FEATURE: Dogmatic or Not… Will the Hegemony of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love Stunt Future Generations’ View of Her Legacy?

FEATURE:

 

 

Dogmatic or Not…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for the Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) single cover (1985)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Will the Hegemony of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love Stunt Future Generations’ View of Her Legacy?

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I have written about this…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Tokyo, Japan in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images

quite a few times recently. I am referring to radio playlists and the dominance of particular songs from Kate Bush. I think the more she is know about and shared, the less adventurous and flexible radio playlists are with her music. The same is true of the media. She is still framed around 1985’s Hounds of Love. I can’t think of any other major artist like her that is defined by one album. She may not mind it herself – as she has reissued Hounds of Love and done some special editions for it -, though it is insulting that an artist of her talent and influence is narrowed down to one album. Nothing against Hounds of Love. It is a rightful and undeniable masterpiece that deserves kudos. There are eight other original studio albums – not counting Director’s Cut in the list – that are either occasionally played or not at all. You do get hits from other albums played though, more often than not, the same three or four songs from Hounds of Love are the lazy go-to. It is a vicious cycle of stations feeling this is the most accessible and commercial music from her. They then keep playing it because they do not get feedback or complaints. There is nobody and nothing pushing against the hegemony and over-reliance on one album. I have actually started listening more to other Kate Bush albums to rebel against this predictably unnuanced media view of Kate Bush! In new stories, she is still seen as the ‘singer’ of songs like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and Wuthering Heights. In previous years, if stations played and the media discussed other hits and singles, I found last year was more directed towards Hounds of Love and its tracks. At best, you’d get occasional deep cuts selected by listeners or daring D.J.s going beyond the obvious.

I wonder how to break out of the cycle. I know that vinyl purchases will increase awareness. Magazine articles and books will alert fans to other albums and great tracks. There are a few tracks that have podcast episodes and get covered though, mostly, discovery is made via radio and streaming services. Hounds of Love is not the only go-to for people, though it seems to dominate more than it should. So many tracks that could be played and are being left aside. It gets boring hearing Cloudbusting for the millionth time, even if it is a classic. What about some of the deep cuts from 1978s Lionheart, 1980’s Never for Ever or even 1989’s The Sensual World?! I know that there are some songs that might not connect with listeners. Even so, I feel it might be an issue not just reserved to Kate Bush. Her music is especially ignored in terms of the songs played, though even massive artists like Madonna are still largely associated with their hits. Not to suggest we put Hounds of Love aside. I think that it is an album that gets played and focused on more as it is talked about and heralded as this classic. At the detriment of all her other albums, I have not heard anything from The Dreaming or most of the albums bar the singles – and, in the case of Aerial or Lionheart, it has been so long since I have heard anything at all from them.

I am not slighting Hounds of Love, as I love it a load. It is a majestic album. I feel, in years to come, unless more songs are played and the impression of Kate Bush goes beyond one album, we will still only see her as the artist who made Hounds of Love. Associate her with one or two songs. So many people have not heard a lot of Bush’s music. Not only does it means playlists featuring her music lack variety. Some of Bush’s most important moments and incredible music is getting overlooked. I have posted this before because there is still little movement and expansion in terms of Kate Bush’s catalogue and how she gets represented. Some say maybe it is EMI or someone connected to her that does not want deeper cuts featuring on radio. That there should be more from Hounds of Love from other albums. Maybe Kate Bush herself has had input. I don’t think that this is the case. Bush, as long as Hounds of Love got some airing, would be open to all her albums getting an outing. EMI don’t have much say on her current output and decisions. I think it is more likely that radio stations have got into a rut and are reluctant to get out of it. That is a real shame! It is a new year, so we should be a lot more appreciative of Kate Bush’s full body of work. Go to Spotify and listen to her albums in full. Check out videos on YouTube and also search out podcasts relating to her albums and songs. I am not hopeful there will be quick change, though we definitely need to get out of the mindset that Kate Bush’s most commercial and successful album is the only valid one. Even the best. Many might debate that. Definitely, when you think of all the treats that have either never been played or are relatively unknown, it is angering indeed! I am concerned that it will affect not only fans but artists. Different Kate Bush songs can resonate with different artists. A lack of cover versions of her songs too. There needs to be a dedicated push to highlight how varied Bush’s catalogue is. If we keep defining her so rigidly then that does a huge injustice to her. It may seem daring and new but, the more you dig deep, the more surprises you get. Once done, people will reveal…

A fascinating and bewitching sonic world!

FEATURE: Saluting the Queens: Peggy Gou

FEATURE:

 

 

Saluting the Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Christian Soria for Interview

Peggy Gou

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AT a time when women…

are dominating British Dance music, it is perhaps no surprise that Peggy Gou was placed third in the BBC’s Sound of 2024. A superstar D.J. and legend in the game, you can follow her on Instagram. Perhaps better known as a D.J. rather than through her music/wider afield, she is a queen I wanted to salute. Not only is she one of the world’s best D.J.s. Peggy Gou has also released incredible music. I Believe in Love Again was her collaboration with Lenny Kravitz. I think that this year will be one of her best. I shall end with that Sound of 2024 interview with the BBC. I want to come to some other interviews before that. You can see some updated biography here (it would not allow me to copy and paste the text); here is some background to a wonderful, globe-struggling D.J. that is one of the world’s most influential and important:

“Berlin-based Peggy Gou is a South Korean DJ and fashion designer, quickly cementing her mark in the music industry with a unique concoction of house and acid sound as well as an equally unique sense of style with a New Guards Group-backed clothing line, Kirin.

With her first track only dating back to 2016, the musician and Instagram star has enjoyed a rapid rise to fame, gaining the support of established musicians Moodyman, The Black Madonna and DJ Kaze through support slots that have attracted a loyal fanbase that includes Virgil Abloh .

Gou was born in Seoul, moving to London aged 14 to complete her high school education. Growing up, Gou harboured ambitions to become a singer; a classically trained pianist, she composed her first piece aged eight. A few years later, she left her passion behind, opting to pursue a fashion degree at the London College of Fashion instead. While studying, Gou reignited her love for music, pursuing music production after making a start mixing in Korea with her then boyfriend, and performing at London’s Cirque Le Soir nightclub through connections. With the desire to become the youngest and first female Korean DJ playing at the Berghain club in Berlin, Gou threw herself into music full-time, pushing her fashion studies aside.

By the end of 2016, Gou released her first double EP, titled “September War,” and played her first set at the Berghain club after moving to Berlin. She has produced four EPs, including her first American tour and a month-long BBC Radio 1 residency in 2017, and has performed at Coachella. At Dazed’s 2017 Off-White party, Gou met representatives from New Guards Group, which offered Gou her own label. Her line of high-end streetwear, marrying traditional Korean mythological motifs with club culture graphics, made its debut at Paris Fashion Week in 2019 and is yet to be made available in stores

In 2019, Gou also announced the launch of her own record label and was included in Forbes’ 30 under 30 Asia Entertainment & Sports list”.

Before coming to some 2023 interviews – and ending with one that is from this year -, I will go back to 2020. 2019 was one of the busiest to that point for Peggy Gou. She spoke with i-D about a hectic 2019 and her resolutions for 2020. The South Korean D.J. and producer is someone who has brought joy to thousands around the world. Even if you are not overtly-familiar with her name, I guarantee that, once you hear her work and D.J. magnificence, you will fall under her spell:

“Peggy Gou had a busy 2019. On top of playing close to a hundred gigs the world over, the South Korean DJ, producer and now fashion designer -- known as much for her popular Instagram account as the sophisticated deep-house sets she never fails to deliver -- recently launched her own record label and streetwear line. “I enjoy it so much that I forget I’m tired,” she says, laughing, as we chat over a New Year’s Day iced coffee in Desa Potato Head, Bali’s new OMA-designed hotel and cultural venue. Dressed in a silky short-sleeve shirt and sporty Mugler shorts, the DJ-turned-designer looks suspiciously fresh for someone who was up until the wee hours playing to a rowdy crowd of 3000. The beach-front gig -- whose promotional posters plastered across the island read ‘Gou Year’s Eve’ -- coincided with the drop of a new capsule collection, made in collaboration with the Indonesian hospitality group.

But 2020 is going to be more low-key for the overachieving music sensation, who plans to cut down on live shows to focus on her first album. “Creative people need to do nothing to be creative,” says Peggy, before telling me about the new home studio she’s having built in her adopted city of Berlin. The LP follows an eclectic score of dance music EPs (she sometimes refers to her music as ‘K-House’) released since 2016, as well as a recent DJ-Kicks mix. The album, however, will be released by XL Recordings, Peggy’s dream label, who she remembers emailing obsessively back in Korea to ask about internship opportunities. “I never once got a reply!” she laughs.

Alongside this, the 29-year-old DJ will continue to grow her own record label, Gudu. So far, the project has acted as a platform to support the work of cult-yet-overlooked electronic producers, from Rephlex Records’ DMX Krew to American remix maverick Maurice Fulton. “Some of my legends,” Peggy says, “who I think deserve more spotlight”. But ultimately, the powerhouse hopes to sign emerging talents, particularly female and Asian musicians. “I went through a lot after I signed my first music,” she says, remembering the lack of support she received from her first label. This early experience encouraged her to change the game: “I want to give artists what they want,” she says.

While Peggy is best known for her music career, now gathering crowds in the thousands at international clubs and festivals alike, her first love was fashion. After spending her teenage years in London -- her parents sent her to learn English because “they thought I had no future in South Korea,” -- she applied to London College of Fashion and started a course in styling. “I realised I wasn’t good at it,” says Peggy, who briefly worked as a correspondent for Harper’s Bazaar Korea. “I only enjoy styling myself,” she laughs.

But this stint in fashion wasn’t all in vain. Last year, following a series of timely encounters with Louis Vuitton’s artistic director Virgil Abloh, Peggy launched her women’s streetwear label Kirin (‘giraffe’ in Korean; her favourite animal) backed by Off-White’s parent organisation, the Italian luxury company New Guards Group which was recently acquired by Farfetch. The brand has since released an eclectic and colourful slew of logo-print shirts, robes and jumpsuits -- all infused with Korean mythological iconography.

These references appear as much in her design aesthetics as in the visual identity of her musical universe. Whether it be the recurring motif of the xiezhi (a mythical lion-shaped creature) across her designs, or the traditional mask interpreted by illustrator Jee-ook Choi for Gudu’s logo, Korean culture remains a strong source of inspiration for Peggy. “I always try not to lose the link between Korea and I,” she says, recounting how she cried during her last gig in Seoul after the audience started to sing along to her Korean-language track “Starry Nights". “Oh my god, I’m getting goosebumps,” she says getting excited, “which apparently, in Bali, is a good sign!”

PHOTO CREDIT: Christian Soria for Interview

A little bit of a detour before getting to some more music-based interviews. The uber-cool queen Peggy Gou chatted with Interview back in October. They fired some questions her way. We get to know a little more at least about a remarkable talent who is someone who is going to make more big strides this year. One of the best producers and D.J.s in the world. Everyone needs to know the name Peggy Gou:

“Who do you tell your secrets to?

Depends on how secret it is, but I don’t think I really have a secret in my life.

Where do you go to hide?

My bed is where I feel comfortable being alone.

What are you wearing right now?

I’m wearing faux Ferragamo fur. And Harley-Davison. Did I pronounce that right? And denim.

What do you collect?

I collect records, I collect sunglasses, I collect shoes, and I collect art.

What’s your bad habit?

I eat too much.

What do you do when you can’t sleep?

I put lavender oil on the pillow. CBD oil, magnesium, and melatonin.

What do you tell yourself when no one else can hear?

I don’t really understand the question.

Do you like answering questions?

It depends on the questions, but I feel like you asked me interesting questions”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Christian Soria for Interview

Speaking with Zane Lowe on her Apple Music podcast series, Peggy Gou spoke about her collaboration with Lenny Kravitz. Whilst unexpected, it is also a perfect and natural pairing when you hear the song. I think that this year is going to be one where she collaborates with other huge names. Maybe there will be an album. Definitely some epic D.J. sets around the world:

“Speaking to Zane Lowe as part of his The Zane Lowe Show Apple Music podcast series, the (It Goes Like) Nanana producer and singer recalls their recent – and unexpected – collaboration. The collab resulted in a new track, I Believe In Love Again, which is out now on XL Recordings.

“It was such an honour to get a chance to work with him,” she tells Lowe. “He’s very perfectionist just like me.”

In the interview, Peggy reveals that the collaboration was not a typical “modern” digital exchange but involved physical studio sessions in the Bahamas and Paris.

She goes on to say how Kravitz wanted to bring a “different DNA” to the track with an unexpected falsetto part, with Lowe and others agreeing they didn’t think it was sung by him at first, but by Peggy instead.

“Would you have guessed that it was Lenny if this was not written, Lenny?” She asks

Zane Lowe says, “Yes, I thought it was you. I thought it was you as well the first time.”

“I was like, ‘Really, Lenny? I don’t know if it’s a good thing, man. Seriously, I want people to know it’s you because it’s like I’m so honoured that my first collaboration song that I have a feature in the album is you.’

“He was like, ‘Pegs, we’re going to do a music video. People will know it’s me. Don’t worry.’ I was like, ‘That’s true, but,’ and he was like, ‘Girl, let me tell you something. I put different DNA to it when I sing this song.’”

Peggy also reflects on the simplicity and catchiness of ’90s music in the interview, highlighting what Lowe calls “sampling with optimism”.

“’90s music is timeless for me. I also love hip-hop and every song from that period.

Lowe says, “What I love about this song is when you come in with the, ‘Ch, ch, ch,’ it’s like no one uses upper register percussive instruments in songs anymore, but they were everywhere in the ’90s.”

“Also, if you think about it, ’90s music was simple. Although it is repetitive, I feel like it’s catchy and you don’t get bored of listening to it.

“It’s very true,” Lowe responds, “It’s almost like the drums were by design a blank canvas to write these songs over and it was like there’s a naivety to the way technology was working back then that people have mastered now. I love that you’ve captured that sense of optimism, sampling with optimism”.

Let’s finish off with the BBC Sound of 2024 interview. Peggy Gou as placed third. Mark Savage caught up with someone who is a crossover star and a hugely important name in music. Actually, doing the interview, it is revealed that a debut album is coming soon from Peggy Gou. Her path into music is a fascinating one. Still unknown to some, 2024 is when she will truly connect with everyone. Such a wonderful talent that now belongs to the world:

“Peggy Gou was born Kim Min-ji in 1991, and raised in South Korea's chief seaport, Incheon.

The first music she loved was K-pop - not the modern, mechanical sounds of Stray Kids or BTS, but the 80s idols like Kim Wan-sun and Uhm Jung-hwa (aka "the Korean Madonna").

"If I listen back to it now, it's still good," she says. "It has a sexy feeling and a happy feeling to it."

But her real musical education began when she turned 14 and her parents sent her to London to study English.

Studying took second place to nightlife. She went out dancing six times a week, at hip-hop nights and underground clubs. In 2011, she discovered deep house and fell in love with its vibey, R&B-infused sound.

By that point, she'd already learned the basics of beat-matching from a friend, and when the DJ pulled out of a Korean society event at her university, Gou offered to step in.

"I messed up a lot of things in that show, but I still made people dance.

"I was like, 'Wow, this is amazing. I love this feeling.'"

Word began to spread. Gou was booked to play at other University events, then scored a weekly residency at east London's Book Club.

Unsurprisingly, she failed her fashion course, but she picked up work at Harper's Bazaar and, in 2016, moved to Germany.

There she had one aim: To be the first Korean woman to play Berghain, Berlin's most exclusive nightclub.

Within a year, she'd achieved it.

The star's debut album is scheduled for release in the first half of 2024

PHOTO CREDIT: Jongha Park

By that point, Gou was dropping original songs into her DJ sets - but only after four years of writing and rejecting her own material.

Her first demos were "70% samples", she says, mixing club beats with traditional Korean instruments, but "every song sounded the same" (for completists, she later released one of those early tracks, Hungboo, on her DJ-Kicks compilation).

In 2016, she released four EPs of supple-but-lethal house tunes. But it was only when she went for a more stripped-back, vocal-led approach that things started to come together.

Her calling card was It Makes You Forget (Itgehane), the sound of sunrise set to music - all swirling synths and gently bubbling acid bass, over a skipping house beat.

An ode to club culture and the restorative power of escapism, it also marked Gou's first attempt at singing.

"That was my brave challenge. I was singing in Korean, which I thought wasn't such a cool thing in the beginning," she says.

"I did try it in English and Spanish, also. But then I was like, 'You know what, I'm Korean. I should sing in Korean!'"

For Westerners used to the staccato, rap-infused cadences of K-Pop, Gou's diaphanous vocals may come as a surprise, but she explains the Korean language has many colours.

"With K-pop, as soon as it's out, it has to hit number one - meaning it's all about how addictive the song is, how catchy it is.

"In my songs the lyrics are very poetic, so I care about how the words sound. Does the line finish with an "ay," an "ah", or an "oh"?

"My vocal trainer always says I have a breathy voice, so the way I sing is not so staccato."

Peggy Who? Peggy Shoe!

It Makes You Forget (Itgehane) became a huge anthem in the summer of 2018; and Gou's schedule grew even busier, with gigs in Brazil, Australia, Italy, Paris, France and Japan.

But it was a set at Glastonbury that really stood out.

"I didn't even know what Glastonbury was, I was so naive," she says.

"But when I started playing, people took their shoes off, held them in the air and started shouting, 'Peggy Who? Peggy Shoe!'"

"I still don't really know why - but in Australia, when people take their shoes off, it means you're playing a banger."

The success was thrilling and welcome, but the demanding lifestyle of an international DJ began to take its toll.

When she travels, Gou takes notes of how she feels as a sort of aide-memoire. But in 2019, after catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror of an airport toilet, she simply wrote: "I look exhausted".

It was only when Covid hit that she had time to pause.

"I had to stop because there were no shows," she says, "and I spent a lot of that time digging out 90s music and 80s music.

"I don't know why but music from that period really encouraged me during that difficult time. Simple, catchy, classy, repetitive but never boring."

Inspired, she spun her exhausted-in-an-airport story into a song, using the uplifting innocence of 90s dance music to give her motivation when life seemed overwhelming.

"'I Go' is such a great phrase because, obviously, it means 'I'll keep moving' in English, but it's also a sound that older people in Korea make whenever they're suffering from pain or they're tired.

"I thought it was perfect. I like to find the word in Korean that makes sense in English, too."

Unsurprisingly, Gou admits to being a perfectionist. She won't release a song until she's 100% happy - which is perhaps why it's taken eight years for her to prepare her debut album.

Scheduled for release this year, it will feature It Goes Like (Nanana) and her current single, I Believe In Love Again - a collaboration with Lenny Kravitz.

The rest of her album, including the title, is currently under wraps, but Gou promises "it's not just dance music".

"You can expect certain things that are different than I've ever done".

And as she takes centre stage, she hints that her in-demand DJ sets might soon be accompanied by more traditional concert performances.

"Why not?" she smiles cryptically. "I think that's everyone's dream”.

A queen that I had to salute, the magnificent and magnetic Peggy Gou is a true modern icon. I cannot wait for a debut album. With a string of great tracks under her belt, the D.J. and producer is now breaking away purely from Dance. A spellbinding woman with this incredible talent, go and check out her work. Expect to see a lot more from her this year. Rightly named among BBC’s Sound of 2024 names to watch, there is no denying how special and important Peggy Gou is. I hold so much love for this…

WONDERFUL human.

FEATURE: Spotlight: As December Falls

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Jay Sanderson for Kerrang!

As December Falls

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LED by the brilliant Bethany Curtis…

As December Falls are a remarkable trio who have been on the scene a while. That said, there are many who might not know about their incredible music. The trio released the album, Join the Club, in July. Formed in 2014 by Bethany Curtis (Vocals), Ande Hunter (Lead Guitar/Backing Vocals), Timmy Francis (Bass Guitar) and Lukas James (Drums), the band have amassed a loving and loyal fanbase. The trio have just been named by Kerrang! as one of their acts who will redefine Alternative music this year. I shall come to that. First, I want to start with an interview from Bring the Noise from last year. We get some insight into this wonderful and must-hear band:

“For people who don’t know the band, can you sum yourself up in five words? I love the panic which goes across people’s faces whenever I say that.

A: You have to count the words too! That’s the problem.

B: Energetic.

A: Energetic alt-rock with bangers. I’m going with that.

B: No, you can’t do that. Energetic alt-rock with bangers doesn’t count!

A: Is alt-rock one or two words? It’s two words. Alternative rock.

We’ll accept that as your five word answer. This is already a really exciting year for you, you’ve got your new album Join The Club coming out in July. Can you tell us a little bit more about it the recording process and why should we look forward to it?

B: I will take this one. To be honest, this is the album that I feel the most proud of and I’m so excited to get it out because I do love our first two albums but this one feels like we’ve sort of consolidated our sound. It feels more us, it feels kind of like we finally sort of know what we’re doing. But yeah, I am so stoked. It’s got a bit of everything on there. We’ve got our serious tracks a little bit slower mellower, but we’ve also got our pop punk anthems and we’ve also got slightly heavier tracks like Mayday and Carousel which is to be honest, probably the route we’re going to continue down because everyone seems to be absolutely loving those two tracks. But yeah, so I’m super excited to get Join The Club out there for the world to finally hear it.

You’ve kind of mentioned some of the tracks already but do you have a favourite track or one which sums up the release?

A: I feel like this album we’ve really tried a lot of different genres and a lot of different styles. I don’t think there’s one song.

Timmy: I think if you go into it thinking it’s going to be one sound, I don’t want to use the word disappointed but it’s not going to be that.  It’s kind of a bit all over the place. We’ve kind of got some modernization of our older stuff and then we’ve got stuff where we’re experimenting a lot more like Carousel and Mayday and all different bits and bobs.

A: I think Carousel is my favourite song though personally.

B: I think Mayday is my favourite.

A: Interesting.

B: I think the reason Mayday is my favourite is because we’ve had a chance to play Mayday live and I love seeing everyone’s reaction. As soon as you play that first riff. You see everyone like YES! and that’s what I want every day of my life.

T: Yeah, I think my Mayday is my favourite.

A: Really? Over Carousel?

T: But the intro to Carousel is my favourite.

B: We’re going to have a full band domestic here.

A: We can’t break up right now.

So essentially, we’re stepping further away from the Home and ballad side of things, into more of the here’s a mosh pit?

B: Yes, absolutely 100%.

A: More riffs, more pits. New band slogan!

Perfect! How have you found it since the release of your album Happier? The fanbase changing? The experience?  Obviously, we had that big massive event, which everyone knows about and we don’t talk about too much. But how has that been for you?

B: I’ve found that without that awful event, I don’t think we could have made our second album any better because we got to spend so much extra time on it which we wouldn’t have had if not for it, because we are all-in full-time jobs. We all have to make it work around holiday time and all of that lovely jazz which comes with working in the corporate world. So, I think it actually kind of helped in regards to being able to write the album that we wanted to create at that time. In regards to how I think it’s affected the fanbase. Well, I’ve always been one for believing we’ve grown up with our fans. So, our target audience is basically us and we know that we write songs that we enjoy and it translates hopefully most of the time. I think it’s nice that we’ve had that growth with them. They’ve seen us from when we were drunk teenagers with no money in bars, all the way up to

A: being drunk adults with no money.

B: Yeah, but we had, you know, we’ve matured with them. It’s nice. I like that.

A: And also, like we came out of COVID and we had the brand new album ready. We did a sixteen date tour, and it sold out pretty quickly and I feel a lot of that growth was because we were coming out of that COVID period. No one had been to a show for eighteen months, everyone was absolutely ready to get back to a show and I think that was actually quite good for us really.

T: Yeah, people kind of felt ready to embrace the album then just run with all the shows and music videos and the support was just there out of the gate for it. That was awesome.

A: When did lockdown hit? Was it like March April, time? I can’t even remember! We were on tour the October, like the year after”.

DORK spoke with As December Falls in August about their success. Feeling like now is a moment that they have finally arrived, 2024 is a year where they can look ahead and take that next step. It is only a matter of time before world domination. A band that needs to be on your radar. They are going to be a fixture at many festivals in the summer:

“As December Falls first started making music together in 2014 and have released two sugary pop-punk albums alongside a handful of EPs and singles in the years since. They’ve remained definitely independent throughout. New album ‘Join The Club’ sees them, if not out to take on the world, then at the very least ready to crash the Official Album Chart. “It feels like we’ve finally arrived,” says vocalist Bethany Curtis.

“We’ve been laying the foundations, we’ve got the bricks and mortar down, and we’re ready to build it up another level now,” she continues, still recovering from a hectic weekend at Download Festival that saw As December Falls make their Donington debut. The band only live twenty minutes away from the heavy metal festival and grew up watching the likes of Slipknot, Biffy Clyro and Deftones. “It was our first time actually performing at Download, but it felt like a welcome home,” grins Bethany. “As soon as we got out onstage and saw people trying to cram themselves into that 10,000-capacity tent, we realised just how insane things have got.”

After slowly building the world of As December Falls, the past 18 months have seen things rapidly accelerate as the band head towards third album, ‘Join The Club’. “We want everyone to be part of this band,” explains Bethany, with the band setting up a Patreon for fans to have their say on every aspect of ADF’s new album, from videos and merch to what songs should be finished first. “It’s been really collaborative; it feels like they’ve been on the journey with us,” she continues, with long-term fans and newcomers given the same power. “Calling the album ‘Join The Club’ just felt right. We wanted to remind people that all of us have made this record together.”

Allowing so many voices to be involved in the creation process is a recipe for middle of the road, but As December Falls are now so confident in their vision of their band, nothing could derail them. “This album has really finalised our sound. It feels a lot more complete, and we’ve finally nailed everything we’ve been trying to do since this band started,” says Bethany. “In a way, it feels like our debut album. It’s definitely a new energy for the band.”

During the recording of the album, there were a couple of times the band worried they had gone “too My Chemical Romance” but as soon as Bethany’s poppy vocals were added, everything shifted, and the band could plough on. Heavy tracks like ‘Mayday’ and ‘Carousel’ sit next to pop-punk ragers like the title track, while ‘Little By Little’ and ‘Home’ are designed to kick listeners in the feels.

Having the fans essentially be As December Falls’ record label did add to the pressure when it came to creating ‘Join The Club’, though. “We wanted them to be as proud of the record as we are,” says Bethany. “Every time we’d show a demo to fans, we were expecting them to say they hated it. We’re still waiting for the day where they say, ‘this one isn’t good’.”

The community spills out into the physical world as well, with As December Falls gigs “a party that everyone is invited to. It’s a very welcoming environment,” adds Bethany, who knows a lot of people have had rubbish experiences in the alternative music scene. “It’s outrageous that kids are made to feel like outsiders in a genre like rock, which is meant to champion outsiders,” starts Bethany. “But whatever, they can come be whoever they want to be with us.” That camaraderie and freedom is why people first connect to As December Falls. “It’s also why they stick around,” Bethany explains. “It’s this massive community; why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?”.

I want to come now to an interview from Official Charts from the summer, as Join the Club gave the band their biggest chart entry to date. As they explain in the interview, there are no labels bank-rolling the band: it is all the fans ensuring they can continue and thrive. The loyalty and dedication from their fans is simply amazing. I think that As December Falls will have their busiest year this one:

“As December Falls' story is one of drive, determination and perseverance.

The Nottingham-formed alt-rock trio, comprising Bethany Hunter, Ande Hunter and Timmy Francis, are currently heading for their first-ever Top 10 album with Join The Club; their third studio record across a career spanning almost a decade.

Proud of the collection, which the group are confident contains their 'best songs,' it looks set to see the group reach news highs as an independent act truly breaking into mainstream consciousness. Today, we catch up with As December Falls to talk turning down labels, their fans' unwavering support and how their 'tough' journey has always been worth it

Your new album is heading for the Top 10 alongside the likes of Blur, Taylor Swift and Elton John. How does it feel to be in the company of such icons?

Bethany: It's absolutely wild. We're a completely independent band with no label and no management, and the fact that we're battling it out with some of the biggest artists on the biggest labels is just nuts.

A Top 10 album would be an undeniable sign your music's connected with the masses, transcending your close fanbase. How does it feel to know your vulnerabilities are relatable on such a scale?

Bethany: Honestly, as a songwriter the most rewarding feeling is when you pour your darkest secrets and insecurities onto a page to then have the lyrics sung back to you by a sold-out crowd. We always made music to connect with people, everything else on top is just a bonus at this point. The past 12 months have been an incredible experience as a band.

This album feels a little heavier, sonically and thematically, than your past work. Was that a conscious progression?

Timmy: We didn't really go into this record with a set plan. We very intentionally just tried to write the best songs we could without worrying if they all fit into a certain 'genre' or 'box' sonically, and I feel that the result was something completely raw and honest. At no point did we think 'oh, we shouldn't use that riff as it's far too heavy for our normal sound.' We just went with the flow and we've written some of the best songs of our careers.

Which tracks on this record were you most excited for fans to hear - and do you get nervous as to the reaction?

Timmy: We really broadened out our song writing on this album. We have some of the heaviest tracks we've ever written, like Carousel and Mayday, alongside some of the softest songs like Home; so it's a real mixed-bag of a record. We honestly didn't know how our fans would react to the new style but they've really embraced it with open arms!

Your journey as a band hasn't necessarily been by the book. What would your advice be to any musicians wanting to make a name for themselves in a world so occupied with overnight success and near-instant gratification?

Ande: We've always been fiercely-independent, having turned down a number of label and management offers. I think our biggest advice to any artist would be to try your absolute hardest to build your artistry on your own for as long as possible before signing over all your music to someone else. It's a tough journey, but it's definitely worth it”.

Kerrang! have predicted big things for As December Falls this year. If you need some insight into Join the Club, then Bethany Curtis certainly provides some in this interview. I will end with Kerrang! and their review of Join the Club. This is an album that I have fallen in love with. I know so many other people have done too:

“Their band name might be lifted from the heart of winter, but As December Falls make music for when the sun is high in the sky. Plumbing into the same kind of springily indomitable pop-punk as early Paramore and We Are In The In Crowd, with a little more modernity, a pinch of extra alt.rock grit, the Nottingham collective intoxicate with simplicity – as this genre’s finest acts tend to do.

Where 2019’s self-titled debut was a DIY stroke of defiance in the face of an apparently disinterested industry, and 2021’s Happier bore the hallmarks of a band still building confidence, third album Join The Club feels like the crest of a wave: attitude, aptitude and belief that their songs will see thousands of fans rocking along coming together in a perfect storm.

The gouging guitars and Bethany Hunter’s joyously angsty vocals on the opening title-track feel like a literal invitation to those legions of fans-to-be. Honey wraps its-sugar-loaded tendrils around your heart and squeezes. Carousel feels like the first showcase for this record’s heavier side, but the crunchy guitars and thumping drums are most effective for throwing the central, surging energy into relief: more evocative of the thrill of amping-up on the edge of the pit than the violence of diving in.

Brilliantly, the juggernaut momentum, breathless emotion and urgent desire to find new ways to express themselves continues for a further eight tracks. It’s there in the jaunty swagger and claustrophobic panic of Mayday, in the aching melodrama of I Can’t Sleep, in the tingling acoustic of Home and in the percussive heartbeat of Alive.

Three albums in, some may think they’ve already seen what these guys have to offer, but by the time the beauty and dynamism of whirlwind closer Tear It Out drops curtain, it’s clear that this is As December Falls’ arrival. And they could be huge.

Verdict: 4/5”

Do not miss out on this band. Despite being together for a decade now, 2024 is a year when they are going to truly break through. They should be among your names to watch. Such an amazing trio that have this incredible sound in their locker. Amazing live, together with that growing fanbase, and one would not bet against them achieving incredible things this year. There is no doubt that As December Falls are a band that…

YOU need in your lives.

___________

Follow As December Falls

Official:

https://www.asdecemberfalls.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/asdecemberfalls/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

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Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7Atp614yT56v9XrlqZryzX?si=p51vPv1-TlKkipULSv59uQ

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FEATURE: Elevated Pitch: The LuckChap Entertainment Empire, Margot Robbie: Future Director, and Gender Imbalance in Hollywood

FEATURE:

 

 

Elevated Pitch

IN THIS PHOTO: Margot Robbie/PHOTO CREDIT: Victoria Stevens for Variety

The LuckChap Entertainment Empire, Margot Robbie: Future Director, and Gender Imbalance in Hollywood

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AHEAD of the nominations…

IN THIS PHOTO: Margot Robbie alongside Joey McNamara (left) and Tom Ackerley/PHOTO CREDIT: Victoria Stevens for Variety

being announced for this year’s Academy Awards on 23rd January, there is a lot of attention around a production company and growing empire that is behind some of the biggest films of last year (before that, one Margot Robbie and Barbie are nominated at the Golden Globes this Monday coming (8th January). LuckyChap Entertainment are based in Los Angeles and was formed in 2014 by Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Sophia Kerr and Josey McNamara. Recently, Robbie, Ackerley and McNamara spoke with Variety about the success of Barbie and Saltburn. Two recent and successful films under their belt have built their name and reputation. With award-nominated and box office hits under their belt and some fascinating projects upcoming, LuckyChap Entertainment are one of the most original and successful production houses in film. Aside from Robbie and her co-founders seeking out interesting and fresh films that jump off the page, there is also this desire to support and highlight incredible female filmmakers. Working with Greta Gerwig (director/co-writer) on Barbie, Emerald Fennell (director and writer) on Saltburn and Olivia Wilde on a future film, Naughty, LuckyChap Entertainment are showcasing the work of some of Hollywood’s most talented and remarkable voices. I want to start with a 2022 interview from Grazia Daily, where Margot Robbie spoke about getting Barbie off the ground, and addressing female directors in Hollywood. Until Barbie, she had only been directed by one woman -  Josie Rourke for Mary Queen of Scots -, even though she had worked with a lot of female directors for her T.V. career:

“The BAFTA nominated actress admits that she didn't anticipate the amount of attention she would get. 'It was my first film in America,' she continues. 'Honestly, I know that sounds silly now, knowing how big the movie became, but at the time, I said, "No one's going to notice me in this film, everyone will be focused on Leo [DiCaprio] and I'll just slip under the radar."'

Through her remarkable career, Margot has worked with a breadth of legendary film directors; from Martin Scorsese on Wolf of Wall Street, to Quentin Tarantino on Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood. But it was noted that in the nearly 20 feature films she'd starred in - she hadn't been directed by a woman, until Josie Rourke for Mary Queen of Scots.

Margot says, 'When that became a big part of that conversation, I was like," I've worked with tonnes of women oh, it's all in TV. "' She explains, 'Every single director I work with has a totally different personality and different process. Of course, Josie has a particular insight as a woman, but then you do something like Bombshell with a Jay Roach, and he's the most emotionally intuitive person I know. ' She adds, 'So, I wouldn't say that it didn't work better because he was a man. When it comes to dealing with those specific topics - it's really down to the person. '

I like doing things that are scary, and Barbie was definitely scary because there's so much recognition and baggage.

A style icon since the 50s, Barbie has been setting trends with her pink aesthetic for multiple generations. Today, she’s still at the forefront as the 'Barbiecore' trend infiltrates pop culture (with 7 million TikTok views and counting.) And who is responsible for the resurgence of the trend? It's all thanks to Margot after being papped in THAT bright pink aerobics-inspired look, whilst filming the 2023 Barbie live-action film. 'It's insane,' she says. 'I didn't know it would get the hype that it seems to have already.'

She recounts that it wasn't an easy mission trying to persuade people on how much impact the film could have. She explains, 'When we were trying to get the budget that we needed for it. I kept saying to boards "This is the most globally recognised word next to like Coca Cola, everyone knows Barbie. This will hit!"' She jokes,' Give us more money for budget!'

But what drew Margot to this project? She explains, 'Barbie seemed like a huge opportunity. I was coming at it as a producer to begin with so, I didn't really think of it from the acting point of view until I knew that it was a goal.' She adds,' I knew the only way worth doing it was to have the Greta Gerwig version - I didn't really want to make a straightforward version of the film that didn't seem exciting.'

While Margot is grateful the upcoming film has sparked interest already - she just hopes it doesn't fizzle out. 'The producer side of me is like, everyone just put a lid on it - we're releasing this next summer, ' she says. Adding, ''I would really love the hype to still be there in a couple of month's time, just not right now. But it's exciting, it's great that it ignites conversation, debate, and interest.'

And while the rise of streaming is evident, as a self-confessed movie fanatic, Margot doesn't think the world should count out the theatrical experience any time soon. 'Nothing makes me happier than when a movie does well in theatres - that helps all of us.' She throws out a question of her own, 'Think of your favourite song. Imagine if the first time you heard that song was live at a concert, or the first time was on the radio. I mean, wouldn't you rather it be live? You'll never forget that experience and you can never get that first time back”.

I do hope there is more written about LuckChap Entertainment. There is a lot of emphasis on actors and directors, though we do not often get to hear about producers and companies behind successful films. Margot Robbie is one of the most successful and respected producers in Hollywood. The fact Variety spotlighted LuckyChap Entertainment and gave us some behind-the-scenes exposure of a wonderful team and company is fantastic. I am not sure how many Academy Awards Saltburn will be nominated for, though you feel Barbie could easily get seven or eight nominations – including Margot Robbie for Best Actress:

“Sitting on a sunny rooftop patio of her Los Angeles production company, LuckyChap, flanked by co-founders Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara, Robbie says, “When we finished the press tour, I was like, ‘I guess I’ll throw all the pink out of my wardrobe now.’” They all laugh. “But the fact that we’re going to the Golden Globes and all that stuff? I truly did not see that coming. I’m not trying to be modest.”

To house its booming production enterprise, LuckyChap is outfitting new digs in L.A. Today, Robbie’s office, one of the only areas that’s fully renovated so far, boasts a plush white carpet and a rendering of a pink high heel that’s reminiscent of the iconic shot of Robbie stepping out of Barbie’s feathered shoes. Her friend also gifted her a piece from a New York street artist that has a 1950s era Barbie sitting on the floor with her stiletto pressed against the face of a crawling Ken doll — a perfect merging of Robbie’s breakout performance in 2013’s “Wolf of Wall Street” and now, Barbie, precisely 10 years later.

PHOTO CREDIT: Victoria Stevens for Variety

In that time, the company has grown to 13 employees, with a film division (directed by Bronte Payne) housed in one area of the office and the TV team (led by Dani Gorin) in another, all working on the 20 projects they have in active development.

“The office is a five-minute skateboard ride away from home,” Robbie says enthusiastically, while she and Ackerley give me a tour.

Before “Barbie,” LuckyChap’s three biggest films — 2017’s “I, Tonya” and 2020’s “Birds of Prey” and “Promising Young Woman” — were successful, grossing a combined $275 million worldwide and winning two Oscars out of six nominations. “Barbie” made five times that and recently earned nine Golden Globe nominations and a record-setting 18 Critics Choice nods, on top of special prizes at the Gotham Awards and slots on the National Board of Review and AFI lists of the year’s best films.

PHOTO CREDIT: Victoria Stevens for Variety

“God, if every year could be like this one!” Robbie exclaims as we sit down, her Australian accent punctuated with a hint of wistfulness.

Beyond the broken records and the accolades, Robbie, Ackerley and McNamara see 2023 as a shining example of everything they hoped to achieve with the company, which was founded in their London flat in 2014. Robbie and Ackerley, who are married, met on the set of “Suite Française,” an independent feature on which Ackerley and McNamara (both Brits) were working as assistant directors. Robbie was an Aussie soap star with big-screen aspirations. The trio bonded over their desire to tell female-driven stories.

How do you plan to build on the success of “Barbie” and “Saltburn”?

TOM ACKERLEY: What we set out to do in the beginning is working. We’ve built this company around filmmakers, and we want them to take big swings and be really bold and tell original stories. We’re happy to take the big swings and miss; we’d rather that than play it safe.

MARGOT ROBBIE: Originality is definitely the key. But the thing about being original is you can’t do the thing that worked before. As much as we’re trying to celebrate the moment we’re in right now, our minds immediately go to what’s next. You can’t be original again; you have to be original every time. Whether it’s “I, Tonya” — the tone of that was so completely original — or “Barbie,” they’re all very bold. We swing for the fences, and sometimes you hit it out of the park and it’s amazing. But even if you didn’t hit it out of the park, you can’t not keep taking those big swings.

How do you decide what projects to take on?

MCNAMARA: It’s as important to know what to say no to as it is to say yes to. I don’t think we’re interested in pumping out 100 movies as quick as we can. It’s more, “Who are the people we love working with, and let’s build long-term relationships with them and help support their careers.” Repeat business is key.

ROBBIE: We have to be really clear about why we started the company and what our North Star is always going to be. Because any opportunity is exciting. We set out to break barriers with and for female talent, and if it isn’t a project that could potentially do that, then it’s not a project for us.

ACKERLEY: We obviously have people we would die to work with, but we’re as excited about breaking new talent as we are working with the best of the best filmmakers, like the Gretas and the Emeralds of the world. We want to look back in 10 years’ time and be proud that we fostered and broke a generation of filmmakers.

IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Wilde/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

LuckyChap has announced that it will be making Olivia Wilde’s next film, “Naughty,” with Universal. The project is on target to begin shooting early this year. What interested you in it?

ROBBIE: We have a penchant for actress-turned-writer-directors, between Olivia, Greta, Emerald and Megan. It’s our sweet spot.

Margot, you’ve mentioned that you want to direct one day. What’s the timeline on that?

ROBBIE: I don’t know. The tricky thing is, as much as I say I’m strict about saying no as a producer, I also get so excited with all the things that I could produce that it ends up taking up all my time. And as an actor, I get to work with so many brilliant directors and watch them do it — it’s like having a front-row seat to the best master class in the world. So it’s really tempting to keep doing that. But directing is a dear ambition of mine”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cass Bird for WSJ. Magazine

I want to go back to November 2022 and an article from The Wall Street Journal. Looking back a year and seeing how LuckyChap Entertainment have grown since. Even in 2022, Margot Robbie was being heralded as a force for change in Hollywood. Someone very much putting female voices first:

“The company’s current slate of projects widely varies in content and tenor. What the company looks for, according to its principals: material that is left of center. Fresh. Experimental. Yet commercial, they are quick to clarify. Of the projects pitched to them, only “1 percent are the ‘f— yeses,’ ” says Robbie. LuckyChap co-founder and co-principal Josey McNamara adds, “I wouldn’t say [the rest] are ‘hell nos’—a lot of times…it’s not right for us.”

Robbie says that the #MeToo movement has brought even more momentum to the company’s longstanding mission: “The knock-on effect of that was that a slipstream was created for female creatives. I can see quite a few of us riding that slipstream, and I would encourage all female creatives to ride in it.”

Among the talent fostered by the LuckyChap team: filmmaker and writer Emerald Fennell, whose 2020 film Promising Young Woman won her an Oscar, a BAFTA award and a WGA Award, all for best original screenplay. Fennell has become something of an in-house director and proof of concept for LuckyChap, which is also producing her second film, Saltburn, currently in post-production. Fennell says that the company has nurtured and defended her work.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cass Bird for WSJ. Magazine

“They’re not pandering to Hollywood or anyone else,” she says. “They stand behind you and don’t care if it gets them into trouble.” From the beginning of her working relationship with LuckyChap, “They never made me feel like a little girl. They believed in me and helped me,” Fennell says. “I felt safe with them.” And in Hollywood, she says, “it’s no small thing.”

Writer and director Greta Gerwig—who co-wrote and is directing the upcoming LuckyChap project Barbie—also describes Robbie and LuckyChap as champions of the female talent with whom they work. “Once they back a project, they back it all the way,” she says. As both an actor and producer, “Margot has a flash of certainty and then runs at it,” Gerwig says. “She doesn’t have a waffling aspect to her psyche.” 

Robbie and her colleagues are part of a wave of film and TV leaders helping women commandeer top creative roles and tell women’s stories on-screen. Actor and director Eva Longoria founded UnbeliEVAble Entertainment, dedicated to telling scripted and unscripted Latino stories. Writer and director Ava DuVernay founded Array, a collective that produces content that aims to “tell inclusive and entertaining stories that will…[amplify] people of color and women of all kinds across all narrative formats.” Hello Sunshine—a media company created by producer and Oscar-winning actor Reese Witherspoon—“puts women at the center of every story we create, celebrate and discover.” (Witherspoon sold the company in 2021 for a reported $900 million to a new company backed by private equity firm

PHOTO CREDIT: Cass Bird for WSJ. Magazine

It’s an increasingly crowded playing field. While sometimes LuckyChap must compete for projects with other companies with similar mandates, “it doesn’t feel like unhealthy competition,” says Robbie. “I’d be thrilled for even more female-led and female-driven companies to start. The more the merrier.”

“They’re not pandering to Hollywood or anyone else,” Emerald Fennell says of Robbie and the LuckyChap Entertainment co-founders. “They stand behind you and don’t care if it gets them into trouble.” Jacquemus shirt and tie, $755, Jacquemus.com.

In the earliest years in the film industry, women regularly worked as directors and producers. In the early 20th century, director Alice Guy Blaché ran her own studio, Solax, and produced up to three films a week; Dorothy Arzner directed nearly 20 films between 1927 and 1943. However, once motion pictures showed signs of becoming lucrative as mass entertainment, Wall Street took notice; the studio system emerged and quickly locked down the industry. Female directors and producers were largely exiled.

“Hollywood was an open space at the time and a new industry,” says Stacy Smith, associate professor of communication at the University of Southern California and founder of the school’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. “[But] when money comes in, marginalized communities are pushed out…. That’s a common theme that runs all the way to present day.” 

PHOTO CREDIT: Cass Bird for WSJ. Magazine

Over the decades, as the industry changed, some determined actresses founded companies or acted as producers in an attempt to assert control over their careers. Actor Mary Pickford founded her own production company in 1916 to create better projects and collaborations for herself and helped found United Artists in 1919 in part to distribute her films. After being designated “box office poison” in 1938, Katharine Hepburn managed to option rights to Philadelphia Story and use it as a vehicle for a comeback on her own terms. The movie earned her a best actress Oscar nomination; Robbie cites it as one of her favorite films. 

“It’s easy to put female names on a list,” Robbie says of getting female-driven films made. “It’s a bigger hurdle to get someone to bankroll [a] project. We still have a long way to go in that regard; that ship is going to take so much longer to course-correct.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Cass Bird for WSJ. Magazine

While galvanizing, these triumphs and others that followed also belie the historical fight for gender equity in the industry. Only five women have won an Academy Award for an original screenplay since 1956, when the Academy established its current configuration of writing categories; just three women have won best director, out of eight total nominations. (Jane Campion has been nominated twice.) Even with the current proliferation of companies dedicated to nurturing female talent, Smith warns that statistics show that inequality remains tenacious.

Today studios and production companies are considering more female directors and writers, says Robbie. “[But] it’s easy to put female names on a list,” she says. “It’s a bigger hurdle to get someone to bankroll [a] project. We still have a long way to go in that regard; that ship is going to take so much longer to course-correct”.

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I think there is something genuinely wonderful and innovative about LuckyChap Entertainment. Their ethos, passion and drive is inspiring! The projects they take on and how they are supporting incredible women and also bringing these captivating stories to life. The future is hugely busy and exciting for them. I know that Margot Robbie especially, as actor and producer, will have a hectic year ahead – and I hope she gets to appear in a film where she uses her natural Australian accent -; maybe awards will come her way and there will be new honours. Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Josey McNamara and Sophia Kerr have created this modern-day empire that, unlike a more faceless company or studio, seems to have a very personal and down-to-earth touch. From the vibe and stunning new offices to the impressive and successful filmography behind them right now, I think that the next few years will see LuckyChap Entertainment grow even bigger. Bringing through incredible upcoming female directors and working in T.V. and film. I am excited by the idea of Margot Robbie directing soon. I have said before how she seems like a natural director. So many projects you could see her helming. Whether a biopic (I am begging for someone to make a Blondie biopic!), literary adaptation, Indie film or blockbuster, you know she could make any film a massive success. I want to end with Variety. They write that, despite female filmmakers like Greta Gerwig and Celine Song (Past Lives) making some of 2023’s best films, there is still huge gender disparity throughout film:

“Greta Gerwig‘s “Barbie” wasn’t just the year’s biggest box office winner. It also made history as the highest-grossing movie directed by a woman. Despite the film’s outsized success, major studios gave most of their biggest gigs to male filmmakers.

That’s the conclusion of a new study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.  It found that women comprised just 16% of directors on the 250 top-grossing films, which was down from 18% in 2022. There were modest improvements the higher up the list of money-earners you climb — female filmmakers called the shots on 14% of the 100 top films, which was up from 11% in 2022.

IN THIS PHOTO: Celine Song/PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Dunivan

The findings come as female filmmakers like Gerwig, “Salburn’s” Emerald Fennell, “Past Lives’s” Celine Song and “Priscilla’s” Sofia Coppola released some of the year’s buzziest and most acclaimed movies; and pop divas like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift topped the box office with concert films.

All that critical and commercial success hasn’t changed the employment picture. Indeed, things weren’t much brighter when it came to female talent in other key roles. Overall, women accounted for 22% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers working on the 250 top-grossing films. That was a decline from 24% in 2022. Moreover, 75% of the top-grossing films employed 10 or more men in key behind-the-scenes roles, while just 4% employed 10 or more women.

In descending order women comprised 26% of producers, 24% of executive producers, 21% of editors, 17% of writers, 14% of composers and 7% of cinematographers. Of these roles, women saw gains as composers on the top 250 films, improving by 6%. The number of women employed as producers, executive producers and writers all declined, while the percentage of female editors and cinematographers was roughly even with 2022.

IN THIS PHOTO: Greta Gerwig/PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Rayner via Festival De Cannes

“It’s the ultimate illusion, Greta Gerwig’s well-deserved triumph belies the inequality that pervades the mainstream film industry,” Dr. Martha Lauzen, the report’s author and the center’s founder and executive director, said in a statement. “The numbers tell the story. Behind-the-scenes gender ratios in Hollywood remain dramatically skewed in favor of men.”

The study found that on movies with at least one woman director, more women were hired for key behind-the-scenes roles than films with exclusively male directors. When women were in the directing chair, 61% of writers, 35% of editors, 10% of cinematographers and 26% of composers were female. On films with male directors, women accounted for 9% of writers, 18% of editors, 7% of cinematographers and 11% of composers”.

I wanted to nod to LuckyChap Entertainment before we see whether Barbie and Saltburn are going to scoop Oscar nominations. It is not about the awards and box office. Even so, for Margot Robbie and everyone at LuckyChap Entertainment, starting on modest ground, accolades and financial success is very important. A sign that their vision is coming to life and connecting with people around the world. Despite the fact LuckyChap Entertainment does not exclusively work with female directors, I think that their collaborators with amazing women in film is one of their best aspects. I think it is the dream of every director/screenwriter (me included) to have their script in the hands of LuckyChap Entertainment. There is that blend of a familial vibe and this very determined and ambitious company that are really adding their stamp on the industry. After a very busy and successful 2023, it already looks like this year is going to magnificent for Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Sophia Kerr and Josey McNamara’s baby. LuckyChap Entertainment has grow into…

A wonderful and inclusive empire.

FEATURE: Queens of Pop: Why the Dominance of Female Artists Should Tip the Industry Scales

FEATURE:

 

 

Queens of Pop

IN THIS PHOTO: RAYE

Why the Dominance of Female Artists Should Tip the Industry Scales

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THE start of this year…

IN THIS PHOTO: PinkPantheress/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

has already seen women very much front and centre of critical attention. BBC’s Sound of 2024 was dominated by women. So many of the best new acts to watch are women or bands fronted by women. This year is clearly one where music’s queens will rule. I think this has been the case for years but, especially right now, there is proof that they are owning the airwaves and making the best music around. Even if attention and appreciation is being paid, will the industry reverse gender bias in regards festival spaces? Many women in the industry feel objectified. That labels and the industry treats them as toys or puppets. Not being treated fairly and given much dignity. This all needs to change. We are seeing a new Pop revolution that is fronted by women. Reacting to news that female artists had a huge year across commercial radio in the U.K. last year, The Guardian wrote why the best Pop stars are women. That being said, the industry needs to endure that women are given their dues - and we no longer have to talk about imbalance and inequality through an industry they are defining:

“Madonna, Beyoncé, Britney, Whitney: if you think about the most iconic names in mainstream pop history, you’ll probably come up with a list of women. And this week, we have solid confirmation of female artists’ dominance. British audiences listen to more female musicians than male, according to the latest industry figures for 2023.

It was the most successful performance for women on the UK singles chart since it began in 1952, the British Phonographic Institute (BPI) found. This included artists such as Raye and PinkPantheress, both of whom saw their music proliferate on TikTok this year, and those global heavy hitters you’d probably expect: Miley Cyrus – whose single Flowers stayed at No 1 for 10 weeks on the UK chart – Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo et al.

And yet, despite this, unbalanced festival line-ups and award ceremonies dominated by men do little to reflect the cultural weight that woman artists carry. The music business has always been deeply sexist. It is only in very recent years that female pop artists in general have been taken seriously by the music press and listeners at large. But the latest figures do show some signs of change.

First, the figures offer confirmation and recognition that a large majority of the biggest names in mainstream music are now women. And second, they show that the commercial heft of female musicians now matches their societal impact.

Throughout the decades, women have always made the best pop stars, in my view (consider all of those I mentioned above for proof), through a unique mix of sexuality and magnetism and the fact that pop music itself has long been coded culturally as feminine. A “poptimist” shift in the last couple of decades seems to finally have decreed pop music and, perhaps, the women who make it, as worthy of genuine critical attention. Lana Del Rey, for instance – now widely considered America’s greatest living songwriter – was famously dismissed as unserious at her 2012 debut.

Also worth considering is the simple fact that there aren’t really as many male pop juggernauts as there used to be, despite the perma-popularity of artists such as Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi and Harry Styles. Where we had the charisma machine that was George Michael in the 1980s and, in the 1990s and 2000s, Robbie Williams – whose historic 2003 Knebworth concerts still hold the record for the most people an artist has ever played to in Britain – there are few solo male pop artists who, today, feel as if they come close.

The pipeline of female solo artists about to come into the mainstream, too, is in rude health: the most exciting “rising” pop acts in the world now tend to be young women. The coming year, for instance, looks to be dominated by a 20-year-old Canadian named Tate McRae, whose stage presence and physical precision call to mind Britney Spears in the early 2000s. On their way to household name status, too, are Sexyy Red, Sabrina Carpenter, Reneé Rapp and a host of others”.

It is about the industry not only acknowledging the raft of varied and hugely strong female talent defining and evolving Pop. They are creating so much for the industry. Doing so much fantastic work, in the past, that has not been reflected in fairness. Festivals still hiding behind excuses. A lack of appropriate artists to fill the biggest slots. Award ceremonies struggling to nominated women in various categories. Young artists speaking about being used as a prop or disrespected. A very challenging industry that is hard for any artist, this is especially true for young women. There needs to be this respect and understanding that the tide has turned. With women very much at the forefront, how can the music industry have imbalance and still play more male artists?! Festival still overrun with male artists. So many of them are very tired and predictable, whereas there are women who are fresh and oriignal being overlooked. The Pop queens who are getting this amazing press right now are ready to step up. Line-ups for big festivals will be announced soon. We will see truly whether the balance shifts at all. I hope so. We are still in a position where we have to challenge festivals, radio stations and labels regarding the visibility of women and how they are treated. We should not need to have these conversations in 2024!

It is not just ‘Pop’ where women are making their mark. Across so many genres and corners of music, women are very much producing the best work. It is hard to overcome and reverse decades of bias and the norm. The industry naturally and lazily favouring male artists and seeing them as the driving force. Treating them better and given them more opportunities. Although not everything will be eradicated this year, this exposure of female artists and their success should force the industry to address the past and help create a more equal future. The queens of music are not asking for a lot. Only what is owed and rightly earned! With so many natural festival headliners already out there, together with a wave of new artists who mean we are spoiled for choice, we cannot ignore the fact. An industry often accused of sexism and misogyny needs to change! Women need to be properly respected. Many might say they are already though, when we hear stories of imbalance and male artists still being the go-to, this does not really ring true. This year should be one for positive change. It not only gives hope for women coming through that they have a place. It means the industry is much more interesting and varied. Not having to feature the same artists and repeat mistakes. There is hope at least! If we are in the same position this time next year, then we really have to ask serious questions. The news that women dominated the U.K. singles market last year is another sign that things are changing. The industry needs to react. In the coming weeks and months, we will see if…

THEY truly step up.

FEATURE: To Watch in 2024: Tyla

FEATURE:

 

 

To Watch in 2024

PHOTO CREDIT: Epic/Fax Records

Tyla

_________

THIS year is going to see some…

truly awesome artists make their mark on the scene. Someone I have written about before but feel compelled to revisit just came in fourth in the BBC Sound of 2024 list. I will come to the corresponding interview at the end. First, there are a few more that I want to come to. Tyla is someone who is going to make big strides this year. I am going to bring in a few interview so that we can get a fuller impression of an artist who is going to conquer the globe before too long. She is someone I have loved for a long time. Such a fresh and exciting voice in music. Do make sure you check Tyla out and what she is doing. Born and raised in Johannesburg, Tyla hails from a multiracial ethnic group in South Africa with the highest levels of mixed ancestry in the world - and a rich history and cultural identity. Back in October, Wonderland. spoke with the twenty-one-year-old superstar-in-the-making. In their words, Tyla was “Championing the Johannesburg music scene with her ethereal flow and Pop-tinged take on the rapidly rising South African dance genre, Amapiano, the music riser is making her presence known”. This is someone who is going to rise to the highest levels. Such is her talent and passion she has:

“Introducing a rising genre to new audiences is no easy feat. But 21-year-old Tyla – aka Tyla Laura Seethal – is giving it a try. “So I do make Amapiano music, but I wouldn’t say I’m an Amapiano artist,” contemplates the artist as she reflects on the South African music genre that she is bringing to promi-nence. Growing roots in South Africa during the mid 2010s, the genre is a melting pot of Deep House, Jazz and Lounge, which marry in symphonic har-mony, characterised by distinctive sounds packed with signature vibrating synths and wide percussive baselines. “It’s definitely new for the Western world. But I mean, it’s been around for so long in South Af-rica. We’ve been partying to this genre. It’s been a part of our culture for a long time. So naturally, I fell into it. I wanted to explore it as well as put my own spin on it. That’s why I make it a bit more Pop-y.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Wonderland.

The Pop-infused sound in question first graced our ears when the songstress made her debut two years ago, with the uptempo tune “Getting Late” ft. Kooldrink. Amassing 6.2M YouTube views since its release, the internet embraced Tyla with arms wide open and her debut was hailed a success. But, a quick scroll to the depths of her YouTube channel – which hosts archival gems of an infant Tyla bellowing Justin Bieber covers at the camera – is all it takes to confirm that her love affair with music has been nurtured since infancy. “My family is very mu-sical,” the artist confirms as she reminisces on her childhood spent in Johannesburg. “My family sings and plays instruments. My parents cannot sing, but they love music. My gran can sing, she would do it a lot when we were growing up. She’d do competi-tions and that’s how she would get money. She al-ways says I got [my talent] from her, and I probably did.” With her gran’s influence guiding her, a young Tyla began putting pen to paper – well, pen to diary. Filling a journal with her first scrawling of lyrics and song ideas, along with the detailing of boy crushes, the making of Tyla was underway. Will the musings of the young artist ever see the light of day? “There was a song that I recorded that had something that was similar to what I’ve written in that diary. It’s not out, but it was something that was recorded.

With confirmation that there will “definitely be Amapiano songs on the EP,” and her recently-released summer anthem “Water” giving listeners a scintillating hint at what is to come, South Africa’s global musical revolution is in motion. And, Tyla is sure she is the right person to spearhead the move-ment. “Firstly, being from South Africa, I’m from a completely different place. Not many Pop stars are emerging from where I’m coming from. So that is already exciting. I think I have a new sound and I’m also a performer. I dance, I sing, I do it all. And I genuinely have so much passion and love for what I do. I just see the potential and how far I could go not only with music but also outside of music in the industry.” Self-assured she may be, but Tyla is not the only person invested in her success – the social me-dia-crazed TikTokers are also backing her. “I was just seeing people from everywhere making videos to “Getting Late”,” she says of her viral reception on the app. “From places I had never heard about ever in my life. Places that I’ve always dreamed of going to; that was very exciting for me around that time”.

Tyla was featured by Cosmopolitan in October. Someone who was introducing and exposing South African culture to a global stage, there was this growing excitement and anticipation. Songs such as Water have demonstrated why she is so heralded. The latest BBC Sound of 2024 honour shows that her music is spreading worldwide. I predict that she will feature at some massive festivals in the summer:

“Water” has positioned the 21-year-old South African star in a league of popular artists solidifying Afrobeats music in the mainstream (see: Tems and Tiwa Savage). And Tyla is already making history. She became the first South African solo artist to enter the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 55 years since Hugh Masekela did it. (That was back in 1968 if math’s not your thing.)

So how does a girl who hadn’t left South Africa before signing to her label adjust to global spotlight? Cosmopolitan sat down with Tyla—fresh off her U.S. TV debut performance on The Tonight Show—for a check-in...and some tips on how not to look ridiculous while attempting the “Water” dance.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ruben Chamorro

Congrats on “Water” going viral! You’re blowing up. I know you wanted to put out a smaller project before your debut album—how is the development process going? Where are you on that journey?

I have a lot of amazing songs. I’ve been recording for basically two years trying to make the project that I’m happy with. My mini one is just a little taste, you know, so people have more things to listen to other than “Water” and people can get to know my sound and who Tyla is as an artist. Then the debut album, mmm! That’s gonna be a moment. I really love how artists used to break back in the day, so I try to bring that back with the things I do. I really liked that time.

Which era are you most drawn to when you look at different times in music history?

The 2000s for sure. When Rihanna was coming up, and Aaliyah was doing her thing. Beyoncé, that era.

I can see a lot of that influence in your fashion too. What type of things are on your mood board when you’re curating a look?

I just like feeling a certain way, you know? When I put on something, it has to make me feel something. In general, the easy island type of vibe has always been mine. A very sweaty, ripped look.

Is there an essential piece that’s best to wear during the “Water” dance? What do you suggest to get the most movement going?

Girl, definitely a skirt. Not a tight one. It can be a little tight by the waist, but your bum needs to be free. That’s the trick. Like, your bum can’t be tense in the outfit.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ruben Chamorro

What type of music were you listening to when you were growing up? Were they into pop culture?

My parents listen to everything. My house was always playing music every day. We’d wake up to music, we’d come home to music. Rap, R&B, pop, our type of House in South Africa—not the oontz-oontz type. Jazz, literally almost everything. So I had a wide variety, and I fell in love with it all. I think that’s why my sound is a fusion of a lot of different things—because I don’t like just one sound.

What would you consider your career high so far?

Oh my gosh, there have been so many moments, especially this year. I feel like this was my year in general. “Water” has made my life. Everything that’s happening is crazy, and it doesn’t feel real yet. Being from where I’m from, this thing doesn’t happen all the time. I’m happy that I’m able to do that not only for myself and my music but also for South Africa and African music as a whole.

There’s so much precision. I think that’s something people respect about you as well—it seems like you have a real respect for your craft. What is your rehearsal process like when you’re getting a performance together? Are you a perfectionist?

I’m definitely a perfectionist. When things are just “eh,” it’s like, what’s the point? But I also have people around me that I trust, so we work very well together to create something beautiful. There’s also the fact that my creative team is from South Africa. So everything I do is South African and close to home and constantly pushing the culture and who I am in general, you know? I love to rehearse. I love to get things right. But there are times when I leave it to God, and it always comes back the way it’s supposed to.

Thinking about your career specifically, if you were able to sit down with the version of yourself that exists 10 years from now, what would you hope she’d have to report back to you?

I would just want her to say that Tyla is the biggest pop star of my time. Because I want that pop star to be from Africa. That’s really something that I want in general and for myself”.

Harper’s Bazzar spotlighted the remarkable Tyla at the end of last year. With a debut album being worked on and new music coming pretty soon, there are going to be more and more eyes on this astonishing artist. I have not heard anyone quite like her. This all means that 2024 is a year where Tyla will dominate. I have no doubt about that. A hugely important name in modern music. If you are not aware of her then do make sure that you check her out as soon as possible:

“Portions of her debut LP have been recorded in multiple countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Ghana, and the United States. That global influence permeates her upcoming album, set for release in 2024. Tyla’s new songs—“On and On,” “Truth or Dare,” “Butterflies,” and the “Water (Remix)” with Travis Scott—are available now for fans who preorder her upcoming self-titled album. Her airy voice floats above melodies, detailing how love went wrong and the joy of finding someone new. She is clearly well on her way to the global stardom she’s striving for.

Her diverse approach to production and choice of collaborators ultimately fuel what she considers her “popiano” sound, a fusion of pop and amapiano influences, such as kwaito music. “I just love mixing R&B and pop with African production. That is my favorite type of music,” Tyla says.

Though celebrated for her bubbly persona on social media, there is greater depth to her budding talent—this musical moment has been years in the making. Tyla scripts her videos’ storyboards, is hands-on with her stylist, pens songs from personal experiences, and more importantly, understands the value of teamwork. “Obviously, I enjoy doing things by myself. But I always find that I enjoy collaborating with people. I enjoy those sessions more. It is more creative. I am able to bounce [ideas] off of people. Then, people can bounce off of me,” she says. “I love getting inspiration and sharing where I am from and things about my life and culture.”

The person most responsible for instilling these values in her also helped establish the breezy style that launched Tyla’s career—it was her mother. The singer would raid her mom’s closet as a tyke, hoping to emulate her beauty. “I love fashion … I would wear all my mother’s clothes, heels, shoes, and everything. I would model for my family … I really grew up looking up to my mother and loving the way she carried herself,” she says. While brand names are not yet a major focal point for her at this stage, being put together is. As with her music, Tyla’s style is more concentrated on execution than anything else. So far, the performer has worn looks from Gen Z–adored brands Di Petsa and Blumarine, which have caught fans’ attention. As we have learned over the years, fashion is nearly as vital in building a superstar as music.

That sentiment was showcased on social media recently through a snippet of her video for “Truth or Dare,” filmed in Jamaica, with creative direction from Thato Nzimande. The single’s emphasis on how exes play themselves only to regret it later carries weight with Tyla’s audiences. The lyrics (“So, let’s play truth or dare / Dare you to forget / That you used to treat me just like anyone”) remind listeners that women with their own things going on are at liberty to hold romantic partners accountable.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeremy Soma

Tyla confirms that she writes about what she is familiar with. “A lot of the new songs I relate to,” she says. “With my songs, I just do storytelling … I do find myself in all the music that I make.” Her eyes are set on having it all, and why not?

She is not afraid to voice what she wants out of fame. “I want to become the biggest pop star and to advocate for Africa and African music wherever I go. That would make me feel like I have made it,” she says. Among her dream collaborators are Rihanna, PartyNextDoor, Drake, and Blackpink, to name a few. Her passion and purpose have led her this far, and will continue propelling her forward.

As she puts it: “I am so ready for everything that is to come”.

I shall come to that new interview from the BBC. After being placed fourth in their annual competition to decide which artists will define the year, she reflected on her upbringing and path into music. Even if people define her with a song like Water, there is a lot more music to come. Her debut album is going to be among the most anticipated of this year. Someone who is rightly earning a lot of praise and celebration at the moment. An artist far too special and strong to overlook:

“I really looked up to Rihanna, because she came from outside America and just dominated the industry," she says. And if a girl from Barbados could do it, why not her?

After "a lot of convincing and a lot of crying", her parents gave her a year to break into the industry. If she didn't succeed, she had to go back to school.

"And I'm still on my gap year now!"

Tyla released her debut single, Getting Late, in 2019, casually creating a new genre in the process.

Called Popiano, it's essentially a more streamlined, hook-heavy variant of Amapiano - the popular South African sound that blends house music with reggae, jazz and trunk-rattling kwaito bass lines.

"Amapiano really felt like me, being a South African girl," she explains. "But I also love pop and R&B so I wanted to mix that influence with sounds from home. It came together very naturally."

PHOTO CREDIT: Epic/Fax Records

Showcasing her soulful, intimate delivery over a shimmering shaker-and-snare groove, Getting Late put Tyla on an upward trajectory in South Africa - but the song lacked a music video, and Tyla lacked the resources to shoot one.

On the boisterous Overdue, she's harbouring a secret crush. The agitated beats of Been Thinking capture the anxious moment where she confesses her feelings.

"I read a lot of teen romance when I was younger, and I love those type of stories," she explains. "It's all very fun and young."

Water is where the passion boils over, as she guides a man back to her bedroom and instructs: "Make me sweat, make me hotter / Make me lose my breath, make me water."

The lyrics were inspired by Aaliyah's Rock The Boat - another bedroom anthem with an aquatic double-entendre - but the sound is all hers, with rattling log drums and South African slang phrases like Hayibo.

It became a phenomenon on TikTok, where million of fans copied Tyla's steamy Bacardi-style dance moves, which she accentuates by pouring a bottle of water down her back.

That trend spawned a craze of its own - where women would sit next to their boyfriends and play the song's opening bars. If they leaned in to catch a glimpse of Tyla's video, they faced all manner of shame and scorn.

The singer takes no responsibility for any subsequent break-ups.

"I'm not a part of all of this!" she laughs.

The song has taken her around the world, onto the stages and TV shows she dreamt of as a child. She made her live debut at Milan fashion week, and sat next to Kim Kardashian at Dolce and Gabbana's Fall/Winter show.

Ciara, Normani, Jack Harlow and BTS member Kim Tae-hyung (aka V) have all been in touch - but her mind was truly blown when Janet Jackson started performing Water as a mash-up with What Have You Done For Me Lately on her US tour.

"I was like, 'What the heck!' And then she DM'd me and she was like, 'Congratulations, stay blessed'," Tyla says.

"I was just star-struck. I couldn't believe Janet Jackson took the time to even say anything, you know? It's crazy."

Tyla's bid for world domination is going to plan, then. And she's ready to follow up Water with her self-titled debut album in March.

"I feel like people are going to be so surprised, like, 'Where did this girl come from?'," she says,

"So I'm very excited because when I listen back to the album, I'm like, the people are not ready!".

A beautiful and wonderful talent that is going to grow through this year, everyone needs to tune into Tyla. Someone who I genuinely think can rank alongside some of the biggest artists of the modern age, there will be a lot of eyes and ears on her debut album. One that is going to introduce her to a whole new wave of fans. When it comes to Tyla, she is well and truly…

A global sensation.

____________

Follow Tyla

PHOTO CREDIT: Epic/Fax Records

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/tyla

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Tyllaaaaaaa

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3SozjO3Lat463tQICI9LcE?si=tdI8U3bqSdiobIH4XHxTcg

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8HOgNWipVorrlBH8oN2R-A

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/iamtyla/

FEATURE: Spotlight: Gia Ford

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Melanie Lehmann

Gia Ford

_________

AN artist I have admired…

for a long time now, Gia Ford is someone to look out for this year. A tremendous artist whose is truly distinct and instantly memorable, I think that she will have a huge career. Hailing from Sheffield, I would advise everyone to follow her. I am going to get to some interviews with her. So that we can discover more about this tremendous talent. I will start out with this Fred Perry interview:

“Name, where are you from?

Gia Ford, I’m from Sheffield North England!

Describe your style in three words?

Androgyny, drama, prep.

What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to?

Probably Sevdaliza at the Barbican in 2018. She has some of the most immersive music/performances I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. Her integrity is also really inspiring to me, she does what she has to do for the music and nothing comes between her and her art.

If you could be on the line up with any two artists in history?

Portishead and Pink Floyd. Both probably extremely exciting and inspiring to watch on the same stage you’re on. They’ve been two of the most daring artists I’ve taken inspiration from.

Which subcultures have influenced you?

I’d say the queer community (which I am a part of) and the drag world has influenced me more than I’ve thought about before. The freedom of gender expression, the fantasy, the alter egos.

If you could spend an hour with anyone from history?

Grace Jones. Just to be in her presence.

Of all the venues you’ve been to or played, which is your favourite?

I enjoyed watching Kelela at The Roundhouse - I’d never been before but it was such a beautiful space.

Your greatest unsung hero or heroine in music?

Jeff Lynn of ELO. He’s a genius and not many people knew he wrote so much of the music, including music for the strings.

The first track you played on repeat?

That I can remember… 'Dance In The Dark' by Lady Gaga. There was probably an earlier one but my memory is terrible”.

A song you wished you had written?

'This Woman’s Work' by Kate Bush :'(

Best song to turn up loud?

'Tear You Apart' by She Wants Revenge.

A song people wouldn’t expect you to like?

'Halo' by Machine Head”.

Among a sea of amazing artists out there, Gia Ford really stands out. I am interested to see what comes from her this year. I know that a debut album is coming soon. That will be really great to hear. Her name is definitely highlighted as a truly essential one. I am going to move to an interview from Mancunion. Signed to Chrysalis, they were keen to speak with an artist who was building on her early promise and brilliance. Last year was a great one for Ford. I think that this one is going to be the very best of her career so far. Someone who is primed for huge things very soon:

“Few artists today truly manage to capture a sense of the poetic drama of everyday life quite like Gia Ford. A rising starlet from Sheffield, Ford has recently signed to reborn label Chrysalis – of previous Blondie fame – and is set to play Camden’s famous Jazz Café this Valentine’s Day for the charity Choose Love.

As all good artists are, Ford is a musical magpie, taking influence all the way from golden 70s pop to Shade and Lana Del Rey. Her previously released material – put out by the 1975’s label Dirty Hit – samples an entirely different sonic palette of dark, fuzzy guitars and murky synths. While still expressing a pride she feels over the work, it is a musical direction she has definitely shifted away from. Explaining how she felt about that earlier work: “I was trying to second guess the industry a little bit”.

Now, her music has an Americana twang of a different era. “The new stuff is more of my childhood inspirations … the Fleetwood Macs, the Nick Caves … even the Dusty Springfields … that’s always been my favourite stuff”. A return to old loves. She remarked of the change: “I think I’ve gone back to all of my original inspirations that I never felt confident enough to pay homage to”. “Part of me just wants a complete rebirth… to start again”. 

With potent lyrics full of embedded meaning, Ford is a focused lyricist, with an eye for an unusual image. One song she recalled references the urban grit of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, while she also pointed to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History as a key literary influence (“the descriptions take you into another world. That’s something I try to do”). “I live my life trying to absorb things that go unnoticed usually … like that classic thing with newspaper articles; there are songs in everything if you keep your eye out”.

As an artist from Sheffield and having went to school in Wilmslow, Ford has recently returned to the North after a spate in the capital. Keen to emphasise the cultural differences, she remarked: “Pandemic London was not fun”.

“London is a very soul-stripping place unless you’re having a lot of fun all the time … I’m not really that kind of person … I’m more of an introspective person. I like space”. Referring to the differences in the scene up here, she was eager to make clear how the North generally is “less ‘industry’ and less pretentious” as well as “less cutthroat … it feels more genuine”. Ironically, it seems the distinct lack of industry presence in the North influences music even at a very granular level, something Ford knows all too well.

The lack of a present music business outside of London does increase the challenge of getting music out there however, a fact felt all too easily by artist attempting to get their foot in the door. We discussed the plans to regionalise BBC Introducing – in part due to dwindling radio listenership. As Ford’s most recent single – the beautifully fatal ‘Car Crash for Two’ – has been championed by Sheffield’s own Introducing DJ, Christian Carlisle, there is a clear fondness for the radio promotion young artists receive through the programme.

“Even when I lived in London I was in touch with him [Christian Carlisle] quite a lot”, she explained, keenly emphasising the ‘do-it-yourself’ grit necessary to break through outside of Britain’s musical centre. With no alternatives provided, the worry among artists such as Ford – in a tender part of their career – is that most support for up-and-comers will dry up. “There is no support really in that sense… you have to try a lot harder”.

Artists such as Ford also find themselves in a drastically different environment to that of the music that inspires them. In an age where even the most controversial or rebellious bands have an Instagram account, we discussed the pressures of social media and the incessant marketing drive behind it. “People think that you have to be TikTok savvy or Instagram savvy … I understand [it] as a great tool, but I think it does fall on the artist’s shoulders so much to get yourself out there”.

Like most artists, Ford releases regular content to keep people engaged, but she was keen to stress how the social-media storm mounts on the pressure: “When I first started releasing music there was a lot less pressure around it”. “My girlfriend does all of my imagery… we used to just have fun and take some amazing photos and post them… creating the world whenever we felt like it”

I will end with a recent interview from Rolling Stone. Previously an artist who made darker, more Pop-driven sounds, Americana is where Gia Ford has her home. Someone who much prefers to write about other people – as she finds writing about herself boring -, there is this small wave of British artists creating wonderful modern Americana. It is always fascinating and different. Against the backdrop of modern Pop, there is something deeper in the music of Gia Ford and like-minded contemporaries:

“On recent singles from her debut album, due out in mid-2024, she uses literature as a springboard from which to explore others’ stories. This is best shown on new single ‘Falling in Love Again’, which tells the story of her friend’s father, who mourned the death of his wife by asking his new partner to dress up in her clothes. “That’s so uncomfortable, but also really beautiful and sad,” she reflects of the story. “It’s about those strange ways that people grieve, and how they aren’t often very comfortable to talk about [them]. He was trying to express something, and he didn’t know how to do it. It just leaked out into life the way these things do.”

This bold and multi-faceted world that Ford creates is also enriched by her co-writers, who bring different perspectives to the stories. “I wish I could just write something completely alone,” she says, “but I think there’s something really amazing about writing with other people because you have so many different perspectives on something. We learn about life through writing songs with other people as well. It’s not just about the song, it’s about the relationship that you have with those people.”

This songwriting style is intimately linked to — and significantly enhanced by — the sonic direction she is now travelling in. On ‘Falling in Love Again’, the story of the grieving widower is given space to make its impact accompanied by sparse and luscious piano licks and woozy guitar. “A lot of the stories that I’m drawn to require a big open sky and big open space,” she says of her new sonic palette, which recalls Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell and her new labelmate on Chrysalis Records, Laura Marling. “It’s hard to describe, but it’s that vastness of sound that I like.”

This particular sound was enhanced by recording her album in Los Angeles at the famous Sound City Studios, where Fleetwood Mac first met. “It felt like I was surrounded by the spirits of all these people,” says Ford, smiling. While there she also visited Laurel Canyon, a place with a distinctive and legendary musical vibe that Ford taps into on her new material.

Her upcoming debut album, though not written as such, has ended up as something of a concept album, as Ford explains. “Every song is about an outsider of some kind. Every character is an outsider. If it’s a song about me, it’s because I also felt separate from something. I haven’t even fully deciphered it for myself yet, but there’s a reason why I’m drawn to that theme. Everyone feels separate from something, don’t they? You live life in your own head, even though we’re all living the same thing. You do feel inherently separate from the world. You’re the main character because you’re the only one that can experience your consciousness.”

If Ford does sing of her own life, it’s through heavy metaphor, such as on new single ‘Alligator’, a driving soft rock hit which sees her refer to herself through parallel beings in the animal kingdom. “I wanted to embody them, so I didn’t talk directly about myself. That song’s about trying really hard to get my music noticed on TikTok and just generally in the world. I was getting frustrated at how difficult it was. I felt like I was doing everything correctly, but no one was noticing it or recognising all the work that I had put in.” In keeping with her distinct and unique lyrical expression, she chose to approach the topic from a metaphorical perspective.

This personal detachment and character-led style is also seen in the singer’s — real name Molly McCormick — artist moniker. “To me, Gia Ford is a narrator. Maybe that will change and maybe she’ll be just me, but I’m an observer. It’s from my perspective, but I’m telling everyone else’s stories.” She then pauses for a second, before deciding: “I think I’m afraid of writing about myself. I’m more comfortable pretending to be other people”.

Such a tremendous and fascinating artist who is going to be in the industry for many years to come, I am excited to hear a Gia Ford debut album. It is going to be a very busy year for her. If you have not discovered Ford and her music then make sure that you do. I have loved her music for a while now. Growing stronger by the year, here is a tremendous British talent who is going to take her music internationally. Even though we have a lot of wonderful artists out there, when it comes to Gia Ford, there are…

FEW like her.

____________

Follow Gia Ford

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/gia__ford/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/gia__ford

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/238uE9s8BDKrIYbzpxIgOX?si=ff_j4uDbSBWvRXdOKR5xHA

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGcZG1dWwXphNKKyICYFcZQ

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/giafordmusic/

FEATURE: A Running Start... Kate Bush’s Albums Ranked: The Best Opening Trio of Tracks

FEATURE:

 

 

A Running Start…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a publicity photo for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow

Kate Bush’s Albums Ranked: The Best Opening Trio of Tracks

_________

ONE of the most important things about an…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

album and its track sequencing is making the opening few songs as strong as possible. There have been polls in the past asking which album has the best opening-three songs ever. It is hooking the listener in and keeping their attention. I don’t think I have discussed it regarding Kate Bush and her albums (I will include all her studio albums all bar Director’s Cut). She always puts strong opening tracks on her albums. She is great at making sure the first few tracks are interesting and among the best. I wanted to rank the albums with the best three tracks on. In order of merit regarding the strength of that vital trio of songs. Many might feel it is obvious which albums would be in the medal positions…though everyone has their own opinions. There are artists who put a lot of thought into getting that sequencing right and making sure they do not drop a step when it comes to one-two-three. In terms of creating brilliant opening tracks, this is something Kate Bush…

DOES especially well..

___________

NINE: Aerial

Album Release Date: 7th November, 2005

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Opening Three Songs: King of the Mountain/Pi/Bertie

Best of the Trio: King of the Mountain

EIGHT: The Red Shoes

Album Release Date: 1st November, 1993

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Opening Three Songs: Rubberband Girl/And So Is Love/Eat the Music

Best of the Trio: Rubberband Girl

SEVEN: The Sensual World

Album Release Date: 16th October, 1989

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Opening Three Songs: The Sensual World/Love and Anger/The Fog

Best of the Trio: The Fog

SIX: The Dreaming

Album Release Date: 13th September, 1982

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Opening Three Songs: Sat in Your Lap/There Goes a Tenner/Pull Out the Pin

Best of the Trio: Sat in Your Lap

FIVE: The Kick Inside

Album Release Date: 17th February, 1978

Producer: Andrew Powell

Label: EMI

Opening Three Songs: Moving/The Saxophone Song/Strange Phenomena

Best of the Trio: Moving

FOUR: Never for Ever

Album Release Date: 8th September, 1980

Producers: Kate Bush/Jon Kelly

Label: EMI

Opening Three Songs: Babooshka/Delius (Song of Summer)/Blow Away (For Bill)

Best of the Trio: Babooshka

THREE: Lionheart

Album Release Date: 13th November, 1978

Producer: Andrew Powell (assisted by Kate Bush)

Label: EMI

Opening Three Songs: Symphony in Blue/In Search of Peter Pan/Wow

Best of the Trio: Symphony in Blue

TWO: Hounds of Love

Album Release Date: 16th September, 1985

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: EMI

Opening Three Songs: Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)/Hounds of Love/The Big Sky

Best of the Trio: The Big Sky

ONE: 50 Words for Snow

Album Release Date: 21st November, 2011

Producer: Kate Bush

Label: Fish People

Opening Three Songs: Snowflake/Lake Tahoe/Misty

Best of the Trio: Misty

FEATURE: Queens’ Gambit: As Women Dominated Music Last Year, Why Now is a Moment for No More Excuses or Lack of Opportunities

FEATURE:

 

 

Queens’ Gambit

IN THIS PHOTO: Miley Cyrus

As Women Dominated Music Last Year, Why Now is a Moment for No More Excuses or Lack of Opportunities

_________

SOMETHING that many already knew…

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift

but it has now been confirmed that women dominated the U.K. Pop charts last year. Even though it is one sector of the music industry, this dominance spreads throughout music. One cannot say that women are in the minority anymore. I am going to go on to write why, given the fact female artists ruled the Pop charts last year, how there are no more excuses left when it comes to booking female headliners and ensuring they are represented across award ceremonies. An industry that cannot justify imbalance and a lack of awareness. The time for parity is right now. The Independent explained how last year was a big one for Pop’s queens. Something that is more than likely to be mirrored as we go through this year:

“Women dominated the UK pop charts in 2023, even as festivals struggled to improve representation and female musicians were shut out of a number of major awards ceremonies.

British stars including PinkPantheress and RAYE spent a record-breaking 31 out of 52 weeks at No 1 on the Official Singles Chart in 2023, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade group. This is the highest figure since the countdown launched in 1952.

Based on combined figures from streaming and physical sales, seven of the year’s top 10 singles were by women, including Miley Cyrus’s hit song “Flowers”, Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero”, and Cameroonian-American singer Libianca’s “People”.

RAYE’s viral song “Escapism”, a collaboration with US rapper 070 Shake (real name Danielle Balbuena), was a No 1 hit that also reached No 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, while PinkPantheress’s “Boy’s a Liar” peaked at No 2 in the UK. The remix, featuring Ice Spice, also marked PinkPantheress’s debut on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No 3.

“Escapism” and “Boy’s a Liar” were the third and eighth biggest singles of 2023, respectively.

The numbers are in stark contrast to 2022 when just two female musicians cracked the top 10 biggest songs: Kate Bush, with her 1985 single “Running Up That Hill”, and pop singer Cat Burns with “Go”.

Ed Sheeran, meanwhile, managed to get three of his songs in the top 10, including “Shivers” and “Bad Habits” from his fourth studio album, = (Equals).

BPI’s chief executive Dr Jo Twist said in a statement: “While work continues towards achieving full representation for women across the music industry, 2023 has been a brilliant year for women in the Official Charts.

“There is a more diverse range of recording artists than ever achieving great success with the backing of their labels. Women spent more weeks at No 1 on the Official Singles Chart than in any previous year, while seven of the 10 biggest tracks were by women.

“This should be celebrated, but without complacency, and our work in the music industry continues to ensure that this becomes the norm.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa/PHOTO CREDIT: Thibaut Grevet for DAZED

Despite pop dominance from megastars including Swift, Cyrus and Dua Lipa, 2023 proved to be a mixed year when it came to acknowledging the talent and success of female artists. 

In January, the Brit Awards came under fire for failing to recognise a single woman in its Artist of the Year category, after it abandoned gendered categories in 2022.

Instead, an all-male shortlist was nominated, comprising pop singers Harry Styles and George Ezra, producer Fred Again, and rappers Stormzy and Central Cee.

Meanwhile, Glastonbury Festival faced its own backlash when it was announced that three male acts – Arctic Monkeys, Guns N’ Roses and Elton John – would headline the main stage in 2023.

Co-organiser Emily Eavis – who was defended as a vocal supporter of women in music by a number of prominent female artists – said that the industry was failing to generate enough viable female headliners.”.

I am writing this on 3rd January. Later today, we find out whether mainstream U.K. radio stations have managed to move towards gender equality. That was not the case last year. Even though one or two are an exception, most have struggled to move towards balance. I am cautiously optimistic there will be some positive signs. If we acknowledge the fact that Pop’s queens are dominating and making huge waves, how can any festival now say there are a lack of women to headline festivals?! I don’t buy there was an absence last year. Now, as we look towards this summer’s festivals, there is a raft of wonderful women who can headline. No festival has an excuse for imbalanced bills and a lack of headliners. There is this disparity between the chart success and playlisting of female Pop artists and a seeming ignorance from those who can reward this with award nominations, festival recognition and general respect (from the industry). It is not only major artists like Miley Cyrus that this applies to. So many wonderful young and fresh Pop artists coming through are also showing that they are festival-ready. To start this year, we get some positive findings regarding Pop’s queens. I think that there will be changes and moves towards equality this year. Whether there is a rapid reaction from the industry when it comes to ensuring there is a lack of female headliners I am not sure. Let’s hope so.

IN THIS PHOTO: Victoria Monét

In terms of immediate recognition and potential reversal when it comes to award ceremonies is the GRAMMYs. Next month, Taylor Swift, SZA, Victoria Monét and boygenius are leading nominations. The Song and Record of the Year categories are dominated by female artists. I think that award ceremonies here will move towards a more female-inclusive feel. It is down to festivals to see whether they can match that commitment. If last year was one for missed opportunities and excuses, there can be none of that in 2024. We see the figures and can see all the talent out there. Women not only storming Pop charts; there is also the end-of-year lists of the best albums that are defined by women. As they are bringing so much to the industry, it is incumbent on the industry now to reward that and erase the bias that has been evident for decades. Not just a one-year reversal. This needs to be something that is sustained going forward! We need festivals to do more to not only ensure that the bills are balanced. There are more than enough women who can be selected as headliners. If we go through another summer where we see no female headliners at particular festivals, then that is going to cause a lot of anger! Given the fact music’s Pop queens have made big moves and are dominating, festivals and award bodies need to…

CHOOSE their next move wisely.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Cristale

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Cristale

_________

THIS is a phenomenal artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Shane Anthony Sinclair for Wordplay

who has already been tipped for big things this year by The Guardian. They were full of praise (“Without wanting to stoke the hype fires too carelessly, this Brixton MC has one of the keenest minds and sharpest tongues in rap music today, not just in the UK but across the world. Moment to moment, her flows are astonishing technical accomplishments, with words fiendishly darting into rhythmic space”). Cristale is a spellbinding rapper, poet and voice that is going to be among those at the forefront of new music this year. I am going to get to some interviews with this stunning talent. First, here is some background to the London-based artist:

“Cristale was born in Brixton around the turn of the millennium . She was raised by an incredibly strong family unit to which all  members supported her hard work and dedication associated with but not restricted to Academia, Football, Spoken Word and Poetry. While at primary school, she would compete against her peers in bantering rap battles, with lyrics she and her uncle had written together. Invariably she would win. In year seven, aged 1, she won the first slam poetry competition at her school, beating kids from all other year groups. From there she went on to compete against kids from other schools.

Growing up in a Caribbean household, dancehall artists like Buju Banton and Tony Matterhorn were on regular rotation on Cristale’s family stereo. As she grew up she took a liking to grime rappers like Chip, Stormzy and Wretch 32, as well as funky house acts like T2 and Sweet Female Attitude. Beginning her rap career at 19, her first four mainstream releases were freestyles, Cristale remixed Poundz’s ‘Opp Thot’, Pa Salieu’s ‘Frontline’ and Unknown T and Crazy Cousinz’ ‘Throwback’. She can write lyrics to any type of instrumental, with a vocal style defined by sharp attentive lyricism.

Having grown up writing poetry, her natural talent is as a wordsmith- a trait that aligns her with legendary artists like Lauryn Hill, who carries an essence of realism that Cristale is inspired by. She has a similarly striking attitude on the mic as well, adept at riding any beat and effortlessly likeable. Her competitive spirit is perhaps a legacy of a childhood spent playing football, first at school, where she learned, then she was scouted at 14 to play and train with U16s and U18s at Crystal Palace FC . She is a very non- controversial individual- but she is not afraid of any competition she may face in the UK rap scene.

As a product of south London, she kick started her career by recording at Digital holdings studios, which also gave rise to successful British rap artists like Dot Rotten, Harlem Spartans and SL – Cristale is one of UK music’s hottest prospects. She has singles in the pipeline and a treasure chest of unreleased music on her hard drive. Her latest release “BOOTH (Part 2)” a freestyle over Ruff Sqwad’s classic grime instrumental ‘Together’, is a nod to Chip – a formative influence on Cristale who used the same beat on ‘Coward’ – and an unerring statement of intent.

She is ready for anything the music industry has in store for her”.

There is not a lot of interview material from last year. I am going to go back to a 2022 interview. She spoke with gal-dem about her heritage and why storytelling matters when it comes to her music. Even back then, there was this sense that Cristale was very special indeed. Since, she has stepped up and grown stronger with every release. In 2022, Cristale released the long-E.P., What It’s Like to Be Young:

“Growing up, Cristale would constantly hear people talking about the hardships and struggles of where she lived, especially in the news, “I was told [by] a lot of people – whether I knew them or not –that ‘you’re not gonna make it out’,” Cristale tells gal-dem. But she refused to let the sceptics curtail her rise.

This year she released her debut EP What It’s Like To Be Young, a collection of gritty coming-of-age tales that she uses to open the door for empathy. Tucking clever wordplay into the pockets of unflinching drill beats, Cristale gives a voice to the young people she sees in her neighbourhood and whose backstories are sometimes dismissed.

On lead single ‘13 Going On 30’ she explores her childhood and overcoming obstacles: ‘Started secondary school / Mum said, “Learn your book, don’t turn to no bad girl” (Behave, Cris)” and later “Teach’ said I got so much potential / “Cristale, you don’t know how much you have, girl”

Cristale is quick to credit her matrifocal Caribbean household for keeping her grounded and backing her career. “I had a big support system of women; my aunty, grandma, great-grandma, great-aunt and cousins,” she says, careful not to forget a family member.

Her family has strongly influenced her music. Between the buzz of familial chit-chatter and Jamaican records on loop, she has developed a strong enough accent to confuse fans she met in Jamaica while shooting the video for her hit song ‘Bong Bing’ earlier this year. Her first foray into dancehall, ‘Bong Bing’ saw her team up with Jamaican artist Laa Lee, and became a viral hit on TikTok, being used in over 788,000 videos.

The overwhelming response to ‘Bong Bing’ left Cristale reflecting on her heritage and the kind of artist she wants to be, whether that would mean honing in on dancehall or continuing to experiment with fresh Caribbean sounds. Her mum is mixed Jamaican and Montserratian and her dad is Guyanese: “[I’m] only one-quarter Jamaican,” she says. “I feel like I’ve been served an injustice because I feel more Jamaican than I actually am. But it is what it is, I am fully Caribbean,” she adds. Her heritage is the base from which she constructs her identity, with music melding into the mix. When contemplating the type of artist or person she is, she responds with one clear-cut answer: “I like to tell stories”.

She’s thrilled to find herself part of a new generation making dancehall their own, a musical shift that’s been recognised and celebrated by legend Sean Paul – who happens to be a Cristale fan, too. “After ‘Bong Bing’ blew up, [Sean Paul] followed me on Insta. That was a big shock to me,” she exclaims. “I am an example of the new generation of dancehall even though I’ve only got one track out. I’ve got unreleased tunes with Klassik Frescobar, Roze Don and Noah Powa.”

Cristale is just as keen to bring the moves off TikTok and onto the streets, as seen at this year’s Carnival, where she performed with Jamaican and Guyanese flags hanging from her pockets at the Rampage Sound stage. “You haffi bring yuh flag,” she says, adding that it was a “blessing” to come back to the first Carnival in three years as an artist. “Carnival is about letting your hair down and indulging in culture, not exploiting it but being a part of it,” she beams. “It’s the one day, besides Jamaican Independence, where I feel like people can give back to the culture rather than just taking from it”.

I am going to wrap up in a second. I hope we get some new interviews with Cristale, as quite a lot has happened since 2022. She has put out some of her best music and got onto the radar of some big names’ websites. I know that she will continue to grow and perform on some incredible stages. Before rounding up, there is one more interview that I want to get to. GRM Daily spoke with Cristale about releasing an E.P. and balancing that with her being at university and having to cope with anxiety. It is always fascinating reading Cristale’s words:

“So when did your interest in music start taking shape?

“I know it probably sounds ridiculous to say since I was born, but literally, growing up with my mum raising me, the type of music she would play like Teedra Moses, TLC, Ashanti, that genre.  I’ve always grown up on soulful music, I was kind of born into it in a sense.”

When do you think that started turning into realising that you had a talent for it?

“When I was younger my uncle and I wrote my first bars together, when I was about three. I spat the same ones throughout the whole of primary school and used them for everything and everyone would be astonished, but I was just saying them for the sake of saying them. I’ve only genuinely realised that I have a talent recently. As in the last few months. From me actually developing a fan base and understanding that people listen to me, relate to me and want to hear what I have to say and want to keep track of my life and what I’m doing. That’s made me realise I must have talent.

“Obviously, I don’t have any clout and this industry is based on clout. Thank God, I also don’t have any negative clout around my name or anything like that. I’m not in the blogs, I’m not in anything. So I know that the following is genuine. If it’s genuine, that must mean that people actually respect my art. They must actually believe that I have a talent.  I’m not saying I only realise this because I have fans. Because aside from that, I make music for myself. I don’t make music for anyone else. I think about how I feel, what I’m going to do, what I’ve done, the people around me and the different things that we’ve been through. So I make music for myself.

“Some days I’ll just sit and I’ll go through what I’ve already done. There are loads of songs in the locker that you won’t hear for a while, but they’re there. When I’m sitting down, I kind of have to occupy the space of a consumer and listen to myself like it’s not me. And if I detach myself from myself, and I still like the song that’s how I know like, cool, you’re doing something right.”

Watching your videos, it feels like things come naturally to you. Is it important for you to be seen in the space as a musician, as opposed to a media personality who makes music

“I feel that everything in this life is down to perception which is subjective. Who am I to say how I want people to view me? The most I can do is present myself in a way that is natural. That won’t get received in a negative way, but it’s down to the person. I can’t say I want you to look at me as an artist because you might go from my Instagram and realise that I can play football. You might follow me on Snapchat and see that I’m funny or TikTok and see that I’m creative.

“So for you, I’m just someone that you like to pay attention to. Then you discover oh she makes music. I like to listen to her music, I feel like I know her as a person because I follow her on social media. But then, there’s another set of people that just heard my song on the radio. This is Cristale. I’m going to look through all of her music now. Cool, I  am a fan… oh what and she plays football, she’s got a personality too.  It’s a catch 22 Yeah, and I’m not in control of that.

“I can’t really say I care if people view me like this or view me like that. As long as I’m not viewed in a negative light then I’m good. You can view me as a media personality, an entertainer, an actress, footballer, musician,  poet, orange, apple, whatever you want! Just as long as my general presence isn’t inflicting any negativity on them, I’m calm. You can look at me as whatever you want. Just as long as even though I’ve never met you, the relationship that we have between the phone is good. My music, my personality or my influence makes you feel happy then I’m good.”

That is such a grounded and well-rounded answer and there is such a sense of contentment and freedom in your sound. Where does your inspiration come from and how do you approach your creative process?

“My inspiration comes from life. I do my day by day and when it hits me that this is something, then it becomes something. I could go into the fridge and go to get an orange. Then the orange drops on the floor, but because I’m overwhelmed with uni stuff I’ll start talking about the fact that I was actually holding out very well until I peeled my orange and it just ended up on the floor. And then literally I’ll just write a song about eating food from off the floor and make a metaphor for people that are above you but instead of helping they make you beg.

“It’s literally whatever comes to mind at any given time, and this is all based on experience. Nothing that I come up with or that I say, none of it’s a lie. None of it is fake. Even some of the road stuff that I talk about. Yeah, fair enough, I’ve been through certain things and experienced certain things or seen certain things, but I pray to God every day, and I’m thankful that I haven’t had to experience anything mad like that. That’s why you hear me talking in the songs about the fact that I’m telling a story. And I’m clearly telling them that it is not me that went through it. But right now, I’m the voice for people that can’t speak on what they’ve done. But they’re going through trauma because of it.”

Now I know that visual art and music often go hand in hand. So with covers, photography, videos, the things that accompany a release are you very hands-on in those aspects?

“Very. For the “Militant” artwork, I drew the sketch of what I wanted it to look like, I found the font and everything. Then I just gave it to the graphic designer and he changed the colouring of it officially. But I’m very hands-on with everything. All the concepts for the music video, come from me. It’s why a lot of people say to me now Cristale you’ve got to start having your name as co-director on the music video. It’s like you see the directors have done a very good job, but that doesn’t come from nowhere. I create a very clear blueprint, and then we bring it to life through film.”

You get those credits. It’s worthwhile that people know they are witnessing your creative vision…

“Yeah. Look at someone like Teyana Taylor who does and directs videos for other people. She’s an artist herself, she’s been able to do that through people knowing that she does her own. So no one’s going to know that unless I talk or other people ask. Yeah,I’m gonna start putting it on the video still. Really I should have been doing that since the first one. The old schools “Whites” ,”See Myself” then “Morgan” “Merryland” , “Militant”, they’re all me and the next ones will be me.

“I don’t really go into a situation without knowing what I want. By the time I finished a song in the studio, I can already see what I want the video to look like and I write it down and the video will be like that. I create mood boards, I give a rough treatment. I send it off to the director and then the director sends me their version of the treatment that I’ve done. That basically tells me everything that’s going to happen, how I want it to happen. It’s more detailed and the order is broken down”.

Rightly tipped as a name that we all need to watch this year, Cristale is a sensational rapper, artist and voice that is impossible to ignore. Such a compelling performer and songwriter, we are going to hear her name a lot more this year. Go and follow her across social media and check out her music. Even though this year is going to be one where we see so many artists emerge across multiple genres, you just know that the magnificent Cristale will be…

AMONG the very best.

_____________

Follow Cristale

Official:

https://www.therealcristale.com/

TikTok:

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

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/cristaleyy

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/cristaleyy

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6U1hXHFTV27cbQVXZvnX27

YouTube:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6U1hXHFTV27cbQVXZvnX27

FEATURE: Spotlight: SPRINTS

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

SPRINTS

_________

DESCRIBING themselves…

as “Garage Punk from Dublin, Ireland”, there is a lot of excitement around the mighty SPRINTS. They releasee their debut album, Letter to Self, on Friday (5th January). It is winning some huge reviews. I will end with one (others include DIY’s and NME’s). Tipped as a debut album to watch this year by Rough Trade, SPRINTS play Rough Trade East on Friday. They then have a series of dates around the country and beyond. An exciting start for a band. Not many artists put out albums in January. It is credit to SPRINTS that they ensure they make their mark early. In the process, we get a potential year-best album right from the off! I will come to some interviews from the band. One from 2022 and a few from last year. First, here are some more details about a wonderful and hugely promising band from Dublin. One that is primed and destined for headline slots:

“Formed in 2019 when Karla, guitarist Colm O’Reilly and drummer Jack Callan - already playing together under a slowly-dwindling former guise - had the lightbulb moment at a Savages gig that they too could play the music they actually listened to and loved, SPRINTS have barely paused for breath since. Recruiting bassist Sam McCann, for their first show back in February of that year, the difference from day one was tangible. “Our only ethos in music is to write something that matters and that means something,” says Karla. “It’s all about expressing our identities, and injecting our personalities into it.”

Often labelled a political band, even the way they inhabit that idea feels refreshing. “I don’t have to know everything to be able to tell you that something’s shit. I understand that women should have access to abortion, and I understand that mental health services are not adequate to stop people from committing suicide, so yeah, I don’t know exactly how much money is being spent on it but I don’t need to in order to tell you that it’s not enough,” Karla stresses. “It’s just a class barrier to make people feel like, if they’re not educated enough, then they can’t be involved in the conversation. But you don’t have to be Usain Bolt to run a race, and you don’t have to understand the theory of everything to understand that, morally, someone’s an asshole.”

SPRINTS have received a wealth of press support (The Guardian, Dork, DIY, NME, Loud & Quiet, Clash, Gigwise and others). They've also received an abundance of support at Radio 1 and BBC 6Music.

“On course towards future raucous, beer-soaked headline festival sets.” NME
“Screw-you power, relentless motorik rhythms and impressively large choruses.” The Guardian
"The Dublin gang neatly package existential panic into a buzzy, punchy musical box – DIY”.

Karla Chubb, SPRINTS’ lead, spoke with God Is in the TV in 2022. With some E.P.s under their belt and people tipping them for big things, it was an exciting time for SPRINTS. Coming out of the pandemic and maybe not being as gig-active as they would have liked the past two years, there was a sense of looking ahead to brighter times – which certainly came true for them last year!

“Dublin noise-makers Sprints have released two EPs to date, last year’s debut Manifesto and A Modern Job released this spring. The 4-piece comprising Karla Chubb (lead singer/guitar), Colm O’Reilly (guitar), Jack Callan (drums) and Sam McCann (bass guitar) are signed to Nice Swan Records. 2022 has been a pivotal year for the band and I caught up with Karla to learn more.

I read that you were inspired to form a band by seeing Savages and Jehnny Beth. Is that true, or was the seed already there?

I think the seed was always there. I think all of us always wanted to be musicians. Myself, Jack and Colm played in bands previously and the guys have played together for years. And with that band we weren’t really fulfilled, and it was at a Savages gig that myself Jack, and Colm were at and she was performing and going into the crowd, and we love their albums. That is when it really kind of hit us that’s the kind of music we want to make, why aren’t we making it, I want to be that visceral and almost like wild. So Savages from the start were a major major inspiration and when we first got into the shed with Sam and we were jamming, I think the only thing I said let’s try jams. Idles and Savages were the main music we were listening to then so we’ll see how it goes. When he plugged his bass in and turned the noise up as he always does, it kinda clicked immediately. And ever since Jehnny Beth has been a massive influence, particularly for Jack and myself, as a writer, as a feminist, everything she stands for, the people who she collaborates with she is just one of the underrated artists.

She comes across as comfortable in her own skin

Yeah and whenever I listen to her on 6Music she was really soft spoken and very gentle and very French, but you see her live and that is something I really resonated with. When I tell people I am a very shy person and not an extrovert in any sense naturally, and that alter ego she has onstage has really spoken to me, I can almost pretend I’m someone else. When you listen to her on 6Music she is not the Jehnny Beth that you see in Savages onstage. It’s amazing to see that come out.

In terms of song-writing are you the main lyricist?

What we say is that I put the bones of everything together and the guys add the meat and the spice and everything else. I would be the song-writer and the only one involved in lyrics, except for Sam. Generally when he’s singing he would write his own parts and I would help sometimes.

And how did you come to the attention of Nice Swan Records?

To be honest, we still don’t really know! We’ve asked them before and they said they saw ‘The Cheek‘ on some random Irish playlist, I think they may have been scouting Irish music. That was before Fontaines D.C. had really exploded and Pillow Queens were around obviously. Their whole ethos is to focus on music outside of the hotbed cities, essentially outside of London where bands may not have the same access to exposure. I remember the day they reached out so clearly. This was during lockdown again. I got the email and I quite literally started shaking. It was from Alex saying “Hey lads we really like your music, what’s your plans?” and I’m like “This is it! This is it!”. To be completely honest they have changed our lives, they are amazing. They are just two really passionate music fans. They’re our managers now as well. They came to Glastonbury with us and they are coming over to Ireland soon to come to gigs. They really know their stuff. And its clear from working with them that they are in it for the music They are not shy to tell us not to take certain opportunities even if it would have meant a percentage for them. They are trying to help us to make the best moves.

You have talked in the past about a feeling of Imposter Syndrome. Has that shifted with experience and more exposure?

I think parts of it have. Performing live I don’t get as many nerves, I still get nervous but its definitely more manageable. I think in terms of writing, I don’t think its gone, I don’t know if it will ever fully fade. I don’t know if I want it to. But even just watching people like Sam and Colm and Jack. Sam can play way more instruments than me. But it keeps you motivated, keeps you pushing.

You are such a central part of the live performance, and you look like you’re having an absolute blast.

We have a lot of fun, I love playing with the guys. I think it just comes down to being a girl in a heavy rock band, and not really having had that much training. Maybe technically not being as good as other people, then maybe there’s the idea I should be extra good, that women often have to try ten times as hard to be given half the respect. That’s very ingrained in me, it’ll never go, I try not to let that hold me back. There are definitely days when I think I’m not that good. But at the end of the day if we’re playing life and performing then maybe that’s my skill, maybe that’s what I have that other people don’t. Its one thing to be able to play Bohemian Rhapsody but its another to be able to write a song”.

I have written features about modern music and whether artists are being personal rather than tackling bigger themes. Hatred, homophobia, issues around climate change etc. With SPRINTS, here is a band that are tackling some big themes and doing so in a really direct, interesting and memorable way. Karla Chubb spoke with DIY in November about the upcoming debut album and how the public part of her being out in the music also will resonate with many others. Messages and lyrics that go beyond her own door:

“With ‘Letter To Self’, she’s “putting this very personal part of [her] life out in the public”, and while its writing was hugely challenging, it was also hugely cathartic. “There was so much weight on my shoulders my whole life, and now I feel like a little bit of it is gone,” she says, her voice thick with emotion. “All these stories are like stones weighing me down, and now I’ve shed a few of them.”

These aren’t mere pebbles, either. Lyrically, the album explores mental ill-health (‘Ticking’ and ‘Heavy’); internalised homophobia (‘Cathedral’); suicidal ideation (‘Shadow Of A Doubt’) and more. But none of these are crosses Karla has had to bear alone. Born, like so many other bands, out of the pandemic, Sprints was “such a positive thing to turn to in such a dark time,” and the relationship between the four band members quickly flourished into something approaching familia

“We’ve all got so much better at knowing how each other works,” adds drummer Jack Callan, “so you know when to leave someone alone, or when someone needs a bit of extra support.” In conversation, this almost intuitive bond is self-evident. When Karla compliments guitarist Colm O’Reilly’s playing, Jack leads us all in an impromptu round of applause; when she mentions her anxieties over reading the album’s reviews, bassist Sam McCann gives her a steadying smile - “We’ll take them as they come”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ed Miles

These moments, though seemingly inconsequential, capture the band fairly succinctly: a united front that deals in humour and compassion, but with an underlying steely resolve. Take the show they perform just a few hours later. Karla leaves the stage momentarily to don a Taylor Swift ‘Reputation’ t-shirt, before pronouncing: “Support the strikes and fuck the Tories. We’re Irish, what did you think we were gonna say?” They’ve had this keen political edge since their inception (over which time they’ve released two EPs, 2021’s ‘Manifesto’ and 2022’s ‘A Modern Job’), but never has it been more apparent - or more important - than right now.

Karla and Sam have both just quit their jobs - “We can’t physically or mentally manage the balance of them and music anymore” - which, while daunting, is a prospect that’s only become feasible thanks to the notable success of Irish artists in the past few years. “If you see people doing what you want to do, it obviously increases the chances of you actually thinking it’s a possibility, tenfold,” Karla states. “You have to acknowledge the cultural significance of bands like Fontaines DC and Pillow Queens. There are so few acts who managed to break out of Ireland and make careers abroad until recently, but if they’ve done it, we can do it.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Ed Miles

There is, of course, still a long way to go, however. Karla references a recent interview that Rolling Stone and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame co-founder Jann Wenner conducted with the New York Times, in which he commented that no women are included in his new book - “the Mount Olympus of rock and roll history” - because “none of them were articulate enough on this intellectual level” (there are also, astoundingly, no Black musicians included - but there is Bono). “[Wenner] said that Mick Jagger was ‘a philosopher of rock and roll’,” Karla says incredulously, “and that Janis Joplin or Patti Smith or Stevie Nicks - some of the greatest songwriters in the world - were…” she trails off and shrugs. “I might appear one day on a list of the ‘best female punk bands’ or ‘best female guitarists’, but I’ll never appear on a list of all-time great guitarists, whereas Colm probably will.”

Self-doubt doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and Karla’s proclaimed imposter syndrome - tackled on incendiary single ‘Up and Comer’ - is closely tied to her identity as a queer woman in a male-dominated space. While being part of Sprints hasn’t necessarily helped quash her insecurities, it has given her a medium through which to rally against the social structures that supported them in the first place. “Sometimes I think, ‘Am I talking too much about being angry?’” she says. “There is a part of you - a very dark part of you - that thinks, ‘Would my life be easier if I just shut up?’

“There’s always been this idea of the angry woman, or the angry gays, or the angry trans people,” Karla continues. “But anger doesn’t mean bad. Anger means you’re standing up for something; anger means you’re addressing an issue; anger also means collectiveness”.

It has been remarkable learning about SPRINTS and what has gone into Letter to Self. Their phenomenal debut definitely marks them out as a band to watch very closely. Once more showing the quality and variety of music coming out of Ireland. Karla Chubb chatted with Stereogum a couple of months ago about the album and some of the more technical/sonic details that went in. How they achieved a very distinct sound and feel:

“There’s only so much you can do with vocals. [But] when we put the hi-hat on the snare, or Sam puts his bass through like four terrifying pedals and you get that literal screech in your ear that you couldn’t replicate with anything else, not even a synth — I think it’s those elements that actually make the music anxious,” Chubb says. “For one tiny guitar lick, we used four different Vox amps at the same time running through like five different distortion pedals. So there was that level of granularity in it.”

This suffocating sound was the band’s attempt at matching the purgative songs Chubb was bringing to them. Her lyrics came from a time in her life where self-destructive habits were coming to a head. “I realized I saw patterns in my behavior; I would get angry at friends or have relationships break down because I was so angry in myself. I was like, ‘I need to process whatever is inside of me and get it out,’ because it almost felt like there was a poison in [me] and [I] couldn’t breathe until it was all released,” Chubb says.

PHOTO CREDIT: Niamh Barry

The album’s opening track, “Ticking”, is supposed to be a representation of pure anxiety and panic, both lyrically and musically — from the heartbeat-esque kick drum intro to Chubb’s scattered lyrics to the simultaneous descending and ascending riffs in the outro part. It takes the majority of the song’s runtime to kick into the album’s first big rock-out moment; this slow-bubbling dynamic is the most essential part of Sprints’ toolbox. “It’s almost like, again, horror movie-esque, where there’s quiet parts where you wanna lean closer and then it punches you in the face because of that jump in volume,” says Chubb. Elsewhere on the album, Chubb’s dry, seething voice grapples with the music industry’s fickle sexism on “Adore Adore Adore” and “Up & Comer,” the enduring echoes of trauma on “Can’t Get Enough Of It” and finding the will to resist oppressive societal pressures on the title track “Letter To Self.

Before she used the catharsis of songwriting to expel those feelings, it often came out in more destructive ways, says Chubb. “Definitely substance abuse. I think it’s very Irish to turn to alcohol to solve our problems. I became so good at masking, I often still don’t know when I’m doing it myself. And I think that led to an incredible amount of self-consciousness, self-hate and also internalised homophobia. I think I really started to just believe I wasn’t worth being happy, like I didn’t deserve it. It’s through building really solid relationships with the guys in the band and having music and exploring those things really honestly that I’ve started to come out of the other side of that”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ste Murray

Before coming onto a review, Irish Times interviewed Karla Chubb recently. The Dublin singer and musician discussed identity issues and why Punk resonates to this day. It is always fascinating reading what she has to say. Someone who is always so compelling and honest. You can hear and feel that go into the music. You just know that SPRINTS are going to go a very long way. You wouldn’t bet against them conquering the globe:

“Karla Chubb, the lead singer/co-songwriter of Dublin band Sprints is responding to the fact that, despite some groaning and aching from various quarters of the pop culture multiverse, guitar bands and guitar-based music are not going away anytime soon.

It is, she agrees, a cyclical beast, but being at the coal face, she senses that “alternative music, punk, in particular, is definitely on the rise. You see artists like slowthai and PinkPantheress, who are very mainstream, sampling it [punk], referencing it and using it as an influence. Grime and punk share in their respective birth a lot of idealistic issues and struggles, and because we’re living through turbulent times economically, politically and socially, that’s always going to lead to a rise in more empowered music.”

There are very few female artists that have been allowed to break through, Chubb adds, so, in that sense, Patti, Siouxsie and PJ remain central and influential figures. “The people who troll Sprints on YouTube and Instagram leave comments about our videos along the lines of ‘what is this shit, it’s just ‘90s music again, so why regurgitate it, do something fresh’, and the like, but what we try to do is to take those struggles that are still prevalent today and give it a bit of a refresh, a more authentic touch with a ‘90s-inspired sound.”

Sprints have been in the refreshing business for more than four years, although all four members have been involved in music for longer. Initially influenced by bands such as UK’s Savages and Irish band Bitch Falcon (RIP), the band’s sonic baseline is fast and loud (Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox locates the sweet spot between out-and-out shredding and textured sheer art attack) while the songs are largely based on Chubb’s personal experiences. Assertive music, unambiguous words, live shows that pivot on drama and thrills, a lead singer that gets into the zone song after song with a vocals style that blends rhythm with intonation – what gives?

“Cathartic is the best word. With punk music, you can get pigeonholed as being just aggressive; the nature of it is that because it’s loud and fast it’s perceived as angry, but anger isn’t always bad, it’s also a way of healing. As for personal experience, yes, the music we have already put out and what we will be releasing over the next while is definitely chaptering a part of my life where I have struggled a lot with identity, sexuality and just not knowing what the right place for me in the world is – if there was a place at all, to be quite dark and honest.

“I think processing that is difficult, whether you’re in your 20s, 30s or whatever age you are. The boys give me the open floor with the lyrics and the music reflects that. The anxiety-inducing bass, the snarling guitar, the music build-up – they are supposed to represent the internal struggle and the spiral that many of us suffer from.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Ste Murray

The subject matter for Chubb’s lyrics includes misogyny and sexual harassment (The Cheek), fragmenting relationships (Pathetic) and emigration (How Does the Story Go?). She says figuring out “what I wanted to say and how to say it became a barrier, so what I’ve tried to do is just not to think about it too much. I pick up the guitar and play around with it, and the music evokes an emotion; whatever is in my head is the topic and I’ll just splurge it out. I have found that if I’m not too worried about coming off poetic or well-written then it’s more honest. I have a lot of emotions – I’m Cancer, so I’m very sensitive – so I process a lot but the subject matter comes down to honesty… me figuring out what I should do with my life.”

That shouldn’t be an issue this year or next. Sprints’ recent signing to highly regarded Berlin-based indie label City Slang has presented to the band members (all of whom are in full-time jobs – “we’re very fortunate that the people we work with are kind enough to allow us to balance work with the band for so long”) a projected level of stability.

“What you have to do as a musician – and this is the worst for me as someone with ADHD, who is a complete overthinker and constantly overactive – is that you just have to take it day by day. As much as that means there are big, scary things possibly coming down the timeline – pensions, marriage, houses – you just have to live on a day-by-day basis, take everything as it comes”.

I am going to finish with one of the many incredibly positive reviews for Letter to Self. Even though it is early-January, we have an album that is going to be hard to beat! CLASH were among the first to have their say about SPRINTS’ terrific debut album. One that is going to sound amazing when they take it to venues around the country. Go and buy a copy of an album that everyone needs to hear. It really is going to be among this year’s most important and impressive debuts:

“Dublin four-piece Sprints signed to City Slang in 2023, and blast into the New Year with debut album ‘Letter To Self’. Opening with the brooding beats of ‘Ticking’, the vocals of Karla Chubb begin low, full of foreboding. Questioning and self-doubt are apparent from the very beginning, an uncertainty about oneself. The instrumentation builds into an all-encompassing soundscape – a thrilling start which sets the scene for what is to follow. And to hear lyrics in German, the guttural nature of the language fitting perfectly with the atmosphere of the track. Although born in Dublin, Karla Chubb spent part of her early childhood in Germany, initially turning to music as a consequence of feeling out-of-step with the world.

It’s then straight into the scuzzy static-fuelled guitars of ‘Heavy’.  The external questions continue: “Do you ever feel like the room is heavy?” they ask. The energy and passion evoked here are raw and true. The lyrics build, eventually exploding in an air of frustration “watching the world go around the window”.

‘Cathedral’ is in a similar vein. There is a darkness here; “Maybe living’s easy / Maybe dying’s the same.”  The emotional intensity continues to seep through the music. The combination of Sam McCann’s bass and the guitars of Chubb and Colm O’Reilly combine to create a cacophony of sound, fast and furious.  

‘Shaking Their Hands’ takes us to a different place, with its weariness with life.  More contemplative, witnesses Chubb deliver a softer vocal.  The theme is more thoughtful with the singer “counting the minutes until the clock strikes six” – a sentiment most can connect with.  However it’s an intriguing song as the question is inevitably “whose hands?”.  ‘Adore, Adore, Adore’ was released as a single and projects the idea of being judged with its question “Do you adore me?” The pace rattles along and its chorus of “they never call me beautiful, they only call me insane” suggests a desire to fit in, to be accepted.

‘Shadow Of A Doubt’ has an eerie start with its haunting plucking guitar chords.  Again there is a atmosphere of foreboding, a lack of belonging.  The repetition of “I am lost” is gut-wrenching and Chubb builds the tension until the frustration boils over “can you hear me calling?” The sentiment is heart-breaking as it seems to be a call for help, and that wavering guitar chord perfectly evokes the anxiety.  Likewise with ‘Can’t Get Enough Of It’, the agitation remains. The inevitable ear-worm of the repeating “This is a living nightmare” is breath-taking, as it combines with the soaring soundscape. The mid-track key change takes the listener by surprise as it punches at the very core with its emotional impact. Perhaps there is a sense here of not being able to be oneself, a lack of self-belief, of security in ones own self-worth.  And goodness do those guitar parts add to the overall sense of anxiety.

The sign of a great song is that it still elicits an emotional response long after its initial release. And so it is with the 2022 single ‘Literary Mind’. Re-recorded for ‘Letter To Self’, Sprints have shared that this track has evolved over time. It is pacier than the original single version and is all the better for it. A love song, it relieves the tension felt so far on the album. It’s a song to belt out at the top of your voice, and is thus cathartic for us all. And just listen to McCann’s vocal on the outro, you know Sprints love playing this track. ‘A Wreck (A Mess)’ opens with electrifying guitar riffs and the percussive beats of Jack Callan.  The lighter tone set by ‘Literary Mind’ continues. Again lyrically reflective ‘A Wreck (A Mess)’ is delivered with wild abandon, all scuzzy guitars and thunderous drums. The ebb and flow of the pace keeps the listener on their toes, plus lyrics that will live long in the memory including: “is everyone a wreck, is everyone stressed?”

Latest single ‘Up And Comer’ reached the dizzy heights of the 6Music A-list. The opening guitar riffs stops the listener in their tracks every time.  And then the full force of ‘Up And Comer’ kicks in and once it reaches top speed you just know it’s not stopping with its full-frontal assault. The chorus is simply electrifying.

The title track closes out ‘Letter To Self’ and it takes a stand against the internal turmoil. “I’ll give as good as I get”.  Here there is defiance. The expression is one of hope, of possibility, of coming out from under the weight of expectation, of fighting back. It sees the journey through the album reach its conclusion.  Now the lyrics question those who criticise, those whose behaviour is inappropriate.  ‘Letter To Self’ states confidently “I am alive” compared to the questioning “am I alive?” from opener ‘Ticking’.  It’s a thunderous end, the theme of the track completely different from the rest of the album.

With ‘Letter To Self’ Sprints have produced an album brutally honest and personal. They have not been afraid to express the feeling of being an outsider, of looking for validation, of attempting to overcome self-doubt. The human condition and thus society is complex and difficult to navigate but Sprints have not been afraid to express uncertainty and vulnerability. And all the while they have enveloped these themes in the most glorious noise for us all to find comfort and lose ourselves in.

Is it possible to have an album of the year contender on only the first week in? Of course it is. 9/10” 

Follow SPRINTS and support their terrific work. They have some U.K. dates before heading to Dublin. They then have European dates too. There are also U.S. dates in their diary. A band that will go down a storm there. In fact, they are pretty solidly booked through a large chunk of this year. Don’t bet against them being included at Glastonbury and other big festivals. Letter to Self shows that they are a band we cannot ignore. Another wonderfully original and impressive band to behold! From a country supplying other musical greats like CMAT. It is amazing, though not surprising, discovering all the wonderful music…

COMING from Ireland.

_____________

Follow SPRINTS

Official:

https://www.sprintsmusic.com/

Bandcamp:

https://sprintsmusic.bandcamp.com/music

TikTok:

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

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/sprintsmusic

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/sprintsmusic

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/27nD8P491xX8UzG3j01eIY?si=LDMQSqgYRqCWy6EIwTdIWw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4Nki4OjnOlh2m9oZGarlSg

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/sprintsmusic/

FEATURE: My Back Pages: The Wonder and Importance of Music Books

FEATURE:

 

 

My Back Pages

 PHOTO CREDIT: Yuliia Tretynychenko/Pexels

The Wonder and Importance of Music Books

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I think here are few finer things…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ricky Esquivel/Pexels

than walking into the Music section of a bookstore! For example, I live quite close to Waterstones in Piccadilly, London. Last year saw some fantastic music books released. Rolling Stone, CLASH, Pitchfork, and The Guardian had their say about the very best of the year. You walk into a bookshop and head towards shelves lined with paperbacks and hardbacks. I love the biographies and reference books. There are also the artist-specific books too. Ones about particular album and genres. Time periods in music that are engrossing and full of detail! My particular favourite section is the coffee table books. Those big hardbacks that are either music photography or a biography. The smell and sensation of approaching those books and having something so impressive there to read. Like record shops where they can cover the albums so they are not damaged and feel new when you buy them, you do not get that all the time with bookshops. People can read the books and, sometimes, you are buying one that other people have leafed through. Regardless, that experience of searching through music books is a very different one to vinyl shopping. Perhaps more sedate and a little different in terms of energy, I find that we do not talk about music books as much as vinyl. The Penderyn Music Book Prize has just its shortlist. Recognising the very best music books from last year. An example of an organisation/body who are taking time t highlight how important music books are!

I wonder whether there are music book clubs. Where people can discuss great music books. Also, music book subscription services where you can get a new one sent to you each month. It can be quite expensive when you have your eyes on really great music books. Like vinyl, these books are an investment. You take days and weeks to read them and can keep coming back. With so much focus being on actual music and physical sales there, we do ignore slightly the literature that is just as important. Some of the best books I have read the past few years have been music books So much passion and research goes into them. As much as I do love a great coffee table book or something like a comprehensive Madonna biography there is a lot to be said about a paperback. Even the slim and essential 33 1/3 series. Option for every music lover. We should be encouraging music fans to buy books in addition to the music. You can learn just as much from a book about an artist as their albums reveal. I was compelled to write as, when I walk into Waterstones, Piccadilly and see the glorious shelves of music books staring back at me, I want to own so many of them! Buying the books new is great through, considering budget, it makes me think about a book club or exchange where you can get your favourite music books and swap them.

PHOTO CREDIT: No Depression

In any case, we do undervalue and under-discuss the wonder and tactile power of music books. Whether you prefer text and the detail you get from biographies or reference guides or the mesmeric nature of iconic music photography, there is that excitement of getting the book. The same sense of anticipation when you see that vinyl album and know it will soon be in your collection! I was really fascinated by all of the great music books that came out last year. There will be loads coming this year. Whilst publications and websites have been busy collating their choices of last year’s best albums, there is far less emphasis and acknowledgement of all the important and must-read music books. Seen as inferior to albums perhaps. I hope this changes soon. There is nothing quite like owning a great book about an artist or a music scene and devoting time to it. You do see music books reviewed but, again, fewer than albums. I think all forms of music-related media and content is vital. Shining more of a light on these is paramount. Also, it would be great to see more people in bookstores and chains perusing music books. They are always quieter than record shops. Maybe that will always be the way. So many people missing out. Just like a wonderful album, discovering a music book can change your life. Last year was one where I bought a few exceptional music books and they are still in my mind now. Putting them on the same level as albums is justifiable. One only needs to read and discover the sheer effort and love that goes into writing them to realise that they are…

PHOTO CREDIT: Min An/Pexels

A thing of joyful discovery and wonder.

FEATURE: Blueprints of the Masterpiece: Kate Bush’s January 1984

FEATURE:

 

 

Blueprints of the Masterpiece

Kate Bush’s January 1984

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FOR a few early features this year…

I am going to go to this website and pick some periods in her career and dissect them. I am going back forty years. There are a few events from January 1984 that caught my eye. In terms of where Kate Bush was in her career, she was in-between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. The former arrived in 1982. In the period between 1982 and the start of 1984, there has been quite a bit of activity. It is important to look at the year before to see why 1984 was a pivotal one. Where Bush made real strides laying the groundwork for her masterpiece, Hounds of Love. At the start of 1983, Bush was under pressure to tour because of the relative lack of commercial success for The Dreaming. The singles not doing well. There was definitely plans for Bush to do something new after The Dreaming. In May 1983, a couple of months before her twenty-fifth birthday, a book/memoir, Leaving My Tracks, was shelved. One of those great what-ifs! Fans would definitely have loved to read an autobiography or book from Kate Bush. In the middle of 1983, there was some U.S. activity. The Kate Bush five-track mini-album was released in the U.S. and Canada (the Canadian release contained six tracks). Importantly, whilst there were movements towards greater U.S. awareness and impetus to get her commercial stock rising, Bush was in England planning and construction a bespoke home studio. One that would be the centre of one of the greatest albums ever released.

By September 1983, Bush was writing for Hounds of Love. A year after her previous album, there was this shift in terms of her sound and creative vision. A summer where she had time to be with family and relax, Bush was keen to move away from The Dreaming in terms of the recording and tone. Whilst, in November 1983 EMI conceive the idea of touring the Live at Hammersmith Odeon video around the American colleges – another grab at trying to get U.S. audiences interested in her music more -, Kate Bush was more interested in ensuring that her fifth studio album was done very much in her own vision. Rounding up 1983, The Single File video compilation is released. Bush makes personal appearances in Kingston and Holborn. More a year of promoting The Dreaming, some retrospection and U.S. plans. 1984 was one where Bush was much more interested in pushing forward. That said, as we can see below, the first month of that new year saw a couple of interesting moments:

“January 1984

The new studio being more or less ready, Kate begins work on her fifth album, directly demoing the songs and building on the original demo rather than re-recording.

January 16, 1984

Kate helps launch the Sky Channel, the first satellite TV station in the U.K.

January 23, 1984

The Single File box set of singles is released, further fuelling rumours that Kate is to leave EMI.

EMI-America release Lionheart and Never For Ever, begin a heavy back-catalogue promotion under the theme Looking Back to See Ahead”.

The studio completion and demo work is what I am interested in. Even so, I do love the fact that Kate Bush helped launch the Sky Channel. It is one of those weird and wonderful aspects of her career. Also, that detail regarding The Single File box set being released. I think that the release was timed at a great moment. Six years after her debut single came out, it was perhaps overdue that there would be some retrospection. A couple of years after that was released, The Whole Story came out. Capitalising on big moments in Bush’s career. At the start of 1984, there had been this gap since her fourth studio album. Not only an opportunity to keep her music at the forefront, it is a nice bridge between two albums. I can understand why some might feel she wanted to leave EMI. Given the lack of single commercial success from The Dreaming, an artist might feel like the label was not behind them. Instead, rather than it being about dissatisfaction and a way to clear the decks, this was a chance for fans to get the singles in one place. It has not really been done before that. Of course, between 1984 and now, Bush has released old material quite a few times – though only one greatest hits collection (that stops at 1986). There was this period, forty years ago, when there was the final stage between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. In the same month that there was this collection of singles – perhaps to stoke interest internationally -, Bush was starting to put together songs for Hounds of Love. That idea of the studio having been built and her being inspired to write. I can imagine what an exciting and fertile period it was.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the studio in 1984 recording Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I like the fact that Bush did not demo a song and then re-record it. Most artists do that, where you get this basic and sketch of a song before they go back and then re-record with extra elements and layers. Instead, what we hear on Hounds of Love is Bush’s original demos. Only with her going back and adding to them. Classic songs like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and Cloudbusting starting life quite differently. She then played the demos back and then was compelled to add to that mix. I wonder if that is a reason why Hounds of Love is a classic and so loved. A different sound and feel to other albums. Over a year later, Kate Bush would release her most acclaimed album. Thinking back to January 1984 when these songs were taking place. It was a definite moment when she moved from professional studios and an old way of working to this autonomy and home comforts. The fact that she had her own studio and it was by the family home meant that there was less stress and pressure. Able to take her time and work in the same spot – even though there was some recording Windmill Lane (Dublin) and Abbey Road (London). At the start of 1984, Kate Bush was ready to begin work on her masterpiece. Before too long…

SOMETHING wonderful would follow.

FEATURE: I Don't Owe You Anything: Will The Smiths’ Eponymous Debut Album Get a Fortieth Anniversary Reissue?

FEATURE:

 

 

I Don't Owe You Anything

Will The Smiths’ Eponymous Debut Album Get a Fortieth Anniversary Reissue?

_________

AMONG all of the albums…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Smiths in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Chalkie Davies

celebrating big anniversaries in 2024, there is no doubt that The Smiths is one of the biggest. The debut by the legendary group, it was released on 20th February, 1984. Its fortieth anniversary is nearing. It made me wonder whether there will be a special reissue for an album that is enormously influential. Arriving into the world where Synth-Pop was ruling and the music mainstream was a very different make-up, along came a band who started something fresh and urgent. Intelligent, melodic and nuanced songwriting. Morrissey’s intelligent and standout lyrics tied to that distinct tone his voice carries. Johnny Marr’s phenomenal and genius guitar work, together with Andy Rourke’s bass and Mike Joyce’s drums. A terrific band came onto the scene. Sadly, we lost Andy Rourke last year. He knows how much The Smiths’ debut album means to people. I hope that there is appropriate fanfare and celebration around its upcoming fortieth anniversary. The single from the album, What Difference Does It Make?, was released on 16th January, 1984. Even if fans choose later albums like The Queen Is Dead (1986) as the best album from The Smiths, is there a more important one than their eponymous debut? One that changed music and heralded this new sound.

What is quite annoying and baffling is how little has been written about their debut. It is more straightforward than their following albums, though the significance and quality of the 1984 debut cannot be overstated! Why have more features about its value not been written?! It is a strange thing. Plenty of press about the band in general, though not their magnificent debut. An album that does not sound dated at all. The song still shine and sparkle. Classics and standouts like This Charming Man and Reel Around the Fountain played to this day. I will come to a feature where figures in the music industry discussed the influence of The Smiths on them. It all began with their phenomenal 1984 debut. Rolling Stone reviewed The Smiths in June 1984:

“WHEN TOM ROBINSON sang “Glad to Be Gay” back in 1978, he did it as a dirge — the irony, while bracing, was entirely obvious. Six years later, the singer and lyricist of the Smiths — a man called Morrissey — has little use for the ironic mode: His memories of heterosexual rejection and homosexual isolation seem too persistently painful to be dealt with obliquely. Morrissey’s songs probe the daily ache of life in a gay-baiting world, but the bitterness and bewilderment he’s felt will be familiar to anyone who’s ever sought social connection without personal compromise. Whether recalling the confusion of early heterosexual encounters (“I’m not the man you think I am”) or the sometimes heartless reality of the gay scene, Morrissey lays out his life like a shoebox full of faded snapshots.

Given Morrissey’s rather somber poetic stance, The Smiths is surprisingly warm and entertaining. Though Morrissey’s voice — a sometimes toneless drone that can squeal off without warning into an eerie falsetto — takes some getting used to, it soon comes to seem quite charming, set as it is amid the delicately chiming guitars of cocomposer Johnny Marr. And the eleven songs here are so rhythmically insinuating that the persistent listener is likely to find himself won over almost without warning. From “What Difference Does It Make?,” a clever reprise of a venerable garage-punk riff, to the striking opener, “Reel around the Fountain,” and the U.K. hits “Hand in Glove” and “This Charming Man,” this record repays close listening”.

What comparatively little is written about The Smiths is perspective and interesting. In a year (1984) where Pop queens like Madonna were dominating the mainstream, The Smiths’ music seemed so vastly alternative. I know the legacy of the band and their debut is somewhat marred by Morrissey. Even if his lyrics and vocals are wonderful and help make The Smiths what it is, controversy surrounding him in years since makes some feel guilty about embracing the band. I get that. It would be unfair to ignore an album as crucial and iconic as The Smiths because of a quarter of the band. Consequence shared their thoughts in a 2019 feature:

“With its release on February 20, 1984,The Smiths was an instant game-changer. There was nothing like it just yet; it wasn’t as heavy as Joy Division or as rock and roll as Elvis Costello and the Attractions. It didn’t have the elaborate gossamer of The Cure or Siouxsie Sioux’s cathedral wailings. Instead, Morrissey’s drab voice soars and sours in contrast to Johnny Marr’s majestic guitar work, full of mystery and sorrow.

This album opens with a song about child abuse, and it’s not the only one. “Suffer Little Children” is about the five children murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in what would become known as the Moors Murders. The song was so shocking that the album was removed from several shops, but Morrissey struck up a friendship with Ann West, the mother of Moors victim Lesley Ann Downey, who agreed that the song was written with only the best intentions.

But there have always been songs about crime and hurt. What makes The Smiths so unique is that so much of it revolves around both homosexual and asexual longing — the desire to be desired even if that desire must never or will never be consummated — rather than the traditional love songs or breakup anthems that make up so much of music. “I am sorrow’s native son/ He will not rise for anyone,” he moans on “Pretty Girls Make Graves”. It’s all daring subject matter, even now, to sing about the complex nature of lust, of wanting to be desired without the trappings of sex.

The Smiths even has a lullaby. On a pop album by four childless twentysomething lads. It’s a bold choice for any musician, but “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” is a distinctly Smiths lullaby, full of ominous threats — “There’ll be blood on the cleaver tonight” is gore that would fit right into Grimm’s Fairy Tales — but ultimately brimming with the sort of aching tenderness that Morrissey, with flowers in his back pocket, would make his signature. Perhaps that’s why Morrissey’s descent into curmudgeon hurts so badly — because his lyrics rip apart love into all of the complicated and often contradictory pieces that make it up. Anger and pleasure, need and desire, sexual and familial, Morrissey explores all of these, even when they hurt. Even when they don’t make sense.

“Hand in Glove” is perhaps the best example of this strictly Moz phenomenon. Hailed by the band, at the time, as the best song they’d written, it is The Smiths at their purest, Morrissey with his heart bare and bruised, Mike Joyce keeping everyone steady on the drums, Andy Rourke’s bass warm and inspired, while Johnny Marr’s guitars rain down a sun-drenched melancholy. “No it’s not like any other love,” Morrissey bleats. “This one is different because it’s ours.” It encapsulated what it was like to be a Smiths fan, that there was no other band like it in the world. It says, it’s okay to be tender. It’s okay to be witty. It is love unadulterated by money or sex or gossipy friends, and as such, Morrissey knows it cannot last. That innate understanding of human nature, the ugly pieces we hide from ourselves, is the DNA of every Smiths song, put on full display as though in a lit glass case.

Though “You’ve Got Everything Now” was the debut single, it’s “This Charming Man” that steals the show. It is as perfect a fusion of Morrissey and Marr as there ever was, elaborate, poppy guitars play with, not against, Morrissey’s coy, lilting vocals. “I would go out tonight,” he teases this song’s subject. “But I haven’t got a stitch to wear.”

Listening to any Smiths record is a life-changing experience, whether in 1984 or 2018. No one has been able to match Morrissey’s exact blend of wit and melancholy, the uniquely British charm that cannot be put on or manufactured. It’s a shame of the highest disappointment that Morrissey is such a trash bag, but not even he can ruin what we all once had.

“It just wasn’t like the old days anymore,” he sings on “Still Ill”. We cannot hear The Smiths again for the first time, and we cannot listen to them without thinking, Fuck, man, Morrissey is such a toolbox. But I invite you to put on The Smiths in a quiet room, perhaps with headphones, perhaps in the dark. Listen in full as though it was the first time, recalling who you were and who you are now and how you got to be there. Imagine Morrissey isn’t The Absolute Worst. Chances are you will fall in love with this album all over again in that pure way that you can only love The Smiths, even if just for that moment”.

I will end with thoughts around the fortieth and whether we will get an anniversary reissue. I hope so! First, last year, The Guardian celebrated forty years of The Smiths’ existence. The fact that their debut single, Hand in Glove, was released in May 1983. It is interesting that a track many associate as being on The Smiths, This Charming Man, did not appear on the original U.K. L.P. release. It appears as the first song on side B of the original U.S. L.P. release. The first U.K. C.D. release in 1986 did not include the song; all UK C.D. re-releases since 1993 include it:

“The interplay of gloom and light, of Morrissey’s biting lyrics and Marr’s bright guitars, are what has made the band so enduring for successive generations of British indie musicians, says Connie Constance. The 28-year-old Watford musician counts the Smiths as one of her biggest reference points when it comes to guitar sounds, along with the Clash. “The sound has all the negativity that I think Brits just naturally have,” she says. “It has this gritty, I’m not bothered, moany thing, while having this beautiful layer on top that makes everything feel like it’s gonna be all right.”

Although Constance first engaged with the Smiths as a child, she didn’t realise until later the impact they had on all the other bands she had grown up listening to. “I was listening to their back catalogue and being like, ‘Oh my gosh, this sound is so laced into all of British indie rock,’ from that moment onwards.”

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, a longtime Smiths fan, remembers that the band “came along at a time when the north-west of England was probably at its lowest ever ebb in recent history. It seemed to me to be a recurrent theme in Morrissey’s lyrics that you can kind of aspire to be more than this. You don’t have to be dragged down by your situation or circumstances.” In Burnham’s eyes, the band gave the region a rare sense of cachet. “When I got to university, people would ask, ‘You’ve seen the Smiths?’ and it was like, OK, I’ve got something that you want – that was important, in terms of building a sense of confidence and ambition.”

Richard King, author of the book How Soon Is Now: The Mavericks and Madmen Who Made Independent Music 1975-2005, says the Smiths created a give and take with their fans that felt fresh. “Morrissey wasn’t an adolescent, but he did seem to know how to articulate the extremes of adolescence, and there were very few people who did,” he says. “There was a sense of generosity and value in every release – the picture sleeves, the tone they used, the B-sides: everything they did had this value that you couldn’t find anywhere else – and it felt like it was coming directly from the band. It meant that the emotional investment that you put in as an adolescent, into the songs and their meaning, you felt like that investment was returned by the band in their quality control and their look.”

Although it had been common to pledge sartorial fealty to a genre or subculture – such as punk or goth – Smiths fans, even before they had released an album, dressed like the Smiths. Although other artists had developed a similar aesthetic sensibility previously, most of them, such as Orange Juice’s Edwyn Collins, took their cues from 1950s Americana, with leather jackets, sunglasses and immaculate quiffs. Morrissey combined the 50s hair with what Reed calls a “studenty” look – raincoats bought from charity shops and vintage stores. That look, now, has calcified into what might be termed the classic indie boy aesthetic: T-shirts and shirts tucked into 501 jeans, thick-rimmed glasses, mismatched or ill-fitting outerwear.

Fletcher saw the band in late 1983, and remembers seeing that “fans were already dressed like them – in London, people were carrying flowers in their back pockets. From 1984, Morrissey had the big overcoat thing, and suddenly you just started seeing people like that. It was like some of them were just coming out of their shell – they were very bookish people who suddenly realised that bookish was fashionable, and they didn’t have to apologise for their NHS specs and being a bit dishevelled and literate and into pop music.”

Burnham remembers Manchester’s Affleck’s Palace as being a centre of the Morrissey aesthetic. “Morrissey created it, but people would go there to replicate it,” he says. “It was vintage 501 jeans before they were as ubiquitous as they became, cardigans, stuff that was deliberately old-school looking. It was kind of an outsider look – it became anti-cool fashion before that existed in our heads.”

He recalls the Smiths acting as a kind of codex for broader culture. When the band performed on the South Bank Show, for example: “I remember everyone videotaping it, and it really laid out a hinterland of references. People started reading Oscar Wilde – it kind of did broaden your horizons, liking the Smiths.” The band’s iconography and music was so strong that despite’s Morrissey’s aesthetic and political shifts after he went solo – on 1988’s Bengali in Platforms he suggested south Asian migrants didn’t belong in the UK, and by 1992 he was draping himself in the union jack – many fans can easily separate the Smiths off in their minds.

The freedom that the band seemed to offer their audience – to remove themselves from staid ideas of how to look, dress or think – was revolutionary at the time. King remembers the way Marr and Morrissey interacted on stage, and the amount of fun they seemed to be having, feeling radically new. “The two of them dancing together as men, but both being very feminine and, in Johnny’s case, quite androgynous, was incredibly powerful,” he says. “It felt to an adolescent audience that it was giving them agency to act differently – two men dancing together not in an overtly homoerotic or political way, but just having fun together in their own unique way.”

Moreover, Morrissey pioneered a musical expression that wasn’t geared towards heterosexual romance – or even romance in general. “To have somebody that wasn’t singing either, ‘I’m in love with you,’ or, ‘You broke up with me,’ but singing, ‘I’m not really sure if I want love, I don’t know if I want romance’ – he managed to encapsulate feelings that so many people had,” says Fletcher. “I don’t think anybody had come along with that.”

Constance says that Morrissey’s less explicitly masculine presentation has “allowed a softer side of men in indie bands to come through” in the years since. “I feel like men can share a bit more in the indie world, and they can sing and get things off their chest a bit more, rather than being just this like brutal anarchist punk or superstar over-sexual glam-rock male,” she says. “Someone like [the 1975’s] Matty Healy – Morrissey was the first of that [archetype]”.

There deserves to be a wave of new features written about The Smiths ahead of its fortieth anniversary on 20th February. There is shockingly little out there right now! Undoubtably one of the most significant debut albums ever, it one that inspired legions of bands. I hope that there is a reissue where we get some extras and demos. The oriignal album either released in a range of coloured vinyl, or perhaps one where we get some remixes. Maybe it is too late to do anything if there are no planned released. I suspect that something has been organised. Look at the legacy of The Smiths:

“Slant Magazine listed the album at 51 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s" saying "There's no reason why a mordant, sexually frustrated disciple of Oscar Wilde who loved punk but crooned like a malfunctioning Sinatra should've teamed up with a fabulously inventive guitarist whose influences were so diffuse that it could be hard to hear them at all and formed one of the greatest songwriting duos of the '80s." PopMatters included the album on their list of "12 Essential Alternative Rock Albums from the 1980s" saying: "Morrissey's career are fully accounted for on The Smiths, where they are rendered all the more piercing by Johnny Marr's delicate guitar-picking and John Porter's stark production".

In 1989, the album was ranked number 22 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s. In 2003, the album was #481 on that magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The magazine ranked it at #473 on an updated list in 2012, calling it "a showcase for Morrissey's morose wit and Johnny Marr's guitar chime". The album was ranked number 51 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time. It placed at number 73 in The Guardian's list of the 100 Best Albums Ever in 1997”.

Perhaps their most underrated albums, they would produce more complex and ambitious work from 1985’s Meat Is Murder on. Produced by John Porter, The Smiths was recorded in a piecemeal nature because of The Smiths’ touring commitments. Morrissey felt the finished album was not good enough. He is wrong. There is no doubt how wonderful The Smiths’ 1984 debut album. I just regret it has not been praised and dissected more. I hope that at least a few people share some words ahead of its…

FORTIETH anniversary.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Australia’s First Nations Queens

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Australian rapper Barkaa (who is a Malyangapa and Barkindji woman) photographed for GQ in 2020

Australia’s First Nations Queens

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I came across an article…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Miss Kaninna/PHOTO CREDIT: Tristan Stefan Edouard

from the end of December from The Guardian that discussed Indigenous women from Australia merging the world’s oldest living cultures together with Hip-Hop whilst also wrestling with racism and social injustice. I was not aware of some of the queens of Australian Indigenous Hip-Hop and whether more is known and explored around the world. How many of these artists get played and celebrated in the U.K. for example? It made me want to dive more into that world and highlight that clash of these amazing artists fighting against racism and injustice whilst also producing the most amazing and powerful music. I am going to end with a playlist feature music from Indigenous queens. There are these incredible First Nations women who are releasing music that is moving and important. Malyangapa Barkindji rapper Barkaa is one example. There are these empowered and inspiring Indigenous artists who have found a way to weaponise their voice:

“When the Indigenous hip-hop artist Charmaine Jasmine Armstrong – also known as Dizzy Doolan – started spitting rhymes 22 years ago she was one of a handful of women in Australia’s rap scene.

There was no one to teach her how to put songs together, promote herself, apply for grants or even upload music. In the early 2000s the Australian scene was dominated by white men – groups like the Hilltop Hoods.

“There was no other female rappers that I knew of really doing their thing,” Dizzy says. “There was no one to look up to, apart from your American groups.”

Two decades later Dizzy is part of a growing number of Indigenous female artists across Australia. They are merging the world’s oldest living cultures with a comparatively new genre of music: rap. They’re also ushering in a new wave of hip-hop that wrestles with racial politics, Australia’s bloody past and social injustice.

In far north Queensland, Dizzy, a Takalak, Agwamin, Gureng Gureng and Wokka Wokka woman, grew up listening to jazz and blues. At 16 she released her first rap song, No Shame – a message about not letting that feeling hold you back.

“My mum’s sister passed away, so I was at a very down point,” she says. “When I discovered songwriting and rap, I was like, ‘Oh, I can put on my pain and struggle and make it sound cool.’ Turning your pain to power.”

At 18 she recorded her first song on to CDs and would walk the streets of Brisbane, putting them into letterboxes.

“I was like, ‘How can we get this music out?’ I had no iTunes, there was nothing like that – we barely had access to the internet.

“But the beauty about hip-hop is you only need a pen and paper. I started with no beat, just banging on the table.”

As mainstream Australia’s taste for rap developed, so did Dizzy’s career. From chasing small gigs in Brisbane she went on to support huge international artists including Fatman Scoop, T-Pain and Akon. Now 38, Dizzy has just released her first full album.

“I wasn’t valued as much as a male would be in the industry,” she says. “But then, you use that, you take that and you use that as power, and prove them wrong.

“Nowadays there’s a big movement of more female artists in the scene, which I’m so excited to see.”

Struggling with backlash

Many female hip-hop artists have found their success has been tainted by racism. Miss Kaninna, who is of Yorta Yorta, Djadja Wurrung, Kalkadoon and Yirendali heritage, knows this well.

The artist was crowned the 2023 Unearthed artist of the year for her single Blak Britney, which shot to number one on Triple J within a fortnight of its release.

“I’ve had so many positive things birthed out of releasing Blak Britney, but I’ve also experienced more racism in the past eight months than I ever have in almost my entire life,” she says.

Miss Kaninna says the backlash is exhausting – but it drives her to make more music.

“Indigenous people have found a way to weaponise their voice that can reach farther,” she says. “Like, if you thought the Blak Britney or Pinnacle Bitch was hectic, like these motherfuckers aren’t even ready”.

Maybe not artists or a genre/scene that has yet to gain exposure wider around the world, I thought it was interesting reading about Australia’s female First Nations rappers and their work. Articles like this and this also expand on the great names changing Australian Hip-Hop. The struggles they have faced and how they are turning that backlash and prejudice into something constructive and compelling. Below are just a few examples of the amazing rappers who warrant greater attention and spotlight. As we head through this year, different genres and styles of music will come to the forefront. It would be good, if in years to come, the music of Australia’s First Nations queens…

IS better known.

FEATURE: Tomorrow’s Pearls and New Frontiers: Saluting Donald Fagen, His Songwriting Genius with ‘The Dan’, and How His Music Inspires Me – and Why Its Influence Is Rare to Detect Wider Afield

FEATURE:

 

 

Tomorrow’s Pearls and New Frontiers

IN THIS PHOTO: Donald Fagen shot in London, 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images

Saluting Donald Fagen, His Songwriting Genius with ‘The Dan’, and How His Music Inspires Me – and Why Its Influence Is Rare to Detect Wider Afield

_________

MAYBE 10th January…

PHOTO CREDIT: ALTEREDSNAPS/Pexels

will see more people remember the life – on the date of his death – of a mainstream music icon, rather than the seventy-sixth birthday of a more ‘underground’ musical figure. The former is David Bowie, who died on 10th January, 2016; the latter is one Donald Fagen. One of the founders of Steely Dan (co-founder Walter Becker died in 2017) should be celebrated. I am going to talk more about his solo work, why it impacts me, and how it is unusual we have not seen many modern artists imbue that incredible sound and sonic aesthetic. I want to talk about Steely Dan, as that was my first exposure to the New Jersey-born genius that is Donald Fagen. I would suggest y’all check out Good Steely Dan Takes on Twitter and the podcast, Gaucho Amigos. A go-to and well of Steely Dan archives, takes and knowledge, I am sort of aiming this partially in their direction. I am also nodding again to the sublime and phenomenal writer and journalist Alex Pappademas, and illustrator and artist Joan LeMay. They published a book last year, Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. It is a stunning and gorgeously written and illustrated book where Pappademas and LeMay look at the characters on Steely Dan songs, rather than do a standard biography about Steely Dan. I wrote about the book several times (including here), and I was lucky enough to get a couple of copies of it signed by Joan LeMay at an event in London near where I live (she did at the time; she has moved to New York now I understand). Such a really cool and lovely person, it is a shame I did not get more time to chat (shyness on my part), as she helped create an essential Steely Dan guide.

IN THIS ILLUSTRATION: Aja’s eponymous heroine and cover figure (on the album, there is a photo of Japanese model and actress Sayoko Yamaguchi)/ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the University of Texas Press

When I finished reading the book – which now I have read several times -, it made me realise how special Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were as writers. Not only did these songs I first heard in childhood take on new meaning. The characters dropped into verses and choruses are now coming to life. Their importance. The way the duo could write these amazingly vivid people. Even if they have an unnamed character (Deacon Blue’s ‘The Expanding Man’ or the semi-anonymous ‘Peg’ from the song of the same name), you feel like you can see them. Identify with their story. Donald Fagen brought this writing vividness and wonder into his solo material. He has released four solo albums: 1982’s The Nightfly; 1993 Kamakiriad; 2006’s Morph the Cat; 2012’s Sunken Condos. Fagen suggested in this interview that he is working on new material. That was in September 2022. I would be surprised if we went through this year without the announcement of a fifth solo studio album. If many go for his 1982 debut as his best solo work, to me it is his most recent album, Sunken Condos, that is king. I think that there is a real desire for something from Donald Fagen. He still tours with Steely Dan. Even though he was briefly hospitalised last year, he is okay now and will no doubt by touring throughout this year. He is a few days shy of turning seventy-six. It made me think how there is this gap that needs filling by him. Nobody else sounds like him. Even if Steely Dan are hugely popular – if slightly niche and underground still; not as shared and played widely by mainstream radio stations -, it has not been reflected in terms of other musicians’ output. Who could help but be inspired to write their own version of Peg (Aja) or Hey Nineteen (Gaucho)?! What about Donald Fagen’s solo work like New Frontier (The Nightfly)?! Also, perhaps take a cue from the alluringly brilliant Florida Room (Kamakiriad)?!

Even though artists such as Kate Bush have name-checked them a few times in the distant past – and her song, James and the Cold Gun starts with a piano riff very much inspired by The Dan -, you can’t hear Steely Dan or Donald Fagen that overtly and obviously in many artists’ work today. I have written about this before. How come modern artists are not emulating Donald Fagen and Steely Dan?! I posed that on Twitter a while ago and Nerina Pallot – who covered Peg in 2009 - suggested that the studio-craft and sheer hours of recording needed to do so would be expensive and draining. True in a way. Yes, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker spent so much time drilling musicians and seeking that perfect sound. The fact Donald Fagen obsessively worked to get the ‘right mix’ and fade out for Gaucho’s Babylon Sisters means any modern artists trying to do that might be bankrupted very soon! I am not suggesting artists hire Electric Lady Studios in New York for three months and try to release their version of Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic or Katy Lied. At a time when technology can provide a recording base or crutch at least, I suppose hiring musicians would be costly enough. There are artists who could afford it. It is not the case of needing an army of session players for an album. I mean just the vibe and mood of a Steely Dan or Donald Fagen album. The dreamy and lush harmony vocals. Cutting and clever lyrics, together with the richness of sumptuous brass, standout percussion and wonderfully inventive guitar lines. These arresting characters and situations. Maybe any project without Donald Fagen’s vocal might suffer, though I cannot think of any band/artist since Steely Dan who can readily been compared to them.

IMAGE/PHOTO CREDIT: Canva/Pexels

To me, someone like Donald Fagen is so important. Unique too. Reviews around his solo albums, especially Sunken Condos, have sort of had the same thought: he is in a league of his own and superb, though he doesn’t go beyond his comfort zone much; though it is looser than his previous solo records. They are positive reviews, yet most sort of are comparing it to past work and are not entirely surprised. Suggesting the sound doesn’t alter much between albums. Are they expecting a Jazz odyssey or Fagen to go Pop?! If there is nobody like him in music, do you want him to stray too far from what he is best at – and who else will fill that void he leaves?! The clear reality of his music should overshadow critical dubiousness: if it ain’t broke then why the hell fix it?! Rather than this being pure self-indulgence (though there is some of that in there!), I have been inspired to think of my own Fagen-inspired album. Whilst we await a fifth solo outing from the master, his music has compelled me to dream. An album, The Maris Crane Exposé – the juxtaposition and mystery of an unseen and fabled sitcom character and this major scandal -, would feature thirteen songs very much inspired by Donald Fagen. I have put a hypothetical back cover above. The text does blend into/clash with the background at the times, so the tracklisting is: Local Celebrity; Can’t Buy a Thrill; Coco Chanel in Blue (ft. Margaret Atwood); Winters by the Sea; Put It All on Red; Southside (ft. Lana Del Rey); Katy’s Switch; Stuck in the Middle with Me; For Those in the Back Rows; David Has a Masterplan; Hipsterlooza; Control, Alt, Repeat; I’ll Get to New York City One Day Soon (ft. Donald Fagen and Rachel Brosnahan). Of course, it is a dream and something I will not realise! The frustration with this absence of artists bringing Donald Fagen’s sound more obviously into their own music.

That said, I would love to make the album happen, albeit with someone else singing the songs. With topics covered – alongside traditional love and the sort of wise-cracking and sardonic stuff you’d find on Donald Fagen’s albums – would be climate change, transgender rights, gender equality in music, gun violence in the U.S., women’s rights and autonomy, old minds and bodies keeping track of modern music, and the idolisation of TikTok and social media artists. That sounds like a heavy and serious album! As it is very much channelling Donald Fagen, it would mix clever and important lyrics with wit and wordplay. Whilst nearly every major and acclaimed songwriter or artist has someone in music today that contains some of their DNA, I struggle to find where Donald Fagen’s successors are. Maybe it is a case of him being untouchable and that studio process being too intense. Regardless, as Fagen is seventy-six on 10th January, it should also act as an opportunity for people to seek his music out. I hope it inspires artists enough so they can create something very much with him in mind. Perhaps some important Steely Dan anniversaries – Pretzel Logic is fifty this year – might provoke some movement. Artists like Lou Hayter have covered Steely Dan and are massive fans. In fact, she may be the closest to a Steely Dan mega-fan who is bringing some of their genius into her own work. She is someone I admire hugely and feel will inspire other artists to check out Steely Dan/Donald Fagen - and, who knows, become compelled to follow them sonically and lyrically.

IN THIS PHOTO: Lou Hayter

I was excited about Donald Fagen’s upcoming birthday and the fact solo album number five might not be too far away. With him being the only one making this type of wonderful music, should it be left that way?! I, as a non-musician – though I write lyrics and have aspiration to assemble artists together -, have been influenced to think about my own Fagen/Dan-inspired album. I even got a front cover. A beautiful woman in rollerskates with a spot of blood on one cheek. A seductive look where she bites her lip. A gun in one hand. The backdrop seems like a 1950s milkshake or cola bar in California. You see patrons behind her. An old-style journalist taking a photo with a woman next to him weeping. In her other hand she holds down a newspaper where the headline reads “The Maris Crane Expose’”. The backdrop has a sign for Strawberry Kiss (the fictional milkshake-type bar). Pinks, pastel colours and something that would grab the eye, I got all of that by listening to one Donald Fagen song along: Planet D’Rhonda from Sunken Condos (don’t ask how, I just did!). That fantasy of musicians coming in New York and recording this amazing album influenced by him. One where he could take a vocal turn (I paired him with actor Rachel Brosnahan as a couple (friends/lovers) squabbling in a New York diner who eventually cool off and laugh; a backdrop to the closing track). Without it being too much like Donald Fagen, it does owe a debt to him. One cannot have too much Fagen-influenced magic in the world! Maybe Lou Hayter singing. Or someone else I guess. I don’t know! What I do know is that I am almost as excited by the prospect of a Donald Fagen album as anyone else this year (The Last Dinner Party being high up there; Kate Bush, let’s hope, will drop an eleventh studio album soon). His music is part of my childhood…though it sounds so relevant and original today. Both singular and also waiting for someone to adopt, adapt and personalise. There is nobody quite like The Don (of The Dan). As Fagen sings on Morph the Cat’s What I Do: “It's what I do/I'm specially qualified/To keep 'em satisfied/It's what I do”. Weighing up those words, looking at his impact, and seeing the opportunity for artists to learn from this master…

AIN’T that the truth, brother!

FEATURE: Whole Lotta Love: Jimmy Page at Eighty: His Finest Riffs and Examples of Guitar Genius

FEATURE:

 

 

Whole Lotta Love

PHOTO CREDIT: Ross Halfin

Jimmy Page at Eighty: His Finest Riffs and Examples of Guitar Genius

_________

ON 9th January…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Jimmy Page (bottom left) alongside his Led Zeppelin bandmates, John Bonham (top left), Robert Plant (top right) and John Paul Jones (bottom right)/PHOTO CREDIT: Rex

the iconic Jimmy Page turns eighty. Born James Patrick Page in Middlesex, he has gone down in music history as one of the most influential musicians ever. A genius guitarist who ranks alongside the very best of all time, he was a quarter of the legendary Led Zeppelin – alongside lead Robert Plant, bass player John Paul Jones, and the late drummer John Bonham. To mark a huge birthday for a musician who has influenced so many others, I am going to end with a playlist demonstrating his phenomenal guitar skills. Some of his best riffs and exceptional musicianship. You can buy books about Jimmy Page if you want to know more about this pioneer. Also, Led Zeppelin’s eponymous debut album turns fifty-five on 12th January. It was released on 12th January, 1969 in the U.S. Even though Page has recorded albums with other artists, it is his work with Led Zeppelin that we know him for best. I will come to that playlist. First, AllMusic provide some biography about a true great:

“Unquestionably one of the all-time most influential, important, and versatile guitarists and songwriters in rock history is Jimmy Page. Just about every rock guitarist from the late '60s/early '70s to the present day has been influenced by Page's work with Led Zeppelin -- his monolithic riffs served as a blueprint for what would eventually become heavy metal, yet he refused to be pigeonholed to any single musical style (touching upon folk, country, funk, blues, and other genres). Page also lent a hand in writing (or co-writing) Zeppelin's vast array of classic songs and produced all their albums. Born on January 9, 1944, in Heston, Middlesex, England, Page picked up the guitar at age 13 after being inspired by the Elvis Presley tune "Baby Let's Play House," and while he took several lessons, was mostly self-taught. Instead of attending college right after high school, Page decided to join his first real rock band, Neil Christian & the Crusaders, whom he toured England with. But Page fell seriously ill (with glandular fever) and was forced to quit and recuperate. Dejected, Page pondered giving up music and focusing on another interest, painting, as he enrolled at an art college in Sutton, Surrey.

With the emergence of such bands as the Rolling Stones in the early '60s and their gritty blues-rock, Page's interest in music perked up once again -- but instead of forming a band right away, he decided to hone his craft by becoming one of England's top session guitarists and producers. Although the exact specifics of which sessions he was involved with have become hazy over time, it's confirmed that he worked with many of the day's top acts, including the Who, Them, Donovan, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones, among others. By 1966, Page was looking to put his session work on hold and join a full-time band; he accepted an offer to play with the Yardbirds (initially as a bassist, then shortly thereafter as a guitarist), as he was paired up with another one of rock's all-time guitar greats, Jeff Beck. Although the Yardbirds began as a straight-ahead blues-rock band, with the inclusion of Page in the lineup, the group began experimenting with psychedelic and hard rock styles.

Despite it being obvious that the Yardbirds were on the downside of their career (Beck left shortly after Page came onboard), Page appeared on the album Little Games and several tours before the band finally called it a day in 1968. With a string of tour dates still set up throughout Europe, Page decided to go through with the shows and put together a new band that was dubbed the New Yardbirds -- including longtime session bassist John Paul Jones, plus newcomers Robert Plant on vocals and John Bonham on drums. After the completion of their initial tour, the band changed its name to Led Zeppelin and explored the still largely uncharted territory of hard rock/heavy metal. The band immediately became one of rock's most successful and enduring bands, issuing a string of classic albums from 1969 through 1975 -- Led Zeppelin I, Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin IV, Houses of the Holy, and Physical Graffiti -- which spawned such classic rock radio standards as "Dazed and Confused," "Whole Lotta Love," "Immigrant Song," "Black Dog," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Kashmir," as the band also became a must-see live act in the process. Page also found the time to work with folk artist Roy Harper (most notably his 1971 release, Stormcock, under the alias S. Flavius Mercurius). Zeppelin was arguably the biggest rock band in the world by the mid-'70s (their influence on other rock bands following in their wake cannot be stressed enough) as they launched their own record company, Swan Song, but it was around this time that Page began dabbling with heroin and other substances, eventually leading to him becoming a full-blown addict by the late '70s/early '80s (as a result, his playing began to suffer). Also, Page's interest in the occult became a concern to those around him (he went as far as purchasing a mansion on the Loch Ness in Scotland that was once owned by renowned Satanist Aleister Crowley).

Zeppelin continued issuing albums until the dawn of the '80s (1976's concert movie/soundtrack The Song Remains the Same and Presence, 1979's In Through the Out Door), but tragedy ultimately derailed the quartet -- the death of Plant's young son in 1977 and Bonham's alcohol-related death in 1980. After Led Zeppelin decided to call it quits in late 1980, Page disappeared from sight (it became known later on that he hardly touched his instrument for a long time afterward). It wasn't until 1982 that Page began to emerge from his self-imposed exile, as he composed and played on the motion picture soundtrack to Death Wish III, compiled the Zeppelin outtakes collection Coda, and took part in the 1983 star-studded A.R.M.S. tour, which saw Page unite with Beck and Eric Clapton for a series of shows that raised money for multiple sclerosis research. In 1984, Page guested alongside Plant, Beck, and Nile Rodgers on the hit EP of rock & roll oldies The Honeydrippers, and formed his first band since the demise of Zeppelin, dubbed the Firm. The group featured former Free/Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers, and despite the fact that their self-titled debut was a sizable hit, the band decided to call it a day shortly after the release of its lukewarm-received sophomore effort, Mean Business.

Led Zeppelin fans were given a rare treat when Zeppelin's surviving three members reunited (with drummers Tony Thompson and Phil Collins) for the mammoth Live Aid at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium in July 1985 -- unfortunately handing in an incredibly under-rehearsed, sloppy performance. Zeppelin reunited again in 1988 for the Atlantic Records 25th anniversary concert at New York's Madison Square Garden (this time Bonham's son, Jason, filled in for his late father behind the kit), and yet again performed another mistake-filled mini set. The same year Page guested on Plant's solo release Now & Zen, as well as issuing his first ever solo recording, Outrider, following it up with a tour that touched upon tracks from all eras of his career. By the early '90s, further rumors of an impending Zeppelin reunion continued to circulate, and after Plant declined an invitation from Page to join forces once again, Page decided to collaborate with former Deep Purple/Whitesnake vocalist David Coverdale, whose vocal style was often compared to Plant's over the years. Page's latest project only lasted a single album, 1993's heavily Zep-like Coverdale/Page, as a proposed world tour was scrapped in favor of just a few select dates in Japan.

In 1994, Plant and Page finally agreed to collaborate once again (although Jones wasn't invited this time), leading to the release of the acoustic set No Quarter the same year, plus a highly popular MTV Unplugged special and sold-out world tour. A year later, Led Zeppelin were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, this being the second time a Page-related band got the nod from the Hall (in 1992, the Yardbirds were honored). The year 1998 saw Plant and Page issue an album of all-new material, Walking into Clarksdale, which was surprisingly not well received by the public, sinking from sight shortly after its release. The duo went their separate ways by the late '90s, as Page joined the Black Crowes for a tour and live album (2000's Live at the Greek). The same year as the album's release, another Crowes/Page tour was cut short due to a back injury Page suffered. But in June of 2001, Page took to the concert stage alongside Plant to celebrate the 60th birthday of Roy Harper.

In 2005 Page was appointed Office of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his charity work, and the following year he was inducted, along with the rest of Led Zeppelin, into the U.K. Music Hall of Fame. A one-off charity concert with all of the surviving Led Zeppelin members, with Jason Bonham on drums, occurred in 2007 at the O2 Arena in London, and in 2008 Page appeared in and co-produced the guitar documentary It Might Get Loud, which focused on the careers and playing styles of Page, Jack White, and U2's the Edge. In 2012 Page, Plant, and Jones received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony amidst rumors circulating about a possible Led Zeppelin reunion in anticipation of the forthcoming deluxe reissues of the band's first three studio albums. By 2014 those rumors had mostly abated, and Page announced that he was going to put together a band and tour as a solo act for the first time since 1988”.

Many happy returns to Jimmy Page for 9th January. A guitar God who is in the music history books, you can tell his work a mile away. Such a distinct player and composer, he is responsible for co-writing (mostly with Robert Plant) some of the greatest songs ever. From Whole Lotta Love, Stairway to Heaven and Black Dog, there is nobody out there like him. As he turns eighty very soon, below is a playlist of songs showcasing his guitar chops. You can hear and tell why he is…

SO respected and loved.

FEATURE: Possibly, Definitely Maybe: The Beginning of Recording on a Classic Album Approaching Its Thirtieth Anniversary

FEATURE:

 

 

Possibly, Definitely Maybe

The Beginning of Recording on a Classic Album Approaching Its Thirtieth Anniversary

_________

I have it on…

good authority (well, a few websites!) that Oasis began recording their seminal debut album, Definitely Maybe, on 7th January, 1994. Camping out in Monnow Valley Studio in South Wales, the embryonic touches happened. Those early discussions and noodling. The infant notes that would start the process of a masterpiece. Definitely Maybe turns thirty on 29th August. There will be celebrations around the album’s thirtieth anniversary closer to the time. The first single, Supersonic, is thirty on 11th April. Oasis’ lead, Liam Gallagher, has said he will tour the album this year to mark its thirtieth. I am going to bring in some features around a seismic album from one of our greatest bands. Produced by Owen Morris, Oasis, Mark Coyle and David Batchelor, Definitely Maybe was released through the Creation label. A number one success in the U.K., you can read more about the recording and aftermath here. No doubt one of the biggest and most important albums of the 1990s, I often think of it in context of the ensuring Britpop battle that would form between Oasis and Blur. Blur released their debut in 1991. Their third, Parklife, came out on 25th April, 1994. That album too will get a load of love on its thirtieth. There was this media-stoked rivalry between the band. The truth is that they both released their genius albums in 1994. A brilliant time to be alive! If Cigarettes & Alcohol, Slide Away, and Supersonic were not enough, the album starts with one of the best trios of songs ever: Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, Shakemaker and Live Forever. The band meant business and came swaggering onto the scene.

There are a few interesting articles and bits I want to bring in. I will celebrate Definitely Maybe again closer to its thirtieth anniversary in August. As the band started work and were in the studio in January 1994, it is a good time to look back and how those shoots and early ideas led to something supermassive. TIDAL paid tribute to Definitely Maybe on its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2019. The album still sound so vibrant and essential:

“Just a few months after Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994, Oasis released its debut album, Definitely Maybe, and offered up a no-holds-barred slice of good, old-fashioned rock & roll that changed the face of music almost immediately.

“People always go on and on about the past being this magical, wonderful thing, but that early period really does seem like the last golden period for music,” Noel Gallagher, the former leader of Oasis, says of the earliest days of his band.

The Oasis formula — adding a large dash of the Sex Pistols and T. Rex to the obvious Beatles/Stones/Kinks influences that most British bands wear as a badge of honor — created a turbo-charged sound that’s as urgent today as it was in 1994. But the album had a difficult birth.

Demoed and recorded multiple times over the course of 1993 and 1994 at no less than two major recording studios — and under the tutelage of two producers — Definitely Maybe is a lesson in perseverance and artistic self-assuredness, even as it stands as one of the last great moments from a bygone era in the music business.

According to Oasis’ original drummer, Tony McCarroll, English rock band the Real People initially invited the band in 1992 to record a demo at the group’s Liverpool studio as bait for the record companies. And the demo worked; Alan McGee of Creation Records signed Oasis soon after, sending them back to the Real People to record what was going to be their first single, “Bring it on Down.”

“For whatever reason, it wasn’t coming together,” McCarroll recalls. “I was doing a sound check with the bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat, over and over, and the doors kicked open, and Noel said, ‘Keep that going, keep that going.’ That night he wrote ‘Supersonic.’”

The band went on to tussle with the likes of Dave Batchelor, who’d worked with legendary groups like the Kinks, but their styles didn’t mesh. “He had us all separated, when we were used to being in a small rehearsal space, looking in each other’s eyes,” McCarroll says.

“It’s just wasn’t sounding right,” agrees Oasis founder and guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs. “So we had to have a rethink.” The band then decamped to Sawmills Studio down in Cornwall, England, to work with producer Mark Coyle, the man responsible for their live sound. He recorded the band together, in the same room — and the result was electric.

Noel Gallagher was also on a serious songwriting roll. McCarroll and Bonehead recall that he was writing at a furious pace, with each song seemingly better than the last. “At first a lot of them were just long jams that turned into songs,” McCarroll says. “But there were fully formed songs, too. And they were all amazing.”

“I’ve said this before, but the day he brought in ‘Live Forever,’ I didn’t believe he’d written it,” Bonehead recalls. “I was sure it was some obscure ‘60s B-side. It was just so good, and fully formed. But he just kept churning them out, one after the other, and they were all priceless.”

For his part, Gallagher recalls those early days fondly. “You’re only in that position once,” he says. “You’ve had your whole life to get to that point, and the only expectation people have is that you’re going to have a good time and maybe make a single. But by the time I’d written ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ and ‘Supersonic,’ I did feel a bit unstoppable.”

Oasis had cut its teeth on gigs to small, rowdy crowds on the relatively quiet early ‘90s Northern England music scene, honing their individual skills, and working the kinks out of Gallagher’s already formidable songs. But without a great front man, they would have been nothing, says Bonehead. For that, he turned to Noel’s brother, Liam.

“Even when we were teenagers, and he was passing us by on the football pitch, Liam had the swagger and look,” Bonehead says. “It almost didn’t matter what he sounded like, because he was just born a front man.”

“I have fond memories, because that’s when we started out, when you don’t know which way it’s going to go, even though you think you’re the balls,” Liam Gallagher recalls. “You don’t know how people are going to take you. And then it takes off! So those are fond memories.”

By the spring of 1994, when Oasis made its first rumblings on the U.K. music scene, guitar bands seemed to be becoming a thing of the past. The Smiths and the Stone Roses had both called it a day, Cobain had killed himself, and Primal Scream was struggling to replicate their landmark achievement, 1991’s Screamadelica. Oasis stepped into that breach with big plans.

“I could tell right away that they weren’t aiming to be some little-known indie band,” says Gary Crowley, the legendary UK DJ. “They had tunes and charisma, sure, but they were really funny and enjoying themselves at a time when most other bands seemed to hate being interviewed. Noel wanted them to be the biggest band in the world”.

In 2019, Rock Cellar got together those involved in making Definitely Maybe. Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher, Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, original drummer Tony McCarroll, plus the man who signed Oasis, Creation Records’ head Alan McGee, the legendary D.J. Gary Crowley, and host of The Oasis Podcast, James Corcoran, told the story and shared their memories of the mighty Definitely Maybe:

“25 years after Oasis announced its arrival to the world, Noel and Liam Gallagher, Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, Tony McCarroll, plus Creation Records head Alan McGee, DJ Gary Crowley and the Oasis Podcast host James Corcoran, tell the origin story of the band’s groundbreaking debut album.

The Oasis formula — adding a large dash of the Sex Pistols and T. Rex to the obvious Beatles/Stones/Kinks influences — created a turbo-charged sound that’s as urgent today as it was in 1994, twenty-five years ago, when Definitely Maybe, Oasis’ debut album, hit record store shelves.

Rock Cellar gathered together interviews with lead singer Liam Gallagher, guitarist and principal songwriter Noel Gallagher, guitarist and Oasis founder Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, original drummer Tony McCarroll, plus the man who signed Oasis, Creation Records head Alan McGee, the legendary DJ Gary Crowley, and host of The Oasis Podcast James Corcoran, and the end result is the story about the greatest debut album ever made, and what it still means, all these years later, a key part of Oasis’ impact on the world.

Liam Gallagher: It was the beginning, and all that, that was obviously exciting.

Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs: It doesn’t feel like twenty-five years ago. That’s the scary fucking thing. Twenty-five years in anyone’s life is a long time!

Liam Gallagher: Yeah, our goal was getting a record deal. Then having the fucking brains to go into a studio and put my fucking life on hold to go and make some music. Not getting into a silly 9 to 5 job like all the other dickheads there. And not be caught wearing leather trousers.

If I get out of this life without turning into a knob head and being photographed with leather trousers on I think that would have been a bit of a success.

Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs: We started off as the Rain, but that was just a bit of fun. I’d always played guitar. I had a drum machine. I had a bass guitar. And it was just a case of not having much mood to go out and drink every night. I was friends with Guigs, and it was just a case of us chatting and me saying, “You know what, Guigs, why don’t we start a band?” And Guigs was like, “Well, I can’t play an instrument.” And I said, “Well, you know what, I’ve got a bass guitar, and a bass guitar, all you’ve got to do is hit one note. I’ll show you.” So that was it, really.

Then we had a drum machine, and Chris Hutton, who’d sing, but he wasn’t the best singer in the world. And we didn’t have the best songs in the world. But it was a bit of fun, playing and making noise with the drum machine in the garage. That’s how that started.

Tony McCarroll: We were well aware of each other from 10, 11 upwards. I was invited down to watch them one night, he they a drum machine in the corner. They were good. Bonehead was always impressive on an instrument, whatever it was, whatever he played. I joined Rain that night, probably early nineties; 1991.

Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs: The Stone Roses were the big influence. That was in the late eighties. We used to go to Hacienda. On a Tuesday night, they used to have what was called the “local band night.” I think it was a one-pound in then. There’d be eight bands. So we used to rehearse and then after rehearsals we’d go to Hacienda for local band night. It was fucking brilliant, because you’d see these bands and it was cool and retro. We saw Nico playing there, she was living in Manchester at the time.

Tony McCarroll: We definitely had a Manchester vibe. But we had aspirations from that point on. Yes, we want to be famous. Yes, we want to be successful in the music business. We put our hearts into it from that point. I do credit Bonehead. That big wall of sound? That beefy, big, dangerous wall of sound? That carried over to Oasis.

Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs: Liam was always that kid that you’d see on the street. He always had the coolest clothes. He always had the coolest haircut. He always had the coolest walk. If you didn’t know him, you’d take one look at him and think, “That guy’s got to be in a band. He’s definitely in a band. I’ve just got to find out what band he’s in.”

He just looked the part. He didn’t look like a footballer. He didn’t look like a guy who worked in an office. He looked like a guy who was made to be in a band. He just had that whole charisma about him, which he still does. So Liam had never sung before, but he was inspired by the Roses, and that’s what he wanted to do. He came over to mine and sat on the floor and played along to a couple of demos I’d made. His voice came out and it was like, wow. It’s nothing like the Liam we know now. He was a lot more angelic. Melodic. I don’t know how to describe his voice. Upbeat. But he certainly had “that” voice.

Tony McCarroll: The sound was always getting better and crisper. Everyone bang on the notes. We free-formed band songs.

Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs: As soon as Liam came in, we got really going with the singing. We were like, “We’ve got to change the mood of the tunes. We can’t stay as the Rain.”

Tony McCarroll: I was unaware of what he could do. Obviously, his voice has had a battering since then, but he had very clean-cut, high notes, and he was hitting those high notes. You’d never believe Liam Gallagher could do it like that, but yeah, he was there. And I do remember, because I worked with him when he was 16, 17, and he was always saying, “I am going to be famous. I am going to be famous.”

Lo and behold, he kept to his word and made it happen.

Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs: Noel came back off tour with Inspiral Carpets, and asked, “What’s new?” We said, “Liam’s in the band.” He said, “What? Liam’s what? Doing what?” We said, “We’ve got a band, we’re playing down at the boardwalk.” Noel went, “I’ve got to come down to see this.”

Noel came down to see us. And I think he thought, yeah, there’s something there. You look like a band. The songs aren’t there, but you look like a band doing it on the stage. And he was like, “What about if I come down to the rehearsal room where you rehearse? I’ll come down and bring my guitar and bring my amp and we can have a jam.” And we were like, “Yeah, cool.” Which he did. He came down and that extra guitar,

Noel’s guitar, lead guitar, just jamming, had an immediate effect. We knew we had to bring Noel in. But then of course, Noel being Noel, while he was on tour with the Inspiral Carpets, he’d been writing songs. We all knew he wrote songs, but he started playing these songs that he’d written, and it was just like, wow, fucking hell. We were like, this guy’s got to be in the band. “Noel, you’ve got to be in the band and write the songs.” And he joined.

Tony McCarroll: Noel came down to check out what was going on. And I asked him to join, in front of Liam. At first, I believe he wanted to play bass. Or I think Liam wanted him to play bass. That was uncomfortable.

Alan McGee (Creation Records): They played four songs the night I saw them for the first time, and signed them: “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” “Up In The Sky,” “Bring It On Down” and a Beatles cover. They played great. Liam sang great. Noel played great guitar.

Liam Gallagher: I just remember just being, like, alright, cool we got a deal. It’s our chance to fucking make it happen and sort it out, you know what I mean? You know, let’s not fucking blow it. Fuck Knebworth. Fuck Maine Road. Fuck all that. The best part of it was getting a deal, getting in the studio, and getting out of shitty little venues.

Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs: When McGee signed us, then we got a manager. We didn’t have a manager at the time. We found Marcus Russell, because Johnny Marr recommended him. And we just went out. We gigged and gigged and gigged. Every night. I was driving the van, and the band were in the back of the van, and we just went out and we gigged, and we gigged. We were so fucking tight”.

I am going to finish up with some reviews. The final one related to a reissued version of the album, complete with demos. The sort of sketches that were being made around this time thirty years ago. They would form into their timeless songs that soundtracked a generation. The BBC reviewed Definitely Maybe in 2007. I think that this is an album that will be talked about for generations. You can see the legacy of Definitely Maybe. It inspired a legion of bands. It continues to influence and compel artists to write and pick up guitars:

“In August 1994, just a few months after Kurt Cobain killed himself (and the grunge movement that he'd become the reluctant figurehead of), Oasis’ debut Definitely Maybe was released.

To put this seismic attitude shift into perspective: Kurt’s working title for the final Nirvana album, In Utero, was I Hate Myself And I Want To Die. Definitely Maybe’s most popular song is called Live Forever.

So how did two punters from Burnage, an unremarkable area of Manchester, become so famous? Despite the fact that the second album, (What’s the Story?) Morning Glory, sold more copies and propelled them to tabloid superstardom and 10 Downing Street, the answers are all here.

The album kicks off with Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, which Noel has since said was the end of everything he wanted to say as a songwriter. He’s right in a sense, as it’s easily one of the greatest songs about being up on stage ever written. On arguably Liam’s greatest ever vocal performance he goads all-comers with: "You’re not down with who I am / Look at you now you’re all in my hands tonight." And that’s without even considering the attendant guitar riffs that snag your brain like barbed wire on your best jumper. If you’ve got a mate or relative who’s having a bad time of it, play them this, then watch them grow 10 feet tall and walk down the street like they rule the whole world.

Although at this point it’s easy to imagine the faces of every other British band of the time sadly searching the classifieds for a new vocation, there are still 10 more tracks left. How about Supersonic, a sky-scraping anthem about individuality adopted by the masses? Or Cigarettes and Alcohol, a brash T Rex paean to hedonism? Or Bring It On Down, a non-stop, no-messing punk stomp to certain death or glory?

It’s easy to trot out the tired argument that these Mancs don’t have the power of The Stone Roses or The Smiths because the songs don’t have the wistful, melancholic air that one comes to expect from songs emerging from that rainy Lancashire city. Is it true to say "It’s just Beatles songwriting with Sex Pistols attitude"? Maybe. But have these songs transcended the Conservative-greyed and Britpop-glossed years in which they became public property to become heroic, gigantic pop monuments in their own right? Definitely”.

In 2014, TIME reviewed the twentieth anniversary edition of Definitely Maybe. I remember when the album came out in 1994 and the excitement in the air. It was the year I started high school. In fact, I started in September 1994, so it was this transition period where I was being kept up and positive by music. Definitely Maybe was a huge revelation:

“When Definitely Maybe dropped in August of 1994, it wasn’t out of the blue. Oasis had steadily been releasing singles for a few months prior, beginning with “Supersonic” on April 11, 1994, six days after Cobain’s suicide. Though “Supersonic” was the first official single released by Oasis (and it even charted in the UK Top 40), the group had been passing around a ‘white label’ demo of their track “Columbia” for a few months prior, but with little interest generated. With the deluxe reissue of Definitely Maybe, that white label demo version has been included, as well as an alternate mix of “Columbia”. Not only does it show that the band was on to something, but also how easily the band could have been written off (especially when listening to the third version of the song included on disc three).

Usually I am not a fan of overloaded box sets with all sorts of multiple versions of songs that barely differ, but in this case I actually find it somewhat interesting to go back and hear what Oasis sounded like before they got a proper producer. For the most part, the demos represent a band that had good ideas and were on the right path, but that something was just not quite all the way there. In John Harris’ book Britpop!, Creation Records label head Tim Abbott summed it up perfectly: “[We] had a great sesh, and we listened to it over and over again. And all I could think was, ‘It ain’t got the attack.’ There was no immediacy.” Consider the two versions of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”, the album version and the demo. Though it is still filled with swagger, the demo lacks the braggadocio of the finalized product, yet in a weird twist, actually highlights Liam Gallagher’s voice better. I have never been one to idolize Liam or his style. In fact, I think his voice is rather lackluster, minimal in range; and though he has been heralded as a cross between John Lennon and John Lydon, he’s far more nasally than either (and when you consider how Noel stood in successfully for his brother during the group’s Unplugged performance, it almost relegates Liam to desired but not necessary for the band’s success). But listening to Liam on these demos, dare I say that there is a bit of range in his singing? It almost begs the question as to what happened to it in mixing.

The most obvious thing taken away from the demo versions of these songs is that though Noel had the songwriting chops and vision, he was missing the objectivity that comes with an outside producer, in this case Mark Coyle, Dave Batchelor (a friend of Noel’s from his days working with Inspiral Carpets), and Owen Morris, an associate of Johnny Marr and an engineer-turned-producer trained in the ways of Phil Spector and Tony Visconti. It was Morris who would be instrumental in putting the balls on Definitely Maybe. In fact, it would be fair to say that without Morris, there would be no Definitely Maybe; at least not in the way we’ve come to know. One of the first things he did was effectively ego-check Noel when he stripped off all the guitar overdubs that Gallagher had layered over the album’s material, and as John Harris stated, “remoulded [the album] into something positively pile-driving.” Morris would go on to produce the first four Oasis albums.

Think about the band’s third single, a song described by Noel as “the tune that changed everything,” and the first that really woke people up to Oasis’ potential: “Live Forever”. In addition to cutting out part of Noel’s guitar solo to tighten things up and make it sound less like what he described as “Slash from Guns n’ Roses,” Morris excised the demo’s acoustic guitar intro to give the song a bit more weight, and instead had drummer Tony McCarroll play a beat that not only solidifies the song but helps give it a boost in becoming the monumental track it would eventually become known as. It’s almost a twisted irony that McCarroll played a part that almost immediately identifies the song but was later fired from the band by Noel for not having the skills to do the job.

In spite of Noel’s objections to an album having five singles, if one were to include both the white label release of “Columbia” and the US single for “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”, Oasis plucked six songs out of 11 from their debut album, four of which were released before the album, and three rather successfully. And that certainly does not suggest that the non-singles were not worthy of release. “Slide Away”, the last rocker on the album, and a love song on par with “Wonderwall” but with more “grr” and less “ahh,” was originally slated for release until Noel objected. Easily one of the strongest tracks on the album, it has gone on to become a fan favorite and I can only imagine that it’s amazing live. Every time I hear Liam wail that refrain, I see pyrotechnics going off all around.

In spite of everything that Oasis would become on record, on stage, in the tabloids, Definitely Maybe stands above it all. It came before the drama and the bullshit that fed into the media’s desire for conflict. Be it the interpersonal conflict between the brothers Gallagher or the inter-band conflicts with Blur and others, this album remains unscathed. Yes, the brothers fought prior to and during this album’s creation, release, and tour, but not to the point that it was overwhelming or distracting to the fans. That would come later. As would the “Battle of Britpop,” so labeled by the press when Blur’s label intentionally released their single “Country House” the same day as Oasis was set to release “Roll With It”. (Blur may have won the battle, but Oasis most certainly won the war.) And of course, the press’ obsession with the band’s antics, especially Liam’s, rather than the group’s music, wouldn’t overtake everything for another couple of albums. At the time of Definitely Maybe, there was nothing but hope and promise for Oasis. For a band that set out to take over the world and be the greatest rock and roll group since the Beatles, they were well on their way”.

Go and get Definitely Maybe if you can. You can also read about the creation of Definitely Maybe and why it is such an important album. When Oasis were at Monnow Valley Studio and started work on their debut album on 7th January, 1994, could they have known what would come?! How it would be received and how their career would take off?! In one of music’s best years, Oasis’ debut album might be the defining statement and biggest event. They would follow it a year later with an album perhaps even better regarded: (What's the Story) Morning Glory? It all started with the epic Definitely Maybe. If the title hints at uncertainty and modesty, Oasis’ debut album made a confident and emphatic statement about their quality and importance. Absolutely no…

QUESTION about it!

FEATURE: Groovelines: The Bangles – Eternal Flame

FEATURE:

Groovelines

The Bangles – Eternal Flame

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THERE is a good reason…

IN THIS PHOTO: Susanna Hoffs

why I am spotlighting the amazing Eternal Flame by The Bangles. Not only is it a song very dear to me. One of its writers, and a member of The Bangles, Susanna Hoffs, celebrates her sixty-fifth birthday on 17th January. One of my favourite artists, I wanted to salute her. Go deep with an amazing song. Released on 23rd January, 1989, Eternal Flame soon celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary. That is the U.K. release at least, as the song started at eighty-one in the singles chart of 29th January to 4th February, 1989. It is a song that is very important to me. One I remember coming out and blowing me away. From the arresting, beautiful and emotional vocal from Susanna Hoffs, through to the video – one that I saw played on VH1 back in the day -, it a thing of wonder. Taken from The Bangles’ 1988 album, Everything, Eternal Flame was the second single from it (after In Your Room). Like In Your Room, Eternal Flame was written by Susanna Hoffs, Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg. A number one in the U.S. and U.K., Eternal Flame is one of the best-loved songs from The Bangles. The group, Susanna Hoffs, Vicki Peterson, Michael Steele and Debbi Peterson delivered the song with such purity and power. A track that is still lodged in my head nearly thirty-five years after its release. I will come to an article that goes deep inside Eternal Flame. I know there was a feeling within the band that, because Hoffs had the lead vocal on this song and In Your Room, she was being placed at the front – their lead and central focus. I don’t think that was ever true. A case of two songs where she was lead chosen as singles. I hope Susanna Hoffs – who will probably not get to read this – doesn’t mind me celebrating a song that maybe contributed to the break-up of The Bangles. The group did part ways in 1989., yet they re-formed in 1999 and released albums in 2003 and 2011.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Bangles from left, Vicki Peterson, Susanna Hoffs, Debbi Peterson, Michael Steele in 1988/PHOTO CREDIT: Dpa Picture Alliance/Alamy

In 2021, Susanna Hoffs and co-writer Billy Steinberg explained how they made Eternal Flame. The Guardian got the lowdown on one of the classic tracks of the 1980s. A story I thought was a myth when I was younger – regarding Susanna Hoffs being naked in the studio when recording her vocal – turned out to be true. It was a weird and wonderful time for The Bangles. With songs like this in their locker, there was also a sense of tension and exhaustion:

“Susanna Hoffs, singer, guitarist, co-writer

In 1988, it felt like the Bangles had been touring endlessly. Our second album, Different Light, with the singles Manic Monday and Walk Like an Egyptian, had been released two years earlier. Now, finally, we could take a break from living on buses together.

I began collaborating with the songwriting team Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, who wrote Like a Virgin and True Colors. Writing, for me, had always meant picking up a guitar and crafting a melody; the lyrics would emerge after I felt the emotion of the song. But Billy and Tom would always start with a lyric.

I went over to Billy’s house and was telling him about a Bangles trip to Graceland, in Memphis. When we got to Elvis’s grave, we started recreating Spinal Tap singing Heartbreak Hotel there when we noticed that the eternal flame by the grave was out because it was raining. Billy said: “Wait, eternal flame? That is a great name for a song.” Within about an hour we had the lyrics.

The song is about connection, hope and what we hold most dear. There’s a yearning in it, from the awareness that not everything is eternal, but we don’t want love to seem fragile; we want to depend on it.

When we made the demo at Tom’s studio, we recorded what we instinctively felt should have been a keyboard part, the little tick tock running through the song, on guitar. This was because the Bangles didn’t have a keyboard player. It was Vicki Peterson and me on guitar, Michael Steele on bass and Debbi Peterson on drums. Nevertheless, my enthusiasm and excitement about the song were so great that I carried the demo cassette around in my bag and would play it for anyone willing to listen.

Cut to the tense moment the band sat down with our producer, Davitt Sigerson, to vote which songs would be on the next album, Everything. Eternal Flame was rejected and I was heartbroken, but in the Bangles everybody played and sang and was represented creatively.

Once recording the album was under way, Davitt said: “I keep thinking about Eternal Flame and I know this wonderful keyboard arranger. Let’s go over to his studio and mess around.” When the band heard the result, they decided to go along for the journey.

Davitt had recently produced Olivia Newton-John and pranked me by telling me she did her best vocals in the nude. I imagined it would feel like skinny dipping –vulnerable yet freeing – and I decided to try it. Nobody could see me; there was a baffle in front of me and it was dark. After the first song went so well, I became superstitious about it, like in sports where you have to have your rabbit’s foot, and ended up compelled to skinny dip my way through most of the album, including Eternal Flame.

In 1988, it was the beginning of the end for the Bangles. We’d spent our 20s together, starting as a powerpop, garage-rock, local club band and eventually releasing three albums with Columbia records. After Everything was released, we went off to create our own music in different ways. But we have come back together to tour since, and that same bond is still there between us. It’s an eternal flame!

Billy Steinberg, songwriter

When Susanna told me about the eternal flame for Elvis at Graceland, it made me recall a childhood memory. My family was not very religious but my parents did send me to Sunday school. It was quiet and dark in the synagogue and there was a little red bulb they used to call the eternal flame. I immediately took out a notebook and free associated to the title.

When Tom and I wrote the songs True Colors, Like a Virgin and Alone, we had to make demos and then try to find a record company executive who thought they would be good for one of their artists. We were really lucky because Cyndi Lauper, Madonna and Heart sang the songs beautifully. But it was nothing like when you’re in a room with Chrissie Hynde or Susanna Hoffs, hearing one of those great pop singers sing the song as you create it. It’s so much less arduous and a great inspiration.

Eternal Flame was retro in that it has no chorus. It is structured like an old Beatles song, with the title tagged on to the end of the verse: “Am I only dreaming / Or is this burning an eternal flame?” The Beatles do a similar kind of thing on We Can Work It Out. Instead of choruses, both songs have two bridges (or middle eights). In We Can Work It Out, the bridge is the part that starts, “Life is very short / And there’s no time…” And in Eternal Flame it begins, “Say my name / Sun shines through the rain…” In the 60s, it wasn’t that unusual to have songs structured in that way, but, by the 80s, choruses were much more developed and middle eights had started to disappear.

The enduring popularity of the song is very gratifying. Some songs are hits and then they vanish, and some songs remain evergreen. I think Eternal Flame has that status”.

I love the bones of Eternal Flame. It is a magnificent song that Susanna Hoffs has performed quite a few times live through the years. One she feels an attachment to, I wanted to tie it into her sixty-fifth birthday celebration. An eternal goddess, let’s hope we get a special version of this very soon. I melt every time I hear her sing it! Also in 2021, Stereogum highlighted Eternal Flame for their feature, The Number Ones:

“Eternal Flame” does not sound much like a Bangles song. By the time they recorded 1988’s Everything, their third album, the Bangles had carved out a reliable chart presence with a very specific sound, a jangly and garage-y and consistently upbeat take on harmony-heavy ’60s folk-rock. With that sound, the Bangles had broken through in a huge way. The band’s 1986 single “Walk Like An Egyptian” had spent a month at #1, and Billboard had eventually named it the biggest song of 1987. “Walk Like An Egyptian” also kicks ass. So do the Bangles’ other hits. So when the Bangles came out with “Eternal Flame,” a #1 hit that completely diverged from their established sound, a whole lot of people — some of whom may have been actual Bangles — felt like the song was bad. These people were wrong.

In the late ’80s, the songwriting team of Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly went on a ridiculous run, cranking out a series of #1 hits that also happen to be bangers: Madonna’s “Like A Virgin,” Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors,” Heart’s “Alone,” Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional.” Steinberg was a Bangles fan, and he went to see the band at the Palace in Hollywood. There, he met Susanna Hoffs. Hoffs and Steinberg were both fans and scholars of ’60s pop, and they made plans to write some songs together. One of those songs was “I Need A Disguise,” which Belinda Carlisle recorded for her 1986 solo debut Belinda. That’s a pretty good start.

At one of their songwriting sessions, Hoffs told Steinberg and Kelly a story about when the Bangles had gone to visit Graceland while touring through Memphis. At Graceland, there was an outdoor shrine to Elvis with what was supposed to be an eternal flame. The day they visited, though, it was raining, so the eternal flame was out. Steinberg immediately suggested that “Eternal Flame” would be a great song title. As a kid in Palm Springs, he’d gone to a synagogue that had an eternal flame of its own. In Fred Bronson’s Billboard Book Of Number 1 Hits, a book that I cite in pretty much every column these days, Steinberg says, “There was a little red light — like a little red Christmas light — that they called the eternal flame. I remember thinking that there was this flame that could burn forever. It seemed very mysterious. It was like thinking about how far the universe goes, those little things that kids think about that blow their minds.”

Hoffs and Steinberg wrote the “Eternal Flame” lyrics together quickly, and Steinberg loves pointing out that the song has no chorus. (The “say my name, sun shines through the rain” bit is technically a middle eight.) Hoffs and Steinberg wanted “Eternal Flame” to sound like a track from the ’60s, when pop songwriting often had a less rigid set of rules. (Steinberg: “For us, ‘Eternal Flame’ was the Beatles meet the Byrds.”) Kelly arranged the music, and he and Hoffs recorded a demo together. They knew that “Eternal Flame” would sound better with a piano, but they used guitar on the demo instead, since the Bangles didn’t have a keyboard player. Hoffs sang lead on the demo, and Kelly sang the backup harmonies.

“Eternal Flame” is a love song, of course. But what’s striking about it is how uncertain — how fearful — Susanna Hoffs sounds. She’s head over heels for somebody, but she can’t luxuriate in her own happiness because she’s too consumed with the idea that this love is a fleeting thing. When she goes over everything in her mind, a future without this person becomes a horrifying possibility: “A whole life, so lonely, and then come and ease the pain/ I don’t wanna lose this feeling.”

Those “Eternal Flame” lyrics aren’t statements. They’re questions. Do you understand? Do you feel the same? Am I only dreaming? Or is this burning an eternal flame? It’s hard to imagine Hoffs’ narrator actually asking these questions. Instead, “Eternal Flame” sounds, to me, more like an internal monologue. Hoffs doesn’t really want to tell this person that she watches them when they’re sleeping. Instead, these terrible worries well up within her, and they stay there.

Hoffs’ phrasing on “Eternal Flame” just kills me. She wails the everloving fuck out of the song, but there’s no conviction in her delivery. Instead, her voice cracks and quavers. She’s in anguish. The arrangement answers that anguish back. It’s vast and majestic — strings, synths, pianos, kettle drums. (In the video, each new crescendo triggers a firework explosion or a crashing wave. I love that shit.) The other Bangles, harmonizing behind Hoffs, sound dispassionate and ethereal, like ghosts. They can’t soothe her narrator. All they can do is echo her questions back at her and offer ahhhs that at least come off vaguely sympathetic. In its all-crushing drama, “Eternal Flame” is almost gothic. The song offers Hoffs’ narrator no real comfort. When “Eternal Flame” ends, her questions are still open. She still doesn’t know if this flame is eternal”.

A stunning song that has passion and trepidation in the vocal. This sensed of yearning (and burning) that also has caution and fear. A fascinating song co-written and sung by Susanna Hoffs. She is sixty-five on 17th January…so I wanted to use this opportunity to wish her a happy birthday. Also show my love for one of my favourite songs ever. It is so stirring that it does something to me every time I hear it. When it comes to this song and its white-hot flame, it is something that can…

NEVER extinguish.

FEATURE: Don’t Call It a Comeback! The Media’s Overuse of the Word ‘Return’ – and Whether It Reflects Our Need for Constant Engagement

FEATURE:

 

 

Don’t Call It a Comeback!

PHOTO CREDIT: Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels

The Media’s Overuse of the Word ‘Return’ – and Whether It Reflects Our Need for Constant Engagement

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THIS might seem like an odd feature idea…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

but I can’t help noticing that, whenever an artist releases a new track or album after a short time away, it is called a ‘return’. It may seem like a minor point but, as there is no timeline or rule on how often an artist needs to release music, the word does seem quite pressuring. Like they have been in the wilderness for years and are now back after all of this time. Sure, if someone like Tom Waits released a new single, that might be seen as a return. His album, Bad As Me, came out in 2011. Even so, he has not retired or gone missing in action. Although it does get applied to some artists who have not made music in a few years, you see it all the time in articles relating to a new single from someone who released material a few months before. It doesn’t help that artists like Paul Weller are calling out young musicians who leave gaps between albums! I remember, when Sampha announced news of Lahai, it was seen as a big return. Even if Process, his Mercury-winning debut, was released in 2017, he had not retired or was suggesting he’d be gone. This feeling that he has come back to us after such a long time! Even artists who leave a few months between singles are said to ‘return’. I know what the music media means. They are saying they are back with new material. That is what a music career is. As I said, there is no ruling how often artists should be releasing material, so there is that oddness to saying they have ‘returned’. It can be ridiculous in some cases; maybe someone who released as recently as two or three months ago puts another single out. Suddenly, it is this ‘return’! It sort of makes me wonder whether, in a streaming age where you can get access to music all the time, there is a feeling that artists need to keep producing or fear being irrelevant or passed over!

It bothers me a bit, as I would encourage artists to take as much time as they need. This excitement and anticipation when they release a single or album then leads to people listening and adding to that praise. Do artists feel they need to keep busy and put out music right away?! Fine if that is really what they want to do. I still think music is an industry where there is an unspoken expectation of prolific-ness and productivity. If you dare to take a year between albums or even take six months to follow up one single with another, articles will then keep talking about you returning to the fold. The insulation that it has been a while and, don’t sweat, they are now back! It does seem quite absurd. Rather than this being their musical comeback, the artist is simple conducting their career on their own term. I wonder if this applies to any other industry. Where there is this relief almost when an artist releases music and we sort of assumed they had faded away. Maybe I am reading too much into it, yet so many music news articles relating to new material has that word ‘return(s)’ in it. Such an odd choice. I am not going to highlight or out one website that does it more than others. It is a word I have seen applied to so many. I guess, factually and in terms of the definition, a new song after a little time is a ‘return’. I often wonder what affect that has on an artist if they read it. I don’t think I am bringing up anything new or revelatory. There has on been pressure on artists to put music out as often as possible.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay/Pexels

I wonder whether this can overwork them. Coupled with tour demands and the pressure to keep up with competition and stay in the public eye can lead to mental health challenges and burn out. Maybe social media is a factor in this need for new stuff all the time. Perhaps artists feeling like the streaming age does not pay them enough. That they can earn a living if they keeping pumping out albums, tour them and then repeat. In 2019, The Guardian asked why Pop especially was so demanding and productivity-driven:

“For many artists who release independently, whether they are rappers dropping mixtapes or punks with tape labels, fast-and-furious releases are nothing new. But even major-label pop stars are at it. Ariana Grande released her album Thank U, Next just six months after her previous LP, Sweetener; within two months, she had moved on again, releasing the non-album single Monopoly, later followed by Boyfriend, and is now at No 1 with Don’t Call Me Angel, a collaboration with Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey. This month, before listeners had barely had a chance to hear all of Del Rey’s new album, Norman Fucking Rockwell!, she announced that her next record, White Hot Forever, will arrive as a surprise release within the next year.

The studio album was once the industry’s most valued commodity. Back in 2000, the US music industry earned 92.3% of its revenue from the sale of CD albums. It was the peak of the format’s power since its introduction by Columbia Records in 1948. Leaving behind the singles-focused culture spearheaded in the 50s by A&Rs such as Phil Spector, the album hit new levels of commercial and cultural significance in the 60s with the Beatles. Initially, albums were released at the same breakneck pace as singles had been in the 50s, but by the 70s, the rate had slowed as the album became the most revered form of musical expression. “Judgments were simpler in pop’s early days, partly because rock’n’roll was designed to be consumed in three-minute take-it-or-leave-it segments,” wrote famed critic Robert Christgau in Christgau’s Record Guide in 1981. “The rise of the LP as a form – as an artistic entity – has complicated how we perceive and remember what was once the most evanescent of the arts.”

But today, the pace has “completely returned to a hit-driven model,” says Jamie Oborne, manager of the 1975 and head of their label, Dirty Hit Records. “We’ve returned to the days of the 50s or 60s, where people are just smashing out singles in the hope that one sticks. There is a lot of output that is just about building consumption”.

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

There is so much competition and saturation now. A minefield or factors to consider when you come into the industry. The challenges that artists face. I think there has always been the pressure to release material so that there is no drop in popularity and visibility. This push and expectation to get caught in this cycle can have devastating consequences. This article from 2018 asked if there is too much pressure on artists. With the rise of TikTok and social media, coupled to the sheer mass of artists and options out there, this has only intensified:

“Artists have an enormous amount of pressure on them from having to look good and act well at all times, to making and putting out music at a frequent rate, to touring around the world. There are many cases of artists who suffer from depression and anxiety as well as others having drug addictions which lead to suicide. These may have nothing to do with the music industry and to do with the individuals mental state, but the stresses that the industry has on its stars, definitely doesn’t help. Artists who have admitted to have suffered from mental health issues include, Adele, Demi Lovato, Zayn Malik, Selena Gomez, Kanye West, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Sia, Justin Bieber and Britney Spears.

Speaking to NME about his Purpose tour, Bieber said, “You get lonely, you know, when you’re on the road. People see the glam and the amazing stuff, but they don’t know the other side. This life can rip you apart.” As well as this Zayn Malik, who had to pull out of the Capitol Summertime Ball, said “With the magnitude of the event, I have suffered the worst anxiety of my career. I cannot apologise enough, but I want to be honest with everyone.” “I have anxiety attacks, constant panicking on stage, my heart feels like it’s going to explode because I never feel like I’m going to deliver, ever,” Adele told Q magazine. With Bieber, Malik and Adele all stating that the pressures can be too much, along with many other artists, it shows that the industry should be more aware of how their stars are being treated and should take that into consideration. With drugs and suicide also being prominent in the music industry, we have seen stars like Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchence and most recently Avicci take their own lives. This may be the cause of their own mental health bu the music industry would not have helped them if we take the statements from Bieber, Malik and Adele into account”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Wellington Cunha/Pexels

The faster an artist works to put out material, the lower the quality. There cannot be that same satisfaction and completeness. Of course, I used a single word the media overuse as a jumping off point. It is not their fault that there seems to be expectations of frequent releases from our artists. It just seems to be the end of the cycle. Almost a sigh of relief that, even if they leave a few months between songs, an artist is back and it is this big thing. In actuality, they there is nothing special or anything that requires such a word! The media are just doing their job. They know that the music industry wants this churn. Artists feel pressured to push hard so that they can keep up. I am not sure what the answer is. This recent article discusses social media’s role when it comes to the heat some artists feel to fulfil a huge demand. In the modern time, how many new artists especially can leave a few years between albums? What if you only want to release a few singles a year? Is that enough?! I think we all need to stop expecting so much from artists. But are we simply conditioned to do that?! How do you resolve this?! Maybe something we are going to be asking years from now:

“Another point to the downside of this expectation is simply the question of the quality of work. Putting together and crafting an album to be able to release a collection of songs is a ton of work and even then, it may not be well received.  But albums that end up being award winning or even fan favorites take time and effort, so who are we to rush that? I think that a perfect example of quality work taking time is Adele. Adele is known for putting out incredible albums, maybe doing a tour, and then disappearing for a few years.

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

No one is really expecting her to put out a single every few months, or even put out a yearly album. However, many artists, especially up and coming, don’t have the privilege of being as established as someone like Adele where they don’t have to make efforts to stay relevant. So for these up and coming artists, it seems that their only hope at success in their music is to just consistently put out music and hope fans are still liking it, which most likely leads to a severe case of burnout before they really even get started in their career. Plus, as these newer artists work to put out music often, they are probably put in a position to not spend as much time on each individual song in order to really craft a masterpiece, which then leads to a lower chance of them gaining newer fans due to the decreased quality of their work. Even though I am not an artist myself, just thinking of that scenario makes me stressed out and overwhelmed”.

I do worry! It is funny that an artist can be seen by the music media as returning to us even though they simply have not released material for a little while. It calls into question a bigger issue that has blighted the industry for years. Perhaps to the point where we cannot return. The mental health pressure artists have to stay afloat and seen is immense. No wonder so many feel reluctant taking time to craft music and spending some time out. This year, there needs to be more awareness of the pressures and slavish demands. Fans being more patient perhaps. Tackling streaming sites so artists are paid more. Tiny steps will lead to a big change soon enough. It would be magnificence if artists could take as long as they need to release material. The media could say the artists has ‘shared a new track’ or they have ‘put out a new song’. Just don’t call it a ‘return’. It is simply a continuation…

PHOTO CREDIT: Karolina Grabowska/Pexels

AND not a comeback!