FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 1989: Janice Long (Greater London Radio)

FEATURE:

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

1989: Janice Long (Greater London Radio)

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I might wind down…

this Interview Archive series, but I am indebted to resources like this that store interviews Bush has conducted through the years. Whilst the majority are print interviews, there are some radio chats that have been transcribed that are fascinating. I have been writing a bit about her 1989 album, The Sensual World, a bit lately. Bush did a lot of promotion for The Sensual World, including some radio conversations. On the twelfth and thirteenth October, 1989, Janice Long broadcast her two-part interview with Kate Bush during her morning shows on Greater London Radio. The interview took place at Bush own studio in Welling. In is a really interesting and relaxed interview, we get some nice exchanges between the two. I have selected various parts of the interview that caught my eye:

“Why is there such long gaps <sic> between albums being released?

"I think the problem is, too, that there seems to be a longer gap between each album progressively--which is a bit frightening for me, too. All I can say is that after each album is finished and the promotion is done, I can't just start an album straight away, because otherwise it's just a continuation of that last album. And the whole thing about writing an album is that you want to find something new to say, and at the same time, try to find out who you are at that point in time. You know, what you want to do. What direction you want to move in. So it's very much a self-exploratory process as well."

Now, the thing is, people wait with bated breath for the next Kate Bush album, and they get very excited about it. How do you feel about it? How do you feel about that--knowing that people are still excited about you?

"I think that's quite hard for me to take in, really. I just feel so lucky that I can spend as much time as I need to to make an album, and that people are actually still waiting to hear what I do. It's very exciting for me, and I think sometimes it feels like a big responsibility. It is really important that I put as much as I can into each album, so that it is, hopefully, worth waiting for. It's not something I'm terribly aware of. It's almost too much for me to think about, really--that there are people who want to hear it after such a long time."

So what happens? Do EMI breathe down your neck and say, 'Come on, Kate, the punters are waiting!' Or do you wind down after one album and then just get into it gradually yourself?

"Well, I think the record company know me well enough by now to know that really they just have to leave me to it. I'd really like to be able to make an album quicker. I dream of making an album in eight weeks, but if I did, it would be something that I wouldn't be happy with. Unfortunately, it's just a very slow process for me, and I think they realize this. And they know there's not really much they can do about it, because I couldn't possibly give them an album until it was written and finished."

What sort of influences do you have when you're making an album? Particularly other music?

"My normal way of working is not to listen to other music when I'm making albums. I tend to listen to music after I've finished. A good example of that is after I finished the Hounds of Love album. My brother Paddy played me a tape of The Trio Bulgarka, and I'd never heard anything like it. <This is a slight distortion of the facts. Paddy had in fact been an enthusiast of Bulgarian vocal folkmusic since the late 1960s, when he discovered the genre through an album by the Pennywhistlers. Since Kate was heavily influenced by her brothers' musical tastes at that period, it is unlikely that she didn't get at least some preliminary exposure to Bulgarian music at an early age--IED> I was devastated, like everyone is when they hear it. And by hearing it then, it gave me a lot of time to listen to them and gradually think that maybe we could work together. Bearing them in mind, I actually wrote a track, and then it eventually evolved into the process of working together. But it was probably three years before I actually got around to doing something about it. It just shows you how slow the whole evolving process is."

You don't follow trends at all, do you? <For those thinking that the Bulgarian music influence was a trendy one, remember that Kate's involvement with the Trio Bulgarka actually pre-dated the first re-release of Marcel Cellier's recording of Le Mystere on 4AD by several months. Neither she nor Paddy could have had any idea that Bulgarian vocal music would become chic in the West.>

"I think again, Janice, that it's just as well I don't, because if I did, by the time the album was out it would be three years out of date! I don't stand much chance of being hip--unless it comes right round again, that is."

To many, you're something of an enigma.

"I don't know about enigmas or anything. I just take a long time to make an album."

Do you always write in the studio?

"Yes, I do now. I play around with ideas at home, but most of the writing goes on in here, and that's important, too. Because years ago I'd make demos, and there would be things that I wanted to keep, but of course you can't, because it's a demo. It's the eternal problem. By having your own studio, you can get around that. You can actually make the demos the master, and keep all those little bits that are interesting, but then make the rest sound much better. I work very closely with Del (Palmer), who engineers for me. So most of the time it's just the two of us in there. He works a lot on the rhythms and things, so at least I'm not totally alone in there. Once the song feels good enough to work on, then you bring musicians in and just sort of layer upon layer. You sort of create the picture, as it were, and just build up the sounds that seem to work for what the song is saying. It feels as though songs have personalities. You can try something on a song and it will just reject it. It doesn't want it. And yet you can tray that on another song and it will work so perfectly. They're all so individual."

What about the tense atmosphere when the album is in its final preparation stage? Do tempers begin to flare?

"Yes. I think healthy argument is a very important part of the process, really. Creative or otherwise. Because it can be very constructive. The problem is actually having a strong enough direction, knowing what you want to do."

How important is it to you that te person listening to your record understands what's going through your mind? Or do you mind if they have their own interpretations?

"I think it's wonderful if they have their own interpretations. I think that's really important, although it matters to me that the lyrics are saying something, and I spend a lot of time on lyrics. They're very difficult. I think a lot of the power of lyrics is the sounds. The whole thing is just a combination of sounds and textures, and definitely different words have a different feeling that go with them. The way consonants mark things. It's a very percussive instrument, in a way, words. And I think that's what's very important, that they feel and sound right."

I read somewhere before that you were into Irish music. Is it traditional stuff, or what?

"Yes, it is that. I just love Irish music. It's so emotional, and passionate. It's very, very happy, and it can be very, very sad. It just does something to me. I guess it's because it's in my blood, as well. My mother's Irish, and as soon as I hear the pipes, you know, I feel my blood surging through my veins. And I think the Bulgarian music has...it moves you. The sense of melody and everything. It feels like very old music, stuff we're not in touch with any more. Probably when music was music, and men were men (laughing), and the women were very lonely!"

About "Deeper Understanding": On the way here, the driver kept leaping because he though his VodaPhone was going.

"It's very interesting that you should say that because so many people have. If they'd have that track on, people would be talking away and then they hear the computer sound, they're completely distracted. And I think it reinforces in a way what the whole song is about, which is rather nice. It's almost like people respond more to a machine talking to them than to a human. It's like we're all keyed into mechanical information".

Following on from the hugely successful and acclaimed Hounds of Love in 1985, one could feel and sense a change in Kate Bush’s music and outlook. Entering her thirties (she turned thirty on 30th July, 1988), the 1989 album seems more personal, reflective and futured-looking. Although there is great sensuousness and beauty throughout The Sensual World, I get the sense of Bush thinking more about a future where she is more settled and has different priorities. Maybe not thinking only of work and music, there is this incredible depth and potency that enriches the songs; weaving through the notes like a tapestry. Because of this, I am really interested in the interviews Bush documented to promote the album. Her chat with the much-missed Janice Long (who died on Christmas Day last year) is wonderful! It seems playful but professional. There is a warmth, yet Bush is asked questions that provoke something quite revealing and serious at times. It is another wonderful interview with…

THE inspiring Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Career Opportunities: The Clash’s Eponymous Debut Album at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

Career Opportunities

The Clash’s Eponymous Debut Album at Forty-Five

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ON 8th April…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Clash photographed in New York City in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland/Getty Images

one of the most important debut albums ever turns forty-five. It is hard to really state how important The Clash is as an album. The Clash -  Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon -  released their astonishing debut album through CBS Records. Written and recorded over three weeks in February 1977 for £4,000, it is undeniably one of the greatest and most influential Punk albums ever. The Clash themselves would never been as Punk again. If future albums found them widening their sound somewhat, their eponymous debut is about as Punk as it gets! Strummer and Jones wrote an album that was urgent and resonated in 1977. Subsequently, it has managed to ensure and inspire so many people. Its themes and subjects are relevant to this very day. With Clash classics like I'm So Bored with the U.S.A. and White Riot, The Clash is an album that will never lose its significance and brilliance. I will come to a couple of reviews of the album Prior to that, Billboard wrote about The Clash in 2017. They make an interesting observation about the London band: they do not want to tear things down and cause damage: they wanted progress and betterment in the world:

“Compared to the Sex Pistols, their chief rivals in the early days of U.K. punk, The Clash are seen as righteous and idealistic. They wanted progress, not anarchy. Much of The Clash supports this view. “London’s Burning” is a great example. As guitarist Mick Jones replaces punk’s usual power chords with the type of inverted reggae stabs he’d later use on “London Calling,” frontman Joe Strummer seeks to rouse a numbed city. Strummer used to be disgusted, now he’s enthused. You don’t yell “Dial 99999!” — two digits more than it takes to summon British emergency responders — if you’re happy to see your city burn.

Strummer’s works himself up even more on “White Riot,” the most controversial song The Clash ever did. It was written in response to the Notting Hill Carnival of 1976, where black revelers squared off against white police officers in a bloody street battle. Strummer and Clash bassist Paul Simonon tried to get involved by torching a car but couldn’t get the fire started. The incendiary song that resulted, “White Riot,” is curiously not a show of solidarity with oppressed blacks. It’s a call to white folks who feel similarly unhappy to take action.

“Black man got a lot of problems, but they don’t mind throwing a brick,” Strummer sings. “White people go to school, where they teach you how to be thick.”

Strummer’s heart was undoubtedly in the right place. The Clash were avowedly anti-fascist, and in 1978, they played “White Riot” to thousands of people at a Rock Against Racism festival in London’s Victoria Park. And yet Strummer’s inability to recognize his own privilege — again in the parlance of our times — threatens to undercut his point. The group was better off risking cries of cultural appropriation with their terrifically spiky cover of “Police and Thieves,” a then-current reggae hit by Junior Murvin. Later on, The Clash would learn to play reggae properly — here, they chop away and trust their passion to see them through.

One song nobody was going to get mad at was “I’m So Bored With the USA.” It began life as a Mick Jones love song called “I’m So Bored With You” and transformed into a Strummer diss track aimed at America, the “dictator of the world.” Foreshadowing the international reportage The Clash would offer on 1980’s Sandinista! — named for leftist Nicaraguan revolutionaries — Strummer opens with lyrics about Vietnam vets grappling with heroin addictions they picked up fighting in Cambodia. Joe proceeds to get in a couple digs about Watergate and America’s fondness for TV, violence, and TV shows about violence. This one was almost too easy

The political song that probably resonated most with young Clash fans at the time was “Career Opportunities.” Strummer, Jones, and Simonon lacked what you might call marketable skills, and that was OK, because in late ’70s England, there weren’t many decent jobs to be had. When Strummer sneers, “I won’t open letter bombs for you,” he’s referring to an actual gig Jones had with the Benefits Office. As the low man on the totem, Mick would handle all incoming mail — a dangerous assignment in the days of IRA mail bombings. Jobs that wouldn’t kill you, like the Army or the Royal Air Force, would only make you duller. The Clash can’t decide what’s worse on this stomping sing-along.

“Career Opportunities” speaks to the sort of restless working-class British teens and 20-somethings that Strummer portrays in “Cheat” and “48 Hours” — companion ragers about prowling around for kicks. Jones takes the lead on “Protex Blue,” named for a brand of condom the narrator has no intention of using in the company of another human being: “I don’t need no skin flicks / I wanna be alone.”

These songs of alienation are angrier versions of what fellow U.K. punks Buzzcocks would start blasting out in friendlier form around the same time. The Clash go even darker on “What’s My Name,” where Mick’s howling guitar intro sets up a chilling hooligan’s tale told in 1:41. Strummer stars as an acne-plagued kid with an abusive dad and zero outlets for his energy. When he can’t even get into the local ping-pong club, he resorts to street fighting, then turns up at a house late at night with a “celluloid strip” for picking locks”.

Managing to be inspirational, aspirational, angry and composed at the same time, there is more depth, nuance and meaning in The Clash then most other Punk albums released. In 1977, it seemed like a revelation and revolution. I want to source a couple of reviews for a masterpiece. This is what Louder Sound said in their assessment:

“The holy trinity of punk were so perfectly formed that it’s hard to imagine the scene without any one of them. The Pistols: searing and sneering, nihilistic and iconic (the artwork, the clothes). The Damned: the court jesters. Daft, tough, Tiswas-anarchic, a British Stooges/MC5. And The Clash: the guttersnipes and street punks, the voice you could relate to, and without whom it’s hard to imagine The Jam, Stiff Little Fingers, Sham 69 or Generation X, let alone Green Day, Rancid, or maybe even U2.

The Clash articulated the frustrations of working class kids in a way that the chin-stroking protest pop of previous generations couldn’t hope to, in a way that was more inclusive than the fury of the Pistols or the Damned’s goth theatre. (And, yeah genius, we know the irony: Joe Strummer went to a private boarding school and his father was a top diplomat. Hate to break it to you but David Bowie wasn’t really a spaceman, Tom Waits wasn’t a hobo and Ice-T didn’t really kill cops.)

The Clash was hurriedly-written and recorded and it’s a messy and thrilling snapshot of two creative forces gelling for the first time. From their vocals (Strummer’s yobbish bark balanced by Jones’s boyish sensitivity) to their lyrics (famously, Strummer changed Jones’s track I’m So Bored With You to I’m So Bored With The USA), and even their guitar-playing (Joe’s choppy rhythm guitar versus Mick’s slightly weedy-but-melodic lead), the album is a true Strummer/Jones production. Both men were classic rock’n’roll dreamers. To find themselves in the right time and right place with the perfect partners must have been a buzz and, amid the anger and the outrage, the album captures that rock’n’roll woah perfectly.

Mostly The Clash talks about people in boring jobs, with annoying bosses, in a world going to shit. A London burning with boredom, where everyone sits around watching television. Where the TV is full of American cop shows, because killers in America work seven days a week. Where you get hassled in the street by cops and pressured to take a shit job down the Job Centre. Where ‘hate and war’ has replaced ‘peace and love’ and the world is full of cheats and junkies.

Sounds joyless? It’s only half the picture – a bit like describing Trainspotting as a movie about heroin addicts in Edinburgh. The Clash is full of defiance and dark humour and plenty of cheap thrills. Short adrenaline bursts like 48 Hours and Protex Blue (a stupidly laddish ode to the top condom brand of the time: ‘I don’t think it’ll fit my PD drill’) add levity to darker tracks like Deny and Cheat, while Janie Jones, Career Opportunities, London’s Burning and Garageland do all the heavy lifting – full of righteous anger, great one liners and gleeful humour. (Garageland, the witty riposte to Charles Shaar Murray’s earlier line that The Clash were a garage band “who should be left in the garage with the engine running”, isn’t bitter or spiteful but a warm salute to everyone who’s ever been in a dodgy band with ‘five guitar players, one microphone’ and an old bag of a neighbour who calls the police”.

I will end with a review from Rolling Stone. This is what they said in their review of 2002. They observe how much variation there is in terms of the themes The Clash expressed throughout their debut:

“Nobody fused clamor with conviction like the Clash. Their choppy riffs and shouted choruses touched on rockabilly and reggae, but their insistence was pure punk. When the group's import debut hit the United States in summer 1977, it offered not only raw, hot news from the roiling British underground but the last fantasy of a rock band that could change history with caustic social observations and fanatic faith in guitars. Joe Strummer snarled his lyrics through snag teeth while lead guitarist Mick Jones contributed most of the dense music that never stopped sprinting, even as it lashed out. The most sure and supple rhythms of early punk came from the dub-savvy bass of Paul Simonon and the hammer-on-concrete drums of Terry Chimes (here renamed "Tory Crimes"). With fourteen songs recorded in just three weekends and all of a piece, The Clash rewarded feverish grass-roots anticipation and moved 100,000 copies -- the best-selling import of that time.

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The band's first single, "White Riot," slapped New York Dolls guitar screech over Ramones speed-beats and announced that the Clash played rock not to escape problems but to confront them. Starting from the viewpoint of young roughnecks with few resources and fewer options, Jones and Strummer declared that guys felt jilted by power structures more than girlfriends. The Clash excoriated dead-end "Career Opportunities," the omnipresence of "Hate and War," and both "Police and Thieves" in a landmark reggae remake. They celebrated their no-account origins in "Garageland" or just threw out the still-disturbing roar "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A."(with its ameliorative refrain, "but what can I do-oo?")”.

As pop protest drained from rock into rap, the Clash's rhetorical ambitions became a target for detractors even as fans insisted the songs worked as gutter-perspective dramas. Heard now, The Clash works as party and protest. Saucier and more cinematic than activist-rock competition from the MC5 to Rage Against the Machine, the album lays down a guide to exile and cunning. The tunes still detonate as the group still insists justice must prevail, no matter how the world just ended”.

A magnificent and timeless debut that turns forty-five on 8th April, here is to the sensational The Clash. If the band’s third studio album, London Calling (1979), is seen as their most successful and, perhaps, greatest album, I feel their eponymous debut is their most important. Even though there were other Punk artists putting out tremendous work in 1977, I think that The Clash were…

WITHOUT equals.

FEATURE: Reel-to-Real: Spike Jonze: Wax – California (1995)

FEATURE:

 

 

Reel-to-Real

Spike Jonze: Wax – California (1995)

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THIS is a feature where…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Spike Jonze

I take a deeper look at classic music videos. There are so many to choose from. I am selecting ones that are meaningful to me. In the first edition, I talked about one of Michel Gondry’s greatest videos. The French director is one of the most innovative and visually-arresting music video directors. In terms of icons of the form, Spike Jonze is definitely among the very best. Although the band were active until 2009, that was more of a reunion year. Their first period of activity was from 1991-1995. Wax are a Californian band whose second studio album, 13 Unlucky Numbers (1995), contains California. There is always something standout when it comes to Spike Jonze’s music videos. For California, it is the man seen on fire on the sidewalk. Maybe today someone being set on fire would be no biggie. In a video in 1995, that imagery was quite unexpected and new! It is quite controversial, but it is also filmic and cinematic. Of course, Jonze would go on to work on music videos for Daft Punk, Björk and many others. A celebrated film director, this was his very early career. Wanting to make an impression and stand out, he definitely created something that eclipses the song in terms of its memorability and timelessness. I think, when we think of Wax’s California, the video comes to mind more readily than the song. The 1990s were a time when these soon-to-be-legendary music video directors were starting out and honing their craft. Jonze’s take on California is so different to what any other director would have done!

California is one of those videos where the concept and storyline comes together when you have that central idea: a man walking and jogging down a street on fire. This is what everyone is going to be looking at. Visualising something scary, horrific yet oddly calm and safe, you are transfixed by that central character. Consequence wrote about the video for Wax’s best-known song in 2008:

“Fifteen years ago, the early 90’s was a time when four turtles with ninja skills and New York accents took on Shredder & the Foot Clan, Whoopi Goldberg had a career, and the United States economy was a little bit more stable, music videos were starting to come into their own. Music videos began to break away from the incredibly bland, florescent 80s trends and established a cinematic essence to give itself some artistic merit. One of these videos aired in 1995 during MTV’s golden age of Buzz Bin cutting edge videos was San Jose’s very own Wax, with their only hit “California” which featured an up-and-coming director named Spike Jonze.

For the times, the video heavily stirred the controversy Kool-Aid. After a daytime showing on MTV, it was spike Ridiculously Awesome Music Videos: Wax’s California immediately banned because for the entire video, a man calmly ran down a California street on fire. The camera shows the man jogging past city dwellers and occasionally checking his watch while the whole time he is on fire. During the end, he passes a school bus to where the camera shifts views to a little girl sitting in a station wagon calmly watching the fire follow the man’s trail”.

I can see why California created a bit of a stir when it came out in 1995. I often think the song’s video could have opened a film. Such is the perfection fusion of the music and the images; it could be followed by a scene that introduces the protagonists. I saw California on MTV in the 1990s. I was fascinated by it, as I had never seen a music video like it. Spike Jonze’s direction is wonderful. Before 1995, he had quite a few videos under his belt! Compare his comical video for Beastie Boys’ Sabotage and Weezer’s Buddy Holly and what he did for Wax! The fact he had directed two iconic videos the year before definitely helped when it came to pushing things and trying to top what came before. This article explores the various stages of Jonze’s video direction and how he evolved through the years. Before finishing off, I want to bring in What Culture’s opinions about Wax’s California and Spike Jonze’s direction. They ranked it sixth in their top ten of Jonze’s best:

“There's music videos with a simple premise and then there is Wax's "California" which takes the very concept of "simple" and spins it right on its head. It does not get any more basic than this, folks. Perhaps I am more easily amused than I'd like to admit, but this video makes me laugh harder each time I watch it. It's filmed in one long unbroken take, starting with a close-up of a man's feet which are engulfed in flames. We eventually see that the man's entire body is on fire and he's running down the street. Why does he run down the street? Is it because he's on fire? Is he looking for someone to put him out? Is he running to the hospital? No, he's trying to catch a bus before it drives away. Again, another deceptively simple music video. What's brilliant about it is that it actually coincides with the song perfectly. It's not until the very end of the video when you realize that this all from the point of view of a little girl sitting in the backseat of a car. The narrator in the song is exactly in sync with her perspective. This is the kind of town where a man, who's been lit on fire, is more concerned with catching a bus. Why did I move here?! You could also see the man on fire as being a metaphor. Perhaps we put too much emphasis on the mundane while ignoring our most basic needs in life? Maybe that's looking too deep into it. Nevertheless, this video perfectly represents what Spike Jonze is all about. It explores the beauty of simplicity”.

A magnificent video that ranks alongside the best of all time, it was another iconic and hugely original thing from the majestic Spike Jonze. The New York-born director, prior to 1995, had some awesome videos under his belt. He directed perhaps his best-known video, Daft Punk’s Da Funk, in 1997. Such a brilliant and varied career from a true visionary. When it comes to videos that stay in the mind long after you have seen them, they do not come much more vivid and unforgettable than…

THE spellbinding video for Wax’s California.

FEATURE: A Buyer's Guide: Part Ninety-Six: Garbage

FEATURE:

 

 

A Buyer's Guide

Part Ninety-Six: Garbage

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WHEREAS most artists require…

at least eight studio albums to gain entry into A Buyer’s Guide, I am making an exception for Garbage. Such an important band and significant one to me, the British-American group are led by the incredible and peerless Shirley Manson. Their most-recent album, No Gods No Masters, was released last year. It is among their best work. Before getting to the albums you need to own from them, an underrated one and their most recent album, here is some biography about the iconic Garbage:

“Headed by iconic frontwoman Shirley Manson, alternative quartet Garbage debuted in the '90s with a guitar-based, electronic-washed sound that built upon the sonic landscapes of My Bloody Valentine, Curve, and Sonic Youth, adding a distinct sense of accessible pop songcraft that would help push them beyond cult fandom into the international sphere through multi-platinum releases Garbage (1995) and the Grammy-nominated Version 2.0 (1998). After a brief stylistic shift on the pop-influenced Beautiful Garbage in 2001, the band hit a chart peak with 2005's no-frills Bleed Like Me. Despite an extended hiatus that threatened to end the band, they returned in the 2010s, settling into established veteran roles with the self-released, rock-focused efforts Not Your Kind of People (2012) and Strange Little Birds (2016). In 2021, they kicked off another decade together with their seventh set, No Gods No Masters.

Garbage was the brainchild of producers Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker. A native of Viroqua, Wisconsin, Vig learned to play piano as a child and drums as a teenager. After leaving college, he met future bandmate Erikson in the band Spooner. One of that band's fans turned out to be Marker, who approached the group and remained in touch over the years. While each one went on to pursue their own careers -- Vig became an in-demand producer, best known for helming Nirvana's breakthrough, Nevermind -- they wouldn't reunite until 1993, when they officially formed Garbage.

In search of a lead singer, the trio caught wind of Scottish vocalist Shirley Manson. Influenced by pioneering female rock vocalists Siouxsie Sioux, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, and Debbie Harry, Manson kicked off her music career at a young age, joining rock band Goodbye Mr. MacKenzie while just a teenager, playing keyboards and singing backing vocals from 1984 until the band's breakup in 1993. Along with three former MacKenzie bandmates, Manson formed alt-rock foursome Angelfish, which released a single, eponymous album in 1994. Back in the U.S., Marker saw a video for Angelfish's single "Suffocate Me." He contacted Manson and, after a couple auditions, she formally joined Garbage as their lead singer in August 1994.

Late that year and into early 1995, Garbage holed up in their Wisconsin studio to record their debut album. That eponymous first effort arrived in August on Almo Sounds. After receiving support from radio and MTV, the album began to climb the charts toward the end of 1995, peaking at number 20 on the Billboard 200. By the summer of 1996, Garbage had gone gold in the United States, and shortly afterward it achieved platinum status, supported by radio hits "Queer," "Only Happy When It Rains," and "Stupid Girl." Garbage was eventually certified multi-platinum and nominated for a pair of Grammy Awards in 1997. The band closed the era with a standout inclusion on the Romeo + Juliet film soundtrack, "#1 Crush," which topped the Billboard alternative chart in early 1997.

That summer, Garbage began work on their second album. The record, Version 2.0, was released in May 1998. Topping the U.K. chart and peaking at number 13 in the U.S., Version 2.0 produced six singles, three of which ("Push It," "I Think I'm Paranoid," and "When I Grow Up") were U.K. top ten hits. In the midst of an international headlining tour, Garbage received a pair of Grammy nominations for Album of the Year and Best Rock Album. At the tail-end of the album cycle, they contributed another hit song to a movie soundtrack, this time for the 19th James Bond flick, The World Is Not Enough.

For their third album, Beautiful Garbage, the band veered in a new direction, incorporating the sounds of hip-hop, R&B, and early-'60s girl groups. The first single, "Androgyny," became a moderate radio hit, but momentum stalled due to decreased promotion following 9/11. Three additional singles, including the electronic-pop "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)," kept the band on international charts into 2002. They promptly returned to the studio for a follow-up, but health issues and rising tension marred the recording process. The resulting album, Bleed Like Me, arrived in 2005 on A&E/Geffen. Their first Top Five showing on the Billboard 200, the straightforward rock set featured production by John King (Dust Brothers) and additional drumming from Dave Grohl. "Why Do You Love Me" became their highest-charting U.S. single since 1998's "Special," and subsequent selections "Sex Is Not the Enemy" and "Run Baby Run" charted internationally. Despite being a return to form after Beautiful Garbage, Bleed Like Me hit a terminal road block when the supporting tour was canceled and the band announced it was going on an indefinite hiatus. During this time, Vig busied himself with various production projects, including nabbing a Grammy for Green Day's 2009 album 21st Century Breakdown. Also otherwise engaged, Manson recorded solo material and made her acting debut on the Fox television show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. A greatest-hits set, Absolute Garbage, kept fans hopeful for an eventual return, which wouldn't happen until 2012.

After years of studio work, Garbage released their fifth album, Not Your Kind of People, in 2012. The first album of all-new material since 2005's Bleed Like Me, Not Your Kind of People was also their first independent release. Self-released on their own Stunvolume label, it included the lead single "Blood for Poppies" and peaked at number 13 on the Billboard 200. An international tour kept them on the road until 2013. That year, Garbage teamed with Screaming Females for the Record Store Day single "Because the Night." In 2014, they commemorated Record Store Day with the Brody Dalle-assisted "Girls Talk" b/w "Time Will Destroy Everything." The stand-alone single "The Chemicals" was released for 2015's Record Store Day and featured a guest appearance from Silversun Pickups' Brian Aubert. A deluxe double-disc remaster of Garbage arrived at the end of the year, accompanied by the 20 Years Queer tour.

Garbage's sixth album, Strange Little Birds, was issued in 2016. Again self-released, it was a back-to-basics record, recorded in Vig's basement. Their least-produced album to date, it featured little of the obsessive studio tinkering that had characterized their earlier work, showcased by the raw, soulful single "Empty." Strange Little Birds topped the U.S. Independent, Top Alternative, and Top Rock charts, peaking at number 14 on the Billboard 200.

For the 20th anniversary of Garbage's sophomore effort, Version 2.0 in 2018, the band embarked on a tour and released a deluxe reissue that collected B-sides and rarities from the era. Their seventh studio album, No Gods No Masters, arrived in 2021, with its placement in their discography becoming a major theme for the record; they used the lens of the seven sins, sorrows, and virtues to explore chaos and injustice around the world”.

To celebrate the tremendous Garbage, below are my suggestions with regards their albums that you need to own. Such a strong and varied back catalogue, it has been tough selecting the best four from their seven studio albums. Let’s hope that the band keep on releasing great music for years to come. They are most definitely…

ONE of my favourite bands.

_______________

The Four Essential Albums

 

Garbage

Release Date: 15th August, 1995

Label: Almo

Producers: Garbage

Standout Tracks: Supervixen/Only Happy When It Rains/Stupid Girl

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/garbage/garbage/lp-x2

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6J6VzS5nLEzIdAynrYzqfk?si=F4WnSuJtRdeig1C2Y1Guyg

Review:

“Although they formed in Wisconsin and three-quarters of their line-up is American, coverage of Garbage around their MTV Award-winning debut album – best breakthrough artist, 1996 – was dominated by feisty Scottish front-gal Shirley Manson.

Manson had been a member of Bathgate-based 80s alt-rockers Goodbye Mr MacKenzie, and was also involved in the band’s splinter group, Angelfish. The latter’s 1993 single, Suffocate Me, attracted the attention of American producer Steve Marker, who was after a vocalist to front his new band. The rest, as ‘they’ so often say, is history – although Garbage’s career hasn’t since hit the heights it did with this eponymous effort, which has to date shifted over four million copies.

From second album, the terribly titled Version 2.0, onwards, Garbage’s star has dimmed. A disbanding in 2003 and subsequent reformation for 2005’s Bleed Like Me rekindled interest; but the record itself, their fourth overall, was a critical flop. Newcomers are therefore advised to begin with this debut, and be done with it unless particularly taken by what is, today, some pretty formulaic, albeit arena-sized, pop-rock, lent an edge purely because of the paralysing presence of Manson.

The vocalist holds court from the outset, opener Supervixen painting a picture of a dominatrix-style paramour who’s perfectly aware of their grip on their significant other. “Bow down to me,” comes her instruction, and it’s not just the suggested subject of her attention that obeys – the world, for a year or so, fell at the feet of an opinionated female artist who talked the column-filling talk without missing a beat. Queer is similarly pitched, Manson the antagonist ready to “strip away your hard veneer”. She was both alluring and wholly intimidating, a snarl in her voice but equally capable of a purr to melt away any resistance. 

Garbage were as interested in their visual representation as their sound on record, so videos became vitally important. This album was followed by Garbage Video, collecting five official promos for Queer, Vow, Only Happy When It Rains, Stupid Girl and the set-closing Milk, a trip hop-indebted number that’d be remixed by Tricky. Although it expresses weakness, vocally, there’s a paradoxical aspect to the lyrics: she cries, but her tears are power, bringing “you home”. So even at her most vulnerable, Manson maintains her controlling condition” – BBC

Choice Cut: Queer

Version 2.0

Release Date: 11th May, 1998

Labels: Mushroom/Almo (North America)

Producers: Garbage

Standout Tracks: When I Grow Up/Push It/The Trick Is to Keep Breathing

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/garbage/version-2-0-remastered

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0vQQr2bJVVd6vqKprAIhum?si=_SNtz1rnRoqc4sG4XVJBXA

Review:

“Unveiling the new model of a machine that made its debut three years prior, alternative rock outfit Garbage polished the raw grind of their hazy first album with the sparkling digital sheen of 1998 sophomore effort Version 2.0. Emerging from the eerie trip-hop and bleak grunge of the critically acclaimed, multi-platinum Garbage, the quartet expanded their vision, going into overdrive with a futuristic sound that blended their inspirations both classic (the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Pretenders) and contemporary (Björk, Portishead, and the Prodigy). While Garbage retained the sleaze and effortless cool of their debut -- hinted on early tracks "As Heaven Is Wide" and "A Stroke of Luck" -- they infused Version 2.0 with deeper electronic layering, improved hooks, and an intimate lyrical focus courtesy of iconic vocalist Shirley Manson, who seized her place as the face and voice of the band with authority and confidence. On the propulsive "When I Grow Up" and the bittersweet "Special," Garbage took cues from '60s girl groups with "sha-la-la"s and stacked vocal harmonies, grounding them with a delivery inspired by Chrissie Hynde. Elsewhere, the hard techno edges of Curve and Björk cut through the frustrated "Dumb" and the lusty "Sleep Together," while Depeche Mode's Wild West years received tribute on the stomping "Wicked Ways." Beyond the blistering hit singles "I Think I'm Paranoid" and "Push It," Version 2.0 is also home to Garbage's most tender and heartbreaking moments, from the pensive "Medication" to the trip-hop-indebted "The Trick Is to Keep Breathing" and "You Look So Fine." Balanced and taut, Version 2.0 is a greatest-hits collection packaged as a regular album, not only a peak in Garbage's catalog, but one of the definitive releases of the late '90s” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: I Think I’m Paranoid

Beautiful Garbage

Release Date: 1st October, 2001

Labels: Mushroom/Interscope (North America)

Producers: Garbage

Standout Tracks: Shut Your Mouth/Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)/Breaking Up the Girl

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/garbage/beautiful-garbage/lp-plus-x2

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4qm3Qamjfbv5sgw2qDSrup?si=boIFATyXRfahzVeALW0aTg

Review:

“Funny what a difference a few years make. Back in 1995, Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson was pop’s potent new female voice, and the band, despite the membership of Nirvana producer Butch Vig, created an electro-rock sound—alt-metal with so much sheen that models could walk down runways to it—that was miles removed from grunge. Now, in the era of Christina and Britney, Garbage face two challenges: to make Manson seem like something other than Spears’ bitter old sister and to keep evolving.

In both regards, the band’s third album, beautifulgarbage, succeeds in modest ways. Manson still revels in the aggressive bite of previous Garbage records, and the band backs it up with throbbing tracks like ”Till the Day I Die” and ”Shut Your Mouth.” But she also reveals more tender aspects, singing softer and sweeter on ”Cup of Coffee,” a breakup song with heartfelt detail, and on the subdued ”So Like a Rose,” where she comes off like a dissolute Dido.

Garbage’s experiments with sonic expansion yield more mixed results. They thaw their sound by adding elements of trip-hop, which works for ”Cup of Coffee” and the first single, ”Androgyny,” in which Manson advocates switching sexual orientation as a cure for personal malaise. But on a record that’s more self-consciously varied than 1998’s Version 2.0, other attempts are gimmicky and less successful, like the girl-group opulence of the cloying ”Can’t Cry These Tears” and the dated, ’80s-new-wave bounce of ”Parade.” (Granted, the lyrics of the latter—”So let’s pray for something/To feel good in the morning”—take on a new relevance now.) If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were listening to a compilation, not a band album. Still, there’s just enough to salvage from beautifulgarbage. B” – Entertainment Weekly

Choice Cut: Androgyny

Strange Little Birds

Release Date: 10th June, 2016

Label: Stunvolume

Producers: Garbage/Steve Marker/Billy Bush

Standout Tracks: Blackout/Magnetized/So We Can Stay Alive

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=1012760&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0EBQyjl6kq9iPYMWM7eLWN?si=EQRDZ9rNRXmSJU5gKZlv3w

Review:

“Vocalist Shirley Manson says Garbage’s sixth studio album, Strange Little Birds, is “less fussed over” than any of the quartet’s records to date. This isn’t a code word for sloppy—that would never fly with the band members’ production and mixing backgrounds—but her assessment does describe the record’s airy arrangements and light sonic touches. Unlike 2012’s Not Your Kind Of People, which was all sharp angles and a marbled sheen, Strange Little Birds is atmospheric and meditative.

Minimalist ’90s electro inspires the languid “If I Lost You,” a deeply romantic song with flickering funk blips and oscillating effects which resemble drags on a cigarette. “Night Drive Loneliness” drips with intermingled seduction and regret, which fits its spy movie-theme vibe. The cobweb-coated, smoldering “Even Though Our Love Is Doomed,” meanwhile, boils over into a grinding, droning denouement where Manson repeats the song’s title with increasing agony. And “Teaching Little Fingers To Play” is soft-glow synthpop with a blue-black gothic tint.

Strange Little Birds isn’t all downtempo or dirge-like, though. “Blackout” sounds like an outtake from The Cure circa Pornography, between its rumbling bass and Manson’s creepy-witch singing. Highlight “Empty” is a compact slice of jagged electro-rock, while both “Magnetized” and “We Never Tell” boast bustling electronic programming, slashing guitars, and soaring vocals. Strange Little Birds’ closest sonic kin within Garbage’s catalog is 1998’s Version 2.0, another album whose aggressive songs also have room to breathe.

Most notably, however, the album gives Manson room to stretch out and draw power from vulnerability as well as ferocity. Her voice is at the front of the mix, unsullied by distorting effects, which leads to striking performances. Despite its tender declarations, “If I Lost You” has uncertain, unsettled undertones, while the ominous opener “Sometimes” explores emotional polarity—forgiveness vs. destruction, jealousy vs. insecurity—and the strength that’s often needed for resiliency.

Garbage’s sound has always been futuristic—it’s what’s helped the band endure and stay relevant. But 20-plus years after forming, each band member is still fired up to mine new sounds and approaches for inspiration. That willingness to be uncomfortable and look beneath the surface makes Strange Little Birds a rousing success” – The A.V. Club

Choice Cut: Empty

The Underrated Gem

 

Bleed Like Me

Release Date: 11th April, 2005

Label: Geffen

Producers: Garbage/John King

Standout Tracks: Run Baby Run/Bleed Like Me/Sex Is Not the Enemy

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=26107&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6EtLmXBiSjkRmMTttJFNo2?si=L-RLYg_fT1OiGkf0G5KIDw

Review:

“After losing themselves under the weight of second hand identities on their last album, Garbage have spent four years finding their way back to the grungy guitars, girl-group melodies and adolescent angst that made them famous. But Shirley Manson and her misunderstood-bad-girl persona remain unscathed. Falling somewhere between boy-baiting Madonna and the Boy's-Own style of Chrissie Hynde, she entices and discards with equal disdain. "I'm no Barbie doll, I'm not your baby girl," she sings in Why Do You Love Me, like a bra-burning Ronnie Spector. Yet she bemoans the feminist cause on the campaigning Sex Is Not the Enemy, in which she advocates free love through a loudspeaker yet vocally sounds at her most weak. Boys Wanna Fight equates world politics with a Saturday night punch-up - which might be merely a simplification, if Manson didn't sound like a stocking-wearing schoolmarm glorying in the masculinity of the fight. She is equally voyeuristic on Bleed Like Me, coldly observing self-imposed starvation, self-harming and sexual confusion. However, while Manson's changeling vocals are always worth listening to, Garbage's songs often aren't” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Why Do You Love Me

The Latest Album

 

No Gods No Masters

Release Date: 11th June, 2021

Labels: Stunvolume/Infectious Music

Producers: Garbage/Billy Bush

Standout Tracks: The Men Who Rule the World/The Creeps/Wolves

Buy: https://store.hmv.com/store/music/vinyl/no-gods-no-masters-neon-green-vinyl

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Pr4iEMou8CPCeeN53DxGP?si=vnHZE39pSwWznLdLT_UAwA

Review:

“Bona-fide grunge goddess Shirley Manson and her group of accomplished Wisconsinites are back with their seventh studio album, ‘No Gods No Masters’, unabatedly plunging into political territories not yet traversed by the band in previous years.

Greed is excoriated in ‘The Men Who Rule The World’, as the album's dynamic opening sounds are punctuated by slot machines and hyper-techno samples. Lyrics are peppered with tales allegorising The #MeToo movement, as Manson bites "The king is in the counting house / He’s the chairman of the board / The women who crowd the courtrooms are accused of being whores" then proceeds to demand an end to climate change. For a track with such technical and lyrical dexterity to be delegated as the album opener puts the remaining tracks on an anticipatory pedestal; one that refuses to falter.

‘Waiting For God’ show’s Garbage at their peak vulnerability, possessing elements of Nick Cave’s hyper-literacy and transcendental broodings, whilst maintaining a solid grounding in today’s socio-political realities, as Manson cracks "Smiling at fireworks that light all our skies up / while Black boys get shot in the back". Through this melancholia, Garbage signal a protest of cataclysmic, unchecked racism in its most beastly guise. Draped in industrial synth and driven by Manson’s soul-stirring vocals, ‘Waiting For God’ is the record’s defining track, and signposts the album's proclivity towards darker textures in its second half.

Enter the pulsating ‘A Woman Destroyed’ as Manson delivers a shrill stiletto jab to The Man, reeling "I guess I will be taking my revenge". It would not lay amiss on the soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, jostling with themes of sexual violence and fear amidst a backdrop of doom-laded bell-tolls and synths. In contrast, The eponymous ‘No Gods No Masters’ is the most radio friendly of the cohort, driven by its dynamic chorus hook, yet still rings with an urgency propelled by a torrent of crunchy electronic guitar riffs. It is a lamentation of frustrations, as the band are simply trying to make sense of the world. The non-linear structure of closer ‘This City Will Kill You’ succeeds in laying bare cinematic undertones that drive the album in its entirety, with suave keyboard plinks and dreamy narratives.

"This is the record I was supposed to make," Manson shared in a recent press note, and this rings true throughout ‘No Gods No Masters’, as it screams quintessential Garbage, maturing into the political elder sister of their 1995 debut. Listening to ‘No Gods No Masters’ feels like listening to Garbage again for the very first time, which is a terrifically thrilling prospect” – CLASH

Choice Cut: No Gods No Masters

FEATURE: Aretha Franklin at Eighty: A Testament to the Queen of Soul: Her Greatest Tracks

FEATURE:

 

Aretha Franklin at Eighty

IN THIS PHOTO: Aretha Franklin performing in Los Angeles on 16th May, 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images 

A Testament to the Queen of Soul: Her Greatest Tracks

___________

MAYBE I have put together…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Aretha Franklin in 1968

an Aretha Franklin playlist a couple of times before but, as the Queen of Soul would have been eighty on 25th March, I couldn’t pass that by without revisiting her work. We lost the icon on 16th August, 2018. It is almost too difficult to write about the influence and legacy of Aretha Franklin. In terms of the artists who are influenced by her and how successful she became. It would take a lot of words to properly and truthfully discuss why Aretha Franklin was so special. Others might mark her eightieth birthday by looking at her accolades or the way her career developed. Some might talk about her best solo albums. I wanted to put together a career-spanning playlist but, more than that, say something else about Franklin. When I think about her, I think about her songs and their incredible power. I think about her as a Soul singer and how she started singing as a child at church and rose to become this icon. I think one of the most defining aspects of her career and legacy is her voice during the civil rights movement. As Far Out Magazine wrote in their article exploring the legacy of Aretha Franklin, she was a champion and supporter of the African-American people (especially strong women) at a time of riots and division:

“The most defining point of her career, however, arrived in 1967 when she released ‘Respect’. The song became an anthem for the civil rights and feminist movements, a legacy that still endures today. In her 1999 autobiography, Aretha remembered how the song captured the essence of the era: “It (reflected) the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher—everyone wanted respect.” She characterised the song as “one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement,” she said, before adding: “The song took on monumental significance.”

Substantiating her stance and support for strong African-American women, Franklin weighed in on the arrest of popular activist and philosopher Angela Davis in 1970, stating: “Angela Davis must go free … Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people.” She didn’t stop there and, in her next move, Franklin would end up funding the bail for Davis.

The singer didn’t limit her activism to solely African-American/feminist issues, however. Throughout her life, albeit less explicitly, she was a supporter of a vast array of movements that supported the plight of the Native American’s and other indigenous peoples worldwide. A leading light in bringing the attention to the downtrodden, Franklin would continue with this attitude right up until her death in 2018. Her final act came in 2017 when she, along with other American icons, declined to perform at the inauguration of then-President Donald Trump. The Queen of Soul abhorred his politics and remarked that “no amount of money” could persuade her to take the stage.

Shifting from one President to another, in 2015, then-incumbent Barack Obama wrote of Franklin: “Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R. & B., rock and roll—the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope. American history wells up when Aretha sings.”

He tactfully captured her importance, adding: “That’s why, when she sits down at a piano and sings ‘A Natural Woman,’ she can move me to tears—the same way that Ray Charles’s version of ‘America the Beautiful’ will always be in my view the most patriotic piece of music ever performed—because it captures the fullness of the American experience, the view from the bottom as well as the top, the good and the bad, and the possibility of synthesis, reconciliation, transcendence.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Aretha Franklin‘s legacy will continue to endure, as in life and music she captured the most important elements of American society. Not afraid of discussion and protest, she helped to drag America out of the past and into the future. For this, she will never be forgotten”.

It is Aretha Franklin’s spectacular and unsurpassed catalogue that will endure for centuries and be talked about by fans, historians and people all around the world. A stunningly expressive, soulful and electrifying singer who has inspired so many people and is one of the most successful artists ever, I wanted to mark her upcoming eightieth birthday with a selection of her songs (with some classic cover versions included). This is my tribute and salute to…

THE Queen of Soul.

FEATURE: Paul McCartney at Eighty: Seventeen: Maybe We’re Amazed: A Playlist of Songs from Artists Inspired by the Icon

FEATURE:

 

Paul McCartney at Eighty

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney in 2012/PHOTO CREDIT: Mary McCartney 

Seventeen: Maybe We’re Amazed: A Playlist of Songs from Artists Inspired by the Icon

___________

RATHER than…

do a new part of my feature, Inspired By… - where I compile a playlists of songs from artists influenced by a legend -, I wanted to do something separate. Paul McCartney is eighty in June. I will examine his career and legacy in various different features. Today, I wanted to highlight artists who have been inspired by the legendary Macca. I will end with a playlist containing great artists who have cited him as an inspiration. That, or one can tell Paul McCartney has definitely influenced them in some way. As I include biography about the featured artist in my Inspired By… features, I will do so with Paul McCartney for this feature. For that, I come to AllMusic:

“Out of all the former Beatles, Paul McCartney by far had the most successful solo career, maintaining a constant presence in the British and American charts during the 1970s and '80s. In America alone, he had nine number one singles and seven number one albums during the first 12 years of his solo career, and in his native United Kingdom, his record was nearly as impressive. McCartney's hot streak began in 1970, when he became the first Beatle to leave the group. A little more than a year after the Beatles' breakup, McCartney formed Wings with his wife Linda and Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine, and the group remained active for the next ten years, racking up a string of hit albums, singles, and tours in the meantime. Wings disbanded in 1980, but McCartney stayed near the top of the charts over the next five years, thanks in part to a couple big duets with Michael Jackson. McCartney revived his solo career in 1989 via Flowers in the Dirt and its accompanying international tour, setting a template he would follow into the new millennium, when he'd support his records by playing concerts around the world. Between these massive endeavors, McCartney pursued other projects, including classical compositions, an electronica outfit with Youth called the Fireman, and overseeing archival projects such as the Beatles' Anthology series. As the 21st century rolled on, McCartney continued to take risks, including recording an album of standards from the Great American Songbook and collaborating with rapper Kanye West, proving that there was no area of popular music he couldn't touch.

Like John Lennon and George Harrison, McCartney began exploring creative avenues outside the Beatles during the late '60s, but where his bandmates released their own experimental records, McCartney confined himself to writing and producing for other artists, with the exception of his 1966 soundtrack to The Family Way. Following his marriage to Linda Eastman on March 12, 1969, McCartney began working at his home studio on his first solo album. He released McCartney in April 1970, two weeks before the Beatles' Let It Be was scheduled to hit the stores. Prior to the album's release, he'd announced that the Beatles were breaking up, against the wishes of the other members. As a result, the tensions between him and the other three members, particularly Harrison and Lennon, increased and he earned the ill will of many critics. Nevertheless, McCartney became a hit, spending three weeks at the top of the American charts. Early in 1971, he returned with "Another Day," which became his first hit single as a solo artist. It was followed several months later by Ram, another homemade collection, this time featuring the contributions of his wife, Linda.

By the end of 1971, the McCartneys had formed Wings, which was intended to be a full-fledged recording and touring band. Former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell became the group's other members, and Wings released their first album, Wild Life, in December 1971. Wild Life was greeted with poor reviews and was a relative flop. McCartney and Wings, which now featured former Grease Band guitarist Henry McCullough, spent 1972 as a working band, releasing three singles -- the protest "Give Ireland Back to the Irish," the reggae-fied "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and the rocking "Hi Hi Hi." Red Rose Speedway followed in the spring of 1973, and while it received weak reviews, it became his second American number one album. Later in 1973, Wings embarked on their first British tour, at the conclusion of which McCullough and Seiwell left the band. Prior to their departure, McCartney's theme to the James Bond movie Live and Let Die became a Top Ten hit in the U.S. and U.K. That summer, the remaining Wings proceeded to record a new album in Nigeria. Released late in 1973, Band on the Run was simultaneously McCartney's best-reviewed album and his most successful, spending four weeks at the top of the U.S. charts and eventually going triple-platinum.

Following the success of Band on the Run, McCartney formed a new version of Wings with guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton. The new lineup was showcased on the 1974 British single "Junior's Farm" and the 1975 hit album Venus and Mars. At the Speed of Sound followed in 1976; it was the first Wings record to feature songwriting contributions by the other bandmembers. Nevertheless, the album became a monster success on the basis of two McCartney songs, "Silly Love Songs" and "Let 'Em In." Wings supported the album with their first international tour, which broke many attendance records and was captured on the live triple-album Wings Over America (1976). After the tour was completed, Wings rested a bit during 1977, as McCartney released an instrumental version of Ram under the name Thrillington, and produced Denny Laine's solo album Holly Days. Later that year, Wings released "Mull of Kintyre," which became the biggest-selling British single of all time, selling over two million copies. Wings followed "Mull of Kintyre" with London Town in 1978, which became another platinum record. After its release, McCulloch left the band to join the re-formed Small Faces, and Wings released Back to the Egg in 1979. Though the record went platinum, it failed to produce any big hits. Early in 1980, McCartney was arrested for marijuana possession at the beginning of a Japanese tour; he was imprisoned for ten days and then released, without any charges being pressed.

Wings effectively broke up in the wake of McCartney's Japanese bust, although its official dissolution was not announced until April 27, 1981, when Denny Laine left the band. Back in England, McCartney recorded McCartney II, which was a one-man band effort like his solo debut. Ironically, the hit single associated with the album was a live take of the song "Coming Up" that had been recorded in Glasgow with Wings in December 1979 and was intended to be the B-side of the 45, with the solo studio recording as the A-side. DJs preferred the live version, however, and it went on to hit number one. Later in 1980, McCartney entered the studio with Beatles producer George Martin to make Tug of War.

Released in the spring of 1982, Tug of War received the best reviews of any McCartney record since Band on the Run and spawned the number one single with "Ebony and Ivory," a duet with Stevie Wonder that became McCartney's biggest American hit. In 1983, McCartney sang on "The Girl Is Mine," the first single from Michael Jackson's blockbuster album Thriller. In return, Jackson duetted with McCartney on "Say Say Say," the first single from McCartney's 1983 album Pipes of Peace and the last number one single of his career. The relationship between Jackson and McCartney soured considerably when Jackson bought the publishing rights to the Beatles' songs out from underneath McCartney in 1985.

McCartney directed his first feature film in 1984 with Give My Regards to Broad Street. While the soundtrack, which featured new songs and re-recorded Beatles tunes, was a hit, generating the hit single "No More Lonely Nights," the film was a flop, earning terrible reviews. The following year, he had his last American Top Ten with the theme to the Chevy Chase/Dan Aykroyd comedy Spies Like Us. Press to Play (1986) received some strong reviews but was another flop. In 1988, he recorded a collection of rock & roll oldies called Choba B CCCP for release in the U.S.S.R.; it was given official release in the U.S. and U.K. in 1991. For 1989's Flowers in the Dirt, McCartney co-wrote several songs with Elvis Costello; the pair also wrote songs for Costello's Spike, including the hit "Veronica." Flowers in the Dirt received the strongest reviews of any McCartney release since Tug of War, and was supported by an extensive international tour, which was captured on the live double-album Tripping the Live Fantastic (1990). For the tour, McCartney hired guitarist Robbie McIntosh and bassist Hamish Stuart, who would form the core of his band through the remainder of the '90s.

Early in 1991, McCartney released another live album in the form of Unplugged, which was taken from his appearance on MTV's acoustic concert program of the same name; it was the first Unplugged album to be released. Later that year, he unveiled Liverpool Oratorio, his first classical work. Another pop album, Off the Ground, followed in 1993, but failed to generate any big hits, despite McCartney's successful supporting tour. Following the completion of the New World tour, he released another live album, Paul Is Live, in December 1993. In 1994, he released an ambient techno album under the pseudonym the Fireman. McCartney premiered his second classical piece, The Leaf, early in 1995 and then began hosting a Westwood One radio series called Oobu Joobu. But his primary activity in 1995, as well as 1996, was the Beatles' Anthology, which encompassed a lengthy video documentary of the band and the multi-volume release of Beatles outtakes and rarities. After Anthology was completed, he released Flaming Pie in summer 1997. A low-key, largely acoustic affair that had some of the same charm of his debut, Flaming Pie was given the strongest reviews McCartney had received in years and was a modest commercial success, debuting at number two on the U.S. and U.K. charts; it was his highest American chart placing since he left the Beatles. Flaming Pie certainly benefited from the success of Anthology, as did McCartney himself -- only a few months before the release of the album in 1997, he received a Knighthood.

On April 17, 1998, Linda McCartney died after a three-year struggle with breast cancer. A grieving Paul kept a low profile in the months to follow, but finally returned in fall 1999 with Run Devil Run, a collection that primarily included cover songs. The electronica-based Liverpool Sound Collage followed a year later, and the pop album Driving Rain -- a successor, of sorts, to Flaming Pie -- came a year after that. The live album Back in the U.S. appeared in America in 2002 with the slightly different international edition, Back in the World, following soon after.

McCartney's next studio project included sessions with super-producer Nigel Godrich, the results of which appeared on the mellow Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard, released in late 2005. The album reached the Top Ten in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S. and U.K. McCartney performed every instrument (not including the strings) on 2007's David Kahne-produced Memory Almost Full, a bold but whimsical collection of new songs, some of which had been recorded before the Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard sessions. It too reached the Top Ten across the world. A live CD/DVD set, Good Evening New York City, appeared in 2009. The following year, McCartney kicked off an extensive reissue campaign with a box set of Band on the Run, and he supported the reissue with an American tour in the summer of 2011.

Later in 2011, McCartney released his first ballet, Ocean's Kingdom, and less than a year later followed with another first -- his first collection of pre-WWII standards. The latter work, titled Kisses on the Bottom, topped the U.S. jazz charts and reached the Top Five in seven different countries. His busy year continued during the summer, when he ended the opening ceremony of London's 2012 Olympics with a set that included a customary extended version of "Hey Jude." A surprising cap to 2012 came that December when he appeared on-stage with the surviving ex-members of Nirvana as part of a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

The year 2013 brought recording sessions with four of McCartney's favorite producers: Paul Epworth, Ethan Johns, Giles Martin, and Mark Ronson. His initial intention had been to hold trial sessions with each producer, aiming to select one of them to oversee the whole of his next album. However, each of them had a hand in producing New, his first album of original material in six years, which appeared that October. New debuted in the Top Ten in more than a dozen countries and McCartney supported the album over the next two years with a series of international tours. In 2015, he continued his ongoing Paul McCartney Archive Collection with deluxe reissues of Tug of War and Pipes of Peace. The next summer, he released Pure McCartney, a personally curated overview of his solo career available in two separate incarnations: a double-disc set and a four-disc box. Flowers in the Dirt arrived in early 2017 as part of the singer's Archive Collection. In September 2018, he delivered the Greg Kurstin-produced Egypt Station, his 17th solo album; it was preceded by the singles "I Don't Know," "Come on to Me," and "Fuh You." Egypt Station became McCartney's first number one album in the U.S. since Tug of War; in the U.K. it debuted at three.

A couple of non-LP tracks from the Egypt Station sessions appeared in 2019, then McCartney released an Archive edition of Flaming Pie in July 2020. The bigger news for 2020 was the recording and release of McCartney III, an album McCartney wrote and recorded on his own during the global lockdown of 2020. McCartney III appeared on December 18, 2020, giving McCartney his first number one album in the U.K. since Flowers in the Dirt; it debuted at two in the U.S. and spawned a 2021 album of "reinterpretations, remixes, and covers" called McCartney III Imagined”.

In this part of a run of features that celebrates the iconic Paul McCartney ahead of his eightieth birthday in June, below is a playlist of tracks from some of the awesome artists who have been moved by or inspired by him. In the next feature, I might talk about some of McCartney’s underrated albums. Now, here are songs from artists who count the genius McCartney as…

AN idol and guide.

FEATURE: A Score to Settle: Kate Bush and How Her Talent Would Translate Into Film Composition

FEATURE:

 

 

A Score to Settle

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of the 1993 short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari 

Kate Bush and How Her Talent Would Translate Into Film Composition

___________

KATE Bush…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the video for Hammer Horror (a single released from 1978’s Lionheart)

is a big film and T.V. fan. Since her childhood, she has taken influence from the screen when it comes to her songwriting. I am not sure how much of a film buff she is today, but one suspects the Bush family does get to the cinema now and then. She understands the importance and impact film and T.V. can have on someone. I think she is someone who owes a lot to that medium. Although she does not give permission much for her songs to be used on screen, we have seen her music feature. This Woman’s Work first appeared on the film, She’s Having a Baby, before it was on The Sensual World in 1989. Bush is more used to composing traditional songs, yet she did a series of commercials for a drinks company, Fruitopia, in 1994. This consisted of a few short musical pieces that soundtracked particular flavours. It was an unexpected move for Bush, though she must have been intrigued by the chance to compose scores rather than songs. I feel she is an artist who would excel when it came to a film score. It is not unusual for artists to do this. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have done so. Listen to Bush’s albums where strings come to the fore on various songs (2005’s Aerial is a prime example) and you can feel this sort of classical composer working away.

Even on albums without much strong work, the musical innovation throughout is incredible. I am not sure which genre Bush is a bigger fan of, though I could see her composing something for a thriller or horror film. Thom Yorke’s score for Suspiria (2018) could act as a guide. Maybe working out of Abbey Road Studios, a film with Kate Bush composing the score would be a real treat! Of course, fans would probably prefer a studio album from her where we get to hear new songs. It wouldn’t be to far-fetched to imagine Bush adding her name to a film score. She worked with the Trio Bulgarka (a Bulgarian vocal ensemble) on The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). Adding a flavour of that to a stirring song could prove interesting! Think about how horror has inspired her music through her career. Hammer Horror, Get Out of My House and Hounds of Love are either influenced by or included references to horror films or literature. In truth, there I no genre Kate Bush could not own and do a wonderful job on! I am surprised she has not recorded a score before. She has had offers to appear in films herself. She did contribute a song, Be Kind to My Mistakes, to the 1987 film, Castaway (which she was approached to appear in).

In terms of 2022, I keep saying that we will see music from her at some point. Maybe the tragedy in Ukraine will prove sobering and affect her in terms of drive and inspiration. I am not certain whether we will get a new album this year. Let’s hope that we do. Maybe she has been approached to compose for a film. Perhaps people are a bit scared to do so. I can picture Bush in a studio listening to an orchestra or working alongside musicians from various areas of the world to create a rich, colourful and unique cocktail that is very much her own vision! Bush, I feel, is a visual writer where she projects images and scenes in her head when she is writing. As inspired by the visual mediums as much as any artist, a natural translation into score composition would delight fans. She would definitely excel in that role. Who knows when it comes to Kate Bush. I thought about this career expansion when listening to albums like The Dreaming (1982), Hounds of Love (1985) and Aerial. There are symphonic qualities to those albums. Such interesting compositions throughout. She can rouse the spirits and build big scenes; she can also take things down and portray intimacy and something much less atmospheric. All of this experience and ability would aid and heighten any film score. So many people would relish the opportunity to hear Bush’s music on the big screen. Whilst her studio tracks have appeared in films, she herself has not created original scores for any motion picture. Hearing a brilliant film score from the iconic Kate Bush is something that we…

MAY see one day.

FEATURE: Friends and Neighbours… Why the Loss of a Television Icon Is Not Only a Big Loss to the Acting World

FEATURE:

 

 

Friends and Neighbours…

PHOTO CREDIT: Channel 5

Why the Loss of a Television Icon Is Not Only a Big Loss to the Acting World

___________

EVEN though…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Jackie Woodburne and Alan Fletcher have played Susan and Dr. Karl Kennedy on Neighbours since 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Channel 5

the news of Neighbours’ forthcoming end is not in the same leagues as what is happening in Ukraine and wider afield, I feel that some have taken that announcement too casually. Sure, one cannot match and compare a television series finishing with a war. Ironically, for so many of us right now, the long-running and iconic Neighbours has been a lifeline and much-needed dose of sunshine, escape and company. I am a music journalist, so I am going to tie this to music and why, through its thirty-seven year run, the Australian series has provided the music world with some superstars. Its end, therefore, also denies us of more potential artists. Some may say that great artists will be discovered either way, though the fact that Neighbours is a hugely loved platform with a big audience means that they can discovered quicker. That acting experience also is hugely beneficial regarding their music careers. It is not only about the potential loss of artists that is sad. Before I go on, and in case you were not aware, Variety were among the many who reported the news:

“The future of long-running Australian soap opera “Neighbours” is in question following its cancellation by ViacomCBS-owned U.K. broadcaster Channel 5.

The soap, produced by Fremantle and now in its 37th season, is watched by 1.5 million viewers a day in the U.K. but Variety understands that its Australian audience is on the wane. Although “Neighbours” is produced in Australia, it is largely bankrolled by Channel 5.

Australia’s Network 10, which airs the soap on its 10 Peach channel, is only a part funder

A Channel 5 spokesperson told Variety: “’Neighbours’ will no longer air on Channel 5 beyond this summer. It’s been a much-loved part of our schedule for more than a decade, and we’d like to thank the cast, Fremantle and all of the production team for their fantastic work on this iconic series.”

“We’d also of course like to thank the fans for their loyal support of ‘Neighbours’ across the years,” the spokesperson added. “We recognize that there will be disappointment about this decision, however our current focus is on increasing our investment in original U.K. drama, which has strong appeal for our viewers.”

News of the show’s cancellation has come as a shock to cast and crew, which total around 150 people. Sources tell Variety that conversations have been ongoing about the program’s future beyond Channel 5, but no decisions have been made as of yet and aren’t thought to be imminent.

Channel 5 first began airing “Neighbours” in 2008, and struck a new deal for the program in 2018 that allowed it to air all year round. In the last few years, however, priorities have changed for the channel, which has enjoyed success with new dramas such as “All Creatures Great and Small.”

In an email to the “Neighbours” cast and crew, Fremantle said: “Our audience remains steady and Channel 10 would love the show to continue if we could find another broadcast partner to replace. These discussions are ongoing however there is no new broadcaster at the moment and production must end, effectively resting the show.”

The soap featured several performers who would go on to stardom including Kylie Minogue, Margot Robbie, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce”.

It is real tragic that Channel 5 here have decided not to fund and broadcast Neighbours anymore. Being British, there is almost this sense of guilt that we have let down our Australian cousins! Yesterday (18th Mach) was the thirty-seventh anniversary of the series. It was a bittersweet day; one where fans around the world remembered and paid tribute to the show, in addition to expressing sadness of its forthcoming end. The fact that the U.K. and Australia have a bond and there are similarities between the nations accounts for the fact that Neighbours is so adored here. More popular in the U.K. than Australia in a lot of ways, I am surprised the BBC did not help rescue the show. Before getting to the music, it is worth addressing a couple of points. I do not think a T.V. show should be belittled or mocked if you do not like it. There have been long-running comedies that have ended I was gutted about (Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Black-ish in the U.S.). It is the familiarity and routine of watching a show like Neighbours that means its (in my view) premature end is moving. Even though it has run for almost four decades, it is showcasing a crop of incredible young actors who, together with the established legends, could keep the show going for many more years. Richie Morris (Levi Canning), Charlotte Chimes (Nicolette Stone) and Freya Van Dyke (Zara Selwyn) are bright and promising actors who have helped keep Neighbours fresh and appealing.

Ben Turland (Hendrix Grayson) and Georgia Stone (Mackenzie Hargreaves) are amazing together – they play a couple in the show -, and I could well see them having careers in film. One of my favourite actors on the show is April Rose Pengilly. Having played Chloe Brennan since 2018, she is one of the show’s most popular cast members and characters. With an incredible range, presence and charm, she is an actor who can play any emotion with perfection. Eminently likable and hugely powerful, it would have been interesting to see her character’s arc in the coming years. I am sure Pengilly will have offers from the U.S. She could make it there in the U.K. without doubt. She is also someone who would have a career in the U.K. That said, being based in Australia, perhaps uprooting and living in the U.K. might not be on her radar at the moment! I know there is a great range of Australian shows being made and shown at the moment. Although the industry is not as big as it is here or America, many of the cast will be able to find new homes. That is not the point. Watching actors like Pengilly every weekday in a very warm and familiar setting has been a blessing! The sense of escape has been very much needed. One can imagine themselves in Ramsay Street (the focal point of Neighbours) and becoming immersed. I started watching the show when I was about seven or eight. This would have been right at the start of the 1990s. Perhaps the character that first struck me was Jarrod ‘Toadfish’ Rebecchi (Ryan Moloney). Back in the 1990s, he sported a mullet and some pretty loud shirts! His character has calmed down a bit. Seeing actors like that still on a show I remember vividly as a child keeps me connected with that past. One that was carefree and filled with memories and friends.

That is one of the things about Neighbours. It does feel like you are watching friends and neighbours on the screen! It is a show that has fostered tremendous actors like Margot Robbie and Guy Pearce. An invaluable way to cut their teeth and get that essential training and exposure, I look at the current young cast and there are several that are primed for bigger things. As we have to say goodbye to a show that has some legendary characters (from Paul Robinson through to the Susan and Karl Kennedy) this summer will be very hard! Not only have award-winning actors and major stars passed through the Neighbours doors through the decades; the musicians who started out there is amazing! Neighbours is a show that gives this opportunity to actors who have the promise to be among the world’s very best. Its loss is going to be a big blow to Hollywood and the acting world. From Natalie Imbruglia, to Kylie Minogue, to Delta Goodrem, Neighbours has been on their C.V. longer than their professional music careers! Minogue is probably the most famous export. I do not think her career in music would be as big and successful were it not for Neighbours. I can imagine there are young members in the cast or actors that were going to come through that would have ended up in music. I feel Bonnie Anderson is the latest cast member who has departed Neighbours and pursued music. Maybe we may not have seen icons like Kylie Minogue start their life in Neighbours, though we definitely would have seen some big musicians begin here!

The Australian music scene is definitely fertile and varied. Maybe not as championed in the U.K. and U.S. as homegrown artists, each state and territory offer a different flavour and sound. I have always been fascinated by artists coming out of Brisbane, Hobart and Sydney. Neighbours is filmed in Melbourne. No surprise that some spectacular artists from Melbourne (Kylie Minogue for example) started on Neighbours and found music fame. Some great bands and artists are coming out of Melbourne right now. It is a city with such a proud history. I have never been, but it is top of my lift of places to visit. Although blogs and music magazines mean artists from Melbourne will never be ignored or lost, series like Neighbours can showcase artists first-hand. It is also a way for potential artists to get acting experience that they can bring to their music. As someone who loves what is coming out of Melbourne, I think we would have seen a lot of great young artists begin their path on Neighbours. The show also features music both diegetic and sound-tracked. We get to hear artists played in the show. Another invaluable resource for them and music fans! As much as I love the show and think cast members like April Rose Pengilly and Ben Turland will continue their careers in Australia, the U.S. or U.K., the hole and void that will be on the T.V. screens who have watched the show for years will be immense! The sun, smile and, yes, drama that we get from shows like Neighbours has been more essential since the pandemic struck than ever before! It has given us some fine actors, brilliant and timeless scenes, great moments and, also, wonderful artists. It will be interesting to see how Neighbours winds down and what happens in the final episode around August. I think they are shooting that episode in June. Having acquired a legion of fans since its start in 1985, Neighbours is a television institute that so many people will be…

SO sad to see it go.

FEATURE: People Everyday: Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

People Everyday

Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... at Thirty

___________

ON 24th March…

one of the greatest Hip-Hop albums ever turns thirty. As opposed a lot of the Gangsta Rap that was around in 1992 (Dr. Dre is an example), Arrested Development’s amazing debut, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... was more concerned with fostering peace and love; changing the bad things around us and opening eyes to injustices. If a lot of Hip-Hop at that time was concerned with darker and more violent themes, Arrest Development were more like preachers. Trying to calm things down and offer a more positive thing into the world. The title refers the length of time it took for the Atlanta group to get a record deal. Their debut was released through Chrysalis/EMI on 24th March, 1992. Produced by Speech and with terrific performances from everyone in the group (with especially fine and memorable vocals from Dionne Farris), 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... is an album that offers up so much. Whilst it does not seem revolutionary today, Arrested Development’s stunning debut did offer an alternative Hip-Hop take. Classic songs like People Everyday, Tennessee, and Mr. Wendall are played widely to this day. Speech’s songwriting and the efficient and effective use of samples (Sunshine by Earth, Wind & Fire features on Natural; Alphabet St. by Prince (among others) can be heard on Tennessee) means we get this marriage of different worlds. Fusing older records with this modern and forward-looking set of lyrics makes 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... very special. I will draw in a couple of reviews of a truly awesome and awe-inspiring album.

Maybe, given the Hip-Hop we hear today, Arrested Development’s debut has not dated as well as some other albums of the time. I love the Daisy Age work of genius from De La Soul, 3 Feet High and Rising. By 1992, that was very much dead in the water. There was definitely more of an edge and attitude coming through in Hip-Hop. 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... was definitely something different reactionary. To mark its anniversary last year, Udiscovermusic.com contextualised the 1992 album. They explain what was happening in Hip-Hop when Arrested Development broke through:

“Hip-hop was in a state of flux in 1992. The conscious, Afrocentric rap of Jungle Brothers had failed to catch fire in a major label environment. De La Soul had renounced their DAISY Age agenda, and even A Tribe Called Quest, for many fans the best of this new, less aggressive generation of rap acts, were struggling to get their voice heard amid a slew of gangsta stars such as Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Geto Boys. The term “alternative rap” was starting to sound more like a put-down than a description. You may have been forgiven for thinking that 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of… was not the name of the debut album by Arrested Development, rather the lifespan of the alternative acts who seemed to be facing their demise.

Into this uncertain arena came a thoughtful collective that not only spoke of revolution, humanity, roots, spiritual matters, and unity, but also came from the South rather than the rival rap hubs on the East and West coasts. Why, their debut album featured songs about the homeless, put-upon women, the importance of childcare, and more unfashionable topics, and didn’t even look like a hip-hop record, with a cover depicting endless blue sky and sun-parched grass. What chance did Arrested Development stand?

Quite a big one, it turned out. Fronted by the busy, buzzing Speech, who also produced their records, with two prominent female members in Montsho Eshe and Aerle Taree; plus co-founder turntablist Headliner and, from their parents’ generation, Baba Oje as spiritual adviser, together with various vocalists and instrumentalists, stylists and dance-have-yous, compared to most hip-hop acts they might have fallen to earth from space. But once they began releasing records, their impact was immediate: their debut single, “Tennessee,” went Top 10 in the US and topped the rap and R&B charts. Quite an achievement for a record covering the oppression and roots of black people in the South, and inspired by the deaths of two of Speech’s close relatives. This group was not just acting different: their feel came from the heart.

The single was released on March 24, 1992, the same day as their debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of…, which opened with cut-ups including the words “man’s final frontier is the soul,” a message that resonated throughout this album.

While they soon became known for mellow, even tender-hearted singles, the point needs to be made that Arrested Development’s debut album is actually pretty raucous, as the second track, “Mama’s Always On Stage,” makes clear, sampling a honking Buddy Guy and Junior Wells tune and hurtling like a skydiver without a ’chute. The anthemic “People Everyday,” reversing the title but not the message of Sly & The Family Stone’s “Everyday People,” is not the laidback remix of the single version, but a grittier, harder-edged cut that emphasizes the tougher side of Speech’s lyric that often passed unnoticed. On the other hand, “Mr. Wendal” is every bit as accessible as its single sibling, but the mellow groove is used to make a point about homelessness and respect; putting their money where their mouths were, the group gave half their royalties from the song to homeless charities.

So, a light feel delivers a heavy message. That combo comes up again on “Raining Revolution,” a meditation on precipitation and its place in feeding body, soul, and spirit. More water metaphors appear on the upbeat “Fishin’ 4 Religion,” which demands a belief system that nurtures improvement for people – again, “revolution” is mentioned. Further piscine poetry follows on “Give A Man A Fish,” a Minnie Riperton-sampling set of thoughts on how to make the nation rise, which rejects gangsterism and talks politics and armed rebellion. Love, a little-mentioned rap topic in 1992, crops up in “U,” a whirling jazzy loop courtesy of Ramsey Lewis and whipped into a frenzy of desire in an onrushing tale of emotional longing.

There’s back-to-nature roots material on 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of… too. “Eve Of Reality” is a shimmering tribal instrumental that sounds like it dates from the dawn of human existence, and “Children Play With Earth” calls for raising your kids to respect the soil we’re rooted in: a literal hands-on environmentalism. “Natural” hits a different note, both musically and lyrically, noting the craving for a love partner that’s as old as time. “Dawn Of The Dreads” links the pan-Africanism of early 90s hip-hop with Rastafarianism through an encounter with a woman who understands Speech’s vibe. This is complex stuff and the group aren’t afraid to just let it unfold: the closing “Washed Away” is more than six minutes of spiritual thought, which sounds dry on paper but is actually compelling listening; hip-hop had barely attempted material like this since The Last Poets’ “Delights Of The Garden” in 1977.

3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of… was no ordinary hip-hop album in 1992. And that remains the case today. There’s a lot to absorb; repeated listening delivers aspects you’d previously not noticed: a wailing vocal here, a blues lick there (and there’s quite a lot of blues present, not a musical form rap often acknowledged). It might take you just as long as the title suggests to soak it all up”.

Some people who have not rated 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... as a classic feel that it was niche and is dated. Not as hard-hitting and political as other albums of the time, perhaps it was part of a much-needed movement and moment in 1992…though that has shifted and we do not hear much Hip-Hop like it anymore. It is a shame, as the best moments from 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... are remarkable and absolutely timeless. From People Everyday to Give a Man a Fish, through to Mr. Wendall and Tennessee, to the incredible, Children Play with Earth, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... is such an amazingly strong album. The BBC said this in their review of the album back in 2009:

“Arrested Development breezed on to the scene in 1992 and made the year their own with this, their super-confident debut. 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days In The Life Of... (the exact length of time it took for the group to get a recording contract) was one of those records that arrived fully-formed, making everything that had gone before in the world of hip-hop sound rather passé.

Formed by rappers Speech and Headliner and inspired by Public Enemy, Arrested Development espoused afro-centricity, feminism, love and harmony, and were an antidote to the machismo of Gansgta Rap, then very much on the rise.

3 Years... was rightly lauded at the time; it is resolutely upbeat – none more than on Give A Man A Fish with its chorus, ''give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish he’ll eat forever''. The three US Top 10 singles, People Everyday, Mr Wendal and Tennessee seemed to be everywhere. People Everyday, which updated Sly and The Family Stone's Everyday People, showed how they could embrace the past while modernising the message. The tale of a man having to use violence in self defence against a gang is like most of their work, deeply thoughtful with a generous splash of wit (''I had to take the brother out for being rude'')”.

To end things, I will source one more review. AllMusic are among those who have provided Arrested Development’s iconic debut album with a positive review. This is what they wrote:

“Widely adored when it appeared in 1992, Arrested Development's debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of... seemed to herald a shining new era in alternative rap, when audiences and critics of all colors could agree on the music's importance. Of course, that didn't happen, as Dr. Dre instead took gangsta rap to the top of the charts with The Chronic. In retrospect, 3 Years... isn't quite as revolutionary as it first seemed, though it's still a fine record that often crosses the line into excellence. Its positive messages were the chief selling point for many rock critics, and it's filled with pleas for black unity and brotherly compassion, as well as a devotion to the struggle for equality. All of that is grounded in a simple, upbeat spirituality that also results in tributes to the homeless (the hit "Mr. Wendal"), black women of all shapes and sizes, and the natural world. It's determinedly down to earth, and that aesthetic informs the group's music as well. Their sound is a laid-back, southern-fried groove informed by rural blues, African percussion, funk, and melodic R&B. All of it comes together on the classic single "Tennessee," which takes lead rapper Speech on a spiritual quest to reclaim his heritage in a south still haunted by its history. It helped Arrested Development become the first rap group to win a Grammy for Best New Artist, and to top numerous year-end critical polls. In hindsight, there's a distinct political correctness -- even naïveté -- in the lyrics, which places the record firmly in the early '90s; it's also a bit self-consciously profound at times, lacking the playfulness of peers like the Native Tongues. Nonetheless, 3 Years... was a major influence on a new breed of alternative Southern hip-hop, including Goodie Mob, OutKast, and Nappy Roots, and it still stands as one of the better albums of its kind”.

As it turns thirty on 24th March, I wanted to look at the important, moving, wonderous and accomplished 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... Against the bravado and macho Hip-Hop of the early-1990s, Arrested Development pushed back. They offered something much more spiritual and inspiring. That is why 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of... will always remain relevant, influential and…

GREATLY loved.

FEATURE: Where Do I Begin? The Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Where Do I Begin?

The Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole at Twenty-Five

___________

TWO years after…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Tonge/Getty Images

their amazing debut album, Exit Planet Dust, The Chemical Brothers (Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons) keep that hot streak going with Dig Your Own Hole. I think the best three albums from the duo include their first two, plus their third studio album, Surrender (1999). I think that Dig Your Own Hole might be their strongest and most important album. Released on 7th April, we mark twenty-five years of a classic. I feel 1997 was a year when things changed a lot in music. Britpop and other scenes were dying out. We were seeing more Electronic and Big Beat albums coming through. Bands who started recording a particular way pushed their boundaries and adopted new sounds (Radiohead’s OK Computer (1997) is a great example). Featuring some of the duo’s biggest songs, Block Rockin' Beats and Setting Sun are classics. An album that every fan of music should have in their collection, I want to use this feature to combine a couple of retrospective articles together with some positive reviews.  To start, this article form last April talks about how inspired The Chemical Brothers are on Dig Your Own Hole. The use of guest spots (Noel Gallagher appears on Setting Sun for instance) works brilliantly well:

“The Chems had their roots in blazing dance music, so they still sounded freshest of all on the classic, punishing opener and single, “Block Rockin’ Beats,” which smoothed their formula slightly for the benefit of the masses, but kept all the raw bass, the breakbeats, and the flickers of scratching. The title track then upped the BPMs convincingly, before “Elektrobank” blasted the doors off their hinges. An early harbinger of the electro revival, which only reached full momentum in the new millennium, “Elektrobank” featured the voice of Kool Herc in a nod to hip-hop’s earliest days, and was so propulsive that it nearly juddered itself into pieces, before slurring into a brain-bashing arc of psychedelia.

This signaled the direction for much of the rest of the set, segueing, in traditional Chems fashion, into the mind-expanding glitches of “Piku.” Then the older Gallagher brother loomed over the skyline, heralding the album’s lead single, “Setting Sun.” The Chems had him freefalling into deep water, before he emerged transformed by – and slathered in – electronic trickery. It was a clear update of The Beatles’ late 60s psychedelic period, yet made the group’s own by the undeniable power of their mountain-destroying guitars and lashing beats. Who needed the 60s now?

(Beth) Orton graced the more pastoral, gently pulsating psych piece “Where Do I Begin,” which almost had a touch of 80s indie-pop to it, before the beats crashed in once more. The indie-psych crossover theme was, however, most notable of all on album closer “The Private Psychedelic Reel,” a nine-minute single which featured reverb-soaked clarinet input from hazy American psych-rockers Mercury Rev.

Dig Your Own Hole built on the duo’s debut, and set the tone for the rest of their career to date. Time and again, The Chemical Brothers have produced collections that start out from dance music’s sometimes forbidding fortress, and yet offer variety, depth, and inspired guest spots, both from established acts and glittering new arrivals”.

DJ Mag featured Dig Your Own Hole back in 2018. They argue that, whilst it might not be The Chemical Brothers’ greatest album (I argue it is), it is one of their most important and inspired:

“Dig Your Own Hole' was perhaps not the best electronic album of the 1990s. But there is an argument to be made that it was the most representative, an album that united many of the dance music trends of the decade, while simultaneously blazing brilliant new trails for other acts to follow.

With the release of their debut album, 1995’s ‘Exit Planet Dust’, The Chemical Brothers were still seen in many quarters as representing the lingering remnants of big beat: a fun, if rather shallow, mid ’90s dance phenomenon that combined rock music structures with electronic production. After 1997’s ‘Dig Your Own Hole’, however, it was impossible to see The Chemical Brothers as anything but their own men, a legacy that has stayed with them until today. Open up a new Chemical Brothers album in 2018 and you genuinely don’t know what to expect, from shiny trance fusion to soil-worn psychedelia. This is the legacy of ‘Dig Your Own Hole’, an album that radiated ambition and adventure, as Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons matured as producers, growing up without ever growing old.

‘Dig Your Own Hole’ is an album that can be cut in many different ways, an album that is packed with stories. Within the album’s opening five tracks alone you can find big beat Chemicals (opener ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, an improbable minor hit on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks); electro Chemicals (‘Elektrobank’); hip-hop Chemicals (‘Piku’, whose lolloping groove foreshadows later collaborations with MCs Q-Tip and k-os); and Britpop Chemicals (‘Setting Sun’ with Noel Gallagher, a vast UK hit in the summer of 1996). What is telling is that, even when The Chemical Brothers aren’t at their most adventurous — ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ could have fit fairly squarely on ‘Exit Planet Dust’, while the duo had already gone down the indie guest vocal route on ‘Life Is Sweet’ with The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess — there is a real confidence to their sound, as if they had taken everything they achieved on their debut album and rendered it in Technicolor.

The song’s waft of psychedelia continues into ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’, the most ambitious song The Chemical Brothers have ever recorded, combining a sitar hook, great shimmering walls of noise, a clarinet freak out and a stirring chord sequence into a nine-minute masterpiece of psychedelia that you can genuinely lose yourself in. The song takes its name from a recording The Beatles were alleged to have made to soundtrack their acid trips and, incredibly, it actually lives up to its moniker. The Chemical Brothers were big Beatles fans, referencing Ringo’s driving, lopsided beat to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ on ‘Setting Sun’. But it is on ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ where they approach their idols’ grandiose sense of psychedelic adventure, creating an absolute monster of musical liberty.

It is a fitting closer for an album that remains almost unparalleled in electronic music for scope and adventure. Individually, the 11 tracks on ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ are fantastic; collectively they add up to a milestone of musical ambition, one that stinks of the sheer possibility of the electronic sound. In many ways, ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ is a nostalgic album, a reminder of an age in which Britpop, rock, beats, clarinets and psychedelic reels were united in the hearts of open-minded ravers. But it is very forward-looking too, its genre-hopping foreshadowing the post-genre pop world in which we now live. The Chemical Brothers didn’t just dig their own hole back in 1997, then; they dug out a new space for everyone”.

Even if you are not a big fan of The Chemical Brothers or genres like Big Beat and Breakbeat, there are songs on Dig Your Own Hole that will capture you. Mixing different effects, vocals and layers, it is a sublime album that still sound remarkable and layered. I heard the album when it came out in 1997, and I am still picking up on new things twenty-five years later. On 7th April, we get to mark a quarter-century of a ground-breaking album. In their review, AllMusic wrote this in their review:

“Taking the swirling eclecticism of their post-techno debut, Exit Planet Dust, to the extreme, the Chemical Brothers blow all stylistic boundaries down with their second album, Dig Your Own Hole. Bigger, bolder, and more adventurous than Exit Planet Dust, Dig Your Own Hole opens with the slamming cacophony of "Block Rockin' Beats," where hip-hop meets hardcore techno, complete with a Schoolly D sample and an elastic bass riff. Everything is going on at once in "Block Rockin' Beats," and it sets the pace for the rest of the record, where songs and styles blur into a continuous kaleidoscope of sound. It rocks hard enough for the pop audience, but it doesn't compromise either the Chemicals' sound or the adventurous, futuristic spirit of electronica -- even "Setting Sun," with its sly homages to the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" and Noel Gallagher's twisting, catchy melody, doesn't sound like retro psychedelia; it sounds vibrant, unexpected, and utterly contemporary. There are no distinctions between different styles, and the Chemicals sound as if they're having fun, building Dig Your Own Hole from fragments of the past, distorting the rhythms and samples, and pushing it forward with an intoxicating rush of synthesizers, electronics, and layered drum machines. The Chemical Brothers might not push forward into self-consciously arty territories like some of their electronic peers, but they have more style and focus, constructing a blindingly innovative and relentlessly propulsive album that's an exhilarating listen -- one that sounds positively new but utterly inviting at the same time”.

The final thing I am including is a review from NME. I remember the excitement from fans and the music press when The Chemical Brothers followed their 1995 debut (which was hugely successful) with Dig Your Own Hole:

 “The world of 'Dig Your Own Hole', that is - bruised, pissed, moody, stubborn, phenomenally cocksure. A trashing of all dance music's spiritual, pacifying potential. A record designed not to calm savage beasts, but to make them even madder...

It's fabulous, actually. The images we customarily imagine techno to soundtrack - great empty vistas of space, a stainless, genteel vision of the future - don't apply here. Rather, the Chemicals conjure up a grimy, urban and unavoidably violent nightworld. As the speedy, sliding title track whizzes by - a bit like 'Firestarter' but meaner, less camp - it evokes cars crashing, buildings collapsing, faces melting... everything, with compelling inevitability, exploding. Edge-of-the-seat stuff, if you're still sitting down.

Which is unlikely, frankly. If 1995's 'Exit Planet Dust' was a rough'n'ready story-so-far, 'Dig Your Own Hole' is the fully-honed full-on block-rocking cortex-hammering take-no-prisoners real deal, the album whose party omnipotence will only be matched in '97 by The Prodigy's tortuously awaited third excursion. The first three-quarters - 45 seamless minutes”

Reaching number one in the U.K. and hitting the top twenty in the U.S., Dig Your Own Hole arrived ta a perfect moment. There was as shift and evolution in the musical landscape. 1997 also saw Björk release Homogenic. It was a time when these amazing artists were releasing immense work. I think that Dig Your Own Hole is one of the best albums of the 1990s. It is such a mesmeric and mind-blowing album that is beyond criticism. Eleven incredible tracks that take you somewhere else, I was eager and excited to mark the upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary of The Chemical Brothers’…

GLORIOUS second album.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Elton John – Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time)

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Elton John – Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time)

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THERE are a couple of reasons…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Elton John in 1972/PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O’Neill/Iconic Images/Getty Images

why I am celebrating Elton John’s hit, Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time). I have not featured it on Groovelines before. It turns fifty next month, so I wanted to look ahead to the anniversary and celebrate a classic song. As an article I am about to bring in attests, there were a few songs about space exploration out in the early-1970s. As the Moon landing happened in 1969 and the possibility of space exploration was opened, this boundary-breaking history meant that artists were fascinated and reflecting the times. Also, Elton John turns seventy-five on 25th March. I wanted to salute an iconic songwriter who, through the years, has released some of the most memorable music ever. Reaching number two in the U.K., Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time) is a gem of a track. Released on 17th April, 1972, it was the lead song from John’s fifth studio album, Honky Château. In this feature, Far Out Magazine tell the story of one of the greatest songs ever released:

“Space curiosity was at its peak during the time of the production of the song. When it was released, the Apollo 16 Mission landed men on the lunar surface for the fifth time. The song narrates the tale of a young boy called Doug, whose astronaut father is sent to space frequently as a part of an exploration programme that requires him to take three months journey at a regular interval. Although Doug feels his father’s absence, he still aspires to be like him one day. The father, on the other hand, has mixed feelings about this entire adventure. It breaks his heart to leave his family behind, but the call of the stars and endless void tempts him as well: “You don’t know what it is. Every time I’m out there I think, if I ever get back to Earth I’ll stay there; I’ll never go out again. But I got out, and I guess I’ll always go out.” He commits to one last mission that ends with dire consequences.

Taupin talked about the influence behind the song in 2016, explaining: “People identify it, unfortunately, with David Bowie’s Space Oddity. It actually wasn’t inspired by that at all; it was actually inspired by a story by Ray Bradbury, from his book of science fiction short stories called The Illustrated Man. In that book, there was a story called The Rocket Man, which was about how astronauts in the future would become a sort of everyday job. So, I kind of took that idea and ran with that.” However, John admitted to being unaware of this fact: “Do you know, I never knew that?”

Ray Bradbury’s story was the basis of another song of the same name that pre-dated John’s record and was released by the folk group Pearls Before Swine. In their song, the child can no longer look at the stars admiringly after being disillusioned by his father’s death. Taupin openly admitted to borrowing ideas from Pearls’ 1970 song, saying: “It’s common knowledge that songwriters are great thieves, and this is a perfect example.”

The opening lines, which read: “She packed my bags last night, pre-flight. Zero hour: 9am. And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then,” was conceived by Taupin while he was driving to his parents in Lincolnshire, England. Anxious that he’ll forget the lines, he drove some back roads as fast as he could to put it down on paper. Until he reached their house he had to “repeat it to himself for two hours,” which was “unfortunate” but also worthwhile given the magnanimous status the song achieved.

A ballad rooted in piano, the song added extra textures through an atmospheric synthesiser and processed slide guitar. The synthesiser was played by the recording engineer David Hentschel while the backing vocals featured Dee Murray, Nigel Olsson and Davey Johnstone, the trio that was to become signature backing voices in John’s other songs. It was produced by Gus Dudgeon, the same person who worked with Bowie on his 1969 release ‘Space Oddity’”.

Kate Bush released Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time) as a single in 1991. Reaching number twelve in the U.K, it weas released for the Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin album. Her version is brilliant and has this Reggae vibe. She is a big fan of Elton John and has loved his music since she was a child. The two worked together on her 2011 album, 50 Words for Snow. I think that this is a track we will be playing and remembering decades from now. It is definitely one of Elton John’s greatest tracks. Before wrapping up, it is worth bringing in some Wikipedia information about the video for the song (which was released five years ago):

“In May 2017, an official music video for "Rocket Man" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as a winner of Elton John: The Cut, a competition organised in partnership with AKQA, Pulse Films, and YouTube in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of his songwriting relationship with Bernie Taupin. The competition called upon independent filmmakers to submit treatments for music videos for one of three Elton John songs from the 1970s, with each song falling within a specific concept category. "Rocket Man" was designated for the animation category, and was co-directed by Iranian refugee Majid Adin and Irish animation director Stephen McNally; the video was inspired by Adin's own migration to England, portraying a character envisioning himself as an astronaut to draw parallels between the song's lyrics and the experiences of a refugee”.

As it turns fifty next month, I wanted to highlight and explore the legendary track, Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time). Its performer turns seventy-five on 25th March. When it comes to the all-time best Elton John songs, this 1972 slice of brilliance…

IS hard to beat.

FEATURE: Spotlight: MICHELLE

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

MICHELLE

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A group I have not featured before…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Dorsa

the amazing MICHELLE released the album, AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS, in January. The N.Y.C.-based group have released an incredible album. I will come to a review for it at the end. Before that, there are a few interviews that I wanted to include. Before that even, here is some biography about the stunning MICHELLE:

“Born-and-bred New Yorkers, MICHELLE formed in 2018 and is comprised of Sofia D'Angelo, Julian Kaufman, Charlie Kilgore, Layla Ku, Emma Lee and Jamee Lockard. The predominantly POC and queer collective mix and match the writing and production groups amongst the six of them.

The hallmarks of MICHELLE's music—layered vocal harmonies, analog synthesizers, vibrant percussion, smoldering hooks—dominate the sonic landscape of their upcoming album, with the four female vocalists pushing the boundaries of their considerable singing talents as Charlie and Julian’s shared production explodes with fearless creativity and exploration. Despite all the tinkering elsewhere, it is important to note that the vocals remain largely untouched and appear in their organic state. Songs hop across genres, from funky R&B to bedroom slow jams to amped-up beat-heavy anthems and more. The songwriting on AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS has been elevated, as there is a depth and prowess at work that makes good on the promise of the band’s early songs, something they admit was learned by reflecting and allowing room for artistic growth”.

The first interview I want to bring in is from DIY. They spoke with MICHELLE back in November 2020. One of the most interesting and appealing aspects of the group is how they represent modern-day New York. A  diversity in terms of P.o.C, the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ communities, in addition to the eclectic and variegated sound:  

“The first time all six members of MICHELLE were in the same room, their debut album had already been released. “We didn’t meet each other until the day of our first show in the middle of November 2018,” reflects singer Layla Ku. “We were all strangers!”

Having been wished into existence earlier that year by producers Julian Kaufman and Charlie Kilgore, the collective formed as the result of a crackpot plan to conjure up a record (September 2018’s resultant ‘HEATWAVE’) that would document Big Apple life in two weeks flat. They assembled a group of singers that they separately knew - some well, others more peripherally - and set up a series of homemade recording sessions, with no more than one or two of the four MICHELLE vocalists included at any one time. Songs would often be written and recorded on the same day and, by the end of the fortnight, all of the ten tracks had been locked down.

Was it touch and go to get it finished in time? “Really, it was just barely, by the drawstrings of our ten year old sweatpants,” laughs Julian. “There was still a lot of post-production to be done afterwards.”

As a band, MICHELLE reflect the modern reality of a city like New York, bringing an eclecticism of interests, upbringings, ethnicities and sexualities together; it electrifies their music with an unconstrained, pan-genre freedom, where slick R&B, cool jazz and angular rock all jostle for supremacy. The diversity of the sound matches the diversity of the six members’ personalities: Julian, they describe as the helping hand - the guy that “brings the sauce” - and Charlie as the “mad scientist”, whereas Layla is “the commissioner”, Sofia D’Angelo “the star”, Jamee Lockard “the student of the month” and Emma Lee “the triple threat” (dancer, visual artist and singer). “If we were all given the same track to write on, I think we would all create very different songs,” says Jamee.

Recent singles ‘UNBOUND’ and ‘SUNRISE’ mark the first two glimpses into the group’s as-yet-unnamed second LP that’s currently in the “cutting down phase”. Their first original album for Transgressive (who also re-released ‘HEATWAVE’ earlier this year), the band enthuse that the production is set to be much larger this time around due to the additional gestation time for the writing process. “We had the time to craft this thing in a way we didn’t before, which will hopefully be rewarding,” says Emma”.

It is impressive that a band who had such an unusual start (in the sense they didn’t meet each other right at the root of their formation) are together now and are stronger than ever. When speaking with The Forty-Five in August 2020, they were asked about how they acquired the confidence to keep going:

“The best in sunny, summer anthems. Blending funk, dream pop and simmering jazz sounds, their debut album ‘Heatwave’ gave the collective a platform to spread messages on social justice, and a little bit of joy with musical themes highlighting the stories of young people in New York.

A predominantly queer band with Black members and members of colour, their rise has marked a renewed approach to pop, where representation is not a performative focus and visibility becomes a beautifully normalised element of their group. In anticipation for the release of their new single next month, we caught up with all six members of MICHELLE over Zoom – Julian Kaufman and Charlie Kilgore on production and vocalists Sofia D’Angelo, Jamee Lockard, Layla Ku and Emma Lee – to chat about self confidence, fundraising and their journey so far.

How did you all meet?

Jamee: So we all either knew Charlie or Julian, and this was our summer 2018 project. I knew Charlie from our freshman year of college that we’d just finished, Charlie and Layla went to high school together and Sofia and Layla met organically as part of the New York City music scene. We got together separately, pockets of us got together with Julian and Charlie, recorded the songs the day we wrote them and we didn’t actually all meet until our first concert a couple of months after we released the album!

As a band only a couple of years into your career, how do you find the self confidence to keep going?

Sofia: Interesting question. I never really thought of it in that context before because like Jamee said, we all just came together in 2018 to make a record. None of this was really supposed to happen, we weren’t expecting all of this to get to where it is now. When I left the studio… well, Julian’s apartment, after writing and recording ‘Ideal’, I didn’t think the songs we were playing together would be playing on BBC Radio 1. That was always a dream of mine for music generally, but I never expected it to happen with this. Now that we have this new platform, we want to share the fun that we have with each other, with the world, but also use the platform to empower our fans and our listeners. I think that’s where we get the confidence from – taking advantage of our social media platforms to share resources, share music that we love, share inspiration, share artists of colour that we admire, queer artists that we admire, and share the stage. That’s something that gives us all more confidence in being MICHELLE out there.

You’re a predominantly queer BIPOC band. Do you see your band as a bit like an act of resistance, considering you produce such happy music and you’re being visibly queer BIPOC?

Layla: We were recently talking about how we are such an authentic reflection of where we come from in the sense that it’s not forced and it’s not a product of “oh there’s a demand for representation of these communities, let’s put together a group that amplifies that and meets that demand”. It was actually more “these are the people who were brought into this project because of their talents and their abilities and their skills and desire to work on this together”.

We just all happened to be of very diverse backgrounds, and happened to meet that need for representation that is being pushed to the forefront and is being listened to a little bit more than it has been in the past. But I take a lot of comfort in knowing that we make this music because we want to make that music and that’s what’s come to us and what we’ve gravitated towards and created together. The people behind it and the people making it is an afterthought. What we look like isn’t the first thing we bring to the table. It’s not everything we are”.

I will end with a positive review for MICHELLE’s new album. Just before then, V MAGAZINE celebrated a group that we can celebrate and find joy in. There is plenty of evidence of this on AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS. V MAGAZINE chatted with the group in September last year:

“MICHELLE is a band born of unique circumstances in this regard. All the members know each other through either Kaufman or Kilgore, who decided to make an album in 2018; in the early days, there was consideration of calling themselves GERTRUDE. Scattered across the country, the six musicians came together virtually, sharing recordings and sounds until HEATWAVE was born in September—and the first time they were all in a room together wasn’t until months later, in November 2018.

“A lot of people were part of the making of that record, and the record did pretty well,” says D’Angelo. “And then we started doing shows and getting more attention, which required us to make some sacrifices and make some hard choices and make some awesome choices and share some delicious feasts, and also just do a lot of things we’ve never done before, until eventually MICHELLE became the group that it is today with the six of us. Now we’re embarking on a tour in two weeks and releasing our second full-length album.”

While AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS isn’t due until January 2022, the first single from the sophomore album, “SYNCOPATE,” dropped alongside a music video today. For MICHELLE, everything is warm and sunny; their sound is a conglomeration of influences of all six members, from Sza to Stevie Wonder to NSYNC (“nsync is julians hair influence,” joked Kilgore in the Zoom chat, before hastily adding that “it looks great dont worry”), and their visuals are a dream of New York City friendships dipped in the sweetness of summer.

The songs on the album are essentially a time lapse of what MICHELLE has been up to since 2018; not all the songs are brand new. “SYNCOPATE,” for instance, was written in November 2020, launched from a melody Kaufman woke up with in his head, a track not added until much later—the vocals led the single to what it is today, a spirited September single with whimsical, groovy vibes, lightheartedness resting behind the force of MICHELLE’s sound.

The music video fits MICHELLE’s sound entirely: Manhattan rooftops (the perfect summer hangout setting, if you’re lucky enough to have one) alternate screen time with the interior of an apartment where the group hangs out, lounging and dancing. It’s warm and intimate, much like our Zoom interview; whether you’ve been a listener to MICHELLE for years or are just being introduced to them, the presence of all six members at once feels like you’re on a group FaceTime call with friends, idly chatting and glimpsing into each other’s days.

“We had a MICHELLE manifesto going into the video,” says Lockard. “It had things like New York being our backdrop, but also the seventh member of MICHELLE. New York is a big part of the reason why the group exists and a big part of our lives, so we wanted the music video to reflect New York.”

If “SYNCOPATE” is any indication, AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS is going to usher in an entirely new era of MICHELLE, emphasizing their creative maturity and growth as a collective.

“One of the biggest differences [between both albums] is that it’s going from being a fun summer project that we just kind of did and didn’t think much about to our second album, us being a band and really doing it intentionally,” says Lee. “Knowing that it’s the six of us working on this project, solidifying ourselves as a band and actually taking more than two weeks to write and record the album, and being very intentional.”

And how does this new intentionality manifest itself between HEATWAVE and ADWTD? According to Kilgore, “It’s totally different…and also very much the same.”

“A beautiful thing about MICHELLE is that because there are so many members and because the process is always shifting, you hopefully get something different, but that still feels like home,” says Lee. “Something comfortable, like ‘Oh, I know these people, and I’m excited to grow with them.’”

The band agrees that if you find one track extremely weird and another unbelievably perfect, your best friend might find them to be opposite, the weird perfect and the perfect weird. It’s an album for everybody, with something kind enough for all ears, a “galaxy that has all these little worlds in it.” But still, the band carries hopes for what might be a collective takeaway by listeners.

“Happiness,” sums up Kaufman. “I do think that as musicians, we have a duty to make people feel better about everything. In a certain way, uplifting people. I hope some of the songs make people feel uplifted and happier, because the world can be so difficult and sometimes a good song really can make you feel happier.”

D’Angelo adds on that she wants the album to feel like a comfort. “For me, whenever I put on a certain record, it feels like home and it’s something that I can always go back to,” she says. “The dream would be for this record to be that for somebody. I want this to be a record that people revisit when they want to feel safe.”

Whether upbeat or mellow, September or January, MICHELLE or GERTRUDE, one thing is certain: everything is right on the horizon for the band.

“We’re going to see an influx of the MICHELLE vibe being taken in full force to things beyond the music,” promises Kaufman. “In the past, we’ve had a really strong focus on the music and everything else was kind of in the background, but now we’re taking everything and the music and making it just as powerful”.

There have been some really positive reviews for MICHELLE’s AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS. It is an amazing album that people should check out. This is what Loud and Quiet wrote when they listened to the album:

“There’s an easy kinship between Arlo Parks and New York collective MICHELLE. The labelmates share similar influences, and the award-winning British artist guested on a new version of their single ‘Sunrise’ last year.

The parallels are most obvious on the smooth beats of ‘Mess U Made’, the opening track on second album After Dinner We Talk Dreams, and in the way they write relatable relationship lyrics. “Now you’ve left I’ve no idea / Who to text when I’m feeling blue,” they mourn over slick backing on ‘Expiration Date’. By the time they reach the breezily harmonised ‘No Signal’ their phone is “off the grid” in an attempt to get “one night to myself.”

Yet while Parks makes downtempo music for the head, the predominantly queer, POC six-piece capture the cool sound of the heart and streets. Unashamedly commercial, ‘Pose’ shows their fun side with the sweetness of Janet Jackson. ‘Layla in the Rocket’, meanwhile, has the organic instrumentation and sisterly vibe of Haim.

The layered four-part vocals, which they’re at pains to point out remain untouched, illustrate their musicianship at a distinctly human scale. The breadth of their individual interests is meanwhile reflected in the way they push against genre. This can be heard in the funky bassline on ‘End of the World’, jazzy guitar on ‘Spaced Out, Phased Out’, and ’80s synths on the darker mood of ‘Looking Glass’.

There are moments that would work on the club floor but, as the title suggests, the album is mainly intended for after dinner intimacies”.

Go and follow and listen to the amazing MICHELLE. Maybe not a big name in the U.K., that will change soon enough. I hope that they get some tour dates over here very soon. Making music of the highest order, the N.Y.C.-based MICHELLE are…

AN incredible group.

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Follow Michelle

Official:

https://www.wearemichelle.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/wearemichelle/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/michelletheband

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/michelletheband

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@wearemichelle

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLgdaHCBkZ79BGKCleNjMmQ

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4yYvor6Rq4fG82J1L47DYp?si=Db3NQHbsTA6eANRp2vu8iQ&nd=1

FEATURE: meta angel: FKA twigs: Godlike Genius

FEATURE:

 

 

meta angel

PHOTO CREDIT: Zoe McConnell for NME

FKA twigs: Godlike Genius

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ALTHOUGH this happened…

 PHOTO CREDIT: orograph for NME

a few weeks back, I wanted to reflect on the Godlike Genius honour FKA twigs won at the BandLab NME Awards. I am going to bring in a couple of fairly recent interviews with her, in addition to ending with a playlist of some of her best tracks. Even though I have included her in Modern Heroines and covered her in the context of someone who will be an icon soon enough, the award win in London earlier this month seems to confirm that she has already reached that level. In terms of the importance of her music and pioneering talent, she has been elevated to deified heights. Before moving on, NME looked back at a night when Soul II Soul legend Jazzie B introduced and acknowledged a modern-day genius:

“Jazzie B spoke to NME from the winner’s room at the awards show held March 2 at O2 Academy Brixton. It was his first time ever attending the Awards, which he joked, on the red carpet, made him “an NME virgin”.

At 34, FKA Twigs is the youngest person to ever be crowned Godlike Genius, and also the first Black woman to receive the honour. Jazzie B was effusive about Twigs’ talent. “Her innovation is incredible. It’s off the Richter scale,” he told NME.

He continued: “I know her and the efforts and hard work she puts into what she does. She deserves that Genius Award. A person that young that talented and so driven – it’s interesting to watch that evolve in today’s very fickle, even more so than my day.”

Jazzie B praised FKA Twigs’ “almost thespian-like” approach to art, “because she almost consumes everything that she [then] oozes, which is very rare for a musical artist these days. It’s often a lot short-lived, and not as deep and hasn’t had the textures and depth.

“But I find with Twigs, she does – she goes to the limits. She really forces the envelope. And it’s so wonderful for her to be from the UK with this level of innovation. [She] truly has my support all the way 100 per cent.”

He added: “There’s still so much more to come. And you know, we should really truly in Britain be super proud of Twigs.” Watch Jazzie B’s full winner’s room interview above – and his red carpet chat with NME below.

FKA Twigs proved why she was a Godlike Genius with a surprise performance at the BandLab NME Awards 2022, taking to the stage with her dancers for an ethereal rendition of ‘Meta Angel’ and ‘Tears In The Club’, both from ‘Caprisongs’ – which was nominated for Best Mixtape. ‘Tears In The Club’, which features The Weeknd, got a nod for Best Collaboration.

Before presenting Godlike Genius to FKA Twigs, Jazzie B said on the podium: “This is a young lady at the very top of her game. You’re blessed baby, you truly are blessed.”

FKA Twigs accepted the trophy with a moving speech. “I don’t know a godlike genius but it’s a godlike strength to carry on throughout difficult times, the personal experiences, through world experience, the hardest thing to do is to keep going,” she said. Watch it above”.

Following two successful and remarkable albums – 2014’s LP1  and 2019’s MAGDALENE -, twigs released the phenomenal mixtape, CAPRISONGS, earlier in the year. Her first mixtape, it was a chance for her to diversify in terms of format and sound – the mixtape includes interludes and has a more conceptual and conversational arc to it. On the mixtape, FKA twigs (Tahliah Barnett) is joined by a number of writers and producers. It is a busy and eclectic project that was recorded between Hackney, Los Angeles, New York and Jamaica. It confirms her status as one of the world’s most important and inspired talents. Before coming onto an interview where twigs discussed CAPRISONGS and astrology, NME chatted to her as they conferred the Godlike Genius award on her (it was conducted the day she found out; the ceremony came later). Learning more about FKA twigs’ personal life, development and past work contextualises her new work and reveals more about a fascinating, strong and hugely accomplished artist:

“When ‘LP1’ landed in 2014, it marked the crystalisation of FKA Twigs’ remarkable artistic visions: glistening, slippery, futuristic R&B music co-produced with fellow left-field pop architects including Arca, Sampha and Dev Hynes. It also heightened the beguiling mystique she had seemingly cultivated from the start.

Arriving in 2019, more than five years after ‘LP1’, Twigs’ second album ‘Magdalene’ was a panoramic art-pop masterpiece rooted in pain, heartbreak and, above all, recovery. “And I don’t want to have to share our love,” Twigs sings on ‘Cellophane’, presumably alluding to her high-profile relationship with Robert Pattinson which ended in 2017.

Last year, Twigs revealed on Louis Theroux’s Grounded podcast that she was targeted by racist trolls while she and Pattinson were dating. “People just called me the most hurtful and ignorant and horrible names on the planet,” she said. “He was their white Prince Charming and they considered he should be with someone white and blonde.”

Twigs first realised her own strength when she moved from sleepy Gloucestershire to buzzing south London as a 17-year-old. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow – I’m so resilient! You can drop me anywhere and I’ll be OK – like a cat,” she says.

She took solo trips to New York, Paris, Berlin and LA “maybe twice a year” and always met people she connected with. When she was 21, she was so fascinated by a documentary about krumpers – US street dancers – in clown makeup that she flew to LA to track them down. “This was like pre-internet, before Uber, so I got on a bus to Inglewood by myself, walked around the streets and asked people where the krumpers were,” she recalls. “And I found them.”

On ‘Darjeeling’, a ‘Caprisongs’ bop that cleverly borrows from Olive’s ’00s Eurodance banger ‘You’re Not Alone’, she namechecks Croydon College, where she did her A-levels, and credits London with “diallin’ my confidence up / About my hair and my skin”. Last year, in an interview for The Face, Twigs, the daughter of a Spanish mother and Jamaican father, told I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel that she “100 per cent” has memories of experiencing racism and feeling othered as a child. “The first day I went to school, someone wouldn’t hold my hand in case the brown came off,” Twigs recalled, heartbreakingly.

So it’s a little surprising, at least initially, to hear her describe her childhood in Cheltenham as “absolutely my secret weapon”. How so? “Because I never take anything for granted,” she replies. “I think everything in culture is absolutely incredible. Always. All the time.” Twigs makes her voice go high-pitched in a parody of excitement: “Oh my God – a new shop just opened and it’s got all these amazing clothes!”

Her guiding principle is an expression she once heard on a documentary: “As an artist, you drink from your own thumb.” “Like, if the inspiration is coming from yourself, if you’re drinking from your own thumb, then your art is always going to feel very honest and authentic and real,” Twigs says. “So that’s how I stay in tune with what I should do next”.

Rather than bring in a review for CAPRISONGS as I would do for other similar features, I want to hear more from FKA Twigs herself. Featuring collaborators such as Pa Salieu, The Weeknd, Shygirl, Dystopia, Rema, Daniel Caesar, Jorja Smith, and Unknown T, twigs spoke with Variety about one of this year’s most remarkable releases:

“With her just-released “Caprisongs” mixtape and a fresh affiliation with a new label, Atlantic, British singer-songwriter-producer FKA Twigs ups the ante on her eerily experimental sound and intimately nuanced lyrics and goes big. That’s not only because the genre-jumbling, multi-octave performer has invited brand-name featured guests such as Jorja Smith and the Weeknd to the party that is “Caprisongs.” Rather, it’s because the Gloucester, U.K.-born artist — real name Tahliah Barnett — is having any kind of party at all.

The bottom line on Twigs has long been that her most ambitious music was deeply emotional and uncompromising. Darkly avant-garde, aggressive and atmospheric, the scorched earth-soul of 2014’s “LP1” and 2019’s “Magdalene” positioned her as a cross between Billie Holiday and Siouxsie and the Banshees produced by Lee Scratch Perry. Incidents with a private life made public (accusations of sexual assault and emotional distress against actor Shia LaBeouf) made it appear that the supercharged sentiment of her music carried over into, or came from, real life. With all of this harsh reality, what may have come off as distanced to some was perhaps a defense mechanism for the sake of self-survival.

Which brings us to “Caprisongs.” While not sunny in an obvious way, FKA Twigs and her co-conspirators – old friends such as Arca, and newer associates like Mike Dean, El Guincho and the Weekend – have created a mixtape filled with bold, blunter melody and open-faced, truth-telling lyrics touched by the smiling spirit of the zodiac. To call it mainstream, as the music has been described going into “Caprisongs’s” release, skirts the fact that it is glowingly theatrical and touched by idiosyncratic new musical expressions such as squeak-rap, hyperpop and Afrobeat. With that, “Caprisongs” is her liveliest, most spirited recording.

Even though “Caprisongs” was made during a challenging time, it’s brighter, more optimistic and less angular than your previous music. How did that happen?

My other projects really touched on personal, very specific things that I’ve gone through in my life. That’s usually how I write. In the pandemic, though, there was a shared adversity, a shared sadness and loss. Because we all lost something on some scale — be it our freedom, our routine, love, a sense of security. I think it was the first time as an artist that I felt the desire to create something for other people. It would be naïve to believe that it made them feel better… but I did want to provide truth, honesty, light and joy to people, to remind them what we had, and are grateful for. Everybody needed support during this time. I certainly had with my friends and family, and I wanted to share that with the world.

Along with “Caprisongs” came news that you’ve partnered with Atlantic Records in the U.S. for “this next exciting phase of [your] art.” What were you looking for in a label?

The pandemic, for me, was a time to really think about what I wanted as an artist. When I went into my career in my youth… look, I’m from a small town in England, Gloucester. When I first got signed I was just grateful to be signed — I wanted to please, to fit in. I was happy just to have a seat at the table. It has taken me this long to think about what I would truly like. I’ve had a beautiful career, and haven’t wanted for much. But I wanted to dream big, to make music around people that look like me, think like me and understand my cultural background more. The ambition that I have — to be a girl from a small town in England, to get to New York when I was 20, it all took ambition. Maybe I wanted to experience that on a bigger level. Don’t get me wrong: Young Records [formerly called Young Turks, which will continue to be her label in the U.K.] is incredible, and we’ve had a beautiful journey, but in my heart, it was time for me to move on in certain aspects: Push myself, dream bigger, have more people experience my art.

Advance word on “Caprisongs” was that it was more mainstream. Were you aiming for a broader audience?

I’ve never really been able to turn pain into joy in the past. I’ve managed it this time, though, so I’ve learned a lot. Many of the lyrics on “Caprisongs” are still sad, definitely not ignoring how I feel and what’s been going on, but I’ve taken rhythms that I really love and tried to approach them in different ways here. The fact that I’m singing opera over some of the tracks says it all. “Caprisongs” is an expression of me returning to a side of myself that I lost over the past several years. I’ve kept who I am away, for the most part. In reality, I am a very funny, goofy person. I was a class clown growing up. Even when I’ve gone through traumatic experiences, my sense of humor gets me through and makes me strong. In that way, “Caprisongs” is about me laughing again, rediscovering that cheeky side of myself”.

It is quite right that the Gloucestershire-born Tahliah Debrett Barnett has been bestowed such a high honour by NME recently. As FKA twigs, she is an artist who has evolved since her debut. A truly unique and amazing artist, she is an inspiration to so many. Having faced quite a lot of personal struggle and some truly awful things, it is encouraging that she has been able to speak about it. In terms of the music, I truly think she is an original and innovator on the same plain as Björk. In terms of going forward, there will be a lot more albums and some huge shows. She will get a Glastonbury headline slot in the coming years and big festival bookings will come. Her fanbase will continue to swell. A remarkable human who is one of the prides of British music, I can imagine her relocating to the U.S. in the future. I think this might afford her more opportunities and convenience when it comes to working alongside big producers and artists. It will be exciting to see how FKA twigs grows and moves in the next few years. CAPRISONGS is a mixtape that everyone needs to spend time with, as it is intimate and accessible at the same time. Moving closer to the Pop mainstream, twigs definitely retains her sonic oddness, originality and personality. It is a typically intriguing and wonderful release from…

A godlike genius.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Whitney Houston - Just Whitney

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

Whitney Houston - Just Whitney

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SHE has featured…

a fair few times on my blog. I love Whitney Houston’s music, though I feel one or two of her albums are underrated and should get re-evaluated. Following the brilliant My Love Is Your Love of 1998, Just Whitney arrived in 2002. Houston's fifth studio album, it was recorded after renewing her contract with Arista for a record $100 million. In terms of the sound, Just Whitney mixes R&B ballads, R&B mid-tempo numbers, and Dance songs. It did get some good reviews, though a lot were more critical. Maybe not as strong as her earlier albums – and with few songs on Just Whitney that match her peak –, the album is still really strong and contains some of Houston’s finest vocal performances. Of course, we sadly lost Houston a decade after Just Whitney came out. I often wonder what sort of music she would be putting out were she still with us. Reaching nine on the Billboard 200 in the U.S., Just Whitney did do well commercially. It is an album that was not met with similar critical affection. I am going to bring in a couple of contrasting reviews. For anyone who has not heard Just Whitney, I would definitely urge them to. Songs like One of Those Days and Love That Man are classic Houston. I think some of those who did not view Just Whitney as great felt it was a step backwards from My Love Is Your Love. Others noted how it was four years since her previous album. Perhaps some momentum was lost. With a host of producers on Just Whitney, there was a great team behind her. The legendary Babyface was among them (he produced Try It on My Own).

I will source a couple of reviews, just to give an idea of what people said about 2002’s Just Whitney. This is what AllMusic said in their three-star review:

“The four-year wait between 2002's Just Whitney and her previous album, 1998's My Love Is Your Love, was half that between that record and its predecessor, 1990's I'm Your Baby Tonight, but it felt twice the length, since Whitney Houston's career nose-dived during those four years. She retreated from the spotlight and as she cancelled concerts, scrapped albums, and pulled out of public appearances, rumors swirled that she and husband Bobby Brown were dangerously addicted to drugs. Following a disastrous performance at the September 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert, where she looked as if she had already wasted away, the chattering reached a fever pitch and she needed to restore her reputation -- hence the title of Just Whitney, an assertion that she's returning to her basics. But that's not the half of it. As her trainwreck interview with Diane Sawyer on PrimeTime Live the week prior to Just Whitney's release proved, she's arrogantly defensive about her "bad habits" and is "Unashamed" of "the life that [she] leads," as she sings on the eighth song on this odd, disarmingly brief (under 40 minutes) self-styled comeback album. Just listen to the first single, the roundly ignored "Whatchulookinat" (produced by husband Brown, who Whitney thanks for being the best producer in the world, although he only helmed this track on the album), where she plays the victim, claiming that the gossip-mongers "messing with my reputation/ain't you got no education...don't even have a clue about what I'm facin'," coming across as if she had something to hide.

It's a sentiment that runs throughout the album -- phrases like "you don't know what I'm goin' through" and "you criticize my actions/even though you don't stand in my shoes" pop up regularly -- and undermines an album that's otherwise a not-bad set of contemporary soul. Certainly, Whitney is in better voice than rival diva Mariah Carey (whose near simultaneously released Charmbracelet found her voice in tatters) and she's fortunate enough to have Babyface for four productions, three of which are among the highlights of the album. Though Missy Elliott produces a track here, this is nowhere near as concerned with hip production as My Love was and who can blame her? When a career is on the rocks, it's best to play it safe. And that's what Just Whitney is: a measured attempt to salvage a career that's on the verge of destruction. Does it work? Well, musically, it's not bad, though few songs are memorable. It would be a good standard-issue Whitney album if it wasn't for her disarming, defensive attempt to defuse every rumor hurled in her direction. Even an otherwise innocuous duet with Brown is presented like it's the two of them against the world, nearly celebrating the fact that Bobby's voice is very strained these days. Worst of all, there seems to be nobody to check Whitney and prevent her from indulging in bad ideas. After all, surely somebody in the Houston camp should have realized that at this crucial time in her career, as she admits drug "habits," that covering "You Light Up My Life" might not be the smartest move to make right now”.

I first heard Just Whitney when it came out in December 2002. Since then, I have never really lost any attachment and respect for it. With Houston’s vocal power and brilliance very much at its best, it is an album that needs to be dug and get some love. The BBC’s review was more positive (than a lot of others):

“Once upon a time there lived an extremely gifted pop princess who possessed beauty, poise and a set of vocals that would make the clouds smile. Critics were perplexed by this seemingly perfect specimen, and swiftly termed her bland and banal. However, a bad-boy husband, 120 million album sales, and rumours of a dubious lifestyle ensured that Whitney Houston never leaves the headlines.

With one of the most exceptional voices in contemporary music, her latest album, aptly titled Just Whitney sees the diva return to her former glory with a combination of high-voltage ballads and smooth-liqueur R&B.

'Love That Man' sounds suspiciously like an ode to her much criticised hubby. Here Whitney comes across as soulful and sincere as she ooohs and aaahs in the right places. The mid-tempo track harks back to 80s soul with its simple bass line, and unfussy production.

'One Of Those Days' also has a slight retro feel to it, cleverly sampling the Isley Brothers' Between the Sheets. Modern day women will be able to relate to this one, as Whitney croons about the need to withdraw from the pressures of day-to-day living for a spot of girlie pampering.

Whitney has been experiencing her own fair share of pressure-cooker environments recently. For evidence, look no further than 'Whatchulookinat', an assertive, defiant statement against her critics. The gentle vocals, which appeared on previous tracks, have now been replaced by an authoritative Whitney stating: 'Unashamed by the life that I lead, the choices I've made, the things I have done, my belief in the one'.

The most welcomed return on Just Whitney is the incorporation of big love ballads; with the melancholic "On My Own" providing one of the album's highlights. The big-band orchestral feel to this track provides the perfect platform for Whitney to deliver vocally. Climaxing with one of those highly sustained notes sung in an octave that only the likes of Mariah, Celine and Aretha are capable of, she renders this track truly awesome.

The moral of this story is always stick to what you do best. Whitney's return to big ballads will hopefully ensure that this pop princess will be able to lead the rest of her life like a clichéd fairy tale - happily ever after”.

Nearly twenty years after it arrived, Just Whitney is an album I love. It is so sad that its creator is no longer here. One of the most influential artists of her generation, I think we need to treasure the world she left behind. Maybe not as cohesive, consistent and great as albums like 1985’s Whitney Houston, Just Whitney is still a very worthy and solid album. If it is one that you have not heard or have avoided until now, I would definitely encourage you to…

CHANGE your mind.

FEATURE: Paul McCartney at Eighty: Sixteen: Live and Let Live: An Unforgettable Stage Experience

FEATURE:

 

 

Paul McCartney at Eighty

Sixteen: Live and Let Live: An Unforgettable Stage Experience

___________

I am writing this…

 PHOTO CREDIT: (Pete Still/Redferns

on 4th March. It has been announced that Paul McCartney will headline Glastonbury. I wanted to use the feature to explore his live work. One of the most engaging live performers ever, I have never seen him myself. I would love to see Paul McCartney in concert. I am going to look at McCartney and bring in a few videos of his great live sets. A while ago, I asked on Twitter anyone who had special memories of seeing Paul McCartney live. Richard K. White said that the special '89 dress rehearsal show at Elstree Film Studios, Oct ‘93 in Paris, 2003 at Earl's Court, and the 1997 classical premiere of Standing Stone, plus the 1999 album launch of Run Devil Run at Leicester Square in London are his favourite. I am not sure when McCartney’s first live show was, but I suspect it was with The Beatles in the early-1960s. It may well date before that even! Over sixty decades of live sets, he is still on the road and thrilling fans! Next month, McCartney heads to North America for his Got Back tour. That ends on 16th June. After that, McCartney will head back to the U.K. Although he lost a couple of millions in touring revenue because of the pandemic, he will have a much busier 2022. When he turns eighty on 18th June, it will be a couple of days after his final U.S. date. I am sure he will want to relax and spend time with the family. One suspects that, Paul being Paul, half of his mind will be on the stage and delivering music to the fans! He has a Glasto headline slot to prepare for on 25th June!

As it is such a stressful and strange time in the world, he will not be able to play any war-affected countries like Ukraine. He did recently share a post where he performed in the Ukraine in 2008 in Independence Square. Everyone who has seen McCartney play has their views as to which gig was best. I have heard some say McCartney’s voice has deteriorated and he is not as good as he was. I have heard from many more who say his voice is as fine as ever! As he is nearly eighty, he is hardly going to have the same range and power. Even though he is older than he once was, McCartney’s stamina and charisma is as strong as it ever was! I have read reviews of recent gigs where reviews are blown away. Here is what Variety had to say when Macca played Dodger Stadium in 2019:

“Dodger Dogs were doing a robust business Saturday night during Paul McCartney’s appearance at the stadium that shares the delicacy’s name. He is not one of those performers who tries imposing dietary restrictions on the venues he plays, if that were even possible on the rarefied stadium tour circuit. Nor did food or any kind of health regimen arise as a subject as he bantered with the crowd. Nonetheless, it was the best 170-minute commercial that going meatless ever had, implicitly, as 57,000 mostly younger attendees scratched their heads in shared wonderment at how they, too, might be able to pull off a pretty unassailable three-hour show — or whatever its commoner equivalent would be — when they get to 77, seeing the superstar in all his vegetarian fighting trim.

 It wasn’t just McCartney that was paunchless. That could be said for the 38-song set itself, which flew by as if it were dashed off in a half-hour — something we promise to never say about anybody else’s 38-song set, should we ever come across another one, because it won’t be true. The food and merch lines were so ridiculously long ahead of showtime because anyone who’d done any kind of recon at all knew this would be three hours without potty breaks built in — that is, without any costume changes (McCartney joked, as he always does, that taking his jacket off constituted the only one), but also without any duff tracks. If anyone had written the equivalent to one of those “When can you go to the bathroom during the new “Avengers’ movie?” articles… well, they might have written in “Come On to Me,” or one of the five other 21st century songs sprinkled in among the classics, but they would have been wrong. When you have the fellow who is the singularly most multi-talented artist in the history of popular music passing through town, as Steven Tyler would say, you don’t want to miss a breezy thing.

There is an inevitable sense of disappointment that accompanies any McCartney tour, though, maybe especially now that we might reasonably wonder how many more he has left in him. That’s right, disappointment. (Put the pitchforks away.) He fosters it by populating the hours leading up to showtime inside a stadium with a DJ set of his other greatest (and some not-so-great) hits — literally hundreds of songs beloved by somebody, if not the world, that he is not going to play later that night. And so the hardcore fan sits there thinking, “Damn  — I guess ‘Big Barn Bed’ over the PA means he’s not going to celebrate the recent deluxe re-release of ‘Red Rose Speedway’ in this show?” That is exactly what it means, and the odds of our ever getting the full-album “Back to the Egg” tour we’ve been waiting for also diminish by the day. The less hardcore fan may also notice that not only does McCartney’s show not have much room for truly deep cuts, but it also doesn’t leave space for some of the less deep ones that are being rotated out, like, on this tour, “Yesterday.” But they probably aren’t noticing till the next day. Three assaultive hours of pop greatness has a way of making you forget an expectation or two.

So much of the show did fall along the lines of what McCartney buffs have come to expect that, although big surprises aren’t necessary, it was a joyful occasion when they arrived. Nothing was deviated from in the actual set list, but McCartney is building up a pretty good track record now for who might show up to help out on “Helter Skelter” in the encore segment. In Las Vegas June 28, it was Tyler, taking a night off from Aerosmith’s residency to sit in. At Dodger Stadium, it was Ringo Starr, taking a night off from not being a Beatle so that he could help half-reform the band by playing drums on both that and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise).” It was difficult to actually hear whatever had been mic-ed up on the drum kit that was rolled in for Starr over the steady beat that tour drummer Abraham Laboriel Jr. was kicking up, but we could at least see Ringo, grinning up a storm and seeming to want to renew the blisters he’d worked up when first recording “Skelter,” despite his limited time to do so. There were at least a few folks on hand, going up into the eightysomething fan division, who’d seen Ringo and Paul the last time they played together at Dodger Stadium, in 1966, at what turned out to be the Beatles’ next-to-last show. You didn’t have to be there, then, of course, to find this reunion deeply sentimental — and to get a thrill out of the fact that it was expended on two rockers as unsentimental as the “Pepper’s” reprise and “Helter Skelter.” Bono stole (okay, borrowed) that song, and finally the freakin’ Beatles were stealing it back”.

I could bring in a load of reviews from those glowing about McCartney’s live wonder. In 2018, McCartney made a surprise return to the Cavern Club (which The Beatles helped to make famous). That gig was shown on T.V., but it is not available on the BBC iPlayer at the moment. I would love to see that put back up. I am sure the BBC or other stations will dedicate a night to McCartney in June when he is eighty. His stage performances are such a big reason why he is so adored and respected! Whether, as a fan of McCartney, you prefer his gigs with The Beatles, Wings or solo, he has delivered more than his fair share of classics through the years! PopMatters listed their ten favourite McCartney live performances back in 2014. I have selected a few:

“I’m Down” (The Beatles, Shea Stadium, 1965)

Due to the Beatles’ short-lived touring period and a lack of technology at the time, there are few live recordings of the biggest band in rock ‘n’ roll history. However, their 1965 Shea Stadium concert was filmed for a rarely seen/heard TV special. And this dizzying spectacle was the highlight. Spoilsports usually point out that the band clearly acts as if they are under the influence of some illegal drug here, but what a true music fan sees/hears are master musicians celebrating their relatively newfound immense fame. Paul later played homage to his part of that epic performance four decades later on his Good Evening New York City CD/DVD set.

“Soily” (Wings Over America, 1976)

There’s rumored to be at least seven different studio versions of “Soily” recorded, but this live cut remains the definitive release. Paul performs lyrics like “the cat in satin trousers says it’s oily” as if his very life depends upon it. And perhaps those lyrics are purposely nonsensical. It leaves fans with nothing to do but rock out.

“Freedom” (The Concert for New York City, 2001)

It’s a little ironic that an Englishman wrote a song that perfectly expresses the spirit of American freedom, but that’s just what everyone needed to hear in the days following 9/11. Assisted by a stomping, cheering crowd of family members affected by the tragedy, first-responders, and those out to help a good cause, this simple song turned into an uplifting moment of unity”.

Very soon, those in North America will get to see Paul McCartney play for them. He played the U.S. in 2002 (and has done a lot since). The Back in the U.S. live album is brilliant! 2022 is a year when we are experiencing horror and tragedy in Ukraine and around the world. It will be sobering to play gigs - though McCartney has this ability to bring people together. An affinity for other people and cultures. I am sure Glastonbury is on the cards, and it will be one of the most emotional and important dates of his life. A peerless live performer who, from the late-1950s and early-1960s to now has enraptured people around the globe. Cutting his teeth with The Beatles and racking up hundreds of dates since then, he is such a professional! Late last year, The New Yorker spoke with McCartney. In a detailed interview, we discover more about the great man. I forgot to mention Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back documentary-film. It culminates in The Beatles playing their legendary rooftop gig. That is, perhaps, one of the most famous live performances ever. McCartney, throughout, is having a great time, and he is definitely in his element (you can feel the relief when the band get together and gel on the roof, after a difficult period trying to get songs recorded for Let It Be). In the feature from The New Yorker, they make reference to McCartney as a live performer:

“As a musician and a performer onstage, McCartney remains phenomenal, playing three-hour concerts—five or six times longer than the Beatles’ shows in their heyday—to enormous crowds. He sings Beatles songs in their original keys and at the top of his register: “I can’t be bothered to transpose them.” He seems eager never to disappoint. As his daughter Mary told me, “Look, he’s an entertainer! You’ll see him play ‘Live and Let Die’ and he’s surrounded at the piano by all these pyrotechnics, all these flames, and I’m, like, ‘Dad, I can feel the heat from those flames! Do you have to do that?’ But he says the audience loves it. I say, ‘Don’t do that to yourself, it’s a huge risk!’ But he won’t be told”.

Before he turns eighty, I wanted to explore and celebrate Paul McCartney in a number of ways. I had to mention him as a live artist and how the audiences love him – and he, in turn, loves them. He was born to be on the stage it seems. I have not seen him myself, though those who have all agree it is among the greatest experiences of their lives. We will see the master play the U.S. next month and here in the U.K. soon after. Whilst the catalogue has expanded and the demand has increased, McCartney still produces a dazzling show and has this verve and dedication to the road and fans around the planet. The iconic McCartney is still going strong…

AFTER all of these years.

FEATURE: Before We Flip the Vinyl… Kate Bush’s Best Side One/First Half Closers

FEATURE:

 

Before We Flip the Vinyl…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional shot for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay 

Kate Bush’s Best Side One/First Half Closers

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IN previous features…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

I have ranked Kate Bush’s opening and closing tracks. I have ranked her albums and pretty much covered every angle. I have not ranked her album side one closers. These are the songs that would end the first side of a vinyl or, in the case of a double vinyl, the first side of the first vinyl (rather than the second side). Maybe we would not notice on a CD or streaming, but there is great importance when it comes to the tracks that end the first side/half. It keeps us gripped at the end, so that we are excited flipping over that album! Bush is masterful when it comes to sequencing and making sure the strongest tracks are assorted so that you get this even experience. Because of that, it has been tough ranking the songs! In the case of the 2005 double album, Aerial, it is the final song on the first side of the first vinyl; the same goes for Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow. Some might be surprised regarding the number-one choice. I am not necessarily judging it based on which side closer is my favourite song. More, which track, in the context of the entire album, ends the first side best. Here are the side one closers from her amazing…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985

TEN studio albums.

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10. Egypt – Never for Ever

Album Release Date: 8th September, 1980

Producers: Kate Bush/Jon Kelly

Label: EMI

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/never-for-ever-0e80c456-fc19-41c7-85b8-6574e9091658/lp

Review:

“You listen to all of these records in sequence and good as The Kick Inside is, it’s just very apparent that the songwriting has gone up a gear with Never Forever. Strident, diverse, and intense Never Forever is the last Bush album with batshit mental prog art, the last album with an outside producer (though she co-produced with Jon Kelly), and the last record before she started using her beloved Fairlight synthesiser/sampler. It was also her third album in three years, that preempted the first meaningful gap in her career - you could point at the ways in which it predicts The Dreaming and call it a transitional album, but the truth is Never for Ever feels like the [apotheosis] of Leotard-era Kate Bush. The songs are just dazzlingly strong and distinctive. There are singles: ‘Babooska’ is a lot of fun, and the closing one-two of the eerie ‘Army Dreamers’ and the apocalyptic ‘Breathing’ is remarkable. But there’s a hell of a lot of little-remembered gold amongst the album tracks: the breakneck ‘Violin’ and tongue-in-cheek murder ballad ‘The Wedding List’ are really extraordinarily good pieces of songwriting. (8)” – Drowned in Sound

9. Heads We're Dancing – The Sensual World

Album Release Date: 17th September, 1989

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-sensual-world-e4747d6f-f1a1-4c91-bc7d-c5562cef6288

Review:

“An enchanting songstress, Kate Bush reflects the most heavenly views of love on the aptly titled The Sensual World. The follow-up to Hounds of Love features Bush unafraid to be a temptress, vocally and lyrically. She's a romantic, frolicking over lust and love, but also a lover of life and its spirituality. The album's title track exudes the most sensually abrasive side of Bush, but she is also one to remain emotionally intact with her heart and head. The majority of The Sensual World beams with a carefree spirit of strength and independence. "Love and Anger," which features blistering riffs by Bush's mentor and cohort David Gilmour, thrives on self-analysis -- typically cathartic of Bush. Michael Nyman's delicate string arrangements allow the melodic "Reaching Out" to simply arrive, freely floating with Bush's lush declaration ("reaching out for the star/reaching out for the star that explodes") for she's always searching for a common peace, a commonality to make comfort. What makes this artist so intriguing is her look toward the future -- she appears to look beyond what's present and find a peculiar celestial atmosphere in which human beings do exist. She's conscious of technology on "Deeper Understanding" and of a greater life on the glam rock experimental "Rocket's Tail (For Rocket)," yet she's still intrinsic to the reality of an individual's heart. "Between a Man and a Woman" depicts pressure and heartbreak, but it's the beauty of "This Woman's Work" that makes The Sensual World the outstanding piece of work that it is. She possesses maternal warmth that's surely inviting, and it's something that's made her one of the most prolific female singer/songwriters to emerge during the 1980s. She's never belonged to a core scene. Bush's intelligence, both as an artist and as a woman, undoubtedly casts her in a league of her own” – AllMusic

8. Lily – Director’s Cut

Album Release Date: 16th May, 2011

Producer: Kate Bush

Labels: Fish People/EMI

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/director-s-cut-23cb82bf-539f-4cfd-a97b-a846f8e0dbdf

Review:

“During her early career, Kate Bush released albums regularly despite her reputation as a perfectionist in the studio. Her first five were released within seven years. After The Hounds of Love in 1985, however, the breaks between got longer: The Sensual World appeared in 1989 and The Red Shoes in 1993. Then, nothing before Aerial, a double album issued in 2005. It's taken six more years to get The Director's Cut, an album whose material isn't new, though its presentation is. Four of this set's 11 tracks first appeared on The Sensual World, while the other seven come from The Red Shoes. Bush's reasons for re-recording these songs is a mystery. She does have her own world-class recording studio, and given the sounds here, she's kept up with technology. Some of these songs are merely tweaked, and pleasantly so, while others are radically altered. The two most glaring examples are "Flower of the Mountain" (previously known as "The Sensual World") and "This Woman's Work." The former intended to use Molly Bloom's soliloquy from James Joyce's novel Ulysses as its lyric; Bush was refused permission by his estate. That decision was eventually reversed; hence she re-recorded the originally intended lyrics. And while the arrangement is similar, there are added layers of synth and percussion. Her voice is absent the wails and hiccupy gasps of her youthful incarnation. These have been replaced by somewhat huskier, even more luxuriant and elegant tones. On the latter song, the arrangement of a full band and Michael Nyman's strings are replaced by a sparse, reverbed electric piano which pans between speakers. This skeletal arrangement frames Bush's more prominent vocal which has grown into these lyrics and inhabits them in full: their regrets, disappointments, and heartbreaks with real acceptance. She lets that voice rip on "Lilly," supported by a tougher, punchier bassline, skittering guitar efx, and a hypnotic drum loop. Bush's son Bertie makes an appearance as the voice of the computer (with Auto-Tune) on "Deeper Understanding." On "RubberBand Girl," Bush pays homage to the Rolling Stones' opening riff from "Street Fighting Man" in all its garagey glory (which one suspects was always there and has now been uncovered). The experience of The Director's Cut, encountering all this familiar material in its new dressing, is more than occasionally unsettling, but simultaneously, it is deeply engaging and satisfying” – AllMusic

7. Oh England My Lionheart - Lionheart

Album Release Date: 13th November, 1978

Producer: Andrew Powell (assisted by Kate Bush)

Label: EMI

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/lionheart-60077c9a-5fb5-4714-821a-280d80024a96

Review:

“Proving that the English admired Kate Bush's work, 1978's Lionheart album managed to reach the number six spot in her homeland while failing to make a substantial impact in North America. The single "Hammer Horror" went to number 44 on the U.K. singles chart, but the remaining tracks from the album spin, leap, and pirouette with Bush's vocal dramatics, most of them dissipating into a mist rather than hovering around long enough to be memorable. Her fairytale essence wraps itself around tracks like "In Search of Peter Pan," "Kashka From Baghdad," and "Oh England My Lionheart," but unravels before any substance can be heard. "Wow" does the best job at expressing her voice as it waves and flutters through the chorus, with a melody that shimmers in a peculiar but compatible manner. Some of the tracks, such as "Coffee Homeground" or "In the Warm Room," bask in their own subtle obscurity, a trait that Bush improved upon later in her career but couldn't secure on this album. Lionheart acts as a gauge more than a complete album, as Bush is trying to see how many different ways she can sound vocally colorful, even enigmatic, rather than focus on her material's content and fluidity. Hearing Lionheart after listening to Never for Ever or The Dreaming album, it's apparent how quickly Bush had progressed both vocally and in her writing in such a short time” – AllMusic

6. Mrs. Bartolozzi – Aerial

Album Release Date: 7th November, 2005

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/aerial-90730658-35e2-49ab-93d8-9c3e7897c0f4

Review:

“In the gap since 1993's so-so The Red Shoes, the Kate Bush myth that began fomenting when she first appeared on Top of the Pops, waving her arms and shrilly announcing that Cath-ee had come home-uh, grew to quite staggering proportions. She was variously reported to have gone bonkers, become a recluse and offered her record company some home-made biscuits instead of a new album. In reality, she seems to have been doing nothing more peculiar than bringing up a son, moving house and watching while people made up nutty stories about her.

Aerial contains a song called How to Be Invisible. It features a spell for a chorus, precisely what you would expect from the batty Kate Bush of popular myth. The spell, however, gently mocks her more obsessive fans while espousing a life of domestic contentment: "Hem of anorak, stem of wallflower, hair of doormat."

Domestic contentment runs through Aerial's 90-minute duration. Recent Bush albums have been filled with songs in which the extraordinary happened: people snogged Hitler, or were arrested for building machines that controlled the weather. Aerial, however, is packed with songs that make commonplace events sound extraordinary. It calls upon Renaissance musicians to serenade her son. Viols are bowed, arcane stringed instruments plucked, Bush sings beatifically of smiles and kisses and "luvv-er-ly Bertie". You can't help feeling that this song is going to cause a lot of door slamming and shouts of "oh-God-mum-you're-so-embarrassing" when Bertie reaches the less luvv-er-ly age of 15, but it's still delightful.

The second CD is devoted to a concept piece called A Sky of Honey in which virtually nothing happens, albeit very beautifully, with delicious string arrangements, hymnal piano chords, joyous choruses and bursts of flamenco guitar: the sun comes up, birds sing, Bush watches a pavement artist at work, it rains, Bush has a moonlight swim and watches the sun come up again. The pavement artist is played by Rolf Harris. This casting demonstrates Bush's admirable disregard for accepted notions of cool, but it's tough on anyone who grew up watching him daubing away on Rolf's Cartoon Club. "A little bit lighter there, maybe with some accents," he mutters. You keep expecting him to ask if you can guess what it is yet.

Domestic contentment even gets into the staple Bush topic of sex. Ever since her debut, The Kick Inside, with its lyrics about incest and "sticky love", Bush has given good filth: striking, often disturbing songs that, excitingly, suggest a wildly inventive approach to having it off. Here, on the lovely and moving piano ballad Mrs Bartolozzi, she turns watching a washing machine into a thing of quivering erotic wonder. "My blouse wrapping around your trousers," she sings. "Oh, and the waves are going out/ my skirt floating up around my waist." Laundry day in the Bush household must be an absolute hoot” – The Guardian

5. Leave It Open – The Dreaming

Album Release Date: 13th September, 1982

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-dreaming-03e10ee0-e2d3-4b54-948e-0afcb7e7c290

Review:

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

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

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

4. Lily – The Red Shoes

Album Release Date: 2nd November, 1993

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Buy: https://store.hmv.com/store/music/vinyl/the-red-shoes

Review:

“The album’s musical unwieldiness is set against Bush’s relatively diaristic songwriting.The Red Shoes is the most confessional album by an artist not known for, or especially interested in, confession. Bush has always taken advantage of the elusive space between art and reality, conjuring characters, rarely doing interviews, always aware of getting burned by a lingering spotlight. “That’s what all art’s about—a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can’t, in real life,” she said around the time of The Red Shoes. “It’s all make believe, really.” The album falters when she falls short of this magical realism. When it comes to her songwriting, Kate Bush’s stories are almost always more engrossing than Kate Bush.

The record’s personal themes of loss, perseverance, and memory coalesce on “Moments of Pleasure,” one of Bush’s most affecting ballads. She sings of the small memories of life—laughing at dumb jokes, snowy evenings high above New York City, a piece of wisdom from her mother—as Oscar-nominated composer Michael Kamen builds these quiet moments into monuments with a heroic string arrangement. Bush ends the song with a series of mini eulogies: for her aunt, her longtime guitarist, her dance partner. “Just being alive, it can really hurt,” she belts at the center of the track, stating the obvious with such conviction that it sounds revelatory” – Pitchfork

3. Cloudbusting – Hounds of Love

Album Release Date: 16th September, 1985

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/hounds-of-love-d3743f1e-51e3-4337-b759-f47b26c0a247/lp

Review:

“Kate at the young age of 22 had already recorded four albums with Hounds of Love being the follow up to her 1982 release The Dreaming. The Dreaming was the first time Bush had been in complete control in the sound booth as a producer. The success of her debut album The Kick Inside won her significant creative independence and patience from her record label a rarity in this period of popular music. From the beginning of her career, Kate was known as a renegade who did not play by the usual record industry rules.

A topic that is not often discussed when looking at Kate’s accomplishments was her ability to create a way to use the corrupting music label industry for her own devices. That skill alone is enough to make her a legend. Her musical abilities and risk-taking in her music make her a trailblazer. Very early in her fledgeling career, she realized the importance of artistic control. She set up her own publishing company and management after her disappointment in her treatment by the marketing at EMI and additionally being rushed by the label to record Lionheart. She always felt that Lionheart had not turned out as good as she would have liked. Her success on the charts would enable her to demand more time to record and enable her to release music only when it met her high standards.

In 1978 Kate was all of 19 when she topped the UK charts with Wuthering Heights off of The Kick Inside becoming the first female to achieve a UK #1 with a self-written song. As she moved through her various releases she looked to pushing the envelope and attaining artistic perfection. She quickly became know for her amazing vocal range, exquisite stylings and need to control and make perfect all her recording efforts. EMI was relatively undemanding about Kate’s work and level of success until the aftermath of The Dreaming. The Dreaming was ambitiously unlike Kate’s prior works and did not have a recognizable hit single. The album did not perform commercially as well as her prior efforts and the label put pressure on Bush to knock the next release out of the park. It was not for lack of effort that The Dreaming failed to find an audience; unfortunately, the surreal sonics and themes did not make for easy listening. Bush was exhausted after touring for The Dreaming. She decided after three years of unrelenting work to take a break. With the decision, she found her self in unmoored territory and was confused and disoriented by not to have do promotional work or perform studio duties. She also experienced writer's block for a period of about five months. Bush described this period as such, “It’s very difficult when you’ve been working for years doing one album after another. You need fresh things to simulate you. That’s why I decided to take a bit of the summer off and spend time with my boyfriend and with family and friends, just relaxing. Nor being Kate Bush the singer, just being myself.” In the summer of 83, she built a 48 track studio in the barn behind her newly purchased farmhouse. This event energized and inspired Bush to begin what would become Hounds of Love.

In January of 1984 Kate in her home studio at Wickham farm, Welling, England she began recording demos and enhancing them rather than re-recording them. Five months into the work she began overdubbing and mixing the album. The entire process took a year. Musically the album would be a marriage of traditional world instruments and utterly futuristic machinery, particularly the Fairlight synthesizer, which was the 80’s version of today’s Pro Tools. Always looking to expand her sonic palette she utilized everything out there that was available and a few things only she seemed to know existed. In the studio, Kate performed alchemy blending literary influences and a definite storyline especially on side two of the album. Throughout “Hounds of Love” would be loaded with Kate’s trademark melodramatic emotionalism and surreal musicality. The result was not only a winning release but a masterwork. “Hounds of Love” would be Bush’s 2nd chart-topper in the UK and her best selling studio album to date. It would go double platinum and by 1998 sell 1.1 million worldwide and actually make it across the pond reaching the top 40 on the Billboard 200. The singles are all taken from the first side of the album and were; Running up that Hill, Cloudbursting, Hounds of Love and The Big Sky. It was the great success that Kate achieved that finally brought her to the attention of a larger American audience. As per usual American exposure to a seminal British artist was a day late and a dollar short but led to a significant following of dedicated new fans on the US side of the pond.

There is an inherent dichotomy to “Hounds of Love” and it has a definite split personality. Kate fully utilized the format of two sides on a recording. The first side is the most approachable yet contains numerous deep and esoteric themes. That side presented everything anyone familiar with Kate’s prior work had come to expect. It examined many Freudian themes, the relationships of parents and their children, anxiety, Eros, ecstasy and nature. Throughout there is a total emotional commitment from Bush that is physically palpable. The second side would be more ambitious and more difficult for the indifferent less adventurous listener to grasp. The second side or as it is titled, The Ninth Wave is beyond almost anything attempted at the time. It was a concept album to the nth degree, cohesive and evocative as it dealt with death and the unimaginable. Where the first side was life and Eros The Ninth Wave is Thanatos and facing imminent death; the loss of control. The Ninth Wave is extraordinary, mystic and ultimately epic” – XS Noise

2. Wuthering Heights – The Kick Inside

Album Release Date: 17th February, 1978

Producer: Andrew Powell

Labels: EMI (U.S.)/Harvest (U.S.)

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/kate-bush/the-kick-inside-7a5278e6-76b3-40e7-a55f-2d9471a311ae/lp

Review:

“In the beginning she was seen as a prodigy, not an enigma, but this would change as she gradually faded from view. The touring stopped first, the interviews became less frequent and less revealing; eventually, after 1993, she dropped out of sight altogether, only reconnecting with the world unexpectedly, at great intervals.

We are currently experiencing a minor reconnection. There is no new album, or live show, but there is, How to Be Invisible, a book of her lyrics, plus her albums remastered and reissued as three boxed sets.

Part of me frets this ordering of her legacy might be a coded retirement – would she do this if a new record was underway? The less tinfoil hat bit of me notes she has always tinkered with her back catalogue, and that there’s probably no higher meaning beyond some fairly typical pre-Christmas action from a heritage artist.

Anyway, whether by accident or design, Volume One binds the leotard years up as a distinct phase. The Kick Inside, (1978), released when she was just 19, and The Dreaming (1982), which came out when she was 24, are vastly different records, but they were marked by a relatively cohesive aesthetic that she’d largely leave behind afterwards

I am banging on about leotards because again, it’s much easier to stick to mundane facts than actually explain Kate Bush. And ‘Wuthering Heights’, her debut single, most famous song, and sole number one, sounds borderline comical if you stick to the mundane facts.

You can call it a musical adaptation of Emily Brontë's sole novel, but is that really why it works? It’s easier to laugh it off as an eccentric endeavour than really interrogate its power, than admit the way she sings the word "window" is genuinely astonishing, than contemplate the fact she’s somehow drilled her way into deeper emotional chambers simply inaccessible by most artists. I think maybe the key to ‘Wuthering Heights’ - and most of her music - is that it goes too far: the voice, the dance, the subject matter; anybody else would have stopped way before; it’s Wagnerian in scale and intensity, only tangentially bound to the mortal form of a pop song. It’s beyond most artists’ imaginations to write this sort of stuff, and I think it’s beyond most writers’ imaginations to write about this sort of stuff.

I am absolutely including myself in that, btw. But her PR has sent me these lovely vinyls and I guess I need to pass critical comment, so here we are, maybe let’s not drag this out.

One funny thing about The Kick Inside is that from the atmospheric bleed in of ‘Moving’, it sounds like a Kate Bush-produced album - which of course it isn’t, the little-known Andrew Powell doing the honours.. There is a maturity to the songwriting that is matched by the musicianship: it doesn’t feel like there’s any attempt to patronise the teenager, or market her as such. I think it must have been a pretty extraordinary record to hear at the time. Peculiarly, though, The Kick Inside is almost dated by the strength of its fundamentals: in some respects it sounds like a less good version of what she’d do later, and I wonder if a less slick version of her debut might have stood up a bit better, historically. But detail and polish were always her thing, in a good way, and to say she'd bottled nothing of her youth would be wrong: both ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Man with the Child In His Eyes’ have a gorgeous gaucheness. At the end of the day it still just about nudges classic status, but it would be eclipsed soon enough (plus sue me but the ’86 ‘Wuthering Heights’ is way better) (8)” – Drowned in Sound

1. Lake Tahoe – 50 Words for Snow

Album Release Date: 21st November, 2011

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: Fish People

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=386159&ev=mb

Review:

“Six years after Aerial’s bursts of summer sound, Kate Bush’s winter album arrives, each track exploring the long Christmas months. They reflect a season which brings out the profound and absurd in equal measure – the feelings of longing and loneliness that emerge as the dark nights bed in, the party-hat silliness that pops up when the same nights stretch out. 50 Words for Snow initially aims for the former value, with Bush’s son Bertie taking the opening vocal on Snowflake. "I was born in a cloud," he sings eerily, like the ghost of Little Lord Fauntleroy; he is constantly falling, all "ice and dust and light". His mother keeps appearing – he sees her "long white neck" – promising to find him, but we don’t find out if she does. On paper, it’s a lovely concept. On record, it treads an exceedingly fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous.

But this is classic Kate. On 1993’s The Red Shoes, Prince had to play second fiddle to Lenny Henry on Why Should I Love You?; on Aerial, Rolf Harris performed on two songs. But Bush has always been almost wilfully uncool, and this time around is no different. Take Stephen Fry taking the lead on the title-track, whispering fifty synonyms for the white stuff, from the lovely "blown from polar fur" to the frankly daft "phlegm de neige". It sounds embarrassingly cold, perhaps because of his ubiquity – if only Vincent Price was still alive, or Ian McKellen was available. Another guest, Elton John, fares much better on Snowed in at Wheeler Street, partly because his voice takes on a gentler quality than usual, partly because the song maps the movements of lost love very beautifully, and partly because John was Bush’s first hero; you can hear this depth of feeling as their voices mesh together.

The album only really reaches the heights Bush has set for herself when she appears centre stage. Her voice is noticeably older now, full of earth, heft and husk, and works stunningly well with little more than her piano’s sustain pedal – especially in Misty, her already widely-commented-upon love song for a snowman. Giving Raymond Briggs’ famous concept an X-rated twist – he is "melting in my hand", the next morning "the sheets are soaking" – its 13 minutes are spellbinding. The album’s finale, Among Angels, is even better, a torch-song for a friend in need, with a stunning central lyric: "I can see angels standing around you / They shimmer like mirrors in summer / But you don’t know it." Throughout, the piano sets a magical mood, all dark, loud and heavy.

Just after the song’s start, you also hear Bush stop for a second, take her fingers off the keys, and whisper the word "fine". In Lake Tahoe, the song also breaks suddenly at 8.44, leaving Bush to exhale one sharp, startling breath. 50 Words for Snow may threaten to lose its way in the blizzard sometimes, but it is moments like these – jolting us from her world for a moment, reminding us of how all-embracing her talent can be – that show just how much she can move us with her fire and ice” – BBC

FEATURE: Now There You Go Again… Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams at Forty-Five: The Iconic and Timeless Popularity of a Masterpiece

FEATURE:

 

 

Now There You Go Again…

IN THIS PHOTO: Fleewtood Mac’s Stevie Nicks on board a press boat in the Rotterdam Harbor in April 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Schultz 

Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams at Forty-Five: The Iconic and Timeless Popularity of a Masterpiece

___________

EVEN though I recently…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Fleetwood Mac (John McVie, Christine McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham) in 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Hutson/Getty

wrote about Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours turning forty-five, I wanted to supplement and accompany it with a feature about, in my view, its greatest song. Released as a single on 24th March, 1977, I will mark the forty-fifth anniversary of a song that is timeless and hugely iconic. A dreamy and beautiful song from Stevie Nicks, I am amazed by Dreams. Given the fact there was turmoil in the group, and she and Lindsey Buckingham were going through a painful break-up, it is brilliant that such a beautiful moment came from it! Buckingham took the lead when it came to a lot of the decisions around the recording and propduction of Rumours. I think that he would have had very little time for collaborating with Nicks and entertaining songs from her. Dreams is only one of several brilliant tracks she wrote (another album highlight, Gold Dust Woman, is hers). Following the album opener, Second Hand News, we get this wonderful song from Nicks. The fact that songs from Buckingham and Nicks open the album shows that, in some respects, there was a connection between them. It is the perfect opening couple of tracks. I love Dreams more than any other song on Rumours. The timeless cut is so adored decades after its release. It gained new attention in late-2020 because of a viral TikTok video created by Nathan Apodaca. Dreams was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone's 2021 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

I want to bring in a couple of interesting articles that tell the story of Dreams, and why it has such a famed and beloved legacy. Rhino wrote about Dreams for a feature on 24th March, 2021:

“It's the Fleetwood Mac meme that perfectly encapsulates the vast dichotomy between what it took to create the band's Rumours album, and the effect all of that internal turmoil has had on its listeners for years: A woman is blissfully listening to music on headphones, completely unaware of the massive brawl that's erupted behind her.

The drama that was tearing Fleetwood Mac apart served as fuel for one of the greatest and best-selling rock albums of all time. Among the five members, there was a pair of couples: singer Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, and keyboardist Christine McVie and bassist John McVie. Both were going through brutal separations during the making of Rumours. As if that wasn't enough, drummer Mick Fleetwood--whose own marriage was falling apart--would make things even more volatile by having an affair with Nicks in the middle of the chaos.

Those personal power struggles spilled over into the recording process. It didn't help that the band was obsessed with consuming hard drugs at a record pace: "It was the craziest period of our lives," Mick Fleetwood admitted to Q in 1997. "We went four or five weeks without sleep, doing a lot of drugs. I'm talking about cocaine in such quantities that, at one point, I thought I was really going insane."

For Stevie Nicks, the chaos would drive her to find peace elsewhere in the Record Plant recording studio: "One day when I wasn't required in the main studio, I took a Fender Rhodes piano and went into another studio that was said to belong to Sly of Sly and the Family Stone," Nicks told Blender in 2005. "It was a black-and-red room, with a sunken pit in the middle where there was a piano, and a big black-velvet bed with Victorian drapes."

Alone in Sly Stone's old space, Nicks went to work: "I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me," she recalled. "I found a drum pattern, switched my little cassette player on and wrote 'Dreams' in about 10 minutes. Right away I liked the fact that I was doing something with a dance beat because that made it a little unusual for me."

Nicks knew she had something special, so she presented the demo to the rest of the band. Christine McVie, for one, was not impressed: "It was just three chords and one note in the left hand I thought 'This is really boring.'"

Even though Nicks and Buckingham were in the middle of their bitter breakup, the artist in him had no choice but to agree that the song was good.

 "It was a rough take, just me singing solo and playing piano," Nicks said of the moment. "Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it and then looked up at me and smiled."

For Nicks, it was a bittersweet validation" "I wrote 'Dreams,' and because I'm the chiffony chick who believes in fairies and angels, and Lindsey is a hardcore guy, it comes out differently," she wrote in the liner notes to the Rumours reissue in 2013. "Lindsey is saying go ahead and date other men and go live your crappy life, and [I'm] singing about the rain washing you clean. We were coming at it from opposite angles, but we were really saying the same exact thing."

Rumours came out in early February 1977. "Dreams" was released as the second single from the album on March 24, 1977. It took a quick trip up the charts, peaking at #1 for the week of June 18, 1977. It held the top spot for just a single week, replaced by Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give it Up (Pt. 1)" on the following chart. "Dreams" still stands as Fleetwood Mac's sole US #1 on the Hot 100.

"What was going on between us was sad," Nicks sighed to the Daily Mail in 2009. "We were couples who couldn't make it through. But, as musicians, we still respected each other -- and we got some brilliant songs out of it”.

Because of platforms like TikTok and the endless popularity of Rumours, Dreams will always be played and reach new people. I think, more than any other song on Rumours, it has this different life and significance of its own. One of Stevie Nicks’ most moving and beautiful songs, I hope that it gets a lot new love on its forty-fifth anniversary. This Wikipedia article discusses the legacy of the incomparable Dreams:

“In the United States, "Dreams" reached the number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on 18 June 1977, and held it for one week. On the Adult Contemporary chart, "Dreams" was Fleetwood Mac's highest-charting single during the 1970s where it reached number 11. In the UK Singles Chart, "Dreams" went to number 24, staying in the top 40 for eight weeks.

Since its initial release, "Dreams" has re-entered the charts on various occasions. It picked up two additional weeks on the UK charts in 2011 following the airing of the Glee Rumours episode. In 2018, "Dreams" returned to the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart at number 14, re-popularized by a viral tweet. The song also returned to the New Zealand charts for one week in 2019 at number 40. The song then re-entered the New Zealand charts on 5 October 2020 at number 28, and has since spent 71 consecutive weeks in the top 40, whilst also reaching a new peak of 3 consecutive weeks at number 6. The same year, it also entered the Irish charts for the first time”.

A happy anniversary to one of the most enduring and greatest songs ever. During the strain and struggle of recording Rumours, something truly astonishing was created by Stevie Nicks. A number one track in the U.S., Dreams boasts one of the best performances from Fleetwood Mac on Rumours. Gaining new life and relevance forty-five years after its release, the staggering Dreams will ensure and move people…

FOR ever more.

FEATURE: Your Songs: Elton John at Seventy-Five: His Five Essential Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

Your Songs

IN THIS PHOTO: Elton John in 1975 

Elton John at Seventy-Five: His Five Essential Albums

___________

WHLST I have…

 PHOTO CREDIT: David Redfern/Redferns

sort of already done this when I included Elton John in A Buyer’s Guide, because he is seventy-five on 25th March, I wanted to highlight his five greatest studio albums. 2016’s Wonderful Crazy Night is his most-recent album in terms of new recordings (2021’s Regimental Sgt. Zippo is composed of material from 1967 and 1968 and is a vinyl-only release). With thirty or so studio albums under his belt, I will drill down to the best five from the regal and supreme Elton John. I am sure there will be features and celebrations when it comes to marking his seventy-fifth birthday closer to 25th March. For today, I wanted to highlight his albums that you need to listen to and get. From his 1969 debut, Empty Sky, to the 2021 collaboration album, The Lockdown Sessions, John has given the world so much phenomenal music. Here are the greatest five albums from…

 A true music icon.

______________

Elton John

Release Date: 10th April, 1970

Producer: Gus Dudgeon

Label: DJM

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=84203&ev=mb

Standout Tracks: Your Song/Border Song/The Greatest Discovery

Review:

“Empty Sky was followed by Elton John, a more focused and realized record that deservedly became his first hit. John and Bernie Taupin's songwriting had become more immediate and successful; in particular, John's music had become sharper and more diverse, rescuing Taupin's frequently nebulous lyrics. "Take Me to the Pilot" might not make much sense lyrically, but John had the good sense to ground its willfully cryptic words with a catchy blues-based melody. Next to the increased sense of songcraft, the most noticeable change on Elton John is the addition of Paul Buckmaster's grandiose string arrangements. Buckmaster's orchestrations are never subtle, but they never overwhelm the vocalist, nor do they make the songs schmaltzy. Instead, they fit the ambitions of John and Taupin, as the instant standard "Your Song" illustrates. Even with the strings and choirs that dominate the sound of the album, John manages to rock out on a fair share of the record. Though there are a couple of underdeveloped songs, Elton John remains one of his best records” – AllMusic

Key Cut: Take Me to the Pilot

Honky Château

Release Date: 19th May, 1972

Producer: Gus Dudgeon

Labels: Uni (U.S.)/DJM (U.K.)

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=85555&ev=mb

Standout Tracks: Honky Cat/I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself/Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

Review:

“The fifth Elton album, and the first since the debut Empty Sky not to be drowned in strings, 72’s Honky Château stands up as one of his most eclectic, durable collections. Best-known for the hits Rocket Man and Honky Cat, it witnesses the singer finding the balance between camp pop-rock and gushing ballads which would subsequently serve his career so well. It was also the first on which his finest touring band was allowed to gel in the studio, and session musicians weren’t to the foreground.

Named after Château d’Herouville in France, where Elton was to record his next two albums (and which subsequently hosted Pink Floyd, T.Rex, David Bowie and Iggy Pop), it has a warm, relaxed feel which complements both the sincere and the ironic songs. Rocket Man somehow slots into both categories. A curious classic, clearly indebted to Bowie’s Space Oddity, its melodic power and sadness are undeniable, but its lyrics get in a right old tangle. Chief among many clumsy clunkers has to be: "Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids / and there’s no-one there to raise them if you did."

Honky Cat is a flippant piano boogie in the style of Dr. John, but there are darker, deeper shades to come, with Bernie Taupin minimising the private jokes. I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself is a satire of teenage angst, but hits a few nerves on its way. Susie (Dramas) is another song of infatuation which beneath its honky-tonk nuances locates grit. Salvation is white gospel, taking a mild dig at religion, while Slave sees Taupin revisiting his Americana obsessions and Amy is Elton mimicking Mick Jagger.

The outstanding Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters is a textbook showcase of the writing pair’s talent: on paper, it’s maudlin and hymn-like. In reality, it works. Only Elton John could follow this with a silly, doo-wop finale, Hercules, which the most ardent fan couldn’t defend. No matter: a number one in the US and number two in the UK, Honky Château was where John laid down solid foundations” – BBC

Key Cut: Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time)

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Release Date: 5th October, 1973

Producer: Gus Dudgeon

Labels: MCA (U.S.)/DJM (U.K.)

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=30577&ev=mb

Standout Tracks: Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding/Candle in the Wind/Bennie and the Jets

Review:

“Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, Elton John became one of the biggest stars of the glitz n’ glamour fueled ‘70s, racking up seven consecutive number one albums and scoring at least one Top 40 hit every year until 1996. Following his 1972 U.S. breakthrough, Honky Chateau, which spawned the hits “Rocketman” and “Honky Cat,” John released two back-to-back albums, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player and the now-classic Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which displayed the singer’s talent for crafting infectious pop/rock ditties that evoked a diverse span of genres ranging from mellow piano music to full-out rock n’ roll. The double-album begins with the dirge-like, 11-minute “Funeral for a Friend,” which opens with a foreboding organ that later gives way to swirling prog-rock guitars, piano, and psychedelic keyboards. The complex song is instantly juxtaposed by the album’s second track, the simple “Candle in the Wind,” John and perennial songwriting partner Bernie Taupin’s famously sentimental homage to Marilyn Monroe. (The song would later become the fastest selling single in history after John revised it as an ode to the late Princess Diana in 1997.) Accentuating Goodbye’s impressive diversity is the smooth, lounge-y “Bennie and the Jets,” with John’s high-reaching falsetto giving the track a cabaret feel. The album doesn’t shy away from John’s signature subversion either: “All the Girls Love Alice” is a masked sweet ballad that’s really about a teenage lesbian who does “favors” for older women, while the hit “Sweet Painted Lady” is a jaunty song about prostitution: “Getting paid for being laid/Guess that’s the name of the game.” From the catchy title track and the orchestral “I’ve Seen That Movie Too” to songs like “Grey Seal,” with its high-adrenaline rush of pounding piano keys and won’t-leave-the-head-for-days hook, it’s the balance between melancholic ballads (where John’s vocals and strong narratives take center stage) and the pure rock n’ roll tunes that makes the album work as a whole. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is such an epic, varied display of emotional depth and soul that it should be classified as some sort of operetta” – SLANT

Key Cut: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Too Low for Zero

Release Date: 30th May, 1983

Producer: Chris Thomas

Labels: Geffen (U.S.)/Rocket (U.K.)

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=87201&ev=mb

Standout Tracks: Too Low for Zero/I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues/Kiss the Bride

Review:

“Elton John began inching back into the mainstream with Jump Up, an uneven but strong record highlighted by "Empty Garden." Its success set the stage for Too Low for Zero, a full-fledged reunion with his best collaborator, Bernie Taupin, and his classic touring band. Happily, this is a reunion that works like gangbusters, capturing everybody at a near-peak of their form. That means there aren't just hit singles, but there are album tracks, like the opener, "Cold as Christmas (In the Middle of the Year)," that strongly (and favorably) recall Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. John hadn't been this engaging in years, not since Gerald Ford was in office. Why does this work so well? Well, the question isn't just consistency, since records like A Single Man were strong, but it's because each cut here showcases John at a peak. He's rocking with a vengeance on "I'm Still Standing" and "Kiss the Bride," crafting a gorgeous romantic standard with "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues" -- songs that anchor this album, giving the hits context. While this may not be as rich as his classic early period, it's a terrific record, an exemplary illustration of what a veteran artist could achieve in the early '80s” – AllMusic

Key Cut: I’m Still Standing

Songs from the West Coast

Release Date: 1st October, 2001

Producer: Patrick Leonard

Labels: Rocket/Mercury

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=126938&ev=mb

Standout Tracks: Dark Diamond/Original Sin/This Train Don't Stop There Anymore

Review:

“Not counting two soundtrack albums and a live release, 2001’s “Songs from the West Coast” is the first formal Elton John studio album of the 21st century.

A throwback to his 1970s’ sound, “Songs from the West Coast” boasts a warm, crisp and organic sound that had been sorely lacking on his 1980s’ and most of his 1990s’ works. Especially prominent is the return of an acoustic piano sound, which has always served Elton’s richly textured melodies much better than the hollow clinical electronic keyboard sound he began using in the early 1980s’. Elton also wisely invited back arranger Paul Buckmaster back into the fold, giving several songs the lush orchestral treatment he gave to classics such as “Levon” and “Tiny Dancer,” and reunited with peak era drummer Nigel Olsson, who along with Davey Johnstone and Dee Murray formed the backbone of Elton’s classic sound.

Of course, the most crucial component for Elton’s albums isn’t the sound, but the songs. Even with the impressive roster of musicians and collaborators, “Songs from the West Coast” could only succeed if the material matched the pedigree of those playing it. From the opening strains of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” it’s clear that everyone involved is firing on all cylinders: Taupin’s lyrics are clever, introspective and evocative, Elton’s melody is gorgeously layered, his voice is in fine shape, and Johnstone and Olsson’s harmonies are reminiscent of their soaring accompaniment on songs such as “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.”

The rest of the record delivers admirably on its promise; the songs all range from good to outstanding, with even the weakest tracks having something enjoyable to offer, whether it be a clever or moving lyrical passage, a catchy melodic hook, or a robust vocal from Elton’s now fully ripened baritone. The best songs are the reflective ballads, such as the cinematic, elegant “Original Sin,” the Lennon esque confessional “I Want Love,” the nostalgic “Mansfield,” and the surprisingly cynical closer “This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore.” Lyrically and melodically, these are all first rate songs that hold their own against previous John-Taupin peaks. There are also two tracks inspired by current events, “American Triangle” and “The Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes.” “Ballad” is a quietly angry damnation sung from the perspective of a AIDS victim who suffered at the hand of Ronald Reagan’s ignorance, while “Triangle” is an absolutely chilling account of the murder of homosexual teen Matthew Shepherd, a critical moment in the fight for gay rights and the acknowledgement of hate crimes within the gay community. Both songs are successful, particularly for Taupin, whose lyrics handle the songs’ delicate subject matter with grace, empathy, and tastefulness.

With its excellent material and outstanding production, “Songs from the West Coast” is one of the watershed moments in the last 25 years of Sir Elton’s career, and can easily hang with his best records of the 1970s’. While his subsequent records have been very solid, none have the sense of purpose or consistent quality that “Songs” has from start to finish” – Sputnikmusic

Key Cut: I Want Love

FEATURE: Revisiting… Gwenno - Le Kov

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

Gwenno - Le Kov

___________

BECAUSE the forthcoming…

 PHOTO CREDIT: David Levene/The Guardian

Tressor is released in July, I wanted to use this opportunity in Revisiting… to look back at Gwenno’s current studio album, Le Kov. Released in 2018, it is a stunning album from the Cardiff-born artist. Her second studio album (following from 2015’s Y Dydd Olaf), I heard a few of the songs from Le Kov played on the radio when it was released a few years back. Now, whilst you might catch the odd track here and there, it does not get the airplay and examination it deserves. It is an album where its deep cuts are so interesting and original. Recorded all in Cornish (Gwenno Saunders grew up in a Cornish-speaking family, with her father Tim Saunders writing Cornish poetry), maybe the dialect means that some people find Le Kov less accessible than other albums. I feel the greatest strength of Le Kov is that it celebrates Cornwall and we get to hear the accent and dialect. With compositions that go between dreamy and trippy, and stunning vocals from Gwenno throughout, Le Kov is an intoxicating experience! A tribute and representation of a displaced people whose language has been marginalised. Gwenno was also inspired by the Government’s decision to cut funding towards the Cornish language in 2016. Seemingly seeing it as a dead language, it means Le Kov is a very valuable, educational and important album. The melodies and hooks are there to keep you coming back, whilst the heart of the album is this beautiful and heartfelt representation of the Cornish dialect (or language).

Before getting to a couple of positive reviews for the exceptional Le Kov, I have found a couple of interviews where Gwenno talked about the inspiration behind the album and her relationship with the Cornish. The Guardian chatted with her in 2018 and, quite rightly, noted the fact Le Kov is probably the first Psych-Rock/Pop album in Cornish:

“To that end, Saunders has just recorded her second solo album entirely in Cornish, the language she learned as a child. The follow-up to Welsh-language Y Dydd Olaf (2014), which won the Welsh Music prize, Le Kov would be a fantastic album whatever it was sung in – spacey, strange and richly melodic – but there’s no doubt that the language gives it an added sense of purpose. Without wishing to make any rash claims, it seems likely that it’s the first ever Cornish electronic psych-pop concept album.

Indeed, it seems likely it’s the first ever Cornish rock album full stop. There has been a vibrant Cornish-language folk scene for decades. The late singer and poet Brenda Wootton was its best-known exemplar, while Saunders has a soft spot for a band called Bucca, who released a solitary album, An Tol Yn Pen An Telynyor, in 1980. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, given how few native speakers there are, it never crossed over into pop.

The website Kernow Beat has assembled an exhaustive database of wildly obscure bands from Cornwall, pulling back the curtain on a vibrant regional music scene: who knew punk took such a grip on Penzance in the late 1970s? But, alas, not one of the frequently mind-boggling names it lists (Constable Zippo’s Electric Commode Band, Furry Vermin, Big Dick and the Deviants) seems to have used Cornish. Its solitary appearance in something approaching pop was on Aphex Twin’s 2001 album Drukqs, the track listing of which contains a few Cornish titles, albeit frequently misspelt and easy to miss among the titles comprising entirely made-up words.

Aphex Twin actually turns up on Le Kov, one of an array of real-life figures who haunt the album’s songs. They are the inhabitants of the titular imaginary city “where Cornish is spoken by everybody”: Peter Lanyon, a painter of abstract landscapes from St Ives who died after crashing the glider that he flew to “get a more complete knowledge of the landscape”; Michael An Gof, commander of the doomed Cornish rebellion of 1497; and Georg Sauerwein, a 19th-century German linguist who was the first person to write a letter in Cornish for a century, the words of which inspired the song Koweth Ker.

As the cast list suggests, Le Kov is an album teeming with ideas. As she discusses it, Saunders flits from Brexit to JG Ballard, from Constant Nieuwenhuys, a Dutch artist who imagined an anti-capitalist utopia where no one had to work, to cheese. (One of the few surviving traditional sayings in the Cornish language is “Eus keus?” or “Is there cheese?”)

There is also a preponderance of the lost, sunken cities that pepper Cornish mythology: Lyonesse, reputed to be the home of King Arthur, and Langarrow, “which I thought was more interesting, because the people there really went for it and had a good time. It was built by convicted criminals, who then mixed with the natives and it all went wrong. It became like the Cornish Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Saunders says the album was partly inspired by the government’s decision to cut its meagre funding for the Cornish language in 2016. “There’s that argument that I think is really stupid: why do you have to learn Cornish or Welsh, why don’t you learn Mandarin? It’s like everything you do has to have monetary value. I think you have to find the non-monetary value in things.” But mostly it’s rooted in something more personal: her desire to “accept what I actually am – and my upbringing, which always felt slightly at odds with other people’s”.

It certainly sounds unconventional. Saunders is the child of a Cornish poet and a Welsh language activist who was imprisoned “a couple of times for vandalising the Welsh Office”. She elaborates: “My mum was always complaining about being in the house and having to look after the kids, so I think she really quite looked forward to going to prison, just to get a break.” In her house, Anglo-American culture and the English language were forbidden, the TV was turned down if S4C wasn’t broadcasting, and everyone spoke Cornish, a language that virtually died out in 1770, before undergoing a minor – but ongoing – revival 150 years later.

“It was like living in a sort of cult of four people, in Riverside in Cardiff,” she says. “I had no idea about popular culture. Years later, I said to my mum, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about David Bowie or people like that?’ And she said that it was all just around, that I was always going to find out about that stuff myself. But it was really annoying for a while, because I’d meet people and have no idea what they were talking about – you know, ‘Who are Pavement?’.

I am looking forward to seeing what her new album, Tresor, offers. Although it was recorded in Cornwall, it is about her experiences of motherhood and how this has affected and changed her. Even so, the album is almost entirely recorded in Cornish. As preparation for Tresor (the Cornish for ‘treasure’), have a listen to the gorgeous Le Kov (Cornish for ‘a  place of memory’). The Quietus sat down with Gwenno and, as I suggested earlier, asked about that ill-advised 2016 Government decision:

“Did the decision coincide with the government withdrawing Cornish language funding in 2016?

G: I think that a lot of things contributed to it. I found a lot of Cornish speakers on social media, which sounds like a really uneventful thing, but it was eventful for me having not known a huge amount of Cornish speakers growing up. I met people in Cardiff who spoke Cornish. And yeah, it was related to the funding thing. But also the last song on my last album was in Cornish [‘Amser’] and it was really amazing every time I played that song live. People would really listen when I’d announce it, so that excited me because it was suggesting a conversation. I think you learn quite a lot when you play live.

To me it’s astonishing that you grew up speaking Cornish, because I assumed it was ancient history growing up. I certainly didn’t know anybody who spoke it.

G: Not as a first language among native speakers where you use it with parents or whatever and you're using it every day. Now I have a son and I speak Cornish with him. So I thought a lot about that; about what you're given. When you have children you think a lot about your own childhood. So that fed into it because Cornish to me is a family thing. I instinctively think of the home because I didn't use it in school. It's a very homely thing.

I don’t speak Welsh or Cornish, but I know the salutary “Iechyd da!” and “yeghis da!” mean the same thing (Good health). I suspect they’re quite similar so do you mix them up ever?

G: I don't think you do. Someone asked me that the other day. I don't think you do mix your languages up if you speak more than one do you? They're both Brittonic languages so Welsh is related to Cornish.

It’s a part of my heritage so I should probably learn it really.

G: It's a tool isn't it? And if you've got a couple of tools you may as well use them all. I overthink things a lot and so I found that singing Welsh initially helped me feel freer in the creative process, and I became less conscious of what I was doing. And I felt that with Cornish too, because it was such uncharted territory for me. There's not a lot of Cornish language music, so as a creative process I became a lot less conscious of what I was doing.

One of the biggest disappointments of the Brexit vote for me was that Wales and particularly Cornwall voted out.

G: But you know what, Richard Wyn Jones - who's the head of politics at Cardiff University - did a study of who voted for what, and you can't forget there are quite a lot of people who are retired who have moved to rural areas. The joke is they'll move to somewhere like north west Wales - "I just want to go somewhere away from the foreigners" - and they'll end up in a predominantly Welsh speaking area. I think the percentage of people who weren't born in the area was quite high and I just wonder if that would apply to Cornwall as well. I think there are two things going on: that and the fact there wasn't much in it. For me more than anything else, people were manipulated by state media.

There certainly was a lot of sneering at the Cornish after the referendum.

G: A friend was going door-to-door in Holyhead trying to convince people to vote remain. And when asked why they were voting Brexit people would answer "because of the muslims". And that epitomises people in disenfranchised areas where they can't really work out what's wrong. They're believing what they're reading. It's very complicated so you can’t just to say people were cutting their noses off to spite their face”.

I shall move on to a couple of reviews. Voted one of the best albums of 2018 by several publications, there was a lot of praise for Le Kov. This is what Loud and Quiet had to say in their review:

“Those who’ve been to Cornwall will know its beauty is subtle and serene, and those who haven’t will get a pretty good idea if they let ‘Le Kov’ – the second album from former Pippettes member Gwenno Saunders – immerse them in all the hidden charm the southern coastal county has to offer.

The first thing you fall in love with about Cornwall is the sea, so it’s no surprise that the album’s opener ‘Hy a Skoellyas Lyf a Dhagrow’ perfectly captures its tranquility with sun-tinged psychedelia. From there, ‘Le Kov’, an album sung entirely in Cornish, becomes a record of two halves. There’s the pop-infused, groove-laden soundtrack to a quintessentially British day out by the sea on one side – captured in glistening lye in the infectious art-pop of ‘Tir Ha Mor’ or the fairground nostalgia of ‘Daromres y’n Howl’. Then there’s the hypnotic lure of Cornish mythology on the other (the Brythonic city legends are a great place to start digging deeper). Of course, no Cornish experience would be complete without cheese, and “Eus Keus? (Is There Cheese?)” provides one of the record’s most unabashedly fun tracks in its dedication to fromage.

Gwenno effortlessly glides between styles on ‘Le Kov’ – the seamless transitions between forlorn piano and frosted beats (Aphex Twin was an inspiration) to pristine drums and discordant brass evoke a Cornwall that’s as easily accessible as it is steeped in tradition and folklore.

Like her debut, ‘Y Dydd Olaf’, delivered in her native welsh (the Cornish comes from her parents, it was spoken around the house, and her father is a Cornish poet), the fact that the majority of people won’t understand the lyrics matters not. ‘Le Kov’ would be a wonderful album even if it were sung in Gallifreyan”.

The Skinny with impressed with the beguiling Le Kov. An album that turned four earlier this month, go and listen to it in full if you have not done so already. You will definitely find yourself coming back for further spins:

“On her solo debut Y Dydd Olaf, Gwenno Saunders explored the importance of preserving a sense of cultural identity almost entirely in Welsh. Closing track Amser, though, was sung in Cornish. It’s this thread that Gwenno picks up again on her new album Le Kov, journeying through both the individual and collective subconscious entirely in the Cornish language.

Much like Y Dydd Olaf, Gwenno’s often languid vocal style ensures the language is delivered beautifully, both tuneful and entrancing, continuing to ensure that her music is accessible to the non-Cornish speaker. On the sparkling pop of Tir Ha Mor, her voice and the seemingly intuitively musical nature of the words give the album one of its strongest hooks. She draws inspiration from Aphex Twin’s Drukqs on Hy a Skoellyas Lyf a Dhagrow, delivering a dream-like landscape alongside her hushed vocals. Eus Keus? (or “is there cheese?”) is more playful, building on propulsive melodies and continually reintroducing warped guitar around Gwenno’s own more exuberant voice.

Le Kov is a cinematic and atmospheric collection, crisply produced while also maintaining a sense of mystery. Its cosmic blend of psychedelia and strong synth-pop sensibilities once again bring the listener firmly into Gwenno’s psychological territory. She places another Brythonic tongue firmly in the spotlight, continuing to break through language barriers with sparkling psych-pop”.

Undoubtedly one of the best L.P.s of 2018, Le Kov is an album we all need to hear. Ahead of the release of her third studio album in July, go and listen to the moving and wonderful Le Kov. Not too many of its tracks make its way onto radio now. It is a shame, as every track on the album is engrossing (and something that people need in their lives). Le Kov is a remarkable album from…

THE brilliant Gwenno.

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Fifty-Six: Elton John

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

Part Fifty-Six: Elton John

___________

I will include an inspirational woman…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Gibson

in the next edition of this feature. The reason for including Elton John today – aside from the fact that he is incredible! – is that he turns seventy-five on 25th March. To celebrate that, I am releasing a few features that look at his influence and brilliance. I will start with Inspired By…, and a list of songs from artists who are influenced by him. Before getting there, AllMusic provide a detailed biography about the iconic Elton Jonh:

“Elton John exploded like a supernova in the early 1970s, generating headlines and hits with ease. As "Your Song," "Rocket Man," "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," and "Bennie and the Jets"--songs John wrote with his lifelong collaborator Bernie Taupin--climbed into the Top Ten on either side of the Atlantic, John was inescapable during the first half of the '70s, five years that turned out to be the first act in a remarkable career that kept him at the top of the charts for decades. He had a Billboard Top 40 hit single every year between 1970 and 1996, a sign that he knew how to both change with the times and mold the times to fit him. John's earliest records were part of the moody, introspective post-60s singer/songwriter movement yet once he had a hit with "Your Song," the pianist revealed he could also craft Beatles-like pop and pound out rockers with equal aplomb. Over the ensuing decades, he delved into soul, disco, and country, as well as classic pop balladry, progressive rock, and even musical theater, writing songs for Disney's The Lion King and collaborating with Tim Rice on Aida. His versatility, combined with his effortless melodic skills, dynamic charisma, and flamboyant stage shows, became his calling cards; many of his songs became contemporary pop standards.

The son of a former Royal Air Force trumpeter, John was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in 1947. He began playing piano at the age of four, and when he was 11, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. After studying for six years, he left school with the intention of breaking into the music business. In 1961, he joined his first band, Bluesology, and divided his time between playing with the group, giving solo concerts at a local hotel, and running errands for a London publishing house. By 1965, Bluesology was backing touring American soul and R&B musicians like Major Lance, Doris Troy, and the Bluebells. In 1966, Bluesology became Long John Baldry's supporting band as they toured cabarets throughout England. Dwight became frustrated with Baldry's control of the band and looked for other groups to join. He failed his lead vocalist auditions for both King Crimson and Gentle Giant before responding to an advertisement by Liberty Records. Though he failed his Liberty audition, he was given a stack of lyrics left with the label courtesy of Bernie Taupin, who had also replied to the ad. Dwight wrote music for Taupin's lyrics and began corresponding with him through mail. By the time the two met six months later, Dwight had changed his name to Elton John, taking his first name from Bluesology saxophonist Elton Dean and his last from John Baldry.

John and Taupin were hired by Dick James to become staff songwriters at his fledgling DJM in 1968. The pair collaborated at a rapid rate, with Taupin submitting batches of lyrics -- he often wrote a song an hour -- every few weeks. John would then write music without changing the words, sometimes completing the songs in under a half-hour. Over the next two years, the duo wrote for pop singers like Roger Cook and Lulu. In the meantime, John recorded cover versions of current hits for budget labels to be sold in supermarkets. By the summer of 1968, he had begun recording singles for release under his own name. Usually, these songs were more rock- and radio-oriented than the tunes he and Taupin were giving to other vocalists, yet neither of his early singles for Philips, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" and "Lady Samantha," sold well. In June of 1969, he released his debut album for DJM, Empty Sky, which received fair reviews, but no sales.

For his second album, John and Taupin hired producer Gus Dudgeon and arranger Paul Buckmaster, who contributed grandiose string charts to Elton John. Released in the summer of 1970, Elton John made inroads in America, where it appeared on MCA's Uni subsidiary. In August, he gave his first American concert at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, which received enthusiastic reviews, as well as praise from Quincy Jones and Leon Russell. Throughout the fall, Elton John continued to climb the charts on the strength of the Top Ten single "Your Song." John followed it quickly in late 1970 with the concept album Tumbleweed Connection, which received heavy airplay on album-oriented radio in the U.S., helping it climb into the Top Ten. The rapid release of Tumbleweed Connection established a pattern of frequent releases that John maintained throughout his career. In 1971, he released the live 11-17-70 and the Friends soundtrack, before releasing Madman Across the Water late in the year. Madman Across the Water was successful, but John achieved stardom with the follow-up, 1972's Honky Chateau. Recorded with his touring band -- bassist Dee Murray, drummer Nigel Olsson, and guitarist Davey Johnstone -- and featuring the hit singles "Rocket Man" and "Honky Cat," Honky Chateau became his first American number one album, spending five weeks at the top of the charts.

Between 1972 and 1976, John and Taupin's hitmaking machine was virtually unstoppable. "Rocket Man" began a four-year streak of 16 Top 20 hits in a row; out of those 16 -- including "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," "Bennie and the Jets," "The Bitch Is Back," and "Philadelphia Freedom" -- only one, the FM hit "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," failed to reach the Top Ten. Honky Chateau was the first a streak of seven consecutive number one albums -- Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player (1973), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973), Caribou (1974), Greatest Hits (1974), Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975), and Rock of the Westies (1975) -- that all went platinum. John founded Rocket, a record label distributed by MCA, in 1973 in order to sign and produce acts like Neil Sedaka and Kiki Dee. John didn't become a Rocket recording artist himself, choosing to stay with MCA for a record-breaking eight-million-dollar contract in 1974. Later in 1974, he played and sang on John Lennon's number one comeback single "Whatever Gets You Through the Night," and he persuaded Lennon to join him on-stage at Madison Square Garden on Thanksgiving Day 1974; it would prove to be Lennon's last live performance. The following year, Captain Fantastic became John's first album to enter the American charts at number one. After its release, he revamped his band, which now featured Johnstone, Quaye, Roger Pope, Ray Cooper, and bassist Kenny Passarelli; Rock of the Westies was the first album to feature this lineup.

Throughout the mid-'70s, John's concerts were enormously popular, as were his singles and albums, and he continued to record and perform at a rapid pace until 1976. That year, he revealed in an interview in Rolling Stone that he was bisexual; he would later admit that the confession was a compromise, since he was afraid to reveal that he was homosexual. Many fans reacted negatively to John's bisexuality, and his audience began to shrink somewhat in the late '70s. The decline in his record sales was also due to his exhaustion. After 1976, John cut his performance schedule drastically, announcing that he was retiring from live performances in 1977, and started recording only one album a year. His relationship with Taupin became strained following the release of 1976's double album Blue Moves, and the lyricist began working with other musicians. John returned in 1978 with A Single Man, which was written with Gary Osborne; the record produced no Top 20 singles. That year, he returned to live performances, first by jamming at the Live Stiffs package tour, then by launching a comeback tour in 1979 accompanied only by percussionist Ray Cooper. "Mama Can't Buy You Love," a song he recorded with Philly soul producer Thom Bell in 1977, returned him to the Top Ten in 1979, but that year's Victim of Love was a commercial disappointment.

John reunited with Taupin for 1980's 21 at 33, which featured the Top Ten single "Little Jeannie." Over the next three years, John remained a popular concert artist, but his singles failed to break the Top Ten, even if they reached the Top 40. In 1981, he signed with Geffen Records and his second album for the label, Jump Up!, went gold on the strength of "Blue Eyes" and "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)," his tribute to John Lennon. But it was 1983's Too Low for Zero that marked his last great streak of hit singles, with the MTV hit "I'm Still Standing" and the Top Ten single "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues." Throughout the rest of the '80s, John's albums consistently went gold, and they always generated at least one Top 40 single; frequently, they featured Top Ten singles like "Sad Songs (Say So Much)" (1984), "Nikita" (1986), "Candle in the Wind" (1987), and "I Don't Want to Go on with You Like That" (1988). While his career continued to be successful, his personal life was in turmoil. Since the mid-'70s, he had been addicted to cocaine and alcohol, and the situation only worsened during the '80s. In a surprise move, he married engineer Renate Blauel in 1984; the couple stayed married for four years, although John later admitted he realized he was homosexual before his marriage. In 1986, he underwent throat surgery while on tour, but even after he successfully recovered, he continued to abuse cocaine and alcohol.

Following a record-breaking five-date stint at Madison Square Garden in 1988, John auctioned off all of his theatrical costumes, thousands of pieces of memorabilia, and his extensive record collection through Sotheby's. The auction was a symbolic turning point. Over the next two years, John battled both his drug addiction and bulimia, undergoing hair replacement surgery at the same time. By 1991 he was sober, and the following year he established the Elton John AIDS Foundation; he also announced that he would donate all royalties from his single sales to AIDS research.

In 1992, John returned to active recording with The One. Peaking at number eight on the U.S. charts and going double platinum, the album became his most successful record since Blue Moves and sparked a career renaissance for John. He and Taupin signed a record-breaking publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music in 1992 for an estimated 39 million dollars. In 1994, John collaborated with lyricist Tim Rice on songs for Disney's animated feature The Lion King. One of their collaborations, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as the Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. John's 1995 album, Made in England, continued his comeback, peaking at number three on the U.K. charts and number 13 in the U.S.; in America, the album went platinum. The 1997 follow-up, The Big Picture, delivered more of the same well-crafted pop, made the Top Ten, and produced a hit in "Something About the Way You Look Tonight." However, its success was overshadowed by John's response to the tragic death of Princess Diana -- he re-recorded "Candle in the Wind" (originally a eulogy for Marilyn Monroe) as a tribute to his slain friend, with Taupin adapting the lyrics for what was planned as the B-side of "Something About the Way You Look Tonight."

With the profits earmarked for Diana's favorite charities, and with a debut performance at Diana's funeral, "Candle in the Wind 1997" became the fastest-selling hit of all time in both Britain and the U.S. upon the single's release, easily debuting at number one on both sides of the Atlantic; with first-week sales of over three million copies in the U.S. alone and 14 weeks in the top spot, it was John's biggest hit ever. For his next project, John reunited with Lion King collaborator Tim Rice to write songs for Disney's Broadway musical adaptation of the story of Aida; an album of their efforts featuring a who's-who of contemporary pop musicians was released in early 1999, going gold by the end of the year. In late 2000, John landed a TV special with CBS, performing a selection of his greatest hits at Madison Square Garden; a companion album drawn from those performances, One Night Only, was issued shortly before the special aired. Released in 2001, Songs from the West Coast was a return to form for John, who found critical success for the first time since the '80s. However, it wasn't until 2004's popular Peachtree Road album that he managed to match that success commercially. In 2006, John and Taupin released The Captain & the Kid, a sequel to 1975's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. John busied himself with stage work and a Vegas show before he unexpectedly recorded a duet album with Leon Russell, releasing the T-Bone Burnett-produced The Union in the fall of 2010.

The Union revived Russell's career and the duo supported the record with a limited tour. John settled into another Vegas stint in 2011, signing a contract with Caesars Palace to deliver a show called The Million Dollar Piano over the next three years. Despite this long-term commitment, Elton pursued other projects: He published an autobiography called Love Is the Cure in the summer of 2012 and, around the same time, the Australian dance duo Pnau reworked many of his classic '70s recordings on the Good Morning to the Night album. He also completed another collection of new songs, The Diving Board; the T-Bone Burnett-produced album appeared in September 2013. Three years later, John again reunited with Burnett to record Wonderful Crazy Night, the first album of his to feature his touring band since The Captain & the Kid. Wonderful Crazy Night saw release in February 2016. A year later, PBS aired the Burnett-produced documentary The American Epic Sessions, which yielded a number of unique collaborations between prominent artists, including the Elton John and Jack White duet "2 Fingers of Whiskey." In November 2017, Universal released the Diamonds compilation -- available as a double-disc and as a deluxe triple-CD set -- to mark the 50th anniversary of John's songwriting career with Taupin.

Elton John launched his final tour, dubbed Farewell Yellow Brick Road, in September 2018, the first in a series of retrospective events that ran through 2020. The splashiest of these was Rocketman, a Dexter Fletcher-directed 2019 biopic starring Taron Egerton as the rocker and Jamie Bell as Taupin. John and Taupin contributed a new song, "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" -- performed as a duet with Egerton -- which later won the Academy Award for Best Song. At the end of 2019, John published his memoir, Me. Jewel Box, a hefty box set containing non-LP B-sides and previously unreleased early collaborations with Bernie Taupin, appeared in time for the holiday season of 2020. Among the highlights on Jewel Box was John's scrapped debut album Regimental Sgt. Zippo, a record cut in the wake of Sgt. Pepper; it was released on its own for Record Store Day in 2021.

During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021, Elton John collaborated long-distance with a variety of artists, a roster ranging from Lil Nas X and Miley Cyrus to Eddie Vedder, Stevie Nicks, Gorillaz, Brandi Carlile and Stevie Wonder. These recordings comprised his 2021 album The Lockdown Sessions”.

To mark the upcoming seventy-fifth birthday of the legendary Elton John, below are artists who definitely have followed John, or they have been influenced by his sound. We will see artists come through for years to come who are influenced the iconic artist. This is an Inspired By… salute to…

THE magnificent Elton John.