FEATURE: A Buyer’s Guide: Part Seventy-Two: The Coral

FEATURE:

 

 

A Buyer’s Guide

Part Seventy-Two: The Coral

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FOR this A Buyer’s Guide…

I am highlighting the best albums from The Coral. The fabulous Merseyside band formed in 1996. Twenty-five years after they started out, they are still producing sensational ands hugely original music. Their tenth studio album, Coral Island, was released earlier this year. Before getting to the albums from The Coral that you should investigate, here is some biography from AllMusic:

“Since their debut in the early 2000s, the Coral proved to be one of the most consistent bands in the U.K. retro-rock scene thanks to their knack for crafting sneakily good hooks, the jangling interplay of the guitars, and James Skelly's powerful vocals. Their rambunctious sound deftly mixes together elements of '60s garage rock, psychedelic pop, and folk-rock, spicing it with bits of Merseybeat, Motown, vintage blues, and even sea shanties. The band's 2002 self-titled debut album topped the U.K. charts, and even as their sound changed over the years, taking detours to spooky folk on 2004's Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker, stripped-down indie pop on 2005's Portishead-produced The Invisible Invasion, and expansively heavy '70s rock on 2016's Distance Inbetween, they stayed popular and influential. 2021's Coral Island displays all their influences over a double-length concept album devoted to memories of English seaside resort towns.

Hailing from Hoylake, a town on the Wirral Peninsula just across the River Mersey from Liverpool, the band was formed in 1996 by school friends vocalist/guitarist James Skelly, guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones, drummer Ian Skelly, and bassist Paul Duffy, and were soon joined by another guitarist, Lee Southall. After a couple years of rehearsing and playing shows, they added keyboardist Nick Power to the lineup. Their vintage sound and mysterious songs piqued the interest of former Shack drummer Alan Willis, who launched the Deltasonic label specifically to release the Coral's music, beginning with a 2001 single and a pair of EPs that led up to their breakthrough 2002 self-titled debut LP. The album was an immediate success, reaching number five on the U.K. charts and garnering a Mercury Prize nomination the day after its release. Though the next year was filled with a hectic touring schedule, they were able to quickly write a batch of songs and headed to the studio with producer Ian Broudie, who had worked with one of the band's touchstones, Echo & the Bunnymen. Released in 2003, Magic and Medicine was a focused album, with more cohesive songs and a streamlined sound. It hit the top of the U.K. album charts, and the band expanded the scope of its touring by heading to the U.S., Europe, and Japan. While in the middle of all that, they repaired to a small shed in North Wales with Broudie to record what turned out to be a stopgap before their next album. The Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker mini-album explored darker territory than the previous album, and had a lo-fi and experimental sound in comparison.

Their next album took a completely different tack, as the group headed into the studio with Portishead's Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley. Working together, they stripped the band's sound down to the spooky essentials to create a powerfully sparse setting for the band's most impressive songs yet. After the album's release, Ryder-Jones stepped down as a touring member of the band and was replaced by guitarist David McDonnell for the subsequent tour dates that included some with Arctic Monkeys. The band began work on another record, minus Ryder-Jones' participation, but abandoned the project before it could be completed. Instead, they welcomed Ryder-Jones back and began work on their fourth album with producers Broudie and Craig Silvey. The resulting folk-rock and sunshine pop-influenced Roots & Echoes was issued in 2007 and reached the Top Ten of the U.K. album charts. Soon after the record came out, Ryder-Jones left the band for good, citing agoraphobia, depression, and nervous anxiety brought on by being in the group as the reasons.

Regrouping as a five-piece, the Coral enlisted legendary producer John Leckie (who had worked with everyone from XTC to Radiohead) to work on their sixth album. Arriving in 2010, Butterfly House was the band's most modern-sounding work to date, with Leckie giving their sunny psych-pop sound a little extra studio gloss. Along with the album proper, the quartet also released an acoustic version, simply titled Butterfly House Acoustic, later in the year. Sessions with Leckie for the band's next album were started at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studio, and they got about halfway through before they decided to go on hiatus. The bandmembers felt like they were running out of gas creatively and wanted to work on other projects.

Ian Skelly's Cut from a Star came out quickly in 2012 and James Skelly's Love Undercover followed the next year on the brothers' own Skeleton Key label. Ian also formed the band Serpent Power with former Zutons member Paul Molloy and released a self-titled album in 2014. That same year, Skeleton Key released the album the Coral had nearly finished in 2006. Recorded on an eight-track tape machine, The Curse of Love had a lo-fi psychedelic folk sound and featured 12 songs that had never before seen the light of day. During the process of getting the release together, Skelly decided he had a batch of Coral songs ready to go and the band, minus Southall, reconvened to start making music again.

Inspired by the memory of their mentor Willis, who died in a cycling accident in 2014, and the sounds of Can and Hawkwind, the foursome quickly got some songs together. They were joined in the studio by producer Rich Turvey and guitarist Molloy, who added his Stooges-influenced guitar parts, and then stuck around to join the band officially. Distance Inbetween, which was heavier and more '70s-influenced than anything they had previously done, was their first album not to be released by Deltasonic. It came out in 2018 on Ignition Records instead. After a couple years spent playing shows, running Skeleton Key and Parr Street Studios in Liverpool, and, in James Skelly's case, producing the highly regarded indie group Blossoms, the band found time to record its ninth album, 2018's Move Through the Dawn. Working again with Turvey, the band took a step back from the heavy sound of the previous record in favor of something much poppier, inspired by Jeff Lynne's production and the rambling spirit of the Traveling Wilburys. After spending much of 2019 in the studio, working on a wide range of material, and at one point almost scrapping the project before turning it into a double album, the band were ready to release their tenth album when the global pandemic sent the band into lockdown with the rest of the world. They spent time tweaking the finished tracks and recorded and released an album of songs recorded during lockdown. A collection of Coral classics and covers done acoustically by James Skelly, The Lockdown Sessions was issued in May of 2020. Almost a full year later, Coral Island was released. Drawing from all the musical threads of their long career, the record is inspired by classic concept albums like Odgens Nut Gone Flake and Village Green Preservation Society; the first half plays like an imagined soundtrack to busy fairgrounds, while the latter, more somber section focuses on the out-of-season lives of its characters”.

To acknowledge and honour the terrific work from The Coral, I have recommended their four essential albums, an underrated gem and their latest studio album (I could not find a book specifically about the band to mention). If you are new to The Coral, then this guide below should…

HELP you out.

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The Four Essential Albums

 

The Coral

Release Date: 29th July, 2020

Label: Deltasonic

Producers: Ian Broudie/Zion Egg (co.)

Standout Tracks: Shadows Fall/Simon Diamond/Skeleton Key

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/the-coral/the-coral-5136bcc9-90db-4da6-bffa-087350a77380

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6Fhnezpt7TKojq1ufkZ5qA?si=S9AhsLFDQDWVRq0ikf5csA&dl_branch=1

Review:

“Dunno how it happened. But thanks to a glitch in the time-space continuum, The Coral's brilliant, bizarre debut album arrives with us in mid-2002, fresh from the British beat boom of 1964. En route they've navigated their way via Country Joe & The Fish, Leadbelly, Motown, The Doors, Russian Cossack music, the (early) The Coral, The Action, Hawaiian instrumentals, WWF wrestling, Scouse luminaries The Stairs and Shack (former drummer Alan Wills, fittingly, is their manager) and, most probably, Captain Birdseye. It's so nautically-inclined you can almost smell the fishing nets. And all the work of six straggly youths from Hoylake, Merseyside - where else? - the eldest of whom, leather-lunged singer James Skelly, weighs in at a wizened 21. Too much.

In The Coral's company, the usual critical shorthand isn't so much made redundant as turned into hieroglyphics. Take 'Goodbye'. Stomping rhythm 'n' blues for two minutes, then suddenly the guitars flip into gonzo-punk overload and then whoooosh, it's turned into that dream sequence bit in 'Wayne's World 2' where Wayne meets Jim Morrison in the desert, before wriggling to a triumphant conclusion in four minutes flat.

Tunes so joyous you thought they only existed on dusty 45s in ancient pub jukeboxes appear regularly through the mist. 'Dreaming Of You' is two minutes and 19 seconds of yearning pop confusion ('I still need you but/I don't want you') to rival both Madness' 'When I Dream' and Frank Zappa' 'My Girl' (told you it was weird); 'Skeleton Key' is a deranged Coral tribute that morphs into a gothic mariachi shuffle and finally, sublime, slippery Grace Jones disco and 'Shadows Fall', as you know, features the first ever marriage of ragtime, Egyptian reggae and barbershop on record. All orchestrated by Joe Meek (sombrero's off, incidentally, to Ian Broudie for an impeccable production).

But The Coral display not the slightest trace of Gomez-ian worthiness, just an insane joy at being able to make an album that, as James has gone on record as saying, sounds 'timeless'. Only the Super Furriesand would dare show such disrespect for the rulebook, but even they, you suspect, would draw the line at skiffle-driven Gregorian sea shanties” – NME

Choice Cut: Dreaming of You

Magic and Medicine

Release Date: 28th July, 2003

Label: Deltasonic

Producers: Ian Broudie/The Coral (co.)

Standout Tracks: Secret Kiss/Bill McCai/Confessions of A.D.D.D.

Buy: https://www.banquetrecords.com/the-coral/magic-and-medicine/MOVLP1889

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3vd7xfTaPLTZZFIfSOzxLp?si=LvHLThsYR2-S5-oI3blxJg&dl_branch=1

Review:

“Mixing equal bits Merseybeat melody, ragged Nuggets energy, and pure rock nostalgia, the Coral create one of the 21st century's finest odes to 1960s and 1970s garage rock. Not since The La's has a band more convincingly aped an era, and like that album, there's not a cringe-worthy moment in sight. If the lads were accused of being too bombastic and experimental on their debut, here they rein in their influences and just stick with the program of creating rocking tunes. The songwriting, playing, and production are so subtle, one almost imagines that these 12 songs are lost sonic treats from the Animals, Love, or some forgotten band of psych-pop dreamers. While a number of the songs stick out as highlights, particularly the catchy U.K. singles "Don't Think You're the First" and "Pass It On," a majority of the songs work as growers. While the band has abandoned the rousing loony attitude of its debut, and filtered out any ska influence, jazz, blues, and Spanish guitar motifs keep things varied. Beyond the singles, every track works its own fine magic, but the spooky, chugging "Bill McCai" and the atmospheric ballad "Careless Hands" are particularly noteworthy. The album loses its bearings somewhat after "Pass It On," not because the final two songs are weak, but because they stray from the even tone of the previous ten songs. Remarkably authentic in recovering the vibes of early British rock, Magic and Medicine is a mature, solid throwback. Whether or not the Coral travel these same musical avenues in the future, for now they've definitely created an album that's a world unto itself, and one that's well worth repeat visits” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Don't Think You're the First

The Invisible Invasion

Release Date: 23rd May, 2005

Label: Deltasonic

Producers: Adrian Utley/Geoff Barrow

Standout Tracks: She Sings the Mourning/Something Inside of Me/Arabian Sand

Buy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Invisible-Invasion-Coral/dp/B000808YY6

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1PioHkWD8fyM5UhrzxMQkS?si=1buZbk5YSQuk4GCGdBFLyg&dl_branch=1

Review:

“Not content with just referencing the usual suspects (The Beatles et al), The Coral have a knack of revisiting more recent Merseyside luminaries such as Julian Cope and Ian McCulloch's back catalogue when constructing a tune, and here is no exception, with 'A Warning To The Curious' and 'Far From The Crowd' both casting a knowing glance towards The Teardrop Explodes' 'Sleeping Gas' and 'When I Dream' respectively, as Nick Power's Hammond crashes in and out of time with an opulent menace, orchestrated by the twin twanging of Bill Ryder-Jones and Lee Southall, with James Skelly swooning "If I never had you..." hauntingly punctuating the former, while a wall of reverb halts the latter on both take-off and mid-flight.

Sure enough, The Coral have always done simplistic songs with paramount ease, and 'So Long Ago' and 'Come Home' are no exception, both borrowing from the same guidebook as 'Dreaming Of You' and 'Pass It On' in that their charm lies in the initial feeling that they are so "throwaway" that anyone can write them, despite the fact that seldom few artists do with the aplomb of The Coral.

'Something Inside Of Me' meanwhile is what 'London Calling' would have sounded like if Strummer and Jones had spent the summer of 1978 holed up in Toxteth rather than Brixton, Skelly offering the couplet "The invisible invasion, it's like a stranger, strangled on the moor" that sets it's mushroom'n'opium cocktail apart from The Clash's ganj'n'rum infested r'n'b. Similarly 'The Operator' feels like it could have been lifted from Echo And The Bunnymen's timeless 'Crocodiles' album, as the Manzarek swirl of Power's organ wraps itself around a psychotic groove reminiscent of both the Cavern in the 60s and Erics in the late 70s whilst Skelly opines "they're coming to take me away...".

By far the most engaging track here though is 'Arabian Sand', a five minute blissed out stomp that owes as much to Julian Covey's Northern Soul epic 'A Little Bit Hurt' as it does Liverpool's music hall of fame, and also sees the Coral in (semi)vitriolic mood as they take out their frustration on "the madman in the desert".

Ending with the curtains drawn, time for bed ballad of 'Late Afternoon', it almost seems like The Coral may have burnt themselves out making this record. Let's hope not because 'The Invisible Invasion' is far from being a difficult third album, instead providing another shining example that the Grandsons of Invention have plenty more use for their test tubes and bunsen burners just yet” – Drowned in Sound

Choice Cut: In the Morning

Distance Inbetween

Release Date: 4th March, 2016

Label: Ignition Records

Producers: Richard Turvey/The Coral

Standout Tracks: White Bird/Chasing the Tail of a Dream/Holy Revelation

Buy: https://www.fiveriserecords.co.uk/product/coral-distance-inbetween/

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6cw9U3LIFGGMbqqQPl2aXf?si=aluRpMbKT-2Ith7AgXkNEg&dl_branch=1

Review:

“Fourteen years have passed since The Coral’s self-titled debut catapulted them from the new act pub circuit to the Top Ten, back when such an achievement truly meant something, and it’s a rather different version of the band that pitches up with this heavier, fuzzier album. The wide-eyed, chemically enhanced euphoria of that first set has morphed over time into a sound that is more intense and less ephemeral.

They seemed to have lost their way a little after 2005’s third outing ‘The Invisible Invasion’, hunting for singles at the expense of their parent records. A case in point is ‘Jacqueline’, from ‘Roots & Echoes’, a truly magnificent song that starkly contrasts with its stodgily pleasant companions. When ‘lost’ 2006 recording ‘The Curse Of Love’ was quietly released in 2014, it served as a reminder that The Coral could be quite the album band, able to craft a coherent set that delivered a sustained and absorbing mood.

The reference points largely remain in the ‘60s, but a little later in that formative decade. The riffs are elongated and the quest for cheap thrills has long since faded. A slight chill is felt on several tracks as the sense that they are perilously close to a less hyperbolically testosterone-coated Kasabian emerges, but it can be largely overcome. For all the tinkering around the edges, the knack for melody married with James Skelly’s gloriously emotive voice has always been The Coral’s calling card and so it remains.

‘Distance Inbetween’ certainly possesses its own sonic landscape, fluctuating little across its duration but occupying the territory in confident, coherent fashion. ‘Connector’ buzzes like an alarm and makes for an arresting opening, while ‘White Bird’ commences a neat line in multi-tracked vocals that is used to fine effect on several occasions. The title track hinges on the mid-paced melancholia that is one of the band’s hallmarks, but no less beautiful for being ever so slightly familiar.

‘She Runs The River’ twinkles magically, multiple Skellys floating atop a spaced out soundscape. It’s an exercise in understatement that serves as a reminder of the intuitive interplay that has developed over the years. It is topped, however, by ‘Miss Fortune’, the album’s joyous highlight. With its Krautrock-tinged rhythm, backwards guitar and soaring chorus, it suggests that this rested and revitalised incarnation of The Coral still has plenty to offer. Having grown tired, their enthusiasm is audibly restored” – CLASH

Choice Cut: Miss Fortune

The Underrated Gem

 

Butterfly House

Release Date: 12th July, 2010

Label: Deltasonic

Producer: John Leckie

Standout Tracks: More than a Lover/Walking in the Winter/Butterfly House

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=263927&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/58mxHA6d29lBNysgUDdvwZ?si=fpzD24dlT12nrG51T4ngww&dl_branch=1

Review:

“Five albums into their career -- or six, depending on whether or not you count the limited-edition Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker, which the band apparently doesn't -- the Coral find themselves as close as they've ever come to the "mainstream" with Butterfly House. The U.K. psych revivalists' first two albums are winningly quirky outings full of gloriously skewed pop sensibilities, but from 2005's The Invisible Invasion onward, the band has moved toward an increasingly more straightforward approach. It seems likely that the Coral would have continued in that direction even if guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones hadn't departed before the making of Butterfly House, but his exit may have pushed the band even further from the willful weirdness of its past. The trademark ‘60s influences are still present in no uncertain terms, but instead of drawing inspiration from the druggy, trippy side of that era's sounds, Butterfly House hones in on a more pop-savvy vibe, coming out closer to, say, the Association than Pink Floyd. In the process, the lads have made their most hook-laden and, yes, accessible album to date, full of infectious melodies and indelible riffs. Some champions of the band's early albums may consider this to be some kind of betrayal, but in fact it's simply part of an inevitable maturation process, and considering the results, a very welcome one indeed. And while the Coral's music will probably always have a strong connection to the past, Butterfly House turns out to be the band's most contemporary-sounding album to date, depending as it does on timeless pop values more than psychedelic spelunking” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: 1000 Years

The Latest Album

 

Coral Island

Release Date: 30th April, 2021

Labels: Run On/Modern Sky UK

Producers: The Coral/Chris Taylor

Standout Tracks: Vacancy/Faceless Angel/Take Me Back to the Summertime

Buy: https://sisterray.co.uk/products/the-coral-2022-reissue?variant=40043382210607&currency=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gclid=CjwKCAjwvuGJBhB1EiwACU1AiRmZKDJnQeGvmVx4QkUoJkESMOrI5xY8NL-0LHv7C_Wo_5eQ6cE4sRoC8HEQAvD_BwE

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3DsVPs2X3o6HJOrioFo4lx?si=VQCJinvuTjGH84kEdg9_cw&dl_branch=1

Review:

“The highlights are almost too many to mention. ‘Lover Undiscovered’ is a sublime tongue-twister; ‘Change Your Mind’ is blessed with quiet assurance, while ‘Mist On The River’ is dominated by a sense of uneasiness that goes beyond words.

A double album in the old-fashioned sense, ‘Coral Island’ will no doubt work particularly well on vinyl. The songs are fused together in natural groupings, while the break between placing the stylus on a fresh side of vinyl allows the narrative to seep into the unconscious, before the music begins once more.

‘Arcade Hallucinations’ is an unsettling, emphatically creative piece of off kilter psychedelia, it’s rattling charity shop percussive noises truly setting you on edge. The introspective pairing of ‘Autumn Has Come’ and ‘End Of The Pier’ pull at the heartstrings, while ‘Golden Age’ is a late-career high.

Held together by narration by Ian Murray – James and Ian Skelly’s grandad – ‘Coral Island’ has a natural flow, one that holds your attention even at the record’s most sonically obtuse moments. And there are certainly moments of experimentation – as much as ‘Coral Island’ revels in plaintive guitar pop classicism, the band certainly enjoyed thinking outside the box. There are shades of Joe Meek’s experimentation at work throughout, with Liverpool’s Parr Street Studios being turned into a mania of pedals, horns, and other effects.

Closing with the beautiful pairing of ‘The Calico Girl’ and ‘The Last Entertainer’, ‘Coral Island’ is huge in scope and ambition, while also remaining staggeringly consistent. The bar is set high from the off, and they never fail to reach it. A lazy comparison: it’s as creative as ‘The White Album’ and as unified as ‘Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake’. A truly superb experience, it feels as though The Coral have painted their masterpiece – a one way ticket to ‘Coral Island’ is a truly an offer you can’t turn down” – CLASH

Choice Cut: Lover Undiscovered

FEATURE: Radio XY: The Small Improvement Regarding Gender Disparity on Radio Playlists

FEATURE:

 

Radio XY 

IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa

The Small Improvement Regarding Gender Disparity on Radio Playlists

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IT seems like there is…

PHOTO CREDIT: Amr Taha/Unsplash

this yearly issue where we look at figures in the music industry that point at gender disparity. Whether it is the lack of female headliners at festivals or an unequal balance regarding those in executive positions, it always makes for depressing reading. Even though there has been some small improvement regarding the number of women played on radio, there has not been a big leap at all. A new report has highlighted how, despite a tiny jump, there is still inequality. It is not just women affected. Non-binary artists are also in the minority. As this article from The Guardian outlines, artists of colour are still fighting for recognition and equality. Some stations have improved the number of female artists on their playlists. Others are languishing behind. There are some interesting findings:

“The latest edition of the Gender Disparity Data report into UK radio airplay of British artists has revealed slight improvements on last year’s findings.

Between 1 January and 1 August 2021, 44% of the top 50 British artists played on UK radio were male, down 7% on last year. Women accounted for 20% – an increase of 1% – and non-binary artists, represented exclusively by Sam Smith, 2%. Mixed-gender collaborations represented 34% of airplay, up 4% from 2020.

The slight shift was also tangible behind the scenes. Male songwriters and composers created 76.4% of these radio hits, down 3.6%. Female songwriters and composers represented 23.2%, up significantly from 19% last year. Non-binary songwriters and composers slipped from 1% in 2020 to 0.4% this year.

BBC Radio 1 showed a sharp shift from favouring British male solo artists towards mixed-gender collaborations. Men made up 45% of this year’s airplay, compared with 85% in the previous 12 months. Collaborations were up from 5% to 45%. Solo female artists remained stuck at 10%.

British female artists were also disadvantaged by collaborations at BBC Radio 2: men held fast at 55%, women dropped from 40% to 25%, and mixed gender collaborations rose from 5% to 20%.

BBC Radio 6 Music showed the greatest improvement of any BBC station, with men dropping from 60% to 45%, women rising from 10% to 40%, and collaborations halving from 30% to 15%.

A BBC spokesperson told the GuardianL “BBC radio is committed to supporting and celebrating a diverse range of music across our pop platforms, from festival slots right through to the playlist, with an estimated 40% of playlisted songs featuring female artists.”

The rock-focused stations Absolute Radio (Bauer) and Radio X (Global) featured 0% British female artists in their airplay for the period, the same as 2020. Kerrang! (Bauer), which featured 0% women in the previous 12 months, showed an improvement, now with 10%.

A Bauer spokesperson told the Guardian: “We are improving female representation across our stations, not only in terms of our playlist but with on-air talent. Our stations have introduced more female-fronted programming this year, and are continuing to work with labels and the wider music industry to ensure the future of rock and indie is entirely inclusive”.

It does seem to be a bit of a mixed bag. Although there has been some visible improvement regarding playlists on some stations, on others there has been stagnation. I think we would all love to hear more women on playlists. Not just solo artists; collaborations featuring women and non-binary artists would be fantastic. One could say that there are genres where women are smaller in numbers, so some stations are going to struggle to make up the numbers. I would disagree. Although BBC Radio 1 is featuring more mixed-gender collaborations, there are so many great female artists breaking through that fit their demographic. I wonder why they are not being included. Also, for stations like Absolute Radio who have more of a Rock demographic, there are so many brilliant female Rock artists and female-led bands that they are overlooking. I assume that the findings take in new talent. In terms of legacy artists, there is an ocean of choice that stations can choose from! The report that has been published breaks down stations and the number of women/men/non-binary artists/artists of colour they play. It is there so that everyone can make improvements. It is quite poor that, at a time when so many artists are hit hard and look to royalties for sustainability, they are being denied. I guess there are positive signs. More women are being played. Though, as I always say, the best music is being made by them. The new statistics do not reflect this fact.

PHOTO CREDIT: @icons8/Unsplash

Going forward, I do think stations need to keep making strides. One only needs to look at the albums being released and websites tipping artists to watch. One will find plenty of women across all genres. I want to bring in another section from The Guardian’s article regarding the most-played songs on U.K. radio:

“Another side of the report focused on the top 20 songs played by British artists on UK radio stations over the period 1 August 2020-1 August 2021. The list was topped by Joel Corry and MNEK’s Head and Heart, followed by Dua Lipa (Levitating) and Sigala and James Arthur (Lasting Lover)”.

I am going to wrap up in a second. So many people have been lifted and comforted by radio during the pandemic. Not only is it the artists played that have given us strength. The broadcasters have been integral. Some stations have recruited more women to their presenting ranks, though one still hears more men. There is work to do. It does appear that, in some quarters, there has been movement in the right direction. Far from there being a lack of worthy and talented women in music (and non-binary artists/broadcasters), there is this reluctance from some to recognise them. It is a pity. Greater inclusion and mindfulness needs to happen on most of the big stations. If some have taken it upon themselves to make some real changes, others appear to have stalled. I hope that the Gender Disparity Data report spurs proactive reaction. It is evident that there is still work to be done as…

WE look ahead to 2022.

FEATURE: Past the Point of No Return: Kate Bush’s Pi

FEATURE:

 

 

Past the Point of No Return

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot in 2005 as part of the Aerial sessions/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton 

Kate Bush’s Pi

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I am not sure…

whether I discussed Pi when marking the fifteenth anniversary of Kate Bush’s double album, Aerial, last year. If I did, then I want to return from a very unusual song from an artist who has never really walked on the conventional path! Aerial is such an ambitious and triumphant album. Much like Hounds of Love, there are conventional songs (as conventional as she could be, anyway!) and a conceptual suite. Recorded when her son, Bertie, was a small child, one can hear the warmth and his importance. Rather than it being a homely/soft album, there is a sense of peace, reflection and appreciation of nature and focusing on what is important. Looking at things Bush sang about prior to 2005, it should not have come as a surprise that she wanted to tackle a mathematical constant. As of 2019, π has been calculated to 31.4 trillion decimal places. It would have taken a while for her to get that far! Before quoting an interview where Bush spoke about the idea for writing Pi, an article from 2005 highlights a small error she made in her calculations:

“A great observation from Simon Singh's recent article in the Telegraph.

Chris McEvoy pointed out that Aerial, the new album from Kate Bush, has the mathematically flawed song "Pi". Although Bush seems to be singing the digits of Pi, McEvoy decided to check.

All was well for the first 78 decimal places, but suddenly disaster struck: "Then it went to hell in a handbasket," said McEvoy, "when she missed out the next 22 digits completely before finishing with a precise rendition of her final 37 digits."

He was right to point out Kate Bush's error, particularly as she seems to be trying to capture the essence of being a mathematician: "Sweet and gentle and sensitive man, With an obsessive nature and deep fascination for numbers, And a complete infatuation with the calculation of Pi".

I don’t suspect that Bush would lose too much sleep knowing about a minor error. The fact that she dedicated a song to π is amazing. It is the sort of thing one might hear from an experimental artist or in the underground. As one of the most popular and beloved artists ever, it was quite a risk! Ahead of Aerial turning sixteen in November, I am going to put together a few features about the album. This article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia highlights an interview I was not even aware of:

“I really like the challenge of singing numbers, as opposed to words because numbers are so unemotional as a lyric to sing and it was really fascinating singing that. Trying to sort of, put an emotional element into singing about...a seven...you know and you really care about that nine. I find numbers fascinating, the idea that nearly everything can be broken down into numbers, it is a fascinating thing; and i think also that we are completely surrounded by numbers now, in a way that we weren't you know even 20, 30 years ago we're all walking around with mobile phones and numbers on our foreheads almost; and it's like you know computers...

I suppose, um, I find it fascinating that there are people who actually spend their lives trying to formulate pi; so the idea of this number, that, in a way is possibly something that will go on to infinity and yet people are trying to pin it down and put their mark on and make it theirs in a way I guess also i think you know you get a bit a lot of connection with mathematism and music because of patterns and shapes... (Ken Bruce show, BBC Radio 2, 31 October 2005)”.

With her lyrics, Kate Bush tells fascinating stories and takes the listener somewhere special. That is true of Pi. This is my favourite passage: “Oh he love, he love, he love/He does love his numbers/And they run, they run, they run him/In a great big circle/In a circle of infinity/But he must, he must, he must/Put a number to it”. Coming straight after Aerial’s only single, King of the Mountain, I love the fact Bush put Pi as the second track! It is quite brave and bold sequencing. One might assume a song like How to Be Invisible or Joanni would be next. Pi is over six minutes - so it something people have to invest time in. Many fans might put it in the bottom three of their least-favourite tracks from Aerial, but I really like it! Such an engrossing and unusual song, one can definitely get lost in it. I will wrap up in a second. Aerial is such a wonderful (double) album that has these wonderful and individual songs on the first side – A Sea of Honey – that is followed by a suite set over the course of a single day – the magnificent A Sky of Honey. I might delve back into that second side in the next Aerial feature. Go and listen to Pi, and go and investigate to the other tracks on Aerial. A masterful ‘return’ (Bush’s previous album, The Red Shoes, was released in 1993) of 2005, I really love the sounds and songs of her eighth studio album. I think that Pi is an underrated and…

FASCINATING track.

FEATURE: Spotlight: TOKiMONSTA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Bethany Vargas 

TOKiMONSTA

___________

RATHER than…

quote any reviews, there are a few interviews with TOKiMONSTA that I want to source. Real name Jennifer Lee, she has had a remarkable life and career so far. Her latest album, 2020’s Oasis Nocturno (Instrumentals), is excellent. Although there are quite a few guest voices, I think TOKiMONSTA’s talent shines through. The first interview is from Pitchfork in 2017. TOKiMONSTA (Lee) discussed a potentially fatal brain disease that changed her life:

“For Jennifer Lee, the worst part of recovering from two brain surgeries wasn’t the loss of her ability to comprehend language. It wasn’t even the fact that she had to relearn how to walk, or the extreme anxiety she felt stepping outside after an extended recovery period spent immobile. The worst part was that Lee, who produces kinetic, psychedelic hip-hop beats as TOKiMONSTA, couldn’t make music anymore. She couldn’t even hear it as music. “All music just sounded like noise,” she tells me by phone recently. “I remember being like, ‘Ooh, this is weird! This is metallic, harsh nonsense to me.’”

The Los Angeles-based Lee, who was diagnosed with an extremely rare and potentially fatal brain disease called Moyamoya at the end of 2015, eventually regained her ability to comprehend music. Her forthcoming third album, Lune Rouge, consists entirely of songs she wrote after her recovery. Though its lyrics don’t address the specifics of her ordeal (and often arrive via guests like Joey Purp, MNDR, and Yuna), the music is embedded with Lee’s struggle to overcome the biggest challenge of her life. Lune Rouge tends more melancholy than the West Coast beatwork she’s produced in the past, which has included bold and bright collaborations with the likes of Anderson .Paak and Gavin Turek, but it also carries an undertone of hope, even exuberance. Sharp, clear instrumentals cut through airy vocals across 11 tracks that raise Lee’s music to new emotional heights.

“Moyamoya” is a Japanese word that means “a puff of smoke.” When your main arteries start shrinking, the blood still wants to reach your brain, so it starts taking these smaller, weaker collateral vessels. Usually you wouldn't be able to see those little veins, but because they’re taking more blood to compensate, it looks like a puff of smoke is coming from the base of your brain. If your arteries start to shut down and the blood starts to take these weaker vessels, you’re either going to have a stroke or an aneurysm or thrombosis. It just explodes, basically, because those veins are not meant to take on an artery’s worth of blood.

Without any treatment, most people don’t live past 40. Eventually your arteries shut off. I didn’t know how much time I had, and I was leaving on tour. You know how with medical stuff you have to usually get a referral and insurance and all sorts of crazy shit? It’s a really convoluted process to get treatment. But I was a ticking time bomb. I was really desperate and scared shitless. So I went online and found that the leading institute for this really rare condition was at Stanford, and I found an email address for the head nurse at the neurosurgery department. She replied to me, I sent them my paperwork, and they were like, “OK, come in.”

After the first surgery, I had a couple of childhood friends come visit. I was tired but fine—joking with them, playing dominos. It was looking good. The day after they left, I couldn’t talk or understand speech. I could still think thoughts, but all the words I knew were gone. I even tried texting people and my texts were complete gibberish. It was almost like suddenly I spoke a different language than everyone else. I’m a fairly chatty person, and to take that facility away was just a visceral pain. But the worst part was that I couldn’t understand any kind of music whatsoever. It didn’t sound right.

As time progressed, my language got better and better. On my birthday, January 26th, I had my last scan that said the surgery was successful and I got to go home. My speech was at about 70 percent. I could communicate, but I would have frequent brain farts. Also, because I basically had been sitting in bed 24 hours a day, I lost all the muscle tone in my body, so it was really difficult for me to walk.

The whole month of February [2016], I tried to acclimate myself to my life again. The most difficult thing was trying to work on music. I opened Ableton and I couldn’t understand what I was doing, even though at that point my speech was at 90 percent. I tried to make music and it was just garbage. The part of my brain that knew how to put sounds together was broken. I didn’t understand why it didn’t make sense anymore. When you make music, so much of it is intuitive and natural. I could always put sounds together, play a little ditty on the piano. I never had to think about doing it. And then I’m there in front of my computer going, “I don’t understand if this is a good sound or a bad sound. I don’t know if I’m playing a melody.” I didn’t want to pity myself, but it was a heart-wrenching pain”.

It is amazing looking at all of the E.P.s, singles and albums that TOKiMONSTA has put out since 2008’s E.P., Bedtime Lullabies. It is hard to define TOKiMONSTA’s music. It is Hip-Hop/Rap mixed with Electronic. It is a wonderful blend that any listener can pick up new and appreciate. Although there has been new music from TOKiMONSTA this year, I am not sure whether there are plans for another album or E.P. We shall see what comes next. Last year, DJ Booth chatted with TOKiMONSTA about her classical training and special blend of sounds:

“DJBooth: Growing up, what was your first experience with rap music?

TOKiMONSTA: The very first piece of music I purchased was Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” which I bought as a single. I could’ve bought the album, but I guess I didn’t understand how purchasing music worked. I bought it at the same time I bought “Waterfalls” by TLC; those were the first two music purchases I ever made. Just imagine a very small Asian girl walking into Tower Records and buying those [singles]. And for whatever reason, I bought them on cassette. I carried them with me later on in life and remember asking myself why I bought the single version since it only had one song on it. Shortly after that, I started learning how to make mixtapes, so then it was cool. My mom and my sister bought me a boom box with a CD player and space for two cassettes. That’s when I started recording Westside Connection off the radio. But it was all thanks to Coolio; I’ve gotta thank him.

You’re classically trained in piano. How does that training translate to your beat making?

It had a pretty big impact in a unique way, especially considering the beat scene we had in LA during the 2010s era. Most of us, myself included, were making loops, so there were no transitions. The beat would play, and then the drums would come in, and that’s what we would play for each other. Because I had this classical background, I felt I needed to elaborate on it and turn it from just a beat to a song. It was important for me to not only have a beat looping; I wanted to sequence everything and arrange it like it was telling a story. To this day, it’s still an important part of my process. I want these songs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end with something to follow. I don’t want the beginning of the song to sound just like the end of the song.

Your music sits snugly in between the worlds of hip-hop, EDM, and dance music. What inspired you to move toward a more amorphous sound as your career has progressed?

Creative necessity and evolution as an artist. I can’t make the same things I made 10 years ago. Even if I wanted to make Midnight Menu again, I’m not in the same headspace. I’ll listen to that album and be impressed with certain things I did because I don’t think in those ways anymore. I appreciate that era of myself when I wasn’t equipped with the knowledge I have today, but it made me creative in a super-specific way. Now, I have so much knowledge, and I’m a much better engineer and songwriter. Not to say I wasn’t good at things then, but I didn’t know how to work with vocalists at the time. If I make music to satiate the needs of someone who liked my music from a certain era, then I’d be doing myself a disservice. Fortunately, I feel like my evolution has been natural. Every album is a little further down the road from the last one.

It’s been almost five years since your moyamoya diagnosis and subsequent surgeries. How have you been holding up since then? What about your life as a producer has changed post-moyamoya?

It almost goes back to what I was saying before. If tomorrow didn’t exist, would I be happy with my output? I almost died, and it was not chill. I had to write a will; I had to decide where all my stuff goes. No one’s living today and thinking about the possibility that they might die soon. Sometimes we do see it coming, and when you think about everything you’ve done in your life, the regrets start to settle in. I made it through, and after recovering, I thought about what tomorrow brings. You can’t predict what comes next. Make every day count”.

I am finishing off with this interview. One of the most interesting questions raised regards TOKiMONSTA being a trailblazing Asian-American artist. It is clear that she is a hugely inspiring and important artist:

“In the early MySpace days, TOKiMONSTA recalls hiding her gender, fearful that if someone thought they were listening to production by a young woman, they would hold preconceived notions about her talent. “I was very mysterious back then, I had no photos up,” she laughs. At the time, there were a few women who she could look up to – her personal favorites were Bjork and Missy Elliott – but no one she felt was exactly like her. Eventually, as her career grew, she came to understand the magnitude of her success and the impact it could have on others. “I know that just by existing and accomplishing things, it feeds fuel to the younger generation,” she says.

Since then, she has survived a devastating health crisis, become the first woman and Asian American to be nominated for a Grammy in electronic music, started her own label, and most recently curated the Twitch event Every Woman, sponsored by Native Instruments among others, to provide more visibility for women in different music industry roles. In the two-day event, TOKiMONSTA provided a spotlight for a diverse group of women, from all areas of the music business, to share their advice, discuss pertinent issues, and give live-streamed performances like the one above. Through Every Woman, TOKiMONSTA has created her own open community of women, sharing in the highs and lows of working in music and helping each other succeed. “I learned so much from this event,” she says.

You’ve often been seen as a trailblazer. For example, you were the first woman and first Asian American to be nominated for a Grammy in electronic music. Do you feel a lot of pressure to act as a role model?

It is and it isn’t. I think in the earlier days, it was a lot more pressure because I had to constantly prove myself. Everyone else making beats was a dude. I worried they wouldn’t believe me, or even if my music was good, I would be judged more harshly because of who I was. But by the time I had got the Grammy nomination, I was very much tenured. I knew I had been doing this long enough. I had staying ability, and I didn’t come out of nowhere as a gimmick. You can strip me of my identity, and I still make really good music, you know? And that’s what’s important for me. Being this trailblazer is not something I intended to do, I just wanted to be a really dope musician. And in the process of that, my identity ties back into everything. The early days, I actually didn’t even want to say I was a girl, because I didn’t want people to judge or to have these preconceived notions about me, but as the person I am now, I realized that representation is so important. And even though I never set out to be a trailblazer, I take the responsibility of being that person. I didn’t have anyone like me when I was growing up. I know that by existing and accomplishing things, it only feeds fuel to the younger generation.

 You’ve built such a sustainable career over the course of about 10 years in an industry known for burn out and high turnover. Do you have any advice for other young women hoping to have a career like yours?

The music industry is so fickle, but for me, the main thing is and always will be the fact that I love making music. I don’t care about fame, and I don’t care about anything else. I only care about the career because I need to make sure that I can survive off this and can continue to make the music. For a lot of people that are trying to get into the music industry, I think you have to really know why you want to do it. For a lot of the musicians I know that are really successful, a lot of them (even if they’re making a ton of money) don’t care about the money. They couldn’t care less, they just want to be able to make music and share it with the most amount of people possible. If you can stay true to your vision and not get caught up in a lot of the ancillary things, it’s possible to find success. It also takes a lot of self confidence to make it in music because you need to believe in your vision. I find it helps to have other friends that you make music with. I think, for me, a lot of my success comes from where I started, in my LA community of musicians.

You are involved in so many aspects of the music business. Beyond your work as a producer, you also have your own label and host your channel on Twitch. Why is it important to you to work in various aspects of the music industry?

I think it’s just the kind of person I am. I have so many interests. And the reason why I make music is because I love music. I love listening to music. There’s the music making side of me, and the music loving side of me. Through the label, I’m able to express my tastemaker side, and I get to pick these amazing artists and help them shine and share their music. I was always the kind of friend who would burn people CDs back in the day or send people random Spotify links to new music so that’s kind of my more professional way of doing the same thing. With the Every Woman event, I was thinking beyond myself, wondering what needs to happen right now. I knew I would really love to see something like this. I decided, if no one’s gonna do it, then I’m gonna do it. I’ve survived this long by being a go-getter. If I want to do something, I do it”.

Whilst TOKiMONSTA is not new and she has been around a while, her music has not been heard by everyone. With every release, we get new layers and elements. I love TOKiMONSTA’s music and think that everyone should hear it. Go and follow her on social media and experience one of the finest composers, artists and producers in the world. I will wrap up here. Go and investigate a wonderful talent who has many more…

SUCCESSFUL years ahead of her.

______________

Follow TOKiMONSTA

Official:

https://tokimonsta.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/tokimonsta/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/TOKiMONSTA

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/tokimonsta

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/tokimonsta

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3VwKSHAfgzV1DOHV0aANCI

FEATURE: Childhood Treasure: Albums That Impacted Me: Traveling Wilburys – The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1

FEATURE:

 

 

Childhood Treasure: Albums That Impacted Me

Traveling Wilburys – The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1

___________

EVEN though…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Traveling Wilburys in Encino, California in 1988

I have written about the Traveling Wilburys’ album, The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 before, I thought it would be worth coming back to it for this feature. There is no doubting that it is very important to me. Last year, I also highlighted the debut album by the supergroup consisting of George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne. The reason why The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 impacted me as a child is because it was played quite a lot on car journeys. It regularly soundtrack some very pleasant and carefree times. Not only is the album accessible and full of wonderful moments, you can really hear the connection and friendship between all of the members. Many supergroups don’t really gel, though the Traveling Wilburys were harmonious and on the same page. One would think such huge names would not fit together or there would be clashes. Conversely, they all bring out the best in each other. George Harrison and Jeff Lynne very much seem like the readers of the group. Roy Orbison is that incredible singer (who sadly died before the group recorded their second album, The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3) that brought so emotion and power to proceedings. Tom Petty and Bob Dylan are these iconic songwriters and voices that add something essential to the blend. I don’t think that I will ever grow tired of an album where there is so much wit, warmth and truth. It is, essentially, a group of five middle-aged men having fun and reflecting on mortality!

Released in 1988, The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 got so many positive reviews. A lot of critics consider it to be one of the best albums of that decade. I would definitely agree with that! In terms of sheer positivity and pleasure, there are few other albums that deliver such a hit! I was struck by the album the first time that I heard it – possibly aged seven or eight -, and I keep coming back to it. The songwriting is so simple yet brilliant. Choruses lodge in the head. There is a great review from AllMusic that provides some history about how the Traveling Wilburys came together and why their debut album is so important:  

“There never was a supergroup more super than the Traveling Wilburys. They had Jeff Lynne, the leader of ELO; they had Roy Orbison, the best pop singer of the '60s; they had Tom Petty, the best roots rocker this side of Bruce Springsteen; they had a Beatle and Bob Dylan, for crying out loud! It's impossible to picture a supergroup with a stronger pedigree than that (all that's missing is a Rolling Stone), but in another sense it's hard to call the Wilburys a true supergroup, since they arrived nearly two decades after the all-star craze of the '70s peaked, and they never had the self-important air of nearly all the other supergroups. That, of course, was the key to their charm: they were a group of friends that fell together easily, almost effortlessly, to record a B-side for a single for George Harrison, then had such a good time they stuck around to record a full album, which became a hit upon its 1988 release.

The Traveling Wilburys was big enough to convince the group to record a second album, cheerfully and incongruously titled Vol. 3, two years later despite the death of Orbison. Like most sequels, the second didn't live up to expectations, and by the time it and its predecessor drifted out of print in the mid-'90s, with the rights reverting to Harrison, nobody much noticed. A few years later, though, it soon became apparent that the Wilburys records -- mainly, the debut, widely beloved thanks to its two hits, "Handle With Care" and "End of the Line" -- were out of print, and they soon became valuable items as the Harrison estate dragged its heels on a reissue. Finally, the two albums were bundled up as a two-CD set simply called The Traveling Wilburys and reissued with a DVD containing a documentary and all the videos in the summer of 2007 (there is also a deluxe edition containing a longer, lavish booklet).

Looking back via The Traveling Wilburys, the group's success seems all the more remarkable because the first album is surely, even proudly, not a major statement. Even under the direction of Lynne, who seems incapable of not polishing a record till it gleams, it's loose and funny, even goofy. It's clearly a lark, which makes the offhanded, casual virtuosity of some of the songs all the more affecting, particularly the two big hits, which are sunny and warm, partially because they wryly acknowledge the mileage on these rock & roll veterans. "Handle With Care" and "End of the Line" are the two masterworks here, although Roy's showcase, "Not Alone Anymore" -- more grand and moving than anything on the Lynne-produced Mystery Girl -- comes close in the stature, but its stylized melodrama is a ringer here: it, along with Dylan's offhand heartbreak tune "Congratulations," is the only slow thing here, and the rest of the album just overspills with good vibes, whether it's Tom Petty's lite reggae of "Last Night," Jeff Lynne's excellent Jerry Lee Lewis update "Rattled," or Dylan's very funny "Dirty World," which is only slightly overshadowed by his very, very funny Springsteen swipe "Tweeter and the Monkey Man." These high times keep The Traveling Wilburys fresh and fun years later, after Lynne's production becomes an emblem of the time instead of transcending it. (The album contains two bonus tracks in this reissue, the excellent Harrison song "Maxine" -- a low-key waltz that should have made the cut -- and "Like a Ship," a folky dirge that builds into ELO-esque pop which is pretty good but doesn't have the effervescence of the rest.)

The Traveling Wilburys built upon Harrison's comeback with Cloud Nine and helped revitalize everybody else's career, setting the stage for Dylan's 1989 comeback with Oh Mercy, Petty's first solo album, Full Moon Fever, produced by Lynne (sounding and feeling strikingly similar to this lark), and Orbison's Mystery Girl, which was released posthumously. Given the success of this record and how it boosted the creativity of the rest of the five, it's somewhat a shock that the second effort falls a little flat. In retrospect, Vol. 3 plays a little bit better than it did at the time -- it's the kind of thing to appreciate more in retrospect, since you'll never get another album like it -- but it still labors mightily to recapture what came so effortlessly the first time around, a problem that can't merely be chalked up to the absence of Orbison (who after all, didn't write much on the first and only took lead on one song). Where the humor flowed naturally and absurdly throughout the debut, it feels strained on Vol. 3 -- nowhere more so than on "Wilbury Twist," where Petty implores you to put your underwear on your head and get up and dance, the epitome of forced hilarity -- and the production is too polished and punchy to give it a joie de vivre similar to the debut. That polish is an indication that Lynne and Petty dominate this record, which only makes sense because they made it between Full Moon Fever and Into the Great Wide Open, but it's striking that this sounds like more like their work, even when Dylan takes the lead on "Inside Out" or the doo wop-styled "7 Deadly Sins."

Both of these are quite good songs and they have a few other companions here, like the quite wonderful country stomp "Poor House," but they're songs more notable for their craft than their impact -- nothing is as memorable as the throwaways on the debut -- and when combined with the precise production, it takes a bit for them to sink in. But give the record some time, and these subtle pleasures are discernible, even if they surely pale compared to the open-hearted fun of the debut. But when paired with the debut on this set, it's a worthy companion and helps support the notion that the Traveling Wilburys were a band that possesses a unique, almost innocent, charm that isn't diminished after all this time”.

AllMusic mention the second album from the group. Not as strong, there are a few great songs worth seeking out. I love The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 because one can feel the excitement of the group members. They are having so much fun in every moment! There are few albums as important to me as The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. It is a slice of my childhood that reminds me of simpler times. It may be a while until I cover The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 again. I wanted to include it in a feature which reveals albums that shaped and impacted my childhood. I have such strong memories associated with this album. If you have not heard The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, then go and check it out! One does not need to be a fan of Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne or George Harrison to enjoy the songs. It is a simply…

EXCEPTIONAL album.

FEATURE: The September Playlist: Vol. 3: To Beautiful James: THATS WHAT I WANT

FEATURE:

 

 

The September Playlist  

IN THIS PHOTO: Lil Nas X

Vol. 3: To Beautiful James: THATS WHAT I WANT

__________

THIS is another busy Playlist…

IN THIS PHOTO: Pillow Queens

where there is a range of tracks from artists all over the musical map. In this week’s rundown are new tracks from Lil Nas X, Placebo, Rod Stewart, Self Esteem, Pillow Queens, James Blake, GIRLI, Faithless, and FLOHIO. Also in the mix are Frank Turner, Foxes, Emeli Sandé, Liz Lawrence, and Hatchie. It is a packed and exciting week for new music. If you need a boost to get you into the weekend, then I think that the songs below will do the trick. There are all sorts of genres and moods covered! Play this week’s best loud and you are sure to get…

IN THIS PHOTO: Foxes/PHOTO CREDIT: Zachary Chick

THE kick you need.   

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

____________

Lil Nas X - THATS WHAT I WANT

Placebo – Beautiful James  

PHOTO CREDIT: Olivia Richardson

Self Esteem – Moody  

PHOTO CREDIT: Faolán Carey

Pillow Queens – Rats 

James Blake – Famous Last Words

Faithless – Everybody Everybody

GIRLI – Ruthless

FLOHIO – Whiplash

Rod Stewart – One More Time

Magdalena Bay - You Lose! 

Frank Turner - Haven’t Been Doing So Well 

Liz Lawrence – The Avalanche

Foxes – Sister Ray 

PHOTO CREDIT: Olivia Lifungula

Emeli Sandé – Family 

The War on Drugs (fr. Lucius) - I Don’t Live Here Anymore 

Metronomy x Sorry – Out of Touch 

Kehlani – Altar

PHOTO CREDIT: Ebru Yildiz

Marissa Nadler - If I Could Breathe Underwater

JONES – Blue Sunshine

Hatchie - This Enchanted

MarthaGunn – Lost in the Moment

Adia Victoria – Troubled Mind

Buena Vista Social Club – Chan Chan – 2021

PHOTO CREDIT: Tina Tyrell

Snail Mail – Valentine

Carly Pearce – Diamondback

PHOTO CREDIT: Joshua Atkins

Pa Salieu (ft. Obongjayar) - Style & Fashion

Alana Springsteen – Girlfriend

PHOTO CREDIT: Jacob Boll

Hand Habits - Graves

PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel

TV Priest – Lifesize

PHOTO CREDIT: Aaron Dees

Anna B Savage – A Girl Like You

Honeyglaze – Burglar  

APRIL – Piece of Me 

Liv Grace Blue – Young, Wild & Free

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Thirty: Mary J. Blige

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

 Part Thirty: Mary J. Blige

___________

IN the thirtieth…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times

part of Inspired By…, I wanted to highlight the impact and importance of Mary J. Blige. In terms of her legacy, Blige has been referred to as the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. She is credited with influencing the musical marriage of Hip-Hop and R&B. Before I come to a playlist of songs from artists inspired by Blige, I want to bring in some biography:

“When Mary J. Blige's debut album, What's the 411?, hit the streets in July 1992, critics and fans were floored by its powerful combination of modern soul and edgy hip-hop production that glanced off of the pain and grit of the singer's New York upbringing. Blige instantly became a distinct force in R&B, and throughout a three-decade career has put the full power of her voice behind her music, exorcizing her demons and consequently softening her style, yet never ceding her rank as "the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul." Each one of the singer's proper studio albums has debuted within the Top Ten of the Billboard 200, highlighted by a streak of five multi-platinum titles lasting through No More Drama (2001), and Best R&B Album Grammy awards for The Breakthrough (2005) and Growing Pains (2007). As she continued to add to her rich catalog in the 2010s, a new generation of artists cited her as an influence and sought her for collaborations. These included Kendrick Lamar's "Now or Never" and Disclosure's "F for You," just to name the Grammy-nominated recordings.

Born in the Bronx, Blige spent the first few years of her life in Savannah, Georgia before moving with her mother and older sister to the Schlobam housing projects in Yonkers, New York. Her rough life there produced more than a few scars, physical and otherwise, and Blige dropped out of high school during her junior year, instead spending time doing her friends' hair in her mother's apartment and hanging out. When she was at a local mall in White Plains, New York, she recorded herself singing Anita Baker's "Caught Up in the Rapture" into a karaoke machine. The resulting tape was passed by Blige's stepfather to Uptown Records CEO Andre Harrell. Harrell was impressed with Blige's voice and signed her to sing backup for local acts like Father MC. In 1991, however, Sean "Puffy" Combs took Blige under his wing and began working with her on What's the 411?, her debut album. Combs had a heavy hand in What's the 411?, as did producers Dave Hall, Mark Morales, and Mark Rooney, and the stylish touches that they added to Blige's unique vocal style created a stunning album that bridged the gap between R&B and hip-hop in a way that no singer had before. Uptown capitalized on the success by issuing What's the 411? Remix a year later.

Her 1995 follow-up, My Life, again featured Combs' handiwork, and if it stepped back stylistically from its urban roots by featuring less of a rap sound, it made up for it with its subject matter. My Life was full of street pathos, and Blige's personal pain shone through like a beacon. Her rocky relationship with fellow Uptown artist K-Ci Hailey likely contributed to the raw emotions on the album. The period following the recording of My Life was also a difficult time professionally for Blige, as she severed her ties with Combs and Uptown, hired Suge Knight as a financial advisor, and signed with MCA. However, she soon won her first (of several) Grammy awards: Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By," a duet with Method Man.

Released in 1997, Share My World marked the beginning of Blige's creative partnership with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The album was another hit for Blige and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. By the time her next studio album, Mary, came out in 1999, the fullness and elegance of her relatively conventional sound seemed more developed, as Blige exuded a classic soul style aided by material from Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Stevie Wonder, and Lauryn Hill. Mary made it obvious that the street-grounded style and more confrontational aspects of her music were gone, while the emotive power still remained.

That power also helped carry the more modern-sounding 2001 release No More Drama, a deeply personal album that remained a collective effort musically yet reflected more of Blige's songwriting than any of her previous efforts. The Mary J. Blige on No More Drama seemed miles away from the flashy kid on What's the 411?, yet it was still possible to see the path through her music that produced an older, wiser, but still expressive artist. In 2003 she was reunited with P. Diddy, who produced the majority of that year's patchy Love and Life album. The Breakthrough followed two years later and was a tremendous success, spawning a handful of major singles. By the December 2006 release of Reflections (A Retrospective), The Breakthrough's lead single, "Be Without You," had spent nearly a year on the R&B chart, while the album's fifth single, "Take Me as I Am," had been on the same chart for over four months.

A year later, Blige came out with her eighth studio album, Growing Pains. It was her third consecutive studio album to top both the Billboard 200 and the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. While on tour with Robin Thicke during 2008, Blige began working on Stronger with Each Tear, which was released near the end of the following year and came one spot short of topping the Billboard 200. My Life II...The Journey Continues (Act 1) followed in 2011 with appearances from Beyoncé, Drake, Rick Ross, and Busta Rhymes. Like her previous nine studio albums, it reached gold status. (Her first eight surpassed gold to reach either platinum or multi-platinum status.) Blige's next major move was a featured appearance on Kendrick Lamar's"Now or Never," off the deluxe edition of the Grammy-nominated Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. A Mary Christmas, her first holiday album, stuffed stockings in 2013.

Early in 2014, Blige linked with Disclosure for an alternate version of the U.K. dance-production duo's single "F for You." A few months later, Blige -- supported by extensive assistance from the-Dream and Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, as well as a few other associates -- provided the soundtrack to the comedy Think Like a Man Too. It entered the Billboard Top 200 at number 30 and also reached the Top Ten on Billboard's R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart. Released on Epic, rather than on her home label, it didn't receive the typical level of promotion for a Blige album.

Inspired by Disclosure and other genre-blurring singer/songwriters and producers who were emerging from the U.K., she recorded her 13th album in London that summer with the likes of Sam Smith, Naughty Boy, and Emeli Sandé, as well as Disclosure once more. The London Sessions, her first album for Capitol, was released that November and placed two singles in the Top Ten of Billboard's Adult R&B chart. In late 2016 and early 2017, Blige released the first singles from her next proper studio album, including the Kanye West collaboration "Love Yourself." The parent full-length Strength of a Woman arrived in April 2017, and featured further guest spots from DJ Khaled, Missy Elliott, and Kaytranada. The album peaked at number three on the Billboard 200. Accolades soon piled up for her role in the period drama film Mudbound. Most prominently, she was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song (for "Mighty River"). Newly signed to Republic, Blige issued a handful of 2018-2019 singles, all of which hit the Adult R&B chart. Among them was the Nas collaboration "Thriving," a track that appeared ahead of the two artists' co-headlining summer 2019 tour”.

In order to show how many great artists cite Mary J. Blige as an inspiration, the playlist below features some serious talent. Her thirteenth studio album, Strength of a Woman, was released in 2017. I hope we hear more from her soon. The incredible Mary J. Blige is one of the greatest and…

MOST important artists ever.

FEATURE: Bring It Back to the Boil: The Changing Nature of Sex in Pop Today

FEATURE:

 

 

Bring It Back to the Boil

PHOTO CREDIT: @vital1969/Unsplash 

The Changing Nature of Sex in Pop Today

___________

I have covered this before…

but, having done a trawl of music Pop music from 2001 and 2002, I have noticed how there has been a change in terms of sex and explicitness. Today, there are artists who explore sexuality freely and confidentially – whether that is through promotional images or lyrical content -, though it seems rarer compared to years ago. Modern stars like Dua Lipa and Charli XCX inject a raciness and passion into the music that can be thrilling and alluring, though I don’t think there are that many artists today that are that raw and sexual. Perhaps it has been as result of new standards and Pop rules. Social media might have affected things. I don’t think that things have become more puritanical and cautious. I guess, with social media meaning artists can be blasted and trolled so easily, many hold back. Pop has become more experimental and sophisticated but, as it is still a genre that allows personal revelation and release, mentions of desire and sex have been pared-down and are less widespread. That said, I was watching the video for Holly Vallance 2002 single, Kiss Kiss. It is a cover version of a remake of the song, Şımarık, by Tarkan. It is catchy and has a great chorus hook, though the video leaves little to the imagination! At some points, Vallance appears to be naked (certain parts of her body covered by shafts of light). For a song that is not overly-explicit, I feel the content of the video was perhaps not that well-judged.

It seems like there was a push to promote sex rather than represent the song. This did happen a lot in the early-‘00s. It was not just Vallance who was culpable. Male artists were doing it too, though I think a lot of labels and directors were pushing female artists to be more explicit. Around 2001/2002, artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were hugely popular. Aguilera’s album, Stripped, came out in 2002. Songs like Dirrty are notable for the sexual nature of the video. Britney Spears track, I'm a Slave 4 U, was released in 2001 (it is from her 2001 album, Britney). Maybe it is the visual aspect that has become less sexual. Listening to Pop music from the past decade or so, there has been a slight change of emphasis. Maybe sex is less important or commercial. I do miss a certain sense of the risqué and the evocative. Of course, if the Pop songs are no good or lack any notable hook, then one has to wonder what the objective is. So much of the music of the early-mid-‘00s is really memorable and catchy. Not that Pop music is forgettable now, though we have lost a certain energy, fun, thrill and rawness. Even if Pop music lately has not had the same hooks and sense of uplift that defined the ‘90s and early-‘00s, there has been incredibly accomplished and original Pop made. We have some incredible artists taking genres like Pop in new directions; creating sub-genres and new sounds.

When did things change and why did the ‘rules’ alter? I think it is relevant today but, back in 2018, Laura Snapes wrote for The Guardian. In her feature, she discussed why Pop rules on sex have changed forever. There are sections that discuss how sensuality and a lack of obvious sexualisation has been co-opted. Other artists are talking about romance and chilling on the sofa, rather than putting it all out there and letting the sweat drip:

“That is not to say that sex has vanished from pop since the controversy. Jason Derulo and Bruno Mars are no strangers to objectification; ex-boybanders such as the former One Direction members are still breaking with their clean-cut pasts by letting you know in song exactly how much sex they’re having; while Brit awards nominee J Hus cackles in the face of good taste. In 2016, Ariana Grande released a classic of the form in the admirably brazen Side to Side, about the inability to walk straight after a long night at the coal face.

But pop’s portrayals of sexuality have been complicated – and muted – by an unusually eventful half-decade. Intimacy has been corrupted by technology and anxiety. Female artists are redefining sexuality. Would-be seducers must acknowledge conversations about consent and gender politics. Provocateurs who aren’t progressive are soon rumbled. R&B is grappling with what pleasure looks like when black bodies are under siege from police brutality and cultural fetishisation. And LGBTQ listeners are demanding more than rote heterosexual hook-ups. This immediacy is nothing new – pop has always either shaped or reflected the social and sexual mores of its era – but the outcomes are.

Ed Sheeran is far from a conventional pop Adonis, but, Powers tells me, that is what makes him a contemporary sex symbol. “Shape Of You, the biggest hit of 2017 by a long shot, is about sex. ‘Now my bedsheets smell like you’ sounds like a line from a Marvin Gaye or Joni Mitchell song.” She views Sheeran as, in some ways, the perfect Top 40 heartthrob for this era: “ He comes across as unthreatening, but he’s still sensual. In Sheeran’s song, the new couple goes out to eat, the girl eats a lot and he still wants to have sex with her. That is where anxiety about being “woke” is taking pop songwriters today.”

More significantly, listeners’ heightened awareness of pop’s gender politics began extending behind the scenes. In 2014, the singer Kesha filed a civil suit against her producer Dr Luke accusing him of sexual assault and battery. Dr Luke immediately countersued for defamation in a case that’s ongoing and Kesha’s claims were later thrown out by a judge. Regardless of the outcome, the case prompted debate about pop’s fraught power dynamics.

Rina Sawayama is a Japanese-born, London-raised DIY pop star tipped to break out this year. Her slick sound is influenced by mainstream music from the turn of the millennium, “when labels and A&Rs were actively promoting young sexuality through acts like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera”, she says. But that is where the similarities end. “People are more sensitive to manufactured sexuality, especially from female artists.” she says. “If singers are going to talk about sex, then it has to come from the artist; authenticity is important.” She praises the “comfy erotica” of SZA and her track Drew Barrymore: “She talks about the TV show Narcos in the first verse; it’s a perfect Netflix-and-chill song. I think it echoes how millennials – and especially people of colour – want to spend our time, in a safe space with the people we love.”

The gold standard of empowered female pop sexuality is another holdover from 2013. On Beyoncé’s self-titled surprise album, she sang with explicit command about rediscovering her sexuality after the birth of her first child. “Beyoncé boldly proposes the idea that a woman’s prime – personal, professional, and especially sexual – can occur within a stable romantic partnership,” wrote Pitchfork’s Carrie Battan.

But Beyoncé’s next album represented another paradigm shift in how artists – and specifically black artists – address sexuality. Built around images of matriarchy and female solidarity, 2016’s Lemonade was assumed to confront longstanding rumours of husband Jay-Z’s affairs. “But the trauma of infidelity is about much more than matters of adulterous fucking in Lemonade,” wrote MTV News critic Doreen St Félix. “Black women in America are cheated out of spiritual and material things.” Lemonade confirmed the inseparable nature of structural injustice and interpersonal love, St Félix asserted.

This vision of sexual sanctuary will look intolerably bleak to some. So what should erotic pop look like in 2018? Tranter, who is gay, already sees the mainstream becoming more inclusive. Last Friday, he says, gay artists Troye Sivan and Hayley Kiyoko released new singles, both co-written with LGBTQ writers, “that were clearly queer, fully humanised and sexual while still being emotional, and not fetishising – so I’m pretty hopeful.” He is currently working with black trans singer Shea Diamond, determined to present a three-dimensional portrayal of her desires. “I’m fighting my hardest to make this future come soon,” he says”.

In the wake of Black Lives Matter and ongoing discussions about gender equality and how women are represented in music, maybe the sort of sexual freedom and lack of boundaries we heard almost two decades ago is not going to return. There needs to be quality and change. It would be great to see more L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists spotlighted and heard; for them to be given the same platform. Even so, there are great L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists (such as girl in red), who are writing songs that are erotic yet intelligent. For many reasons, there will not be a return to artists like Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake and their peers who were producing Pop that was red-hot and bold. Times have changed and attitudes to sex in music/videos has evolved. I do feel that, even though there have been improvements and conversations, things have gone in the opposite direction. I can appreciate how the pandemic might affected what Pop artists write about and what their priorities are. I do miss days when Pop was rich and varied enough so that we could hear wholesome and carefree songs sit alongside those with more tongue and tease. Pop is becoming even broader. With that, there has been a loss of an element that made it so thrilling and boundary-pushing. Perhaps things will change in years to come. I like Pop today, but there is something lacking beyond big choruses, hooks and a warmth that one requires. A heat has gradually gone out that has been replaced by ‘the new sexy’. I feel there can be a compromise between the type of the more sexual Pop of years past and a more mature nature. I have asked what ‘post-pandemic Pop’ will sound like and how a huge worldwide pandemic will affect artists and what they discuss. It is going to be interesting…

WHAT we will see.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Pip Blom

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 Pip Blom

___________

ALTHOUGH one cannot call…

Pip Blom a new act, the fact that a new album, Welcome Break, is out next month means I wanted to spotlight them. Led by Pip Blom, the Dutch Indie quartet with the same name are amazing. They released their acclaimed and exceptional debut album, Boat, in 2019. They are getting ready for follow-up. It will be released on Heavenly Recordings on 8th October. Here is a bit of biography about the amazing Dutch force:

“Pip Blom (born 1996) is a musician, singer and songwriter based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Pip Blom is also the name of her four-piece indie rock band.

"Never listen to people who want to change your music." With that advice from a fellow musician Amsterdam based Pip Blom (19, at the time) started writing songs. First with a three string Loog guitar, with the 14-track demo album Short Stories (2013) as a result.

Three years and an array of singles later, her sound had shifted into Courtney Barnett and The Breeders territory. The 'little girl with a guitar' had formed a fully-fledged indie rock band line-up. But it is still Pip.

Pip Blom's début full-length, Boat, was released in 2019 on Heavenly. The band performed at many festivals in The Netherlands, United Kingdom and beyond, from Lowlands to 'Glasto', and is now selling out venues as a headline act in the U.K.”.

I want to bring things up to date and look ahead to the release of Welcome Break. Most of the interviews online are from 2019. That is when Pip Blom sort of captured the most attention and were promoting their debut album. I will refer to Pip Blom as a band because, although the eponymous Blom leads the band, it is very much the music of a group. It must have been exciting for the band in 2019. They had so much energy and this buzz surrounding them. Of course, the pandemic slowed down some momentum last year and this. They must be excited to get back on the road! In 2019, NME featured them. It is interesting hearing how music runs through the Blom family:

“Dutch artist Pip Blom has already fulfilled much of her musical destiny. Form a band to breathe life into her solo bedroom recordings? Check. Sign a record deal with an indie label? Done. Play Glastonbury? It’s on the cards. The 22-year-old musician who fronts the indie quartet of her namesake will open the John Peel stage at Worthy Farm this month. She may have always had Glastonbury in her sights but the stage slot is a significance one: her father was pals with the late, great Peel himself.

Pip, with her younger brother Tender who plays guitar in her band, uphold a legacy together. Their father, Erwin Blom, was in a post-punk band called Eton Crop who Peel adored – so much so that he invited the Dutch group to perform five BBC Radio 1 sessions between 1983 and 1988. Eton Crop disbanded in the mid ‘90s but Erwin laid down something of a musical foundation for his children.

Tender is quick to downplay his father’s career, however. “I mean, not to talk trash about him but they didn’t achieve that much,” he says, sipping a beer in a sunny east London beer garden. “Aside from the John Peel sessions – that’s their claim to fame.” The 20-year-old gives off an air of belief that his band will trump his father’s accomplishments sooner rather than later.

‘Boat’, the group’s debut album, out now via cult label Heavenly Recordings (Manic Street Preachers, Saint Etienne) brims with melodic, college rock-indebted anthems. It follows 2016’s ‘Are We There Yet’ and 2018’s ‘Paycheck’: two EPs rammed with impossibly catchy lo-fi ditties. Basically, Pip Blom write songs that make you fall in love with guitars again.

The band are understandably “very excited” about opening the John Peel stage but in some ways the dream was never too distant nor too big for Pip. “It’s funny because around the period I started producing songs, I began a blog called ‘The road to Glastonbury’,” she says. “I asked lots of Dutch industry people if I could have a chat with them and then I turned it into an article. I wanted to play the festival once in my life. Lots of people were laughing and saying like, ‘Well, it’s quite an ambitious goal’, which it is, but I think it’s really important to aim very high.”

I shall bring it forward to now. Pip Blom are looking ahead to a new album. It is going to be one of this year’s best om my view. Before providing some album details, Pip Blom’s lead spoke to Mixed Mantra earlier this year about her start in music and what the band set out to achieve on Boat:

“Pip Blom, a 24-year-old singer-songwriter based in Amsterdam who fronts the indie pop band that bears her name, has made quite a splash both at home and internationally since she began recording and releasing her tunes in 2016. The band’s debut album Boat, released in 2019, was met with widespread critical acclaim (Rolling Stone called it an “instant classic.”).

Mixed Mantra recently chatted with Pip Blom to learn more about her origins as a musician, Amsterdam’s music scene and her group’s second album.

MIXED MANTRA: How did you first get into making music?

PIP BLOM: I first got into music because of my parents. My mom worked as a music journalist, and my dad played in a band. They talked about music a lot, mostly about tours with my dad’s band — my mom was their sound engineer — and they always told the wildest stories. I had taken some guitar lessons and some singing lessons, but nothing too serious. The real turning point was when I was at a gig — I think I was 14 or something — and I saw Parquet Courts play, and it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. I immediately thought, “I want this too!”

MM: What did you set out to achieve with your debut album Boat? How has all of the critical acclaim for the album impacted your group or made you feel?

PB: I don’t think we ever decided on a certain goal. However, it has always been my personal goal to play the U.K. festival Glastonbury once, so once that happened I felt like we made it. We got so many good reviews and responses from people and press. It was just really nice.

MM: We’re really interested in songwriting processes. Can you walk us through how you wrote “Hours”?

PB: Here’s how it usually works: I start watching a documentary and play some stuff on my guitar, focusing on the documentary. Whenever I play something that sparks my interest, I stop watching, record it and start building the song. “Hours” is based around this one guitar loop and drum loop. I had just borrowed a very weird synth from a guy who said he didn’t really understand it and I loved the way it sounded, so I decided to play around with it, and that’s how the bridge happened. I work in blocks, so I work on the verse, finish it, start working on the chorus and so on, until the song is done.

MM: What has been Pip Blom’s most memorable set so far?

PB: That’s a hard one. There are so many. Some because they were amazing — Glastonbury, Corona Capital in Mexico, our biggest sold-out show in London at the Scala — and others because they were terrible, ha.

MM: How has COVID-19 impacted your artistic process?

PB: It’s been a lot harder to find inspiration. However, we did manage to record and finish our second album, so we can’t really complain about it too much.

MM: What can you tell us about your new album? Release date?

PB: Yeah, it will hopefully appear somewhere this year. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we’ll also be able to play live shows again by that time, because we really, really miss that. But we will see!

MM: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

PB: Go check out Personal Trainer! They’re an awesome Dutch band with super catchy songs”.

Welcome Break is an album I am looking forward to. From what we have heard from the album so far, it is going to be incredible. Go and pre-order a copy. This is what Rough Trade wrote about the upcoming Welcome Break:

“Actively seeking out moments of creative-authenticity, be it via a slightly- out-of-tune guitar or proudly-fuzzed vocals, Pip Blom take us back full circle and introduce us to their Welcome Break- an eleven-track release which resonates with about as much decisive allure as it’s Boat precursor, but this time with a bit more contemporary chaos to boot. Where Boat reckoned as a fresh-faced, yet gloriously fearless game- changer, Welcome Break is the self-assured older sibling who, with an additional year or two behind themselves, isn’t afraid to speak out, take lead, and instigate a liberated revolution-come-bliss-out.

Following an extensive touring schedule which saw the Dutch 4-piece roam over field, oceans, and Glastonbury’s John Peel stage following the release of their debut record Boat, any such cool-cat would be forgiven for wanting to kick back, and indulge in some very appreciated, time off. As is often the way, such timely-abandon cannot be said for Pip Blom however, who immediately began to gather up all her soaked-up inspirations taken from the road, and manifest a re-energised sense of self, and ritualistic songwriting. It’s at this stage in our indie-fairy-tale that things start to get ever so 2020.

Whilst the world was suddenly put on hold as a result of Covid-19, Pip Blom, who’d made plans to return to their favourite ‘Big Jelly Studios’ in Ramsgate, England, were suddenly faced with a very sticky, kind of dilemma. “We’d scheduled to go into the studio in September but summer started moving and there were a couple of countries not allowed to go to the UK anymore... a week before we had to go, the Netherlands was one of those countries”- notes Pip.

In total, three weeks were spent recording what would become the groups sophomore release; a Al Harle engineered love-affair which was self- produced entirely by the band and culminated in a legally intimate, fully- seated album play-back, to six, of Ramsgate’s most chorus-savvy and ‘in- the-know’ residents. Getting out of their hometown and into an environment which removed all notions of “normality” or personal space, was an atmospheric godsend in terms of motivation; an act which encouraged Pip Blom to re-adjust and buckle down as a unit again, after spending so long in mandatory isolation”.

Perhaps a bit late to the game regarding Pip Blom, I think it is an important time to spotlight a band who are getting stronger and are making the best music of their career. I am looking forward to seeing where the band go and what comes next. Follow them on social media and go and get Welcome Break. I think that the next few years will be very exciting…

FOR the amazing Pip Blom.

______________

Follow Pip Blom

Official:

https://pipblom.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pipblommusic

Bandcamp:

https://pipblom.bandcamp.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Pipblom

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/pipblom/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6zWJfH1TTmIqEi7EV35HGr

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 2011: Sinéad Gleeson (The Irish Times)

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s Director’s Cut

2011: Sinéad Gleeson (The Irish Times)

___________

I am going to spend some time…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Sinéad Gleeson

with Kate Bush’s 2005 album, Aerial, as I am celebrating album anniversaries of hers. That album was released in November of that year. I am considering it, as Bush  returned after twelve years. Recently, ABBA announced their first album in forty years, Voyage! Not that Bush leaves that sort of gap between albums - though we were relieved when Aerial was announced! It has been ten years (almost) since Bush released her latest studio album, 50 Words for Snow. Earlier in 2011, Bush surprised everyone with Director’s Cut. Almost six years after Aerial’s release, it was wonderful having new Kate Bush material. Re-working tracks from her albums, The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993) – songs she felt dissatisfied with –, it is an album that we wouldn’t have expected from her. It is interesting hearing her reversion these songs all these years after they first appeared. Before that, Bush had not really engaged in retrospection like this. Therefore, interviews from that time are really interesting. In this part of my interview feature, I want to bring in Sinéad Gleeson’s interview for The Irish Times. I wanted to highlight this interview, as there are some great questions and answers. We get a sense of how motherhood (her son was born in 1998) has affected her work. Bush also talked about why she wanted to take on Director’s Cut:

“When we finally speak, Bush is late, and profusely apologetic. Her day has been taken up with a short film she has directed for Deeper Understanding. It’s the first single to be taken from Director’s Cut, a new album of reworked songs culled from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. Six years after the release of her last album, Aerial, Bush had multiple motivations in going back to these songs. Technological and production limitations were a factor, but artistic doubt also lingered in the back of her mind.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a while, and I think some of my more interesting songs are on those two albums. You look back on your work and often feel there’s something wrong with all of it, but that’s just part of being a human being as much as an artist. I tried to make some of those songs sound like I’d want them to sound now, but this time I wanted it to be more about the songs than the production. I also approached them in a lower key, because my voice is lower now.”

Bush’s voice was just one of the unique things about her. Female singers who wrote their own songs were in a minority, as were ones who played piano, never mind ones who wrote about Brontë novels. Stylistic experiments have pushed her in various vocal directions, but age has added new textures and angles to her voice. It’s noticeably lower on songs such as Song of Solomon and Rubberband Girl. Elsewhere, she sounds as distinctive as she always has, and is comfortable with these changes.

“I really like other people’s voices as they age. I think singers’ voices get more interesting as they age. People like Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday had wonderful voices when they were younger, but they sounded even better as they aged.”

Bush grew up in a musical family, and played piano from an early age. She absorbed all kinds of music, and she says that many of her early influences – not just her piano-playing father and musical brothers – were men. Like women in 1970s music, from Joan Jett and Ari-Up to Poly Styrene, Bush’s musical image is self-made, because of a dearth of role models. No one was doing what she was doing.

“There was Joni Mitchell and Carole King, but the people I was drawn to in my teens tended to be male. My greatest hero was Elton John, and part of that was because of what he does, but that he was also a singer who played piano. A lot of songwriting at the time was very guitar-based, but Elton stood out. He’s a brilliant pianist and I still love his work.”

On Director’s Cut, This Woman’s Work has been completely re-recorded. The song (and original video) deal with the idea of womanhood, especially in relation to being a mother. Bush wrote it long before she gave birth to Bertie, but on 2005’s Aerial, the sense of the domestic seeped in again, from the track named for her son, to Mrs Bartolozzi. Cyril Connolly warned of the dangers of the “the pram in hallway” for great art, but Bush thinks she has the balance, and her priorities, right.

“It’s quite an intense life when you’re trying to be a mother and work, but you have to get on with it.”

Has motherhood influenced her work? “Oh yes, I think so. I’ve had to learn to work differently, because I have a lot of commitments as a mother, and there are things I don’t want to bypass. I love spending time with my son. The way I set out to be a mother was that he came first and my work would fit around that. It means I don’t always get a lot of sleep , but I feel really privileged that I can do a lot of my work at home.”

When she’s not recording or writing, she admits she loves to watch films and read – no Kindles, mind – she believes in “the energy of a physical book, the smell of it”. She admits to being “immensely flattered” when people cover her work, and is indefatigably modest when asked about being an influence on artists such as Joanna Newsom, PJ Harvey and Alison Goldfrapp. At the moment she is working on new material, but is guarded about it.

“ Director’s Cut took a long time. It’s funny, every time I start a new album I say to myself ‘this one’s going to be really quick’, and of course it ends up going on and on. But it was great to go straight into the new songs, while I was still in focused, studio mentality. With Aerial and this new album I feel there’s a greater space. They’re a bit different to my other work, but then I feel that about everything when I start it, and I don’t want to keep making the same album all the time. It’s hard to talk about work when it’s in progress, because it’s always an evolving process.”

While there is no definite release date yet for the forthcoming album of brand new material, the singer’s return via Director’s Cut was bound to cause the issue of touring to resurface. Bush has famously toured just once – in 1979 – and legions of devotees would love to see her live. Few artists command the kind of fan loyalty she does, but then Bush is a one-off. A consummate artist and an original – the ne plus ultra of female musicians”.

I am fascinated by Bush in 2011. She released Director’s Cut in May, then followed it with 50 Words for Snow in November. She herself wouldn’t have felt she’d put out two albums in a year! No wonder she needed a break! Let’s hope that we do not have to wait too long before we here from her again. I love a lot of Kate Bush interviews. The one with Sinéad Gleeson of The Irish Times is especially compelling. It is great reading a legendary songwriter discuss…

SUCH a wonderful album.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Del Shannon - Runaway

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Del Shannon - Runaway

___________

FOR this Groovelines…

I am highlighting a song that is sixty years old – perhaps the oldest track I have included in this feature. Del Shannon’s Runaway is a song that I discovered as a child. Not only must have it been exciting and strange to hear a song like Runaway in 1961. I wonder what people make of it now when they hear it for the first time! I am not sure whether many people, say, under the age of forty listen to a lot of music from the early-1960s. Aside from bands like The Beatles, it can be quite hit and miss. Runaway is a slice of Rock and Roll gold that, unsurprisingly, got to number-one in the U.S. and U.K. There is a great article that goes into more depth regarding one of the defining songs from the time. Prior to that, this Wikipedia article discusses the origins of Runaway and how successful it became:

“Singer-guitarist Charles Westover and keyboard player Max Crook performed together as members of "Charlie Johnson and the Big Little Show Band" in Battle Creek, Michigan, before their group won a recording contract in 1960. Westover took the new stage name "Del Shannon", and Crook, who had invented his own clavioline-based electric keyboard called a Musitron, became "Maximilian".

After their first recording session for Big Top Records in New York City had ended in failure, their manager Ollie McLaughlin persuaded them to rewrite and re-record an earlier song they had written, "Little Runaway", to highlight Crook's unique instrumental sound. On January 21, 1961, they recorded "Runaway" at the Bell Sound recording studios, with Harry Balk as producer, Fred Weinberg as audio engineer and also session musicians on several sections: session musician Al Caiola on guitar, Moe Wechsler on piano, and Crook playing the central Musitron break.

Other musicians on the record included Al Casamenti and Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, and Joe Marshall on drums. Bill Ramall, who was the arranger for the session, also played baritone sax. After recording in A minor, producer Balk sped up the recording to pitch just below a B-flat minor. "Runaway" was released in February 1961 and was immediately successful. On April 10 of that year, Shannon appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, helping to catapult it to the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for four weeks. Two months later, it reached number one on the UK's Record Retailer chart, spending three weeks in that position. On Billboard's Hot R&B Sides, "Runaway" peaked at number three.

The song was ranked No. 5 on Billboard's end of year "Hot 100 for 1961 – Top Sides of the Year" and No. 9 on Cash Box's "Top 100 Chart Hits of 1961”.

I think that it is the simplicity of Del Shannon’s Runaway that makes it such effective and memorable! In 1961, it must have sounded quite advanced and different. Now, one can appreciate how it sticks in the head because it delivers so much in 2:17 (or thereabout). With a timeless chorus and passionate central vocal, it is no surprise that the song is so well-regarded!

It is worth knowing more about the song and how it came to be. Earlier this year, Medium marked sixty years of Runaway by delving deeper and providing some context. The combination of Del Shannon’s vocal and a new electronic keyboard, the Musitron, made Runaway an instant classic:

“Shannon was born Charles Westover in Grand Rapids, Michigan. By 1958, Shannon sold carpet by day and played guitar by night at a local club, where he met keyboardist Max Crook at a Battle of the Bands contest.

Crook, an electronics geek, recorded some of Shannon’s earliest songs and they began to write together. Shannon’s voice was paired with one of Crook’s inventions: the Musitron, an electric keyboard that pre-dated the Moog synthesizer by three years. The Musitron created one of rock’s most memorable instrumental breaks.

“We were playing at the Hi-Lo nightclub in Battle Creek, Michigan, a few nights a week and Del decided he was getting tired of the same-old, same-old blues progression songs. Let’s try something different, Del told me,” Crook recalled in Forbes magazine.

“So he started singing random words — some here, some there. Then he told me to play something for the musical bridge in the middle of the song. At that time, I had built a little instrument called the Musitron, and it was sitting alongside the keyboard of the piano. So when the time came to make the bridge, I just played what came out of my head. What you hear on the record is precisely what I came up with on the Musitron, with no changes whatsoever.”

 Crook brought his Musitron from Grand Rapids to New York, where he set it up before skeptical engineers at Bell, then one of the first four-track studios in the world. Shannon’s website explains that when Balk returned to Detroit, he felt that Shannon’s singing was flat and should be re-recorded. Instead, Bell engineers sped up Shannon’s vocals to nearly one-and-a-half times its original speed.

When Shannon heard the way his voice was manipulated, Balk recalled, he was angry.

“He said, ‘Harry, that doesn’t even sound like me!’ I just remember saying, ‘Yeah, but Del, nobody knows what the hell you sound like!’ Two weeks after its release, forget it! It’s selling 50,000. It’s selling 60,000. Eventually, it topped off selling 80,000 records a day. After ‘Runaway’ became a million-seller, Del came in and thanked me for what I had done”.

I have loved Del Shannon’s Runaway since I was a child. I play it now and it evokes such strong memories. Sadly, Del Shannon (Charles Weedon Westover) took his own life in 1990. He left behind so much great music, though Runaway is his finest moment. Whilst the composition is spritely and dances from the speakers, the lyrics hide a real pain. The chorus is especially striking: “I'ma walkin' in the rain/Tears are fallin' and I feel the pain/Wishin' you were here by me/To end this misery”. A track that so many people can relate to, Runaway is…

AN all-time classic.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Feist – The Reminder

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Feist – The Reminder

___________

I have not featured…

a Feist solo album in Vinyl Corner before. I want to induct The Reminder, as it is one of my favourites of hers. Released in April 2007, it contains one of her best-known own songs, 1234. The entire album is brilliant! One of the best albums of 2007, The Reminder debuted on the US Billboard 200 at number sixteen. It debuted at number two in Canada, selling just over 18,000 copies. I would encourage people to buy The Reminder on vinyl. Canadian-born Feist continues to produce stunning music. Her latest album, Pleasure (her fifth), was released on 2018. Although not her best-reviewed album, I think The Reminder is her most interesting. It did get a lot of acclaim when it was released. Her vocals are so extraordinary and beautiful. Her songwriting is unique and engrossing. Across thirteen track, The Reminder is a wonderful listen. I am going to bring together a couple of reviews for The Reminder. In their review, this is what Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2007:

“Like her 2005 breakthrough Let It Die, Leslie Feist’s latest shows how this critics’ darling also woos regular folks. She has a sexy, slyly powerful, charmingly imperfect voice. She crafts deliciously catchy, acoustic-based songs with motifs recalling ’80s radio hits (from Springsteen to Soft Cell) as much as the ’00s Toronto indie-rock scene she began in. And her simple lyrics both seduce (”On milky skin my tongue is sand”) and court singalongs (”1, 2, 3, 4/Tell me that you love me more”). In short: The Reminder is another multifaceted gem. A”.

I might actually quote a couple of other reviews, just to get different perspectives on the album. Before then, I wanted to focus on the huge track, 1234. In 2017, NPR interviewed Feist. She was asked about the reaction to the success of The Reminder and 1234:

“You achieved huge success in 2007 with your album The Reminder, but you've said your goal since then was to "descend the ladder with dignity and go back to the altitude that [you] can breathe at." Does that mean that you'd leave music altogether — or at least the way you've been doing it, the tours and the limelight?

No, I think it meant — before The Reminder sort of took on a life of its own, I had been playing for so long where I felt that any of my own effort would be — I could feel the response. Like, if I worked hard, then A, B or C; there would be a response that I could sense had come from me. And it made me feel like my hands were on the steering wheel.

"1234," off [The Reminder], kind of took on a life of its own. It sort of pulled me along with it. But I actually enjoy playing smaller venues, and I enjoy that rarefied air of a smaller group of people being in a room together and passing those two hours together. There's a synergy that can happen that can't happen at the Hollywood Bowl, for instance — or at least it can't happen for me, because I really enjoy and feel invested in the quieter side of things. So yeah, I basically just meant going back to a place that would be sustainable, that I can imagine enjoying when I'm 90”.

I have listened to The Reminder a lot. It is a great album from an artist who I think remains underrated. Maybe Feist is a bit more underground than some artists; not someone who yearns for the spotlight and fame. She is an artist that everyone should know about. This is what the BBC observed in their review:

“In nearly ten years, Feist has rarely paused for breath. That is until now. Holed up in a 19th century château on the outskirts of Paris in 2006, Feist set about recording this, her third full-length release. With Jamie Lidell, Dominic “Mocky” Salole, and Eirik Glambek Boe (Kings Of Convenience) all contributing, The Reminder was recorded in a two-week spell of concentrated creativity.

It shows, too. The Reminder is easily the most focused thing Feist has released to date. True, it isn't quite as eclectic as Let It Die, but in the first four tracks alone there's plenty to showcase the breadth of her talent. On gentle opener “So Sorry”, she lays graceful Joni Mitchell tones over an acoustic groove, before letting her hair down on the Rilo Kiley-esque “I Feel It All”, one of the album's many gems.

Piano-driven first single “My Moon My Man” struts along like a Goldfrapp number, showing off the singer's sassy side, while “The Park” takes things down to grass roots level, literally: it's a beautiful tale of London parklife, accompanied by the sound of birdsong. With her understated and melancholy folk strum, Feist comes across like the big sister of Conor Oberst, the song evoking Bright Eyes' drunken lullaby, “Lua”. Later, there's an infectious and spirited version of the rootsy classic “Sea Lion Woman”, with more than its fair share of hand claps (see also: “Past In Present”).

It's hard to choose, but “1 2 3 4” is probably the record's stand-out track, and it looks destined to be The Reminder's second single. It's three minutes of summery euphoria that will almost certainly be the soundtrack to an advert for mobile phones before long; after all, what else brings a bunch of terribly good-looking people together like the sound of a banjo?

In short: the girl done good, yet again. Do yourself a favour and buy this record; it's really rather lovely”.

I am going to round up with a review from Pitchfork (or some of it). Among other things, they discussed Feist’s songwriting and why she is a step above many of her peers:

“Unlike the half-covers/half-original split of Let It Die, every song but one was at least co-written by Feist on The Reminder. (And her buzzing take on the traditional playground sing-along "Sea Lion Woman" makes it distinctively Feist-ian anyway.) Whereas her last album's smoothed-out eclecticism could be both daunting and empty, The Reminder is equally diverse yet more full-blooded. From the indie pop of "I Feel It All" to the creeping electro-ballad "Honey Honey", the album ambles effortlessly; its musical palette is wide enough to stave off repetition yet innate enough to offer an intense cohesiveness. The record's keen combination of off-the-cuff production and no-fat songwriting is likely linked to its method: With several songs whittled down over years of performances, Feist-- aided by her usual one-named conspirators Gonzales and Mocky, along with Jamie Lidell and others-- recorded them in less than a week in a manor outside Paris. Fleeting touches from horns, glockenspiels, makeshift choirs, and other subtle accoutrements never announce themselves ostentatiously. Instead, the LP relies on a modest refinement that breaks with current singer-songwriter trends that promote infinite ambition in lieu of the basics-- melody, arrangement, feeling.

Hardly the first singer-songwriter to love, live, lose, and emote, Feist once again elevates herself above countless other diary-keeping tunesmiths with a voice that could make even Dick Cheney weep. Marked by specks of Dusty Springfield's soul, Björk's confrontational adventurousness, and Joni Mitchell's warmth, the singular allure of Feist's vocals is difficult to deny or overstate. You might hear her over cappuccino-machine hisses in Starbucks, but her direct-line moans easily cut through the biscotti muzak. And on The Reminder, her whisper-to-wail control-- exemplified by stark heart-tuggers "The Water" and "Intuition"-- is even more striking than before.

"With sadness so real that it populates the city and leaves you homeless again," coos Feist on "The Park", a desolate, lovelorn lament. The song-- with its references to a relationship torn by distance, omnipotent nature (a carefree bird can be heard mocking Feist's sadness in the background), and a hazy "past" that offers partly-forgotten flickers and flashes-- is a fitting summary of The Reminder's wounded pleas. Leery of a sixth sense, the songstress concludes "Intuition" with a question, "Did I miss out on you?"-- its insolubility packing more ache than a hundred clear-cut break-up songs. Such eternally spotty "what if?" queries needn't always strike such dour chords. On the shaggy, Broken Social Scene-esque romp "Past to Present", the refrain ("There's so much past inside my present") has the singer embracing yesteryear with a proud vitality. But no matter where she sits on love's teeter-totter-- down on the after-the-fact apology of "I'm Sorry" or aloft in heady infatuation on "Brandy Alexander"-- her philosophy-of-self is sound”.

Go and get Feist’s The Reminder on vinyl if you can. It is a wonderful album with so many standout songs. One of the very best albums of 2007, I think that every record lover should go and out and get themselves a copy…

OF The Reminder.

FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Sixty-Six: Sigrid

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

Part Sixty-Six: Sigrid

___________

THIS feature concerns…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Sarda

women in music today who I feel are going to be hugely inspirational in the future. The artists who will leave a mark and do sensational things. Today, I want to spotlight Sigrid. She is someone who has been making music for a while now, though she is growing stronger and more intriguing with every release. Sigrid Solbakk Raabe is a Norwegian singer and songwriter. She released her debut E.P., Don’t Kill My Vibe, In 2017. She won the BBC Music Sound of 2018. In 2019, she released her debut studio album, Sucker Punch. It was a busy time for Sigrid. From being highlighted as a new artist to releasing an acclaimed debut album. Since 2019, she has grown in stature and popularity. She recently played Reading Festival. By all accounts, it was a hugely memorable performance. I am going to source a few Sigrid interviews in a bit. Before then, it is worth pulling in a review for Sucker Punch. There is going to be a lot of demand for a second album. I am not sure when that will arrive, though one feels it will not be too long. Sucker Punch was definitely one of the finest debuts of 2019. This is what The Line of Best Fit said in their review:

“Each and every new track here glitters, too. "Sight of You" is the sweetest take: an anthem about how, despite gruelling schedules, AWOL luggage and almost-permanent homesickness, Sigrid feels saved by the sea of adoration that awaits her on stage. 'Basic' conjures that first flush of romantic infatuation: Sigrid nails the lyric here ('Let's be real, I'm just saying, If you feel it, don't cage it, Ooh, I wanna be basic') before pulling out the catchy big guns with a brazen 'nah nah nah nah' refrain. And over the skipping '80s vibe of "Mine Right Now", we hear her talk herself out of sabotaging a new relationship by overthinking ('But I ruin the moment 'cause I picture the end, And I don’t wanna go there, So I tell myself that, Hey, it's alright if we don't end up together.')

With Sigrid's knack for finding that silver lining, genuinely sad songs are a rarity here. That said, "Never Mine" speaks to a place we've all been: the torment of a love who has moved on before you've had the chance. Here, as the synths part, we hear Sigrid's changling voice settle, briefly, in a broken place, repeating the song's titular lament – a performance that will make the breath catch in your throat.

On the technical side, Sigrid's arrangements surpass the genre she rode in on: there's a core of deftly-orchestrated electronic pop, sure, but more classical features abound too – the ringing electric guitar solo that lifts "Sucker Punch"'s final bars; the thunderous strings carrying "Sight of You"'s melody; the tender piano chords that transform "Basic"'s middle eight. With pop currently consumed with references to trap and dancehall – Scandi-pop being no different – hearing these delicious deviations is a thrill.

Again, it all comes back to Sigrid's character, and how her beaming confidence and candour gives her arrangements a stand-out flair and her stories an earthy relatableness. Aside from being a near-perfect collection of belting pop, Sucker Punch also carries a message of triumphant grace: if you can try to be your own best friend and love yourself a little more, wonderful things will happen”.

If you have not heard Sucker Punch, then go and check the album out. It announced Sigrid as a wonderful young Pop act. She has only just turned twenty-five. I know that we will see a lot of music through her career.

There have been a few interviews with Sigrid this year. I will come to those. There is one from 2019 that makes for interesting reading. The Skinny featured Sigrid. It is an illuminating and deep interview where we learn about her start. The Norwegian songwriter provides some useful tips and advice:

“I’m a college dropout!” Sigrid Solbakk Raabe (known mononymously as indie-pop singer Sigrid) exclaims, somewhat bemused that she’s been chosen as the cover star for The Skinny’s student guide. However, while she’s not been through the multi-year slog of coursework and last minute library sessions – it was only a few weeks into a Comparative Politics degree that she decided to devote herself to music – she’s certainly someone that any fresher, or any young person for that matter, could learn a thing or two from.

A fresh-faced 22-year-old, music journalists have been keen to stress her youth, painting her as some kind of Nordic ingénue plucked from obscurity. Yet, even over the course of our conversation, it’s clear that this narrative misses the mark. Yes, she’s remarkably young for what she’s achieved – she already has a debut album, a slew of charting singles and the BBC Music Sound of 2018 title under her belt – but there’s nothing wide-eyed about her.

 Perfectly courteous, with each statement from her mouth seeming so carefully considered and unabashedly serious, she’s professional to a fault – even when peppering her sentences with stateside slang or declaring her unbridled enthusiasm for Tame Impala. Initially it’s easy to think she has her guard up, that no 20-something is this together, but she assures us her personality has always been marked by precocity. “I’ve always been one of those kids who try to be a bit more grown up than they are,” she admits, with a laugh. However, she’s not shy to admit that music, and the various skills she was forced to develop as a DIY artist, was a crash course in the dark arts of “adulting”. “I was still in high school – I was only 16 – when I started to talk to labels,” she says. “I was sort of running my own music career. That was my introduction to email!”

Her journey, from first gaining attention in her native Norway to blowing up internationally with the slow-burn hit Don’t Kill My Vibe – a slice of zeitgeisty, empowered pop released at just the right time – to now embarking on her biggest ever tour across Europe and the US, it started in her teens and has taken her into her 20s. The emotional intensity of these years, when it can feel like your life is brimming with potential one minute and careening towards disaster the next, is tough for everyone, so it’s hard to imagine managing that while simultaneously forging a career in the limelight.

Yet Sigrid, in her own words, is “doing pretty well” – though she admits it’s not always plain sailing. “I’m 22 and you’re still figuring out stuff [at that age] so it’s strange that everything [I do] is on display if anyone wants to know. But maybe that’s what makes it really exciting too.” Her concerns, however, don’t seem too different from your average Gen Zer reared in a digital age where, thanks to social media, each life moment is searchable at the click of a button. She seems relatively unfazed at being in the business of playing festival main stages (at the time of our conversation, she’s fresh from a top-billed gig at Oslo’s Øya Festival) or touring globally. “In some ways you get used to the thought of people listening to your music from across the world,” she says, though there are some moments when things do still feel a bit surreal; “in other ways it still kind of blows my mind.”

What, then, has she learned from what’s admittedly quite a unique experience (even if she seems keen to downplay its significance)? “I think I’ve just grown more and more secure with who I am and what I want,” she says, after taking a moment to consider our question. “Obviously I still have doubts sometimes of what to do and how to do things but I still come back to my gut feeling.” We're struck at the easy confidence Sigrid has in her abilities and the faith she has in her own intuition. For most people, this self-assuredness only comes much later in life, after years of looking to others to work out who we should be.

 It seems that she’s not found success to be a distraction from remaining in touch with her “authentic” self – quite the opposite, in fact. However she’s not overly attached to the person she once was and, rather, is keen to embrace the change and growth that comes with growing up, regardless of what your chosen career is. “Obviously I’m going to change a little bit because that’s what happens when you grow older: whether it’s studying or working, any experience will change you in some way, and I think that’s cool and exciting.”

Sigrid’s Top Tips

On being taken seriously as a young person:
"I can’t say that it’s always been easy being the youngest one but usually I feel very respected and it always goes back to the fact that I’m the artist. I’m the one that’s on the poster for everything – I’m the boss of my own career so I need to love everything I do because I’m going to promote it.”

On giving things your all:
“My luxury problem in school was that I didn’t know what I should be most focused on – it was kind of halfway school, halfway music. I was supposed to play some really cool gigs in Norway in my last year of school but I cancelled them. I wanted to go to these shows and really kill it if I was going to do it, so I took a year off music to focus on my grades”.

I think the last year or two has been the biggest for Sigrid. She has released a debut album but, since 2019, hype and popularity has built. The new material she has put out is her very best. Although she hasn’t performed live a lot lately, the sensational performance at Reading showed she has not lost any of her ability. In the process, she has shown herself to be one of the most compelled live performers in the world. I will finish with a few 2021 interviews.

In this i-D interview from May, Sigrid discusses a second album. It seems that, although there has not been a title announced, we will get music from her fairly soon:

“The problem with having a career that you love is that it becomes so intertwined with your identity that when life is put on pause, or things don’t work out quite the way they should, it can really hit you. “I think it’s the closest I’ve been to an identity crisis,” Sigrid says of the period. “But I’m on the other end of it now, so that feels good. You hear so often about not putting your self-worth into your job, but it’s so easy to say that. And I put every waking minute into my music! I think about it constantly! At one point, I felt like I was just floating around. I lost that sense of — and this sounds cheesy — but everyday purpose. Not knowing what I’d be doing in half a year, or even three weeks, kind of freaked me out.”

Luckily, summer brought with it salvation in the form of legal travel between Norway and Denmark. Sigrid spent much of July and August in Copenhagen, working with Danish producer Sly and his Norwegian songwriter girlfriend Caroline Ailin (a frequent collaborator of Dua Lipa). The two of them had also retreated from LA, where they’d worked with Sigrid on a number of songs, including her new single “Mirror”. “I’d stay by the harbour, it was quite serene,” she says of the creative process. “And it was different! For Sucker Punch, every song was written between tours where it was like: you have one day with this producer and you need to write a song. But this was totally chill. There was no rush, so we’d go swimming in the ocean between sessions. I was totally off the grid, in a sort of studio cave.” It was the steady, productive set up she’d long hoped for.

PHOTO CREDIT: Zoe McConnell for NME 

It’s a topic Sigrid no doubt explores on her sophomore project, which she says she wrote with live performances in mind. “A big inspiration for all of the songs is big festival stages, probably because it’s where I feel the most secure about myself,” she says. “I miss it so, so much.” She notes how the fact that she’ll be performing these songs over and over for the next few years impacts her songwriting. “It needs to feel good to sing,” she says. “If I’m having a bad day but I know that the next song is going to be ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’, it makes me feel a lot better. It’s probably the feeling I chase the most: going on stage and singing and feeling better. And doing it together with a lot of other people. Fuck, I miss touring!” Sigrid, usually the sensible one, has promised her band that she’ll party with them a lot more on their next tour. “I’m scared about what I’ve got myself into,” she laughs.

It sounds like she’s putting herself out there sonically too. “I think that the past year opened up some more experimental doors for me,” she says of her new work. “I really felt like I could do anything I wanted to. It’s quite playful but ambitious and it’s very me. It’s a pop record but it’s leaning in so many different directions.” As is the case with many isolated popstars, Sigrid has been anxious about having an audience to return to, but those fans are still there, as loud as ever. “That’s been a real light at the end of the tunnel,” she says. “Writing at home before Copenhagen, I was like: what am I doing? Who am I even writing for? Who’s going to listen to this?” In reality, she has nothing to worry about.

With the live music industry starting back up again and Sigrid on track to bless us with a body of work imbued with such positivity that it’ll undoubtedly carry us through the remainder of the pandemic unharmed, things are looking good. “It was as if someone just turned on a switch and everything went from 0 to 100 very quickly,” she says. “And I was like, ‘Woah, this is my real life.’ It’s quite daunting to go back to the whole circus but I absolutely love it. And, you know, there’s more music coming”.

I will actually bring in just one more interview. NME chatted with her last month. It seems that one Sigrid’s new track, Mirror (her most-recent, Burning Bridges, was released on 25th August), announces a new sound and personal attitude. It seems that her second album is going to be a lot of fun, too:

“But for ‘Mirror’, it’s all change. This time the Norwegian pop star stands tall astride atop a diving board in a flowing pink gown, hands on her hips but with comfort and confidence. It matches the song’s narrative flip, too; instead of grappling with other people’s putdowns, she’s in a celebratory mood. The chorus’s buoyant, direct message – “I love who I see looking at me” – is under-pinned by slick beats and party-starting piano stabs, a far cry from the brooding, skittish drums of ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’.

“I needed to hear ‘Mirror’ when we wrote it,” she says on a break during her first NME cover shoot in a south-east London studio. “This is an industry of perfection and I want to do as well as I can, but I still need to hear that it’s OK to do your best and that is good enough. I get really paranoid and up in my own head about not being good at something straight away, then I remember ‘Mirror’’s message of: ‘Just love yourself – just have fun with it.’”

If Sigrid’s modesty had been misread as cynicism, ‘Mirror’ kicks off a new era that sees her shy away from nothing – even the challenge of following up hit singles. It is, perhaps, the only way to navigate the hellish standards currently set for pop stars, particularly women, who are forced to navigate criticism that they’re in a “flop era” if a song or album does not fly immediately. “That pressure to follow-up a hit is always there,” she says. ‘It’s hard to deal with and definitely gets to me sometimes, but it’s a pressure I put on myself as well.”

And ‘Mirror’ is a celebration of the incremental changes we make; rarely do we engage in wholesale makeovers, but full of subtle improvements and recalibrations. ‘Mirror’ is the sound of someone who knows that they belong and to enjoy it while it lasts.

“I was just trying to be honest with myself more than I’ve been before, I always worry about being perceived as ‘cocky’”, she says, air quotes around that final word. “Sometimes that can tip over a bit and that’s when you need to remind yourself that, like, ‘I am good at this’ – I wouldn’t have gotten this far if I didn’t know what I’m doing.”

irror’ and the remainder of the upcoming second album finds the 24-year-old on spectacularly liberating form. She leans into her love of stadium bands such as Muse and Coldplay, landing at the intersection of rock and pop; it’s decidedly Sigrid with sharp wordplay and tightly constructed songs, but there’s a looseness to her performance and the band she’s assembled to thrash out the songs.

It’s a reflective listen, unsurprisingly, given how she spent the last year. When the pandemic hit in early 2020, she was working in Los Angeles but raced home to spend most of lockdown with her parents and boyfriend in Ålesund, a port town. Initially that period meant that work didn’t seem like an attractive proposition for the first time in a little while, but it gave her time to consider her place in the world”.

I am going to wrap it up there. I believe that Sigrid is an artist who will be a massive inspiration on the next generation. In a busy music market, she is one of the most talented and interesting artists. Many will keep an ear out to see what her second album contains. It looks like it is shaping up to be pretty memorable. A tremendous young talent, I know that Sigrid will go on to…

WORLD superstardom.

FEATURE: Who Do You Think You Are: Spice Girls' Spice at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Who Do You Think You Are

Spice Girls' Spice at Twenty-Five

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I love a good album anniversary…

and, unlike some artists, the Spice Girls are marking twenty-five years of their debut, Spice, with a new release. Released on 4th November, 1996, I think Spice is an underrated album. A great debut from a girl group who, by the time their debut was out, were already huge names. The release of Spice sent them stratospheric! This article explains more about the twenty-fifth anniversary release:

“Spice Girls are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their debut album with a reissue featuring previously unreleased songs, demos and mixes.

Spice 25 is out on October 29, almost exactly 25 years after the release of their debut album on November 4, 1996.

The collection includes the album's original 10 songs, plus previously unreleased demos and mixes, including the 7-inch radio mix of the record's second single Say You'll Be There - released today - where the familiar harmonica solo is replaced by a saxophone.

The expanded edition also includes two previously unheard songs, One Of These Girls and Shall We Say Goodbye Then?.

Spice 25 tracklisting

CD1

1. Wannabe (02:53)

2. Say You’ll Be There (03:56)

3. 2 Become 1 (Single Version) (04:05)

4. Love Thing (03:39)

5. Last Time Lover (04:11)

6. Mama (05:05)

7. Who Do You Think You Are (04:01)

8. Something Kinda Funny (04:05)

9. Naked (04:26)

10. If U Can’t Dance (03:49)

CD2

1. Wannabe (Dave Way Alternative Mix) (03:25)

2. Say You’ll Be There (7-inch Radio Mix) (04:09)

3. 2 Become 1 (Orchestral Version) (04:05)

4. Mama (Biffco Mix) (05:49)

5. Love Thing (12-inch Unlimited Groove Mix) (06:25)

6. Take Me Home (04:07)

7. Last Time Lover (Demo) (04:05)

8. Feed Your Love (04:36)

9. If U Can’t Dance (Demo) (03:36)

10. Who Do You Think You Are (Demo) (03:49)

11. One of These Girls (03:33)

12. Shall We Say Goodbye Then? (00:53)

Spice spent 15 weeks at Number 1 on the UK's Official Albums Chart, across four different spells, and logged more than a year in the Top 40. The record's global sales are reportedly 23 million, over 3 million of which are from the UK.

Emma Bunton said in a statement: "From the first wannabe baby steps to conquering the whole world with a team of Spices, thank you doesn’t seem enough to all of you who have supported us, followed in our footsteps, walked in our great big shoes and who have shared our dreams. It’s been 25 years of pure magic. Spice Girls forever!!!"

Geri Horner added: "To our diehard and loyal fans; without you there is no us – sending endless love and gratitude. Whoever you are, whatever your dreams – live them, be them. The Spice Girls motto is testament to that."

The 2CD release comes in an A5 hardback booklet, with a collection of images plus new messages from the group, and a set of six Spice Girls postcards featuring photographs by Tim Roney, taken in Paris in September 1996. The album will also be released on picture disc, limited edition coloured vinyl and cassettes.

Commenting on the album's milestone anniversary, Melanie C said: "25 years, wow! I have so many wonderful memories of writing, recording, promoting and touring this album and so many people to thank. This is the record that set us off on our incredible journey. A huge thank you to our fans and family all around the World. Thank you for always being there with your unrelenting support and making our dreams come true. My love and gratitude always.”

Melanie B added: "All I ever wanted was to be accepted and to make everyone around me – gay, straight, brown, black, shy or loud like me – to feel they can celebrate who they are and to be free to be themselves. All I hope – 25 years on – is that message has been heard loud and clear. It’s true that in the end love IS all you need so I thank everyone who has ever bought a Spice Girls record or stood in the rain to greet us or got dressed up in pink, in a tracksuit, a ginger wig, a leopard print catsuit or put on Vic’s iconic pout!"

Speaking of which, Victoria Beckham said: "We couldn't let 25 years pass without thanking the fans for their incredible support. There are so many people who have played a part in the success of the Spice Girls throughout the years, you know who you are and we thank you".

I wanted to mark twenty-five years of a wonderful debut. I was big into Pop and R&B in 1996. I knew about the Spice Girls thanks to the success of their debut single, Wannabe. I was more into other bands at the time - though the compelling and catchy nature of their music drew me in. Whilst some might see the group (at the time, Mel C, Mel B, Geri Halliwell (who left the group in 1998 but has since re-joined; Victoria has since left), Victoria Adams and Emma Bunton) as a bit manufactured – and their Girl Power slogan/mantra as empty -, the connection in the group and the upbeat nature of the music is pure. It is why we still hear songs from Spice now. I will bring in a positive review for the debut soon. With the group co-writing all the tracks on Spice, there is that personal relevance. I love the lesser-spun songs like Last Time Lover and Naked. There are so many huge songs on the 1996 debut. Wannabe, Say You’ll Be There and 2 Become 1 must be among the best opening three tracks of any album. Mama and Who Do You Think You Are are also big tracks. Half of the album is pretty well known. The singles are dispersed, so that you do not get a big run of deeper cuts. In terms of quality, Spice is much more than the singles and nothing else.

I think a lot of the negative or mixed reviews was based on the hype and popularity the Spice Girls were receiving. There would have been snobbish attitudes towards girl groups and more manufactured Pop then. Listening to Spice now, it is such a satisfying listen. Maybe there is some nostalgia coming in! This is what AllMusic wrote in their review:

“Spice doesn't need to be original to be entertaining, nor do the Spice Girls need to be good singers. It just has to be executed well, and the innocuous dance-pop of Spice is infectious. None of the Girls have great voices, but they do exude personality and charisma, which is what drives bouncy dance-pop like "Wannabe," with its ridiculous "zig-a-zig-ahhh" hook, into pure pop guilty pleasure. What is surprising is how the sultry soul of "Say You'll Be There" is more than just a guilty pleasure, and how ballads like "2 Become 1" are perfect adult contemporary confections. The rest of the album isn't quite as catchy as those first three singles, but it is still irresistible, immaculately crafted pop that gets by on the skills of the producer and the charisma of the five Spices. Sure, the last half of the album is forgettable, but it sounds good while it's on, which is the key to a good dance-pop record”.

I am going to end with a feature from Albuism , who wrote about the twentieth anniversary of Spice in 2016. Many people might have hated Pop then and been into other scenes. The energy of Baby Spice (Emma), Scary Spice (Mel B), Sporty Spice (Mel C), Posh Spice (Victoria) and Baby Spice (Emma) was infectious:

“Happy 20th Anniversary to Spice Girls’ debut album Spice, originally released in the UK November 4, 1996 and in the US February 4, 1997.

I grew up in the NYC hardcore/punk scene—nothing but depravity, filth, and sometimes songs that were only eighteen seconds long. But when I got a text from the bartender at a local biker bar that read: “Spice World is on the TV. Your first drink is on me,” I immediately threw on the tattered, rotting Spice Girls t-shirt I bought in 2001 and my patched-up leather vest and ran over.

I don’t wear that shirt ironically. I wear it because I think they were a brilliant pop sensation (even if created—like the Monkees or countless other groups whose songs will stick in your head). And, trust me, I fucking hate pop music.

“Spice World opens tomorrow. We’re all going. 10am screening,” a bandmate said to me in 1998. I laughed because I was as drunk as a character in a Joyce novel and it was already 4am. It was possibly one of the greatest theater-going experiences I’ve ever had. Kids were dancing in the aisles, singing every word—and at one point a 9-year-old boy shouted at another child, “If you don’t shut the fuck up so I can watch the movie, I’m gonna pop a cap in your ass!”

Up until this point, my only exposure to pop music had been “Weird Al” Yankovic throughout my childhood. After all, I was raised on Coltrane, Devo, Ravi Shankar, John Lee Hooker, and Zeppelin before I discovered punk. But I couldn’t help but sit back as a musician and tap my feet as I watched the film with half a liter of gin throbbing in the back of my brain on a Friday morning. Sure, it was cheesy, but it was good. Hell, even Black Flag released “TV Party” and that’s the most stupidly fun punk tune you can find (excluding most of NOFX’s catalog).

But I thought, “Jesus. I don’t care how many producers and songwriters it took to build this record... the girls can sing, dance, and these tracks are like a fucking tackle box—nothing but hooks.”

They depth-charge you out of the water with their debut album’s opening track “Wannabe” (which has a brilliant “one-shot” video—I put that in quotes because I’ve spotted two edits), slide into a great disco track (and I hate disco) on “Say You’ll Be There,” and then drift into a smooth R&B jam on track three with “2 Become 1.”

While there may be a few duds on the B-side of Spice, I can only blame the songwriting, not the singing, because these girls were on point. I’ve had to record three-part harmonies by myself and I found it nearly impossible as a singer; I can’t imagine doing a five-part harmony.

Admittedly, it’s a sexually overt (yet not blatantly explicit) album geared towards tweens, what with songs like “Love Thing,” “Last Time Lover,” “Naked,” and the aforementioned “Wannabe” refrain “If you wanna be my lover / you gotta get with my friends.” Obtuse—as an adult, I get it—but as an adult with a few threesomes under his sheets, I take it in a different light. And don’t get me started on the “2 Become 1” lyrics.

But they merged their sexuality with an array of female archetypes, all of which (hopefully) encouraged young girls to embrace “Girl Power.” The sassy redhead, the butch athlete, the strong girl of color, the prissy snob, and the girl who just wants to play. While fulfilling stereotypes rarely does anyone justice, I see them as a pop extension of the Riot Grrrl movement. Your parents might not take you to a Bikini Kill concert, but I’m sure they’ll take you to a Spice Girls concert. And the message is the same: girls can rock just as much as the boys if not more so.

Spice is an outstanding record that combines feminism with funk, hip-hop, and R&B. If you haven’t listened to it in the last 20 years, I highly recommend you do so. An hour was spent dancing in my living room before writing this article, after all, and I listened to it four more times. While I may have to listen to a few Slayer albums now to “cleanse” myself, it’s a killer fucking record and I was glad to listen to it yet again.

I used to ask strangers in bars dumb questions like “Who’s your favorite Beastie Boy?” or “Beatles vs. Stones?” I believe that an answer to either question reveals something about someone’s personality. But, now my question is “Who’s your favorite Spice Girl?”

While once a Posh guy, I can safely say that I am Scary all the way.

Go spice up your life. Buy this album, if you haven’t already”.

It may be a bit previous, but I want to look ahead and wish Spice a happy twenty-fifth anniversary to the on 4th November. It is one of the most important Pop introductions. Still effusive and addictive after all of these years, I know there will be celebration and memories shared across social media in the lead-up to its twenty-fifth. Although the anniversary edition is out next month, I would advise people to…

LISTEN to the original now.

FEATURE: The Magnificent Watching You Without Me: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Six

FEATURE:

 

 

The Magnificent Watching You Without Me

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the cover shoot for Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Six

___________

AHEAD of the thirty-sixth anniversary…

of Kate Bush Hounds of Love on 16th September, I wanted to do another song-specific piece. I have spotlighted most of the songs from the other. Recently, I looked at a song from the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave, in the form of Jig of Life. Now, I am looking at the tremendous Watching You Without Me. It occurs at a crucial moment on The Ninth Wave. In fact, it comes just before Jig of Life. That song is like an awakening; almost a call from the skies for the heroine – who, in the suite, is stranded at sea and trying to keep afloat/san. Before Watching You Without Me is Waking the Witch. This is a terrifying song where one can sense the protagonist slipping away or letting her nightmares take over. Before the spirited kick of Jig of Life and the rush of that comes a sort of ‘bridge’. Watching You Without Me arrives in the middle of, arguably, two of the most energetic and intense songs on The Ninth Wave. All of the songs on Hounds of Love are great. There is particular respect for The Ninth Wave, as it is such an ingenious and huge series of songs that takes the listener into the record. It still sounds so moving and staggering after all of these years. I will spend some time concentrating on a song that I have not heard played a lot on the radio. And Dream of Sheep gets played now and then - through one does not hear Watching You Without Me much.

I think it is important to get some song information; what motivated Bush to write it. There is something desperately sad about Watching You Without Me. This feeling that the heroine should be at home and people might not know what has become of her. When breaking down The Ninth Wave with Richard Skinner in 1992, Bush explained what the song is about:

“Now, this poor sod [laughs], has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they're kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home. And, you know, watching the clock, and obviously very worried about where they are, maybe making phone calls and things. But there's no way that you can actually communicate, because they can't see you, they can't you. And I find this really horrific, [laughs] these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song. And when we started putting the track together, I had the idea for these backing vocals, you know, [sings] "you can't hear me". And I thought that maybe to disguise them so that, you know, you couldn't actually hear what the backing vocals were saying. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)”.

The thought of a parent or loved one waiting for someone to return, unaware of their situation, is something many have experienced. The way Bush delivers the lyrics adds so much pain and loss: “You watch the clock/Move the slow hand/I should have been home/Hours ago,/But I'm not here/But I'm not here”. It is the lack of musicians on the song that makes it so impactful and emotional. Danny Thompson plays double bass. Stuart Elliott is on percussion. Deceptively beautiful and sensual, Watching You Without Me is sparser than Waking the Witch and Jig of Life. It is like this calm refrain between the songs. She takes us away from the ocean and her varying thoughts to a house. Not as devastating and tear-jerking as And Dream of Sheep, one is still affected and taken aback by the idea of this protagonist as a spirit, almost accepting death; the chance of seeing her loved one slipping away as it goes dark at sea and chances of rescue fading. It is just as well that we get Jig of Life. It is almost like the natural response to someone who is near rock bottom. On every song from Hounds of Love, there are lines that are among Kate Bush’s best. On Watching You Without Me, she sings “You won't hear me leaving” at the end. Before that, she says that they (her family/lover) won’t hear her come in. It adds to that sense of loss and the spiritual. Such a beautiful and image-heavy track that takes the breath!

 PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I do love the songs on Hounds of Love’s first side. I think there is something special and different about The Ninth Wave. It is such a fascinating story and work that is being poured over thirty-six years after people first heard it. I was keen to dive into Watching You Without Me and spend some time with it. The triumphant and genius throughout The Ninth Wave cemented Bush as one of the greatest artists of her time – and she remains one of the very best. I will end by quoting a passage from a Pitchfork review. They revisited Hounds of Love in 2016:

“As her sailor drifts in and out of consciousness, Bush floats between abstract composition and precise songcraft. Her character’s nebulous condition gives her melodies permission to unmoor from pop’s constrictions; her verses don’t necessarily return to catchy choruses, not until the relative normality of “The Morning Fog,” one of her sweetest songs. Instead, she’s free to exploit her Fairlight’s capacity for musique concrete. Spoken voices, Gregorian chant, Irish jigs, oceanic waves of digitized droning, and the culminating twittering of birds all collide in Bush’s synth-folk symphony. Like most of her lyrics, “The Ninth Wave” isn’t autobiographical, although its sink-or-swim scenario can be read as an extended metaphor for Hounds of Love’s protracted creation: Will she rise to deliver the masterstroke that guaranteed artistic autonomy for the rest of her long career and enabled her to live a happy home life with zero participation in the outside world for years on end, or will she drown under the weight of her colossal ambition?

By the time I became one of the few American journalists to have interviewed her in person in 1985, Bush had clinched her victory. She’d flown to New York to plug Hounds of Love, engaging in the kind of promotion she’d rarely do again. Because she thoroughly rejected the pop treadmill, the media had already begun to marginalize her as a space case, and have since painted her as a tragic, reclusive figure. Yet despite her mystical persona, she was disarmingly down-to-earth: That hammy public Kate was clearly this soft-spoken individual’s invention; an ever-changing role she played like Bowie in an era when even icons like Stevie Nicks and Donna Summer had a Lindsey Buckingham or a Giorgio Moroder calling many of the shots.

It was a response, perhaps, to the age-old quandary of commanding respect as  a woman in an overwhelmingly masculine field. Bush's navigation of this minefield was as natural as it was ingenious: She became the most musically serious and yet outwardly whimsical star of her time. She held onto her bucolic childhood and sustained her family’s support, feeding the wonder that’s never left her. Her subsequent records couldn’t surpass Hounds of Love’s perfect marriage of technique and exploration, but never has she made a false one. She’s like the glissando of “Hello Earth” that rises up and plummets down almost simultaneously: Bush retained the strength to ride fame’s waves because she’s always known exactly what she was—simply, and quite complicatedly, herself”.

I shall leave it there. Ahead of the thirty-sixth anniversary of Hounds of Love on 16th September, I wanted to highlight one of the very best tracks. Watching You Without Me is Kate Bush’s imagined heroine wrestling with the water, fatigue and the possibility that she may not be rescued – although, at the end, she is. It is another magical and unique song, from an artist who…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Watching You Without Me during her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn

HAS no equals.

FEATURE: A Let It Be Holy Trinity: Looking Ahead to a Very Special Documentary, Book and Album Reissue

FEATURE:

 

 

A Let It Be Holy Trinity

PROMOTIONAL PHOTO CREDITS: Apple Corps Ltd./The Beatles 

Looking Ahead to a Very Special Documentary, Book and Album Reissue

___________

THERE were plans…

to mark the fiftieth anniversary of The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, last year. The Peter Jackson documentary-film was announced for last year, though that has been pushed back. There will be this bonanza where fans get to experience that album and its recording/legacy in three different ways. I will end with a feature regarding the album reissue and the special editions. The documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, will be released as a three-part documentary series on Disney+ on 25th, 26th and 27th November 2021, with each episode being about two hours in length. The book of the same name will be released on 12th October. Three days later, the Let It Be reissues will be out. It is a big October and November for fans! I wonder why all three were not released on the same day. Maybe it was a chance to spread it out and not throw everything out there at once! I am going to bring in articles about all three releases. The documentary has been the longest in the works. We have known about it for quite a while. Of the three projects, I think this is the one that will reveal the most and provide the greatest exposition and revelation. This article from July tells us what we know about Peter Jackson’s documentary so far:

“It was made with the full co-operation of the band

Both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have sung the film’s praises, while John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono Lennon, and George Harrison’s widow, Olivia Harrison, have also offered their full support of the project.

It will be the ultimate fly-on-the-wall experience

“It’s like a time machine transports us back to 1969, and we get to sit in the studio watching these four friends make great music together,” Peter Jackson has said. The footage used in Get Back was originally shot for Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary, Let It Be, which captured intimate moments in the studio while the band rehearsed and recorded the songs for what would be their final album. The footage, now revisited by Jackson in a new light, is the only material of note that documents The Beatles at work in the studio.

It will feature the famous rooftop performance in its entirety

On January 30, 1969, The Beatles played a surprise performance on the roof of their Savile Row studio. Though footage of the live set has been well documented over the years, it has never been shown in its entirety. Jackson’s film will include the entire 42-minute performance.

Ringo recently shared his recollections of that iconic performance with Variety: “We’d decided to play together, as a live band. And we did think of other venues, and then we thought, ‘Wait, let’s just go up on the roof.’ And Michael shot that stuff on the roof really great, with a lot of cameras.” While the original film showed roughly 20 minutes of the performance, Ringo shared that he was thrilled to see the set in its entirety, adding “it’s great.”

Jackson used digital technology in combination with archival footage

Jackson explained in the same interview that they adopted technology from the film They Shall Not Grow Old to balance the film’s color palette, but little else was changed. It left the director feeling envious of fashion during that era. “All we’ve done is use the technology we developed for the WW I film ‘They Shall Not Grow Old,’ taking all this old First World War footage and restoring it. We haven’t tried to push the primary colors of the clothing up or anything. We’ve done no tricks like that. We’ve just balanced the skin tones, and the colors that you see, I’m assuming, are the colors that were there on the day. I mean, it does make you jealous of the 1960s, because the clothing is so fantastic.”

‘Get Back’ is a celebration

In the introduction to his interview with Peter Jackson in GQ, journalist Dylan Jones outlined how the new film is less of a bummer than the original. “‘The Beatles: Get Back’ is another step on the long and winding road to enhanced immortality, as the films show The Beatles at the very top of their game and not deteriorating, as they appeared to be in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s ‘Let It Be.’ The Beatles’ very last film was a massive downer when it was released in 1970 and it has remained a downer ever since.” In short, Get Back is a celebration.

The band’s true relationship is revealed

While Lindsay-Hogg’s feature film offered an in-depth look at The Beatles’ sessions, it also revealed some of the tense moments in the studio. In many ways, it documents a band on the verge of a break-up. Get Back, in contrast, looks at the footage as a whole, and paints a very different picture of the band’s time together. In a recent interview on The Howard Stern Show, Paul McCartney said, “We’re obviously having fun together. You can see we respect each other and we’re making music together, and it’s a joy to see it unfold.”

Meanwhile, in a statement, Ringo recalled, “There was hours and hours of us just laughing and playing music… There was a lot of joy, and I think Peter will show that. I think this version will be a lot more peace and loving, like we really were.”

Speaking to Variety, Ringo added that the original film, “focused only on the one down moment…Everybody knows my position. I thought the downer was much bigger than the rest of it (in Let It Be). I was there. There was lots of fun… I said, ‘I know there’s lots of humor there.’”

“The reality is very different to the myth,” Jackson confirmed in a press release. “After reviewing all the footage and audio that Michael Lindsay-Hogg shot 18 months before they broke up, it’s simply an amazing historical treasure-trove. Sure, there’s moments of drama – but none of the discord this project has long been associated with”.

Although the publication date for The Beatles: Get Back has been pushed back from the date announced on The Beatles’ official website, it is available to pre-order now. This is something many fans will want to own on 12th October:

“Callaway Arts & Entertainment and Apple Corps Ltd. are pleased to announce plans for the global publication on August 31, 2021 of THE BEATLES: GET BACK, the first official standalone book to be released by The Beatles since international bestseller The Beatles Anthology. Beautifully designed and produced, the 240-page hardcover tells the story of The Beatles’ creation of their 1970 album, Let It Be, in their own words.

Presenting transcribed conversations drawn from over 120 recorded hours of the band’s studio sessions with hundreds of previously unpublished images, including photos by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney, THE BEATLES: GET BACK also includes a foreword written by Peter Jackson and an introduction by Hanif Kureishi.

The book’s texts are edited by John Harris from original conversations between John, Paul, George and Ringo spanning three weeks of recording, culminating in The Beatles’ historic final rooftop concert. THE BEATLES: GET BACK will be a special and essential companion to director Peter Jackson’s “THE BEATLES: GET BACK” feature documentary film, set for theatrical release on August 27, 2021.

This intimate, riveting book invites us to travel back in time to January 1969, the beginning of The Beatles’ last year as a band. The BEATLES (‘The White Album’) is still at number one in the charts, but the ever-prolific foursome regroup in London for a new project, initially titled Get Back.

 Over 21 days, first at Twickenham Film Studios and then at their own brand-new Apple Studios, with cameras and tape recorders documenting every day’s work, the band rehearse a huge number of songs, new and old, in preparation for what proves to be their final concert, which famously takes place on the rooftop of their own Apple Corps office building, bringing central London to a halt.

Legend now has it that these sessions were a grim time for a band falling apart, but, as acclaimed novelist Hanif Kureishi writes in his introduction to THE BEATLES: GET BACK, “In fact this was a productive time for them, when they created some of their best work. And it is here that we have the privilege of witnessing their early drafts, the mistakes, the drift and digressions, the boredom, the excitement, joyous jamming and sudden breakthroughs that led to the work we now know and admire.”

These sessions, which generated the Let It Be album and film released in May 1970, represent the only time in The Beatles’ career that they were filmed at such length while in the studio creating music. Simultaneously, they were exclusively photographed and their conversations recorded.

THE BEATLES: GET BACK is the band’s own definitive book documenting those sessions. It brings together enthralling transcripts of their candid conversations, edited by leading music writer John Harris, with hundreds of extraordinary images, most of them unpublished. The majority of the photographs are by two photographers who had special access to their sessions—Ethan A. Russell and Linda Eastman (who married Paul McCartney two months later).

Peter Jackson’s documentary film will reexamine the sessions using over 55 hours of unreleased original 16-millimetre footage filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969, now restored, and 120 hours of mostly unheard audio recordings. This sumptuous book also features many unseen high-resolution film frames from the same restored footage”.

A few weeks back, we heard about the reissues of Let It Be. So far, there have been anniversary reissues for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017), The Beatles (2018) and Abbey Road (2019), to mark fifty years of these classics. I was not sure whether there would be any for Let It Be. The Beatles’ website explains more:

“London – August 26, 2021 – This fall, The Beatles invite everyone everywhere to get back to the chart-topping 1970 album, Let It Be, with a range of beautifully presented Special Edition packages to be released worldwide on October 15 by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe.

Three tracks from the newly remixed and expanded edition make their digital release debuts with today’s preorder launch: “Let It Be” (2021 Stereo Mix), “Don’t Let Me Down” (first rooftop performance), and “For You Blue” (Get Back LP Mix).

Pre-order / Pre-save The Beatles’ Let It Be Special Edition

Stream “Let It Be” (2021 Stereo Mix)

Stream “Don’t Let Me Down” (first rooftop performance)

Stream “For You Blue” (Get Back LP Mix)

The Let It Be album has been newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell in stereo, 5.1 surround DTS, and Dolby Atmos. The album’s sweeping new Special Edition follows the universally acclaimed remixed and expanded anniversary editions of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017), The BEATLES (‘White Album’) (2018), and Abbey Road (2019).

All the new Let It Be releases feature the new stereo mix of the album as guided by the original “reproduced for disc” version by Phil Spector and sourced directly from the original session and rooftop performance eight-track tapes. The physical and digital Super Deluxe collections also feature 27 previously unreleased session recordings, a four-track Let It Be EP, and the never before released 14-track Get Back stereo LP mix compiled by engineer Glyn Johns in May 1969.

On January 2, 1969, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr kickstarted the new year together on a cavernous soundstage at Twickenham Film Studios in London. The Beatles jumped into rehearsals for a project envisioned to get them back to where they once belonged: onstage. For 21 days, cameras and tape recorders documented almost every moment: first at Twickenham and then at The Beatles’ own Apple Studio, where Billy Preston joined them on keyboards. Together they rehearsed brand new originals and jammed on older songs, all captured live and unvarnished.

On January 30, the cameras and recorders were rolling as The Beatles, with Preston, staged what was to be their final concert on the chilly rooftop of their Savile Row Apple Corps headquarters before a small assembly of family and friends, and any others who were within wind-carried range of their amps. The midday performance brought London’s West End to a halt as necks craned skyward from the streets and the windows of neighboring buildings were flung open for better vantage. A flurry of noise complaints drew police officers to the rooftop, shutting the concert down after 42 minutes.

 Work to compile an album to be called “Get Back” was carried out in April and May by Glyn Johns, who, for his version, included false starts, banter between songs, early takes rather than later, more polished performances, and even “I’ve Got A Feeling” falling apart with John explaining, “I cocked it up trying to get loud.” The Beatles, however, decided to shelve the project’s copious tapes, film reels, and photos, in order to record and release their LP masterpiece, Abbey Road. Drawn from the tapes made in January 1969, plus some sessions which preceded and followed those recordings, The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, was eventually issued on May 8, 1970 (May 18 in the U.S.) to accompany the release of the Let It Be film.

The sessions that brought about the Let It Be album and film represent the only time in The Beatles’ career that they were documented at such great length while creating music in the studio. More than 60 hours of unreleased film footage, more than 150 hours of unreleased audio recordings, and hundreds of unpublished photographs have been newly explored and meticulously restored for three complementary and definitive Beatles releases this fall: a feast for the senses spanning the entire archival treasure. The new Let It Be Special Edition is joined by “The Beatles: Get Back”, the hotly-anticipated documentary series directed by three-time Oscar®-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson, and a beautiful new hardcover book also titled The Beatles: Get Back. The raw sources explored for the new projects have revealed that a more joyous, benevolent spirit imbued the sessions than was conveyed in the 1970 Let It Be film’s 80 minutes.

 “I had always thought the original film Let It Be was pretty sad as it dealt with the break-up of our band, but the new film shows the camaraderie and love the four of us had between us,” writes Paul McCartney in his foreword for the Let It Be Special Edition book. “It also shows the wonderful times we had together, and combined with the newly remastered Let It Be album, stands as a powerful reminder of this time. It’s how I want to remember The Beatles.”

Let It Be Special Edition: Super Deluxe Editions

5CD + 1Blu-ray (album’s new stereo mix in hi-res 96kHz/24-bit; new 5.1 surround DTS and Dolby Atmos album mixes) with 105-page hardbound book in a 10” by 12” die-cut slipcase

180-gram, half-speed mastered vinyl 4LP + 45rpm 12-inch vinyl EP with 105-page hardbound book in a 12.5” by 12.5” die-cut slipcase

Digital Audio Collection (stereo + album mixes in hi res 96kHz/24-bit / Dolby Atmos)

• Let It Be (new stereo mix of original album): 12 tracks

• Previously unreleased outtakes, studio jams, rehearsals: 27 tracks

• Previously unreleased 1969 Get Back LP mix by Glyn Johns, newly mastered: 14 tracks

• Let It Be EP: 4 tracks

o Glyn Johns’ unreleased 1970 mixes: “Across The Universe” and “I Me Mine”

o Giles Martin & Sam Okell’s new stereo mixes: “Don’t Let Me Down” & “Let It Be” singles

The Super Deluxe CD and vinyl collections’ beautiful book features Paul McCartney’s foreword; an introduction by Giles Martin; a remembrance by Glyn Johns; insightful chapters and detailed track notes by Beatles historian, author, and radio producer Kevin Howlett; and an essay by journalist and author John Harris exploring the sessions’ myths vs. their reality. The book is illustrated, scrapbook style, with rare and previously unpublished photos by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney, as well as never before published images of handwritten lyrics, session notes, sketches, Beatles correspondence, tape boxes, film frames, and more.

Let It Be Special Edition: Deluxe Edition

2CD in digipak with a 40-page booklet abridged from the Super Deluxe book

• Let It Be (new stereo mix of original album): 12 tracks

• Previously unreleased outtakes, studio jams, rehearsals: 13 tracks

• Previously unreleased 1970 mix for “Across The Universe”

Let It Be Special Edition: Standard

1CD in digipak (new stereo mix of original album)

Digital (album’s new mixes in stereo + hi res 96kHz/24-bit / Dolby Atmos)

180-gram half-speed mastered 1LP vinyl (new stereo mix of original album)

Limited Edition picture disc 1LP vinyl illustrated with the album art (new stereo mix of original album)

Making The Album

When The Beatles arrived at Twickenham in January 1969, their self-titled album (AKA ‘The White Album’) was still topping charts around the world following its November 1968 release. They had an ambitious plan in mind for a project that would include a stage performance for a “TV spectacular” and a live album. Michael Lindsay-Hogg was hired to direct the concert and document the rehearsals with unfettered “fly-on-the-wall” filming and mono audio recording on two camera-linked Nagra reel-to-reel tape machines. Ethan A. Russell was brought in for exclusive all-access photography. Beatles producer George Martin and engineer Glyn Johns supervised the sound. Johns remembers, “Paul told me he had this idea to do a live concert and he wanted me to engineer it, because I had a reasonably good track record of making live albums.” Impressed by the band’s day-to-day progress with their slate of new songs, Martin later recalled, “It was a great idea, which I thought was well worth working on. A live album of new material. Most people who did a live album would be rehashing old stuff.” After 10 days on the soundstage, The Beatles and the film crew later moved to the band’s more intimate and cosy Apple Studio. There, Johns manned the controls of borrowed equipment from The Beatles’ old stomping ground, Abbey Road Studios, to record on eight-track tape. Billy Preston was invited to play keyboards with the band at Apple, lifting the sessions with his boundless talent and buoyant bonhomie.

 In April 1969, The Beatles rush-released their worldwide number one single “Get Back”/“Don’t Let Me Down”. Promoted as “The Beatles as nature intended” and “as live as can be, in this electronic age,” both sides of the disc were credited to “The Beatles with Billy Preston”. “The greatest surprise was when the record came out,” Preston remembered in 2002. “They didn’t tell me they were going to put my name on it! The guys were really kind to me.” The “Let It Be” single produced by George Martin, released March 6, 1970, is different from the album version “reproduced” by Phil Spector. Exemplifying Spector’s signature Wall of Sound production style on the Let It Be album is his orchestral overdub on “The Long and Winding Road”, which became The Beatles’ 20th U.S. number one single.

Directed by Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “They Shall Not Grow Old”), “The Beatles: Get Back” takes audiences back in time to the band’s intimate recording sessions during a pivotal moment in music history. Because of the wealth of tremendous footage Jackson has reviewed, which he has spent the past three years restoring and editing, “The Beatles: Get Back” will be presented as three separate episodes. Each episode is approximately two hours in length, rolling out over three days, November 25, 26 and 27, 2021, exclusively on Disney+.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ethan A. Russell/Apple Corps Ltd. 

The documentary series showcases the warmth, camaraderie and creative genius that defined the legacy of the iconic foursome, compiled from over 60 hours of unseen footage shot in January 1969 (by Michael Lindsay-Hogg) and more than 150 hours of unheard audio, all of which has been brilliantly restored. Jackson is the only person in 50 years to have been given access to these private film archives. “The Beatles: Get Back” is the story of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as they plan their first live show in over two years, capturing the writing and rehearsing of 14 new songs, originally intended for release on an accompanying live album. The documentary features – for the first time in its entirety – The Beatles’ last live performance as a group, the unforgettable rooftop concert on London’s Savile Row, as well as other songs and classic compositions featured on the band’s final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be. The music in the series is also newly mixed by Giles Martin (“Rocketman”) and Sam Okell (“Yesterday”).

Ahead of the series’ debut, Apple Corps Ltd./Callaway Arts & Entertainment will release The Beatles: Get Back book worldwide on October 12. Available in English and nine international language editions, The Beatles: Get Back is the first official standalone book to be released by The Beatles since international bestseller The Beatles Anthology.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1969/PHOTO CREDIT: Ethan Russell and Monte Fresco 

Beautifully designed and produced, the 240-page hardcover complements the “Get Back” documentary series and Let It Be Special Edition with transcriptions of many of The Beatles’ recorded conversations from the three weeks of rehearsals and sessions and hundreds of exclusive, never-before-published images, including photos by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney. The Beatles: Get Back begins with a foreword written by Peter Jackson and an introduction by Hanif Kureishi. The book’s texts are edited by John Harris”.

With the book and album reissue out very soon, that is then followed by the long-awaited documentary in November. I feel it will be a chance for people to learn more about an album that is misunderstood. The assumption that The Beatles were fighting and it was an unbearably tense atmosphere during Let It Be/Get Back. There was, in fact, laughter and plenty of good moments. The book will give us an insight into the recording - and we will get to see some great photos. The album reissues will provide some alternate takes and pieces of the puzzle. Let It Be is one of The Beatles’ worst-reviewed albums. Maybe the reissues will allow us to see the album in a new light. Then the documentary will go deep into the recording process and the reality of the band members’ relationships (and Yoko Ono’s role). One of the lesser-loved albums in the cannon of the greatest band ever, I am glad that we will get three exhaustive and passionate projects. It will be a treat for existing fans of The Beatles. Let us hope that it also…

BRINGS new fans in.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Baby Queen

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Meara Kallistafor for NOTION

Baby Queen

___________

BECAUSE she played (slayed?) Reading recently…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas for The Line of Best Fit

I am keen to focus on the tremendous Baby Queen. I have been following Bella Lathum’s music for a long time now. She is one of the most sensational and original Pop artists of her generation – though she might be keen to distance herself from being seen as ‘Pop’. I will bring in some interviews that give us a bigger picture of the London-based, South African-born artist. Last year, The Line of Best Fit spoke with an artist who, even then, was standing out as one of the strongest and most fascinating artists:

“When Bella Latham, aka Baby Queen, moved to west London as a wide-eyed, excitable 18-year-old, she was on a particular mission: to reshape the pop-sphere as we know it. Within a week of living there, she had settled in Fulham with her auntie and uncle, and had enrolled in a music course at a North London college to help kick start her career. So far, so good. But it wasn’t long before she threw herself in at the deep end; alone, she began to traverse the bustling pubs and the clubs of the city in an attempt to meet like-minded musicians and creatives, to little avail.

“I was totally unprepared for a city like London,” admits the 23-year-old singer-songwriter now, speaking over Zoom. “I had bright light syndrome, and I came here with all these ideas. I thought I was gonna arrive off the plane and Universal Records would be waiting on the other side for me with a contract! I came with the shit demo CD and everyone was like, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ My jaw was permanently dropped, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing around me and the people I was meeting – it was total sensory overload.”

The conception of the Baby Queen moniker, then, was key to a process of growth and becoming, and still figuring things out, it provided Latham with the sense of direction she so desperately needed. “One day, I was writing a song about a breakup and I wrote this line that said: ‘I’m your little baby queen’. It was just meant to be in a song,” she laughs. “And then I was like, that’s what I’m going to call myself! I had this moment of realisation where I felt like I was comfortable in my own skin. This name represents who I’ve always wanted to be.”

Baby Queen makes effervescent, high-octane pop full of transformation and discovery, mixing twinkling beats with sugary vocals to create hook-stuffed, earworm choruses, with two releases to her name as proof. For Latham, it’s important to write songs that reflect the world around her, all the while she excavates moments from her past. She details body dysmorphia, terrible breakups, internet culture, and above all else, the stigma of discussing mental health, a weighty subject that is most felt in her latest single, Buzzkill; “What doesn’t kill you makes it wish that it had”, she sings with a laidback drawl over a rough-edged, punchy electro pop arrangement.

But it’s this innate understanding of the virtual realm that makes the escapist aspects of her music so powerful: in both conversation and song, Latham is deeply ruminative, and is adamant that social media has proven indispensable to not only shaping the identity of Baby Queen, but to reaching an ever-burgeoning audience.

“It’s very clear to me that social media is a tool to connect with the people that are listening to music,” she says, earnestly. “And if I can leave somebody feeling less alone, as if their own self has been mirrored through my songs, then I think that’s the whole point of why I do this”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Bella Howard

I will come onto her debut E.P. and her mixtape. Both have been reviewed hugely positively. In another 2020 interview, NME had Baby Queen on their radar. She talked about her relationship with the Internet. We also learn why Baby Queen music is so personal:

“She describes her relationship with the internet as “a constant battle”, but points to her fans making it feel brighter. The Baby Kingdom, as she calls them, regularly make appearances in her Instagram Lives, while she has a group chat with them where they talk about relationships, Taylor Swift, politics and more. “We’ll be on FaceTime for hours and I genuinely have no idea what we’ve been speaking about,” she laughs. “These people that I’ve connected with over the past few months are more similar to me than any of my actual friends that I have in real life.”

One of the hallmarks of Latham’s music as Baby Queen is honesty and she says that is a big part of why she has such a close relationship with her fans. “When you write music that’s so open and so revealing, you’re sending out an invitation for those people to open themselves up to you in the same way,” she says. “It’s very difficult to stand for honesty without being prepared to have a really close and open relationship with these people.”

While some people credit their favourite pop music with changing their lives, Latham doesn’t think she has that power but there’s still an importance to what she does. “The only thing I can do is be honest about my experience so you know you’re not alone,” she says, adding that she “definitely” wants Baby Queen to be a pop star who can support her fans through their struggles.

As any star will tell you, you have to learn to adapt on your way to the top. Her masterplan might need tweaking in the age of coronavirus, but nothing is stopping Latham from continuing her ascent. She’s already planning to spend 2021 working flat out ahead of releasing her debut album in 2022, aiming to graduate from being a buzzy new artist to someone on the cusp of greatness in that 12 months. “I’ll stop working after the second album,” she jokes after running through her game plan. By that point, she should be well on her way to achieving her superstar dreams – and then some”.

The Line of Best Fit reviewed the Medicine E.P. back in November. Delivering such a confident and flawless debut, they were clearly impressed by what they heard:

“As Bella Latham finally unveils her debut EP, Medicine, it's easy to get caught up in the South Africa-born and now London-based singer-songwriter’s upbeat melodies and dazzling pop-hooks. Yet, piercing through all the swirling saccharine is a cutting honesty, laced with satirical quips, that makes her music vital for a disaffected generation.

Opener “Internet Religion” is a stream of consciousness whirlwind of an anthem, exploring the nightmare of a life built online. Deconstructing online personas with snarky remarks, “it's a pity / we can't Facetune personality”, Baby Queen is striding out with her own unique brand of anti-pop and a firm resolution to talk about everything that the pop-industry isn’t.

Open about her struggles with depression and exploring themes of body dysmorphia and online dating, she’s writing music that’s both catchy and frighteningly relatable to anyone growing up in the digital age. “Pretty Girl Lie” tackles the glossy, photoshopped images of women plastered across social media, noting our role in perpetuating the problem as she quips “I’m so obsessed with being you / That I become the problem too”, whilst “Buzzkill” zones in on depression-caused apathy and the fear of becoming a killjoy to those around her.

As EP highlight “Want Me” kicks in, her confessional spoken word story of an imagined unrequited love is self critical in its sincerity. With a bridge in French that opens with “I don’t even really speak French”, her desire for constant self-reflection feels like the antidote to a bubblegum pop world we’ve all become far too complacent with.

With a clever critique of a society that gives kids depression and aims to crush individuality and self-expression, Baby Queen’s Medicine suggests that maybe she’s the type of “pop-princess” this generation really needs”.

I will stick with The Line of Best Fit. They featured Baby Queen in February as one of their rising artists that we need to keep an eye out for:  

“When she was recording “Pretty Girl Lie”, a self-incriminating track about editing your legs “‘til the doorway bends”, and the unspoken truth that “I get more likes when I don’t look like me”, Latham was ready to point the finger at everyone but herself. But her producer, King Ed, helped her to climb down from the soapbox. “I was going to be like, ‘It’s you! It’s you!’ the whole time, but he said, ‘No, let’s go with “I” – because he knows me, that’s the thing,” she laughs. “He knows what I’m like, and I’m a guilty bitch! I think that’s what’s so likeable about the music. It’s about saying, ‘You’re all dicks, but me too’. It’s almost self-deprecating, in the way I spent like 10 hours on my phone per day – it’s horrendous.”

By taking aim at the artificiality of our lives, Latham draws attention to the idea of our ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’ personas. “That’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life,” she says. There is a divide between Bella Latham and Baby Queen. She explains, “Baby Queen is a constant show. It came from this belief – which is kind of a narcissistic belief, in a way – that you have to make everyone in the room happy. You have to be the source of laughter, the source of everything. But a lot of what I write is from Bella, when I’m alone. Baby Queen is a really big facet of me, rather than a character – but she’s not everything. I can talk in a million different ways, and Baby Queen is just one of them.

I’m not going to leave the house and speak to people, and be in front of the camera as the depressed version of myself who watches Drag Race upstairs, you know? We’re all so multifaceted. You will never get like the full picture of yourself, ever. We're never going to present all of our shit that goes on behind the scenes.”

It's taking us behind the scenes, though, that has certified Baby Queen as a blue-tick Gen Z voice in an age of ‘authenticity’. The truth, she emphasises, is often ugly, and she’s more than ready to drop the charade. She set a precedent for this with the titular track “Medicine”, a glaringly honest depiction of her life on antidepressants. “I feel like people have touched on it before, but no one has said it quite this way,” she says. “I struggle with emotional blunting. I’ve got to tell you, I haven’t cried in years. Like, no matter what happens in my life, I’ll just be like…” She looks blankly into the camera. “I mean, all of a sudden, you can’t cry; you have zero libido. If someone talks to me about sex, I’m literally like, ‘Cool… I don’t know what to say to you.’ They take a way a lot – they take away your ability to think and feel; they box you in. And I’m desperate to cry. I would love to cry. I would love to literally sit here and weep right now, but I can’t.”

But as much as the song readily shows her struggles, it also acknowledges how important they are in her life. “I know for a fact I wouldn’t be alive without them,” Latham insists. “I would cease to exist. So I have to take them. It’s really important people realise that they saved my life. I don’t want people to not go on the medication, because I’m still on it. If they were that bad, I wouldn’t be taking them. It’s a double-edged sword.”

Latham continues to contend with their effects daily – it’s something in her life for which there is no answer, but she has found a silver lining. “I feel like my genius is in my depression,” she says. “My therapist and I talk about, like, when you’re really depressed, you find these nuggets of gold in the dark spaces you can’t make sense of. All those ideas that you write when you’re in that dark place – you don’t get those when your mood is up here.”

The release of her two latest singles, “Raw Thoughts” and “These Drugs”, follow in the same vein. “I feel like the music coming out this year is more personal in the way that it’s more of a true depiction of stuff that’s actually happened to me, as opposed to being observational. It’s more what I feel as opposed to what I think. I’m actually kind of terrified for other people to hear them, because they’re obviously fiercely honest.” Rather than a new era, the new music is a continuation of these very real, immensely personal stories”.

Before coming to a review of the extraordinary mixtape, The Yearbook, NME chatted with one of their favourite artists to find out more. It is interesting reading what Baby Queen had to say about the mixtape:

“The Yearbook’ shows there’s another side to Baby Queen’s honesty though – one that might not be quite as weighty but is just as important in building a picture of who she is as a person. ‘American Dream’, which features Aussie newcomer MAY-A, is a crush fantasy that boasts the immortal line: “The things I could do in a hotel room all alone with you/ That I can’t say aloud.” The baggy lope of ‘You Shaped Hole’ tackles heartbreak in the most cathartic, jubilant way. “Sometimes being honest is writing some stupid little love song about someone you fancy,” she reasons. “It’s just important to make sure that you’re always speaking your truth.”

Talking so freely about her life in her songs has brought Latham the biggest reward of all – a fanbase, dubbed Baby Kingdom, with whom she has such a unique and strong connection. Before she sits down with NME today, she’s greeted by a stack of letters and presents from her fans, who she writes her own missives to and hosts big Zoom hangouts with. “I’m really grateful for the decision that I made to be as honest as I was in songs like ‘These Drugs’,” she nods, “because that’s where this feeling of connecting to people in such a really intimate way comes from and I don’t think I would have achieved if I had not just let it all out.”

To the musician, ‘The Yearbook’ is a “coming-of-age” project that she describes as a being written during her “most developmental years”. To get to that part of our lives when we figure who we are out, we have to move through a lot of versions of ourselves and that’s reflected in the host of characters that make up the record’s visual identity. The cover features Latham dressed up as a goth, a cheerleader, a prom queen and more. “I wanted to bring the songs and story to life and make everyone listening feel like they could grow up with me and come on that journey,” she explains. While she admits some of the personalities she’s assigned to each track are “a bit of a reach”, she wanted to add that element in to give each song “a human element”.

It’s a moment of creativity that is typical of the world Latham has been building since her debut single ‘Internet Religion’ was released in May 2020. Like most artists who’ve started their careers in the last 18 months, all she’s known so far has been a very online pop star existence. But last month, she finally got to enter the real world, play her first festival shows and meet her fans IRL for the first time.

“I was so depressed before those festivals, I felt really powerless and I had a complete identity crisis,” she says, but those shows were transformative for her. “It reignited this feeling of ‘This is why I’m doing it’. It’s a fucking dream come true – I could never have been prepared for what that feeling is when you come off that stage”.

I will finish with a review of The Yearbook. Indie Is Not a Genre had their say on a fantastic work that strengthened Baby Queen’s position as one of the most important young voices in music:

“The Yearbook consists of 5 pre-released singles and 5 new tracks that seamlessly meld together, stand strong on their own, and perfectly capture Lantham’s Baby Queen persona. It’s honest and critical without being gimmicky or self-serving.

Opener Baby Kingdom is a spoken declaration of unabashed nostalgia for Lantham’s past self set to a dreamy synth beat that perfectly encapsulates the dichotomy of this album. You can easily imagine her leaning against the wall outside her school disco a la Effy Stonem with rips in her tights and a cigarette between her teeth – a drawling, pessimistic monologue layered over a distant bedroom-pop beat.

The first half of the Yearbook sees Baby Queen struggle through a breakup with three absolutely banging tracks dripping in vulnerability and addicting electric pop beats. Raw Thoughts and You Shaped Hole, originally released in January and July of this year respectively, detail Lantham’s hedonistic, self-destructive efforts to move forward – “I kissed all our mates to procrastinate the pain / Then I felt ashamed and kissed them all again” she reflects in You Shaped Hole.

American Dream, featuring MAY-A, is Lantham’s first cultural and political critique on The Yearbook and a true display of her metaphorical and lyrical capabilities. Lantham regards her infatuation and desire for her lover as delusional and inaccessible as the American Dream. An escalating, irresistible beat as enticing as the myth she sings about is the backbone of the track, dropping at all the right moments and leaving nothing to be desired.

If American Dream is a thinly veiled metaphor knocking quietly on the door, Narcissist breaks the hinges off. Narcissist is Lantham’s Gen-Z anthem, an outright f*ck you to older generations and their hypocrisy. Quiet rage undercuts her apathetic tone as she laughs “I find it kinda weird you’d critique your own creation / But you still go online and call me self-obsessed / Wait did you forget? / Who made the internet?” Narcissist’s loud, layered wall of sound expands and cuts off at just the right moments, making it an incredibly satisfying listen.

The Yearbook. Dover Beach, first released this past April, begins quietly, and quickly accelerates into a bouncy, beachy, drum driven track with vocals that display Lantham’s upper register beautifully. Dover Beach Pt. 2 adds further depth to the desperation and loss of identity that too often follow the end of a relationship. “I’d change the shape of my mouth if I thought you’d kiss me” Lantham admits.

Baby Queen follows the thread of vulnerability into These Drugs, a gutsy and direct exploration of her own destructive escapism, and reveals what happens when you believe you deserve to suffer. Ethereal background harmonies give this track a slight hopeless, existential edge that compliments Lantham’s portrait of her downward spiral beautifully.

PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas for The Line of Best Fit

I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for scathing, banging musical critiques of hypocritical American religious culture (ie. Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America), so it’s no surprise that Fake Believe really sold me on this album. Latham’s vocals meld with the beat as she delivers line after line of incredibly satisfying sharp-tongued criticism – “I’m in love with apathy / Nothing on the planet ever gets to me / When I’m living in the world of fake believe.”

The Yearbook culminates with I’m a Mess, an immaculate capstone to Lantham’s debut and encapsulation of her musical and cultural persona. Though by far one of the least complicated tracks, essentially just Lantham crying “I’m a mess” with several spoken interludes, I’m a Mess bleeds emotion and leaves you craving more. The imperfect vocal breaks that define the climax communicate the desperation and self-loathing of The Yearbook, and serve as a masterful conclusion to Baby Queen’s triumphant debut”.

Go and follow Baby Queen and check out her music. I know that we are going to see so much incredible stuff from her. After a wonderful E.P. and mixtape, she will be keen t perform live. After a celebrated performance at Reading, there are some dates coming up. Go and check her out if you can. In Baby Queen, we have an artist…

SITTING commandingly on the Pop throne.

______________

Follow Baby Queen

PHOTO CREDIT: Clark Franklyn 

Official:

https://www.babyqueen.world/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/queenofthebabies/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9S9t9qA3hf0DqvOd3YdHqQ?view_as=subscriber

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/babyqueen

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4VqlewwKZJoIcA88PYHUDd

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/queenofthebabies

FEATURE: You Ain't the First: Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

You Ain't the First

Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II at Thirty

___________

THIS is a slightly different…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Guns N’ Roses in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts

anniversary feature, as two albums from Guns N’ Roses were released on 17th September, 1991. Use Your Illusion I and II were launched into the world. Three years after their underwhelming second studio album, G N' R Lies, the Los Angeles band delivered two incredible albums. To be fair, there is a bit of a discrepancy between the albums. I think that I is a lot stronger than II. Not that the second instalment was full of material not strong enough for the first album. We do not really have that today, where as an artist will release two albums on the same day! Some might say that it was ego from Guns N’ Roses. To mark thirty years of the twin albums, I will quote some reviews. Use Your Illusion I debuted at number two on the Billboard charts, selling 685,000 copies in its first week - behind Use Your Illusion II's first-week sales of 770,000. It is amazing to think that Guns N’ Roses released two hugely impressive albums just a week before Nirvana put out Nevermind. What a fortnight that was for fans of Rock and Grunge! If you are not familiar with both of the Use Your Illusion albums, I will pop them in this feature. The first alum features a cover of Wings’ Live and Let Die, November Rain, Garden of Eden and Coma. The second has Civil War, 14 Years and Knockin' on Heaven's Door. I love how there are two classic cover versions. The band took two very different songs and made them their own!

W. Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum and Dizzy Reed are fantastic through the two albums. Before sourcing two reviews for each of the albums,. Rolling Stone took us inside the making of the albums in 2016 (to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary). I have selected some sections from a hugely interesting and revealing feature:

“In April 1990, the classic lineup of Guns N’ Roses played its final show. The occasion was the nationally televised Farm Aid concert, a disastrous set that included, among several bizarre highlights, Steven Adler drunkenly belly-flopping in the general direction of his drum set only to miss by four feet, and Axl Rose ending the live broadcast with a climactic “Good fuckin’ night.” It was the mark of a band breaking apart.

Amazingly, though, the imploding GN’R were in the midst of an artistic surge. One of the songs played at Farm Aid (in a version hampered by Adler’s inability to learn it) was “Civil War,” a sweeping epic that would eventually open the second disc of the massive 30-song, two-and-a-half-hour opus they were hard at work on throughout 1990 and ’91. Slash would later liken Use Your Illusion I and II to the Beatles’ White Album (though “maybe not as good”), a titanic mix of gritty ragers, passionate rock-opera ballads and decadent screeds – from the failed-relationship triptych of “Don’t Cry,” “November Rain” and “Estranged” to the rock-critic indictment “Get in the Ring” to the misogynistic double-header of “Bad Obsession” and “Back Off Bitch.” “Thirty-five of the most self-indulgent Guns N’ Roses songs,” Slash said. “For most bands, it would take four to six years to come up with this much stuff.” Like the White Album, it was brilliance created amid collapse.

The band began seriously considering a follow-up to Appetite for Destruction in the summer of 1989, during a fruitful writing session that took place in Chicago. Izzy Stradlin, who had recently sobered up and often traveled separately from his bandmates, was especially productive. “Izzy has brought in eight songs – at least,” Rose said in 1990. “Slash has brought in a whole album. I’ve brought in an album. Duff [McKagan] knows everybody’s material backwards. So we’ve got, like, 35 songs we like, and we want to put them all out, and we’re determined to do that.” Discussing his newfound sobriety, Stradlin reflected, “I just reached a point where I said, ‘I’m gonna kill myself. Why die for this shit?’ ”

The Chicago meeting spawned, among other songs, “Estranged” (about Rose’s divorce from Erin Everly, daughter of rock & roller Don Everly), the rocker “Bad Apples” and the bondage jaunt “Pretty Tied Up.” While there, they also fleshed out “Get in the Ring,” the frustration anthem “Dead Horse,” McKagan’s tribute to deceased New York Doll Johnny Thunders “So Fine” and the doomy, 10-minute headbanger “Coma,” notable for Rose’s most dramatic and literal lyric in the GN’R catalogue: “Pleeease understaaand me.”

GN’R began recording in earnest in January 1990, a little over a year after the release of Lies, with an attempt at capturing “Civil War,” a tune they’d sketched out in 1988 and later donated to a compilation benefiting Romanian orphans. Immediately, Adler’s drug problem became an insurmountable obstacle. Addicted to heroin, he began nodding off at his kit. “I said to Slash, ‘Dude, I’m so sick that I can’t do it right now,'” the drummer once recalled. “And he said, ‘We can’t waste the money. We got to do it now.’ ”

After consulting with lawyers, the bandmates put Adler on probation, and within a matter of months, they’d kicked him out altogether. “He was so messed up he couldn’t pull off the drum tracks,” Slash said. “And he would lie to us [about getting clean]. We’d go over to his place and find drugs behind the toilet, under the sink.”

Guns N' Roses, Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion, Use Your Illusion, Use Your Illusion sessions, Guns N' Roses Rolling Stone

Nevertheless, the band pushed forward. It solved the drummer problem by recruiting Matt Sorum, of hard rockers the Cult – a band whose affinity for Stones-y riffing and trippy lyrics put them in the same league as GN’R at the time. “He was fucking amazing,” Slash wrote in his autobiography, recalling a Cult show he attended in April 1990.

Around the same time, Rose brought in keyboardist Dizzy Reed. Reed had known the group since its earliest days, when a band he was in practiced in a space next to GN’R’s studio. In early 1990, he called Rose in a panic. Reed, who’d previously auditioned for GN’R, told the singer he’d soon be homeless; Rose offered him a job. “They fucking saved my life,” Reed said. Reed would become the only musician other than Rose to stay in the band in the years leading up to its current reunion.

With the new lineup in place, work continued more smoothly. The first tune they recorded with Sorum was a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” for the soundtrack to the 1990 Tom Cruise racing movie, Days of Thunder. “We would get to the studio at noon,” Sorum recalls. “We were serious about the work ethic. We’d cut a song and then take a break at one of our favorite bars for a drink or two and then cut another track or two. We never did a lot of takes of a song. We’d get it in two to three takes.” They also recorded a number of covers during the sessions, some of which showed up on “The Spaghetti Incident?”; among them was a version of Wings’ James Bond anthem “Live and Let Die,” which Rose once called “Welcome to the Jungle 2.”

Digging deep into their history, Guns revived several holdovers from the Appetite for Destruction days, and earlier. Even though Slash would later say the bass-thwacking rocker “You Could Be Mine” was too reminiscent of Appetite to fit the mood of the Illusion albums, it would eventually appear in the 1991 movie Terminator 2 and be released as a single. There was also the punky, two-and-a-half-minute “Perfect Crime,” which Stradlin had brought to their first-ever preproduction session.

“I’m used to doing things in an hour,” Cooper says. “I know Axl likes to take his time, but if you can’t get a vocal like that in an hour, there’s something wrong. So I told him upfront, ‘I have a tee-off time tomorrow at seven. We’re doing this in about an hour.’ I did it in two takes. I don’t know how long it took him to do all of his takes, but it ended up sounding really, really good.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Guns N' Roses performing live at Rock In Rio II on 15th January, 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Ke.Mazur/WireImage/Getty 

In an omen of the darkness surrounding the band, police discovered a dismembered arm and head in the dumpster behind the studio where GN’R were recording. Stradlin would reference the incident in the sinewy “Double Talkin’ Jive.” “Izzy had gone back to Indiana, and when the police found the body parts, he flew back out and sang the opening line and the final vocal,” Sorum recalls.

Violence seemed to follow Guns N’ Roses out of the studio, too, as they toured while still working on the records. Rose’s wife Erin divorced him in the middle of recording Use Your Illusion, accusing him of assault, and the band toured frequently between sessions, occasionally inciting riots by walking offstage as Rose had done in St. Louis after a fight with a fan. “We all gathered in the dressing room … we’d open a door and there was yelling, we’d open another and see people on stretchers, cops with blood all over them, gurneys everywhere and pandemonium,” Slash recalled.

“After we left the stage, the crowd turned into an angry mob,” Sorum recalls. “Our crew was defending our gear through flying chairs and debris as riot squads arrived with tear gas. We tried to go back onstage but ended up in a van and drove to Chicago, still in our stage clothes, not really sure of the outcome of what had transpired. It was a ride I’ll never forget. Only when I turned on the news the following day to see the damage and destruction did I realize what had happened and the frenzy that had injured many of our fans.”

When they were released in September 1991 – a week before Nirvana’s game-changing LP Nevermind – the Use Your Illusion albums were immediate hits, selling more than 14 million copies combined. “There’s a ton of material we want to get out, and the problem is, how does one release all of it?” Slash said of the unusual twin-disc offering. “You don’t make some kid go out and buy a record for $70 if it’s your second record.”

The gambit made history: No other artist had put out two records on the same day and claimed the top two spots on the Billboard album chart before. “We poured everything into those albums,” Sorum says of their creation. “The music was all that mattered”.

I love 1991 for music. Amazing that two huge bands released such important albums a week apart. If Nirvana’s Nevermind is the more celebrated and popular, Use Your Illusion I and II are not to be overlooked. There is, inevitably, some weak material on each album. That said, when you have classics like November Rain in the pack, one cannot be too critical! They are among the best albums of the 1990s, that is for sure. I know lots of Guns N’ Roses fans around the world will mark thirty years of Use Your Illusion I and II.

It is time for a couple of reviews for each album. Let’s start with Use Your Illusion I. This is what AllMusic wrote in their review of the unexpected first Use Your Illusion.

“The "difficult second album" is one of the perennial rock & roll clichés, but few second albums ever were as difficult as Use Your Illusion. Not really conceived as a double album but impossible to separate as individual works, Use Your Illusion is a shining example of a suddenly successful band getting it all wrong and letting its ambitions run wild. Taking nearly three years to complete, the recording of the album was clearly difficult, and tensions between Slash, Izzy Stradlin, and Axl Rose are evident from the start. The two guitarists, particularly Stradlin, are trying to keep the group closer to its hard rock roots, but Rose has pretensions of being Queen and Elton John, which is particularly odd for a notoriously homophobic Midwestern boy. Conceivably, the two aspirations could have been divided between the two records, but instead they are just thrown into the blender -- it's just a coincidence that Use Your Illusion I is a harder-rocking record than II. Stradlin has a stronger presence on I, contributing three of the best songs -- "Dust n' Bones," "You Ain't the First," and "Double Talkin' Jive" -- which help keep the album in Stonesy Aerosmith territory. On the whole, the album is stronger than II, even though there's a fair amount of filler, including a dippy psychedelic collaboration with Alice Cooper and a song that takes its title from the Osmonds' biggest hit. But it also has two ambitious set pieces, "November Rain" and "Coma," which find Rose fulfilling his ambitions, as well as the ferocious, metallic "Perfect Crime" and the original version of the power ballad "Don't Cry." Still, it can be a chore to find the highlights on the record amid the overblown production and endless amounts of filler”.

I want to bring in a different perspective. The reviews for Use Your Illusion I were largely positive. Despite a couple of weaker tracks on the album, this was a band regaining the sort of form we saw on their 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction. This is Rolling Stone’s take on the band’s 1991 ‘revival’:

“If it was just down to riffs, hooks and body-slam sonics, loving Use Your Illusion I (by itself the equivalent of a double LP) would be no problem. Imagine Exile on Main Street‘s epic grunge, the shotgun eclecticism of the Beatles’ White Album and the lunatic pagan sport of Alice Cooper’s Love It to Death and Killer albums (Alice himself pops up on one track), all whipped together with the junkyard grace of Rocks-era Aerosmith. That breathless Exile feeling is especially ripe on rockers like “Right Next Door to Hell” and “Perfect Crime,” in which you can barely make sense of Rose’s rapid-fire yelp over the molten guitar soup of Slash and Stradlin. “Dust n’ Bones,” sung by Stradlin, is grim n’ greasy, feral guitars and funeral-parlor keys echoing Izzy’s shorthand yarn of sex and psychosis out on Highway 666.

There are backfires. The ballad “Don’t Cry,” a relic of the Gunners’ L.A. club days, is too sweet and pleading; Rose is more convincing busting chops. Slash’s classical-guitar break at the end of “Double Talkin’ Jive” comes out of nowhere and should have stayed there. But “November Rain,” overlong at almost nine minutes and overrich with electro-orchestration, has a cool, “Layla”-like coda with sublime high-wire guitar by Slash. In “Dead Horse,” Rose’s desultory acoustic complaint bookends a stunning, volcanic outburst of electric Aero-Stones slammin’.

On the other hand, it’s not enough to simply be indignant about Illusion I‘s verbal rancor. You ought to be scared for the future. Get past the “parental advisory” buzzwords and you hear a declaration of insolence fueled by self-righteous anger and fearful confusion. Guns n’ Roses’ rock & roll niggers-with-attitude act, however indefensible at times, is emblematic of a greater adolescent cancer: an almost total loss of hope compounded by blind, impotent rage and the perverted Reagan-Bush morality in which the actual cloth of the Stars and Stripes is deemed more holy than the freedom and humanity for which it stands.

It’s all there in “Don’t Damn Me,” the best song on the record and a striking crystallization of Rose’s — and his generation’s — dilemma. “So I stepped into your world/I kicked you in the mind,” Rose declares in a proud full-moon howl against fierce staccato guitars and a galloping rhythm section. “But look at what we’ve done/To the innocent and young/Whoa listen to who’s talking/’Cause we’re not the only ones/The trash collected by the eyes/And dumped into the brain/Said it tears into our conscious thoughts/You tell me who’s to blame.” Empowered by celebrity and his own rock & roll might, even Rose feels dazed and helpless, violently seesawing between “Don’t damn me!” and “Don’t hail me!” as the band explodes behind him in one last orgasmic, twin-guitar rush.

Was Use Your Illusion I worth the wait, the traumas and the onstage tantrums? Yes, if only for “Don’t Damn Me” and the album’s ten-minute closer, “Coma,” a locomotive parable about suicide dreams and troubled resurrection. A few tracks (“Live and Let Die,” the weird art-metal nightmare “The Garden”) could have stayed on the outtakes shelf and no one would have minded. But the Gunners’ anything-worth-doing-is-worth-overdoing spirit is a bracing slap at the reigning fascism of studio perfection.

For better and worse, Illusion I also mirrors the turmoil in Teenage Wasteland, one nation under a grudge. “Not bad kids, just stupid ones,” Rose snaps in “Right Next Door to Hell.” “Yeah, thought we’d own the world.” This is the sound of that dream all shot to hell”.

Let’s finish with a couple of reviews for Use Your Illusion II. It was an expensive (yet exciting) day for Guns N’ Roses fans on 17th September, 1991! They had two quality albums to get their teeth into! I will start with Rolling Stone, as I like their perspectives on the Use Your Illusion albums. This is what they had to say about the counterpart:

“During the fifty-three and a half minutes of Appetite, the guitars antagonized, the drums slammed, and Axl howled about their savage lifestyle, the perils of drugs, the glory of booze, dreaming of Eden, wide-eyed romantic love, their oppressors and sex. Old-fashioned rock & roll stuff, it proved they were hard; it proved they were bad; it proved that metal could rise again; it sold 14 million copies and remained on the charts for three years. During the seventy-five and a half minutes of Use Your Illusion II, the guitars antagonize, though now with more dexterity, varying in tempo and mood; the drums slam, though now at the hands of new band member Matt Sorum; and Axl of course howls, but he also whispers, croons, talk-sings and plays piano like he did back in Indiana, up in his room, idolizing Elton John. In the four years that have passed since Guns n’ Roses first combined opposing symbols and upset the apple cart with willful disregard for rock & roll legend, interest in the band hasn’t waned: 18,000 people will actually wait for them to come out onstage two hours late; the single “You Could Be Mine,” off II and featured in Terminator 2, has sold nearly 2 million copies; and the band’s slightest misstep becomes controversy and turns established magazines and newspapers into veritable Guns n’ Roses fanzines. No wonder they take themselves so seriously.

 With Use Your Illusion II, the band rewards the loyal legions – with fourteen songs, which range from ballad to battle, pretty to vulgar, worldly to incredibly naive. The seven-minute power ballad “Civil War,” which opens the album (and which previously appeared on the Romanian orphan-relief album Nobody’s Child), begins with fingers studiously squeaking on acoustic-guitar strings and a few lines of dialogue from Cool Hand Luke, then drops the band’s characteristic patriotism for amplified rage and a sober look at political deceit: “So I never fell for Vietnam/We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all/That you can’t trust freedom when it’s not in your hands.” Because the band is reaching beyond its own experience on this song, Axl’s question “What’s so civil ’bout war, anyway?” – backed by thunderclaps and rainfall – is almost excusable. The outstanding cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is epic, beautiful and heartfelt, with little flourishes like guns cocking behind the obvious verse (“Mama put my guns in the ground/I can’t shoot them anymore”) and Axl wailing as only Axl does, through his discolored teeth, turning vowels into primitive cries of pain or resolve.

Quite a few songs mine the territory of love gone awry: the spiteful “14 Years,” the disillusioned “Locomotive,” the lonely (and very long) “Estranged” and the bittersweet “Don’t Cry” (a different version from the one that appears on I), which is chapter 2 of “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” the song that, at least in the summer of ’88, bridged the distance between rural route and urban drawing room. The clunkers on II are “Shotgun Blues,” a sonic assault with surprisingly little impact, and “Get in the Ring,” which challenges the band’s detractors by name but basically hits below the belt. On Appetite it was “Feel my serpentine”; on Illusion II it’s “Suck my fuckin’ dick” – meant in a different spirit, yes, but it’s beneath them just the same.

Axl Rose has stopped teasing his hair, taken a few of the chains off his cowboy boots, left the pink lipstick to Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach and gotten a bit of perspective. So he shouldn’t be bothered by his critics, because even with years of practice, no one has come close to that snaky dance of his, that dance that whips victimization, menace and struggle into one fluid, triumphant motion”.

Just before rounding up, there is one other review for Use Your Illusion II that is worth seeing. This is what Sleaze Roxx had to write about Use Your Illusion II on its twenty-fifth anniversary:

“Gone were the raunchy, sleazy, drug and alcohol fueled songs from Appetite For Destruction and in were a more polished, mature band complete with a full-time keyboardist. In addition, gone was the rather loose playing drummer Steven Adler who was replaced by a more formidable and technically sound drummer Matt Sorum. Just like Appetite For Destruction, there were many songs on the album but the big difference was that this time around, Guns N’ Roses had released two albums so a total of 30 songs! Let’s face it, no band can release 30 songs at one time and expect all of them to be good ones. It’s hard enough to come up with one to three stellar songs, yet ten strong ones on an album, and simply impossible to muster 30 great or even good songs in one shot. Not surprisingly, this is where Guns N’ Roses faltered. Granted, you’d never guess from the album sales with both Use Your Illusion albums occupying the #1 and 2 spots on the Billboard chart the week after their release and with the two records selling over 35 million copies worldwide combined.

Nevertheless, the reality is that having 14 songs on one album (Use Your Illusion II) and 16 on the other (Use Your Illusion) will result in some rather poor songs making the cut. Given that I first listened to Use Your Illusion II and since I have always preferred that album over Use Your Illusion I, it’s only fitting that I review the former first. Use Your Illusion II started off with the now “famous” intro for “Civil War” in “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate…” The song “Civll War” was the perfect showcase for the new Guns N’ Roses‘ approach on the Use Your Illusion albums — serious and lengthier more epic like tracks with varying tempos and a lot more instruments. On Use Your Illusion II alone, the instruments listed included piano, keyboards, a banjo, a sitar, an organ and even a drum machine. It felt like Guns N’ Roses had matured very much like The Beatles expanding their wings with more complex arrangements and more instrumentation. And for a good portion of Use Your Illusion II, the results were/are fantastic. The first three tracks “Civil War,” “14 Years” and “Yesterdays” were slowed down quite a bit compared to what could be found on Appetite For Destruction but they worked brilliantly and are the type of songs that you can listen to many times over discovering something new. Guns N’ Roses‘ cover of Bob Dylan‘s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” has never been a favorite of mine but was a logical inclusion considering that it was already in the band’s live setlist a number of years beforehand.

“Get In The Ring” was probably my favorite track (aside from “You Could Be Mine”) early on when I got the Use Your Illusion albums given that it had the attitude from the Appetite For Destruction days with the charged up lyrics. While it seemed so cool for Axl Rose to take a shot at various publications such as Kerrang, Circus and even single out Hit Parader‘s editor Andy Secher, my enthusiasm has subsided considerably given my new role as Sleaze Roxx editor! Looking back now, “Get In The Ring” is the first taste on Use Your Illusion II that the quality of the songs might have been compromised a little bit by including too many songs. I have to think that “Get In The Ring” and “Shotgun Blues” — while decent songs — would not have made the cut on Appetite For Destruction. “Breakdown” is a quality track once again encompassing the new songs’ direction with a lot more keyboards and piano incorporated. “Pretty Tied Up” had a cool arabic feel to it and again showcased the more mature Guns N’ Roses. The lengthy “Locomotive” and the Duff McKagan sung “So Fine” were decent rockers but again would have probably not have made the cut on Appetite For Destruction.

“Estranged” was Use Your Illusion II‘s answer to “November Rain” on Use Your Illusion I. It was (and still is) an epic track that took the listener on a great journey and still reminds me a lot of what Alice Cooper would have come up with in his heyday with all the nuances and varying tempos. It’s definitely one of the most mature, brilliant and underrated tracks in Guns N’ Roses‘ repertoire. It’s kind of odd to find “You Could Be Mine” buried as the twelfth track on Use Your Illusion II considering that it was the showcase advance single. Funny enough, “You Could Be Mine” was really not representative of what the rest of the songs turned out to sound like on both Use Your Illusion albums. It’s almost like it was a remnant of the Appetite For Destruction days that was dusted off just in time for the release of the Use Your Illusion records. I am not sure why Guns N’ Roses would think we needed an alternate lyric version of “Don’t Cry” but it was included in any case on Use Your lllusion II. Perhaps Axl just could not decide on which lyrics he liked better… Sadly, a great album ended on a terrible note with the industrial tinged “My World” which was apparently recorded in a mere three hours. Clearly, this type of filler material should not have been concluding an otherwise very fine album”.

A very happy thirtieth anniversary to two different but equally important albums. Use Your Illusion I and II are considered to be among the best Guns N’ Roses albums. One week before the genius Nevermind, we got this treat from Axl Rose and co. Whilst I think their greatest album is Appetite for Destruction, the Use Your Illusion albums are hugely ambitious, varied and incredibly consistent! I am surprised there hasn’t been a thirtieth anniversary reissue with extras and demo versions. That said, I am sure there will be celebration on 17th September. People will be playing two classic albums. If you have not investigated them for a while, go and spend some time with Use Your Illusion I and II. Thirty years later, the third and fourth albums from Gun N’ Roses (if you see G N' R Lies as an album rather than a long-E.P.) are…

SIMPLY stunning.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: The Best of Fiona Apple

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

The Best of Fiona Apple

___________

I have covered Fiona Apple…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

a fair few times on my blog. I wanted to put together a selection of her greatest tracks, as she celebrates her birthday on 13th September. I am a massive fan of Apple’s work. Her most-recent album, 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters is, perhaps, her best ever. It is a phenomenal thing to listen to! Before coming to a playlist at the end, I am going to source a biography from AllMusic. This mean I can drop in some of her incredible music videos:

“Fiona Apple never quite belonged to a specific scene. The closest she came was at the dawn of her career, when her debut album Tidal arrived as the alternative rock wave reached its crest in 1996. Apple spent her time in MTV's Buzzbin and on tour with Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair revue, earning a hit single ("Criminal") and platinum certification along the way, but she wasn't a folkie or a punk rocker. Her roots lay in jazz, show tunes, and classic '70s singer/songwriters, an idiosyncratic blend that came into sharper focus on her second album, When the Pawn. Upon its release in 1999, When the Pawn drew attention for its emotional intensity, unconventional arrangements, and eccentric flair, elements that were central to her appeal in the next decades when she worked steadily and rigorously. As her output slowed -- it took her six years to deliver her third album, Extraordinary Machine, and another seven for its sequel, The Idler Wheel, to appear -- her reputation as a daring artist grew. The Idler Wheel and its 2020 successor Fetch the Bolt Cutters confirmed Apple took aural risks without abandoning her strengths as a singer/songwriter, a combination that helped her maintain a devoted cult following.

Born to singer Diane McAfee and actor Brandon Maggart in 1977, Fiona Apple started playing and writing songs at the age of 12 in an effort to work out a traumatic childhood that included rape at the age of 11. Apple continued to write, leaving high school for Los Angeles at the age of 16. She cut a demo tape that eventually earned her a contract with Sony Music in 1995. Teamed with producer Andrew Slater, she cut her debut, Tidal, releasing the album in the summer of 1996.

Tidal was a slow build, earning critical acclaim and a cult that exploded when the controversial video for "Criminal" turned the single and album into a hit. Mark Romanek's seedy, suggestive clip was overtly sexual -- a path Apple notably avoided afterward -- but it did the trick, helping the album reach the Top Ten and earning Apple a Grammy. Despite this titillation, Tidal appealed to middle of the road listeners, a path Apple definitively rejected with her next album, 1999's When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King.... The entire title was a 90-word poem, a fair indication of the artistic ambition that lay within. Produced by Jon Brion, the album was dense, literate, and melodic, not matching the commercial success of the debut but deepening her cult. Despite a romance with director Paul Thomas Anderson -- she contributed to the soundtrack of his 1999 magnum opus Magnolia -- Apple retreated from the spotlight, fostering an element of mystery that only grew when her next album experienced a series of delays.

By 2003, the lack of a sequel became a sensation among some music message boards, where rumors swirled that Sony rejected her newest music for being uncommercial. Within the next year, unfinished mixes leaked onto the Internet and the saga of the album spilled over into the mainstream, earning ink in The New York Times. All this helped usher the album to completion in the fall of 2005, when the original Brion productions were tweaked and expanded with producer Mike Elizondo, who helped Extraordinary Machine reach its final shape. The album was greeted by generally positive reviews -- some compared it not entirely favorably to the leaked album -- and the record received healthy sales. In its wake, Apple maintained a moderate presence, touring with Nickel Creek in 2007 and appearing with the Watkins Family at times during their residency at the Largo in Los Angeles. In 2012, Apple previewed three songs from her fourth studio album (which boasted a typically enigmatic title in The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do) to a wildly enthusiastic audience at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. Produced by Apple with her touring drummer, Charley Drayton, the album earned excellent reviews upon release in June 2012.

Apple spent the next few years contributing songs to movies and television shows, including writing "Container," which was the theme to the Showtime series The Affair. In 2015, she contributed to Watkins Family Hour, the first album by Sean and Sara Watkins' Los Angeles-based collective, and the following year she appeared on Andrew Bird's Are You Serious album. Apple released her fifth solo album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, in April 2020”.

A very happy Fiona Apple for 13th of this month. I hope that she has a great day. As one of the greatest songwriters and artists of her generation, I hope that we see more albums her. She is a remarkable talent and inspiration for so many. I am ending up with a playlist that contains some of the best tracks from…

AN absolute legend.

FEATURE: Inspired By... Part Twenty-Nine: CHIC

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By...

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Part Twenty-Nine: CHIC

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AS I am in a Disco mindframe at the moment…

I thought that I would include CHIC in this Inspired By… Perhaps the most important and influential Disco group ever, one can definitely trace their music to other artists. So many have been compelled by CHIC’s brilliance and how incredible their music is. I am going to finish with a playlist of songs from artists who one can compare with CHIC - or who have said that they are influenced by them. Before that, and as I normally do, AllMusic provide some biography:

“There is no doubt that Chic was disco's greatest band. Working in a heavily producer-dominated field, they were most definitely a band. By the time Chic appeared in the late '70s, disco was already heading toward mainstream saturation and an inevitable downfall. Chic bucked the trend by stripping disco's sound down to its basic elements. Specializing in stylish grooves with a uniquely organic sense of interplay, Chic's sound was anchored by the scratchy "chucking"-style rhythm guitar of Nile Rodgers, the indelible, widely imitated, and sometimes outright stolen basslines of Bernard Edwards, and the powerhouse drumming of Tony Thompson. As producers, Rodgers and Edwards used keyboard and string embellishments economically, which kept the emphasis on rhythm. Chic's distinctive approach not only resulted in some of the era's finest singles, including the number one hits "Le Freak" and "Good Times" -- only two of several classics off the platinum albums C'est Chic (1978) and Risqué (1979) -- but also helped create a template for funk, dance-pop, and hip-hop in the post-disco era. Not coincidentally, Rodgers and Edwards wound up as two of the most successful pop producers, and the sound they developed and perfected remained relevant for decades, acknowledged most notably with the duo's induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Through the 2010s, Rodgers continued to lead Chic as a major live draw and took the act back to the studio for It's About Time (2018).

Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards met in 1970, when both were jazz-trained musicians fresh out of high school. Edwards had attended New York's High School for the Performing Arts and was working in a Bronx post office at the time, while Rodgers' early career also included stints in the folk group New World Rising and the Apollo Theater house orchestra. Around 1972, Rodgers and Edwards formed a jazz-rock fusion group called the Big Apple Band. This outfit moonlighted as a backup band, touring behind smooth soul vocal group New York City in the wake of their 1973 hit "I'm Doin' Fine Now." After New York City broke up, the Big Apple Band hit the road with Carol Douglas for a few months, and Rodgers and Edwards decided to make a go of it on their own toward the end of 1976. At first they switched their aspirations from fusion to new wave, briefly performing as Allah & the Knife Wielding Punks, but quickly settled into dance music. They enlisted onetime LaBelle drummer Tony Thompson and vocalists Norma Jean Wright and Alfa Anderson, and changed their name to Chic in summer 1977 so as to avoid confusion with Walter Murphy & the Big Apple Band (who'd just hit big with "A Fifth of Beethoven").

Augmented in the studio by keyboardists Raymond Jones and Rob Sabino, Chic recorded the demo single "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" and shopped it around to several major record companies, all of which declined it. The small Buddah label finally released it as a 12" in late 1977, and as its club popularity exploded, Atlantic stepped in, signed the group, and re-released the single on a wider basis. "Dance, Dance, Dance" hit the Top Ten, peaking at number six, and made Chic one of the hottest new groups in disco. The band scrambled to put their self-titled first album together, and it spawned a minor follow-up hit, "Everybody Dance," in early 1978. At this point, Wright left to try her hand at a solo career (with assistance from Rodgers and Edwards), and was replaced by Luci Martin. It was a good time to come onboard; "Le Freak," the first single from sophomore album C'est Chic, was an out-of-the-box smash, spending five weeks on top of the charts toward the end of 1978 and selling over four-million copies (which made it the biggest-selling single in Atlantic's history). Follow-up "I Want Your Love" reached number seven, cementing the group's new star status, and C'est Chic became one of the rare disco albums to go platinum.

1979's Risqué was another solidly constructed LP that also went platinum, partly on the strength of Chic's second number one pop hit, "Good Times." "Good Times" may not have equaled the blockbuster sales figures of "Le Freak," but it was the band's most imitated track: Queen's number one hit "Another One Bites the Dust" was a clear rewrite, and the Sugarhill Gang lifted the instrumental backing track wholesale for the first commercial rap single, "Rapper's Delight," marking the first of many times that Chic grooves would be recycled into hip-hop records. Also in 1979, Rodgers and Edwards took on their first major outside production assignment, producing and writing the Sister Sledge smashes "We Are Family" and the oft-sampled "He's the Greatest Dancer." This success, in turn, landed them the chance to work with Diana Ross on 1980's Diana album, and they wrote and produced "Upside Down," her first number one hit in years, as well as "I'm Coming Out."

The disco fad was fading rapidly by that point, however, and 1980's Real People failed to go gold despite another solid performance by the band. Changing tastes put an end to Chic's heyday, as Rodgers and Edwards' outside production work soon grew far more lucrative, even despite aborted projects with Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis. Several more Chic LPs followed in the early '80s, with diminishing creative and commercial returns, and Rodgers and Edwards disbanded the group after completing Believer in 1983.

Later that year, both recorded solo LPs. Hungry for respect in the rock mainstream (especially after accusations that they had ripped off Queen instead of the other way around), both Rodgers and Edwards sought out high-profile production and session work over the rest of the decade. Rodgers produced blockbuster albums like David Bowie's Let's Dance, Madonna's Like a Virgin, and Mick Jagger's She's the Boss. Edwards wasn't as prolific as a producer, but did join the one-off supergroup the Power Station along with Tony Thompson as well as Robert Palmer and members of avowed Chic fans Duran Duran; he later produced Palmer's commercial breakthrough, Riptide. Edwards also worked with Rod Stewart (Out of Order), Jody Watley, and Tina Turner, while Rodgers' other credits include the Thompson Twins, the Vaughan Brothers, INXS, and the B-52's' comeback Cosmic Thing.

Rodgers and Edwards re-formed Chic in 1992 with new vocalists Sylver Logan Sharp and Jenn Thomas, and an assortment of session drummers in Thompson's place; they toured and released a new album, Chic-ism. In 1996, the reconstituted Chic embarked on a tour of Japan; sadly, on April 18, Edwards passed away in his Tokyo hotel room due to a severe bout of pneumonia. Rodgers continued to tour occasionally with a version of Chic. In 1999, his Sumthing Else label issued a recording of Edwards' final performance with the band, Live at the Budokan. More importantly, Rodgers compiled The Chic Organization Box Set, Vol. 1: Savoir Faire, a four-disc anthology released in 2010. Rodgers' career was boosted once more, through a string of collaborations with Duran Duran and Daft Punk, among others. He published a memoir, beat cancer, and kept the Chic name alive, primarily as a touring group. In 2018, two years after Rodgers and Edwards were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Rodgers completed and released a long-in-the-works Chic album, It's About Time”.

To show how CHIC have inspired other artists and made a real mark, the playlist below contains songs from those who are definitely indebted, in some way, to a group who turn fifty next year (though they are now called Nile Rodgers & Chic). Here are tracks from those who certainly are affected and influenced…

BY the sensational CHIC.