FEATURE: It’s My Life: The Iconic Gwen Stefani at Fifty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

It’s My Life

The Iconic Gwen Stefani at Fifty-Five

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A true music great…

celebrates her fifty-fifth birthday on 3rd October. Gwen Stefani is the lead of No Doubt and a successful solo artist. Even though No Doubt have not released an album since 2012’s Push and Shove, they did recently perform together at Coachella. I do hope that they record more music together in the future. Regardless, Stefani is busy with her solo material. She releases Bouquet in November. It sounds like it going to be a more Country-influenced release. This would be a departure for her but, with many mainstream artists crossing from other genres into Country – not least Beyoncé -, it is fertile ground for exploration and reinvention. Rather than it being bandwagon-hopping, this does seem like a natural move for Stefani. Her amazing debut album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby., turns twenty in November. It is amazing to think that No Doubt’s debut single, Trapped in a Box, was released in February, 1992. I am going to mark Gwen Stefani’s fifty-fifth with a career-spanning playlist in a bit. Before that, AllMusic provide some biography about a music legend:

“Gwen Stefani has parlayed her breakout stardom as the effervescent lead singer of the SoCal ska-punk outfit No Doubt into an enduring career as a multifaceted pop star. Before going solo, Stefani reached the top of the charts many times during No Doubt's peak. "Spiderwebs," "Just a Girl," and the ballad "Don't Speak" -- all pulled from their 1995 album Tragic Kingdom -- were iconic alternative rock hits. The early-2000s smashes "Hey Baby," "Hella Good," and "Underneath It All" found the group dabbling in pop, dance, and R&B, a musical expansion that coincided with Stefani stepping outside of the band as a featured vocalist on the hits "South Side" by techno superstar Moby and "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" by the rapper Eve. All this extracurricular activity helped set up the launch of Stefani's solo career in 2004 with the album Love.Angel.Music.Baby., a platinum blockbuster that gave her a number one single with the thumping Neptunes collaboration "Hollaback Girl," plus the hits "Cool," "What You Waiting For?," and "Rich Girl," the latter a reunion with Eve. The 2006 record The Sweet Escape consolidated her pop success thanks to the Top Tens "Wind It Up" and "The Sweet Escape," but by that point, Stefani began to venture outside of music. She launched her fashion line L.A.M.B. in 2004, a pursuit she'd develop over the coming decade. She started to dabble in film, an interest that eventually led her to joining the televised singing competition The Voice in 2014 (where she met husband Blake Shelton). Music remained essential to Stefani's appeal -- she reunited with No Doubt on occasion in addition to returning to her solo career with This Is What the Truth Feels Like, an album released a decade after The Sweet Escape. Later singles, such as 2023's ska-infused "True Babe" and 2024's '80s adult-contempo influenced "Purple Irises" with Shelton, along with her position on The Voice, reinforced her crossover pop legacy as a star who shines upon every aspect of the entertainment industry.

Born and raised in Fullerton, California, Stefani had a musical epiphany at the age of 17. She had fallen in love with the Madness and Selecter records her brother Eric was constantly spinning. Seeing Fishbone, the Untouchables, and other bands involved in Los Angeles' ska revival scene only reinforced her interest, so she was more than ready when her brother asked her to join a ska band he was forming with a friend named John Spence. Gwen originally shared lead vocals with Spence, but in December of 1987 he committed suicide, leaving the band -- now called No Doubt -- with an uncertain future. According to many interviews with the bandmembers after their breakthrough, Gwen was the glue that held No Doubt together during these hard times, pushing the group to keep trying. She was also romantically involved with the band's bass player, Tony Kanal, by this time.

After playing numerous gigs and parties, No Doubt were signed to Interscope in 1991. The label considered their 1992 debut album a flop and refused to financially support a tour or further recordings, but the band refused to give up. The self-financed Beacon Street Collection appeared in 1994 and did well enough to make nice with Interscope, but the band was once again going through a traumatic period behind the scenes. Eric Stefani left to become an animator for The Simpsons and Gwen and Tony's relationship had ended. Gwen wrote a collection of songs focused on heartbreak and rebirth that would become No Doubt's third album, Tragic Kingdom, and the rest, as they say, is history.

With the smash singles "Just a Girl," "Spiderwebs," and "Don't Speak," the album reached the number one spot on the Billboard 200 and garnered two Grammy nominations. The press began to focus on Stefani's role in the band. Voted one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People," video and photo shoots focused on her and rumors spread that the other three members of the band were unhappy with the lack of attention they received. This topic of discussion continued as the band released Return of Saturn in 2000 and the heavily reggae-influenced hit album Rock Steady a year later. During this time, Stefani's romantic relationship with Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale became a frequent topic of No Doubt's songs. The pair married on September 14, 2002. She also started doing some work outside the band, lending her vocals to the remix of Moby's "Southside" and rapper Eve's "Let Me Blow Your Mind."

After Rock Steady, No Doubt took a break. Stefani approached Kanal about producing an off-the-cuff solo project that would be influenced by her non-ska favorites. Prince, the Time, Club Nouveau, and Madonna were the names thrown around and the idea was to make the project "fast and easy." Over time, the "fast and easy" record morphed into something much bigger. Old friend, former labelmate, and hit songwriter Linda Perry became involved and the project became much more polished, slick, and dance-oriented. A pile of high-profile collaborators -- Dr. Dre, the Neptunes, Dallas Austin, Andre 3000, Nellee Hooper, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis -- became involved. In September of 2004, the infectious and hyper dance single "What You Waiting For?" appeared, with its accompanying video dominating MTV.

The album, Love.Angel.Music.Baby., hit the shelves in November with surreal artwork that introduced Stefani's four-woman "posse," the Harajuku Girls. The all-Asian Harajuku Girls were inspired by Stefani's fascination with the Harajuku girls of Japan, young club kids with a flippant and fun attitude toward fashion. Appearing with Stefani live, in videos, and in photos, the Girls quickly drew criticism from the Asian community, angry about the rumor that they had to sign a contract to never speak English even though they could, and that Stefani's Girls looked nothing like the "real" Harajuku girls. Nonetheless, the album was a hit and continued to roll out singles. Based on a dancehall cover of Fiddler on the Roof's "If I Were a Rich Man," "Rich Girl" became the next smash, reuniting Stefani with Eve. The cheerleader kiss-off anthem "Hollaback Girl" was the third success. While the singles were dominating pop and dance radio, Stefani appeared as Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. With music and movies checked off, Stefani moved into the world of fashion and introduced her clothing line, L.A.M.B. Taking her influence to the world of tech, she designed the Harajuku Lovers' 4.1 MP Digital Camera for Hewlett-Packard. The camera was released in a limited edition with a Stefani-designed case and a biographical DVD.

Late in 2005, Stefani discovered she was pregnant with her first child, but her schedule remained busy in 2006: along with working on L.A.M.B., she released a line of limited-edition fashion dolls complete with outfits from her videos and tours, and worked on her second solo album with producers including Akon, Swizz Beatz, Tim Rice-Oxley of Keane, Nellee Hooper, the Neptunes, and Tony Kanal. That spring, Stefani gave birth to a boy. The Neptunes-produced, Sound of Music-sampling "Wind It Up" arrived later that fall and heralded the full-length The Sweet Escape, which was released on the same day as the live DVD Harajuku Lovers Live.

No Doubt announced a return to the studio in 2008, but progress slowed to a crawl as the band experienced a bout of writer's block and the Rossdale-Stefani family continued to grow with their second child, Zuma Nesta Rock. The band maintained their momentum by touring through 2009. No Doubt eventually released Push and Shove in 2012, featuring a mix of Rock Steady-esque dancehall bangers and new wave ballads similar to Stefani's solo material. In February 2014, Stefani and Rossdale had their third boy, Apollo Bowie Flynn. Later that year, Stefani joined the judges panel on The Voice with her friend Pharrell, opening the pair to a number of subsequent collaborations. Stefani lent her vocals to fellow Voice coach Adam Levine for Maroon 5's "My Heart Is Open." She also appeared on tracks with Calvin Harris and Snoop Dogg.

By late 2014, Stefani was in the midst of a full-scale comeback, releasing a pair of singles: the Ryan Tedder/Benny Blanco-penned "Baby Don't Lie" and another Pharrell production, "Spark the Fire." The following year, she contributed the song "Shine" to the Paddington Bear movie soundtrack and a duet with Eminem on "Kings Never Die" from Southpaw. In August 2015, Stefani and Rossdale filed for divorce. A third song -- "Used to Love You" -- was released months later. It gained moderate airplay and was the only comeback single to be included on her third project, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, which was released in March 2016 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. The second official single from the album, "Make Me Like You," was accompanied by a video that Stefani recorded live during the 2016 Grammy Awards. Later that year, she provided the voice for the DJ Suki character in the animated movie Trolls and, along with Justin Timberlake, appeared on several songs from the film's soundtrack.

In September 2017, she released the seasonal album You Make It Feel Like Christmas, which featured a duet with her Voice co-star -- and new romantic partner -- Blake Shelton. Stefani duetted with Shelton on his 2020 single "Nobody But You," a song featured on the compilation Fully Loaded: God's Country, and added "Here This Christmas" to a reissue of You Make It Feel Like Christmas. At the end of the year, she returned to pop music with "Let Me Reintroduce Myself," a single that built upon the effervescent sounds of No Doubt. Another single, the reggae-injected "Slow Clap," followed in in March 2021, with a Saweetie-accompanied edition arriving a month later. Stefani and Shelton married in July. The ska-inflected single "True Babe" appeared in June 2023, followed in February 2024 by a second Shelton duet, the romantic, adult contemporary-sounding "Purple Irises”.

On 3rd October, Gwen Stefani turns fifty-five. It is a moment to herald one of the greatest leads and songwriters of her generation. Few people as cool as her! I always think that Stefani could have had a successful career as an actor. I could picture her in so many films. There was this magnetism that she had. Look at videos from through the years and she was such a natural. Perhaps It’s My Life is where she truly flexes her full range. A remarkable and distinct voice, we will be hearing a lot more from this unique and hugely influential artist. Let us raise a glass…

TO the divine Gwen Stefani!

FEATURE: Take a Bow: Looking Ahead to the Thirtieth Anniversary of Madonna’s Bedtime Stories

FEATURE:

 

 

Take a Bow

Looking Ahead to the Thirtieth Anniversary of Madonna’s Bedtime Stories

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ONE of the…

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna at The Ritz, Paris in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Early

most important albums in her career I think, Bedtime Stories was Madonna’s follow-up to 1992 Erotica. In 1992, Madonna put out Erotica, the coffee table book Sex, and starred in the erotic thriller, Body of Evidence. There was a lot of negativity and flack from critics and some fans. Thinking Madonna was pushing it too far, many wrote off her career. Of course, she has sustained and released tremendous albums since. It was a hard move following Erotica. It is an album that should be celebrated. Critics being prudish and needlessly sensitive. If you look at how that album inspired so many Pop artists of the 1990s and 2000s. Confident, liberated and provocative, it would not receive the same kind of criticism now. Erotica empowered and resonated with a host of women in music that we see to this day. Even so, there was a sense of compromise or apology with Bedtime Stories, Madonna was still pushing the envelope, yet it was a warmer and less sexualised album compared to Erotica. Released on 25th October, 1994, I wanted to cast ahead to the thirtieth anniversary of perhaps her most underrated album. It was a big commercial success. Hitting the top three in the U.S. and U.K., there was still this reservation from critics. Some awarded it kudos and high praise, yet many reviews were middling. Undeniable standout songs such as Take a Bow and Human Nature sat alongside some deeper cuts critics did not get on board with. There is such a fascinating blend of moods through Madonna’s sixth studio album. From mature, smooth and sensual songs such as Secret and emotional hits like Take a Bow through to the edgier Human Nature and Bedtime Story (which was co-written by Björk). Four years after Bedtime Stories, Madonna would release Ray of Light. Perhaps her greatest album, it showed that you could not write her off, put her down or predict where she would go next! I do think that the heat she got in 1992 was vastly unfair. If a male artist/band put out Erotica and Sex then they would not get the same treatment. In fact, they would probably be celebrated!

I am going to publish another feature closer to 25th October. Saluting an album that has never got huge respect and appreciation. You can never please critics! Luckily, Ray of Light silenced doubters and confirmed that Madonna is one of the most resilient and gifted artists ever. I will end with a couple of reviews for Bedtime Stories. I am going to open with a 2014 feature from Billboard where producer Babyface and Donna De Lory provided their thoughts on Bedtime Stories twenty years after its release:

“Twenty years ago this month, Madonna released her sixth studio album, Bedtime Stories, a classic that came out at a strange crossroads in her career.

While Madonna certainly didn’t lack for fame in 1994, the button-pushing Erotica album had soured many critics and fans. For the first time in a decade of superstardom, people weren’t shocked by her antics anymore — even worse, they often seemed exhausted by her.

Artistically speaking, she’d spent the last four years challenging and subverting America’s sexual puritanism. But after releasing an entire book called Sex featuring nude pictures of herself and other celebrities, there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go in that realm.

It didn’t help that she’d detonated 14 F-bombs on a March 1994 episode of The Late Show With David Letterman, an infamous appearance that racked up FCC complaints and distanced her from Middle America. Evita was two years away and the overt sexuality of Erotica was growing stale — so when Bedtime Stories hit, Madonna’s career was at a strange point.

To that end, Bedtime Stories is lyrically and musically a much warmer album. She sacrifices some bawdy entendres (compare Erotica‘s “Where Life Begins” to Bedtime‘s “Inside of Me”) and focuses on autobiographical matter.

Instead of Erotica‘s chilly, pounding dance pop, Bedtime puts Madonna in softer sonic territory. There’s the singer-songwriter-y “Secret,” the avant pop of “Bedtime Story” (co-written by Bjork), the new jack swing jam “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” (featuring Meshell Ndegeocello rapping), the Herbie Hancock-sampling ballad “Sanctuary” and the lush, orchestral R&B of “Take a Bow.”

But softer sounds didn’t necessarily mean muted lyrics. “Human Nature” finds Madonna taking on her critics more directly than ever with a logical, defiant attack on slut-shaming. And while album opener “Survival” is a cozy R&B-pop song, it was similarly unrepentant in attitude.

The inviting R&B sound of Bedtime Stories is due in part to co-producer Dallas Austin, who longtime Madonna backup singer Donna de Lory describes as “part of her tribe at that time.” Also on board were co-producers Nellee Hooper, Dave “Jam” Hall (hot off Mary J. Blige‘s debut, What’s the 411?) and, of course, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds.

While Edmonds had recently worked with TLC and Toni Braxton, he tells Billboard it was one of his own hits that brought him to Madonna’s attention.

“Madonna was a fan of a song I did, ‘When Can I See You.’ Because of that, she was interested in working with me,” Edmonds recalls. “She came to me for lush ballads, so that’s where we went.”

Babyface would collaborate with Madonna on three songs — two of which, “Forbidden Love” and “Take a Bow,” ended up on the album. Although the latter became Madonna’s long-running No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Edmonds says he wasn’t gunning for chart-toppers when they met.

“I wasn’t so much thinking about the charts,” Edmonds recalls. “I think I was more in awe of the fact that I was working with Madonna. It was initially surreal, but then you get to know the person a little bit, and you calm down and then it’s just work. And work is fun.”

When Edmonds played Madonna the bare bones of a song that would become “Take a Bow,” she immediately took to it. “It was just a beat and the chords. From there we collaborated and built it up,” he says. “I was living in Beverly Hills and I created a little studio in my house, so she came over there to write.”

As for “Forbidden Love,” Edmonds recalls that track came together with similar speed. “She heard the basic track and it all started coming out, melodies and everything… It was a much easier process than I thought it would be.”

Donna De Lory, however, wasn’t surprised at how easily Bedtime Stories came together when she and fellow backup vocalist Niki Haris were called in to provide harmonies on “Survival,” co-written by Austin. At that point, she’d been performing with Madonna for seven years.

“The minute you walked in [the studio], she was giving you the lyric sheet,” De Lory tells Billboard. “That was the atmosphere — we’re not here to just hang out. It’s fun, but we’re here to work and get this done.”

And what Madonna sets out to do, Madonna invariably succeeds at. De Lory recalls the sessions for “Survival” took just a “couple of hours” and there were no retakes.

Similar to Babyface, De Lory describes working with Madonna as a creative partnership, even if she was the one setting the tone. “Once she got her ideas out, she was open to your ideas. You didn’t want to go in with her and right off the bat say, ‘Well, I hear this,’ because she was so specific and articulate. She already had the sound in her head. But after she’d spoken, we’d put our two cents in. We always had ideas, like, ‘Can we answer this line with an extra “survival” [in the background]?'”.

I am going to move to a feature from Albumism. They marked twenty-five years of Bedtime Stories. Though they maintain the album was met with positive reviews, I think it is hard to see that from the reviews available. There was a note of disappointment with many of them. Regardless, Bedtime Stories got more love than Erotica. Rather than it being a compromise to critics and this U-turn from her previous position and sound, it was a natural evolution for Madonna:

“But, it was Erotica—and its companion book Sex—that nearly leveled Madonna. A loose concept LP concerned with taboo sexual mores and emotional masochism collapsed under its own misshapen weight; worse, the songs simply weren’t there on the whole. By placing “the event” ahead of a proper commitment to the thematic task of the album itself, Madonna made herself an easy target to be dismissed as a shrewd media manipulator versus the adept singer and songwriter she is. Insulated by the pop culture hysteria she’d generated for a decade, the critical blowback from Erotica/Sex unceremoniously burst that bubble—it was likely a sobering experience.

Yet, there was a silver lining to the difficulties she endured with Erotica in that they helped her gain perspective and grow to realize that she wanted the public to recognize her as an artist. This outlook gave Madonna a newfound focus going into Bedtime Stories. Sessions for her sixth studio set began with Shep Pettibone, Madonna’s principal producer and compeer for Erotica. One of the initial compositions Madonna and Pettibone started work on was its eventual first single, “Secret,” but they ultimately and amicably parted ways, as she wanted to take the urban-pop vibe of that anterior album in a new direction. Madonna returned to finish “Secret” with Dallas Austin, an up-and-coming voice in the contemporary soul genre who had produced sides for Monica, Grace Jones and Joi, among others.

Austin’s work with Joi on her debut The Pendulum Vibe (issued in June 1994) had been of note to Madonna and led to her fast recruitment of Austin for one of two collaborative cliques on Bedtime Stories. That first clique included (but wasn’t limited to) an astonishing array of talent: Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Dave “Jam” Hall and bassist/vocalist/Maverick signee Meshell Ndegeocello. Repurposing the coarser R&B-pop sonics she had laid out on Erotica, Madonna fashions them to be seductively intimate and groove-oriented for Bedtime Stories. From the bluesy, acoustic funk of “Secret,” to the breezy jam “Don’t Stop” and around to the silky shuffle of “Inside of Me,” these songs and most of the LP are sculpted from a mix of expert live instrumentation and impressive studio production.

Almost all of the aggressive beat and groove combinations that defined Erotica are absent with the exceptions of “I’d Rather Be Your Lover”—a side that deliciously weds Ndegeocello’s bass playing (and rap) to Madonna’s smoky mezzo-soprano—and “Human Nature.” The latter track, a stinging rebuke toward Madonna’s Erotica/Sex naysayers, would have been better served up as a B-side as its petulant script threatened to fracture the more demure, introspective air Madonna embodied on Bedtime Stories. Thankfully, the surrounding song stock buffers and neutralizes its antagonistic energy. Musically though, “Human Nature” is an interesting piece with it being erected around the Main Source hip-hop banger “What You Need”—Main Source themselves had loaned a portion of their cut from the jazz musician Walter Maynard Ferguson’s selection “Spinning Wheel.” “Human Nature” represents one of Bedtime Stories’ multiple arrangements that contain clever sample traces or interpolations, along with “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” (Lou Donaldson),  “Inside of Me” (Aaliyah, The Gap Band, Gutter Snypes), “Forbidden Love” (Grant Green), and “Sanctuary” (Herbie Hancock).

Lyrically, Bedtime Stories showcases Madonna’s keen pen that captures the elusive emotional space between strength and vulnerability through love songs or semi-autobiographical entries. “Survival,” “Love Tried to Welcome Me” and “Sanctuary” are undeniable canonical highlights.

Spotlighting “Sanctuary,” Madonna and Austin were the primary assemblers for the downbeat ambient track that slips beautifully into the palatial electronica of “Bedtime Story.” It is here that the second clique Madonna partnered with on Bedtime Stories announces itself. Written by Marius de Vries, Björk and Nellee Hooper, the latter Massive Attack associate and Madonna co-produce this mesmeric slice of existentialist electro-pop that prognosticates what was to come with her next long player (1998’s Ray Of Light) in four years’ time. That Madonna manages to keep “Bedtime Story” in line with the ruling R&B arc of the record is an impressive feat and evidence of her skill toward applying a consistent tone for an album despite any supposedly dueling sounds”

Erotica was attacked because of its sexual nature. Madonna always judged because of her sexuality and provocative nature. It was misogyny and sexism that she faced throughout her career! She still has to answer to critics to this day! I want to drop in almost the entirety of this VICE feature from 2014, as it argues brilliantly how Bedtime Stories is Madonna’s most important album:

“That’s why her album Bedtime Stories, even as it celebrates its 20th anniversary, is still her most important work. For months leading up to its release, it was marketed as an apology for her sexual behavior, and critics hoped it would be her return to innocence. Instead, she offered a lyrical #sorrynotsorry and a response to the problem of female musicians being scrutinized for their sexuality rather than their music. As a result of the public’s moral concerns, it has become Madonna’s most quietly important album, setting the tone for how artists deal with critiques of their sex life.

In 1992, Madonna released Erotica, a techno concept album and ode to bondage, alongside the coffee table book Sex, a softcore pornographic photo catalog of her and her pals. The concurrent releases created enormous and long-running backlash, resulting in multiple countries banning the album from radio airplay and the Vatican banning Madonna from entering. Madonna was already well established as an icon, but her frank lyrics on S&M and published photographs of analingus incited the harshest public outrage in her career. Bedtime Stories was slated to be her one last chance at redemption, and Warner Brothers agreed to produce it under the auspices of a less provocative image.

Both the label and her publicist Liz Rosenberg did everything they could to reverse the damage from Madonna’s last projects. They had her release the soundtrack single “I’ll Remember” to bring her a family-friendly hit and further increase speculation that Bedtime Stories would convey her apology. The album’s promo video promises that there will be “no sexual references on the album” and even panders with Madonna saying “it’s a whole new me! I’m going to be a good girl, I swear.”

Madonna-shaming was a two-part construct: First she was scorned for her sexuality, and then she was eclipsed by it. Since it cited her sex appeal as her sole commodity, the promo video had everyone wondering what she was going to sing about if the topic wasn’t sex. Speculation leading up to Bedtime Stories focused on her exit plan for becoming irrelevant, whether she planned on future facelifts, and what she would offer as a middle-aged version of herself.

“When you’re a celebrity, you’re allowed to have one personality trait. Which is ridiculous,” Madonna told the Detroit News in 1993. When Bedtime Stories was finally released on October 25, she addressed both aspects of the shaming process. Despite the promises in her promo, she continued to acknowledge her sexual desires, although she also experimented with the sound and subject matter. Beginning with “Survival,” a song she co-wrote with Dallas Austin, Madonna doesn’t hesitate to address the backlash and sings “I’ll never be an angel / I’ll never be a saint it’s true / I’m too busy surviving.” The lyrics continue to convey a loosely drawn narrative of the punishment she endured from the media and her feelings leading up to the release, and the songs are carried mostly by R&B melodies produced by Austin, Nellee Hooper, and Babyface.

The definitive single on the album is an explicit rebuke of the backlash. In “Human Nature,” she confirms that wasn’t sorry and that she’s not anyone’s bitch, and she paired the song perfectly with a video that toys with bondage like an Erotica throwback. Right when she is about to drop the mic she whispers, “would it sound better if I were a man?”

Madonna asserted her lack of apology on the grounds that she had not said or did anything unusual; it was simply unusual for a woman to say it. In an interview with the LA Times, she defended Bedtime Stories by saying “I’m being punished for being a single female, for having power and being rich and saying the things I say, being a sexual creature—actually, not being any different from anyone else, but just talking about it. If I were a man, I wouldn’t have had any of these problems. Nobody talks about Prince’s sex life.”

Beyond offering Madonna’s final word on the scandal of her sexuality, the album pivots to address the misconception that her sexual persona limited her versatility as an artist. The narrative in Bedtime Stories immediately turns introspective, relating “I know how to laugh / but I don’t know happiness.” While the album borrows mostly from R&B and new jack swing, it becomes more experimental with the Bjork-penned title track, accompanied with a video that could not have explored the collective unconscious better if Carl Jung directed it. The video for “Bedtime Story” is the first instance of what would become Madonna’s long history of culture-plucking spiritual inquiry, and to this day is stored in a collection at the Museum of Modern Art. As a pair, “Human Nature” and “Bedtime Story” prove that Madonna owned her sexuality and would not be eclipsed by it. While the former fully embraces the decisions she made with previous albums, the latter dismantles the “slut” narrative that her overt sexuality discredits her depth as a performer. Surely people would see this as a feminist masterpiece, no?

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in New York, September 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Bettina Rheims

Still, critics didn’t get it. The New York Times’ Jon Pareles waxed nostalgic for when “Madonna thrived in the 1980s on being sensational and suggestive against a tame mainstream backdrop,” calling her more recent work “vulgar instead of shocking.” Critical reception continued to focus on the scandal of her attitude rather than the actual record. “Madonna’s career has never really been about music; it’s been about titillation, about image, about publicity,” began one TIME review, which wasn’t unique in its premise. Any mention of the album’s experimental sound or numerous collaborations were overshadowed by her promiscuous image and once again left cheapened. Bedtime Stories as an album was not the clear apology the public demanded, and its emotional depth was largely ignored. At best, it was thought of as Madonna’s return to a safer expression of sexuality.

The record found commercial success with the release of “Secret,” and “Take a Bow,” but the two most important songs never broke into the Top 40, a problem Madonna hadn’t faced in nearly ten years. Today, Bedtime Stories is not the first album that comes to mind in Madonna’s legacy. It is, however, the most relevant to many of the cultural conversations that are still happening. Had she acquiesced to the public’s call for apology, it could have set a dangerous standard for how the public can decree an artist’s silence, and it would have allowed the categories for female singers to remain in place. Critical anticipation of the album predicted either a penitent pop star or a one-dimensional sexpot. She defeated both categories, and left the critics to ponder if sexuality and solidity are as mutually exclusive as they had hope”.

I am going to end with two reviews. I will finish with a December 1994 review from Rolling Stone.  To show some of the negativity and misunderstanding around Bedtime Stories, below is a review from Pitchfork. Published in 2017, there is this feeling that Bedtime Stories is inessential. I disagree with that. This is one of her most consistent and fascinating albums:

“Bedtime Stories, the confused, the misunderstood. The early ’90s found Madonna at peak levels of media saturation. Inescapable! Seven years of hits compiled on The Immaculate Collection, Madonna featured on virtually every award show, Dick Tracy paraphernalia in the McDonald’s Happy Meal. I saw her name on a religious pamphlet: “We Christians must reject the mainstream acceptance of the ethics and morals of Marx and Madonna.” I saw her in The Far Side, her Gaultier-ensconced breasts puncturing an inflatable life raft in a cheap sexist gag. She was less a musician and more a holy ghost. Bedtime Stories was the first Madonna album that felt like a non-event, an asterisk to her omnipresence, another hot day in a heat wave.

And as such, this album has been difficult to assess as an art object. Madonna was, in 1992-1994, an artist under siege. Sex, her soft-core porn coffee table book, had been called obscene; it has been subsequently been reassessed as a smart and entertaining post-feminist grand jeté. Her previous album Erotica, with its diversity and effective New Jack Swing tourism, was received generally well and is now considered among many of her acolytes to be her masterpiece. But Bedtime Stories is, if we must go full Pepsi Challenge with Erotica, a blurry non-event of an album.

Closing track and hit single “Take a Bow” is a kind song, lush in production and sentiment, and deservedly hung around the charts longer than any other of her singles. Babyface’s appearance here, at the height of his own artistry, is frankly lovely. It is for many fans, myself included, Madonna at her most sensitive and brave.

Bedtime Stories’ final single, “Human Nature,” in contrast, did poorly on the charts, and yet is one of her most effective grooves, with her anti-slut-shaming slogan, “I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me” thwocking its way through Jean-Baptiste Mondino’s amazing video. It is handily one of Madonna’s best songs.

Conversely, the album’s most successful worldwide single, “Secret,” beloved by many, just meanders—even upon its release I recall my young ears being distracted by the single edit’s monotony when it appeared on radio playlists. On the album proper, the track drags interminably over five-plus minutes. Listening again now, it sounds like a lesser version of subsequent album Ray of Light’s “Frozen,” the dry crumbs of “Secret”’s acoustic guitar tracks waiting to be muted and replaced with William Orbit’s thrilling, tensile production.

Most infamously, we have “Bedtime Story.” Like many other former teenagers falling head over heels for Björk’s first solo album, I recall staring incredulously at the B. Guðmundsdóttir credit when it appeared in Madonna’s liner notes. The song itself is unimaginably disappointing—sterile and static, a less-daring second cousin to “Violently Happy.” Björk’s detached science-textbook approach toward a love-song, which works so well when paired with her own mystic Icelandic aesthetic, doesn’t sit well alongside Madonna’s enthusiastic consumerism. Perhaps the song has some appeal, decades later, now that we’re familiar and tolerant of the sound of Björk-on-autopilot. Perhaps we view it affectionately as a blueprint for her subsequent masterpieces on Ray of Light. Ultimately it remains, to my ears, Madonna’s first truly embarrassing flop.

And most of the rest of the album never really achieves any level of indispensability. Several attempts at New Jack balladry have lovely moody productions married to unremarkable songs or performances. Opening track “Survival,” as carefully constructed as it is, sounds, well, much tidier than Madonna’s contemporaries. The “Inside of Me” sample of Aaliyah’s “Back & Forth”—out the same year—just reminds me as a listener about how 1994 was the year of Toni Braxton, Salt-N-Pepa, and Janet Jackson; far more exciting music than this.

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1994

The deep cuts on the B-side of Bedtime Stories have their fans. Babyface is here, Massive Attack’s string arranging collaborator Craig Armstrong is here also, with an expensive sounding moment, and there’s a cute Herbie Hancock sample on “Sanctuary.” But these songs, for me, are undone by all having nearly identical melodies and moods to “Secret.” What attempts to be sultry and smooth comes off as beige and un-fascinating; my mind wanders and my time is wasted. When Madonna plays tourist with gay culture, with Broadway, with Hollywood, with UK jungle, she is able to keep things (usually) deferential and still interesting, and often, achieve transcendence. But here, she sounds woefully out-of-her-depth as a songwriter and singer when slinging these square attempts at R&B balladry.

It is a compliment to the artist that only here, over a decade into her career, on her sixth studio album, does she, for the first time, let this listener down. Take “Human Nature” and put in on a golden record, play “Take a Bow” at my funeral, and let the rest of this sleepy album be forgotten; it is, to my ears and memory, Madonna’s first truly inessential moment”.

Let’s finish with a review from Rolling Stone. This was published in 1994. It is a more positive approach compared to what some critics afforded. I hope that Bedtime Stories gets more love and some fresh investigation on its thirtieth anniversary on 25th October. It is a wonderful album from the Queen of Pop. One that I remember coming out in 1994. It has lost none of its brilliance:

“Still, in so doing, Madonna has come up with some awfully compelling sounds. In her retreat from sex to romance, she has enlisted four top R&B producers: Atlanta whiz kid Dallas Austin, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Dave “Jam” Hall and Britisher Nellee Hooper (Soul II Soul), who add lush soul and creamy balladry. With this awesome collection of talent, the record verily shimmers. Bass-heavy grooves push it along when more conventional sentiments threaten to bog it down. Both aspects put it on chart-smart terrain.

A number of songs — “Survival,” “Secret,” “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” (to which Me’Shell NdegéOcello brings a bumping bass line and a jazzy rap) — are infectiously funky. And Madonna does a drive-by on her critics, complete with a keening synth line straight outta Dre, on “Human Nature”: “Did I say something wrong?/Oops, I didn’t know I couldn’t talk about sex (I musta been crazy).”

But you don’t need her to tell you that she’s “drawn to sadness” or that “loneliness has never been a stranger,” as she sings on the sorrowful “Love Tried to Welcome Me.” The downbeat restraint in her vocals says it, from the tremulously tender “Inside of Me” to the sob in “Happiness lies in your own hand/It took me much too long to understand” from “Secret.”

The record ultimately moves from grief to oblivion with the seductive techno pull of “Sanctuary.” The pulsating drone of the title track (co-written by Björk and Hooper), with its murmured refrain of “Let’s get unconscious, honey,” renounces language for numbness.

Twirled in a gauze of (unrequited) love songs, Bedtime Stories says, “Fuck off, I’m not done yet.” You have to listen hard to hear that, though. Madonna’s message is still “Express yourself, don’t repress yourself.” This time, however, it comes not with a bang but a whisper”.

The Standard ranked Madonna’s Bedtime Stories as her ninth-best (“Certain detractors have always tried hard to depict Madonna as ‘too much’ of something – and by the early Nineties, she was constantly under fire for her provocative pop. A few years earlier, Pepsi famously pulled out of sponsoring her Blonde Ambition tour after Like A Prayer and its sexy take on Catholic iconography attracted the ire of the Vatican. Then came Erotica: a daring and plain sexy album which came accompanied by the explicit photobook SEX. Another predictable bout of pearl-clutching followed. Even Madonna grew weary of the outrage cycle, and decided her next album would head in another direction. “Sex is such a taboo subject and it’s such a distraction that I’d rather not even offer it up,” she told Los Angeles Times”). In 2015, Billboard ranked it sixth (“Express yourself/Don’t repress yourself,” Madonna coos at the top of “Human Nature,” a quick reminder that her Bedtime Stories album — while not as hardcore as 1992’s Erotica — certainly wasn’t a mea culpa for her polarizing previous project. Instead, the 1994 album captured Madonna in transition, swiveling away from explicit sexuality and relying on R&B and balladry before she dove headfirst into dance music four years later. Songs like “Human Nature,” “Secret” and “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” proved more compelling than most of the New Jack music being released in the mid-90s, and “Take A Bow” added a classic slow jam to Madge’s canon”).

It came in fourth in this recent feature (“Criminally underrated! Before going through her discography, I did not know any singles in the album. When it was time to listen to it, I was impressed. Just like the masterpieces that follow in this ranking, Bedtime Stories carries an impecable cohesiveness. It shows an improvement over Hard Candy on Madonna’s ability to blend into R&B. Human Nature is a perfect, catchy “f — you” to the criticism she faced on her Sex book era. Bedtime Story is a beautiful effort that experiments on different sounds and references Mexican surreal painters in the music video. And Take A Bow is a soothing, calm ballad. It may not be as iconic as the rest of the albums in this ranking, but it surely is one of the best”). Gay Times placed it fifth in their feature (“Out of every Madonna album, Bedtime Stories remains the most criminally underrated, and arguably her most important. Human Nature (both the song and the video) is one of her finest singles of all time, giving a solid middle finger to her critics and those who attempt to suppress female sexuality in the aftermath of her controversial Erotica era, while its more experimental moments including Sanctuary and the Björk-penned Bedtime Story are pure bliss to the ears. Placing it above fan favourites like Erotica and Like A Prayer may raise a few eyebrows, but listened to in the current musical landscape, the album’s R&B/Pop sound sounds remarkably current – more so than any other early-to-mid Madonna release. Take A Bow, beautifully backed by a full orchestra, remains a staple in Madonna’s greatest hits, and helped tone down her image for an offended public”). Definitely underrated and overlooked by some, Madonna’s sort-of-apology for her maligned 1992 album, Erotica – though in years since it is seen as one of the most influential albums ever -, Bedtime Stories did tone down her image a bit but offered plenty of new layers. More depth and passion. The same edgy that we are used to. It was not her completely retreating and sanitising herself thankfully! On 25th October, we mark thirty years of Bedtime Stories. It is an album that I think…

IS one of Madonna’s very best.

FEATURE: Looking Like a Happy Man: Kate Bush’s King of the Mountain at Nineteen

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Like a Happy Man

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

Kate Bush’s King of the Mountain at Nineteen

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EVEN if…

I celebrate the anniversary of the song fairly regularly, it is important to talk about it. Sorry if I am not saying anything new but, on 24th October, 2005, we got the first Kate Bush single in over a decade. After 1993’s The Red Shoes, there was doubt that Bush would release another album. She had reached a point in her career when she needed to step away and think about herself. After having a son in 1998 and moving house, she was settling down and enjoying time away from the limelight. It was not a complete shock that King of the Mountain arrived. In 2001, there was an interview where Bush talked about her family and a new album. We knew that it would come along but were not sure exactly when. How would it sound and what would be the first single from it? When it came to Aerial, Bush only officially released one single. King of the Mountain opens the album and is the most single-worthy. There are other songs on the album that could have been singles – Mrs. Bartolozzi for one -, yet there was this feeling she did not want to give too much away. It would have meant additional promotion. Bush not overly happy being in videos. King of the Mountain was her final music video where she was featured. It was a turning point. Perhaps self-conscious about the way she looked after so long away from music, she did look fantastic in the King of the Mountain video!

I think King of the Mountain was already about a decade before the rest of Aerial. Whether you she intended to release it as a single in the 1990s or this was the first step on a new album I am not too sure. I have said before how it seemed to mirror her own experiences. Being seen as this recluse, Bush was sort of hiding away. King of the Mountain mentions Elvis Presley and whether he is still alive “Looking like a happy man”. Maybe over-reading the lyrics, Bush using that artist to represent herself. How the media were wondering whether she was and assuming she had disappeared. Instead, she was living happily in private. I can hear a lot of herself in the song. Bush adopting an Elvis accent and drawl through the song. With Kate Bush producing and Del Palmer engineering, this is a hugely solid and brilliant single. Her young son Bertie designed the single cover art for King of the Mountain. It is very much this family affair (Del Palmer and Kate Bush were in a relationship for about fifteen years). It is no surprise that the single did well in the chart. It reached number four in the U.K. There was so much excitement around Kate Bush coming back. One of her more popular singles, she did not do any live performances at the time. She did bring the song to the stage in 2014. There are some fantastic interviews to promote Aerial where she spoke about King of the Mountain. The single was first played on 21st September, 2005 on BBC Radio 2. With its video directed by  Jimmy Murakami and Bush’s writing, production and vocals at their peak, I think more sure be written about King of the Mountain. How important this song is.

The lyrics are incredibly evocative. Distinctly from the pen and mind of Kate Bush, I wonder where she was when she wrote them and what inspired the song’s direction and themes. My favourite lines are these: “Elvis are you out there somewhere/Looking like a happy man?/In the snow with Rosebud/And king of the mountain/Another Hollywood waitress/Is telling us she’s having your baby/And there’s a rumour that you’re on ice/And you will rise again someday/And that there’s a photograph/Where you’re dancing on your grave”. In their feature ranking Kate Bush’s fifty best songs, MOJO placed King of the Mountain in thirty-sixth. This is what they observed: “The first song written (and partially recorded) for Aerial, in 1997, and the song that announced its completion eight years later, is an atmospheric meditation on the possibility that Elvis lives on in some iconic hinterland, sledging on Kane’s Rosebud. The slinky marimba groove, tough drums and skanky guitars (by Bush’s husband Dan McIntosh), provided an early clue this album would be unlike anything she’d done before, albeit reassuringly compelling and eccentric”. In 2018, The Guardian ranked Bush’s singles. King of the Mountain came in eleventh: “Comeback album Aerial wasn’t exactly overburdened with obvious singles. Perhaps the beautiful, sunlit Somewhere in Between might have worked out of context of the Sea of Honey song-suite, but instead Bush plumped for a song that involved her impersonating Elvis and knowingly ruminating on the benefits of withdrawing from the public eye”. Earlier this year, Classic Pop placed King of the Mountain fourteenth when deciding on Kate Bush’s forty best songs: “Written a good decade before its eventual release as part of Aerial, King Of The Mountain – her first single in 12 years – wonders if Elvis is still out there, somewhere living normally, having been subjected to such intense fame during his career. It also referenced parallels between Presley and Citizen Kane, hence ‘Rosebud’. Her biggest hit in over 20 years, it went to No. 4 in the autumn of 2005”.

I am going to end with some round-up and reviews for King of the Mountain. Even those who were not huge Kate Bush fans could have resisted the excitement and anticipation that surrounded her first single in many years. What it would deliver. This is what Drowned in Sound noted in their 7/10 review for the mighty King of the Mountain:

“There’s my idea of taking a break and there’s your idea of taking a break. And then there’s Kate Bush’s idea of taking a break. The wandering enigma of British pop has been gone for twelve years. Which means the last time we saw Kate Bush was in the nineties – and let’s be honest, who can remember them?! (I can actually remember them very well, but that last bit scans rather nicely dontchathink?)

So what on Emily Bronte’s misty earth has she been up to for the last twelve years? Well, I imagine she’s been raising a family and proba…yadda, yadda, yadda – who gives an arse? She’s got a new album coming out. She’s called it ‘Aerial’. And ‘King Of The Mountain’ is the first indication that it might be as ace as we hoped it would be.

For a while, I always thought that Kate Bush was taking the piss when she sang. Either that or she was celebrating her release from the mental asylum by screaming at passers-by, then softly informing them that she has a house on top of the hill that they simply must visit because the garden path is made of swords and the kitchen is run by the trees. Of course, that was then. Now, having actually listened beyond ‘Wuthering Heights’, I’d stick her up their with the very best. So apart from the remarkable voice, why do folk dig The Bush? Thankfully, some answers can be found in ‘King Of The Mountain’. Sort of. A slow-burning reggae groove, peculiar lyrics, electronic phasing, tribal pulsing and a shuddering, vintage vocal are all in there. She also talks of “the wind whistling” – which in a Kate Bush track, can only be a good thing. Thing is, the track doesn’t really go anywhere and if the lady herself wasn’t singing it could be considered terribly dull. Still, the pastoral princess returneth – Yeth!”.

Dropping this single in a 2005 music scene when there was nothing like King of the Mountain, there were some impassioned reviews for one of the most anticipated returns in music history. How much Kate Bush had been missed! You can read further reviews for the single here. It was clearly a beloved single release from an artist who proved, no matter how long she had been away, she had lost none of her magic and ability to stand out from the crowd:

“The NME has reviewed the single in style: “Ok, so it was hardly worth waiting a decade and a bit for but then what is? Nothing that we can think of. What it is, mind, is an apt reminder of just how little everyone else is trying right now and just how Ms Bush has been missed. It’s five minutes of druggy acenes, has a mental breakdown in the middle, and sounds like Sade washing down lyrical razorblades with plummets of fizzy white wine nabbed from Massive Attacks rider. But with more heart than a Canadian AOR radio station or a passionate snog with a Care Bear. If we were excited about the album before we heard this (and we were, very), now we’re EXCITED IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS.” Eye Weekly in Toronto writes: “The famously melodramatic (some would say screechy) chanteuse’s influence on such singers as Björk and PJ Harvey has come full circle on “King of the Mountain,” currently available only as a download. The rumbling bass and propulsive drumming recalls Harvey’s “A Perfect Day, Elise,” while Bush takes her creepy torch-song vibe down a notch, mostly reining in her upper register to devastatingly intense effect. Learning how to smoulder is the final frontier for great singers, and Bush does it without giving up the vulnerability that made every teenage wallflower in the ’80s stare longingly at her LP jackets.”

…here’s an article on Peter Bochan’s Alternative Music Blog which reveals that King Of The Mountain is the 231st song about Elvis! “At least one of his white jump suits is in the video with Kate, along with a storyline that seems to be a throwback to the “Is Elvis Still Alive” period in tabloid journalism, mixed with some Citizen Kane “Rosebud” imagery and some dodgy shots of Kate that seem to hide her from any full-figure viewing–maybe she’s going through her own “later elvis” type period. Whatever the reason, this first sample from the upcoming “Aerial” is very encouraging, “King Of The Mountain” is vintage sounding and full of the usual “moments of pleasure” that Kate has been delivering since 1977’s “Wuthering Heights”. Read more here…BBC Radio 1 may be largely ignoring the single from it’s playlists (no, we can’t figure it out either) but one DJ, Rob Da Bank continues to rave about the single: “She makes us wait 12 years and then bam! She’s back and jeepers creepers the lady’s been busy if this, the first single from her new album Aerial is anything to go by. Wooshy wind noises – check! Mystical lyrics – check! Genius reggae guitar and bountiful production – check! Best pop song of the year so far and proud to be a Blue Room tune. Welcome back!” See it at the BBC Radio 1 website here…finally, need wheels to get to the record shop next week to buy the single? The “big black car” from the Cloudbusting video is up for sale – see here!”.

It is hard to believe that it has been almost nineteen years since King of the Mountain was released. On 24th October, we mark that anniversary. With its B-side of Sexual Healing – an unusual choice of cover but one Bush adds her own stamp to -, it was a huge treat getting this new Kate Bush music! Aerial would arrive on 7th November. Bush performed this song as part of her set for the 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. A chance for her to bring this amazing song to life on the stage. Her most successful single since the 1986 duet with Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up, King of the Mountain is a truly magnificent single from…

ONE of her best albums.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Exploring an Under-Read Interview from 1984

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

PHOTO CREDIT: Denis O’Regan

Exploring an Under-Read Interview from 1984

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I want to briefly…

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

return and dust off The Kate Bush Interview Archive. This Kate Bush: The Tour of Life takes us back to 1984. I know I have recently focused a great deal on Hounds of Love and that era. I will dip back in briefly because of a very special 1984 interview I don’t think many people know about. It captures a particular (and important) moment in Kate Bush’s career. There are quite a few interviews available from 1985. When Hounds of Love was released. There are not really many from 1983 or 1984. Louder Sound recently shared a feature looking back to 2011 where they featured an interview conducted by Mick Wall. He is one of the world's leading Rock and Metal writers. The same age as Kate Bush (sixty-six), he recalled reaching out for an interview in 1984 but not expecting to hear back. A rare chance for insight into the writing of Bush’s 1985 masterpiece. Bush must have known about Mick Wall and his music tastes. Finding kinship and things in common, it would have been thrilling to be invited to her home to be around someone putting together songs that would appear on one of the greatest albums ever. It seems like they instantly hit it off:

“It all seems like a dream now… but back in 1984, during what was then viewed as a period of unprecedented reclusiveness for a major rock star, I put in a request to interview Kate Bush. Expecting nothing back – she had more or less disappeared since her 1982 album The Dreaming had received such a bashing in the press – I was astonished when the record company got back and said, “She’d love to speak to you.”

It seemed the opportunity to be interviewed by a bona fide rock writer intrigued her. “She likes Def Leppard,” they added, hopefully. Strange to relate by today’s manicured PR standards, but I was given her address and told to pitch up sometime that week. A few days later I was at door of the south London house Kate used as her home-from-home workplace; a space to play piano, dance and listen to records.

She answered the door herself with a big smile and ushered me in. Dressed in an understated way – no make-up, hair brushed but not sculpted, just jeans and top to keep her warm – Kate was 25 at the time, and very beautiful.

She skipped off to make tea and I knelt by the record player, flipping through her albums. I recall seeing Bryan Ferry’s These Foolish Things, some Pink Floyd, some Bowie, plus some other things I didn’t easily recognise. Classical, maybe? Dance?

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

She returned with tea and biscuits and we sat cross-legged on the floor together. With no new album to promote, I didn’t really know what I should talk about. I hadn’t actually expected to be given an interview. Somehow we got onto the subject of smoking dope, and she giggled and talked of “pinning” – pretending to inhale from a lump of burning hash held up by the unbent pin of a badge.

Kate said she was “very influenced in my writing by old traditional folk songs, handed down by new generations of musicians but with the original atmosphere and emotion still maintained. The sort of music my mother would have listened to and danced to, and used to play for me when I was very little. It’s probably my biggest musical influence.”

…It was her ability to dance so extravagantly that made her live show, which I’d recently caught at London’s Palladium, so enervating and different. “I got so incredibly nervous before I’d go on,” she confessed. “All I’d ever really done in the way of live performance before the tour were TV shows and videos. And the sort of props and ideas for the show we were carrying around with us seemed a bit ambitious, a bit awesome, at first. But I loved those shows. Once I was onstage I had so much fun. I would like to do more of it...”

In another life, could she have made a career out of dancing? “I had people approaching me at the dance class, asking if I wanted to go to Germany and dance in clubs and things, and for a time I really got into the dance thing... But I don’t think I was good enough. I didn’t stand out enough.”

Did she write all the time? “No. I have to be forced to write for an album.” She wasn’t very prolific then? “I used to be. I used to write every day, and if it wasn’t very good keep a little bit and maybe use it in something else. As soon as Wuthering Heights became a hit, though, my whole routine was just blown apart. It was extraordinary how suddenly everything changed.”

Were her dancer mum and musician had worried when she signed to EMI at 16? Sex and drugs etc? “No, not at all,” she smiled. “They had seen it coming for a long time. The original idea was to see if we could sell my songs to a publisher, not that I should be a singer or a performer or anything. We had quite modest, curious aims. So it was gradual and they were always supportive.”

Kate told me she was currently writing songs for a new album – which was to be Hounds Of Love. She explained how she hennaed her hair, crimped it occasionally, and that she had make-up artists and hair beauticians available, as well as costume designers equipped to run off fantasy threads like the still-legendary Babooshka number”.

I am fascinated by this interview because I did not know about it. I can imagine that it would have been hard for Kate Bush to take on too many interviews. As she was making a new album, there would have been this need for secrecy. Now, if there was a new album, she would interview the year it came out. In 1984, she was at a point when Hounds of Love was coming along but not complete. Her home studio was built and it was a really exciting time. Although there would have been stress and some hard days, the production process for Hounds of Love was one where Bush established herself as one of the best. Being invited into her world and getting to soak up the atmosphere around her. I assumed that the Mick Wall interview was at either East Wickham Farm – where she recorded most of Hounds of Love – or the 17th-century farmhouse in the Kent countryside near Sevenoaks she moved into with Del Palmer (her boyfriend and engineer/musician) in 1983. The mention of the South London “home-from-home” seems to nod to East Wickham Farm (in Welling), though it could be a flat that she had in South London. That hospitality and warmth Bush has always exuded. She seemed really relaxed and at a place where she was a lot more at ease. You can see interviews from 1982 where she seems tired or strained. The result of working on The Dreaming. In 1984, Bush was busy in the studio and there was this coming together of some of her most ambitious and remarkable work. This Mick Wall interview gives us a rare glimpse into the psyche of Kate Bush in 1984. 1985 would see her very busy with promotion. I would love to see more photos from Bush recording Hounds of Love and creating this masterpiece album. Maybe we will see that one day. I was keen to make people aware of an interview that really provokes images and warmth. A 1984 chat that finds Bush in a good place. Some assumed Bush had disappeared or was retired because she had not released a new album. It was clear that this was so far from the truth! In 1984, she was busy writing and recording. Little did the world know what she would gift the world…

THE following year.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Songs from Incredible Albums Turning Thirty Next Year

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The Digital Mixtape

Songs from Incredible Albums Turning Thirty Next Year

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IN December…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

I am going to run a series of The Digital Mixtapes collating songs from albums celebrating big anniversaries next year. Taking in classics from 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. It is something I enjoy. However, I might repeat myself because I want to focus on 1995 now. Because Supergrass recently announced that they will be back on the road next year touring to mark thirty years since the release of their debut, I Should Coco, I was thinking about other albums released that year. 1995 is one of the biggest and most astonishing years in music history. 1994, 1995 and 1997 being tremendous. Because Supergrass (Gaz Coombes, Danny Goffey and Mick Quinn) start a ten-leg tour from May next year to mark thirty years of their amazing debut, I have been thinking about contemporaries’ albums that made a commercial or critical impact in 1995. As you can from the playlist, there were loads of epic and timeless albums released! I hope that I have not missed any! Whether you were alive in 1995 or are looking back as a younger listener, the assortment of songs gives you a flavour of what was popular nearly thirty years ago now. I will mark the best of 1995 in December but, because of Supergrass taking back to the road, this Digital Mixtape celebrated…

THE best of 1995.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five: Inside the Amazing Singles, and Three Songs That Could Have Been Singles

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five

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

Inside the Amazing Singles, and Three Songs That Could Have Been Singles

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AS Kate Bush’s…

The Sensual World turns thirty-five on 16th October, I wanted to put out a couple of features. In this second one, I am going to look at the amazing singles released from Bush’s sixth studio album. Compared to 1985’s Hounds of Love and the singles released from this album, The Sensual World offered something different. Reaching number two in the U.K., this is among Kate Bush’s most successful albums. An artist who always charts high with her albums, The Sensual World was a success around the world. Although the reviews were not as universally positive as they were for Hounds of Love, there was a lot of love for her 1989 underrated and understated masterpiece. Perhaps not as acclaimed as its predecessor,  I do think that The Sensual World has a richness and depth that is not explored and dissected as much as it should. Hounds of Love’s singles all went to the top forty in the U.K. The Big Sky was the lowest placing at thirty-seven. Hounds of Love had four singles. The Sensual World three. I am going to spotlight those three singles and suggest three songs that should have been considered as singles. I think the album could have benefited from at least one further single. The first single, The Sensual World, was released on 18th September, 1989 and reached number twelve in the U.K. It was quite a high chart position. One of Bush’s most beloved songs, this charged and sensual track has this beauty, lust and heat that gets into the blood. One of Kate Bush’s most stirring and accomplished set of lyrics. Let’s start out here, The Kate Bush Encyclopedia gives more information about the first single from The Sensual World:

“The Sensual World’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was originally released as a single by EMI Records on 18 September 1989. Also released on her sixth album The Sensual World.

Bush was inspired to write the song after hearing Irish actress Siobhan McKenna read the closing soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses, in which the character Molly Bloom recalls her earliest sexual experience with husband-to-be Leopold Bloom. The book was published in 1922.

Kate, believing the text had fallen to public domain, simply lifted parts from it and sang them on the backing track she’d created. She approached director Jimmy Murakami to make a video for the song, and he expressed doubts because he suspected James Joyce’s grandson Stephen James Joyce had the rights to the book. Kate then contacted him numerous times, but the Joyce estate refused to release the words. She spent over a year trying to gain permission before accepting defeat.

In the end, she kept the backing track but “re-approached the words”, writing a lyric that sounded a lot like the original text but also added the dimension of ‘stepping out of the page / into the sensual world‘, in effect Molly Bloom stepping out of the book and walking into real life.

Musically, one of the main hooks in the chorus of The Sensual World was inspired by a traditional Macedonian piece of music called ‘Nevestinsko Oro’ (‘Bride’s Dance’). A recording of this piece of music was sent to Kate by Jan Libbenga. As in the traditional version, the melody is played on uilleann pipes, in this case by Irish musician Davy Spillane.

There’s a few songs that have been difficult to write. I think the most frustrating and difficult to write was the song, ‘The Sensual World’. Uh, you’ve probably heard some of the story, that originally it was written to the lyrics at the end of ‘Ulysses’, and uh, I just couldn’t believe how the whole thing came together, it was so… It was just like it was meant to be. We had this sort of instrumental piece, and uh, I had this idea for like a rhythmic melody, and I just thought of the book, and went and got it, and the words fitted – they justfitted, the whole thing fitted, it was ridiculous. You know the song was saying, ‘Yes! Yes!’. And when I asked for permission, you know, they said, ‘No! No!’ That was one of the hardest things for me to swallow. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was that, um, I wasn’t allowed to have access to this great piece of work that I thought was public. And in fact I really didn’t think you had to get permission but that you would just pay a royalty. So I was really, really frustrated about it. And, um… kind of rewrote the words, trying to keep the same – same rhythm and sounds. And, um, eventually, through rewriting the words we also changed the piece of music that now happens in the choruses, so if they hadn’t obstructed the song, it would have been a very different song. So, to look at it positively, although it was very difficult, in the end, I think it was, it was probably worth all the trouble. Thank you very much.

Kate Bush Con, 1990

A lot of people have said it’s sexy. That’s nice. The original piece was sexy, too; it had an incredible sensuality which I’d like to think this track has as well. I suppose it is walking the thin line a bit, but it’s about the sensuality of the world and how it is so incredibly pleasurable to our senses if we open up to it. You know, just simple things, like sitting in the sun, just contact with nature. It’s like, for most people, their holidays are the only time they get a real burst of the planet!

Will Johnson, ‘A Slowly Blooming English Rose’. Pulse (UK), December 1989”.

Kate Bush’s production is amazing throughout The Sensual World. I think that her songwriting is as good as on any album. A remarkable collection of ten songs. Even though three singles were released, there are three others that could have worked. And had some remarkable versions and high chart positions. However, the second single from The Sensual World is a masterpiece. Considered one of her best songs, This Woman’s Work has been featured on adverts and in films. The song has been released several times as a single. On 20th November, 1989, the public were able to purchase a single that appeared the year before in a successful film. This Woman’s World reached twenty-five in the U.K. Not a high chart position, I do think that it deserved a lot better. The closing track of The Sensual World – Walk Straight Down the Middle was a bonus track on C.D. and cassette versions -, it is a gorgeous and truly moving song. Again, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia offers insight and background to this stunning song:

“This Woman’s Work’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was originally released on the soundtrack of the movie She’s Having A Baby in 1988. A year later, the song was included in Kate’s sixth studio album The Sensual World.

The lyric is about being forced to confront an unexpected and frightening crisis during the normal event of childbirth. Written for the movie She’s Having a Baby, director John Hughes used the song during the film’s dramatic climax, when Jake (Kevin Bacon) learns that the lives of his wife (Elizabeth McGovern) and their unborn child are in danger. As the song plays, we see a montage sequence of flashbacks showing the couple in happier times, intercut with shots of him waiting for news of Elizabeth and their baby’s condition. Bush wrote the song specifically for the sequence, writing from a man’s (Jake’s) viewpoint and matching the words to the visuals which had already been filmed.

The song was used in the 21st episode of the third season of Party Of Five, an episode of the TV series Felicity, an episode of the soap opera Another World, the second episode of the series Alias and in the first episode of the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale. The song was also used in the film A Man Called Otto.

Critical response

A luscious, spiritually elevating showstopper ballad. How does anyone get that much cool into a voice? Ecstatic with wintry tragedy, undeniably beauteous.

Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 25 November 1989

Is it possible through pop to truly represent the emotions of a young man stranded in the waiting room while his lover’s life is threatened by the birth of their baby? I think not. Unless you’re Kate Bush…

Len Brown, NME, 25 November 1989

There’s a film called ‘She’s Having A Baby’. And John Hughes, the director, rung up and said that he had a sequence in the film that he really wanted a song written to be with. And I’d only worked the once before on the ‘Castaway’ film – where I’d really enjoyed that – so I was extremely tempted by the offer. And when he sent the piece of film that the song was going to be part of, I just thought it was wonderful, it was so moving, a very moving piece of film. And in a way, there was a sense that the whole film built up to this moment. And it was a very easy song to write. It was very quick. And just kind of came, like a lot of songs do. Even if you struggle for months, in the end, they just kind of go – BLAH! – You know. [Laughs]. So that was the first song that I wrote for ‘The Sensual World’ album. In fact at the time we weren’t even sure whether to put it on the album or not. And I must say that Del was very instrumental in saying that I should put it on the album, and I’m very glad I did. Because I had the most fantastic response – in some ways, maybe the greatest response – to this song. And I was really – I was absolutely thrilled, that you felt that way about it.

Kate Bush Con, 1990”.

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

The third and final single from The Sensual World was her first single of the 1990s. It is also the lowest-charting releases from the album. Released on 26th January, 1990, Love and Anger reached thirty-eight. One of the most interesting aspects of Love and Anger is its B-sides. Ken, The Confrontation and One Last Look Around the House Before We Go are fantastically varied songs. Ken is probably the standout. I love the B-sides from The Sensual World. This Woman’s Work had Be Kind to My Mistakes and I'm Still Waiting. The Sensual World boasted Walk Straight Down the Middle and The Sensual World (Instrumental). It is also worth mentioning how Love and Anger reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1989. It was Bush's only chart-topper on any U.S. chart until 2022. Love and Anger features David Gilmour on guitar. One of the most difficult songs Bush ever wrote, I am glad that there was some positive critical acclaim for the single. The first taste of Bush as a singles artist in the 1990s. Again, a huge thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for information about Love and Anger:

“Critical response

Unfortunately the ‘serious’ music press in the UK was not too positive about this single. Only the magazine Kerrang! offered praise.

Is it too late to take back all those gushing hymns of praise we wrote in homage to Kate’s recent LP? [This is] pretty dispensable, fairly orthodox pop-rock listening.

Paul Lester, Melody Maker, 3 March 1990

Kate seems to have lost the plot… all middle without a beginning or an end… lost in an unfocused mire…

Tim Nicholson, Record Mirror, 3 March 1990

Dynamic understanding and depth that is quite untouchable. Bloody fantastic.

Phil Wilding, Kerrang!, 3 March 1990

Remarkably, US reviews were much more positive:

Bush recalls her ‘Big Sky’ in this lively introspective number from the hit album… already a no. 1 smash with modern rock programmers.

Bill coleman, Billboard (USA), 9 december 1989

This bristles with vigour electricity and life… fuelled by cascades of crashing guitars and a huge chanting chorus of background vocals… captures the power and sweetness of Kate Bush’s voice and music.

College Music Journal (USA), November 1989

It’s one of the most difficult songs I think I’ve ever written. It was so elusive, and even today I don’t like to talk about it, because I never really felt it let me know what it’s about. It’s just kind of a song that pulled itself together, and with a tremendous amount of encouragement from people around me. There were so many times I thought it would never get on the album. But I’m really pleased it did now.

Interview, WFNX Boston (USA), 1989

I couldn’t get the lyrics. They were one of the last things to do. I just couldn’t find out what the song was about, though the tune was there. The first verse was always there, and that was the problem, because I’d already set some form of direction, but I couldn’t follow through. I didn’t know what I wanted to say at all. I guess I was just tying to make a song that was comforting, up tempo, and about how when things get really bad, it’s alright really – “Don’t worry old bean. Someone will come and help you out.”
The song started with a piano, and Del put a straight rhythm down. Then we got the drummer, and it stayed like that for at least a year and a half. Then I thought maybe it could be okay, so we got Dave Gilmour in. This is actually one of the more difficult songs – everyone I asked to try and play something on this track had problems. It was one of those awful tracks where either everything would sound ordinary, really MOR, or people just couldn’t come to terms with it. They’d ask me what it was about, but I didn’t know because I hadn’t written the lyrics. Dave was great – I think he gave me a bit of a foothold there, really. At least there was a guitar that made some sense. And John [Giblin] putting the bass on – that was very important. He was one of the few people brave enough to say that he actually liked the song.

Tony Horkins, ‘What Katie Did Next’. International Musician, December 1989”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured during the photoshoot for The Sensual World’s single cover/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I am going to match the three singles with three songs that could have been singles. 1993’s The Red Shoes offered up five singles. Not all of them were U.K. releases. I think that The Sensual World could have offered more. As it approaches its thirty-fifth anniversary, I have selected three songs that could have been successful singles. The first is The Fog. The third song on The Sensual World, I often think that it is a track that could have been on Hounds of Love. Appearing on the second side, The Ninth Wave. It is a phenomenal moment that is my favourite from Bush’s 1989 album. Apart from The Fog being an epic song, it also features the voice of Kate Bush’s father, Robert. I love song of the lyrics and exchanges: “Just put your feet down child/The water is only waist high/I’ll let go of you gently/Then you can swim to me/Is this love big enough to watch over me?/Big enough to let go of me/Without hurting me/Like the day I learned to swim?”. I think that The Fog could have had a brilliant video and would have charted high. Apologies if I have covered this topic and song before. When thinking about singles that could have followed Love and Anger, I feel The Fog would have been a natural success. I will donate to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia because, when it comes to information and details of Bush’s music, they are on top:

“Again, it’s quite a complex song, where it’s very watery. It’s meant to be the idea of a big expanse of water, and being in a relationship now and flashing back to being a child being taught how to swim, and using these two situations as the idea of learning to let go. When I was a child, my father used to take me out into the water, and he’d hold me by my hands and then let go and say “OK, now come on, you swim to me.” As he’d say this, he’d be walking backwards so the gap would be getting bigger and bigger, and then I’d go [Splutters]. I thought that was such an interesting situation where you’re scared because you think you’re going to drown, but you know you won’t because your father won’t let you drown, and the same for him, he’s kind of letting go, he’s letting the child be alone in this situation. Everyone’s learning and hopefully growing and the idea that the relationship is to be in this again, back there swimming and being taught to swim, but not by your father but by your partner, and the idea that it’s OK because you are grown up now so you don’t have to be frightened, because all you have to do is put your feet down and the bottom’s there, the water isn’t so deep that you’ll drown. You put your feet down, you can stand up and it’s only waist height. Look! What’s the problem, what are you worried about?

Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989

That started at the Fairlight. We got these big chords of strings, and put this line over the top, and then I got this idea of these words – slipping into the fog. I thought wouldn’t it be interesting to sort of really visualize that in a piece of music, with all these strings coming in that would actually be the fog. So I wrote a bit of music that went on the front of what I’d done, and extended it backwards with this bit on the front that was very simple and straightforward, but then went into the big orchestral bit, to get the sense of fog coming in.
Then we put a drummer on, and Nigel Kennedy, the violinist, came in and replaced the Fairlight violin, which changed the nature of it. He’s great to work with – such a great musician. The times we work together we sort of write together. I’ll say something like, “what about doing something a bit like Vaughan Williams?”, and he’ll know the whole repertoire, and he’ll pick something, and maybe I’ll change something. By doing that we came up with this different musical section that hadn’t been on the Fairlight.
So when I got all this down it seemed to make sense story-wise. This new section became like a flashback area. And then I got the lyrics together about slipping into the fog, and relationships, trying to let go of people.
It sounded great with the Fairlight holding it together, but it just didn’t have the sense of dimension I wanted. So we got hold of Michael Kamen, who orchestrated some of the last album, and we said we wanted this bit here with waves and flashbacks. He’s really into this because he’s always writing music for films, and he loves the idea of visual imagery. So we put his orchestra in on top of the Fairlight.
Again a very complicated process, and he was actually the last thing to go on. I don’t know how anything comes out as one song, because sometimes it’s such a bizarre process. It does seem to work together somehow.

Tony Horkins, ‘What Katie Did Next’. International Musician, December 1989”.

A song that was released as a single in 2011, Deeper Understanding is one of the most obvious overlooked songs on The Sensual World. It is such a natural single. Director’s Cut was Bush reworking songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. Even though the new version of Deeper Understanding is great, it does not have the same impact as the original. It was prescient and scarily accurate Bush discussing the impact and control computers had in 1989. It all came true! It was less futuristic and impactful in 2011. That is why I think the 1989 version should have been a single. On the version from The Sensual World, Charlie Morgan plays drums. John Giblin played bass – he would also appear on the 2011 version -, whilst Paddy Bush handles tupan. The highlight is the Trio Bulgarka (soloist: Yanka Rupkhina) on vocals. A penultimate visit to the Kate Bush Encyclopeida, I feel Deeper Understanding would have been a top-twenty single in 1990. It could have followed Love and Anger or been the fifth and final single – if we had The Fog as the fourth:

“Kate about ‘Deeper Understanding’

This is about people… well, about the modern situation, where more and more people are having less contact with human beings. We spend all day with machines; all night with machines. You know, all day, you’re on the phone, all night you’re watching telly. Press a button, this happens. You can get your shopping from the Ceefax! It’s like this long chain of machines that actually stop you going out into the world. It’s like more and more humans are becoming isolated and contained in their homes. And this is the idea of someone who spends all their time with their computer and, like a lot of people, they spend an obsessive amount of time with their computer. People really build up heavy relationships with their computers! And this person sees an ad in a magazine for a new program: a special program that’s for lonely people, lost people. So this buff sends off for it, gets it, puts it in their computer and then like , it turns into this big voice that’s saying to them, “Look, I know that you’re not very happy, and I can offer you love: I’m her to love you. I love you!”

And it’s the idea of a divine energy coming through the least expected thing. For me, when I think of computers, it’s such a cold contact and yet, at the same time, I really believe that computers could be a tremendous way for us to look at ourselves in a very spiritual way because I think computers could teach us more about ourselves than we’ve been able to look at, so far. I think there’s a large part of us that is like a computer. I think in some ways, there’s a lot of natural processes that are like programs… do you know what I mean? And I think that, more and more, the more we get into computers and science like that, the more we’re going to open up our spirituality. And it was the idea of this that this… the last place you would expect to find love, you know, real love, is from a computer and, you know, this is almost like the voice of angels speaking to this person, saying they’ve come to save them: “Look, we’re here, we love you, we’re here to love you!” And it’s just too much, really, because this is just a mere human being and they’re being sucked into the machine and they have to be rescued from it. And all they want is that, because this is “real” contact.

Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1 interview, 14 October 1989

I suppose it’s looking at society where more and more people are being shut away in their homes with televisions and computers, and in a way being encouraged not to come out. You know, there’s so many people who live in London in high-rise flats – they don’t know their neighbors, they don’t know anyone else in the building. People are getting very isolated. It was the idea of this person who had less and less human contact, and more and more contact with their computer, where they were working on it all day and all night. They see an advert in a magazine for a program for people who are lonely and lost, so they write off for it. When they get it back in the mail and put it into the computer, it’s the idea – a bit like an old sci-fi film, really – where it would just come to life and suddenly there’s this kind of incredible being there, like a great spiritual visitation. This computer is offering this person love, and the idea that they’ve had such little human warmth, they’re getting this tremendous affection and deep love from their computer. But it’s so intense it’s too much for them to take, and they actually have to be rescued from just being killed with love, I suppose.

WFNX Boston radio, Fall 1989”.

There were four other songs on The Sensual World I have not covered. One or two not suitable as single. There is one song that I think could have been a stronger chart entry than The Fog. Never Be Mine was re-recorded for 2011’s Director’s Cut and also featured during the 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. It is a track that Bush clearly has affection for. I do feel it could have been a successful single. A wonderful album with so many strong songs, it is interesting reading what Kate Bush said about the track:

“Kate about ‘Never Be Mine’

It’s that whole thing of how, in some situations, it’s the dream you want, not the real thing. It was pursuing a conscious realisation that a person is really enjoying the fantasy and aware it won’t become reality. So often you think it’s the end you want, but this is actually looking at the process that will never get you there. Bit of a heart-game you play with yourself.

Len Brown, ‘In The Realm Of The Senses’. NME (UK), 7 October 1989

I wanted a sort of eastern sounding rhythm. I wrote it first on the piano, though the words were completely different, except for the choruses. I did it on the piano to a Fairlight rhythm that Del programmed – I think that maybe because of the quality of the sounds, it was harder for Del to come up with the patterns. And I was more strict – he found it much harder. I think the pattern in ‘Heads We’re Dancing’ is really good – really unusual, the best he came up with. But ‘Never Be Mine’ was kind of tabla based. We got Eberhard (Weber) over to play bass and he played on the whole song. When we were trying to piece it together later we kept saying it just doesn’t feel right, so we just took the bass out and had it in these two sections. You hardly notice it going out at all. I think the song has a very light feel about it, which helps the whole imagery. The Uilean pipes have a very light feel, and the piano is light… I think it’s a nice contrast when the bass suddenly come in.
The piano on this is an upright Bernstein that has a really nice sound – I think it has to do with proportions for us. We did have a big piano and it’s a small room, and it didn’t record well. The small piano sounds much bigger.

Tony Horkins, ‘What Katie Did Next’. International Musician, December 1989”.

On 16th October, The Sensual World turns thirty-five. It is one of Kate Bush’s best albums. As I mentioned in the first anniversary feature, critics now place it high in the album rankings. Normally third or fourth. It is an amazingly compelling album released at a time when Bush was in her thirties and was writing in a different way. More concerned with her femininity and embracing her womanhood, it was different to her previous work. I do really love the three singles that came from the album. It was natural that The Sensual World and This Woman’s Work would be singles. The two most celebrated songs from that album. Even if Love and Anger is less obvious, it is still a wonderful song. I feel there was capacity to have one or two other tracks released as singles. As I suggested, there was plenty of choice. Just think what videos she would have made for The Fog or Deeper Understanding! It is tantalising. In any case, what we did get was three strong singles from an amazing album. Released in a year where Hip-Hop was ruling and Pop was evolving, perhaps The Sensual World did not really fit in. Some critics took against it and felt the album is not her strongest work. Contemporary critics regard it very highly. What we do get from The Sensual World are ten songs with their own skin and sound. They fit together wonderfully. Bush did rework four of The Sensual World’s tracks in 2011 for Director’s Cut. Interestingly, two were originally released as singles: The Sensual World (renamed Flower of the Mountain); This Woman’s Work was also re-recorded. The other two are songs I have suggested as lost singles: Deeper Understanding and Never Be Mine. Maybe Bush was not happy with those tracks and felt they benefited from being taken apart and given more room and space to breathe. What The Sensual World highlighted brightly is that there are…

NO artist quite like Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life): Why Dynamic Pricing Ticketing Needs to End

FEATURE:

 

 

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

IN THIS PHOTO: Green Day/PHOTO CREDIT: Samuel Bayer 

Why Dynamic Pricing Ticketing Needs to End

_________

IT did not start with Oasis…

IN THIS PHOTO: Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis

though dynamic pricing and these ridiculously inflated ticket costs for fans was definitely brought to the forefront when they recently announced 2025 reunion gigs. So many people desperately wanting to see the band but, due to demand, only these very expensive tickets left. It did cause understandable fury and disgust from fans. Like Oasis were cashing in. There is debate as to whether this pricing scheme and model makes it harder for scalpers to sell tickets at an inflated cost. However, if that is the case, then a lot more needs to be done to ensure that all fans can get access to affordable tickets. If you do not know about dynamic pricing, this article from The Guardian explains more:

“Oasis fans spent many frustrating hours of the weekend locked in a desperate race to secure tickets for the Mancunian band’s long-awaited reunion tour.

Shows were initially advertised at £148.50. But when fans finally reached the front of the queue, after many hours of waiting, many found that basic standing tickets had been rebranded as “in demand” and had jumped in price to £355.20.

The culprit is an increasingly common strategy known as dynamic pricing. It is commonplace in other industries but how and why did it creep into live music?

What is dynamic pricing?

When a seller does not set a fixed price for their product, but instead adjusts what they charge in response to changing demand. Airline tickets and hotel rooms are a longstanding example, rising during the school holidays or at weekends. More recently, companies such as the ride-hailing app Uber have deployed “surge pricing” to adjust prices more rapidly, in response to real-time demand fluctuations. Unlike ticketing, this in theory balances out the supply and demand equation by attracting more drivers to the area.

What about in live music?

For the biggest artists, limits on venue capacity mean there is often far more demand than supply.

In the US, dynamic pricing has long been the standard approach to this imbalance, with prices ratcheting up for the most in-demand shows. In the UK, artists have historically been more restrained, keeping ticket prices artificially low so that access is more about luck and dedication than the size of your wallet. However, in recent years dynamic pricing has become increasingly common.

How did dynamic pricing take off in the UK?

In 2018, Ticketmaster had its regular “primary” ticketing business but also owned two “secondary” ticketing websites, GetMeIn and Seatwave.

Secondary sites, which allow people to resell at any price, are overrun by professional touts, who can flip thousands of tickets for a huge profit. Amid public outcry over touting, Ticketmaster shut down GetMeIn and Seatwave, scoring a public relations victory.

Soon, fans started noticing the emergence of Ticketmaster Platinum, a controversial “premium” service that drip-fed higher-priced tickets into the market, after gigs were supposedly sold out. That year, Paul McCartney’s UK tour appeared to have sold out within minutes. But seats at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, which had been on sale at £65, were later released via Platinum for more than £500.

Could artists stop dynamic pricing?

The decision ultimately rests with the artist, their managers and promoters. However, Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, a globe-spanning promotion and ticketing behemoth that is the dominant force in live music in most major economies. It has an incentive to advise the use of dynamic pricing because Ticketmaster takes a cut of the ticket price. The higher the price, the higher the cut.

Music industry sources say artists are often told that dynamic pricing deters touts from fleecing fans. In theory, the higher face-value price decreases the margin on offer for touts. However, Oasis tickets have also been dynamically priced in Ireland, where for-profit resale is illegal and secondary sites are not advertising tickets for shows at Croke Park”.

I disagree that it has to be like this. That there is no other way. It does very much seem to be down to the band. Supergrass recently announced that they are hitting the stage to celebrate thirty years of their debut album, I Should Coco, next year. When announcing the news, they took a dig at Oasis and their dynamic pricing controversy:

“Supergrass have announced a reunion tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album.

The ten-date tour next year will be the first time the Oxford band, who split in 2010 but reunited in 2020, have ever played their debut album I Should Coco live in its entirety.

The album reached number one on the UK album charts on its release on 15 May 1995, and features tracks including Alright and Caught by the Fuzz.

Announcing the tour, the band took aim at fellow Britpop icons Oasis and the recent furore surrounding ticket sales for the Manchester-rockers' comeback shows.

"Supergrass return to perform their debut album live, in its entirety, for the first time plus a small selection of additional fan favourites," the band's announcement on Monday said.

"Dynamic pricing not included," they added, referring to a policy that saw the cost of some tickets to the upcoming Oasis gigs double due to high demand”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Siupergrass in 1995

One can argue that there has always been imbalance when it comes to ticket pricing. Most major artists tour in big venues, so you can pay relatively little and be up high and not have a great view, or you can be at a better vantage point and pay more. Some artists charge for V.I.P. tickets and there has always been this issue with that discrepancy. Also, think about artists like Taylor Swift and the fact that some fans were charged $11,000 for a ticket. It is eye-watering amounts of money! It means only celebrities and the very wealthy can afford them. These expensive tickets might also be bought by fans who can’t afford it but are determined to see an artist. That fear of missing out can lead them to make risky decisions. If you are in the same venue and all get the same experience, then why is there such a huge gulf?! It is true that most major artists’ ticket princes are high. Attending live music should be more affordable though, when you take into consideration venues’ costs and other factors, sometimes it is unavoidable. With V.I.P. tickets, you sort of know what you are paying for, yet dynamic pricing seems to offer no luxuries or benefits. Essentially fans getting the same deal as others but having to pay so much more for it! It is frustrating because you can see bands like Supergrass and brilliant artists who charge fans far less. Make it much more affordable. I don’t think artists have their hands tied and they are being forced into a corner. They can have control regarding the types of venues they play and, essentially, the cost of tickets. Oasis were reacting with greed to demand. More concerned with money and profiting than ensuring that all their fans had a fair chance to come see them, this is also true of artists like Taylor Swift and Green Day.

The U.S. band have made headlines because they are also implementing dynamic pricing for upcoming gigs. Again, the rationale seems to be that these high-priced tickets – that seem to provide no benefit or real exclusivity that would justify such a steep mark-up – makes it harder for scalpers to benefit. However, fans can buy ordinary tickets and resell them and make a big profit. I don’t believe dynamic pricing safeguards fans from scalpers. There needs to be action and activation regarding this insane ticketing system and ensuring that fans are not ripped off. That is what is happening. Dress it how you like but it boils down to this: artists are gouging fans and hiding behind flimsy excuses and a clear sense of greed. The Guardian discussed the recent announcement that Green Day tickets for a future Sydney show are going for $500:

“Dynamic ticket pricing helps combat ticket scalpers, the company behind $500 Green Day tickets claims – but music industry insiders and consumer groups dispute that, with some concerned the controversial practice skews live events to the rich.

Dynamic pricing – when the cost of products rise and fall according to demand – is well established in Australia, from Uber’s surge prices to utilities and airline fares.

It’s increasingly prevalent in entertainment, with Australian fans of Pearl Jam and now Green Day paying variously inflated amounts depending on when they bought their concert tickets. The Australian Grand Prix and Australian Open are also onboard, with seats at the 2024 men’s final fetching between $2,000 and $6,000.

On Wednesday, it was possible to buy “in demand” tickets to Green Day’s Sydney show for $399.60 to $499.60. Set price tickets started at $217.16, despite being advertised at $135.60. Tickets for the band’s Melbourne and Gold Coast shows were slightly lower and fixed at set prices.

Both Ticketmaster and Ticketek defended the practice, telling Guardian Australia prices were set by artists and their teams. They also claimed demand-driven pricing mitigates the problem of ticket scalping, when tickets are bought – often by AI bots – and resold at inflated prices.

“Artists and their teams set their prices and ticketing strategy. Ticketmaster helps execute,” a Ticketmaster spokesperson said. Cameron Hoy, the COO and head of global ticketing at TEG and Ticketek, said dynamic pricing “is directed from the artist and or promoter”.

Some artists have pushed back. The Cure labelled the practice “greedy”, while Taylor Swift chose set prices for her Australian shows and dynamic prices for other legs of her Eras world tour. Green Day’s management was contacted for comment.

In February, Michael Rapino, the president and CEO of Ticketmaster’s owner, Live Nation, told the company’s quarterly earnings meeting the “best sales pitch” for dynamic pricing – which he planned to roll out around the world – was that it ate into scalpers’ earnings.

Jarni Blakkarly of consumer rights group Choice has been investigating the “concerning” impacts of the trend that began in the US. He questioned Rapino’s theory, given Australian state and territory laws prevent resale values more than 10% above the original ticket sale value.

“If everyone purchased their tickets at different prices, how will the consumer know the price they are paying is 10% above the sale price?” he said. “I think dynamic pricing would make it harder to stop ticket scalping.”

Taylor Swift chose set prices for her Australian shows and dynamic prices for other legs of her Eras world tour. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

Dion Brant, the CEO of Frontier Touring, which is promoting the tours of Luke Combs, Supergrass and Primal Scream, said about half a dozen of Frontier’s visiting artists, including Paul McCartney, have chosen to apportion a small number of dynamically priced “platinum” tickets as an anti-scalping measure.

Selling a small percentage of tickets dynamically “makes sense” because it caters to the portion of the market willing to pay more for guaranteed decent seats and the money goes to the artist rather than to “abhorrent” scalpers, he said.

But the practice is more questionable when a large portion of tickets is priced according to demand, he said.

“This notion of trying to drive demand to such a point where people will pay anything, or confuse them to such a point where they don’t know what the real price is … we’re really uncomfortable with and we look to avoid at any cost,” he said.

The practice is here to stay, said Blakkarly, who has seen dynamic pricing in US supermarkets forcing customers to pay more for chilled drinks on a hot day. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Vishnu R Nair/Pexels

“There are no laws against it but there’s a valid discussion to be had about whether it should even be allowed in Australia,” he said, with the increasingly widespread practice raising “valid” questions around equity and ethics.

“At a minimum, companies need to be really open and transparent about how they are pricing tickets,” he said. “It really comes down to what consumers are willing to put up with.”

One of those was Green Day fan Madison Closter, who paid $280 for general admission to the “golden circle” standing-only section at the band’s Gold Coast show. The ticket was not dynamically priced but she said she was repeatedly unable to buy the tickets in her cart due to being told there was “no seating available for purchase”.

“This created a false sense of scarcity when purchasing,” she said.

“It is getting to the point where it is not viable for a lot of people to go to big concerts.”

Ticketek and Ticketmaster both said dynamic pricing works both ways, delivering discounted prices when demand is low – but Blakkarly said he had yet to witness that in practice.

“Do we really want to make a society where only the mega-rich can afford to go to a concert?” he said.

“There needs to be a broader public discussion about ticketing and whether live events should be more accessible to people from an equity perspective”.

It is madness that we should be discussing dynamic pricing! Rather than fans being priced out and others having to pay through the nose, there does need to be a bigger movement and campaign to ensure ticket prices remain affordable. So many gigs these days have standard tickets at such a stupidly high price! It can’t be only about the venue costs. There is an element of exploitation from artists. Plenty have provide you can play bigger spaces but keep the prices low. If scalpers and A.I. is a big threat then that needs to be tackled as soon as possible. From Oasis to Green Day, we are seeing exorbitant tickets prices overshadow the music. Venues are struggling and live music is facing a really rough patch. Seeing live music is so essential and a wonderful moment! Whilst dynamic pricing seem to be something bigger artists are implementing, it is still happening too often. Live music should not be reserved for the wealthy. Even your ordinary seats should be kept as low as possible as fans also have to factor in the cost of travel and so many other things. A gig can really stack up when it comes to cost! Dynamic pricing will put people off. It doesn’t need to be this way. We all hope we live to see the day when we say to dynamic pricing…

GOOD riddance.

FEATURE: The Wild Ones: Suede’s Dog Man Star at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Wild Ones

Suede’s Dog Man Star at Thirty

_________

ON 10th October…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins

Suede’s Dog Man Star turns thirty. Although, in 1994, Suede’s second studio album was not as revered and celebrated as their eponymous debut, in years since it has been seen as a masterpiece. One of the best albums of that decade. A real classic that boasts some of their best work. If their debut was inspired by artists like David Bowie, there is a more varied and eclectic palette that goes into the sound of Dog Man Star. Reaching number three in the U.K., I want to celebrate thirty years of a tremendous album that I can feel inspiring artists to this date. Prior to getting to a couple of reviews for Dog Man Star, there are some features that explore the album in greater depth. On its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2019, The Quietus investigated Dog Man Star around the release of an anniversary reissue. There will be a thirtieth anniversary reissue arriving on 2nd October:

“From the moment Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler started to hone their songcraft, the seeds of Suede’s second album, Dog Man Star were being sown. "It was always an album we knew we could make," say Anderson now. Early compositions like ‘Pantomime Horse’ and ‘The Drowners’ B-side ‘To The Birds’ are supremely confident structures, swelling to operatic climaxes, shifting gears like mini-symphonies. On ‘Where The Pigs Don’t Fly’, the stop-start intro has an almost regal sense of presence. This was music with poise and purpose, music that demanded to be heard by a band that demanded to be seen. Onstage and in song, the pair had forged an almost telepathic, brotherly bond. According to Butler’s recollections in John Harris’ The Last Party, they smoked the same cigarettes, dressed identically, the concerned Butler would accompany Anderson home on the tube.

In July 1993, three months after the release of their debut album, Suede teamed up with Derek Jarman for an AIDS benefit at the Clapham Grand. The show was their most lavish spectacle yet, augmented by cellists, piano and guest singers Chrissie Hynde and Siouxsie Sioux. Behind the band, the director’s Super 8 images flickered. Jarman had made visuals for Suede’s forebears, The Smiths and the Pet Shop Boys (both of them included, along with The Commotions on the Melody Maker ad Butler originally responded to). This wasn’t a gig. It was an event, the gesture a band entering an imperial phase would make. Their next release would be an eight-and-a-half-minute stand-alone single, ‘Stay Together’, that came wrapped in a gatefold sleeve. But just as Suede were ascending to that rarefied realm where commercial success keeps the company of ‘high art’, they started to fall apart…

Brett Anderson is hedonistically lapping up the shirt-shredding adoration that Suede are receiving in Britain and beyond. Like bassist Mat Osman and drummer Simon Gilbert, he is enjoying success. Anderson has gone from taking the occasional E and smoking the odd spliff to being quite a serious user. Crucially he sees a link between drugs and his songwriting. Bernard Butler, on the other hand, is panic-stricken, fearful of fame, irritated by the music biz treadmill and the clichéd rock star excesses his bandmates are indulging in. He’s also increasingly confused by the Brett Anderson character he reads about in Suede’s press.

As Suede tour the world, Anderson and Butler’s ideas for the band get bigger, just like the gap between them. Anderson hears Buddhist monks chanting in a Kyoto temple and decides he wants to summon a similar hypnotic sound to raise the curtain on Suede’s second album. Butler road tests new material at soundchecks, the booming sound of the riff and the drums fills empty halls. It’s a brutal beefy thud that he wants to recreate on the next Suede album. A visceral thump to the punch-bag of Suede’s public image, a fatal blow delivered to the debut’s top-heavy sound. It’s a raw, live noise that will tear through quiet songs and overdub-rich textures. Outside of the studio, those empty halls are the only places that will hear Butler play Suede’s new song.

As Suede embark on a second US tour in September 1993, tragedy strikes. Butler’s father passes away. He flies home for the funeral and then swiftly, insanely, returns to New York on a tour that, all will later agree, should be cancelled. Grief-stricken and missing the domestic anchor of his girlfriend, he moves further away from his bandmates. Too young, too drug-addled and too English, Anderson fears that trying to console Butler will only further damage their fragile relationship. Haunted by his own recent loss of his mother, he looks away. Butler travels with the road crew, gets stoned and composes continuously. Unbeknown to him, Anderson is writing furiously too, and onstage, Anderson and Butler are increasingly competitive. In New York, their last US gig is such a ferocious display of one-upmanship that only one record company representative dares approach them backstage.

Meanwhile back in London, Britpop has been gathering momentum since Anderson appeared on that Select cover superimposed onto a Union Jack with a not-so-graceful ‘Yanks Go Home’ headline. Suede’s touring has opened them up to broader vistas, from Kyoto’s chanting monks to Tinseltown’s casting couch atrocities. When their arch rivals Blur tour America, it concentrates their focus on a ‘British image’ (the mid-60s US blacklisting of heroes The Kinks triggered a similar Anglo-centric shift). Former Suede member Justine Frischmann has formed a new band, Elastica. ‘Car Song’ drives home the difference between her new music and that of her old band. An angular, perky two-and-a-half-minute backseat romp, it contrasts starkly with ‘She’s Not Dead’s languid foreplay, it’s motor tragedy romance.

Dog Man Star will be the most cinematic of records, peopled with James Dean, titles borrowed from Brando flicks, it even uses Marilyn as a Venus/Aphrodite archetype on ‘Heroine’. Butler’s music will be his most visual yet, "a song and a soundtrack", as Buller observed. Hollywood will worm its way into the album in the most random way. Both Anderson and Butler play movies in the studio, a constant backdrop, and a chance switching of a TV channel at the end of ‘The Asphalt World’ reveals the voice of Lauren Bacall in Woman’s World, a 1954 Technicolor drama.

Such heartstring tugs, such grand gestures reflect a band unafraid to think big. As weird as Anderson’s lyrical ideas are getting there’s also the desire, the ambition to write an American number one, to pen that evergreen anthem that sweeps the airwaves of daytime radio, a big broad stroke of genius that buries itself deep into the hearts of the kind of people he writes about. A song for lovers to marry to, a song to transport the housewife away from the drudgery of the everyday. It’s a song he always tries to write. One day he succeeds. After he writes the top line and lyric to ‘The Wild Ones’ he walks around Highgate in a gleeful daze. The only problem is that Butler wants to drag it from the realm of the morning show and into the outer limits with an extended outro that sticks Anderson through a Leslie cabinet.

Anderson’s new writing is rife with contradiction, just as Butler’s music zig-zags between euphoria and woe. The push of his acid-expanding imagination and of seeing new continents merges with the pull of old Suede themes and Anderson’s past, of suburban graves and housewives waiting by windows. No matter how far through America and Europe ‘Introducing The Band’ travels or how "far over Africa" and "endless Asia" ‘The Power’ glides, there is that inescapable impact of the suburbs on the English psyche. "Don’t take me back to the past," Anderson had begged at the end of ‘Stay Together’s rant, but it is forever present on Dog Man Star”.

I am moving on to a feature from GQ. They also looked at Dog Man Star on its twenty-fifth anniversary. I remember the album coming out in October 1994 and how it sat alongside other albums from the year. At a time of Britpop and other stands, Suede definitely stood out. They crafted an album that stands alongside the very best and most important of the 1990s:

“Second albums are often a disaster because bands have nothing left to say. If anything, Suede had too much left to say when they recorded theirs between March and July 1994. This difficult second album was difficult to make, difficult to sell and difficult for some to listen to. When it was released that winter, Dog Man Star caused a mixture of awe, confusion and sniggering. But the 25 years since have been kind to this imperfect masterpiece. It is the art of falling apart.

“It was our imperial phase,” Anderson tells me. “Everything we were writing felt like gold dust. But we knew people were listening and with that comes hubris.”

It was more ambitious but more masochistic than anything their contemporaries could conceive, let alone pull off. Suede didn’t quite pull it off themselves and yet Dog Man Star remains a remarkable achievement.

“The first album started Britpop but we didn’t get sucked into that cavalcade of nonsense and we wanted to go somewhere else,” says Anderson. “We saw other bands jumping on the British bandwagon and Dog Man Star was a reaction to that.”

“Dog Man Star fails quite a lot,” says bassist and founding member Mat Osman, “but it falls in a really interesting place. It’s a pretentious record, in the sense it’s reaching for something beyond its grasp. There’s something quite charming about that.”

The original version of Suede was formed in 1988 after Anderson and Osman met Justine Frischmann at University College London. Butler, an Afghan hound to Anderson’s poodle, joined the then Camden Town scenesters a year later after answering an advert in the NME, gradually replacing Anderson’s then-girlfriend Frischmann, who left in 1991 to date Damon Albarn and eventually form Elastica. Drummer Simon Gilbert had joined a year earlier at the recommendation of Ricky Gervais, of all people, who was their pretend manager for a few months.

Butler’s writing and playing has a uniquely dynamic melodrama and a sense of theatre that dovetailed with his partner’s. Suddenly labels were clamouring for a signature. Their first trio of hits on Nude and the debut album (which won the Mercury Music Prize in 1993) suggested Suede’s rise to national and then global dominance was inevitable. The grime of the Suede universe was in balance with a sense of seedy charisma that had been missing from British music since the Seventies. “Those early records were very on-the-cheap sexual glamour,” says Maconie. “It’s more about snogging than actual sex. Illicit, rushed, cramped and finding the glamour in that.”

“I look back on those days – until things really fell apart – with great pleasure,” says Osman. “It’s an amazing feeling, like you’re in the eye of the storm. To walk out into the streets and feel like this world was yours. We had money. We were young. With Dog Man Star it’s easy to think of it as this dank thing, but there are moments of pure joy in it.”

The volatility that powered Anderson and Butler’s collaboration soon turned into something as likely to destroy as to create. In the gap between the hype of Suede and the near collapse of Dog Man Star, the band did what successful bands do, although by the time of their biggest hit “Stay Together”, in February 1994, Butler, it seemed, wanted to resist the inexorable rush to debauchery. “You can justify drugs by saying you are trying to expand your ideas,” says Anderson. “We lived a pretty dissolute lifestyle. It was a mad blur of consumption. In between moments of hedonism we’d stumble into the studio and write songs and go on tour and I don’t know how we managed to get anything done. Every day was crazy.”

The mood of Dog Man Star changes so acutely from song to song it’s hard to get a feel for it at first, but eventually a broader narrative emerges in which each story complements the next. “Bringing ‘We Are The Pigs’ out as the first single may have been commercial suicide, but it’s still my favourite,” says Maconie. “It had everything about Suede distilled into that four minutes. Some of the reviews of Dog Man Star used the word pretentious, which makes me think, ‘Great.’ By and large, when a rock critic calls something pretentious it means it’s interesting.”

“The Wild Ones” is Anderson’s sweetheart song and it’s the epitome of his and Butler’s ability to communicate a kind of elated melancholy, with a chorus that conveys as much joy as pain. “‘The Wild Ones’ is pure romantic pop,” says Anderson. “It’s the most uplifting thing we ever did.”

After three months of barely contained animosity, the one-in, one-out arrangement became unsustainable and Butler quit before the album was completed. “I didn’t have the diplomatic skills to deliver what I needed to do,” said Butler, now a successful producer. “I’m full of apologies now.”

Session guitarists were brought in to finish “The Power”, a rousing sing-a-long about breaking free, Anderson’s most beloved theme. Now, Buller indulged the band in Butler’s absence. Some of the extended outros were cut. Brass and strings were added. A tap dancer was hired to record a percussion track. A zither was recorded and abandoned when they realised the zither player couldn’t play the zither. London’s Philharmonia Orchestra was enlisted for the last song. Just the usual rock’n’roll breakdown stuff.

“It was a strange period after Bernard left,” says Anderson. “There was a real sense of relief. I don’t mean to be catty but it had been very unpleasant for a long time and it felt like a weight had lifted. We had a few days in the studio when there was a weird sense of release. But then we suddenly realised we had work to do and we thought, ‘What the fuck are we going to do now?’.

I will end with a couple of reviews. I want to start with one from AllMusic. For an album that was recorded during a turbulent and trouble time for Suede, what resulted is something surprisingly cohesive and consistent. It is a credit to the band that they managed to write such affecting and timeless songs whilst their relationship was going through such strain:

“Instead of following through on the Bowie-esque glam stomps of their debut, Suede concentrated on their darker, more melodramatic tendencies on their ambitious second album, Dog Man Star. By all accounts, the recording of Dog Man Star was plagued with difficulties -- Brett Anderson wrote the lyrics in a druggy haze while sequestered in a secluded Victorian mansion, while Bernard Butler left before the album was completed -- which makes its singular vision all the more remarkable. Lacking any rocker on the level of "The Drowners" or "Metal Mickey" -- only the crunching "This Hollywood Life" comes close -- Dog Man Star is a self-indulgent and pretentious album of dark, string-drenched epics. But Suede are one of the few bands who wear pretensions well, and after a few listens, the album becomes thoroughly compelling. Nearly every song on the record is hazy, feverish, and heartbroken, and even the rockers have an insular, paranoid tenor that heightens the album's melancholy. The whole record would have collapsed underneath its own intentions if Butler's compositional skills weren't so subtly nuanced and if Anderson's grandiose poetry wasn't so strangely affecting. As it stands, Dog Man Star is a strangely seductive record, filled with remarkable musical peaks, from the Bowie-esque stomp of "New Generation" to the stately ballads "The Wild Ones" and "Still Life," which are both reminiscent of Scott Walker. And while Suede may choose to wear their influences on their sleeve, they synthesize them in a totally original way, making Dog Man Star a singularly tragic and romantic album”.

I am going to end with a review from the BBC. The more I read about and discover what went on during the recording of Dog Man Star, the more impressive the album sounds. Such a monumental release from Suede. It is sad that their central songwriting duo were fractured. Some might say that this mood improved the album or added something special:

“After the party – the hangover: One year on from the louche-but-rocking debut, Suede had begun to irrevocably fracture at their very core. Luckily, out of such travails are great works of art born.

By this point the chemistry (in all senses) was becoming a little strained. Retreating into a drug-assisted solitude, Brett Anderson’s lyrics were less concerned with the politics of modern love and more with the effects of the morning after. Solitude, paranoia and self-loathing were the themes here. When he sings ‘If you stay we’ll be the wild ones…’ it’s with a quiet desperation that’s clinging to a lifestyle that’s gone horribly wrong.

The downbeat mood pervades everything here. Even on peppier rockers like “The Hollywood Life” or “New Generation” the guitars of Bernard Butler here sound more spiteful, suffused with a vicious metallic edge. It was here that they formerly parted from the Britpop pack as well (‘I don’t care for the UK tonight’ sings Brett on “Black And Blue”).

At the heart of this album is the real-life drama of Anderson’s and Butler’s increasing alienation. Before the album had even been mixed the pair, once touted as a Lennon and McCartney for the post-E generation, had split. Butler subsequently told of how he turned up to the studio one day to find all his equipment outside the locked door.

Yet, while Dog Man Star stands as a testament to the destructive power of thrill-seeking love and ego-bloating drugs it remains a far deeper and sonically adventurous ride than its predecessor. There’s still a huge dollop of Scott Walker-meets-Bowie-in-the-streets-of-Soho-at-5-in-the-morning archness that can grate. And Anderson’s melodrama can be slightly over-egged on tracks like “The 2 Of Us”, yet with its reverb-drenched lushness and fabulously melancholy audio verite ambience (virtually every track is prefaced by or marbled with some low-key moodiness that recalls Talk Talk’s golden period) it’s an album that continues to fascinate and reward: It’s possibly their least dated work.

While the band struggled heroically (and succeeded) to consolidate their success after Butler’s departure the legend of the band’s lost potential really stems from Dog Man Star. Never had misery sounded so alluring, reaching out to all the lonely urbanites that ever woke up alone. For this alone it remains timeless”.

Turning thirty on 10th October, the stunning Dog Man Star was a real moment of crisis for Suede. Some critics in 1994 felt Dog Man Star was out of step with what was being released that year. Something pretentious or weird. Luckily, Dog Man Star is now seen as one of the very best albums ever. You can even hear the influence of the album on bands like Radiohead and Pulp. Adding a darker edge to their Rock template. Such a legacy and stature, Dog Man Star still feels so important and original…

THIRTY years on.

FEATURE: The Ledge: Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The Ledge

Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk at Forty-Five

_________

A very important album…

PHOTO CREDIT: Norman Seeff

is coming up to its forty-fifth anniversary. Though it had to follow the mighty Rumours of 1977, Tusk is still a superb album in its own right. It is interesting considering albums that follow classics. The pressure and expectation and how artists respond to that. The twelfth from Fleetwood Mac, the double album came out on 12th October, 1979. Ahead of its forty-fifth anniversary, I wanted to celebrate a very interesting and incredible album from the U.S./U.K. band. Rumours arrived at a time when the group were going through turbulent times. Relationships and marriages ending. Tension in the studio. What did result from that time is an undoubted masterpiece. Many consider Tusk to be a lesser follow-up. It is a more experimental album. Lindsey Buckingham exerting more control in terms of the sonic direction and production. There are many gems and standout tracks from the album. Sara, Think About Me and its mesmeric title track. The production on Tusk is especially notable and fine. I guess there was a certain degree of a blank cheque after the success of Rumours. Tusk’s costs were initially estimated to be about $1 million. It was later revealed that the true figure was about $1.4 million - making it the most expensive Rock album recorded to that date. Critics inevitably compared Tusk to Rumours. Rumours sold over ten millions copes and was lauded by critics, whereas Tusk was not as well received by critics and sold four million copies. However, Tusk is another classic from Fleetwood Mac. I want to share some reviews and features about Tusk. Its forty-fifth anniversary is very soon, so it is a perfect time to celebrate it.

Starting out with a feature from The Ringer. They marked forty years of the mighty Tusk. It is a fascinating feature that I would compel people to read in full. It tells a lot of the story behind Tusk and the impact of the album. Forty-five years later and the layers and contours of Tusk are still revealing themselves. Such an important period in Fleetwood Mac’s history:

“An underappreciated aftershock of punk’s first wave is the kick in the ass it gave to some of the previous generations’ heroes, pushing some of those “dinosaur bands” to make their most adventurous music in years. Punk dared the Stones to make 1978’s Some Girls, their best and most brash record since Exile on Main St. It’s also the inspiration for some of the great Buckingham compositions on Tusk, from the taut, sneering “What Makes You Think You’re the One” to the haunting, oddly dissonant last-call dirge “That’s All for Everyone.” Buckingham was constantly experimenting in Studio D, searching for undiscovered tones and textures: He got the grumbling, blown-out sound of excitable punk ditty “The Ledge” by tuning his guitar down to sound like a bass. (“It sounds to me like it was put in a cement mixer and almost spat out,” he later said, proudly.) “I remember Lindsey used to make such a horrible sound,” the album’s coproducer, Ken Caillat, said in Ryan Reed’s book Fleetwood Mac FAQ. “He would physically make me distort the guitar so that it sounded like fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. I remember when he was recording ‘Not That Funny,’ he insisted he wanted a really weird-sounding vocal, so he made us tape a microphone to a tile floor, and he was doing a push-up over the microphone, singing, ’Not—that—funny—is it?!’ Anything to make it weirder was better on his songs.”

As a counterbalance to Buckingham’s punk outbursts, Tusk showcases some of McVie’s most straight-forwardly lovely compositions: opener “Over & Over” sets a rose-colored tone, while the understated “Never Make Me Cry” is a perennial tear-jerker. Perhaps the most Rumours-reminiscent cut is McVie’s rousing “Think About Me”—one of Tusk’s few full-band jams. Tusk wouldn’t have confounded listeners if even half its songs sounded like this, but restless shape-shifting was also a consistent part of Fleetwood Mac’s ethos, even from the Peter Green days. “They had been a blues band, then a jam band, then a rock band, then a soft rock supernova,” Davis writes. “The Rumours groove had to be part of a progressive continuum, not the endgame.”

One of the most acrimonious fights during Rumours was over the exclusion of Nicks’s masterpiece “Silver Springs.” The band had to make some cuts to keep Rumours confined to a single LP, and when it came time for the final sequencing, the languorous, slow-tempo-ed “Springs” was first on the chopping block. “I started to scream bloody murder and probably said every horribly mean thing you could possibly say to another human being and walked back in the studio and completely flipped out,” Nicks said years later, recalling the conversation with Fleetwood when she first learned the song’s fate.

She got her revenge on Tusk. While Buckingham often approaches songwriting like a code to be cracked (“I’ve learned more about the mathematics of songwriting—how to fit pieces together, line length, timing chords and melodies,” he said around the time of Tusk’s release), Stevie’s process was more intuitive, her songs less rigorously structured. She thrived in open space and sprawl, something Tusk generously supplied. Her songs on the record are loose, unhurried, and exploratory, from the poignant ballad “Storm” to the meditative confessional “Beautiful Child.” The bluesy rocker “Angel” showcases a gravely, newly mature tone of Nicks’s voice that she’d explore further on Bella Donna, while the fan-favorite “Sisters of the Moon” furthered her witchy self-mythology: “A black widow spider makes / More sound than she,” Nicks sang, “and black moons in those eyes of hers / Made more sense to me.”

Buckingham was, more than anyone, the sonic mastermind behind Tusk. But the very fabric of Tusk is also variety, collaboration, and bricolage—an alchemy he never could have achieved alone. If Rumours was the result of a handful of passionate, often-inebriated people standing elbow-to-elbow in a too-small room, Tusk is the sound of them stomping into their respective corners. To love Fleetwood Mac is to marvel at the beautiful absurdity that these five very different people were ever in a band together, let alone a band whose songs could hang together so well. In this sense, the improbably cohesive Tusk just might be their defining record.

Maybe it was just ahead of its time. Tusk’s double-album breadth might have stunted its commercial prospects in 1979—the 2XLP retailed for $16.98, around $50 adjusted for inflation—but in the more-is-more logic of the streaming era, it seems downright normal. (Drake’s mammoth-selling 2018 album Scorpion, for one example, is 15 minutes longer than Tusk.) Forty years later, it remains the blueprint for what comes after astounding commercial success, if an artist is too itchy and creative to simply rest on their laurels. Its forward-thinking ethos has kept it fresh all this time. “Tusk is not going to sound dated in five or 10 years,” the writer Blair Jackson predicted all the way back in 1981, “and I would be willing to bet that a lot more people will slowly be convinced of the album’s greatness than will forget all about it.” You can say that again”.

I will move on to another fortieth anniversary feature. This one is from Albumism. Whereas excess and dislocation seemed to define Rumours, it is Lindsey Buckingham’s obsessiveness and drive that maybe defines Tusk. Alongside Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine and John McVie, the band created an album that I don’t think should ever be compared negatively to Rumours. It is a compelling double album with very few weak moments:

“Rumours’ massive success has been extensively documented and most of us are well aware of how it spawned countless critical and commercial plaudits, chart peaks, millions upon millions of units shifted, sold-out tours, and the coveted Album of the Year prize at the 1978 GRAMMY Awards. Indeed, Rumours ensured that Mick Fleetwood, Nicks, Buckingham, and the McVies were firmly entrenched in the rock & roll high life.

With the band’s newfound global superstardom came substantial freedom, influence and power. Which was invariably followed by exorbitance in its various forms. Much has been made of the drugs, financial recklessness, and romantic shenanigans that plagued the band during and after the recording of Rumours. But this penchant for excess would also manifest creatively, as the band embarked upon the harrowing task of recording the follow-up to their landmark LP.

More accurately, this penchant for creative excess was fueled by Buckingham’s obsessive ambition in conceiving of and executing the vision for Tusk. Stubbornly determined to differentiate Tusk’s musical identity and resist the temptation of a Rumours rehash, Buckingham’s adventurousness was not well-received by his bandmates initially. As a result, he became more protective and territorial about the album’s gestation. “When it came time to go into the studio, I just had to stick my neck out,” he recalled to Rolling Stone in 1980. “I told Mick that I wanted to put a machine in my house, to work on my things there. I had to pursue things that were in my head, and not be intimidated into thinking they were the wrong things to do.”

While McVie and Nicks stuck closer to their signature songwriting approach, Buckingham boldly branched out in various ways, experimenting with leftfield sounds, non-sequitur lyrics, and varied vocal approaches. Unveiled in September 1979 as the lead single and title track from the then-forthcoming album, and featuring unconventional instrumental contributions courtesy of Buckingham banging on a Kleenex box and Fleetwood slapping lamb chops (yes, you read that right), “Tusk” represents “the embodiment of the spirit of the album,” according to Buckingham, as quoted in Tusk’s deluxe edition liner notes. Sounding far removed from any song that the group had recorded up to that point, “Tusk” is driven by Fleetwood’s pounding percussion juxtaposed with Buckingham’s monotone, séance-like refrains which ultimately segue into a manic frenzy of a war-like chant punctuated by the big, boisterous brass of the USC marching band recorded at Dodger Stadium. It’s a hefty hodge-podge of a song, but it’s also instantly memorable.

Perhaps not surprisingly, amongst the four official A-sides that Warner Bros. released from the album in the US, “Tusk” was the lone Buckingham-led entry. Granted, his endearing ode to romantic innocence “Save a Place for Me, his self-proclaimed “rockabilly on acid” trip “That’s Enough For Me,” and the Charlie Watts influenced “Walk A Thin Line” were all designated as B-sides stateside, while his Fred Schneider inspired new wave funk foray “Not That Funny” surfaced abroad in the UK.

Buckingham’s songs unabashedly defied the convention of radio-friendly construction. Securing airplay was never the goal for him here, which freed him up to focus his energy toward stretching his sound in newfound ways. His liberated approach was evidenced early in the album’s sequencing with the idiosyncratic instrumentation of the second track, the two-minute stomper “The Ledge,” which he confessed was driven by his interest in “trying to find things that were off the radar” and intentionally playing notes that were “a little incorrect.”

“We didn't really like [Tusk],” McVie confided to The Guardian in 2013. “We just kind of went ‘okaaay.’ [Eyeroll] Because it was so different from Rumours. Deliberately so. In hindsight, I do like that record, but at the time me and Stevie would be like, ‘What the hell is he doing in the toilet playing an empty Kleenex box for a drum?’”

Suffice to say that while her bandmate was fixated on pushing the sonic envelope with Tusk, McVie was just fine with sticking to her tried and true script of crafting emotive, unembellished songs of love and longing. A somewhat stark contrast to the noticeably more uptempo opening tracks of its two precursors (Buckingham’s “Monday Morning” from 1975’s Fleetwood Mac and “Second Hand News” from Rumours), Tusk opens with McVie’s laid-back, countrified torch song “Over & Over,” as she summons her lover—presumably her then-boyfriend Dennis Wilson—to do right by her fragile heart. A sleeper highlight for me, the multi-layered “Brown Eyes” features an airy groove with intricate vocal dubbing, not to mention uncredited guitarwork from Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green. Amidst her other subdued offerings (“Never Forget,” “Never Make Me Cry,” “Honey Hi”), McVie recaptures the pep in her sonic step, harking back to her Rumours gem “You Make Loving Fun” with the groove-laden love song and third single “Think About Me.”

Released on October 12, 1979, two days after the band were awarded a coveted star on Hollywood’s hallowed Walk of Fame, Tusk’s subsequent story reinforced the extent to which Rumours proved to be both a blessing for the band (not to mention a financial windfall for Warner Bros.) and a curse due to the sky-high expectations that it set for repeated success. In discussing the marketing campaign that Warner Bros. set in motion to support the album, Shelly Cooper, then the label’s director of advertising, once remarked, “I wouldn't hesitate to say that we'll be spending considerable amounts for a long time to come.”

Tusk went on to sell four million copies, an impressive amount by today’s standards (or any standards for that matter), but fell well short of Rumours’ eight-figure haul, leading Warner Bros. executives and industry pundits to deem it a disappointment. A few valid theories might help to explain why Tusk undersold relative to expectations, including its higher price point as a double-album, its dearth of radio-ready fare, and the mixed critical reception that greeted it due to its perceived lack of cohesion. Fleetwood has even posited that sales were undermined from the get-go when radio stations affiliated with the long-since-defunct broadcasting conglomerate RKO “leaked” Tusk by playing it in its entirety prior to its official release, offering listeners the opportunity to record the album for free.

Despite the initial (and largely misguided) scrutiny by various parties, Tusk has thankfully weathered the criticism rather well in the 40 years since its arrival. “I think everyone was looking for Rumours 2 … So yes, it did have an alienating quality to it in the moment,” Buckingham admitted during a 2011 Gothamist interview. “But then, you cut to a few years later when you could be more objective about it, and as tastes change and evolve and as a younger generation gets a hold of things, they see them not only for what they are musically but possibly for why they were made in context. They can even appreciate the fact that there was someone out there who was trying to undermine the idea of repeating the formula of the brand. There’s a certain kind of idealism attached to Tusk as a subtext to the music, and I think people now can respond not only to how colorful and experimental it is, but also why it was made.”

Critical over-analysis be damned, Tusk remains an immersive and fascinating listen, imperative for an expanded understanding and appreciation of the band’s musical history. “We'll never forget tonight / It will be alright,” McVie sings in the album’s concluding lines, and the unforgettable Tusk certainly sounds quite alright four decades on”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews. Apologies for any repetition in terms of story and detail. It is important to frame the time in which Tusk was recorded and released. How it was affected by the culture around it and how it contributed. Pitchfork reviewed Tusk in 2019. Whereas love broke and dissipated during Rumours, what is the inspiration and focus for the follow-up? It seems work and channelling that focus and energy into something creative guided a lot of Tusk’s process:

“The autumn of 1979 was, by any reasonable accounting, a challenging time to be alive. The world felt tenuous, transitional: panicked families were fleeing East Germany via hot air balloon, China was restricting couples to one child each, fifty-two Americans were barred inside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, pending release of the Shah. It was also the year of Tusk, the album in which Fleetwood Mac, a soft-rock band second only to the Eagles in their embodiment of easy 1970s gloss, completely lost their minds. It was the band’s twelfth album, though only its third with the now-iconic lineup of guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, keyboardist Christine McVie, and singer Stevie Nicks, and it reflected a personal tumult so claustrophobic and intense it felt global in scale—an after-the-fall re-telling of catastrophic heartache and its endless reverberations.

By this time, Fleetwood Mac was widely beloved for its melodic, harmonized jams, which evoked Laurel Canyon, curtains of strung beads, turquoise jewelry, pricey incense, scarves flung over floor lamps, and brandy poured into a nice glass. Despite their smooth, murmuring sound, few of the band’s records pull punches emotionally, but even compared to a cry of pain like “The Chain,” Tusk is singular. It is pocked with heartbreak, resignation, lust, hope, and deep hurt. It poses unanswerable questions. It reckons with the past, and what that past means for a future. It invariably makes some people want to lock their door, excavate half a joint from the recesses of their couch cushions, and spend the next fourteen hours contemplating the Buckingham-Nicks union as one of the great failed loves of the twentieth century.

Just two years earlier, the band had released Rumours, a collection of pert and amiable love songs that sold over ten million copies and spent thirty-one weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 chart. Rumours is presently among the top ten best-selling albums in American history, and, as of 2009, has shipped more than forty million units worldwide. It was—it remains—an album owned by people who have only ever owned eleven albums.

Commercial success on that scale is, of course, a complicated thing to navigate; for Fleetwood Mac, it was presaged and then aggravated by outrageous amounts of cocaine and an awful lot of intra-band copulation. I don’t mean to be reductive about the group’s emotional dynamic, but I can’t think of another assemblage of five able-minded adults who created and survived such a preposterous tangle of romantic investments and divestments (to wit: Nicks and Buckingham, McVie and McVie, Nicks and Fleetwood, Fleetwood’s wife and former member Bob Weston, McVie and the lighting designer, and Fleetwood and Nicks’ then-married best friend—to cite just the handful of permutations known to the public).

By the time Tusk was released, the two primary relationships sustaining the band (Christine and John’s marriage, and Lindsey and Stevie’s long-standing romance) had fully dissolved, which seemed to qualify Fleetwood Mac, in some perverse way, to go on to become one of our best and bravest chroniclers of love’s horrifying tumult. Being tasked with singing backing vocals for a song written by your ex-lover, about you, months (and eventually years) after the relationship ruptured? Hold that in mind—just how excruciating that must’ve been. Then find a video of Buckingham and Nicks performing “Silver Springs” (a song written by Nicks about Buckingham, withheld from Rumours, and later released, either cruelly or keenly, as the B-side to the single “Go Your Own Way,” a song written by Buckingham about Nicks) and try not to lose your mind completely when, as if to narrate the precise mechanics of their break-up, Nicks announces: “I’ll begin not to love you… Tell myself you never loved me.”

It’s “Silver Springs,” more than any other track in the band’s pre-Tusk discography, that tells the story of how Buckingham and Nicks lost each other, and, ergo, the story of Tusk; performing the song live, they frequently end up locked in a kind of tense combat stance. When Nicks’ cool, steady voice begins to dissolve into something feral and nearly deranged (“Was I just a fool?” she finally hollers) she’ll often take steps toward him. He always meets her gaze, calmly, and with determination. Maybe they’re putting us all on, but there’s something in those moments that makes True Love—the preposterous, fairy-tale kind, the sort that never resolves itself, that can’t be outrun or eschewed, not ever, not after decades, not after a lifetime—seem entirely possible, even to the most hard-boiled cynics. I bring this up because it’s the only explanation I can think of as to how the band kept going, despite what must’ve seemed, to anyone watching, like a cataclysmic implosion. True Love doesn’t care if your relationship ends; it remains, it buoys you.

If Rumours was the band’s break-up record, Tusk covers arguably even more complicated ground: how to transform a romantic partnership into a purely creative one, while remaining mindful of all the perilous ways in which love nurtures art, and vice-versa. That the band did this at all, much less successfully, much less good-naturedly—in promotional photos for Tusk, Nicks is pictured resting her left hand disconcertingly close to a bulge in Buckingham’s blue jeans—is dumbfounding.

The result is a beautiful and terrifically strange album. From the outset, Buckingham was insistent that the band not churn out a sequel to Rumours. His was a defensive, contrarian pose: Let’s deliberately not recreate that colossal commercial and critical success; let's instead do something different, artier, less bulletproof, more experimental, more explicitly influenced by punk and new-wave, and less indebted to pop. Tusk contains twenty songs and is seventy-two minutes long. It retailed for $15.98 (or $52.88, in 2016 dollars). Its terrifically unattractive cover features a grainy, off-center photograph of a disembodied foot getting chomped on by a dog. The title is a euphemism for cock. Its sequencing is plainly insane, seesawing between two equally manic moods: “Everything is totally going to be fine!!!” and “This plane is going down and we’re all going to die!!!”

Tusk took thirteen months to make, and was the first record to amass production costs of over a million dollars. It was called self-indulgent, and it is. Legends abound regarding the details of its composition and recording. Nicks described their space in Studio D as having been adorned with “shrunken heads and leis and Polaroids and velvet pillows and saris and sitars and all kinds of wild and crazy instruments, and the tusks on the console, like living in an African burial ground.” Everyone agrees Buckingham was losing it a little—that he was chasing something (artistic greatness? avant-garde credibility?) and pursuing it wildly, haphazardly, like a crazed housecat stalking a black fly about the living room. Did he really have a drum set installed in his bathroom so he could play while on his toilet? (More reasonable minds have suggested he merely liked the acoustics in there.)

One solid argument against Tusk—though it could also be levied against Rumours—is that it lacks narrative coherence, in part because it features three songwriters (Nicks, Buckingham, and McVie), each working in their own distinct style. Still, while Nicks and McVie contributed some truly lovely tracks—“Sara,” “Beautiful Child,” “Think About Me”—the record clearly belongs to Buckingham, who wrote nearly half its songs, insisted upon its scope, and is its unquestionable spiritual center, the hamster on its wheel. The engineer Ken Caillat described Buckingham as “a maniac” during the sessions. He said it without equivocation. “The first day, I set the studio up as usual. Then he said, ‘Turn every knob 180 degrees from where it is now and see what happens.’ He’d tape microphones to the studio floor and get into a sort of push-up position to sing. Early on, he came in and he’d freaked out in the shower and cut off all his hair with nail scissors. He was stressed.” 

At one point, Buckingham insisted that the band rent out Dodgers Stadium, and arranged to have the 112-piece U.S.C. Marching Band back them on the title track (his bandmates went along with this; none of the group’s foundational romantic relationships were intact, but Tusk still couldn’t have been made by people who didn’t trust one another implicitly). “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Why don’t you tell me who’s on the phone?” Buckingham and Nicks chant, their voices paranoid. Buried somewhere in there is a riff that could have sold a zillion cassingles, had this been 1977. But it wasn’t.

Though Tusk’s most memorable tracks are also its strangest (like “The Ledge,” a manic, pitter-pattering kiss-off in which the band’s signature harmonies are overridden by a guitar that’s been tuned down and turned up), there are a handful of songs that harken back to Rumours’ rich palatability. “Save Me A Place” plays like an extension, at least lyrically, of “Go Your Own Way,” in which Buckingham begrudges his lover’s unwillingness to grab what he’s half-offering her. A lot of Buckingham’s lyrics from the late ‘70s seem to simultaneously admit trepidation and cast him as the aggrieved party; he seems, in an endearing way, oblivious to his own caveats, or how they might dissuade another person. “Guess I want to be alone, and I guess I need to be amazed/Save me a place, I'll come running if you love me today,” he sings on “Save Me A Place.” He later described the song as vulnerable. “None of us had the luxury of distance to get closure… It’s about a feeling that’s been laid off to one side and maybe not been fully dealt with, sadness and a sense of loss.” It captures the wildness of recovery: what happens when love dissipates, and you have to find a new thing to believe in? What if that thing is work?

Buckingham funneled all of his disorientation into these songs. Tusk is, more than anything else, a document of that feeling and that process—of bewilderment turning into ambition writ large. What happens when a complicated, wounded person grows exhausted and unimpressed by the commercial medium he took to naturally, maybe even instinctively, but no longer believes is important or curative? It’s not hard to imagine the voice of Buckingham’s internal foil during these sessions, whispering seedily, naysaying each new melody, pushing for more: “This is fine, but it’s not Art.” I don’t know anyone who cares about making things who hasn’t at some point lobbed the exact same challenge at themselves: Can’t you do better? Hasn’t someone done this before? Haven’t you done this before? You get the sense of a broken-down person trying to rebuild himself. He is diligent about getting the architecture right.

All of which makes “I Know I’m Not Wrong”—the first song the band started recording for Tusk, and the last one to be finished – even more poignant. When Tusk was reissued, in 2015, the expanded release included six (!) different “I Know I’m Not Wrong” demos, all recorded by Buckingham in his home studio. The chorus is a declaration of intention, of confidence: “Don't blame me/Please be strong/I know I'm not wrong.” It’s not a thing a person gets to say very often. But Tusk isn’t a record that gets made more than once”.

I will wrap up in a bit. Rolling Stone reviewed Tusk in 1979. In a year when albums from The Clash, Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd, and Talking Heads were perhaps getting bigger acclaim and making a larger impact, Tusk was definitely one of the most anticipated albums of the year. I think that it stands up and still sounds amazing. For anyone who has not heard Tusk then make sure that you check it out:

“Like “The White Album,” Tusk is less a collection of finished songs than a mosaic of pop-rock fragments by individual performers. Tusk‘s twenty tunes — nine by Lindsey Buckingham, six by Christine McVie, five by Stevie Nicks — constitute a two-record “trip” that covers a lot of ground, from rock & roll basics to a shivery psychedelia reminiscent of the band’s earlier Bare Trees and Future Games to the opulent extremes of folk-rock arcana given the full Hollywood treatment. “The White Album” was also a trip, but one that reflected the furious social banging around at the end of the Sixties. Tusk is much vaguer. Semiprogrammatic and nonliterary, it ushers out the Seventies with a long, melancholy sigh.

On a song-by-song basis, Tusk‘s material lacks the structural concision of the finest cuts on Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. Though there are no compositions with the streamlined homogeneity of “Dreams,” “You Make Loving Fun” or “Go Your Own Way,” there are many fragments as striking as the best moments in any of these numbers.

If Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks were the most memorable voices on Fleetwood Mac and Rumours, Lindsey Buckingham is Tusk‘s artistic linchpin. The special thanks to him on the back of the LP indicates that he was more involved with Tusk‘s production than any other group member. Buckingham’s audacious addition of a gleeful and allusive slapstick rock & roll style — practically the antithesis of Fleetwood Mac’s Top Forty image — holds this mosaic together, because it provides the crucial changes of pace without which Tusk would sound bland.

“Not That Funny,” “What Makes You Think You’re the One,” “That’s Enough for Me” and “The Ledge” affect a rock & roll simplicity and directness that are strongly indebted to Buddy Holly, an obvious idol of Buckingham’s. These songs have the sound and spontaneity of beautifully engineered basement tapes. A bit more sophisticated yet still relatively spare, “Save Me a Place” boasts closely harmonized, un-gimmicky ensemble voices and acoustic textures that underline the tune’s British folk flavor. But Buckingham’s most intriguing contribution is Tusk‘s title track, an aural collage that pits African tribal drums, the USC Trojan Marching Band and some incantatory group vocals against a backdrop of what sounds like thousands of wild dogs barking. “Tusk” is Fleetwood Mac’s “Revolution 9.”

The calculated crudeness of Buckingham’s rock & roll forays both undercuts and improves Tusk‘s elaborately produced segments. And several of these segments demonstrate that the limits of the California studio sound, developed in the Sixties by Lou Adler and Brian Wilson for the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys, have at last been reached. Fleetwood Mac has arrived at the point where technologically inspired filigree begins to break down rather than enhance music, where expensive playback equipment is not only desirable for appreciation but necessary for comprehension. In McVie’s “Over & Over” and Nicks’ “Storms,” the production goes too far, and the tracks quiver with an eerie electronic vibrato.

The basic style of Tusk‘s “produced” cuts is a luxuriant choral folk-rock — as spacious as it is subtle — whose misty swirls are organized around incredibly precise yet delicate rhythm tracks. Instead of using the standard pop embellishments (strings, synthesizers, horns, etc.), the bulk of the sweetening consists of hovering instrumentation and background vocals massively layered to approximate strings. This gorgeous, hushed, ethereal sound was introduced to pop with 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love,” and Fleetwood Mac first used it in Rumours’ “You Make Loving Fun.” On Tusk, it’s the band’s signature. Buckingham’s most commercial efforts — the chiming folk ballads, “That’s All for Everyone” and “Walk a Thin Line” — deploy a choir in great dreamy waves. In McVie’s “Brown Eyes,” the blending of voices, guitars and keyboards into a plaintive “sha-la-la” bridge builds a mere scrap of a song into a magnificent castle in the air. “Brown Eyes” sounds as it if were invented for the production, rather than nice versa.

About the only quality that Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie share is a die-hard romanticism. On Tusk, Nicks sounds more than ever like a West Coast Patti Smith. Her singing is noticeably hoarser than on Rumours, though she makes up some of what she’s lost in control with a newfound histrionic urgency: “Angel” is an especially risky flirtation with hard rock. Nicks’ finest compositions here are two lovely ballads, “Beautiful Child” and “Storms.” Her other contributions, “Sara” and “Sisters of the Moon,” weave personal symbolism and offbeat mythology into a near-impenetrable murk. There’s a fine line between the exotic and the bizarre, and this would-be hippie sorceress skirts it perilously.

McVie is as dour and terse as Nicks is excitable and verbose. Her two best songs — “Never Forget,” a folk-style march, and “Never Make Me Cry,” a mournful lullaby — are lovely little gems of romantic ambiance. With a pure, dusky alto that’s reminiscent of Sandy Denny, this woeful woman-child who’s in perpetual pursuit of “daddy” evokes a timeless sadness.

The wonder of Fleetwood Mac’s chemistry is that the casting of these two less-than-major talents in pop music’s answer to Gone with the Wind elevates them to the stature of stormy rock & roll heroines — one compelled to reach for the stars, the other condemned to wander the earth. Within the context of the group, we not only accept these women’s excesses and limitations, we cherish them as indispensable ingredients of their characters.

The aura of romance is finally the real substance of Fleetwood Mac’s music. If the band has an image, it’s one of wealthy, talented, bohemian cosmopolites futilely toying with shopworn romantic notions in the face of the void. Such an elegant gossamer lilt is also synonymous with the champagne buzz of late-Seventies amour. But perhaps, as Tusk‘s ominous title cut and other songs suggest, in today’s climate of material depletion and lurking disorder, the center of things — including Fleetwood Mac themselves — cannot hold. Plagued by internal conflicts and challenged by New Wave rock, this psychedelically tinted folk-rock tribe might well be the last and most refined of a breed of giddy celebrants who, from the early Sixties on, prospered on the far shore of the promised land as they toasted the pure splendor of a beautiful and possibly frivolous pop dream”.

On 12th October, we mark forty-five years of Tusk. The next studio album Fleetwood Mac released is 1982’s Mirage. Once more, the band headed in a different direction. Perhaps moved more back to the sound of Rumours. A less experimental and all-encompassing album. I think that Tusk is among the band’s very best work. Even if Tusk is considered a little bit of a commercial let-down, there is no doubt that it is…

A creative triumph.

FEATURE: Compact But Mighty: Thinking About the Sustainability of the Decades-Old Format

FEATURE:

 

 

Compact But Mighty

PHOTO CREDIT: Wellington Cunha/Pexels

Thinking About the Sustainability of the Decades-Old Format

_________

NOT that it is a major revolution…

IMAGE CREDIT: Dribble

but it is a major revelation! The compact discs has been around for decades and did experience this peak and surge through the 1990s and 2000s. Of course, as technology developed and new formats came in, compact discs were starting to fade from the forefront. Not as advanced and desirable as they once were. People might say C.D.s have always been flawed. A little too fragile and not as cool as a vinyl. Less portable than a cassette. It is amazing that the compact disc has survived all this time. Perhaps not surprising now at a time when people are slowly starting to move away from streaming. It is still a vastly popular medium, though physical music speaks to people in a different way. I really love we can enjoy both. Vinyl has this resurgence and new lease. It is the most popular form of physical music. Compact discs have enjoyed a brief rise. A new time in the limelight. Not as prominently as vinyl, though we look ahead to a big anniversary that I hope will compel people to keep investing in compact disc. In November, it will be forty years since the introduction of the Sony Discman. In 1984 (the D-50), it was a real breakthrough and boom. The Walkman came out five years previously. The opportunity for people to listen to compact discs on the move! That freedom was a real pull for music lovers in the 1980s. Through the 1990s, the Discman became even more popular. I remember owning one and taking it everywhere. A wallet of C.D.s and my Discman. It changed the way I experienced music. Forty years after its release, I am looking out at the current market and the options out there.

PHOTO CREDIT: Maor Attias/Pexels

Depending on your budget, you can get a pretty good C.D. player similar to the Discman. They range from retro and sleek to a little more modern. When it comes to the flaws of the Discman, they might be hard to remove. The fact that you do get skipping. The disc skipping or stopping because of the movement and obvious fragility of the player. I know that modern versions are sturdier and a little more reliable. I would love it if there was a modern-day version of the Discman. Something that could come in a range of colours and was mass produced. Affordable for those who this is their first portable compact disc player or those who have owned one before. Though many people dislike C.D.s and feel there are too many issues – many albums still come in plastic cases and the C.D. itself no more resistant to scratching and damage than they were decades ago! -, one cannot deny the reason they are still around now. To own an album in your hand that is a permanent thing. Vinyl is great, though you have more options with a C.D. where you can play it and how you can experience them. They offer more possibilities. Earlier this year, it was reported that C.D. sales increased for the first time in twenty years:

“Digital and entertainment retail association ERA has issued its preliminary numbers for the past year, and they make encouraging reading for the physical music sector following years of overall decline (although vinyl sales alone have soared for the past decade and more).

Overall, UK spending on music streaming subscriptions, vinyl, CDs, downloads and cassettes grew by 9.6% based on value in 2023, nearly twice as fast as 2022 (which saw an increase of 5%). As part of that sales performance, there was a rare increase in CD sales last year – the first in two decades.

The £2.22 billion total for 2023 was the highest since 2001, the historic peak of the CD era, and just 0.08% short of that record. It was more than double the level of 2013 when music sales were being hammered by internet piracy.

Two years ago, ERA reported a rare increase in overall physical sales (vinyl, CD and cassettes combined) during 2021, although that wasn’t repeated the following year as vinyl sales growth softened a little in 2022 (but still outsold CD for the first time in terms of revenue).

But 2023 was a blockbuster year for physical music sales, delivering growth across the board. A strong release schedule included albums by Taylor Swift, whose 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was the biggest seller on vinyl last year, as well as Take That, the Rolling Stones, Lewis Capaldi, Lana Del Rey, Blur, Olivia Rodrigo, Pink, Kylie Minogue, Foo Fighters, Metallica and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.

ERA said that overall physical sales increased by 10.9% year-on-year to £311 million, a significant improvement on 2022’s 4% decline. It was also ahead of the 7.3% growth for physical sales in 2021, which was then the first such increase since 2001”.

I don’t think one can say that compact discs selling in high numbers is nostalgia. Many of those buying C.D.s are too young to remember them when they were popular. Also, it is more to do with a love of physical music and not necessarily the C.D. and connecting it to the 1980s and 1990s (and early-2000s). If you think about vinyl and its price and limitations in terms of portability and size, cassettes are more volatile. Maybe fewer portable cassette players on the market. Compact discs are affordable and relevant today. I want to bring in this article, which asks whether the rise in C.D. sales are because of nostalgia or a Gen-Z trend:

“CD sales are experiencing an unexpected resurgence and are now well ahead of digital download album sales. According to the Recording Industry Association of America‘s (RIAA) mid-year report, CDs sold almost three times as well as digital albums in the first half of the year. CD sales totalled $236.7 million, while downloads generated only $87.8 million. These figures show a remarkable shift in favour of physical recordings, which many had declared dead.

Why the CD is suddenly booming again and what it means for streaming

Interestingly, the comeback of the CD is largely due to younger listeners. According to the French music industry group SNEP, 43% of CD purchasers are under the age of 35. This generation is showing a growing interest in physical music formats, which can be attributed to several factors.

Firstly, CD sales offer a tangible connection to music, which is increasingly valued in the digital age. In addition, many people prefer the uncompressed sound quality of CDs to streaming or compressed digital files. Nostalgia also plays an important role: for many young people, the CD represents a return to a medium they only know from stories of their parents. In addition, CDs are a cheaper way to build a physical music collection than vinyl records.

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CD sales are exploding: Why young people are going retro

While CD sales remain stable, digital downloads are in sharp decline and represent only a small part of the music industry’s total revenue. In the first half of 2007, digital album sales generated just $87.8 million, down 18.5 percent from the previous year.

Single track sales also fell by 16.1 per cent to $81.8 million. Overall, digital download revenue fell by 15.8 per cent to $189.7 million. This clearly shows that music lovers are increasingly turning to streaming services and digital downloads are becoming less in demand.

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CD and vinyl sales are outperforming digital formats: What it means for the future

In addition to CD and vinyl sales, which continue to play an important role in the market, streaming services are also experiencing growth. Paid subscriptions to music streaming services grew by 4% to $5.7 billion, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the music industry’s total revenue. It seems that physical recordings and streaming can co-exist, while digital downloads are becoming less important.

This could mark the end of digital downloads, while CD sales are making a surprising comeback. The music landscape is therefore more diverse than ever, with a mix of physical and digital formats catering to different listener preferences”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Martinus/Pexels

Against this sign of a resurgence - or a rise at the very least - in C.D. sales and popularity comes the news that new cars are being made without C.D. players in them. Against news that C.D.s are being bought more, it seems like a very myopic decision. I still listen to C.D.s in the car. It is an easy and natural way for people to hear them. Enjoying albums over a long drive. It has left a sour taste:

“Car manufacturers are turning their back on seven million music fans in the UK by removing CD players from new cars, according to digital entertainment and retail association ERA.

Commenting on new data from Which? reporting that no new cars in the UK now include a CD player, ERA CEO Kim Bayley said: “With 15% of the UK adult population reporting that they listen to CDs in their cars, this is a remarkably short-sighted move by carmakers to stop fans listening to the music they love.” 

In the latest edition of ERA’s long-term consumer tracking study conducted by Fly Research 15% of the UK adult population reported that they listen to music on CD in their cars, slightly fewer than the 16.6% of people who listen to CDs at home. 

While the latest figures on CD listening are down on five years ago (2019: 27.6% in-car and 31.2% in-home), it still amounts to around seven million individuals. That equates to around 20% of the 34.5m people with active driving licenses. 

While CD sales have been on a sharp slide for the past 20 years – down to 11.4m in 2023 from their 2004 high point of 170m – recent years have shown signs of a rebound. Vinyl sales have been growing for 18 years and there are signs that CD could be set for a return to growth. 

“Carmakers seem to be looking through the rear-view mirror when it comes to CD,” said Bayley. “The lesson of vinyl is you should never write off a music format. Even today 50% more people say they listen to music on CD as on vinyl”.

That is one bit of a sad news in a sense of hope. That an old format can revive and find a new audience. It is great that compact discs, alongside cassettes and vinyl, are healthy and showing physical music is very much in demand. In November, the Sony Discman turns forty. It should be an occasion to mark a big anniversary of a piece of kit that should not be seen as past it or a sign of a different age. Instead, it should be retooled and reintroduced to coincide with the current state of C.D. sales. I think that sales will continue to rise. Rather than the compact disc being a relic of the past, it is very much…

PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Haupt/Pexels

A part of the future.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five: Reaction, Reception and Words from Its Creator

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five

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

Reaction, Reception and Words from Its Creator

_________

THIS is a more general piece…

about The Sensual World before a final feature that looks into the songs. I will bring in a couple of critical reviews for the album. There are also interview segments from promotion in 1989 that give us more insight and flesh. Bush’s sixth studio album turns thirty-five on 16th October. I think it is important we herald and share thoughts on an album often seen as one of her best. I want to highlight something Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. He talks about the reaction to The Sensual World. How there is this subtext of disappointment in the reviews. I think many were expecting something like Hounds of Love. That same sort of feel and make-up. Four years after that album was released, how could anyone think Bush would produce another album like that?! One of the issues is that critics do not judge the magnificent album on its own merits. Instead, there is this comparison to Hounds of Love. A high benchmark that, if she fell below, would mean a let-down! Instead, what we got was a superb album with some of Bush’s best-ever material. Thomson is not a huge fan of The Sensual World. That is fair enough. He notes how the promotion was kind of dull. Scaled down hugely, interviews were either held in London hotels – with Del Palmer hanging around – or at recording studios. Very little T.V. or any other promotion, there were fifteen-minutes slots for journalists to get what they needed. Bush travelled to the U.S. in 1990 for promotion and was signed to Columbia. Even though it was a big label, it did nothing to really raise her profile there. She got a GRAMMY nomination, and The Sensual World charted at forty-three in the U.S. Not a huge breakthrough but still respectable!

I think those who loved Hounds of Love sort of feel like The Sensual World is a massive switch and move in a wrong direction. I think that it is a masterful album that warrants a lot of love. In the U.K. at the time, there was this issue of being unique. Many other artists around were being compared to Kate Bush. The climate had changed and Bush, now thirty-one, was not the ‘young’ Pop artist she was in 1985 – the industry seeing a woman as past-it or irrelevant if she is over thirty! The technology on The Sensual World gave it a different feel to what was popular in the U.K. in 1989. Also, the amount of promotion Bush undertook for this album was less compared with Hounds of Love. Graeme Thomson notes how The Sensual World is accomplished and has some fine moments, yet it burns at a lower temperature and with less ferocity than Hounds of Love. Autumnal colours and this sense of the smouldering and sensual, compared to the pulsation and depth of its predecessor. Conventionally and a reigned-in approach to some songs. One, Between a Man and a Woman, seen as plain dull. Some songs compared to tracks on Hounds of Love but inferior versions. Maybe not a masterpiece in the same league, though I would argue against there being much to disappoint on The Sensual World. The production over-compressed, especially the vocals, and the album lacking tactility. Songs having to be imagined rather than felt. Thomson felt that there was a slackening of intensity when it came to the production and songs. Bush realising that quality of life was more important than anything. That suggests someone who was not taking the album seriously. On the contrary! Bush knew that she could not work endless hours and almost kill herself every album. Something had to change…and it did.

I don’t agree that there is something to feel disappointed by. Bush was never going to align with what was fashionable in 1989. A remarkably evocative and fascinating album, I do hope that there is a lot of positive energy and respect for it. I shall come to a couple of the glowing reviews for The Sensual World. First, and briefly dipping back into my The Kate Bush Interview Archive, and there are two chats from 1989 I want to quote from. I want to start with extracts from an interview from Pulse! In 1989. Will Johnson spoke with Kate Bush about her exciting new album:

"Having the sort of creative freedom that I've now got," she explains, "having my own studio, taking the time to make albums, not putting something out 'cause there's pressure to, working very closely with Del as engineer, I just felt incredibly lucky to be in this kind of situation. It's a real privilege and I'd hate to abuse that. I think that the problem with writing songs is that you want to care about what you're doing, and sometimes the stuff you come up with is just so banal, you just have to really wipe through it. Get rid of all the shit, do you know what I mean? [laughs]. Hounds of Love was very much the main step, 'cause that was the first time we had our own studio, and I suppose the progression from that one to this is that we've upgraded the equipment. Also, on the last album, I was working with lots of different engineers who could only give me a certain amount of time, because they'd block-booked to someone else, and because I work so experimentally, I didn't want to block-book too far ahead or I wouldn't be ready for them. Working with Del, I've managed to get a bit closer again to the whole process. You know, if it's not working, then we can just go home. If I have an engineer in, it would be difficult to have that freedom and also to feel relaxed; there's a lot of time spent getting to know each other."

The Sensual World LP features 10 new Bush tracks, all written and produced by the enigmatic songstress, recorded by Del Palmer and mixed by Kevin Killen, whose most recent credits include Elvis Costello's Spike. ("Walking Straight Down the Middle," [sic] an atmospheric tale of the reluctance of human beings to face up to their fears that features some truly shrilling vocals by Bush, is only available on cassette and CD.) The first single, "Love and Anger," is probably the meatiest track on the LP. Throughout there's an African beat, the sound of Zulus raiding at dawn, interspersed by some slumbering fretless bass lines (courtesy of Eberhard Weber), and a "big" chorus orchestrated by the power chords of Pink Floyd alumnus Dave Gilmour and Bush bellowing as best she can. It took her a mere 18 months to piece together.

On "Heads We're Dancing," Bush warns the female of the alluring male: "They say that the devil is a charming man/And just like you I bet he can dance. .. A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform.. .. Hot down to the floor/But it couldn't be you/It couldn't be you/It's a picture of Hitler."

But it's the overall feeling of sensuality, of Bush's concept of the being and its relationship with the outside world, that underscores the entire album. In particular, it's the way in which the child comes to realize and experience his or her environment. The solo violin of the aforementioned Nigel Kennedy is accompanied by cello, Celtic harp, whistles, the mysterious Dr. Bush, and Kate's manic witch-like laughter on the eerie, "The Fog": "The day I learned to swim/He said, 'Just put your feet down child'. .. . The water is only waist high/I'll let go of you gently/Then you can swim wiht me."

"I do like the quiet life," she replies almost bashfully. "I do like having privacy; it's incredibly important to me, because I do end up feeling quite probed by the public side of what I have to do. I'm just quite a private person, really. You just end up feeling quite exposed; it's this vulnerability. After I've done the salesman bit, I like to be quiet and retreat, because that's where I write from. I'm a sort of quiet little person."

Which my explain why it's taken so long for this idiosyncratic yet compelling artist to break in the States. "Yes," she says perkily, "I've really had no success in America at all, apart from the Hounds of Love LP. That did quite well, and it was really exciting to think that there were people out there wanting it. But I've never seen it in terms of you make and album and then conquer the world. I must say it's never really worried me that I've not been big in America, but I'm with a new record company over there now, and I really feel good about the people -- they're lovely to talk to and to deal with. It's quite exciting for me. I just hope people out there will have the chance to know that the album's out. Then, if people want to hear it, they can. If they don't, well, that's absolutely fine.

"You know," she continues, "what I like about America is that there's a tremendous sort of hyper energy that I really like. Especially in New York -- there's a much stronger social setup, especially between artists. It's a very isolated setup here, because London's so spread out and everybody's off doing their own thing. You don't seem to bump into people the way you do over there; it's exciting to have that interchanging of ideas, just to talk to people who're going through similar things. It's real modern energy stuff. And also, I really like the positivity of the Americans. I mean here, although I love being here and I love the English, we're very hard on one another, very critical, whilst they have a wonderful willingness to give everyone a chance. We're really hard on people trying to get off the ground -- it's really unfair".

Prior to wrapping up and providing some reviews for The Sensual World, I want to bring in again some words from Phil Sutcliffe and his Q interview of 1989. Although there was not as much media promotion for The Sensual World as Hounds of Love, I think that Bush is still as considered, committed and engaging an interview subject:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because The Sensual World turns thirty-five on 16th October, I will end with some celebration. Critics who lauded this beautiful album. Perhaps one of her most personal to that point. We got new sides and dimensions from Bush’s peerless songwriting. Even if there are a couple of tracks that one might deem to be inferior or near-filler, the consistency and incredible high moments make The Sensual World an album to adore. Rough Trade placed The Sensual World her third-best (Bush has released ten studio albums). NME also put it third. SPIN ranked it fourth. In all, critics have high regard for 1989’s The Sensual World. I want to start with The Quietus’ review of The Sensual World from 2019:

“The Sensual World, then, with its poetic allusions to Bonfire Night and the harvest, is her autumnal album. If Hounds Of Love, with its percussive and effect-heavy arrangements, is a budding fruit, The Sensual World is its ripened, fully mature successor. Where the drums were booming they are now accentual, where the synths were pulsating and fulsome with Fairlight wizardry they are now ambient and warmly textured. The rich instrumentation reflects the mood; Kate had flirted with Celtic arrangements on songs like ‘Night Of The Swallow’ from 1982’s The Dreaming and parts of Hounds Of Love (most notably ‘Jig Of Life’), but the Uilleann pipes of Davey Spillane and the various Celtic instruments played by her brother Paddy and by Alan Stivell (arranged by Bill Whelan) are woven into the very fabric of The Sensual World.

Meanwhile, the titanic, full-throated vocals of the Trio Bulgarka (an inspired choice of personnel) add a wise spirit to the music. The palette of bells and pipes, the imagery of setting fire to cornfields, synths that are somehow removed yet oddly comforting – it all adds up to a striking sound world perfectly evocative of this particular time of year.


Everything about The Sensual World exudes autumnal beauty – from the elegant arrangements to its dusky, monochromatic cover portrait of a wide-eyed Kate Bush; from the album title’s rusty-leaf text to the bells that fade in like a tender alarm call on a crisp morning. Her voice, an instrument that bloomed on The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, is exquisite throughout, alternately keening and soft, throaty and forceful.

Kate turned 30 during the making of the album and conceded that her personal circumstances influenced the mature themes of the album. "I think it’s a very important time from 28 to 32-ish, where there’s some kind of turning point," she told NME in 1989. "Someone said in your teens you get the physical puberty and between 28 and 32 mental puberty. Let’s face it, you’ve got to start growing up when you’re 30, it does make you feel differently, I feel very positive having gone through the last couple of years."

As such, it is an album of opposites, of dual nature – it speaks of loss and hope, of childhood and adulthood. It reflects the passing of time, and the contemplation of mortality, but also the freedom of exploration and the generous acceptance that comes with age. For an album with such themes, autumn is the perfect setting.

Gone is the light joy of summer, and the freshness of spring, but in its stead something more mature, more realised – perhaps still bristling with internal conflict, but with a newly-attained level of perspective. It is an album that suggests both the ending of childhood and the beginning of adulthood ("let’s face it, you’ve got to start growing up when you’re 30") and the bizarre hinterland between the two – the tension between cutting cords ("just put your feet down child, cos you’re all grown up now") and yearning for parental security ("reaching out for mama"), not to mention the prospect of parenthood of your own ("now starts the craft of the father").

‘The Sensual World’ itself sets out the album’s autumnal stall immediately – soft, pealing bells give way to an arrangement that incorporates pipes, warm synth washes, and an insistent drum pattern; its accompanying video, following the singer through a forest of crimson leaves, is as seamless a supplement as could be. She told International Musician in 1989 how she had "had this idea for about two years to use the words from Molly Bloom’s speech at the end of [James Joyce’s] Ulysses, which I think is the most superb piece of writing ever, to a piece of music. So Del [Palmer] had done a Fairlight pattern, and I’d done a DX riff over the top of it, and I was listening to it at home, and the words fitted absolutely perfectly. I thought, ‘God this is just ridiculous, just how well it’s come together.’"

Amid the confusion and uncertainty, she finds humanity in the mundane – the song garnered attention at the time for its bizarre plot line of digital romance, but who can bet against Yanka Rupkina’s soaring, emotional solo vocal? Or the maze-like arrangement, a swirling kaleidoscope of fretless bass, electric piano, synth effects, and the robotic yet improbably cherubic vocals of the Trio Bulgarka? As Kate told Melody Maker in 1989, "When I was working on ‘Deeper Understanding,’ the idea was that the verses were the person and the choruses were the computer talking to the person. I wanted this sound that would almost be like the voice of angels: something very ethereal, something deeply religious, rather than a mechanical thing. And we went through so many different processes, trying vocoders, lots of ways of affecting the voice, and eventually it led to the Trio Bulgarka… it made absolute sense – you know, this loving voice – because they have a certain quality: their music feels so old and deep. It’s really powerful; such intense, deep music that, in some ways, I think it is like the voice of angels”.

I am going to finish with some words from Pitchfork from 2019. They noted how there were these intimate vignettes rather than fantasy and fairy-tale. Bush sounded more grounded and in control of her songwriting than ever before. Giving high praise and salute to an album one might not expect people to revere and find nuance in all those years after its release. It goes to show the depth and strength of Bush’s songwriting and incredible production talent:

“Even its most surreal songs are rooted in self-examination. “Heads We’re Dancing” seems like a dark joke—a young girl is charmed on to the dancefloor by a man she later learns is Adolf Hitler—but poses a troubling question: What does it say about you, if you couldn’t see through the devil’s disguise? Its discordant, skronky rhythms make it feel like a formal ball taking place in a fever dream, and Bush’s voice grows increasingly panicky as she realizes how badly she’s been duped. As far-fetched as its premise was, its inspiration lay close to home: A family friend had told Bush how shaken they’d been after they’d taken a shine to a dashing stranger at a dinner party, only to find out they’d been chatting to Robert Oppenheimer.

It’s more fanciful than most of The Sensual World’s little secrets. To hear someone recall formative childhood truths (the lush grandeur of “Reaching Out”) and lingering romantic pipedreams (the longing of “Never Be Mine”) is like being given a reel of their memory tapes and discovering what makes them tick. On “The Fog,” she’s paralyzed by fear until she remembers the childhood swimming lessons her father gave her, his voice cutting through the misty harps like an old ghost. Relationships on the album can be sticky and thorny. “Between a Man and a Woman” is half-dangerous and half-sultry, its snaking rhythms mirroring the round-in-circles squabbling of a couple. When a third party tries to interfere, they’re told to back off. This time, unlike on “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” there’s no point wishing for a helping hand from God.

But if there are no miracles, there are at least songs that sound like them. For “Rocket’s Tail,” Bush enlisted the help of Trio Bulgarka, who she fell in love with after hearing them on a tape Paddy gave her. The three Bulgarian women didn’t speak English and had no idea what they were singing about, but it didn’t matter. They sound more like mystics during its a capella first half, and when it eventually blows up into a glammy stomper with Dave Gilmour’s electric guitar caterwauling like a Catherine wheel, their vocals still come out on top: cackling like gleeful witches, whooping like they’re watching sparks explode in the night sky. Its weird, wonderful magic offered a simple message: Life is short, so enjoy moments of pleasure before they fizzle out.

Perhaps that’s why there are glimmers of hope even in the album’s most desperate circumstances. “Deeper Understanding” is a bleak sci-fi tale about a lonely person who turns to their computer for comfort, and in doing so isolates themselves even more. But while there’s an icy chill to the verses, Trio Bulgarka imbue the computer’s voice with golden warmth. Bush wanted it to sound like the “visitation of angels,” and hearing the chorus is like being wrapped in a celestial hug. She pulls off a similar trick on “This Woman’s Work,” which she wrote for John Hughes’ film She’s Having a Baby, although her vivid, devastating interpretation of its script has taken on a far greater life of its own. It captures a moment of crisis: a man about to be walloped with the sledgehammer of parental responsibilities, frozen by terror as he waits for his pregnant wife outside the delivery room, his brain a messy spiral of regrets and guilty thoughts. Yet Bush softens the song’s building panic attack with soft musical touches so it rushes and swirls like a dream, even as reality becomes a waking nightmare. “It’s the point where has to grow up,” said Bush. “He’d been such a wally.”

She didn’t need to prove her own steeliness to anyone, especially the male journalists who patronized her and harped on her childishness as a way of cutting her down to size. Instead, The Sensual World is the sound of someone deciding for themselves what growing up and grown-up pop should be, without being beholden to anyone else’s tedious definitions. It gave her a new template for the next two decades, inspiring both the smooth, stylish art-rock of 1993’s The Red Shoes and the picturesque beauty of 2005’s Aerial. Like Molly Bloom, Bush had set herself free into a world that wasn’t mundane, but alive with new, fertile possibility”.

On 16th October, the wonderous and beguiling The Sensual World turns thirty-five. Bush’s first album in her thirties, we get to hear this new approach. Her voice somehow richer and slightly deeper. Songs that are very different to what she had written before. I really love The Sensual World and think that it should be celebrated – rather than seen as a pale Hounds of Love. In fact, there are layers and new details I am discovering on the album I have never noticed before! This magnificent album reveals hidden gems and details…

AFTER thirty-five years.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five: The Trio Bulgarka and a Musical Change of Direction

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five

The Trio Bulgarka and a Musical Change of Direction

_________

FOLLOWING the success and promotion…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with the Trio Bulgarka

of Hounds of Love, there was a bit of transition and change for Kate Bush. It was four years between the release of Hounds of Love and The Sensual World in 1989. Ahead of the thirty-fifth anniversary of The Sensual World on 16th October, I did want to look at the way things changed for Bush. One of the biggest shifts and most notable additions to The Sensual World was the Trio Bulgarka. Bush first heard the trio – Yanka Rupkina, Eva Georgieva and Stoyanka Boneva – in 1985 at the end of the Hounds of Love recording sessions. I am dipping into Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush by Graeme Thomson once more for reference and insight. It was a real transformative period after Hounds of Love. Most of 1986 was spent promoting still and, even after that, Bush could not instantly transition into a new album. There were songs attempted and abandoned. A period where she could not write anything and needed time out. It is quite a leap going from her 1985 masterpiece and The Sensual World. In terms of the sound and palette, they are very different works. Bush connecting more with her sensual and feminine side. Hitting thirty in 1988, this was someone whose priorities had changed. Her outlook on life and music. You can hear that all feed through and bleed into the songs on The Sensual World. It was her brother Paddy Bush who opened the artist’s eyes to the Trio Bulgarka. Bush was devastated by their voices and it inspired her. Influenced by music from various corners of the world, perhaps there was a connection between the Irish music on her mother’s side and how that was present on Hounds of Love and the peasant music of Bulgaria. These two cultures combining on The Sensual World’s title track. It is that sense of romance, wild, wind, landscape and the picturesque that is summoned. Bush took several years to connect the Trio, as she was reluctant to integrate such heady and noble music into Pop.

It was producer Joe Boyd who helped broker a connection. Kate Bush phoned him up in his office and said that he was the man who could help her. That Boyd knew about Bulgarian music. Boyd has worked with the likes of Fairport Convention and Nick Drake. It was the first time Bush brought female vocalists into her music in such a direct and prominent way. Her trip to Sofia in October 1988 was a culture clash. She stayed there over the weekend and, shortly, all four women returned to London. There was this intensity over a few days where three songs were worked on. It was a huge impact on The Sensual World. Altering the sound altogether. It was early-1987 before Bush seriously committed to writing for the album. She wrote This Woman’s Work specifically for the comedy film, She’s Having a Baby. A song written quickly to a particular scene and visual, I think that there was something in that song and setting it to such an emotional scene that opened her mind and led her in a new direction. It wasn’t only vocal impetus and new possibility that affected and guided Kate Bush’s songwriting. The studio and technology Bush employed was also important. After Bush built her own home studio for Hounds of Love, she no longer had to rely on expensive spaces and foreign spaces. The farm studio where Kate Bush and Del Palmer worked for Hounds of Love was upgraded/altered. An SSL console was brought in. Perhaps less reliant on technology and gadgets than Hounds of Love, there was focus on the purity and heart of the song. Her production less layered and complex than it was on 1982’s The Dreaming. It would become more layered and busy by 1993’s The Red Shoes. Maybe less conceptual or advanced as she was used to, the main equipment was the Fairlight III and DX7 synth. She recorded demos and then took a few months out as she was finding it hard to find her direction.

The Sensual World started out a very different album to what it became. Wanting to release an album that was ten short stories. Whereas the songwriting and schedule was not as rigid and hectic as it was on albums past, that did not impact quality and ambition. Bush realising that committing too much of herself to the music was having a detrimental impact. The most notable takeaways from The Sensual World is the working method and sounds. Del Palmer and Kate Bush could work on a song and take it home if they want. They could then take a break and spend a few days away. Very different to what she was used to. This was the later days of their romantic relationship. Palmer was the principal engineer, but one wonders how many of the more romantic songs on The Sensual World were based on Bush’s relationship or more general observations. Wonderfully unusual instruments like a valiha or tupan were brought in. Various musicians adding their own shades and colours. Continuity in the form of warm hospitality from the Bush family bringing food and drink. It seemed like a much less pressured environment and surrounding when we even think back to Hounds of Love. The Sensual World was very much more about the songwriting than pushing the studio and the technology of the day. Also, by the late-1980s, musical tastes and fashions had changed. Another album that sounded like Hounds of Love would not fit into the scene and what was around then. Bush, moving into her thirties, wanted to embrace female energy. Positive energy. The Sensual World reflects that. More seductive and explorative than the more direct and harder-sounding songs on Hounds of Love. The Sensual World divides some because it is so different to Hounds of Love.

One cannot blame Bush for not wanting to repeat herself. As Graeme Thomson notes, The Sensual World is about human connections and discovering what is important in life. Bush explained how she wants to connect with what is important in life. What is missing. Throw away things that were tying her down and getting in the way. A more mature and forward-looking album. An album where she was thinking about herself and seeking meaning, rather than any commercial drive or creating an album that would show critics after some of the reaction to The Dreaming. In some way, Bush might have been thinking about family and settling. Perhaps spending time away from music. Certain events put that on hold. Her mother died in 1992. Two of her friends, guitarist Alan Murphy and dancer Gary Hurst, died as the result of AIDS. Murphy died of pneumonia which weakened his immune system. Thinking about Kate Bush’s association with the Trio Bulgarka, I think that this is the most significant aspect of The Sensual World. How Bush and Joe Boyd were in Sofia and drove around with a translator to find meeting spots. Bush’s structure and writing meant the backing track could not be tinkered with and changed later. The Trio Bulgarka lack of English meant that it was a case of translation and some error. Taking a bit of time to click. However, there was this instant bond and affection between Bush and the Trio. This sisterly appreciation and respect. The Trio spending a couple of days in a school room with a beat-box and a tape of tracks. I loved how there was a back and forth between the arranger and the ethnographer. Translator Borimira Nedeva helped out hugely getting the Trio to London. At the time, it was quite hard travelling between the U.K. and Bulgaria and travelling around Bulgaria is you were foreign. Nedeva pulled strings and took big risks because she loved Kate Bush and wanted her and the Trio to work together.

Borimira Nedeva was crucial in London when it came to translating conversation and music. Recording out of Angel Studios, the few days they were there were quite long and tough. Smiles, hugs and physical contact the most powerful connection given the language barriers. Though it was a difficult process getting the vocals down and blending in the Trio Bulgarka to The Sensual World, you can notice the difference it made! Think about the songs they are on – including The Sensual World and Rocket’s Tail -, and there is this power and sensation that one could not hear in any other album from 1989. In the past, when Bush wanted to bring unusual instruments or sounds into her music, they could usually be played by Paddy Bush or one of her musicians. Her Irish sessions easy to complete compared to working with a trio who spoke Bulgarian. However, knowing that their voices and talent would add something exceptional to her sixth studio album, she committed a lot of time and effort to making it happen. I really love The Sensual World and do not think that it gets enough acclaim. In another anniversary feature, I will discuss how it was perceived. In the third and final anniversary feature, I want to go deeper into the songs. Those bigger numbers and the ones that are deeper. On 16th October, it will be thirty-five years since the release of Bush’s sixth studio album. Following on from Hounds of Love, maybe the public were expecting something very similar. 1989 was a year when Pop was changing. Madonna’s Like a Prayer. Hip-Hop classics from De La Soul and Beastie Boys. Bands like The Stone Roses releasing masterpieces. Even if Bush did not exactly fit into the scene of 1989, she did at least know she needed to change and evolve. What she did release in 1989 is an album that is…

ONE of her very best.

FEATURE: Say You’ll Be There: Will We See the Legendary Group Take to the Stage Again?

FEATURE:

 

 

Say You’ll Be There

PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Roney

Will We See the Legendary Group Take to the Stage Again?

_________

I am writing this…

just shy of the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Spice Girls’ single, Spice Up Your Life. That is the song of theirs that sits in the mind hardest. It was released during a very hard year at high school. My favourite song is from the previous album. Spice is their 1996 debut album. Who Do You Think You Are? was a single from the album and it was released on 3rd March, 1997. I remember hearing that in that same year when I was on holiday in Orlando. I was a big fan of Spice Girls back in the 1990s. Even though they had a relatively brief run, their impact on Pop culture and the music scene is undeniable and indelible. Even if many think that their Girl Power mantra and brand was faux-feminism or manufactured, one cannot argue against the fact they struck out for women and inspired their female fanbase. Great and strong role models. The group’s final album, Forever, was released in 2000. Since then, there have been occasions when the Spice Girls have been on the stage together. Ginger Spice (Geri Halliwell-Horner, formerly Halliwell), Baby Spice (Emma Bunton), Sporty Spice (Melanie Chisholm), Scary Spice (Melanie Brown) and Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham, formerly Adams) broke out with their 1996 debut single, Wannabe. It was an iconic moment in 1990s music. The introduction of a girl group that would change the world. The reason I am asking about a reunion is because of Oasis’ recent announcement. Although there would perhaps not be the same sort of excitement and demand if Spice Girls toured and got back together – however briefly -, I do think that there is desire and promise. As this recent article from Metro explores, the girls have reformed and appeared together after 2000.

It has been a bit of a rocky road the past few years. Brown and Halliwell-Horner seem to be one of the main reasons as to why a reunion might never happen. Even if they can be in the same room together – there was a photo of the five members together for Victoria Beckham’s fiftieth birthday this year -, going on the stage and performing is a different matter. Clashes between two members perhaps derailing hopes. Halliwell left Spice Girls after their second album, Spice World. Beckham was the only member missing from reunion gigs a few years back. I guess there have been approaches by festivals like Glastonbury to get them together for a huge headline set. Although a reunion next year would not be tied to a big anniversary – I guess twenty-five years since their final album? -, we are in a time when incredible women in Pop are coming through. Icons of today who, in some part, owe a debt to Spice Girls. Who have picked up their mantle and are continuing their legacy. I would hate to think that they will never get back together. I am not sure how deep the feud between Brown and Halliwell-Horner runs and whether they can be reconciled. I hope so. Rather than them putting differences aside and this being a cash-in, there would need to be genuine repair and harmony. Otherwise it could be a disaster. I did not know that this might be the reason why Spice Girls have not reformed. There may be other factors, though two of its members being at loggerheads is a pretty big hurdle to overcome!

Rather than it being '90s revivalism or a reaction to Oasis going back on the road, this is a group who have influenced so many artists. Their music still stands up and there would be a definitely wave of love for them if they ever announced their stage return. Even if it was a headline slot at Glastonbury or a brief run of shows. It is such a shame. The more I listen to Spice Girls now, the more I can feel their influence today. How they did make this enormous impact. Seeing interviews from them back in the 1990s and the connection and chemistry. They were so close! Despite all the gruelling touring and promotion, there was this bond and love between them. It would have been impossible for them all to stay together longer than they did given the pressure and spotlight on them. As time has passed, you would hope that they can remember those great days and recapture it once more. I guess one can never say never. If there has been a history of disagreements between Halliwell-Horner and Brown, it is not to say that crack cannot be repaired. It is not only a personal dream to see the quintet back on the stage performing their hits. Even if it seems unlikely, there is this definite desire to see Spice Girls together. Back on a stage united. Maybe Geri Halliwell-Horner and Melanie Brown could never consider that possibility. With next year’s summer festivals providing an ideal platform, we all hope things can change. We all hope they can put any differences to bed so we can ask, with genuine hope in our hearts…

SAY you’ll be there!

FEATURE: Spotlight: SOFIA ISELLA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

SOFIA ISELLA

_________

WITH an illustrious and busy…

string of gigs behind her, a lot of fans have witnessed SOFIA ISELLA in the flesh. ISELLA has supported Taylor Swift in the U.K. She has just completed dates in the U.K. and will no doubt be thinking of a rest and maybe recording new music in soon enough. Her acclaimed new E.P., I Can Be Your Mother, was released on 6th September. It is fantastic! I am fairly new to her work. I am going to get to a couple of relatively recent interviews with SOFIA ISELLA. Describing herself in brief words (“Classically trained violinist. Songwriter, producer. A slut for words. I've never lost a fight with a tiger”), this is an artist that is starting to get a lot of press attention. I really hope that this increases. I want to start off with an interview from last year with Rue Morgue. They asked the then-eighteen-year-old ISELLA about her upcoming single, Everybody Supports Women:

“At only 18 years old, SOFIA ISELLA is already one of her generation’s foremost social critics within the music industry. Her stark, unsettling, dynamic music combines elements of industrial electronic with Sofia’s rich vocals and her experience as a classically trained musician to create an immersive world of her own creation. Influenced by her own observations of the world – as well as her love for dark, sometimes horrific, imagery – Sofia’s lyrics critique sexism, internet addiction, and imagine a future that belongs to the people who have traditionally been excluded from historical narratives. In between festival appearances, Sofia took some time to chat with us here at Rue Morgue about her artistry, her love of the horror genre, and her upcoming single “Everybody Supports Women,” out today.

Hello Sofia! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with Rue Morgue. To begin, I’d like to give you an opportunity to describe your art to our readers; How would you pitch your music to a new listener?

Howdy. Thanks for having me. Industrial, political, opinionated, very lyrically oriented. Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, Nine Inch Nails, Saya Gray, Beck, Imogen Heap, these are the gods I pray to. And I’m a slut for words. Oh my GOD words. Poetry. All that jazz.

In so many ways, your music explores the horrors of our modern society (“Us and Pigs” is a great example). How do you go about your songwriting process?

Different every time. I chuck some stuff around. Rip the walls off. Shatter the windows. Claw my face off. Usual stuff, I won’t bore you with the details. I like my words, usually, I love starting with them and building the rest of that or starting with production and top lining. But even when I do that, I can also pull words I previously wrote and insert them in. “Us and Pigs” started that way for instance. I was bored free writing by a poolside and out of nowhere I started a new paragraph and wrote the concept for the second verse “pump us full of sperm, put us in a barn, us and pigs on a Mississippi farm,” I reread it, scared myself, and put the phone down. Later on, I was at the piano and I pulled the words from that free write and inserted it into the little waltz I was playing on the piano.

How would you frame your upcoming single, “Everybody Supports Women,” to our readers?

If you’re a woman, and you’ve had even a flicker of success in any aspect or part of your life – and it doesn’t have to be on a major global scale, I mean it could be you were the Most Popular Fucking 5th Grader – you’ll know exactly what the song is talking about. I was once at this concert and the artist was introducing a song they wrote about this GIRL. And this GIRL, they said, was NICE. And SMART AND FUNNY AND TALENTED AND PRETTY. And then they do a dramatic pause AND. SHE does CHARITYYYYYY. And the entire crowd just groaned and screamed. Obviously, the artist was not saying this without seeing the irony, but I thought it was a real and true analysis of how people deal with other people having lives that seem better than our own. I wrote it that night in the dark as soon as I was back from the show.

I know that in addition to being an incredibly talented singer/songwriter, you are also a classically trained violinist and producer. How has your musical background informed your approach to creating dark/alternative pop?

To a certain degree, I’ve had to fight against my classical training. The technique and career of classical music is so intense and if you go down that route, it’s a bit more constrained than I ever naturally was. I was brought up in a conservatory-type institution, where luckily I had a supportive family and main teacher who would help me fight it, but I was always getting in trouble if I moved too much during a performance, or if I wore black pants instead of a black skirt. You know the vibe. But violin is incorporated in EVERYTHING I do musically, from recordings to live shows. Even having to fight certain aspects, I’m still really grateful to have the background in the classical world and it gave me a lot, I’m sure it influences me more than I’m even aware of.

Finally, what does the future look like for SOFIA ISELLA? Anything exciting to tease?

OHHHOHO I’m an excited duck. One excited duck. There’s a certain song that I’m going to be doing after “Everybody Supports Women,” something something and something soon. Something something exciting. Things are getting lined up, getting ready to shoot. Also heading back home to LA soon, currently in the UK doing festivals”.

I want to move to an interview with The Standard. SOFIA ISELLA recalls how it was her mother waking her up and asking if she wanted to support Taylor Swift at Wembley that she discovered the big news. Quite a huge moment! Interviewed prior to the release of I Can Be Your Mother, this is an artist who I think will have the biggest year of her career in 2025. All signs point to her being a worldwide sensation:

“SOFIA ISELLA (she stylises her artistic name in capitals), was born in the US, but has lived in Australia’s Gold Coast since her family were quarantined there during the pandemic for her dad’s job. Writing songs since the age of eight, she’s built her career with low-fi gigs and canny online promotion, and only did her first headline show in London last month at the Camden Assembly, which has a capacity of a few hundred. A classically trained violinist since the age of three, she’s previously supported Tom Odell and Melanie Martinez.

ISELLA has not yet released an album, just a series of singles since 2022, and will only play six songs at Wembley. But all are remarkably accomplished, with pulsating and complex electronic production that’s reminiscent of Billie Eilish. Isella has 500,000 Instagram followers, many of whom leave comments saying how her songs speak to them deeply, and they can’t understand why she’s not better known.

While she’s young, her work has maturity, and an often unsettling intensity: like Swift, Isella feels lyrics are all important. As well as Nine Inch Nails star Trent Reznor and Beck, she credits writers Sylvia Plath and Margaret Atwood among her key influences. One song, Unattractive, has the words: “I wanna pull my face off, it's impulsive”. Another song, Everybody Supports Women, explores the performative nature of social media feminism. “Everybody supports women until a woman's doing better than you,” go the lyrics. “Everybody wants you to love yourself until you actually do.”

ISELLA is one of five young women who are supporting Swift for five gigs this week – they’re all playing before her main support act, Paramore. The young musician, who is kicking off the shows, stands out, partly because all the others are all British: RAYE, Suki Holly Humberstone and Maisie Peters.

Like many of the women, ISELLA is a huge fan of the all-conquering country star. She says Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department did “a bunch of numbers” on me, calling it a “f**king hurricane”, with the “the most ribcage squeezing sentences I’ve ever seen on an album”. “Just the prolificacy alone, and not only that but the quality of prolificacy, was so inspiring I could cry,” Isella says passionately.

“I would walk through the day and remember a line and just repeat it over and over at different speeds,” Isella says of the record, which also inspired her to write more. “It gave me that feeling of that’s what we’re all doing it for,” Isella says. “To send shockwaves of that communal inspiration that regurgitates and recycles itself.”

Isella is approaching this gig a little differently to her other ones. “This whole thing is about celebrating Taylor’s legacy,” she says passionately, of her preparation for a stadium crowd. “Just to speak on it on a more physical level, it’s insane. I just get so excited for a challenge, I chomp at the bit... I’ve been going into mode for it since March. I know that Taylor trains for it like an Olympian and that’s the way to do it. She’s a fantastic role model for anyone, both men and women. I look up to her.”

One thing that won’t be different is how much Isella’s family play a role in her music – with her mum actually a part of the live show. “The things I’ll be doing the same though since I used to play gigs at an empty bar or empty malls in Australia, is my family is all a part of it,” she explains. “My mom is running the tracks backstage from empty spaces to Wembley Stadium, my little sister takes my photos, my dad made the intro visuals that I walk out to. They’re the reason I’m still sane… somewhat” she jokes.

For now, Isella can’t wait to get out there. “I can’t speak to why Taylor chooses her openers or what her thought process is because I’ve never talked to her, and I don’t know her personally,” she says. “But she creates an environment of safety in her world, especially in her live music setting, and that kindness and love that she cultivates into her fans makes it less daunting to be walking onto the biggest stage in the world”.

It is a shame that there have not really been any critical reviews for I Can Be Your Mother. Some fans have on message boards, yet there seems to be nothing in the way of a magazine or website offering their thoughts. Regardless. It is an E.P. that everyone should seek out. Speaking with NME earlier this month, SOFIA ISELLA discussed her debut E.P., supporting Taylor Swift and her growing fanbase:

“The artwork for your EP features you with a pregnant belly on your back. What inspired that visual?

“I think visuals are very important. Pregnancy, I was thinking that was the kind of object I wanted to play around with and move. I remember, I was just in the hallway and I was like, ‘it should be in the back. It’s like, pregnant with a career’. Like, there’s two ways to be pregnant and you’re pregnant from the career that you’re growing, pregnant with yourself. That’s kind of where I was feeling with that. I loved the unsettlingness of it.”

On being somewhat unsettling, your sound is often likened to Billie Eilish or Melanie Martinez – how do you feel about comparisons to your alt pop predecessors?

“I love Billie. I remember listening to ‘You Should See Me in a Crown’, and I was crying because I was like, ‘this is so good’. It was such a mind-blowing new thing to see. I love the comparisons that I get. I think that everyone is different, but also, I get comparing [me to other] to people. And I think, really, it’s an incredible compliment.”

“I’ve always been very careful with myself because of how people treat famous people”

Who are some of your dream collaborators?

“I mean, Billie is just one of those iconic people. I love Billie, I love Trent Reznor, I love Ethel Cain. I’m usually a very solo type of creator, but there are some exceptions to that rule where I’m just like, ‘oh, you’re just you’re just phenomenal. You’re just so insane.’

“I love [Cain’s] aesthetic. She’s so good at visuals, and so good at creating a whole world that I think is so important. The sonics of some of her things are just so haunting. I listen to them on night drives, and it’s just a crazy, very unique sonic and whole world she’s got going on.”

The content you do share with fans on YouTube and TikTok is often done in short bursts. Is that done consciously, in light of your relationship to social media?

“This is kind of a topic I’ve never really talked about. I’ve always been very careful with myself, [because of] how people treat famous people, and just me wanting to be at an arm’s length. There’s two aspects of this. One, trying to hold onto my own sanity and my own self, and at the same time, giving them – especially the hardcore people – more.

“I have this private Instagram account, and that’s for people who ever find it, so they have things earlier. They have a snippet of a song, they always see the artwork before anyone else does and we have our own little inside jokes. And it’s a great community. But I also like keeping parts of myself that might not necessarily need to be [out there, private]”.

I will end it there. A rising artist that you really need to know about, SOFIA ISELLA has enjoyed a memorable year. Supporting Taylor Swift, touring through cities and towns and releasing her debut E.P., things will get even better for the Los Angeles-raised superstar. A wonderful artist that I have really got into over the past few weeks, 2024 has very much been…

HER year.

_____________

Follow SOFIA ISELLA

 Official:

https://www.sofiaisella.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/sofia_isella/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/40Aif8AfzbNGA2s52ESEE2

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0eAt21KrRiYwLu3cs1qe6A

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/sofiaisellaa/

FEATURE: Men Are Afraid That Women Will Laugh at Them… Where Is the Protest and Activation from the Music Industry?

FEATURE:

 

 

Men Are Afraid That Women Will Laugh at Them…

IMAGE CREDIT: Nada Foundation

Where Is the Protest and Activation from the Music Industry?

_________

EVERY year of civilisation…

PHOTO CREDIT: RDNE Stock project/Pexels

brings about reports of absolute barbarity, abuse and disgusting attitudes towards women. In terms of the misogyny out there in the world, it can range from Internet abuse through to murder. Recent news stories where women have been murdered – one particular case, it was beyond depraved and unbelievable – are both hugely upsetting, disgusting and, sadly, not surprising! Men’s threat and danger has been known for a long time and yet we keep seeing cases where women are abused, assaulted and murdered by men. Constant incidents of sexual assault and rape. Women being attacked and murdered. I don’t think we are in a better position than we were, say, fifty years ago. One would hope that the more cases we see that move and affect us, the less we would find women as victims. Awareness raised. The shock that you get from hearing about some truly evil and despicable acts! From everyday and no less reprehensible cases of women like Patsy Stevenson receiving abuse or blood-freezing stories of women being killed by those they trust and love, how safe are women now?! That may sound all-sweeping and vague. I know that there will be the predictable and idiotic arguments. Not all men are the same. Not all men are guilty. That is blindingly obvious! It is a reductive and pointless argument that takes focus away from the debate and point: Why should women feel threatened around men?! What all men are not doing is to raise their disgust and concerns. To do something about it. We have seen riots and protests around a variety of things over the past few years – one can never condone the right-wing protests, yet it shows that people will take to the streets if they believe in a cause (however misguided and insane).

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay/Pexels

It is great that we can physically protest and summon numbers in the thousands in a digital era. That causes like ending genocide in Palestine and protecting and making asylum seekers feel safe compels people to come together and raise their voices for a worthy cause. For humanity and solidarity. It is such a powerful and moving thing to witness! I remember seeing on the news those banding together to protest against right-wing terrorists trying to abuse asylum seekers. Those masses that took to the street to free Palestine and show their anger against Israel and the genocide happening there. What about women’s protection and rights?! For sure, there have been protests through the years, yet that mass mobilisation and huge anger and call for change?! I follow these amazing and important voices for awareness and change on Twitter: @JessPected, @ginamartinuk, @karenwhybro, @David_Challen, @flaminhaystacks. I am also a member of @TheTroubleClub and am constantly inspired by the women who speak there. Many share their experiences of being harassed, abused or assaulted by men. It is not something dying away or reserved to a certain few. In terms of violence against women, earlier this year, the World Health Organisation published statistics that highlighted how “globally about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime”.

IMAGE CREDIT: End Violence Against Women (2024)

Recent findings by ITN Business show that violence against women and girls in the U.K. is an epidemic. Something that seems to be on the rise. It is harrowing and despicable that we are in this position! How is there not more of a national outrage?! I hope that there is protest and activation. That the government does everything they can to address something that needs to end. That women can feel safe:

“A new report by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing has shed light on the alarming state of violence against women and girls in the UK.

The findings, which were released on Tuesday, paint a grim picture, with Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth describing the issue as having reached “epidemic” levels, and declaring it a “national emergency”.

The report’s statistics are staggering: an estimated one in 20 adults, amounting to 2.3 million people annually, are perpetrators of violence against women and girls (VAWG). Ms Blyth underscored the severity of the situation, stating, “Nobody in industry and in other sectors and across the public understands just the scale and impact of these crimes.”

The report identified multiple key threats to victims, including sexual violence, domestic abuse, stalking, and child sexual abuse. Between 2018 and 2023, there was a 37% increase in violent crimes against women and girls. Last year alone, over one million crimes against women and girls were recorded in England and Wales, constituting 20% of all crimes documented by the police”.

There are organisations and charities like Woman’s Trust, Women’s Aid , Refuge, Solace and SafeLives out there for any women suffering domestic abuse. It is a real moment of crisis we are in. It is good that there are campaigners and people out there and online who are highlighting the statistics and dangers. Opening up conversations and spotlighting the fact that, more and more, men are posing a huge danger. What will it take for women to ever feel safe and respected?! These are not words that I should be typing in 2024!

PHOTO CREDIT: Duané Viljoen/Pexels

Where does this connect with the music industry? Well, there were plans for concerts protesting the rise in racism we are seeing in the country. It is very worthy and needed. There have been very few campaigns and protests in the music industry. Artists can raise awareness and talk about subjects such as race and violence through their songs. You occasionally get campaigns designed to ignite conversation and raise awareness. That does happen. Considering the horrific rise in violence against women, you feel like the music industry does need to do something. It is something that impacts women right through music. From artists to fans and those in office, it is this constant danger that must be indescribably frightening for women. It affects each and every one of them. In terms of having some connection – whether first-hand or knowing someone who has been abused or attacked – and experiencing the emotional and physical plight of assault and abuse. The number of women killed by men this year is staggering! I do hope that artists react to this. Not just women. Male allyship is so important. I also hope there are protests in the streets and calls for change and immediate action. Music has real power and influence. Campaigns and films need to be made. Artists and those in the industry sharing their words. In the same way there are concerts planned to combat racism and far-right activity in this country, women’s rights and safety needs to provoke a similar sense of duty and rebellion.

 IN THIS PHOTO: MART PRODUCTION/Pexels

In 2024, we should not be hearing news stories of women being murdered by men so frequently. Abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault still incredibly high. To the point where women are constantly under threat. It is not an overstatement to say it is a crisis. One that is growing more disturbing and toxic by the year. There is a big role and opportunity for music to intervene. Artists brining this to the fore in their music. Campaigns raised. Not only highlighting the statistics and the grim realities that women face. Awareness and social media campaigns where men can be educated and informed. Where there is this concerted and dedicated effort to help. Of course, the sad reality is that we will never see the end of violence against women! Since the dawn of civilisation it has been the case. It will be until the end of humanity. However, there has been a startling rise. Whether that is partly responsible for misogynists and abusers like Andrew Tate brainwashing young men or something wider in society, we cannot keep talking about violence against women and stand still. Well, not still, but as we are at breaking point and things are extraordinarily serious, it feels like something needs to happen!

 IMAGE CREDIT: usembassy.gov

Music and those in the industry have an opportunity to do so much. Sexual abuse and violence has impacted so many women in music. There has been very little in the way of any real movement or campaign. That surely must change. As I say, male allyship vital right now. After a past couple of weeks that has seen some of the most disturbing and unimaginable violence and abuse against women, there needs to be uprising. It is important that organisations that can help women are known about. That important activists and figures speak out and highlight what is happening. It feels like this is a moment for taking to the streets. Regardless, I have been thinking how the music industry can do its part. How something so universal and widespread can help bring about change. Huge artists through Pop and beyond can either raise it through their music or join a wider campaign or film that highlights violence against women. I have been appalled and upset by seeing what is happening and this horrendous rise in violence and abuse against women! We cannot get to the position where things are as bad and in the say situation as they are now…

PHOTO CREDIT: MART PRODUCTION/Pexels

THIS time next year.

FEATURE: Jig of Life: Why I Would Love to Write to Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

Jig of Life

Why I Would Love to Write to Kate Bush

_________

IT is an ambition…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Hounds of Love album cover shoot in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

that every Kate Bush fan has. In a digital age where we use email and social media, I am not sure whether we write letters or feel the need to. There is something personal about them. Maybe it is the effort of going through it. Perhaps there are not many reasons why we would need to write a letter. In terms of Kate Bush, once was the day that is the only way you could contact her. She used to receive letters through her fan club or label. Bush would have received a huge stack of them, yet she did reply to quite a few. Occasions where she really took the time to write a sweet response. Fans requesting song lyrics or getting a very thoughtful and personal message back. Perhaps it was not possible for her to reply to many letters when her career went to new levels in 1985. However, there are so many incidents where Bush was personally replying to fans. Now, people can get in touch with her. I think that it is more a case of filmmakers and producers asking Bush for permissions to use her music in their project. The Duffer Brothers reaching out to use Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in Stranger Things. They would have found a way to contact her. I guess calling up her P.R. agency, Murray Chalmers and calling the man himself. The same with other filmmakers that have used her music. There is no public address apart from Murray Chalmers. You can call them direct but it is unlikely that you would be passed through to her representative. In terms of writing letters to them, it would be hard to think any of them would ever reach Kate Bush. It is understandable but also frustrating. I suppose, if Bush was accepting and reading fan mail, she would be overwhelmed and bombarded! In terms of separating fan mail with genuine requests and pitches, how do you go about that?!

This is not a general pondering. Instead, one of my Kate Bush ambitions is to write to her. Not a letter saying how big a fan of hers I am. Of course, if I could write to her, I would mention the blog and the fact that I have written about her hundreds of times. To let her know her music is being shared and discussed. The reason I want to is because, next year, Hounds of Love turns forty. That anniversary is on 16th September. I have written about this recreantly. How it is important that we celebrate that anniversary. I think a radio documentary is the best way to mark the album on its fortieth anniversary. I have been emailing a few production companies but, as yet, no response. Even though it is a year away, it will take time to put everything into place. Getting contributors lined up and a script written. Everything planned to ensure that it is feasible to clear archive interview (from 1985 and 1992) and also use the music from the album. It might be thirty-second clips of each song from Hounds of Love. Also, reaching out to bigger guests like some of Kate Bush’s family and some of the musicians who played on Hounds of Love. Musicians and those through the arts who are influenced by the album and count it among their favourites. Maybe closer to commissioning rounds there will be an opportunity to discuss the project in more detail. I definitely want Sinéad Gleeson to narrate. It would be great to have everyone from Guy Garvey to Stevie Nicks talk about what Hounds of Love means to them. I have written a few Hounds of Love features because it is the album’s thirty-ninth anniversary on Monday (16th September).

I do know of someone who has her home address. I don’t think I could ever, in all good conscience, write to her unsolicited. It may seem too evasive, though it would be an honour if she were to read a letter. Mainly to get her approval to go ahead with a documentary. One I hope that reaches BBC Radio 4 next September. The more I read and learn about Hounds of Love, the more passionate I am about bringing something to life. A huge anniversary for a staggering work. There would be enormous interest. Kate Bush has a clear attachment to the album. She has reissued it a few times now. She performed almost every song from the album during 2014’s Before the Dawn. There is no reason why she would object to the documentary going ahead. The problem is, when it comes to something like this, people want Kate Bush involved. If there is this seal of approval, that would go a long way to making it happen! Giving her details of the documentary and letting her know it is coming from a fan. I would not be on the microphone myself. I am thinking that I could help write the script. I think also Graeme Thomson would be a great authority and someone who be perfect to help craft the script. Contributors ranging from high-profile fans and websites like Kate Bush News. A real celebration and dissection of Hounds of Love! The very least it deserves. I know there will be think-pieces, magazine articles and perhaps entire magazines published that focus on Hounds of Love next year.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay/Pexels

A big dream and reason to write to Kate Bush would be to see if she could contribute a few words. Whether it was something at the start where she explains how she recorded the album and what it was like at the time, or something longer where she also discusses the legacy of Hounds of Love and what it means to her now, it would be a perfect addition to the mix. That may be ambitious. The fact Bush loves the album and has spent time reissuing it and getting it to fans does not entirely rule out the possibility she would do something like that. One can only ask! That is what I would include in a letter. Mostly it would be about the radio documentary and seeing if she could give her blessing to such a programme. That she would receive that letter and might even respond! It would not even need to be a long response. Like filmmakers asking her if they can use music, this would be an opportunity to let Bush know about a project that she would surely be on board with. Taking it back to the start. Whether it was a letter sent to Murray Chalmer that was passed on or another way, I would love that opportunity.

I would be fascinated to see what Bush thinks of a Hounds of Love at 40 documentary. It is very hard to get in touch with Kate Bush because everyone assumes she will say ‘no’. Phoning up her P.R. company and seeing if I can write a letter. If I was ever to get through to her representative, would they just refuse out of hand assuming she would not be interested?! I would love to write to Kate Bush because she would definitely give her go-ahead for the documentary. Maybe she would not contribute herself, though letting her know the plan and hoping that she would give her support. It would provide a lot of impetus for production companies to support and help make the documentary and hopefully BBC Radio 4 or another BBC network (maybe BBC Radio 6 Music?) to commission it. It would be a dream to pen a letter for Kate Bush to let her know about the deal I’m making for…

HER beloved masterpiece.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts: Rubberband Girl

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during filming The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

Rubberband Girl

_________

IN one of the last…

visits to Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts, I wanted to speak about a song I have written about a few times. I think that The Red Shoes is an album that gets overlooked and written off. Think about how critics always place it low in the rankings. I admit there are a couple of weaker songs and it is quite imbalanced when it comes to placing the best songs in the right order. Maybe the final three tracks are not as strong as the top three or those in the middle. That is not Kate Bush’s fault. As producer, she was aware of trying to make the best album possible and having a flow throughout. Her songwriting was still sharp, though some critics noted how there were one or two moments that lacked inspiration. Perhaps flat compared to what she produced on 1989’s The Sensual World. Bush was thirty-five when The Red Shoes arrived. She was at a point when she had been working flat-out for fifteen years or more. She had not had time to focus on herself and decide her future. Her mother died in 1992 and there was this incredibly busy period in 1993 And 1994 where Bush was promoting a lot and needed a break. 1992 was spent recording The Red Shoes. In fact, that album started taking shape two years before. It took quite a while for Bush to record and finalise The Red Shoes. In the 1990s, C.D.s were becoming more popular and artists were filling them up. Not confined by vinyl or cassette, as such, many albums were overlong and could do with a trim. As much as I love The Red Shoes, I do think that it could lose a song or two to make it tighter. The production sound very much of its time. You can hear an overload song like Why Should I Love You? and contrast that with the more natural and less adorned sound of The Sensual World.

In terms of singles, The Red Shoes’ five compared to The Sensual World’s three meant that Bush and EMI were making this bigger push. I am not sure why so many singles were released. Perhaps an effort to ensure that the album was a chart success. After success with her previous albums, The Red Shoes got to number two in the U.K. and twenty-eight in the U.S. An impressive placing! It is unusual that Eat the Music was released in the U.S. on 7th September, 1993. Although the song did well enough on a couple of U.S. charts, one wonders why EMI wanted this song released over there and Rubberband Girl elsewhere. I think that Eat the Music would have done better outside of the U.S. and Rubberband Girl might have been a bigger U.S. success. Considering this was 1993 and genres like Grunge and Alternative were bigger in America, perhaps it would have been a hard sell either way. In the U.K., the initial blooms of Britpop were taking shape. It was a year when artists such as The Breeders, Björk, P.J. Harvey and Suede were breaking through. Music with edge and invention. The Pop landscape would change again heading into 1994. I think there was this blend of incredible Rock and Alternative Dance. The Red Shoes was an album that did stand out in that respect. I really love Rubberband Girl. The first single from the album, it did get to twelve in the U.K. It reached the top forty in many countries. It made its way onto the U.S. charts too. A catchy chorus and this sense of defiance, Bush has a complex relationship with this song. She saw it as a silly throwaway song and considered not including it on The Red Shoes. However, as I have noted before, she did film two videos for it. Three versions of Rubberband Girl were released: an L.P. version, the extended mix, and a remix by American DJ Eric Kupper, which was released towards the end of 1994 on the And So Is Love single. It is interesting that the B-side in the U.K. was Big Stripey Lie; Show a Little Devotion in the U.S.

I shall come to the 1993 version soon enough. Even if Bush felt that the original was inessential and not her best work, she did rework it for 2011’s Director’s Cut. That album where she tackled again songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, the new version was more akin to The Rolling Stones. I prefer the original. However, it is noteworthy to consider she had an attachment to the song. Bush wanted at least to try and improve on it. I always think that the song nods to The Spinners’ The Rubberband Man. Not many rubberband-related songs! Bush was definitely in a position where she needed to bounce back. A song written fast in the studio – which was a rarity for her -, maybe there was this sense of strain and a need for a break. More a message to herself, this was an anthem of self-worth and defiance. Her mother was probably in her mind. I am not sure whether Hannah Bush was ill when Rubberband Girl was recorded. I am guessing it would have been a time when there was challenges and struggle. Bush not at her happiest perhaps. One need only look to 1993 and how she also launched into the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Maybe trying to distract herself. Critical reaction and embrace was lacking compared to previous years. It was a tough time that led to her spending time away from the spotlight of music. After 1993, there was sporadic activity until 2005’s Aerial. I will look at this more when I cover The Red Shoes for anniversary features closer to November. Released in the U.S. on 7th December, 1993, I do like how Bush got so see this song hit the charts and do quite well. I was perhaps a bit hasty when I said how she disliked the song. Although she knew it was a fun track, I think it could have easily been removed from The Red Shoes. A feeling it was maybe too commercial or not as substantial as other songs on the album. It is worth considering what Bush said about Rubberband Girl when she spoke with MOJO in 2011 about Director’s Cut:

“I thought the original ‘Rubberband’ was… Well, it’s a fun track. I was quite happy with the original, but I just wanted to do something really different. It is my least favourite track. I had considered taking it off to be honest. Because it didn’t feel quite as interesting as the other tracks. But I thought, at the same time, it was just a bit of fun and it felt like a good thing to go out with. It’s just a silly pop song really, I loved Danny Thompson’s bass on that, and of course Danny (McIntosh)’s guitar.

Mojo (UK), 2011”.

I am going to wrap things up in a minute. This is a deep cut. Although it was a single and has been played on the radio, many people do not know about this song. It does not get as much focus as most other Kate Bush tracks. Overlooked like much of The Red Shoes. In terms of critical reaction to Rubberband Girl, there was a range of opinions:

“This is Bush at her most direct… rhythmic, almost raunchy workout with the occasional outburst of rock guitar, strange lyrics – and a wired vocal impression of said office accessory being stretched. It is also a very commercial rejoinder.

Alan Jones, Music Week, 28 August 1993

Perhaps a little too up tempo for my tastes – I prefer my Bush all dreamy and mysterious. A minus the drums… but it still has enough kookiness to draw me under. And she’s still the only artist for whom the word “kooky” isn’t an insult.

Everett True, Melody Maker, 11 September 1993”.

There is this playfulness throughout the song. I love the lyrics and the images she summons up: “A rubberband bouncing back to life/A rubberband bend the beat/If I could learn to give like a rubberband/I’d be back on my feet/A rubberband hold me trousers up/A rubberband ponytails/If I could learn to twang like a Rubberband/I’d be a rubberband girl”. The incredible guitar work from Danny McIntosh. Whereas Danny Thompson’s bass joined Mcintosh’s guitar for the Director’s Cut version, John Gilbin provided bass on The Red Shoes’ version. Joined by Nigel Hitchcock, Neil Sidwell, Paul Spong, and Steve Sidwell on brass, this is this mix of the brash and soulful. It is a shame that not a lot of positive things have been written about Rubberband Girl. Not a lot, full stop. Message boards asking if people like the song. One critics took against the Director’s Cut version – finding it funny and a bit tragic.

I have a lot of time for Rubberband Girl and have explored it a few times. I will touch on it for The Red Shoes anniversary features, and I may well revisit it this time next year. There is definitely mixed reception to a song that confidently opens The Red Shoes. Bush could have chosen the title track or Eat the Music. A song with that particular energy. She clearly had faith in Rubberband Girl by making it the first thing people heard when The Red Shoes came out in November 1993. This 2011 review notes how Rubberband Girl was released at a time when other styles and artists were in favour:

“But “Rubberband Girl” is neither angsty nor ironic. It plies a mid-tempo pop thrum, and with its crisp drumming and springing bassline, might be better suited to the late ’80s than four years deep into the last decade of the twentieth century. When I was growing up in a small town yet to receive Triple J’s broadcast transmissions, the only exposure I had to the station were the commercials for it placed in the midst of the music video television program “Rage.” In those, Triple J looked like a chaotic expression of a youth culture I, having just hit double digits in age, was on the cusp of joining. Apart from some spastic moans and excitable horn blats in its outro, however, “Rubberband Girl” has little to do with jejune liveliness. With its stiff percussion and indie-disco groove, it comes off far too polite for a song about learning to loosen up.

This is more a problem with memories of early ’90s culture than with Bush herself. An alt. staple of the ’80s, she was grandmothered into this new era. Alfred Soto once compared a Bush song from this era to a party guest “with smeared makeup, drunk and warbling off-key, but friendly with a couple of the hosts and thus tolerated. But not invited back.” That makes sense; after all, “Rubberband Girl”‘s parent album, The Red Shoes, would be the last collection of new material Bush would release until 2005. In “Rubberband Girl” we see the untidy present succumb to ordered history”.

A successful single in the U.K., I think that we should play and celebrate Rubberband Girl more. A song that has had more than one video and album version, Bush did not want to forget about it. I think it really represents her 1992 and 1993. Years where she suffered loss and came back. A song full of energy and fun, it is hard to think why anyone would take against it. Different to the tone and sound of The Sensual World, this was Kate Bush keeping fresh and evolving. Maybe hard to stand out and get the same reaction in 1993 considering how the music landscape had shifted, The Red Shoes is seen as one of her lesser albums because it was at-odds with that 1993 scene. Bush’s 1980s work stronger and better-sounding. In any case, I feel that everyone should give Rubberband Girl…

A fair shot.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: The Line, the Cross and the Curve: Sweetness and Lives

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush whilst filming The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

The Line, the Cross and the Curve: Sweetness and Lives

_________

THIS is a subject that I have touched on before…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Arrowsmith

but I wanted to spend some more time with. Go into more depth. When thinking of Kate Bush, a number of adjectives come to mind. There is no doubt she is a wonderful producer and fierce talent. Someone ambitious who takes control. Bush is also someone who has this incredibly hospitable side. Even as a producer guiding her album, there is always this consideration and time for other people. The balance between her sweetness and generosity and this need for a private life. An artist that did not want to play into the fame game. She had her small circle of friends and family. I am recalling her being at Abbey Road Studios for a celebration – I think a studio anniversary – and people being more interested in her than the occasion. Bush having to retreat to one of the smaller studios for space and privacy. However, people soon discovered her there and the moment passed! When she was a guest at Elton John’s wedding, she was also one of the most popular people there. Hard for her to be out and stay under the radar. I think that is a reason why she took time out after releasing The Red Shoes in 1993. For most of her career, Kate Bush has worked out of the studios, promoted her albums and been in demand. She promoted her albums professionally but, outside of that, her main focus was on her private life and space. Even after gigs during The Tour of Life in 1979, she would crash and be in her bedroom. I think there was one messy night where there was a lot of water. And pillow feathers everywhere! I would have loved to have seen Kate Bush then and the expression on her face! For most of the time, Bush has wanted to keep her professional and personal lives separately.

Kate Bush has been called a recluse ever since her career began. Because she was driven by family and wanted to keep a low-profile, there was always this assumption that she was holed up and hiding from the world. Whilst many of her peers were at events and parties, Bush was focused on the work. A hugely disciplined person who was very down to Earth. That is what people miss when it comes to Kate Bush. The fact that she has always been grounded and relatable. Keener to focus on work and spend her spare time doing what she wanted. Not leaning into celebrity or doing what others did. The mislabelling of Kate Bush because she was not seen as a typical artist. The fact that she did stay out of the spotlight and was about the music and eschewed the fame aspect was actually a big reason why she has always been so respected. Disciplined and focused, it is sad that the media chose to label her. Create this image of some strange woman holed up and being this reclusive weirdo. Alongside this continued and well-grounded normalcy and privacy, Bush has also got this reputation for her hospitality. Whether that is meeting an interviewer or greeting musicians, you do feel that Bush took a lot from her parents. Especially her mother. I have discussed this about her. The environment she created. If other artists were guarded or had to cultivate this shield, Bush was different. Her natural warmth and openness meant she has been talked about in such lofty tones for decades. Most of her recent interviews – from 2005’s Aerial onwards – have been at her home Bush always taking the time to open her house up to people and giving as much as she could.

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

This is not a new thing. If Bush occasionally had to be strict as a producer or was quite clear about what she wanted, that was a professional necessity. Being clear about her vision or needing to be a particular way to communicate and ensure she was understood. There was never any sense of this being a ruthless or uncaring artist. In the studio or on tour, Bush knew everyone’s name and would treat them like family. It is no surprise that there was this unfortunate attention her way in terms of lust and attraction. The media over-sexualised Bush and focused on her looks and body. That was the misogyny that came in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout her career, Bush would have to face objectification and being mislabelled and insulted. Those who work with her talk about this sense of the devotional. Some artists or producers not able to work with her because they have this attraction and fall in love with her. That mix of her incredible beauty and this warmth and protectiveness means they are unable to handle their feelings. When Bush was in the studio and in a relationship with Del Palmer, you would get this jealousy from other male musicians and crew. If, around 1985, the press thought of Bush still as this air-headed artist and did not give her enough respect, those working with her saw her very differently!

I have talked about Bush being very private and not this traditional star. I think that is a reason why people were drawn to her. Youth (Martin Glover) worked on Hounds and Love and admits that he was a bit of a wally when he got drunk once and made some indiscretions. He wanted to be Del Palmer and could not get over that jealousy. Glover was not the only one! He could not be objective and admitted that the heartstrings are plucked and played with when you worked with Bush. She has this aura and magnetism that meant some who worked with her were overwhelmed. Male journalists constantly fawned over her and seemed to flirt and court her rather than interview her! This idea that they were in with a shot. It was a hazard that she had to face for years. Those who worked with Bush knew how she valued her privacy and they would not divulge secrets or talk out of turn. Bush inspired this loyalty from friends and colleagues. The tactility and genuineness that Bush inspires meant that there was this idolisation. She was a very normal and smart person but one who had this incredible kindness and warmth at heart. Bush is someone who also inspired such hard work from people she was in the studio with because of the exceptional work she produced. Reading Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, I saw a few examples of where Bush’s musicians and friends showed their admiration and affection. When she was making The Line, the Cross and the Curve, as a director and star, there was a lot on her plate. The entire crew would fall over themselves to do her bidding. So much respect to her. It was not just the men who fell under her spell!

Borimira Nedeva, who worked with Bush during her sessions with the Trio Bulgarka (who featured on The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993), explained how the trio loved Bush and has great affection for her. Daniel Lanois explained how Bush was down to Earth yet she was this incredible goddess and very sweet person who everyone fell for! It is interesting reading how Bush made people weak at the knees and brought something out of them besides musicianship and the technical. Journalists had their agenda and were not always professional, though things were different in the studio. Maybe this unavoidable lure and magnetism that I guess Bush took in her stride. Rather than highlight any prurient, I wanted to explore how Kate Bush’s hospitality, professionalism, incredible talent and sweetness has been highlighted by so many people. Also, how she wanted to keep her private life private and had this enormous trust. She expected loyalty from those around her. One particular incident stays in my mind. If people became too emotionally involved with Kate Bush, I think it was as much to do with her incredible work rate and talent. In awe of someone who was human and deified at the same time. This phenomenal producer that was not like anyone else. She could be in control and focused but also so sweet and considerate. Nick Launay, who was one of the engineers at Townhouse Studios on 1982’s The Dreaming, recalls being bought a big box of chocolates by Bush with a note that thanked him for making her music come alive. How she could not have done this without him. People perhaps thinking there was this attraction that Bush had to them. In fact, this was just her being herself! She was kind and very thoughtful when it came to those who she worked alongside. I think she also bought gifts for those she worked with on Never for Ever.

I wanted to explore Kate Bush’s extraordinary capacity for devotion and loyalty. How her natural personality and richness of spirit, together with a wonderful heart, meant that she often left people speechless. Her kindness and great gifts, together with that phenomenal drive and exceptional professionalism, was a potent cocktail! It would have been wonderful being in the studio with Bush. Seeing her work and being one of those people who received a sweet gift…or was helpless to deny her brilliance and beauty. So different to the way the media poured over her and had this unprofessional approach, there are numerous cases of people being spellbound and hypnotised by Bush. As an artist, a lot of this was kept private. She had this inner circle and did not want people to blab any secrets or personal information. That was expected of everyone. Apart from the occasional indiscretion – Peter Gabriel revealing in 2000 that Bush had as son, which was not public news; in 2014, he almost revealed that she was working on a new residency! -, everyone has kept quiet. It showed how much people respected Kate Bush. The fact that she was so relatable and did not pull rank or show any ego. This wonderful human being had and has this rare and undeniable quality and spirit. It was very much about work with Bush. So dedicated to her craft and, as an extension, those who helped her with it, I wanted to explore this for this Kate Bush: The Tour of Life. Proof that our favourite artist is…

A special and divine human.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential October Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Confidence Man

Essential October Releases

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SOME truly amazing albums…

IN THIS PHOTO: Laura Marling/PHOTO CREDIT: Tamsin Topolski

are due next month. I am going to recommend a few that you need to pre-order. Here is a list of the albums that are out next month. I am highlighting those that are especially worth getting. Beginning on 4th October. The first album I am recommending is Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn’s Quiet in a World Full of Noise. This is an album that you need to pre-order:

“Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn share a common collaborative ethos, a genuine sense of musical curiosity, and a cosmopolitan eagerness to escape the conventions of genre. That shared vision first brought them together on 2022’s Pigments — icy and warm, stripped-down and grand, familiar and otherworldly and now it has reunited them for Quiet in a World Full of Noise.

By turns intimate, soul-baring, spectral, and startling, Quiet in a World Full of Noise blends atmospheric and orchestral soundscapes with mellifluous soul, jazz, and journalistic vocalizing driving it all home with stark, confessional lyricism. The new album finds Richard at her most raw and exposed. This year, Richard’s musician father experienced mini strokes while being diagnosed with cancer; and last year, her cousin Cisco was fatally shot seven times in New Orleans. Richard channels the emotional impact of these traumatic experiences of loss into her lyrics and vocal performances, which are left bare and human here, raw and unprocessed across the album. Quiet expands the definitions of what constitutes progressive, avant-garde R&B by rewriting them altogether.

On paper, Richard and Zahn’s audacious, impressionistic musical collaborations feel like a surprising match. Richard, a New Orleans–reared visionary, has had an improbable journey from late 2000s reality television and mainstream pop with girl group Danity Kane to become one of the most prolific, experimental, and visible indie

R&B singer-songwriters of the last decade and a half, with seven solo albums under her belt. Zahn is an East Coast–raised multi-instrumentalist and composer working at the intersections of jazz, Americana, classical, and ambient pop. His growing solo discography includes People of the Dawn, Sunday Painter, Pale Horizon, and Statues I and II, as well as the duo’s first release, Pigments. “Pigments was one of the best projects I’ve ever made,” Richard says, “and the furthest I’ve ever been pushed as an artist.” The album was a critical hit, hailed as Best New Music by Pitchfork and receiving praise from Stereogum as Album of the Week, NPR Music, Bandcamp Daily, The Fader, Bitter Southerner, and Edition, among many other publications.

The making of its follow-up, Quiet in a World Full of Noise, began in 2023 in upstate New York. Fresh from a break-up, Zahn sat at his piano and poured himself into writing and recording instrumental compositions. “I wrote all these stream-of-consciousness pieces on piano, and they were eerie, spacious piano tracks,” he said.

He used a piano that had been unconventionally tuned to the room rather than to standard pitch. These oddly-tuned, eerie instrumental recordings were never intended to be an album. Six months later, he listened to the recordings again and sent them to Richard who immediately recognized their potential and said, “Oh, this is the next album.”

Richard went into the studio the next day and wrote and recorded melodies and lyrics to Zahn’s piano recordings. Zahn brought in gifted musicians like Bryan Senti on strings (violin, viola, and violoncello da spalla) and CJ Camerieri on brass (French horn, flugelhorn, and trumpet). In some cases, like on the track “Life in Numbers,” Zahn used only the original first-take piano recording and scratch vocal, resulting in an intimate close-up of both Richard and Zahn”.

The second album from 4th October that you need to pre-order is from Leon Bridges. The fourth album from the acclaimed American artist, Leon is going to be well worth getting. I am excited to see what comes from Leon. Whether you are a fan or not, I would urge people to go and pre-order the album. It is going to be among the best from this year. A truly tremendous artist that everyone should know about:

“Leon is the highly anticipated fourth album from Grammy Award-winning recording artist, songwriter, and producer Leon Bridges. With 13 tracks featuring Leon’s signature storytelling and a unique blend of organic genre alchemy, ‘Leon’ is his most poignant, powerful, and personal work to date. He takes fans on a trip through the heart of Ft. Worth he knows best, the things he holds dear, and the people and places that shaped him. Featuring production by Ian Fitchuk (Beyonce, Noah Kahan), Daniel Tashian (Kacey Musgraves), and Tyler Johnson (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus), Leon describes the album as “somewhat of a self-portrait… I’m excited to share these stories about my home, about nostalgia, about my upbringing, about where I’m from, with all of you. I hope this music brings you back to your roots and your journey”.

The penultimate album from 4th October that you need to seek out is Orla Gartland’s Everybody Needs a Hero. With an incredible album cover, I am instantly attracted to this album. If you have not heard of Orla Gartland, then I would urge people to go and investigate. Make sure that you go and pre-order the latest album from a sensational rising artist. Someone who should be on everyone’s radar:

“Everybody Needs A Hero is the second studio album by Dublin-born Orla Gartland, released via her own label New Friends. Everybody Needs A Hero explores how Gartland shapeshifts through the currents of a long term relationship and works out how to take up space in a postfeminist world. Throughout the record Orla explores the idea of a ‘hero’: someone to look up to, someone to rescue us from ourselves, someone we use to deflect from our own shadow self. A testament to her artistic growth, burgeoning confidence and proud sense of independence, this record is the latest milestone in this self-made talent’s journey. With her career streams nudging towards a quarter of a billion, sold-out tours and festival appearances at Glastonbury and Latitude; to her debut album Woman On The Internet reaching the UK and Irish Top 10 Orla is ready to boldly step into this next chapter of her career”.

Among the most anticipated albums of this year is The Smile’s Cutouts. It sounds like it is going to be another amazing release from the trio. I would advise people check out this album and pre-order it. Their second album of 2024, Rough Trade provide some more details about an album that everybody needs to get. It is going to be another that will be among the best of the year. I am curious to see what comes from Cutouts:

“The Smile release a new album titled Cutouts, via XL Recordings.

The trio - Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner - debuted several songs from Cutouts during The Smile’s UK tour in March. Cutouts features 10 new-tracks and is produced by Sam Petts-Davies. It’s the band’s third studio album following Wall of Eyes, released in January, and the trio’s 2022 debut album A Light For Attracting Attention. Cutouts was recorded in Oxford and at Abbey Road Studios during the same period of time as Wall Of Eyes. The album features string arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra and the album art was painted during the recording process by Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke.

This is the second studio album release from The Smile in under a year. In January, Wall Of Eyes charted at #3 on the UK album charts, receiving “Best Album of the Year so far” praise from Pitchfork, The Needle Drop, Consequence, Brooklyn Vegan, Treblezine and Spin.

Outside The Smile, Thom Yorke released the original score for Daniele Luchetti’s film Confidenza and announced solo tour dates in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Japan, Jonny Greenwood debuted a new work, ‘X Years of Reverb’ at the 268 year old Octagon Chapel in Norwich, and is writing the score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film, The Battle of Baktan Cross. Tom Skinner released Voices of Bishara Live at “mu” and is touring the jazz summer festival circuit to perform his own solo music”.

There are a couple of albums due on 11th October that I want to recommend. October is quite a busy month and there is a lot of variety in terms of albums. One album that I am very keen to explore is Samara Joy’s Portrait. Go and pre-order the album. This award-winning artist from The Bronx, Samara Joy released her self-titled debut album in 2021. She was named Best New Artist by JazzTimes:

“Born from of a relentless global tour schedule, Samara Joy took her touring band, made up of other rising young jazz musicians, into the legendary Van Gelder Studios (the venerable studio from which A Love Supreme and so many of the great catalog records from Impulse and Blue Note were recorded) in February of 2024. Recorded across three days, Samara and her musicians were able to capture an incredible snapshot of who she is today and the promise of tomorrow. It’s a collection of standards, as well as one original and some of her first forays into lyric writing and features her singular voice, alongside arrangements and playing from this tight knit young group. The recording is this story of the community she’s created with a new generation of young players and serves as a studio rendering that delivers on the promise of the live show so many fans have seen them perform over the last year”.

No Obligation is the new album form The Linda Lindas. This is another great album that you need to pre-order. This American Rock band consists of Bela Salazar, Eloise Wong, and sisters Lucia and Mila de la Garza. I am a big fan of their work and am really eager to explore their new album. Below are some more details. If you do not know who The Linda Lindas are, then you seriously need to listen to their music:

“Here comes No Obligation, the second full-length release from THE LINDA LINDAS further advances their unironic, joyful, and exciting trajectory of mashing up LA punk with alt-rock, garage rock, power pop, new wave, rock en espanol.

No Obligation was written and recorded by the band during spring breaks, winter breaks, and long weekends (Lucia and Eloise are still in high school, Mila just finished middle school, and Bela is patiently waiting for them to get done with it already) and was produced by Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, Best Coast, Bleached).

Known for their incredible musicianship and live performances, the band who has shared stages with and opened for Paramore, Japanese Breakfast, Jawbreaker, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, are about to embark on a massive two-month tour across America with Green Day.

No Obligations. No expectations. No limits for THE LINDA LINDAS”.

There are four albums from 18th October that you will want to consider pre-ordering. The first that I want to recommend is The Blessed Madonna’s Godspeed. Go and pre-order this amazing album from the one and only The Blessed Madonna. It sounds like it is going to be a fascinating and compelling album that you need to check out. I love what The Blessed Madonna does and her upcoming album is one that you need to pre-order and hear. It is going to be incredible:

“The Blessed Madonna began with three magic words, scrawled in shoe polish on a broken - down box and hung on the wall at a small sweaty party: We Still Believe. “I think you have to give up completely to really understand what hope is. It was like 2011? I had spectacularly, monumentally failed. I left the label. I wasn’t DJing. I wasn’t putting out records. I was divorced and living on my Dad’s couch so naturally my friends and I decided to throw an illegal rave. We didn’t have any decorations, so I took a box and wrote, ‘We Still Believe’ on it. I needed to believe that something better was possible and that’s how it all started.” After years of $50 gigs, strung together by gas money and surfed couches, The Blessed Madonna cemented her reputation as a sublime technician behind the decks with a legacy of fluent and dynamic sets, spanning from disco to techno to house and back. One room sweatboxes, circus tents, theatres, massive festival stages and entire city blocks have all served as the canvas for her shows. After a jam packed 2023, from Glastonbury to Sonar to Boiler Room Bali, The Blessed Madonna has been filling the dance floor everywhere she goes and is now releasing her debut album”.

The next album that I want to bring to your attention is Confidence Man’s 3AM (LA LA LA). With an interesting album cover and title, the new release from this Australian duo should be on your radar. You can pre-order the album here. 3AM (LA LA LA) is going to be a predictably phenomenal work from the Brisbane duo of Janet Planet (Grace Stephenson) and Sugar Bones (Aidan Moore):

“Confidence Man’s third studio album, 3AM (LA LA LA) released via Chaos / Polydor Records/ I Oh You Records, sees the delinquent party starters popify 90's UK rave sounds like no one before. Inspired by a recent move to London, meeting their idols KLF, and becoming immersed in the queer club scene, Confidence Man have taken the ideas of hedonism, ecstasy and losing yourself to the music and distilled them into pure a-grade euphoria. The record spans the electronic spectrum from breakbeat and trance, to left-field Underworld size techno and the “let’s 'ave it” punk energy of legacy artists like The Prodigy. 3AM (LA LA LA) follows their hugely successful second album Tilt, which featured breakout single and festival crowd favourite ‘Holiday’. Staunchly defying trends and bringing Janet, Sugar, Reggie and Clarence along for a helluva good time, 3AM (LA LA LA) feels bigger, bolder and in some ways brutal, but like, in a hot way. 3AM (LA LA LA) is a welcome escape from the dull wasteland of modern mediocrity, bringing the weird and wonderful world of Confidence Man to the masses”.

Two more albums from 18th October that are definitely worth considering. I think that Kelly Lee Owens’s Dreamstate is another that will be among the finest of 2024. Do go and pre-order this album. Kelly Lee Owens is a tremendous Welsh Electronic musician and producer. Owens released her self-titled first album in 2017. If you are unfamiliar with her music then do go and listen back. This is an album that you will want to add to your collection:

“Dreamstate is Kelly Lee Owens fourth studio album. The new album will be her first released at new label home dh2 - a brand new electronic music imprint at renowned independent label Dirty Hit being spearheaded by George Daniel of The 1975. There’s an incredible feeling of freedom and escapism found throughout Kelly’s album Dreamstate, born from the experience of inner evolution in the aftermath of a break-up. It’s the sound of a person letting loose and letting go while encouraging everyone else to do the same. Dreamstate is built on the foundations of collaboration, with producer-writer credits from Bicep, Tom Rowlands from The Chemical Brothers and George Daniel”.

The final album form 18th October that I want to spotlight is Porridge Radio’s Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me. If you are interested in pre-ordering the album then you can do so here. I really like the band and their new album sounds like it is really going to be worth your time. Below is some further detail about Porridge Radio’s forthcoming album. One that you need to embrace:

“All the songs started out as poems,” says Margolin of the work that became Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me , “I wanted to challenge myself.” In a song, Dana argues, the writer can always hide behind the tricks of the music and well-worn techniques such as repetition. “In a poem, though,” says Dana, “it’s just words and that’s it.” Recorded in the Somerset countryside in early 2024 by longtime Big Thief and Laura Marling engineer Dom Monks, Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me is Porridge Radio’s new album and first new music in two years. The UK band’s new album is a coming-of-age moment inspired by burnout, the music industry, the brutal collapse of a relationship and - crucially - Dana’s own increasing immersion in her craft as an artist.

“A lot of this album is about a more frenetic and desperate kind of love,” says Dana, “it is about completely losing my sense of self in a relationship, and the deep residue of insecurity and pain that lingered and clouded a new relationship.” Songs that were written as love songs - like In A Dream I’m A Painting - took on new meanings as Margolin viewed the songs with a new distance. “There was a lot of love and confusion, all interspersed with exhaustion and pain.”

The Clouds sessions took place in Frome as Winter melted into early Spring at the beginning of 2024. “There were a few breakdowns,” grins Dana, in a fair assessment of recording such intimate and personal songs, “after some takes I would just collapse on the floor, so upset.” An environment was fostered where Dana could express herself and be nurtured. “We would have these big communal meals every night,” she says, “it felt very close knit and caring and warm and special.”“Our little house looked over a big hill,” remembers Dana, “there was a river running through it, it was big and bright and beautiful.” The studio itself was bright - full of beaming natural light from the large windows, a blessing for musicians used to the sealed tomb world of most recording studios, and for once the band were all able to record in the same room as the producer.

Today, Dana reflects on Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me with the enthusiasm of a real creative breakthrough. “It feels like the first time we’ve made something,” she explains, audibly delighted at the album, “it captured something about our friendship and the way that we have learnt to play together. I love the songs, I love playing them, they haven’t gotten old and it feels like it’s a special thing.” A pause. “It’s taught me so much. Following your gut to the nth point, trusting your friends and their loyalty, trusting to be able to fight with people properly. How I want to live is how I want to make records, because making records is my life because my work is my play is my job is my life. It all ties together in this thing, and there are ways to do this that might not kill me”.

There are four albums from 25th October that you need to check out. The first come from another amazing Australian act. Amyl and the Sniffers’s Cartoon Darkness sound incredible. If you want to pre-order the album then you can do here:

“In the eight years since Amyl and The Sniffers came together in Melbourne’s sticky pub-rock scene, Amyl and the Sniffers have become masters of balancing power and playfulness. With two critically acclaimed albums under their belt - 2019’s self-titled debut and 2021’s visceral Comfort To Me - vocalist Amy Taylor, guitarist Declan Mehrtens, bassist Gus Romer and drummer Bryce Wilson have achieved something unique and remarkable.

Since the release of Comfort to Me, the band has seen their horizons broaden exponentially in every way. And it’s this attitude - bigger, brighter, smarter, sharper - that’s fuelling their third album, Cartoon Darkness. Recorded with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles, on the same desk that captured Nirvana’s Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the latest Amyl offering is full of surprises. Musically, Mehrtens, Romer and Wilson have written The Sniffers’ most diverse album yet. It stretches from classic punk to the glammy strut of recent single ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ to the stormy balladry of ‘Big Dreams’ (which is a sonic gear shift worthy of the title).

Cartoon Darkness is about climate crisis, war, AI, tip-toeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they're helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern day god. It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.

Everything is such hard work, everything is heartbreaking, but everything is beautiful. I want to celebrate. I want to put my phone down and see someone's facial expression change with what they say. I want to people-watch. I want to see if there are bugs where I walk, but I don't see them. I also want the fantasy and the escapism. I want to lean into hedonism, I want to feel alive, while acknowledging the dystopia and chaos unfolding around me.

Cartoon Darkness is driving head first into the unknown, into this looming sketch of the future that feels terrible, but doesn’t even exist yet. A childlike darkness. I don’t want to meet the devil half-way and mourn what we have right now. The future is cartoon, the prescription is dark, but it's novelty. It's just a joke. It's fun”.

Three more albums from 25th October that are going to be worth your time and money. The first is Laura Marling’s Patterns In Repeat. This is one of the albums I am looking forward to more than anything. I have been following Marling’s work for many years now and love everything that she does. Her latest album is one that I will definitely check out. You can pre-order it here:

“Grammy nominated Laura Marling is back with her eighth studio album Patterns in Repeat. Now eight albums and 15 years into her career as one of the most acclaimed, prolific and respected songwriters of her generation (Grammy and Mercury Nominated and Brit award winning) Patterns in Repeat was written following the birth of her daughter in 2023 and finds Laura reflecting on her motherhood experience as well as more broadly diving deeper into her reckoning with the ideas and behaviours we pass down through family over generations.

Almost entirely acoustic with minimal overdubbing and elegantly placed orchestral accents, this is the most focused, subtle and sharpest collection of Laura's career”.

Two more albums that I want to bring in before rounding things off. Underworld’s Strawberry Hotel is going to be one you’ll want to pre-order. This legendary duo always produce amazing albums. Their latest is one fans will want to pick up. Make sure you do not pass it by. A really big and exciting album that will add something very special to October. Do go and check out Strawberry Hotel:

“Welcome to Strawberry Hotel. Here, gleaming tensile techno forms clean, straight lines while scratchy acoustic guitars scuff up edges to produce ghostly audio. Poetry is snatched from the overhead, removed from the overheard; words borrowed from the ether are spun into dizzying new shapes, sometimes reappearing in new settings, twisted back to front, side to side. Each track a very different room - some soundtracked by little more than metronomic kick drum and robotic voice, others deep in layer upon layer of melody and euphoric noise - and each room unmistakably, uniquely Underworld. The only advice from Underworld’s Rick Smith and Karl Hyde upon entering: “Please don’t shuffle.” Strawberry Hotel features the singles and the colour red and denver luna, as well as new release Black Poppies - a celestial love song, a hymn to the universe and to boundless, positive change. Ambient and beatless, Black Poppies is a celebration of full dancefloors and the beauty of life itself”.

The final album that from October that is worth pre-ordering is Tess Parks’ Pomegranate. You may not know this artist, though I think that you will fall for her music pretty quickly. Go and pre-order Pomegranate. Rounding off an incredible month for music. This album sounds terrific.

“Longing. Heartbreak. Levity. Joy. Being filled with love for all things. All of these sensations flow at once through Canadian singer-songwriter Tess Parks’ new album, Pomegranate. Re-establishing Parks as the consummate artist-observer against a swirling nouveau-delic backdrop, her third solo album arrives via Fuzz Club and was produced by multi-instrumentalist and close collaborator Ruari Meehan, who shared mixing duties with Grammy-nominated engineer Mikko Gordon (The Smile, Gaz Coombes, Arcade Fire).

Though Tess Parks first became widely known for her string of collaborations with Brian Jonestown Massacre mastermind Anton Newcombe, her 2022 solo offering And Those Who Were Seen Dancing left an unforgettable impression with its signature blend of weight, whimsy, and open-heartedness. The New York Times would praise its “confident, enchanting presence”, whilst Exclaim! proclaimed it as a record that “demands to be heard and felt”. Where Dancing retained a fair measure of bedroom-demo charm, this time the canvas is bigger, with Meehan’s arrangements stretching all the way to the horizon. This is the most ambitious and cinematic Parks’ music has ever sounded. Drawing on psychedelic elements in a way that sounds decidedly fresh, the dreamlike atmospheres feel oddly nostalgic and modern at the same time.

The pair are backed on most tracks by band members Francesco ‘Pearz’ Perini  – whose piano and organs shine through gloriously on ‘Koalas’ and ‘California’s Dreaming’ respectively – and Marco Ninni, who provides the solid backbone throughout on drums. From a vocal perspective, it feels like Parks pushes her voice to new heights on this album too. Her lyrics are sharp, ever-present, and imbued with strength, depth, and poetic purpose, which shine particularly bright on tracks like ‘Koalas’ and ‘Charlie Potato’. They weave through her flurries of beautiful melodic hooks, featuring sublime choruses and complex, multi-layered harmonic structures, as showcased on ‘Crown Shy’ and ‘Bagpipe Blues’ especially.

On Pomegranate there are also plenty of new experiments and guests introduced. ‘Koalas’, for example, features the spellbinding whistling of Molly Lewis, lending a bittersweet Morricone-esque charm. ‘Crown Shy’ features soaring strings (arranged by Ninni and played by Joe Butler), and ‘Bagpipe Blues’ and ‘Charlie Potato’ are elevated by Kira Krempova’s ethereal flute playing – the latter also accompanied with Wurlitzer piano played by Oscar ‘SHOLTO’ Robertson. The euphoric ‘Running Home To Sing’ and album-closer ‘Surround’ centre the synthesiser for the first time, whilst the piano features more prominently across many of the tracks”.

If you need to know which other albums are out next month, then here is where you can find them. I have selected the ones that I feel are especially worth pre-ordering. It is a wonderful month for new releases. A packed and diverse one where there should be an album for everyone. October is going to offer up…

PLENTY of gems.

FEATURE: Groovelines: The Beatles – Here Comes the Sun

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

The Beatles – Here Comes the Sun

_________

THERE is a particular reason…

 PHOTO CREDIT: © Apple Corps Ltd

why I am spotlighting Here Comes the Sun again. A song I have discussed before, the album it is from, The Beatles’ Abbey Road, turns fifty-five on 26th September. It is an important anniversary. The Beatles’ final studio album (recorded rather than released), it is also one of their best. In terms of rankings, many fans and critics now see it as best. In years past, maybe Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) or Revolver (1966) would have got that honour. A perfect farewell for the band, we get extraordinary performances and some of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s best individual songs. Perhaps McCartney’s influence looming largest. In terms of the medley on the second side of the album. Lennon’s Come Together is one of the highlights. Although there are fewer huge standout tracks compared to some other albums, it is the overall sound and ambition of Abbey Road that makes this album so highly regarded. The iconic album cover and George Martin returning to producing after Phil Spector producing Let It Be. The most-streamed Beatles song on Spotify is also perhaps the highlight from Abbey Road: the majestic and gorgeous Here Comes the Sun. One of two extraordinary songs on the album written by George Harrison – the other is Something -, maybe he peaked in terms of his band output at the very end. It is easy to see why Here Comes the Sun is so popular. It has this optimism. That things will get better. This bright horizon or feeling of being care-free.

I wanted to bring in some features that better explain the origin of the song and what it means. A way of also highlighting Abbey Road ahead of its fifty-fifth anniversary. Prior to coming to those features about Here Comes the Sun, it is worth looking at the critical reaction and love that has been applied to this song. It is one of the greatest songs ever. Perhaps George Harrison feeling stressed about relationships within the band and trying to find some escape. That feeling that things will be alright. A real ray of optimism and uplift on The Beatles’ final-recorded album, it is beloved and celebrated:

“In the context of the late 1960s, according to cultural commentator Steven D. Stark, the song's "promise of a new dawn after a lonely winter caught the wearied sensibility of the counterculture". In her review of Abbey Road for Saturday Review magazine, Ellen Sander said that "Here Comes the Sun" was "an awakening, an exaltation of the dawn" and the start of a run of songs that represented "the [LP's] sun side, suffused with mellowed warmth, woven together with motifs, bridging, reprises, surprises, with all the songs set within one another". Time magazine described it as a "dawn-flecked prelude" to the side-two medley, which the reviewer deemed "a kind of odyssey from innocence to experience", and said that Harrison had "achieve[d] a new confidence in his own musical personality" on Abbey Road. Lon Goddard of Record Mirror described "Here Comes the Sun" as his "pet track", adding: "Nice string picking backs it as the vocals approach Beach Boys or Vanity Fare. Excellent melody creates one of the best atmospheres present on the record."

Writing for Rolling Stone in 2002, Mikal Gilmore likened the song to the McCartney-written "Let It Be" and Lennon's solo hit "Imagine", as Harrison's "graceful anthem of hope amid difficult realities".[58] In the same publication, Greg Kot described it as "simpler, but just as intoxicating [as 'Something']" and said that "Harrison's acoustic-guitar intro is a song in itself, its warmth and fragility presaging the guarded optimism of the lyric." 

While expressing regret at having underestimated Harrison as a songwriter, Martin described "Here Comes the Sun" as being "in some ways one of the best songs ever written". Harrison was one of the first musicians in the UK to own a Moog synthesiser; although the instrument had been used by many American acts since 1967, author Thom Holmes says that with Abbey Road the Beatles were "one of the first groups to effectively integrate the sounds of the Moog into their music". Pinch and Trocco describe "Here Comes the Sun" as "one of the best known Beatles songs ever" and the album's "Moog pièce de résistance".

"Here Comes the Sun" has appeared in critics' lists of the Beatles' best recordings. Among these, the NME placed it at number 4 in the magazine's 2015 list of "the 100 Greatest Beatles Songs". In a similar poll compiled by Mojo in 2006, where the song appeared at number 21, Danny Eccleston described it as "perhaps the best song – outside 'Jerusalem' – that religion can claim credit for", adding: "Those who professed surprise at Harrison's immediate elevation to Most Successful Solo Beatle status [in 1970] clearly weren't listening to this.”  "Here Comes the Sun" appeared at number 28 on Rolling Stone's 2010 list, where the editors commented that together with "Something", "it gave notice that the Beatles now had three formidable composers”.

Covered by a range of artists through the years, including the great Nina Simone, it is worth discovering where the song came from and its story. To start, Beatles Bible provide some useful quotes and details about Abbey Road’s jewel in the crown. A song that will live through the generations. It is impossible to play the song and not be moved by it. Proof that George Harrison was as good a songwriter as Paul McCartney and John Lennon. One of two masterpieces he wrote for Abbey Road, I am glad this song has got the biggest streaming numbers:

“Written by: Harrison
Recorded: 7, 8, 16 July; 6, 11, 15, 19 August 1969
Producers: George Martin, Glyn Johns
Engineers: Phil McDonald, Geoff Emerick

Released: 26 September 1969 (UK), 1 October 1969 (US)

George Harrison: vocals, backing vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonium, Moog synthesiser, handclaps
Paul McCartney: backing vocals, bass, handclaps
Ringo Starr: drums, handclaps
Uncredited: four violas, four cellos, double bass, two piccolos, two flutes, two alto flutes, two clarinets

‘Here Comes The Sun’, George Harrison’s second song on Abbey Road, was written on an acoustic guitar in the garden of Eric Clapton’s house in Ewhurst, Surrey.

The song expressed Harrison’s relief at being away from the tensions within The Beatles, the troubles with Apple and the various business and legal issues which at the time were overshadowing the group’s creativity.

‘Here Comes The Sun’ was written at the time when Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: ‘Sign this’ and ‘Sign that’. Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever; by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house. The relief of not having to go and see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric’s acoustic guitars and wrote ‘Here Comes The Sun’.

George Harrison
Anthology

Harrison’s understated use of a Moog synthesiser was a key feature of ‘Here Comes The Sun’. Robert Moog’s then-recent invention was a rarity in the UK at the time, and The Beatles were keen to experiment with its sounds.

I first heard about the Moog synthesiser in America. I had to have mine made specially, because Mr Moog had only just invented it. It was enormous, with hundreds of jackplugs and two keyboards.

But it was one thing having one, and another trying to make it work. There wasn’t an instruction manual, and even if there had been it would probably have been a couple of thousand pages long. I don’t think even Mr Moog knew how to get music out of it; it was more of a technical thing. When you listen to the sounds on songs like ‘Here Comes The Sun’, it does do some good things, but they’re all very kind of infant sounds.

George Harrison
Anthology”.

There are two features that I want to get to before rounding off. This one from last year observes how George Harrison’s songwriting really blossomed during the Abbey Road sessions. He would go on to have a very successful solo career. We cannot talk about The Beatles and only mention the songwriting brilliance of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. George Harrison proved he could match their heights:

“A backlog of songs

As the finishing touches were being made to “The White Album” in October 1968, George was on his way to Los Angeles to continue work producing Jackie Lomax’s album Is This What You Want? These sessions would see George heading up a crew that featured the cream of America’s session musicians, and he appears to have relished the chance to take the lead in front of such a fine crop of talent. After the sessions were complete, George headed to Woodstock, in upstate New York, where he spent Thanksgiving with Bob Dylan and hung out with The Band, before returning to England in time to take up his duties as a Beatle once more.

By the time The Beatles regrouped at Twickenham film studios on January 2, 1969, George had a backlog of songs, including “All Things Must Pass” and “Isn’t It A Pity,” the latter dating back as far as the Revolver sessions in 1966. On that first morning at Twickenham, John and George played each other their latest songs. But while George enthusiastically pitched in to help on John’s “Don’t Let Me Down,” when George tried to engage John on his song “Let It Down,” John struggled with its chord structure, choosing instead to play some old Chuck Berry tunes. This was a theme that would recur throughout the “Get Back” sessions.

George’s frustration

George’s inability to get the group engaged on his new compositions would prove a source of frustration for the youngest Beatle. At one stage, George told John that he was thinking of making a solo record, by way of using up the songs he had accumulated – a venture John actively encouraged.

By the following Friday, January 10, George had had enough and declared that he was leaving the band. After such a positive experience in the US, George found the Twickenham sessions a step too far. As he recalled in Anthology, “I had spent the last few months of 1968 producing an album by Jackie Lomax and hanging out with Bob Dylan and The Band in Woodstock, having a great time. For me, to come back into the winter of discontent with The Beatles in Twickenham was very unhealthy and unhappy. But I can remember feeling quite optimistic about it. I thought, OK, it’s the New Year and we have a new approach to recording. I think the first couple of days were OK, but it was soon quite apparent that it was just the same as it had been when we were last in the studio, and it was going to be painful again.”

Though George returned to the fold when sessions moved to Apple Studios on January 21, he no longer pushed for any of his songs to be included in the eventual live show the group would perform on the roof of their building (the legendary “rooftop concert”).

The origin of ‘Here Comes The Sun’

In April, George absented himself from an Apple meeting, choosing instead to head 20 miles south to his friend Eric Clapton’s house in Ewhurst, Surrey. And it was while relaxing with Eric in the garden that the seeds of “Here Comes The Sun” were planted. As George recalled in his autobiography, I Me Mine: “‘Here Comes The Sun’ was written at the time when Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: ‘sign this’ and ‘sign that.’ Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house. The relief of not having to go see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric’s acoustic guitars and wrote ‘Here Comes The Sun.’” George completed the song while holidaying in Sardinia, returning just two weeks before work began on the song at EMI’s studios on Abbey Road on July 7 – Ringo’s 29th birthday.

PHOTO CREDIT: © Apple Corps Ltd

“Here Comes The Sun” was the last song that George would present to the group, though John was absent for its recording, having been hospitalized by a car crash in Scotland. The song bore a number of influences. George explained: “It was a bit like ‘If I Needed Someone,’ you know, the basic riff going through it, you know all those ‘Bells Of Rhymney’ Byrds type things. So, that’s how I see it, anyway. It’s quite vintage.”

John saw a much older influence, commenting in 1969: “It reminds me of Buddy Holly, in a way. This song is just the way he’s progressing, you know. He’s writing all kinds of songs and once the door opens, the floodgates open.” George’s love of Indian music was another influence – particularly with the complex timing of the instrumental passage at the end of each chorus. “He said, ‘Oh, I’ve got this song. It’s like seven-and-a-half time.’” Ringo recalled in Martin Scorsese’s Living In The Material World. “‘Yeah, so?’ You know, he might as well have talked to me in Arabic, you know what I mean? I had to find some way that I could physically do it and do it every time so it came off on time. That’s one of those Indian tricks.”

Final touches

With George on acoustic guitar – a capo on the seventh fret – Paul on bass, and Ringo on drums, the 13th take (or take 12 and a half, as it was superstitiously declared) on that July 7 session was the keeper, onto which a number of overdubs would be added over the next six weeks or so: extra drum fills from Ringo and more guitar parts from George, plus an intricate handclaps rhythm were added over the next few days, along with George’s lead vocal and backing vocals from George and Paul. A harmonium was added, before being recorded over by a nine-piece string section, while the work of eight woodwind players was largely erased by an unwieldy new instrument that George had brought into the studio.

Robert Moog’s synthesizer had been increasing in popularity among those in the know in the pop world since its demonstration at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, and George had ordered one after coming across the instrument while recording Jackie Lomax in LA back in late 1968. “I had to have mine made specially, because Mr. Moog had only just invented it. It was enormous, with hundreds of jack plugs and two keyboards,” he recalled. “But it was one thing having one, and another trying to make it work. There wasn’t an instruction manual, and even if there had been it would probably have been a couple of thousand pages long. I don’t think even Mr. Moog knew how to get music out of it; it was more of a technical thing. When you listen to the sounds on songs like ‘Here Comes The Sun,’ it does do some good things, but they’re all very kind of infant sounds.”

All that was left now was to mix the song, and the final touch was added at this stage, with the tape being played slightly fast to increase the pitch of the song by roughly a quarter of a tone – as anybody who has ever tried to play along with the record will have discovered”.

I am ending with this great feature. Apologies if any details or facts about Here Comes the Sun is repeated. Here Comes the Sun not only projects warmth and that sense of the sun being this simple but inspirational thing. It points to a brighter future. A simplicity and sense of ease. No wonder that so many people can relate to the song and find strength from it. Something George Harrison needed to write and put into the world, since 1969, Here Comes the Sun has taken on a new life:

“And “Here Comes The Sun” wasn’t a fluke. Released on the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album — the one with the band walking across the zebra crossing on the cover — it was accompanied on the album by another George Harrison composition, the exquisitely beautiful “Something”.

“Here Comes The Sun” was written at a time when George Harrison was getting fed up of a particularly long and cold British winter — not unlike the past winter as I write this — and had decided to spend the day with Eric Clapton. As the weather was unexpectedly nice, he spent the day in the garden and felt the sunlight on his skin after many months without it.

For readers outside the UK, “here comes the sun” isn’t an expression we can use very often in the winter…

“Here Comes The Sun” is musically quite complex, but lyrically is quite simple.

That really works because the simplicity makes “Here Comes The Sun” a very delicate and tender song. Any artist will tell you there’s a purity in simplicity that’s much harder to find in a more complex piece.

With simplicity, your work has to stand on its own…unadorned.

Simplicity is a very vulnerable thing to do, whether you’re a songwriter, an artist or a musician. There’s nothing to hide behind. And that’s what makes “Here Comes The Sun” such a beautiful record.

It’s very literal too. There are no complex metaphors here. It’s one man’s story, stated as simply as he knows how…

Little darling, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say, it’s all right

IMAGE CREDIT: Jon Berkeley

George Harrison’s voice is the perfect vehicle for this gentle and sensitive song. He was a great guitar player…one of the best, in fact…but he wasn’t an especially powerful singer.

In “Here Comes The Sun”…and indeed in his other album track on “Abbey Road”, “Something”…George Harrison uses his voice to great effect on songs that are gentle, sensitive and delicate. He doesn’t pretend he’s something he’s not.

Lennon and McCartney songs are brilliant compositions…every one of them…written by one of the most successful creative partnerships of all time. But much as I enjoy them, Lennon and McCartney songs are rarely a window to their souls.

Every song George Harrison wrote came from his soul. His songs come from the heart. There’s a piece of him in every one of them.

And maybe that’s our Easter message.

In whatever you do, be yourself.

That takes courage. You might feel vulnerable, uncomfortable, exposed…at first. But there’s an indescribable beauty in discovering who you truly are and sharing that with the world.

Whether or not the world appears to notice or care, you’ll be doing your bit to make the world a better place. Your work will make a difference, however small. And those small differences add up.

George Harrison wrote very few songs that made it to Beatles albums, and even fewer which were released as singles. “Something”, released by the Beatles as a double A-side with “Come Together”, was the only George Harrison composition to achieve that.

However no less a songwriter than John Lennon stated that “Something” was his favourite track from “Abbey Road”. And it remains the Beatles most-covered song, apart from “Yesterday”.

For someone who rarely got a look-in for songwriting duties, George Harrison delivered when it mattered. He wrote some very beautiful songs.

This Easter, on the theme of new beginnings, just remember that even though you might think you’re going through the winter of your life, you never know when summer might just be around the corner.

Every day is a new day, a new opportunity to start again, a fresh chance to become who you were meant to be.

As George Harrison puts it…

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say, it’s all right

Rather than linking to a Beatles performance, the video below is George Harrison on his own, accompanied by Pete Ham. To take on any song with only two acoustic guitars to work with in front of thousands of people takes some guts.

But it proves yet again a point I’ve often made, which is that truly great songs don’t need a full orchestra, a choir and thousands of hours in the studio. If you’re in that game, you’re probably working with material that’s less than great.

Great songs stand by themselves and sound just a beautiful under a range of different treatments, including, as in this case, very simple and unadorned ones”.

On 26th September, Abbey Road turns fifty-five. It will be bittersweet. It was the final album The Beatles recorded. The end of this brief but incredible career. The most important in music history. The greatest band ever. However, Abbey Road is a remarkable album among the most acclaimed of all time. Here Comes the Sun might be the standout from the album. This work of brilliance from George Harrison. A poem and paen that lifts the heart and soul. As Harrison sings:  “Here comes the sun, and I say…

IT'S alright”.