FEATURE: Goodbye England (Covered in Snow): Laura Marling’s I Speak Because I Can at Fifteen

FEATURE:

 

 

Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)

Laura Marling’s I Speak Because I Can at Fifteen

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IN a faultless career…

where she has not put a foot wrong or released an album that is not spectacular, it might seem relative to say her 2010 album, I Speak Because I Can, is not considered to be her peak work. It is still stronger than most other albums released that year. Consider the fact Laura Marling turned thirty-five last month. When I Speak Because I Can was released, she was barely twenty. Astonishing to have released an album as mature, assured and phenomenal! Following her stunning debut of 2008, Alas, I Cannot Swim, I think I Speak Because I Can is among her finest work. Marling’s latest album, 2024’s Patterns in Repeat, is a masterpiece. Possibly her best album yet. It is frightening how brilliant Marling is! Few artists could release eight near-perfect albums and we still think the best is ahead of them. As I Speak Because I Can turns fifteen on 22nd March, I want to spend some time with it. Reaching number four on the U.K. chart, this was a major success in a year that boasted some spectacular albums. I will end with some reviews for a stunningly beautiful and moving album. One where Laura Marling’s lyrical brilliance is near its peak. Some of the reviews for I Speak Because I Can mentioned her age. Marling was a teenager when she was recording the album. It is understandable that her musical palette and lyrical potential was not as realised and full-bodied as it was on future albums.

However, for such a young artist, releasing something as singular and stunning as I Speak Because I Can should not be understated. I will start out with this feature from The Guardian. Written by Laura Barton, they named Laura Marling’s second studio album the eighth-best release of 2010:

“Laura Marling's second album, released earlier this spring, was a breathtaking accomplishment. Though her debut, Alas I Cannot Swim, was a beguiling collection of songs that suggested a rich and distinctive talent, it offered little indication of the furious speed with which her songwriting would mature; I Speak Because I Can is the kind of album musicians spend a lifetime hoping to make.

There is something about Marling's songwriting that is crisp and unflinching, something almost painfully precise. In the album's title track, it's there in the needlepoint sharpness: "I speak because I can, to anyone I trust enough to listen/You speak because you can to anyone who'll hear what you say." But she counterbalances such moments with sudden twists of sentiment, lets the coolness of her voice grow rougher, rawer, and brings a kind of gusty, unleashed quality to lines such as: "Never rode my bike down to the sea, never quite figured out what I could believe, never got up and said anything worthy, for he, for my."

Stand-out tracks include the rollicking Ramblin' Man, the wistful, defiant Goodbye, England and the brief, bittersweet Blackberry Stone, the latter a quiet rumination on death and appreciating the simpler pleasures of life: "I'd be sad that I never held your hand as you were lowered," she sings in one of the album's most devastating lyrics. "But I'd understand that I would never let you go."

This year, Marling stands quite peerless among not only her own generation of songwriters, but also generations before her; a quite extraordinary feat”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews. Very little is written about I Speak Because I Can. That is a real shame. It is an album worthy of more than it got! I want to drop in bits of interviews from 2010 with Laura Marling. I want to start out with the first of two interviews with The Guardian:

"I'm almost an entirely different person to the one I was when I wrote the first album," says Laura Marling, smoking prodigiously on the patio of a King's Cross pub. Then, the singer-songwriter was a pale-faced, chronically shy 17-year-old keen on grungy T-shirts, mulishly determined not to be gussied up for popular consumption. Her 2008 Mercury-nominated debut, Alas, I Cannot Swim, saw her pushed, blinking, into the full-beam of acclaim. Marling was heralded as a precocious young talent, and her striking lyricism and graceful delivery gave rise to flattering Joni Mitchell comparisons.

The LP was produced by her then-boyfriend Charlie Fink, frontman of the folksy pop group Noah and the Whale, because her lack of confidence meant she couldn't express ideas to a stranger. It speaks volumes that Marling, who has just turned 20, chose to make her new record with Ethan Johns, producer also of the Kings of Leon and Rufus Wainwright. Titled I Speak Because I Can, the 10-song set has a fuller, more robust sound, and sees Marling tenderly trace the arcs of relationships with former lovers, as well as the importance of her Hampshire family roots and the jagged conflicts of womanhood and marriage. There's no breast-beating here, more an exquisite quality of guarded observation that lingers long after the record has finished.

In the flesh, she looks like she's been redrawn with a stronger outline. She has makeup on, for starters, and her hair colour has changed from white blond to a sombre brunette. The intonation of her voice is clear and deliberate but deeper than you'd expect from her crystalline singing. "I didn't want to wear makeup then," she explains, "because I didn't want to give in to that. It was all because I wasn't at ease with myself." But the darker barnet wasn't a premeditated image change, she insists, simply the result of covering up a DIY bleaching that turned her locks blue and crusty.

Marling admits to being an odd kid. The youngest of three sisters, she felt out of place at her Quaker school in Reading. She moved to London aged 16 and befriended "other weirdos who were just like me". This meant a cadre of young musicians including Mumford and Sons and Johnny Flynn who formed a nu-folk scene around a Chelsea pub, Bosun's Locker, where Marling found her home singing with Noah and the Whale before striking out on her own.

Although her reluctance to lead a nine-to-five existence pushed her towards an unconventional lifestyle, endearingly, Marling is very old-fashioned. She is a (her words) "wet blanket" who eschews drugs and clubbing in favour of dinner parties at home in Shepherd's Bush. She abhors our modern-day sexual sensationalism and the media's destructive obsession with kiss-and-tells and, to boot, is an incurable romantic who loves the heroines of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters.

While her two albums evoke an empathy with the lovelorn and spiritually wounded, she doesn't perpetuate the wearisome persona of a musician who's suffered for their art. "I've been very fortunate. My parents bought me a guitar and my dad taught me. I went to a good school where I had a music scholarship and was able to learn music and not much else. I've had a pretty easy ride, I have to say."

If her songs have a tendency to bleakness, Marling says, it's because she's most productive when low. Lyrically, though, they have beguiling layers of subterfuge. "I definitely tell things at arm's length but that is conscious. No part of me wants everybody to know what's going on." Which must have made it all the harder when the wilting of her love affair with Fink was laid bare after Noah and the Whale's lump-in-your-throat break-up album The First Days of Spring came out last summer.

"I had a copy of the album, which was very nice of him to send me, but I just wasn't expecting it [the public dissection of their break-up]". Worse still was the leering, flippant tone that music scribes used to write about it. "When I opened up a magazine it was heartbreaking. I was an 18-year-old when it was written. It made me realise that journalists don't give a shit. Why would they?”

Before coming to a third interview, I have chosen some sections of another interview from The Guardian. Big fans of her music, it is not surprising there was a lot of fascination around Laura Marling. After releasing a Mercury Prize-nominated debut that blew people away, there were a lot of eyes on her in 2010:

“Laura Marling's set at Glastonbury this summer must have been the most serene festival performance of the year. Chatting wryly between song after spine-tinglingly perfect song, she was so composed and quietly assured that, at certain points, you could sense a collective swoon.

When I later walked past her outside some Portaloos, I found myself gauchely telling her she'd been wonderful. Now, as I meet her in her local, a small west London pub, I confess to this previous, brief encounter and watch her blue-green eyes widen in patient surprise. I'd interrupted her eating a bowl of noodles, I add, by way of an apology. "Oh how glamorous," she says dryly.

The truth is that the woman sitting in front of me – sipping black coffee, smoking, clad in a camel coat and exuding a ghostly sort of radiance – is nothing if not glamorous. Soignee to the point of actressy, maintaining eye contact with a coolly intense gaze, she is an entirely different being from the desperately shy teenager that put out Alas I Cannot Swim two years ago.

When she toured that album – a Mercury- nominated debut credited with spear- heading an indie-folk revival, and a bewilderingly precocious achievement considering she wrote it aged 16 – her stare would be resolutely fastened on a spot just in front of her feet. It was often painful to watch, as she readily admits.

So where has her newfound ease come from? Partly from growing up – she's 20 now – but also, "because I really considered the fact that if people have come to see a gig, it's actually part of my… role as an entertainer," she over-enunciates the words parodically, "to show my gratitude to them for being there and to stop making them feel like they're slightly intruding on something."

That sense of intrusion, or at least of acute intimacy, is very much there on her second album, I Speak Because I Can – a bolder and fuller record than the first. Though many of its songs are spun by adopted personae (the title track, for example, is written as Penelope, waiting for Odysseus to return) it has the power, like that searing wintry gaze of hers, to cut right to the core. There are few songwriters around at the moment who can match Marling for emotional intensity.

Unsurprisingly, writing songs ("a mixture of self-flagellation and therapy") comes easiest when she's unhappy. Which must present her with a bit of a paradox. Does it mean that she… "Goes looking for it?" she laughs, finishing the sentence. "It's the same reason I don't take drugs," she says. "Life is hard enough." Does she drink, though? "Oh yeah. Hell, yeah," she gives a low chuckle. "But I don't think you have to look very far to find something to make you feel a bit low. Maybe one day when I'm perfectly happy I won't write another song, but I don't think we're in any danger of that."

If not perfectly happy, she certainly seems extraordinarily comfortable in her skin. She admits "when I started doing this I spent too much time making sure that people didn't make me do things I didn't want to do." She was a contrary teenager, making what she terms "anti-points", the most obvious of which was not ever appearing in make-up – she'd doggedly wipe it all off before she went on stage or TV. "And that's all well and good until you travel loads and get off a plane looking like the back end of a bus." (At this point it's worth saying that she is indeed wearing mascara and a tiny bit of blusher, and very lovely she looks with it, too.)

There's a grander explanation for this concession to cosmetics, though: "Womanhood is something you don't consider until it hits you," she says. "At first I was intimidated by it and then I felt empowered by it." It also found her "going into a shop and picking up a baggy T-shirt in one hand and a dress in the other and going [she puts on a mock-existential-crisis voice] 'Who am I?'" Now, clad in an outfit that falls somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum, she adds: "I definitely know my place in the world a lot better, which makes everything a lot easier”.

I want to get to a couple of reviews for I Speak Because I Can. Before that, there is a great archived interview from the New York Times that caught my eye. American audiences possibly discovering Laura Marling then. Such an exciting and interesting young artist who was showing immense promise even back then. I discovered Marling on her debut album and have followed her since. Such a major talent who is one of our greatest songwriters ever:

“How old were you when you wrote the songs on “I Speak Because I Can”?

From 18 to 19. That year in anybody’s life is very much a transition. I began to feel like an adult for the first time. I think the responsibility of that, and of being a woman — those suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. My priorities changed a little bit, what I cared about and what I didn’t care about.

What things were you caring about and not caring about?

It has to do with what I do. I was so concerned about how I was being presented or projected, and how people would perceive my music because of that. In order to have that much control over yourself, you have to be a very difficult person to be around. Also I was very shy when I first started touring. I feel like I know my place in the world now.

What does that feel like?

You don’t have to charm. You are who you are and you know you’ll be that forever.

Do you write autobiographically or do you create fictional characters?

I think it’s a mix of both. I presume it’s the same when you write a novel. I tried to write some stories not too long ago, and they were so self-indulgent. I suppose that’s what every first novel is like, and yet it’s the thing you have to write. The majority of the songs are sort of semi-self-conscious autobiography, and putting yourself in a character just to make sure it’s at arm’s length.

“I Speak Because I Can,” the title song, is a kind of modern-day retelling of the tale of Penelope and Odysseus. What about their story did you connect with?

I happened to have read “The Odyssey” just before I started writing it. I found it so strange that a female character at the beginning of Western literature was portrayed as strong and independent. Then I read these letters that were reprinted in the newspaper between a chap and his woman during World War II. There were hints of sexuality — they took away all my naïveté about women throughout history.

There are folklorish elements in your songwriting as well.

We recorded the album in such an English place, in the middle of the countryside in the West Country. And it’s just beautiful, the last bit of mid-England that’s untouched. I’m fascinated by pagan history. Old English folk stories are absolutely brilliant. Some of them are so witty, and some are so dark. That’s what folk is, I guess. Maybe I stepped closer to actually calling myself folk.

Have you been reading anything good lately?

I just got into Philip Roth. I read “Everyman” and “The Human Stain” and I got halfway through “Portnoy’s Complaint” and thought, I’m really quite bored of him moaning. I’m reading Hesse’s “Siddhartha” at the moment.

What records did you listen to when you were a kid?

The records that were on in the car. We always had a Stevie Wonder record, we always had a Joni Mitchell record. Those were my childhood soundtracks. I’ll always be a closet Steely Dan fan. But the first album I bought was by Macy Gray”.

I am going to wrap up with a couple of reviews. The first I want to include is from the BBC. Similar to a lot of reviews, they praise her abilities and songwriting but say that her true talents will be revealed later. I think it is a little dismissive and unfair. I Speak Because I Can is a complete work that I cannot find fault with:

“When Laura Marling appeared on the folk scene in 2008, aged 17, there was almost as much anticipation of her promise as praise for the music she produced. This was no bad thing, allowing development as an artist, and crucially not placing too much pressure or expectation on not-as-yet broad shoulders. Her debut, Alas, I Cannot Swim, was delivered to a generous critical reception, but the question asked this time round was always going to be one of progression, and the fulfilment of that abundant early talent.

Listening to Alas and second full-length, I Speak Because I Can, back-to-back, a change in tone – if not direction – is evident from opener and lead single Devil's Spoke. The production here is more deliberate and pored-over, expanding upon the earlier bare-bones approach. A leaf out of the Mumford & Sons school of orchestration has also been taken, with Rambling Man the greatest representation of this. The development in vocal styling is also stark; gone is the wispy, quick-fire phrasing and in walks deeper, slower, huskier proclamations. In many ways darkness has replaced the brightness.

It would, however, be disingenuous to paint this record as a collection of Marling's miserabilism. Despite the downbeat opening tracts, certain songs – Darkness Descends and I Speak Because I Can – abound with optimism and the ultimate, swelling crescendo of the latter displays an impressive mastery of dynamics. Similarly, at least a touch of variation is a necessity in folk, and this is demonstrated frequently, no more noticeably than when the boisterous acceleration of Alpha Shallows falls under a weight of heavy strums and gives way to the subtle, tender love letter to a country that is Goodbye England (Covered In Snow).

There was a justifiable argument to be made that Marling's real talent had to be seen live; the recorded compositions not revealing the entire picture. With I Speak Because I Can, that argument may now end. Though just 20, it doesn't appear within her scope to make an outright bad album, and here we are shown a few more glimpses of her gift, but yet not an overwhelming outpouring of it. It's clear that there has been a progression as a songwriter, with a previously unfound depth apparent on these ten tracks. Though it undoubtedly draws on the travails of the past two-or-so years, there remains, without a doubt, more in the can from young Laura”.

I am ending with a positive review from Pitchfork. With U.S. sources and media maybe fresh to Marling at this point, she did get some commercial success there. The album reached number seven on the Folk Albums chart:

“Reviewing Laura Marling's Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Alas, I Cannot Swim, in 2008, I worried that the then-18-year-old might too quickly shed the teenage guilelessness that contributed so greatly to the record's appeal. Marling possessed an undeniable knack for writing about young love with directness and authentic feeling, but at times her pseudo-profound poetics suggested the young folkie was in too much of a hurry to be a serious adult.

Clearly, I significantly underestimated Laura Marling's capabilities. Her sophomore effort, I Speak Because I Can, finds Marling, still only 20, shrugging off virtually all traces of girlishness and wide-eyed charm, instead delving into darkly elemental, frequently morbid folk. And yet, astonishingly, the expected growing pains never come. To say Marling evinces wisdom beyond her years on I Speak would be a criminal understatement, considering she's created a haunting, fully flowered gem of an album despite being younger than two-thirds of the Jonas Brothers.

These are folk-rock songs, but Marling doesn't lazily trade on it like so many other would-be old souls. Instead, like Fairport Convention or Nick Cave or Cat Power, she uses folk as an archetypal form to get at the essential realities of love, sex, heartbreak, and death. Sometimes she does it with heart-stopping quietness, her voice dropping to conversational tones on "Made by Maid" and "What He Wrote". Just as often, Marling sets her allegories to raucous musical accompaniment, an especially impressive feat considering the calm of her debut. The bluesy jig of opener and first single "Devil's Spoke" might elicit a few less-than-ideal comparisons with KT Tunstall, but Marling blows that kind of politely insistent stuff out of the water on the soaring, thunderous "Rambling Man" and the gypsy-ish breakdown of "Alpha Shallows" (which makes up for that song's momentary slip into sub-Dylan poetic doggerel).

It would have been all too easy for an album like this, so grimly fixated and coming from someone of such tender age, to be written off as the work of a morose young Romantic. However, Marling seems to have a great deal of self-awareness of her melancholic bent, lightly skewering herself on "Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)" for writing an "epic letter" to an estranged lover that's "22 pages front and back/ But it's too good to be used." And yet, she's not playing dress-up. She's a wholly developed artist in full command of gifts that may not yet be finished arriving”.

On 22nd March, it will be fifteen years since Laura Marling’s I Speak Because I Can was released. Maybe a fifteenth anniversary is not as special as the twentieth or even the tenth, though I feel this wonderful album deserves some love. Still recording music of the highest order, I can see Marling releasing albums for decades more! Someone who has this golden run of albums that have all been acclaimed, there are few artists that can boast that kind of consistency. Not just one of our very best songwriters. Laura Marling is surely one of…

THE greatest who has ever lived.

FEATURE: Heavy with Seeds: Under the Ivy: Kate Bush and the Personal and Creative Benefits of Gardening

FEATURE:

 

 

Heavy with Seeds

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Under the Ivy: Kate Bush and the Personal and Creative Benefits of Gardening

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SOME might see it…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alamy

as a sign of retirement or quitting, but that just shows there is ageism when we think of gardening. Maybe once synonymous with the older generation, it is not the case that gardening equates to someone ending a career and giving in. Even if you are older, taking up gardening is not indicative of decline or choosing a different pace of life. In fact, it is frequently done by people who lead a very active life and are still working. Gardening now much more visible among younger generations. In terms of music, you do get artists who mention that they have taken up gardening. When I think of Kate Bush, among the images that spring to mind is the garden. It has been a part of life since she was a child. I have recently written about Bush’s East Wickham Farm childhood home. How there was this beautiful garden and farmhouse. A barn and an outside pool. I can only imagine how intriguing the garden was for this young girl. Not that Bush was too involved with the upkeep of the garden herself. Maybe she helped her parents out or was seen dancing around in the garden as they tended to the flowers. The tactility and colour of flowers and the garden no doubt would have fascinated a very young Kate Bush. I mention it because, in recent years, people have connected Kate Bush gardening with retirement. Bush spoke with Emma Barnett in 2022. Bush was asked what she is doing at the moment. Bush replied ‘gardening’. Maybe a question that was designed to elicit plans of new music, many felt that Bush was now in a stage where she did not want to make music and instead was living a much more normal and non-musical existence. Last year, Bush and Barnett spoke again. This time, Bush revealed she was keen to work on a new album. It goes to show that one cannot associate gardening with retirement. In fact, it has been a source of inspiration and creative motivation throughout Kate Bush’s career!

I will end with Kate Bush gardening in the 2020s and how it could, forgive the pun, plan the seeds for an eleventh studio album. I think that the gardening and that routine of planting seeds and curating a garden has been something stabilising and calming for Bush. Getting out in the open and being influenced by the soil and comfort of a garden. It was very much centre stage for 2005’s Aerial and its second disc, A Sky of Honey. A summer’s day unfolding from the view of an English garden. The sound of blackbirds ringing out. Watching the sun rise and set. The moving and evocative world that one gets from their garden. Let’s move back to 1985’s Hounds of Love. When Bush had a bespoke studio built at East Wickham Farm to record Hounds of Love in, there was this wonderful period where she was making music plans but also relaxing. Not only did her trip to Ireland influence her songwriting and open her mind. Bush and Del Palmer (who were dating during the time) spent the summer gardening. Apart from going to films and Bush driving around and enjoying her freedom, gardening was very much a way for Bush to both unwind but also inspire her creative mind. Hounds of Love is an album awash with the natural world and weather. A track that was recorded too late to be included on Hounds of Love but was the B-side for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Under the Ivy very much takes us out to the garden.

One of Bush’s most beautiful songs, its lyrics are so evocative: “Go into the garden/Go under the ivy/Under the leaves/Away from the party/Go right to the rose/Go right to the white rose/(For me)/I sit here in the thunder/The green on the grey/I feel it all around me/And it's not easy for me/To give away a secret/It's not safe”. I love how there is a flower in front of Kate Bush’s mouth for the cover of The Sensual World. This is what Bush said: “The rose on the front cover is real. A lot of people think it was made out of silk…or paper. It’s a rose called Doris Tysterman. I’d planted it in our garden a few years before. Found just before the photo shoot; Doris had produced the perfect bloom”. I know East Wickham Farm had a rose garden, so that would have been spellbinding for a young Kate (Cathy) Bush. I can imagine that her mother was a gifted plantswoman. If Bush stated in 2022 that she was into gardening now, I don’t think it ever left her. Especially when she was at or near East Wickham Farm, she would have been out there gardening. She lived at addresses throughout London during her career – including a time when she lived at Wickham Road in Brockley with her two brothers. Bush took the top floor and lived alone whilst Paddy and John had their own floors. I don’t think she had much access to a garden whilst there. It has become more defined as she moved to larger properties. Bush bought the Grade II-listed Georgian mansion in the mid-1990s in Berkshire. She also used to own a South Hams (Devon) clifftop mansion. Bush currently resides at Clifton Hampden Manor in Clifton Hampden, Oxfordshire. Previously, Bush lived in a property located on the river Kennet, near the village of Theale. The property was built around 1800 as a miller's house for the nearby water mill. Standing in 22.54 acres of grounds, Shenfield Mill was this idyllic paradise.

IN THIS PHOTO: Clifton Hampden Manor, Oxfordshire

In each property, I think the garden and grounds was important. The space and privacy was key. Bush able to build her own studio or have enough room to have a separate studio. If you look at photos of these properties, you can imagine Bush wanting something similar to her childhood home. In the sense she could have this garden that was awash with colour and beauty. Where she could spend time out there relaxing and also working. I think about her now, aged sixty-six. At a time when new music is in her mind, she lives in this wonderful house with beautiful grounds. I think that the gardening she spoke to Emma Barnett about in 2022 led to some songwriting. Bush released the Little Shrew (Snowflake) last year. Whilst in that very busy period of creating and directing the video, I think Bush would have found time to garden. For anyone who thinks that Bush’s love of gardening is her stepping away from music, that is obviously not true! As mentioned, the garden has provided fascination for her since she was a child. One of her earliest songs (around about 1974) was titled In My Garden. Otherwise known as Something Like a Song, these lines strike me: “There's something that sounds like a song/In my garden, by the willow/A piper: "Oohoo, ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, hoooo"/I see him when I turn the lights down low/In my garden, wading through the pond/Rest and sing: "Lover oooooooh..."/"Oohoo, ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, oohoo, ahoo, hoooo". In a future featyure, I will look at the properties Bush has lived in through the years. How they were instrumental when it came to her creativity. All providing their own inspiration. For now, my mind is in the garden. Kate Bush among the flowers, under the ivy; the soil heavy with seed(s). A source of joy and comfort for Bush, it has often fuelled her songwriting. I think we will once more see this…

REALISED fairly soon.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Samara Cyn

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Samara Cyn

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FOR this Spotlight feature…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Bentley

I am focusing on an artist who is not as well-known in the U.K. as she is in her native U.S. The sensational Samara Cyn is the Tennessee-born, L.A.-based rapper/Neo Soul artist who is being tipped as someone to watch closely this year. Her album, The Drive Home, was released last October and marked her out as a talent who has the potential to endure for years to come. Someone whose music is capturing attention. I am going to move to a couple of interviews from last year. First, this NME feature introduces us to an artist that some of you may not know. An artist that definitely needs to be in your thoughts:

“As I evolved as an artist, I stopped wanting to be just a ‘great rapper’” Samara Cyn tells NME, “I wanted to make really good music.” It’s in part what’s responsible for her melodic delivery and her fluid sound vocally and sonically. In her own words, she’s “a neo-soul hip-hop fusion artist” and while she cites icons Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu as influences, Cyn’s music combines current stars like Doechii’s soul inflection and Tyler, The Creator’s experimentation.

It creates a rich and varied musical landscape to pull from; not surprising since Cyn, born in Tennessee, grew up moving around the US and used these experiences to take note of what she saw. “Writing, for me, has been a constant thing,” she says. “It’s my spark for my music.” She had an early interest in poetry, encouraged by her mother, an English teacher, who introduced her to the youth-focused spoken word poetry festival Brave New Voices, an annual event that tours throughout the US. “It’s these kids that looked like me, and were young and they were doing poetry in a different type of way than Edgar Allan Poe,” she says. To her, spoken word had a similar feel to rap. “After that, it opened my mind up to more slam poetry cadences, talking about societal issues and the things that I was going through and how to express myself.”

It wasn’t until a night out during her second year at university that her interest in poetry transformed into a drive to create music. Her friends were playing beats and rapping over them. “And I was like, ‘Man, I have something in my notes that can go with this,’” she remembers. “I basically rapped one of my poems to the beat.” That was just the beginning. “Once I started writing, I couldn’t stop,” she says. “And I remember we didn’t even sleep that night. We went back up to my apartment and grabbed our backpacks and went straight to class and even in class, I couldn’t not finish the song.”

In 2019 she wrote her first song and, in November of that year, she played her debut live show. In 2020, she performed at speakeasies and open mics and continued gigging in Phoenix, Arizona during her studies at Arizona State University. In November 2021, she opened for fellow ‘Bose x NME: C24’ artist Teddy Swims at his show at her alma mater.

When writing songs, she opts for getting her thoughts down on paper first before a brutal editing process. “It’s like a puzzle. I’m trying to figure out how I can say what I’m trying to say, in the cleverest way possible, in a rhyme scheme and a cadence,” she explains, “and still communicate the message?” Over time, she’s grown into a less-is-more approach to writing. “I think the most beautiful things are very simple, consolidated and precise,” she says. “I’ve definitely tried to refine and figure out how to say what I want to say in fewer words.”

Cyn wrote the vibrant, bouncy track ‘Loop’, her submission for the ‘Bose x NME: C24’ mixtape, in 15 minutes, when a friend of hers joined her in the studio. “We were just talking about being stuck in that same relationship and not being able to get out of it and I feel like I was definitely pulling from situations that I was just coming out of,” she explains.

Cyn and producer Cameron Ellis were struck by a video they’d seen on YouTube that showed Pharrell Williams and Justin Timberlake working on the latter’s 2002 debut solo album ‘Justified’. Cyn and Ellis took influence from the track ‘Señorita’ in particular. “We wanted to make something that was upbeat and sassy… and cool,” she remembers. “So we were like, ‘OK, let’s pull from this, the energy from this and go off of it from there.’”

Cyn likes writing in real time in the studio with her contemporaries. “I really love cook-up sessions, which is basically where everybody makes everything from scratch,” she says. “I like hearing the beat build.” It also makes her process a lot tighter, since it’s often hard to recapture that emotion and headspace. “Normally, I’m writing as the beat is being created,” she explains. “When the beat is done, I try to be done with my lyrics.”

While writing may have been the catalyst, her recording career has expanded from there, including recent single ‘Moving Day’. “There’s so much extra shit that comes with just writing – being an artist and doing the shoots and doing the social media and content creation and the creative direction, and all of these different things,” she explains. But writing is what grounds her and pushes her forward: “This is why I do it”.

Before coming to the final interview, I want to quote from this Uproxx chat from last June. I do hope that Samara Cyn is invited to play in the U.K. this year. Someone who deserves to be better known here. An incredible artist who is going to have a long and successful future. A Rap artist who can shake up the scene:

“Samara Cyn is doing everything right nowadays, but truthfully, you could say she always has. Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and bouncing around several cities before settling in Pheonix, Arizona in 2017, rapper Samara Cyn is a new lyricist to reckon with today. She constructs 16s and 32s with impressive ease and breezes through them with the Polish of a veteran. There are more than slick rhymes in Cyn’s arsenal, though. Like artists such as JID and Doja Cat, Cyn lays her raps with the backing of soulful beats and soothing singing voice to make her a complete artist worth getting excited about.

Her latest single “Magnolia Rain” makes for three singles in the past year, showing a promising future in rap lies ahead for Cyn. “Magnolia Rain” presents Cyn with the cool, calm, and collected demeanor that takes precedent on most of her tracks. She steers through the record with an introspective take on life, emphasizing her choice to focus on what she can control and take everything else as it comes. “Finding out that letting go give you more control,” she sings on the song’s chorus. “Keep a calm mind, keep a calm soul.” It’s a soothing reminder to find your peace in a world that can be so chaotic.

Together with the new single, we had a moment o catch up with Samara Cyn and find out more about her in this week’s Uproxx Music 20 column. Scroll down to hear some of Cyn’s music and to learn more about her influences, inspirations, and aspirations.

What is your earliest memory of music?

This is hard. I can’t really pinpoint the earliest moment. Maybe getting ready for school to MTV Top 40s. But what’s coming to mind is rapping Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” on karaoke with my dad at my 13th birthday party. Prime childhood memory.

Who inspired you to take music seriously?

My friend Michael Knight was the first person that really had me thinking I could do this for real. I was in college; I was just having my fun with music. It was something to do. But Michael really sat me down, believed in me, and got me set up. I remember sitting in my closet with my basic ass recording set up and him tapping into my computer from NC to teach me how to record on Logic. On some Spy Kids sh*t. He did all of my earliest production, he would mix my records, master them. All off the strength. Believed in it so much, it made me start too.

Do you know how to play an instrument? If so, which one? If not, which instrument do you want to learn how to play?

I can play a few songs on the guitar. Haven’t been able to stay disciplined enough to really learn it yet though. I think it’d be pretty badass to perform one day with an electric guitar though. So that’s the one.

Who is on your R&B/rap/afrobeats Mt. Rushmore?

Kendrick Lamar, Tyler The Creator, Erykah Badu, and Lauryn Hill.

You get 24 hours to yourself to do anything you want, with unlimited resources: What are you doing? And spare no details!

Maldives, massage, good food, clear water. Peace.

Which celebrity do you admire or respect for their personality and why?

Doja Cat. That woman don’t give a f*ck. She gon’ do her regardless and she does her very well, completely unapologetic. I love a “F*CK YOU” attitude for real. I feel like Tyler has that same energy. And Lil Nas X, I love him too.

What is the best song you’ve ever heard in your life and what do you love about it?

“I Don’t Know” by Nick Hakim. That song will put you in a trance! His harmonies are beautiful, his voice is soothing as f*ck, guitar loops are my favorite, and it just calms me every time I listen to it. Really pulls me back into my body when I need that. Go look it up.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform, and what’s a city you’re excited to perform in for the first time?

I don’t have too many cities under my belt yet, but Raleigh, North Carolina has my favorite performance to date. The crowd was energetic and everybody I talked to was so sweet and down to Earth. I’m excited for London.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

Don’t wait to tap into your life force. Be yourself, be grateful, be kind, and think a little bit more on that tattoo”.

Whether it is a ten-track album or E.P. - I think she has called it an E.P. -, The Drive Home was an important release from last year. If you have not heard it then take some time to listen to it. CLASH had an in-depth conversation with Samara Cyn in December. This is someone I am very excited about:

“For a 10-track EP, ‘The Drive Home’ is dangerously accessible – mostly because the 26-year-old is as confident as a Jill Scott record. ‘Sinner’ name drops Harbor Freight and “serves face” over Ronson pop ideals because “lil bitch, we mobbin’”. ‘Chrome’ meditates on space whips, sliding on a D’Mile loop that blends ‘telefone’ and ‘CARE FOR ME’. ‘Rolling Stone’ clips insecurities with a rose-colored nod to ‘Innanetape’ and Cyn’s Poetic Soul days while ‘100sqft’ finds her threading heartache like a ‘House Of Balloons’ demo — airing out past wrongs, a desire for affection, and feeling adrift amidst the distortion: “Wasn’t like this ‘fore I’d known you / Maybe I ain’t fall in love, I just tripped and fell up on you”. Even when she’s retracing her deepest anxieties about love, Cyn is audibling cadences, creating liminal spaces for flows, and floating through an appreciation of ‘50s and ‘60s jazz structures to selectively blur limitations and use rap as a form of escapism.

With co-signs from Nas, Doja Cat, Rapsody, and Alicia Keys, we caught up with Samara Cyn to go into detail about ‘The Drive Home’, her obsessions with Erykah Badu and Tyler, The Creator, her upcoming ‘Kountry Kousins’ tour with Smino, and why it’s important to be true to yourself.

In a recent tweet, Doechii addressed the growing importance of hip-hop — noting it has always been deep, complex, and soulful, and that communities ‘use hip-hop to evolve’. How has the genre influenced your own personal evolution in the last two years?

I feel like for a lot of people who get into hip-hop, it’s because they were raised listening to the genre. Hip-hop comes with a culture behind it and just like Doechii said, it’s soulful, it’s real, it’s raw. Hip-hop teaches you how to dress – it teaches you code and morals and stuff like that, and going into my past two years of releasing music, I really wanted to pull from the fact that it’s raw and authentic. All of my messages are about being authentic and they are more of a reminder for myself, you know what I’m saying? It’s definitely pulled from all of the unique styles that are under the umbrella of hip-hop – like how can you forge a way that’s unique but is still raw and still has code and makes you dress nice, but is authentic to you.

I don’t know… it’s just a natural part of cadence and the way that I create. I don’t think I have ever been like, “I’m going to be super hip-hop this year”. It’s a third parent for me; it was literally a part of how I was raised and what I was inspired by growing up.

Was music your first passion project?

Yeah, actually. Honestly, I used to be really sad before I had music. Because I didn’t start making music until I was a sophomore in college and I really struggled with feeling purposeless for a lot of my early college years and especially high school. Like I didn’t have a knack for anything. I had hobbies but they weren’t things I was really passionate about. I just did a lot of separate things. I played a lot of different sports. I really struggled with feeling like “why am I here” – I work and I go to school, and it’s like are these the only things I’m supposed to be doing? When I started making music, it was the first time that I really felt free doing something. Like I could never be bored.

I never felt purposeless after that and even though I didn’t initially recognize that music ‘was my purpose’, it was like “Oh, I have something to do now”. It felt productive and I was feeling better getting my feelings out after making music so I had never felt that before – not with painting or roller skating. I tried so many different hobbies [laughs]. Even going to bible study… I tried religion. It was definitely music that was the first thing to make me go “Oh snap, I really enjoy doing this and I can fill all of my time doing this and I won’t get tired of it”.

Were you ever worried that you wouldn’t be able to find your voice?

Absolutely. Do you know what highlighted that for me? It was music. When I first started creating music, it really, really helped me navigate that feeling and pinpoint that feeling of “This is why this feels bad”. Because even now when I’m in the studio – if I don’t feel good that day or if I don’t feel comfortable that day, even if the record comes out amazing, I won’t like the record. And it’s the same thing when you’re trying to navigate these spaces, like I don’t feel good while in this and so I don’t feel good about the situation. Even looking back on college and high school and while I did have some great times, I don’t have fond memories because I felt shitty the whole way through it.

Music really highlighted that. When I first started off, I was making very ‘rah-rah music’ which is what I thought it was supposed to be based on what my friends were consuming and what I was doing – which was college shit. I was partying and hanging out and drinking, and all that type of stuff, and it didn’t feel like good music. It took me a while to find my true voice and my delivery and even how I approach songs. Because at the same time I’m navigating college and how I feel as a person so for me, it was a lot of “this doesn’t feel good”, “that doesn’t sound like me” and “that outfit… that doesn’t look like me, that’s not my vibe”.

There were times, especially being confronted with music, where identity is such an important thing. I think it’s changing as a lot of people are genre-bending and have stories like ours where they’ve moved around a lot and it’s not just “I’m Atlanta all the way” or “I’m New York all the way” and this is my whole personality, and it’s because I’m from this place and do all these things and sound like this. It’s changing a lot more, but trying to be a serious music artist was the first time where I had to ask myself “Okay dude, what is your style? What’s your identity?”. You didn’t know anything about me from listening to my earlier music and there were definitely times where I was like “I don’t know who I am”. You’re talking to people and you’re trying to convey what your music is and what your style is about, and you can’t do that when you don’t fucking know [laughs].

When did you first fall in love with the neo-soul genre and the concept of writing songs that explore love, relationships, and social consciousness?

It was the first time I heard ‘Mama’s Gun’, which is Erykah Badu’s album. That was the first time I fell in love with neo-soul, and then after that, I became like obsessed with Erykah Badu [laughs]. I loved her but specifically the ‘Mama’s Gun’ album really resonated with me for some reason. It was about authenticity and love and shit like that. With indie pop and other genres, that naturally came out of me in the studio and that just ties back to my childhood as I was raised in different places and there’s just a lot of influence that happens there. Like I listen to all types of music.

Even thinking back, with my dad I listened to a certain type of music and with my mom, I listened to a different type of music. My dad was more old school hip-hop, R&B, and those types of vibes and my mom was into Coldplay, The Fray, and The Script. She had more of an alternative, soft rock-type of situation going on – and I love that music too, like Florence And The Machine, all that type of stuff – so I think naturally, again, it was what I was listening to growing up so when I’m creating music, it’s just the natural different sides that come out of me. I like experimental shit. I like artists that push the boundaries of creativity and aren’t stuck in one style or dimension.

As far as introspection and that type of thing, I don’t know if it’s because I fell in love with it. I think I was trying to heal. Those songs are me talking myself through my own emotions and that’s why I talk about that stuff – it’s more of a reminder to myself instead of me trying to tell everybody else “this is what you should do”. It’s more so this is a reminder to me about the conversation that I’m having with myself this week about pride; this is the conversation I have been having with myself and my friends about fucking ego or how I fucked a situation up because my ego was getting in the way of seeing both sides. Like I feel insecure about this so this week I’m going to talk about insecurity because this is how I’m feeling right now. So I feel like with the introspective stuff, the music is going to reflect what’s going on in my life. It’s the best way for me to do it because it’s the easiest way that I can feel the music and convey it, and it often helps me therapeutically to get out the emotion and the logic behind why it is that I’m feeling the way that I am.

I also feel like genres are kind of pit against each other sometimes, especially in hip-hop. It’s like “conscious music” versus modern rap shit and oftentimes it’s people just saying “I don’t listen to ignorant music” or “I don’t listen to conscious music” and people be trying to think too hard as it’s just music. The reality of it is we have different moods for different vibes and all of hip-hop needs each other in order to convey the messages it needs to convey – like in order for it to be hip-hop, there’s all of that. People forget there was a time when Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill and Goodie Mob, Common, Talib Kweli, Kanye West – where they were at the top of the top of the rappers. And then there was also a time when fucking Juvenile and Too $hort and Three 6 Mafia were at the top of the top of what was going on. It’s just different vibes. Yes, I listen to Glorilla on the way to the club and yeah, I listen to Kendrick Lamar and ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ when I’m in the vibe to listen and receive that music, not when I’m ‘rah rah’ or turnt up right now [laughs].

When I want to feel confident, yes, I’m putting Glorilla on but when I’m feeling introspective, it’s going to be J. Cole, Kendrick, J.I.D. – give me the stuff that’s chill, that I want to think to. We are different all the time. We have so many different roles as people and I question people who listen to one thing all the time, their whole life, whatever mood they are in. Like imagine being sad and throwing on… nah, let me stop [laughs]. But imagine being sad and throwing on Sexyy Red, like let me cry to this real quick. Like no, that’s not what I’m trying to do right now [laughs].

What inspired the title ‘The Drive Home’? And what influenced you to release a new EP and project that symbolizes the journey to self acceptance?

So I can’t even take credit for the name ‘The Drive Home’. My friend Nov, who is a producer and a really good friend of mine, deserves the credit as he’s like a big brother to me and he had been doing music for way longer than I had when I first got the concept to even make an EP. My music reflects what’s going on in my life and at the time the topic was “identity” and learning to accept myself and the place where I was at in life, and trying to find peace within myself and who I was in every situation and in every room, and Nov was like, “Why don’t you call it The Drive Home?”.

And I remember being in those sessions, we would talk for like an hour before we even started the session, which shows how great of a producer he is because he really tries to understand where you’re at in the moment and create music based off of that feeling. They were basically therapy sessions before we even touched the computer. I remember crying in the studio while I was talking about some of the stuff I was going through and how I was feeling, and ‘The Drive Home’ ended up being a reminder that “home” means peace and self-acceptance and feeling comfortable, and ‘the drive’ is just the journey to get there. At the time, I was still in the thick of that journey and ‘The Drive Home’ made me realize that I’m always going to be on that journey.

We always think there’s the ‘other side’ or that I’ll be able to move forward once I’m healed, and I don’t really think that’s a realistic destination as you’re always kind of on this journey to becoming a better person and being more accepting of yourself and not giving a fuck. It takes a while to get there and that’s really where the concept came from. It was Nov’s idea and as time and years went on, the meaning of it changed, and it ended up being what it was. I think it’s perfect that it took three years to mold the idea of it but I’m really proud of it and happy with how it ended up.

One of the more interesting qualities about your energy and artistry is your attention to detail when it comes to writing. When did you first become interested in how cadences and literary devices are used in hip hop and other genres of music?

Oooh… I feel like that’s way earlier than when I started making music. A really well-written song has always piqued my interest in music and being raised on old school hip-hop, it’s very playful and with cadences and rhyme schemes, you kind of realize that everybody has their own style with how they do that. Biggie and Tupac were both great but their music sounded so differently, like with what they talked about and how they expressed the feelings they were trying to get off.

My mom is also an English teacher so I got into poetry before I got into music. I remember my mom would teach a lesson in her class every year that was about Brave New Voices, which is basically a reality show about inner city kids that would do these workshops and spend a whole semester or a whole year or whatever working on a slam poetry piece. They would perform them in these tournaments and these end-of-the-year shows, and I remember being so blown away by the poetry, the messages behind them, and the cadence because poetry comes with cadence. I think poetry as a whole and just getting into poetry first taught me rhythm better than when I first started music and songs because punchlines have to fall a certain way. Like if you’re performing in front of a crowd and you have a punchline or a bar and you don’t give it the space to be a bar or you don’t set it up the right way, people aren’t going to get it. Like your cadence matters.

It’s like a puzzle – how do you get out what you’re trying to say but make it sound cool as shit by using literary devices and trying to figure out how many different clever ways can I say the same thing and have it fit the rhyme scheme that I’m going with. There’s a lot of people that do that so well. Like I was really interested in breaking down Lupe Fiasco’s rhyme schemes when I was in high school and college as he’s one of my favourite artists. If we’re talking about more modern names, there’s also J.I.D – people recognize J.I.D but they don’t give him enough credit for how he’s able to fit certain things in and still make it swaggy with a cadence that’s very percussion-y. He’s really dope and he talks about shit too, which is always a plus. Like when you can have a really dope delivery, a really dope rhyme scheme, and you can also be cool and not too far left like what is this person talking about, and on top of that be saying something that can resonate with people and isn’t just about nothing – that’s talented to me. A really well-written song or a well-conveyed song will pique my interest over melodies and production nine out of ten times”.

If you are new to the brilliance of Samara Cyn then make sure you check her out. I hope to see her live one day, as I can imagine she is a wonderful and powerful performer that gives one hell of a show! This year is going to be a busy one for her. If she is known to some and not all at the moment, then that will…

CHANGE soon enough.

____________

Follow Samara Cyn

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/samaracyn/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://x.com/thesamaracyn

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4nqQTosM2Mbg7iRjvJU0N0

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@samaracyn

FEATURE: New Confessions on a Dance Floor: Madonna in 2025

FEATURE:

 

New Confessions on a Dance Floor

PHOTO CREDIT: Madonna

Madonna in 2025

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THERE are certain artists…

PHOTO CREDIT: Madonna

that I constantly think about and wonder what is coming. Even though The Beatles are obviously not active, there is always thew possibility that something wonderful from the archives will come. A reissue of one of their classic albums. It is exciting as you know this year is going to bring at least one really cool project. Whether that is a book, documentary or album reissue, fans are never disappointed or left short! Madonna is obviously still recording and touring. Last year was one where she ended her incredible Celebration Tour. One that began in October 2023, it ended in May last year at Copacabana Beach at Rio de Janeiro. It was a record-setting gig where people flocked to see the Queen of Pop show that she is still peerless! At sixty-six, Madonna still is one of the most compelling and relevant artists in the world. I love how she speaks out on issues that are important. Rather than worrying about commercial repercussions or dividing her fans, Madonna says what needs to be said. At the moment, the state of the world. The U.S. particularly. How her country is in a bad place and run by a President whose motives are evil, selfish and very much not good for the people. Madonna also spoke out against the genocide in Palestine. Although she does say some controversial things and is not always right, Madonna is an artist that speaks truth and uses her voice for good. I do hope that there is something happening regarding new music. Recently, Madonna teased that new material is coming. Recording again with Stuart Price (the two collaborated on 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor), it follows 2019’s Madame X. That album was slightly darker than previous or earlier work. I think a new Madonna album might fit into the currently Pop landscape. Charli xcx, Sabrina Carpenter and Dua Lipa. Like 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, will Disco and Dance be at its heart? I am looking forward to seeing what comes.

I don’t think Madonna will be touring again soon. Very much focused on a new album. I sort of hope that there are not too many collaborators. An album where Madonna is more at the front. I find some of her more recent albums have relied too much on collaborations. It would be nice if there was one or two collaborations, but the remaining tracks were her alone. It would mean we’d get something purer and more personal. What form her fifteenth studio album will take I am not too sure. There are a couple of big album anniversaries coming later in the year. On 18th September, Music turns twenty-five. On 9th November, Music on a Dance Floor turns twenty. I do hope that something special happens for those anniversaries. More than anything, I hope that 2025 sees movement regarding a long-awaited biopic. There have been attempts. Before Madonna toured, we did think that a film would appear. Julia Garner was cast as Madonna. I think Diablo Cody was co-writing with Madonna but that didn’t actually come to pass. I know Madonna wants to direct a biopic, though I think her acting as a producer and someone else directing might be better. I am not certain if Julia Garner would return or another actor is playing her. So many possibilities. In terms of the time period and plot. I think the aborted recent attempt was focusing on years like 1985 and 1986. Julia Garner looking like Madonna during her True Blue (1986) period. I would love to see the story of Madonna turning up in New York and her getting noticed. Her path to her debut album in 1983. It would be fascinating to see that period brought to the big screen. Maybe Madonna co-writing the script. Perhaps a biopic that goes from the early-1980s through to the end of that decade. Now that she is not touring and is working on new material, there must be part of her that wants to reignite a biopic.

The music biopic is that risky thing. So many pitfalls compared to any other type of film. More attentions paid to the actor playing the artist, whether the story told is truthful and real or it whitewashes a lot of the more controversial aspects. In recent years, the likes of Amy Winehouse and Bob Marley have been brought to life in new films. In those cases, reviews were mixed. I can’t remember the last time we saw a music biopic that did not divide people. Objectively that could happen with any biopic though, for someone like Madonna, if you get the balance right then it could be a success. Making sure it is real and raw. That it is honest and does have a blend of the uplifting and not so. That the version of events is correct and the actor playing Madonna at least sounds like her. Maybe not singing her vocals, getting the look right is important. Maybe Madonna is too subjective to direct a biopic that is objective and balanced. I do think it is possible to produce a Madonna biopic that ticks all the boxes. If not a biopic then a film where her music is the soundtrack. A story around her music and life. Scenes unfolding to the iconic music of Madonna. It would be wonderful to finally see her brought to the big screen. She has appeared in other films through depiction but nothing where she is the subject. Aside from that, we hope that Madonna continues to record and engage with fans. So inspiring and always unvarnished, she is an artist who is as important, inspiring and relevant as ever. A generation of new Pop artist following Madonna. Last year, the Becoming Madonna documentary was released. Whilst not perfect, it did give us a glimpse into Madonna in those earliest years. I hope we get a documentary around the Celebration Tour. New music might arrive before the end of the year. A new chapter for the Queen of Pop. Madonna turns sixty-seven in August. I am excited to see what comes next. This Pop genius still burning bright over four decades…

SINCE her debut album was released.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: BRIT Awards 2025 Nominees

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Nia Archive

BRIT Awards 2025 Nominees

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TAKING place…

IN THIS PHOTO: Confidence Man

on Saturday, 1st March at London’s O2 Arena, I have compiled a playlist of BRIT Awards nominees ahead of the ceremony. You can see the nominees here. I have written about it before but, when this year’s nominees were announced, there were those highlighting how more men are nominated than women. Maybe it is going backwards. However, we can see that there are some brilliant women nominated. I do hope that next year’s BRIT Awards redresses its gender imbalance. I will come to a mixtape of BRIT nominees. First, I am once more quoting The Guardian and their reaction to this year’s nominees:

“Charli xcx leads this year’s Brit awards with five nominations for her 2024-dominating record Brat – the Guardian’s album of last year. With four nominations apiece, Dua Lipa, the Last Dinner Party, Ezra Collective and Myles Smith are close on the pop star’s trail.

xcx is nominated for album, artist and song of the year – the latter for the remix of Guess featuring Billie Eilish – and in the dance and pop genre categories.

But despite xcx painting the British music industry’s annual party a violent shade of lime green, women remain underrepresented in this year’s nominations, accounting for 34.7% of the 98 slots. Male acts comprise more than half, at 53%, with mixed-gender acts and collaborations – including the Last Dinner Party – making up the remaining 12.3%.

It’s a noteworthy year for some vintage groups: the Beatles’ AI-abetted Now and Then is up for best song, the group’s first nomination since the very first Brit awards in 1977. (Prior to becoming an annual fixture in 1983, the first Brits marked Queen Elizabeth II’s silver jubilee and 100 years since the invention of the phonograph, and honoured the preceding 25 years in music, seeing the Beatles earn three nominations.) And with three nominations for Songs of a Lost World – their first album since 2008 – the Cure score their first Brit nominations in more than 30 years in the categories for album of the year, group of the year and alt/rock act.

At the newer end of the scale, Stargazing singer Smith is this year’s Rising Star winner, tipped by the industry for major success, and is also nominated for new artist, song and pop act.

The genre categories are assembled by the Brits voting academy and then voted for by members of the public via WhatsApp. Predictably, the category for hip-hop/grime/rap act features just one woman, Little Simz, alongside Central Cee, Dave, Ghetts and Stormzy.

London jazz act Ezra Collective may also be set for a breakthrough year. The five-piece released their third album, Dance, No One’s Watching, in September, after winning the 2023 Mercury prize for their second album. “From a youth club to the Brit awards and beyond,” they said in a statement.

Some may raise eyebrows at a group active since 2016 being up for new artist – alongside last year’s Mercury winners English Teacher, the Last Dinner Party, Myles Smith and former Brit School student Rachel Chinouriri – but the category parameters stipulate that acts must have had one Top 40 album or single in the eligibility period, but can’t have had a Top 10 album or more than one Top 10 single, nor have had prior nominations for best artist, group or album”.

To mark the upcoming (1st March) BRIT Awards ceremony, I wanted to compile and combine songs from the albums and artists nominated. It is an eclectic and strong field this year. We shall see who will walk away with the awards this year. I think that Charli xcx is going to be the big winner and will probably win three awards. I am eager to see which artists…

ARE honoured at this year’s ceremony.

FEATURE: Kings and Queens of the Mountain: Saluting the Kate Bush Experts

FEATURE:

 

 

Kings and Queens of the Mountain

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993

Saluting the Kate Bush Experts

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THIS is a big Kate Bush feature…

in terms of its significance. This is the 950th I will publish. I will be shared in March. I am writing this at the start of February. As I type, there has been no update on whether we will get a new Kate Bush album this year. I reckon any possible announcement will happen in the spring or summer. Maybe an album release nearer the end of this year. However, we cannot tell exactly when an album will drop. I am exciting to see what comes this year. Bush will no doubt update fans on what is happening. There are going to be events and anniversaries through the year. For this feature, I want to spend some time saluting the experts. Those who know Kate Bush’s work better than me. I know I have said in the past how I have published more features about her than any other journalist. This is probably true. In the pre-Internet age, there was not the opportunity or desire to write multiple Kate Bush features. Journalists published interviews and features when there was a call for it. There have been some great blogs dedicated to Kate Bush. I am not sure whether any are active now. However, I owe a real debt to the likes of Dreams of Orgonon. In terms of song analysis and giving depth to Kate Bush’s tracks, this website is essential. The way that the songs are deconstructed and analysed is really fascinating. So many interesting perspectives. I am not sure whether I have written more words about Kate Bush than anyone who has ever lived (it is over a million but I have lost count!). There are a couple of contenders. In terms of people who are experts and will always know more than me, one name that springs to mind is Gaffaweb. An invaluable resource for journalists like me and those who have written books about Kate Bush, this is meant to be the ultimate resource about our favourite artist:

“Kate Bush -- singer, songwriter, musician, dancer, actress, and director -- has inspired a devoted following around the world, and in August 1985, Doug Alan created an online discussion group about Kate. At first taking the form of a mailing list called Love-Hounds, it soon grew into a usenet newsgroup called rec.music.gaffa. The name was chosen over "rec.music.katebush" to indicate that discussion would not be limited to Kate Bush alone. Other artists discussed in Love-Hounds / rec.music.gaffa include those who have been involved in Kate's work in some way, such as Peter Gabriel and Roy Harper, as well as those who have been influenced by her or likened to her, such as Tori Amos and Happy Rhodes. Together, the mailing list and the newsgroup form an informal fan club known as "Love-Hounds." More information on all of this is available in the FAQ.

>

There are already a number of sites on the World Wide Web devoted to Kate. Some of these have been incorporated into Gaffaweb itself, and Gaffaweb will ultimately include links to all other Kate Bush sites on the Web. In addition, there are selections from the best of the Love-Hounds archives, a comprehensive FAQ, a vast selection of images, and much original material specially created for Gaffaweb.

Note: Like every other site on the Web, new things are continually being added to Gaffaweb. Still to come are a set of "song story" pages which will offer in-depth discussion and analysis of each of Kate's songs, a fully searchable database of all Kate Bush lyrics, the truly delightful Cloudbusting: Kate Bush In Her Own Words collection, a searchable archive of over a decade's worth of discussion and debate in Love-Hounds, and more. Check back often for new developments.

Gaffaweb is intended as a source of information and entertainment for the devoted fan and the curious newcomer alike. If you're already a fan, you've definitely come to the right place. And if you're not yet familiar with the work of Kate Bush, we hope this is an introduction you'll enjoy”.

There are a wealth of images, interviews, links and other bits of Kate Bush information. I have not counted the number of words published by Gaffaweb, though the interview archives are pretty extensive, so I would imagine that they have outstripped me so far. Although it is an archived website, I believe there are plans to update it. To add interviews with Kate Bush from 2011. For many in the Kate Bush world, Gaffaweb is the ultimate source. The GOAT. I use them all the time and owe a debt of thanks to them!

For anyone who wants to discover more about Kate Bush, Gaffweb is where you should start. It is exhaustive and I hope there are plans to add more information to it. The Kate Bush Encyclopedia is exactly what it says it is. This site that has this broad range of Kate Bush information. Ordered alphabetically, you can find songs, albums, people and places associated with Kate Bush. In terms of resources, this is a perfect companion to Gaffaweb. I don’t know how many words have been published, but again, it is a massive amount. Perhaps not as many as Gaffaweb, one has to give thanks to the dedication and passion of the Kate Bush Encyclopedia. Before coming to a couple of books that I think is the most passionate display of Kate Bush love, I want to mention a few other special people. I have written about these books before but, as it is the 950th Kate Bush feature, I want to return to them. Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush is one that every Kate Bush fan should own. In terms of books about her, this is perhaps the go-to. I love all the other biographies about Kate Bush, though Thomson’s is the one I have read the most. Someone who knows Kate Bush’s music and career better than most, you need to buy this book. Another great Kate Bush biography is Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. Here is some more information:

“Featuring details from the author's one-to-one conversations with Kate, as well as vignettes of her key songs, albums, videos and concerts, this artful, candid and often brutally funny portrait introduces the reader to the refreshingly real Kate Bush.

Along the way, the narrative also includes vivid reconstructions of transformative moments in her career and insights from the friends and collaborators closest to Kate, including her photographer brother John Carder Bush and fellow artists David Gilmour, John Lydon and Youth”.

I have been thinking about the possibility of other Kate Bush books. There is definite scope and potential. If you think about a band like The Beatles, there are plenty of books written about them. A tome such as The Beatles: All These Years – Volume 1 – Tune In by the world’s leading expert on The Beatles, Mark Lewishon. That first volume is 1728 pages (The Extended Special Edition at least), and there will be two more volumes. Nobody will ever surpass him in terms of depth and detail. There are also two books about Paul McCartney. The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969 – 73 and The McCartney Legacy: Volume 2: 1974 – 80. In terms of the Kate Bush universe, there is not anything quite like Mark Lewishon’s book. I think there would be potential for something similar to it. Maybe it could not be quite as deep and long, yet there is so much to say about Kate Bush. It would not have to rehash what has already been written. I would love to see a huge book that charts Kate Bush’s life from childhood through to now. Maybe someone is working on a book like this at the moment! When thinking about the two-volume Paul McCartney examination, there is HomeGround. In terms of the most words printed about Kate Bush, these books must be at the top! I would consider these two books to be the most amount of passion and love you can have for one artist. The books are edited by Krystyna Fitzgerald-Morris, Peter Fitzgerald-Morris and Dave Cross. Here is some information about HomeGround. It was originally a fanzine. The books collate all the letters, writings and images that were published through its run:

“Homeground is the longest running Kate Bush fanzine, which started in 1982. The final printed issue, number 79, was published in 2011. It is run by Krystyna Fitzgerald-Morris, Peter Fitzgerald-Morris and Dave Cross from the UK.

The idea for the fanzine was conceived in Dave Cross’s flat on 18 May 1982. 25 copies were run off an office photocopier. Through the years, the fanzine was produced with ever more professionality. In fact, it got the support of Kate and the people around her. Fans contributed stories, artwork and poetry, while the editors followed every detail about Kate in the press worldwide, even during quieter times.

In 2014, two big books summarizing the impressive output of the fanzine were released by Crescent Moon Publishing. They were called HomeGround Anthology volumes 1 and 2. It is a detailed look at Kate’s career through the eyes of fans around the world, along with the aforementioned artwork, poetry and prose from fans.

Since then, two digital publications have been released: Homeground 80 was devoted to the 40th anniversary of the fanzine (Summer 2022), and in January 2024 a special memorial issue after Del Palmer passed away”.

You can get Anthology One here. If you want to know what sort of thing is in this first volume, then there is some background here. It is a book that should be part of every Kate Bush fan’s collection. One that I own and have referenced many times now:

“First book in a two volume set, bringing together articles and insights from the UK fanzine Homeground. Edited by Krystyna Fitzgerald-Morris, Peter Fitzgerald-Morris and Dave Cross. Published by Crescent Moon Publishing on 25 March 2014.

The first book covers Kate Bush’s career from Wuthering Heights to The Sensual World (from the late 1970s to the late 1980s). It is a book about the reaction to her work and how her unique music has touched the lives of so many people.

The book includes an enormous amount of information about Kate Bush, accounts of every release, album, single, pop promo and appearance, as well as memories and accounts of music fandom (such as conventions, meetings, hikes, stage door encounters and video parties). It also includes material on many other pop acts and events. It features poetry, stories, letters, reviews, interviews, memoirs, cartoons, drawings, paintings and photographs. Years before the internet, HomeGround became a place where fans could discuss Bush’s music, and a place where they could publish creative writing and artwork that music inspired”.

Homeground: The Kate Bush Magazine: Anthology Two: 'The Red Shoes' to '50 Words for Snow' can be purchased here. I would like to think that we could see a Kate Bush fanzine or fan club spring back up. Her fanbase is larger than it has ever been. If there is another album coming, then there is fresh impetus and motivation. When it comes to words and information printed about Kate Bush, perhaps HomeGround steals it. In terms of the best website for all things Kate Bush, that would be Kate Bush News. Run by Seán Twomey and his team (including the folks from HomeGround), this is a website that gives us all the latest Kate Bush news. There is this incredible archive. Also, the Kate Bush Fan Podcast. Run by Twomey (and the website has been running since January 1998), one cannot find a bigger Kate Bush fan than him. I wanted to recognise the people who are so valuable. People who I rely on for my features and Kate Bush news. As I publish this and look towards the 1,000th Kate Bush feature, real credit and salutes should be given to the experts. From the HomeGround volumes to Kate Bush News, through to Gaffaweb and books about Kate Bush, I do think there should be some get-together or collaboration. Whether it is a special fan convention or a podcast, getting the Kate Bush experts in the same space would be wonderful! I haven’t even mention Laura Shenton and Leah Kardos and the books they have written about Kate Bush (the former wrote about The Kick Inside and The Dreaming; the latter Hounds of Love). Considering all the time and effort they have put in regarding all things Kate Bush, one is helpless but to…

BOW down to them.

FEATURE: Rose Darling: Steely Dan’s Katy Lied at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

Rose Darling

Steely Dan’s Katy Lied at Fifty

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THIS is an interesting anniversary…

IN THIS PHOTO: Walter Becker (right) and Donald Fagen photographed on 23rd November, 1975 in Los Angeles, California

to mark, as I am looking back at the original release of Steely Dan’s Katy Lied. Their fourth studio album was released on 1st March, 1975. I wanted to mark its fiftieth anniversary. Even though the 1975 album is extraordinary and features some of Steely Dan’s best songs, there are issues with the sound and mix. Not sounding as even, clean or polished as other albums from them. I shall come to that. A reissued version of the album is available now. You can read more about it here. It is an ultra-high quality version of the album that addresses some of the issues with the original. I hope that it gets more people listening to the album. Even if Walter Becker and Donald Fagen felt that it was one of their least favourite releases, I would suggest that it is not the group’s worst album. With ten tracks that are perfectly sequenced, Katy Lied is this overlooked masterpiece. It was the first album Steely Dan made after they stopped touring, as well as their first to feature backing vocals by Michael McDonald. I want to get to some features and reviews for Katy Lied. The first piece is from Backseat Mafia:

“The general consensus seems to be that Katy Lied is Becker and Fagen’s least favourite Steely Dan album, because it didn’t match their levels of studio perfectionism that they had achieved on their other albums. As it turns out that is exactly the reason that it is my favourite Steely Dan album. I’m a rock fan you see and I’m one of those rock fans that appreciates the feeling of how something is played rather than how well it is played. This is a slightly scruffier and more natural sounding Steely Dan album than the rest, it sounds organic rather than meticulously structured, and as such it seems a little more fallible. A little more human if you like.

Probably the reason that Becker and Fagen are so harsh on Katy Lied is that this was the first time that they had recorded a whole album with a significant amount of support from some of the top session musicians that the 70s had to offer, and so they were probably expecting the most note-perfect and slick Steely Dan album to date. Quite why this wasn’t achieved is anyone’s guess, but I’m glad they didn’t. The songs on Katy Lied are among my personal favourite Steely Dan numbers, particularly “Doctor Wu” and “Any World (That I’m Welcome To)”. I also have a thing for “Bad Sneekers”, though quite why I have never really figured out.

At this point in their career Becker and Fagen were kings of smart-arse smug-bastard songwriting, with only 10cc able to match them when it came smart arrangements and Randy Newman was their only peer when it came intelligent and concise lyrics. Becker and Fagen’s faith in themselves should have been at an all time high, especially as they had abandoned touring and were concentrating all their efforts in the studio, but the comparatively rough-around-the-edges sound of this Steely Dan album just wasn’t what they were looking for, they wanted perfection and from now on nothing short of that would be good enough”.

When people think about Katy Lied, they often talk about the sound quality and its shortcomings – rather than the brilliant songwriting. Denny Dias, who played guitar on the album, wrote about some of the horrors that he witnessed when Katy Lied was being made and mixed. Something that has been addressed with the new vinyl reissue of a classic from 1975:

“Guitarist Denny Dias, writing for an early Steely Dan website, recounted the details of the dread incident, which may or may not have involved a mysterious mist straight out of John Carpenter’s The Fog. “Something happened during the remix of ‘Doctor Wu’ that scared the hell out of us,” Dias recollects in the essay, reproduced here with the author’s permission. It’s the kind of spooky story that will make any audiophile wonder whether ghosts hang around recording studios too.

Happy Halloween!

Katy and the Gremlin

By Denny Dias

She is lovely yes she’s sly, but we were ordinary guys. I still have a 30ips safety (copy made from the master tape) of Katy Lied that Roger Nichols signed in blood! Yes, Katy was a bug. She got to all of us. I remember trying to master the record by myself because no one else wanted to work on it any more. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.

In 1975 we had great expectations and lots of enthusiasm. We had excellent musicians ready to perform in a state-of-the-art recording studio. We had our radical super hi-fi monitor system that consisted of electromagnetic flat panel Magneplanar speakers with three amplifiers and two subwoofers and active crossover tuned to the room with a real-time analyzer. They sounded great. The songs were great. The musicians were grateful. What could go wrong? Well, things happened. Some could be attributed to human error. Others could be blamed on mechanical failure. The rest will never be explained.

Anyone who watches old science fiction movies knows that strange things start to happen when you encounter a mysterious mist. I am thinking of the day that the steam generator went berserk. It was supposed to keep the air in the studio at a perfect 50 percent humidity, but on this day it felt more like Biscayne Bay. The air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The glass was foggy. Everything was damp, including the sound. The drums actually sounded like they were soaking wet even though they had been recorded on a normal day. It was almost funny except that we couldn’t work that day. We all went home, and the steam generator was soon fitted with a new control unit. The studio was given a clean bill of health, but I can’t help thinking that there was some unseen oxidation that caused the studio and even the tapes themselves to fester.

The actual recording went fairly well for the most part. There was, of course, the tambourine fiasco when Roger accidentally erased part of Victor Feldman’s track on “Rose Darling” (Roger had never done anything silly like that before or since), but the worse mistake didn’t become apparent until much later when it was time to transfer the record to vinyl.

Mixing was an absolute nightmare. Every song was mixed at least twice, and not because we were being fussy. In fact, we had mixed the entire record before we realized that there was a problem. We were using the new dbx noise reduction system, which was supposed to give us a better signal-to-noise ratio than Dolby, and for some reason the dbx units could no longer decode the mixes on tape. They sounded dull and lifeless, and no one could explain why. After all, all of the equipment had been properly aligned for each session. This was especially puzzling since each mix was played back immediately upon completion. How could the sound deteriorate so quickly? Even if there had been some awful mistake, it couldn’t have happened the same way twice and certainly not more than twice.

Several of us formed a contingent to storm dbx headquarters. We packed up the tapes and the dbx units, and Gary and Roger (and one or two others) boarded a plane to the East Coast. They confronted dbx and discovered that no one could fix it or explain it. The people at dbx built us a special pair of units with adjusting knobs that could alter the settings that are normally sealed inside at the factory. This too was a miserable failure. Could the tapes have been exposed to gamma rays? Why didn’t any one else using that studio have a problem? And why only the two-track mixes? The two-inch 24-track masters were still sounding good, so we decided to remix the entire record using Dolby.

I just dusted off my copy of the first mixes and gave them another listen. They still sound quite dull as expected, but I wanted to see if there was anything lost in the remix. Let me assure you that the new mixes are better in every case. I’ve heard some people describe the mixing process as a “thankless task,” but I think it’s more like a performance. It’s done with feeling, and depending on the mood of the day the result can vary quite a bit. Here are just a few differences that can be described with words:

• We were so impressed with the performance of Phil Woods on “Doctor Wu” that when it came time to fade out at the end of the song we couldn’t fade Phil. In the first mix, everything fades out except the saxophone!

• On “Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More,” there is no special effect on the lead vocal. For the remix Roger implemented a manual phasing technique that required him to stand near a tape machine and slowly turn a dial by hand.

• On “Bad Sneakers” there is a drum bash that happens at least a half dozen times during the guitar solo. In the first mix it sounds kind of ordinary, but in the final mix Roger found a compressor that he could set to make it sound really special.

Something happened during the remix of “Doctor Wu” that scared the hell out of us. I mentioned that we were impressed with the performance of Phil Woods, so you can imagine how we felt when his saxophone suddenly sounded dull and lifeless! This required immediate investigation. The 24-track master was encoded with dbx so there was big tension while Roger did some troubleshooting. When he cleaned the heads on the tape machine the sound cleared up for a while. Then it got dull again. It seems that the tape head developed an irregularity on track 17 and was scraping bits of oxide off the tape! We decided to keep working on the mix, but we would avoid playing any part of the tape containing that saxophone. When everything else was ready, Roger cleaned the head once more, and we recorded the mix on two-track tape.

Then it came time to make master disks. Records that are re-released with the indication “direct from the master tape” are generally disappointing because here is the last chance for the people who made the record to correct any mistakes made during mixing. A little adjusting here and there can really make a record sparkle. “Katy Lied” needed more than a little adjustment. I remember the first time we brought it to Allen Zentz’s mastering facility, it became obvious that there were things on the tape that couldn’t be transferred to vinyl. Roger said, “I’m getting out of here,” and left before we knew what the problem was. Apparently, his use of condenser microphones in close proximity to the cymbals required too much acceleration for the needle to track.

The mastering process now became a desperate attempt to produce a vinyl disk that could be played on an average phonograph. We moved to Kendun Recorders, where they had more processing equipment. The speakers there were foreign to us, and all we could do was look at each other and shrug. The engineer suggested some compression, we shrugged and when we brought the disk to a more familiar setting it was awful. As I said, the job was left to me because no one else wanted to work on it any more. I brought my own speakers to Kendun and, after a week of disappointing attempts, Walter stepped in to produce the final release version. It was still disappointing, but it sounded better on more sound systems, so it was the better choice.

At this point it might be a good idea to read the back cover of the original record. There are some comments about bandwidth and transient response that should have new meaning now. However, the music is still on the tape, and the tape is well preserved. The sound of the digital CD version on Citizen is better than any vinyl by far. It’s interesting that after all these years there is finally a released version that sounds good”.

I am going to end with a review from Pitchfork that was published in 2019. Without a weak moment and some deeper cuts that Dan fans should check out – including Rose Darling, Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More and Your Gold Teeth II -, this is an album that still sounds stunning. It turns fifty on 1st March so I wanted to shine a light on it:

“It captures Steely Dan in the thick of it all, still hungry and energized by their early burst of creativity but not taking anything for granted. Before Katy Lied, Steely Dan were a rock band, but this is the record where they became something else.

In 1974, following the shows to support their third album Pretzel Logic, Fagen and Becker decided that they didn’t enjoy touring, didn’t make much money from it, and would prefer to focus on making records. It was like the Beatles after Revolver, except that Steely Dan weren’t especially huge and their lives weren’t especially crazy. More than anything, the shift was an outgrowth of their studio obsession. With no upcoming gigs, they no longer needed a steady band, and Steely Dan became officially what it already kinda was—Becker and Fagen and whatever musicians they deemed good enough to complete their vision.

Katy Lied lives at the midpoint of Steely Dan’s first act. Behind them were three records that were incrementally more sophisticated and less rock-centered. After this one were three increasingly finicky and obsessive albums that would find them reaching for a kind of perfection, albums that found them chronicling the decadence around them from the inside. Where they once wrote about the delightfully sleazy underbelly of life in America from a remove, they started to write more about what they saw around them. Katy Lied is the fulcrum in this progression—it’s messier, less sure of itself, besotted neither with youthful confidence nor veteran polish.

After the departure of Jeff “Skunk” Baxter following the dissolution of their touring unit, guitars moved a half-step into the background. These are songs for piano, jazzier and lighter, and the keyboards are higher in the mix. Listening to it brings to mind nearly-empty cocktail bars after the people with something to live for have all gone home and cabaret shows in seedy theaters. Fagen sings with gusto but if it’s possible for sweat to make a sound, then you could say he sounds a little sweaty. Almost all the drums were played precocious by a 20-year-old genius named Jeff Porcaro, who would become one of the world’s most in-demand session players, and there are many distinctive background vocals from Michael McDonald, who would become one of yacht rock’s most in-demand session singers.

The songs Becker and Fagen came up with are the usual mix of the funny, cynical, and cryptic, but here and there are moments of what seems to be actual sweetness. The brilliance of their songwriting is that they always aimed for complexity and never allowed themselves to be pinned down. Everything was up for negotiation, even when the lyrics were studded with clear meaning. “Black Friday” is a brilliant depiction of chaos, describing what it would be like to make your way out of town and cash your checks when the apocalypse hits. Fagen makes evil sound appealing, suggesting that it might be the only sane response to living in an insane world, but listen with the other ear and you hear the satire and even a kind of yearning from someone who might actually wish for a better world. Meanwhile, Becker plays the best guitar solo on the album, capturing the ragged edge of the moment.

Steely Dan made songs about the destructive force of male vanity that came from two people you knew were speaking from personal experience. They never hold themselves above their characters, but they don’t let them off the hook, either. On “Bad Sneakers,” we see a man bopping around the street near Radio City Music Hall like he owns the place. We feel what he feels but also see how ridiculous he looks, while McDonald’s background vocals suggest grace in his awkwardness, celebrating the energy that powers him even though his actions are laughable. “Rose Darling” is the third track in a row to mention money specifically, but on a more casual listen it sounds something like a pure love song. And then two cuts later, the A-side closes with “Dr. Wu.”

Lodged in the middle of the album that came in the middle of the decade and in the middle of Steely Dan’s decade-long, seven-album run is one of their very best songs, a weary and funny and specific and mysterious ode to longing and loss. “Dr. Wu” gave the album its title (“Katie lies/You can see it in her eyes”) and crystalizes its essential mood. One moment it’s about drugs, the next it’s about a love triangle, and then you’re not sure what’s next or even what’s real, and weaving through it all is the saxophone solo from Phil Woods, connecting dots between musical worlds both corny and elegant, from Billy Joel to Billy Strayhorn.

The characters flailing clumsily throughout Katy Lied are paralyzed by desires they aren’t introspective enough to understand, so all they can do is keep stumbling forward. “I got this thing inside me,” Fagen sings in a bridge on the late album highlight “Any World (That I’m Welcome To)”, “I only know I must obey/This feeling I can't explain away.” Sometimes obeying those desires lead people to something ugly and inexcusable, as on “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies,” a song about a guy who is almost certainly grooming kids for abuse. It’s a Todd Solondz film rendered in sound, and Fagen only shows us the lead-up, forcing us to assemble the pieces in our heads as he hides the crime behind the album’s cheeriest arrangement.

This collision between word and sound—in which the precise moral takeaway and is obscured even as the music makes it go down easy—made the band hard to trust. “The words, while frequently not easy to get the definite drift of, are almost always intriguing and often witty,” John Mendelsohn wrote in a review of Katy Lied in Rolling Stone. But a few paragraphs later he concluded: “Steely Dan’s music continues to strike me essentially as exemplarily well-crafted and uncommonly intelligent schlock.”

It sounds harsh but Mendelsohn captured how a lot of people think about Steely Dan, then and now. This band was always about asking questions instead of giving answers, and Katy Lied came out in a particular moment of uncertainty and confusion. The fact that Becker and Fagen themselves couldn’t bear to hear their own creation only deepens the mystery. They wanted desperately to render their tragically amusing scenes just so, and the sonic purity they’d been chasing would soon be theirs. But here they give failure a kind of twisted majesty”.

The incredible Katy Lied is fifty on 1st March. Steely Dan’s fourth studio album might not be viewed as highly as Pretzel Logic (1974) or Aja (1977), though it does deserve more love and attention than it has received through the years. In 2023, Far Out Magazine placed it third (out of nine studio albums). They said it is a “grand celebration of everything Steely Dan, even if it’s not the band in true innovation mode”. In 2022, Classic Rock ranked it in seventh. In 2015, Stereogum ranked Katy Lied fifth. This is what they noted: “The ways in which they seethed were rangy, often drenched in wit and charisma and disguised as paeans to self-reinvention and/or self-negation: the speculator in "Black Friday" who sees the next big imminent calamity as a good excuse to fuck around on some lost-weekend tomfoolery; the farewell to the presence of a career dirtbag booze-and-guns aficionado in "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More"; the roamer of "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)" who, amidst his optimistic daydreaming, lets slip the despair of "the one I come from.” But now-what ambivalence isn't exactly a grand step up from cynicism, and the seediness is hard to shake, with the predatory con-job m.o.s of teen-luring skin-flick screeners ("Everyone's Gone to The Movies") and outsiders playing undercover for cryptic rewards -- drugs? women? live gigs? ("Throw Back The Little Ones") -- all calling the shots. As for fan-favorite "Doctor Wu," an existential gem about friendship in the face of relationship woes, Fagen eventually revealed that the song was really about a love triangle -- between a woman, a man, and heroin”. With a new version of Katy Lied out on vinyl, it is the perfect time to embrace and digest a Steely Dan work of brilliance. One that turns fifty on 1st March. I really hope that it endures and it is discussed…

THROUGH the generations.

FEATURE: Never Be Mine: Kate Bush and the Art of Not Listening to Other Artists

FEATURE:

 

 

Never Be Mine

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

Kate Bush and the Art of Not Listening to Other Artists

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THAT title may be misleading…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on set of the Dr. Hook T.V. special on 20th March, 1980, where she performed Babooshka

however, when it comes to Kate Bush, less is more. That is the case when creating her own sound. I guess one of the most-asked questions of any artist is what their influences are. I guess it is a little reductive and cliche, though the media always needs to label and compare artists. How an artist got to sound like they are. I suppose it is curiosity at worst. At best, we can paint a wider and deeper picture of an artist. No artist is unique in the sense they have no influences or are complete originals. Every artist takes some form of guidance or inspiration from others. Maybe their reason to get into music in the first place. Kate Bush’s motivation for getting into music was not fame or success. It was not driven by another artist. She was not watching T.V. or listening to the radio and thought that she should take up music to be like that artist. Sure, Bush did listen to artists like Elton John and David Bowie and saw something in them that she wanted for her. Something about the way they wrote and dressed that resonated in her. That opened up something that she could not get from people around her. As a hugely creative and curious person, Bush was drawn to these more unusual figures. Music would allow her to explore her love of dance. To adopt different looks and characters. To transform her early poetry and songs intro something bigger and real. This might suggest that Bush was listening to a lot of different music and then taking bits from each to use on her albums. This might have been true for the first few albums. Taking influence from artists like Peter Gabriel and The Beatles. I think that was less apparent from The Dreaming onwards. I could not envisage Bush listening to out-there or less commercial albums and being motivated to write The Dreaming. The same with Hounds of Love. One might hear shades of other albums in her work, though I think Bush was more influenced and connected to people and her own imagination. Not wanting to be compared to anyone else.

I know Kate Bush was asked about her influence in various interviews. She has shared her own loves and musical favourites. However, one of the most interesting takeaways connected to this subject is when Bush is asked about the kind of music she listens to when writing. There is this interesting switch between Bush’s creative process earlier in her career and later. I think a lot of what she listened to as a child and teenager went into The Kick Inside and Lionheart (both released in 1978). Maybe not obviously running through the songs, no doubt there was a case of Bush listening to some of her favourite artists and them providing inspiration for songs and ideas. If the influences were less obvious or less conventional for Never for Ever (1980), The Dreaming (1982) or Hounds of Love (1985), Bush was still listening to quite a bit of music and getting ideas from it. I think her creative process was different mind. I know the Trio Bulgarka featured on The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). Their music was in her mind when she was writing those albums. However, you can’t really hear too many obvious touchstones. Other artists’ impact making their way into Kate Bush’s albums. I do feel that she would have still listened to quite a bit of other music when creating those early/mid-career albums, to get the creative juices flowing. Things did sort of shift for her more recent album. I have heard interviews for Aerial (2005) and 50 Words for Snow (2011) when Kate Bush was asked what she was listening to. If she had bought any new albums. Though she did drop in Gorillaz and Elton John/Leon Russell – to show she was not out of touch and still kept up with current music -, this was more out of curiosity. These artists not necessarily influencing her.

IN THIS PHOTO: Björk in New York in October 2001

It is amazing how Bush is quite rare in the fact she does not listen to a lot of other artists’ music when writing her own. This gives the impression Bush does not buy albums and mainly leans on older artists. I suspect, if we saw her vinyl/C.D. collection today – I can’t see Bush having many Spotify playlists and downloading albums! -, there would be some contemporary stuff in there. It might seem like a minor point, yet I have always been interested by that question and response. Someone asking if Bush has bought any albums or listening to other albums. Her saying she hadn’t. I think about it a lot. What music Bush listens to and how often she allowed other artists’ sounds into her mind. I guess her songwriting is unique because she does not write whilst listening to other artists. I am intrigued whether any future Kate Bush albums might take a particular direction because she is connecting with modern artists. Even if a legion of artists – from Big Boi to St. Vincent to Björk – have spoken about Kate Bush and her impact on them, Bush has not really engaged or reached out to these artists in a creative sense. It is not strange for someone in their fifties or sixties to rely on older alums and not buy as much new music as they would when they were younger. I would like to think there is a Björk, Radiohead, Tricky or Big Boi album in her collection. I would love it if Björk’s Vespertine (2001) was there and had some impact on Aerial (2005) or 50 Words for Snow (2011). Some 1990s Radiohead nestling with other C.Ds. Maybe Bush taking bits of OK Computer (1997) or even a later work like Kid A (2000) and getting some inspiration from them. Bush does love Hip-Hop, so it would not be a shock of Tricky’s Maxinquaye (1995) or OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003) was in her C.D. rack. These albums might be there for pleasure or occasional indulge.

However, there are signs to suggest that Bush is working on an eleventh studio album. No doubt, when interviews are conducted around that, she will be asked if she listens to much new music or has bought any albums. I can imagine Bush is invested in physical music now more than she was in 2011 or even 2005. This being Kate Bush, one cannot imagine any new albums directing her sound. Could we imagine Bush buying The Last Dinner Party’s debut album (Prelude to Ecstasy)? Was she one of the many who bought Charli xcx’s BRAT? It is unlikely that Bush will collaborate with any of these artists, though I do think she is more open to new music. Will this change the way she writes and how she sounds? I would not imagine so. Bush will continue to write from her own mind and imagination and not really let anyone else’s work direct even. It was a thought that hooked me. There is a lot of great new music. Artists inspired by Kate Bush. I wonder if any of this will see Bush parting ways with some cash and checking it out. Perhaps her creative process is at its best and purest when she is not listening to other artists and new albums. This point warrants greater discussion. It is still humbling how many artists emerging credit Kate Bush. Say that she has inspired them. Bush is no doubt aware of this. She is still this innovator and true original. Perhaps not someone who digests a lot of albums. That said, I have a hunch that Bush at least keeps her ear to the ground in case something of interest emerges! Bush not buying albums or name-checking other artists is not her being dismissive or not recognising others. When you think of Kate Bush’s writing and work, it is very much her own. Bush is at her very best when her…

MIND clear and her voice is her own.

FEATURE: The Home in Which I Live: The Transformation from Cathy to Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

The Home in Which I Live

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

The Transformation from Cathy to Kate Bush

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WHEN writing about Kate Bush’s…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush standing outside of her family home at East Wickham Farm, Welling

early life and the first songs she composed, I have taken us inside the walls of East Wickham Farm. I have written a bit about her home recently as I have looked back at her debut album, The Kick Inside, and penned some features around that. Released on 17th February, 1978 when Kate Bush was nineteen, it has just turned forty-seven. It still sounds amazingly relevant, urgent and astonishing. Keeping on revealing layers and new gems. There is a certain amount of destiny and inevitability when we think about the crystallisation of Bush’s ambitions to be a songwriter. Her transformation and blossoming. Born Catherine Bush, that name was shortened to Cathy. Her brothers Paddy and John (Jay). I often wonder what it would be like having Catherine Bush or Cathy Bush recording music and releasing it under that name. We know her as Kate Bush. However, in the 1960s and early-1970s, she was still very much the girl she was born. Someone finding their way into music. Experimenting and honing her passion. The stability and influence of her home. Her mother Hannah and father Robert were married in Epsom during World War II. Born Hannah Daly, the farmer’s daughter from County Waterford, Ireland married her love in Surrey. They moved to the nearby Welling in Kent, where Catherine Bush and her family resided for many years. Catherine Bush was born in Bexleyheath on 30th July, 1958. Her father studied for a mathematics degree. As WWII broke out, his path changed and he eventually became a doctor. It is amazing to think about the struggles and warfare breaking out when Kate Bush’s parents married! Hannah was a nurse at Epsom Long Grove Hospital. That medical profession bond between her parents. I think this care for humans and compassion was evident at East Wickham Farm. A lot of the perspectives in Kate Bush writing enforced by her parents’ professions. Kate Bush considering going into psychology at one point when she was a girl (or maybe psychiatry).

I have recently published a feature looking inside Kate Bush’s childhood home and some of the music posters that would have been attached to her bedroom walls. I wanted to take a different approach here. I did not know that Dr. Robert Bush sold the publishing rights for one of his songs to buy an engagement ring for Hannah! It was after Kate Bush’s two brothers were born that the family located to Welling. Maybe needing somewhere bigger and more settled then where they started out, it was a perfect nest and haven for creativity for Kate Bush. Her earliest years surrounded by art and culture. Two parents who were working in medicine/hospitals and also loved music. Apart from her dad writing music and teaching her piano, her mother, a skilled folk dancer by all accounts, would also have given her daughter this impetus to explore dance and music. Welling was just far enough away from London but also close enough to intrigue and entice a girl who aspired to go beyond the walls of her family home. The seventeenth-century farmhouse the Bush family moved to offered sanctuary and inspiration. The outbuildings and a barn (as Rob Jovanovic writes in his Kate Bush biography, it was quite mouse-infested!). An outdoor swimming pool that replaced a pond. The beautiful and spacious garden would have given Catherine/Cathy/Kate Bush this combination of peace and influence. Able to relax but also find wonder in the flowers and shrubbery around her. I look at some of the photos from the Cathy book (her brother John’s photos of his sister from her earliest years) and can imagine what it was like being there! The kitchen was the heart of the home. Family and friends sat around the table debating for hours. When Catherine was born, she was protected by her parents, older brothers and her paternal grandfather (who resided there until the 1960s).

Even if Bush was raised in a Catholic household and went to a Catholic school, it did not really make much of an impact on her. The suffering rife. The fact that she was someone born of love and was attracted to kindness. A religion where a lot of violent imagery is taught, that would not have attracted her at all. Bush was in this comforting bosom. Music was all around her. No doubt moved and intrigued by her mother’s dancing and connection to Ireland, this exposure to various cultures and artforms directly influenced Bush’s music. I have talked about this before, but one of the most striking images from those early years is Bush’s dad playing piano and teaching his daughter. Teaching her how to play in C, she would spend a lot of times in the barn at East Wickham Farm playing the harmonium. An instrument that was subject to the interest of mice and was probably not at its best, Bush was studious and attentive. Dedicating many hours to playing. Bush mastered the basics of a keyboard and would be heard belting out hymns. She loved their melodies and harmonies. She figured that a chord was made up of three or more notes and by changing one of these notes, you could create a whole new chord. Bush probably wrote her first song aged eleven. Her father was always willing to listen to his daughter play. His playing gave her enthusiasm and something to aspire to. She would soon overtake her dad’s playing ability. Bush was so prolific and was compelled to write so many songs. Not just her mother and father providing this motivation. Her brothers’ interest in music and poetry was important to their sister. Not just traditional Folk or Rock of the day. Some more esoteric and unusual sounds undoubtably can account for the original nature of Bush’s music. How she started out writing in such a different way to her peers due to the music she was introduced to by her brothers. I do love that Bush’s parents listened to her sing and hear her compositions. Even if they thought that their daughter’s voice was terrible to start with, they sent Cathy for some vocal training and she soon strengthened her vocals and improved her range. Her parents were open and honest, though they were also encouraging. I don’t know how many parents of the 1960s would support their child’s dreams of going into music. Bands like The Beatles breaking through when Cathy was very small. It would have seemed like another world. A very scary one too!

 PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

In future features, I am going to go and focus on Kate Bush’s career in the 1980s and 1990s as I have focused a lot on her earliest work. I have also spent some time in 2005. I wanted to take another trip back to East Wickham Farm. One of my favourite images connected to Kate Bush is imagining all the sights and sounds through East Wickham Farm. I might not visit this subject for a while. Building from a feature I published last year, I wanted to once more be within the walls and in the grounds of East Wickham Farm. More than that, I was interested to talk about Kate Bush’s parents and brothers. The love and support that was there in the family home. The way they encouraged this girl who clearly had desires to turn her fascination around music into a career. There is no telling how important those early years were. Not only in driving Kate Bush to music. The mix of the orthodox and unorthodox sounds. If she only listened to the popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, would she have written and sung in a different way? Would she have lasted as long and been as revered? Perhaps not. It was the eclectic nature of the culture she grew up around that helped shape her into this singular artist. Someone whose voice, both literal and lyrics, created different worlds and emotions. So much more interesting and original compared to her peers. The fact her parents worked in the medical profession and they showed so much love and faith. That can be heard in her lyrics. The positive nature. The fascination with people but the affection and trust she has in them. A gentle but strong spirit. It is always so warm and welcoming returning to East Wickham Farm. I will mention it in a couple of features coming up, though this is one of the last for a while focused almost entirely there. Though I am sure I will do another deep and detailed feature about East Wickham Farm…

AT some point next year.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential February Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: NAO/PHOTO CREDIT: Lillie Eiger

Essential February Releases

_________

I normally do this a bit earlier…

IN THIS PHOTO: Sam Fender

and look ahead to the following month when it comes to spotlighting albums. However, as we are in February, I want to look at the great albums upcoming. We do not have to wait long. On 7th February, there are some wonderful albums that you will want to get. I am going to select some choice albums. However, you can see a fuller list here. There are three from 7th February that you will want to add to your collection. The first album to investigate is Biig Piig’s 11:11. Go and pre-order this album from an incredible artist. Before moving on, here is an interview from Ticketmaster with Biig Piig. She talks about her incredible upcoming album:

“Since bursting onto the scene with her hypnotic, sensual mixture of alt-pop, R&B and dance, tracks like 2019’s ‘Sunny’ and 2020’s ‘Feels Right’ helped ensure her breakthrough translated into sustained success. With infectious basslines to her name alongside her calming, heaven-sent vocals – which are sung in both English and Spanish – she’s crafted a distinct sound, developed over the course of various EPs and mixtapes.

Her recent project was 2023’s Bubblegum, which weaved between hip-hop and liquid drum ‘n’ bass to capture the emotions of her move to LA. Now, eight years on from her first single, Smyth’s debut album has finally arrived, converging on her long-standing affection for dance music – which remains a constant in amongst the turbulence of young adulthood.

We spoke to Smyth about the pace of being an artist in 2025, the road to 11:11 and why she now feels at home in London, after plenty of globetrotting.

Why did the time 11:11 resonate with you as the title of your debut album?

Whenever I catch it on my phone, it’s the only time that I really stop and take a minute to be really present, and reflect on things that I wish were different. It’s also just a really peaceful moment. I was stuck for an album title for so long… I just thought about it one day, and the time came up [on my phone]. Actually, the album is about reflection. It’s about points in the last two years, looking back on relationships with myself, family, friends and my partner. 11:11 represents the moment – looking back through all of that.

Do you find yourself catching it in the morning or the evening?

Morning – always morning! By the evening, I’m not looking at my phone.

When did you realise you were regularly noticing that time, and using it to reflect?

Honestly, it’s been like that for years. It’s something that I’ve been doing since teenhood. Not every day, but when it does happen, I love it. It feels like a moment of getting in touch.

Life can seem to move so fast in 2025 – especially for young creatives. Is it rather telling that you can only take one minute to reflect and be present?

I hadn’t really looked at it like that, but it’s very true. The way the world moves right now is so fast, and it’s quite demanding. There’s a lot of anxious feelings in stopping, because you feel like if you stop, you’ll implode. We’re so onto ‘the next thing’ that it keeps us out of our heads a little bit… sometimes it becomes default to keep going. It’s a bit of a generational thing, as well.

Do you thrive, creatively, in the chaos?

100 per cent. I’ve always been like that since growing up. That’s not to say that I don’t want more quiet moments. As I’m understanding more about the healing process of different things – and also maturing –  you need to be content with just being present, and not running to the next thing all the time.

Did that approach underpin how 11:11 came together?

It was definitely a bit untethered. I started writing it a couple of years ago, and I didn’t know I was writing it at the time. I was just writing music, found a track, and I was like, ‘I want to start making a record.’ There was a lot of stopping and starting. For the best part of a year, I was still confused as to what I was making. You keep writing, and then it starts to make sense… it’s almost like one day, you stop, and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s done.’

I never thought I would get to a point where I’m content with putting out an album, because I’m so indecisive sometimes. Maybe it’s not even that – I’ve [previously] only wanted to say the story in four or five tracks. This one, I wanted to get a bit deeper with.

Sonically, you’ve already explored a wide range of sound palettes –  what were you going for on 11:11?

It shifted and changed. When I wrote ‘4AM’, I knew that was going to be the opening track from the get-go… I would love to start the album with that first line – “You should have hit me with the bad news first” – and then reflect through how you got there. After that track, I realised I [wanted] to make a hard-hitting club record, but there’s also a softer side that I also want to display. ‘One Way Ticket’, an acoustic track, sitting alongside [the other tracks] was important, also because there’s just different levels of space. I love creating space in songs”.

The next album I want to get to is Heartworms’ Glutton For Punishment. One of the most original and captivating young artists around, I would recommend everyone pre-order the album, as it is going to sit alongside the best of the year. There is not a lot of information available about the album. Instead, I am going to bring in a recent interview from NME. We get a bit of background around the South London artist and her new album:

“Even if it isn’t immediately clear what Heartworms sings about, an undeniable darkness seeps into every song. “I feel comfortable in it,” she admits. “I mean, happiness is not even a real emotion to me. There’s joy in a moment, or content. Most of the time, I’m not content – I’m in a dark place and trying to figure things out. That’s just the way I am, and I’m always going to be this way.”

Sometimes, you don’t know whether to be charmed or concerned by Heartworms’ matter-of-fact nature. We arrive at the colossal Avro Lancaster R5868, the steely crown jewel of Hangar Five. She points out its “tattoos”, or the small yellow bombs painted on its side denoting every mission it’s embarked on. The average Avro Lancaster might have been deployed 21 times; tot up the “tattoos” on this one, and you’ll get 137.

“I once met a guy who had a family tie to this,” Orme says casually. “He was crying because he felt the emotions connected to it. It’s such a grand connection because it’s so big. He just came up to me and was like, ‘Can you take a photo?’ with tears streaming… it was such a strange situation.”

That discomfort arises again when we talk about her fascination with military history. It permeates many of the songs on ‘Glutton For Punishment’; lead single ‘Warplane’ documents the tragic death of Spitfire pilot William Gibson Gordon at just 20. A chugging, fizzing bass and grand, operatic chorus see the singer proclaim: “Oh, look up theeeere / We’ll be freeeee!” Meanwhile, follow-up single ‘Extraordinary Wings’ is a sleek, simmering and very definitive anti-war statement: “I don’t wish murder, ‘cause I got no right.” Heartworms’ military obsession can make one feel queasy – but evidently, there’s something deeper in it for her.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jamie Waters for NME

Standing in a hangar filled with bombers, NME notes that there’s a lot of destruction in this room. Heartworms concurs, running through a spiel she’s seemingly prepared beforehand: the planes are machines built by humans and only turned into weapons by humans. What she’s appreciating are simply innocent contraptions, art detached from their artists.

But then she says something more interesting. “It’s easy to make [war] a reality when you’re around these things because you’re not hiding from it,” she says plainly. “You become more aware of it every day.”

“I want people to understand that it’s fine to just be honest about how you feel”

Perhaps Heartworms’ unflinching attitude to conflict can also be explained by her childhood. While ‘Glutton For Punishment’ gives an overview of the general human lust for suffering, the record partially alludes to her difficult relationship with her mother.

She unintentionally kick-started Heartworms’ career by grounding the then-14-year-old for the grave offence of having a boyfriend. Stuck at home for her sins, Orme picked up the guitar, and a beautiful new relationship was born. But the “constant conflicts” forced her to escape, where she bounced between foster homes, couches and the YMCA. As the track ‘Smuggler’s Adventure’ makes clear, Heartworms always had to return to her family’s house”.

The penultimate album from 7th February that you will want to get is Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory’s eponymous album. A new group fronted by an established and legendary artist, this will be a slightly new direction. I would urge people to pre-order the incredible Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory. This is going to be an album already getting a lot of buzz and love. You will want to add this to your collection for sure:

“From the off, Sharon Van Etten and The Attachment Theory is sonically different from Van Etten’s previous work. Writing and recording in total collaboration with her band for the first time, Van Etten finds the freedom that comes by letting go. The result of that liberation is an exhilarating new dimension of sound and songwriting. The themes are timeless, classic Sharon – life and living, love and being loved – but the sounds are new, wholly realized and sharp as glass. Reflecting on this new artistic frame of mind, Van Etten muses,

“Sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's scary, sometimes you feel stuck. It's like every day feels a little different – just being at peace with whatever you're feeling and whoever you are and how you relate to people in that moment. If I can just keep a sense of openness while knowing that my feelings change every day, that is all I can do right now. That and try to be the best person I can be while letting other people be who they are and not taking it personally and just being. I'm not there, but I'm trying to be there every day.”

Sharon Van Etten and The Attachment Theory is a quantum leap in that direction - Lol Tolhurst”.

I will move to 14th February soon. Go and pre-order the phenomenal Cowards from Squid. One of the country’s best bands, their latest album is really intriguing. Even if you have not heard of the band, you will want to check it out. I am fairly new to their brilliance but can recommend them highly. A wonderful group that may be about to release their strongest work yet:

“Squid’s new album Cowards is about evil. Nine stories whose protagonists reckon with cults, charisma and apathy. Real and imagined characters wading into the dark ocean between right and wrong.

Cowards is Squid’s most courageous album: simultaneously growing in scope and returning to basics. The band recorded Cowards at Church Studios in Crouch End with Mercury prize winning producers Marta Salogni and Grace Banks. On additional production is longtime shifu and collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums. The record was mixed in Seattle by John McEntire, before being compressed by the rich analogue chain of Heba Kadry’s mastering in Brooklyn, New York.

Squid have come a long way since forming in 2016 as an instrumental jazz band for a monthly night in Brighton. Their debut album Bright Green Field (2021) arrived as the world was starting to open up after the pandemic and they broke into the top 5 in the UK chart. In 2023 they released their sophomore album, the brooding O Monolith, which took the band all over the world and broke new ground that hardly seemed possible years prior”.

There are two albums from 14th February that I want to mention. First, a bit of a shift. Doves’ Constellations for the Lonely initially was announced for 14th February but has been moved back to 28th February. Go and pre-order the album. I will bring in an interview now from The Guardian from December. This is a big and very personal album from Doves. Fans and new discoverers of their music alike will want to purchaser it. Constellations for the Lonely sounds like it is going to be amazing:

“Just over four years ago, Doves were on the crest of a wave. Their first album in more than a decade – The Universal Want – had been rapturously received, helping them notch up their third UK No 1. All set to perform it live, the tour was suddenly cancelled due to frontman Jimi Goodwin’s mental health – he has since said he is in recovery from substance abuse.

The cancellation “was heartbreaking for us because this is all we’ve ever wanted to do,” explains guitarist Jez Williams, who formed Doves with drummer brother Andy and schoolfriend Goodwin in Wilmslow, Cheshire in 1998. Sat alongside him in a Manchester eaterie, Andy explains: “You can get away with that once, but if we had to pull a tour again it would be curtains.” Thus, in late 2023, with a new album on the way, and Goodwin telling them he still wasn’t up to touring, they made the momentous decision to go on the road without him.

“With Jimi’s blessing,” insists Jez. Fans, too, have been overwhelmingly supportive. In November, with the brothers sharing vocals, a rejigged Doves performed in Hanley, Birkenhead and Hebden Bridge to rapturous receptions. Some fans even flew in from the US and audiences applauded the supportive onstage mentions of the absent frontman. “It felt like Jimi was there in spirit,” says Andy. “He isn’t here at the moment, but is very much a part of us.”

The singer is very much a presence on Constellations for the Lonely, the forthcoming album which ranks with their best work despite – perhaps even because of – the difficult circumstances of its creation. Recording had to take place when Goodwin was well and up for working. The brothers reveal that the singer’s vocal to first single Renegade was laid down as a guide, and not intended for the finished record, but it’s beautifully melancholy. “It’s not a perfect vocal,” admits Andy, “but there’s real emotion. Jimi brings authenticity.”

The trio have been close since school, and are so accustomed to setbacks that Jez jokes about a “curse of Doves”. After they emerged as dance act Sub Sub – reaching No 3 in 1993 with Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) – their studio burned down. “But that gave us the opportunity to start afresh,” he explains. “We’d played instruments as kids and picked them up again. We’d seen how the Beasties Boys transformed themselves from brat-rap and thought: if they can do that, why don’t we have a go?”

Their 2000 debut Lost Souls and follow-up The Last Broadcast in 2002 were both Mercury-nominated, the latter and 2005’s Some Cities reaching No 1. “We’d grown up watching Top of the Pops and suddenly we were on it,” says JezThey toured the US with the Strokes as their support band. “It was party time on the bus like it was someone’s birthday every night. You’ve never done it before, so you get carried away.” Gradually, though, the lifestyle and heavy touring took a toll. “Two day drives and sleeping in a bed moving at 70mph are not natural environments for a human being,” considers Jez. His brother adds: “Throw in drink and drugs and something’s bound to go wrong, isn’t it?”.

The first album from 14th February I want to spotlight is Richard Dawson’s End of the Middle. A truly brilliant songwriter who many people might not know. I hope that people buy his album. You can pre-order it now. Do make sure that you give this album some love. From what we have heard from it so far, it is shaping up to be one of this year’s best albums:

“The title of Richard Dawson's new album End of the Middle is a suitably slippery contradiction, one that invites multiple interpretations: Middle-aging? Middle-class? The middle-point of Dawson's career? The centre of a record? Centrism in general? Polarisation? The possibility of having a balanced discussion about anything? Stuck in the middle with you? Middle England? Middling songwriting?

End of the Middle is a wonkily beautiful peer into the workings of the family unit, perhaps several generations of the same family: "I wanted this record to be small-scale and very domestic", Dawson explains, "to be stripped back, stark and naked, and let the lyrics and melodies speak for themselves and for the people in the songs". By paring things right back what is revealed is a suite of remarkably poised, oddly elegant, beautiful music”.

Prior to moving on to albums out on 21st February, I want to highlight The Velveteers’ A Million Knives. This is a band I am recently switched onto. I am really interested to hear what they deliver on their upcoming album. If you want to pre-order it, then you can do so here:

“The Velveteers bring a visceral energy to their explosive sophomore album, A Million Knives.

The album is a blistering rock anthem infused with melodic indie songwriting. With Grammy Award-winning producer Dan Auerbach at the helm, the Boulder, CO trio encapsulates the raw, forceful, and profoundly heavy energy of their live performances and laser-focuses a spotlight on tightly crafted songs as they carve out their own distinctive niche.

Driving The Velveteers is the commanding presence of frontwoman Demi Demitro, a no-bullshit, five-foot-something spitfire with thunderous guitar riffs and soaring vocals, backed by the incendiary duo of Baby Pottersmith and Johnny Fig on drums. The band's signature dual drum setup creates a thunderous foundation that propels their gritty, dynamic garage rock sound. On A Million Knives, this setup melds seamlessly with a more modern indie rock influence-the attitude of Wolf Alice, the colossal sound of Queens of the Stone Age, and the singular lyrical voice of Hole.

The Velveteers have built a dedicated following through relentless touring and electrifying performances, sharing stages with renowned acts such as Smashing Pumpkins, The Black Keys, Greta Van Fleet, Guns N' Roses, and Des Rocs. With A Million Knives, The Velveteers offer a compelling testament to their rising stardom, a rock 'n' roll album as beautiful as it is terrifying”.

An album that you will not want to miss out on, IDER prepare to release Late to the World on 21st February. You can pre-order the album here. A duo I have been a fan of for a few years now, I am really excited to hear their new album. Before moving along, I want to drop in this article from CLASH that provides us some useful insight and information about an album that is going to make a big impact:

“IDER will release new album ‘Late To The World’ on February 21st.

The alt-pop duo continually twist and turn, with each album representing its own world. Recent sessions with Dann Hume have been exceptionally productive, with IDER commenting that the result album is one they have “always wanted to make.”

Out on February 21st, new album ‘Late To The World’ finds IDER zeroing in on their core values. Megan Markwick explains…

“We had high ambitions for the sound of this record. We talked a lot early on about how we wanted the production to be super intentional. Sometimes when you’re unsure, you shove everything in – you fill it up with every synth sound, every beat, every layer. But actually what feels more mature for us right now, and what mirrors the [album’s] messages, is stripping things back to the essentials. Everything has its purpose.”

The incoming album is available to pre-order, and features previous singles ‘Unlearn’, ‘Girl’, and ‘You Don’t Know How To Drive”.

The next album I want to spotlight is the fourth from NAO. Jupiter is one you will want to pre-order. There is a lot to recommend about this artist and album. She is a tremendous talent. I am going to bring in this interview from The Guardian where NAO talks about Jupiter and living with ME:

“Nao is trying to articulate how it feels to be on the verge of releasing a new album. When this thing that’s been yours and yours alone has to be launched into the world. “It feels really similar to being pregnant,” the 37-year-old mum of two decides. Her answer feels apt; we’re currently sitting in an east London cinema cafe hemmed in by buggies while a mum-and-baby screening of erotic thriller Babygirl plays next door. “It’s really exciting in the beginning, then it gets a bit tedious,” she continues. “And you’re stuck in the process because you need to finish it. Get it out.” Sometimes, she says, it can also be just as painful.

Not that you’d know it from listening to this month’s fourth album, Jupiter, a typically featherlight concoction of pillow-soft soul, experimental R&B and airy acoustic ruminations all anchored by her angelic, otherworldly voice. It also carries just a dash of the electronic-leaning “wonky funk” that saw Nao (born Neo Joshua) hailed as one to watch when she emerged in 2015. But Jupiter’s overarching sense of contentment has been hard won after years spent battling an illness that prevented her from touring.

Jupiter is a sequel of sorts to 2018’s Grammy and Mercury prize-nominated second album Saturn, an emotionally tumultuous opus named after the astrological concept of Saturn return, a sort of crossroads a person reaches roughly every 27 to 29 years, before entering the next stage of their life. While that album dealt with the ups and downs of her 20s, 2021’s And Then Life Was Beautiful, released into post-pandemic’s upside-down world, searched desperately for joy. Shortly before it came out, Nao revealed she’d been diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), a disabling condition that left her profoundly fatigued and darkened by what she calls a low-grade depression. “You can only do a small percentage of what you were capable of,” she says, nursing a coffee, a rare treat while following a low-carb diet that helps her recovery (she will return to touring later this year). “For example, walking to meet you here, I’d probably have to take a taxi home. And then I’d be in bed for the rest of the day.”

Jupiter’s title was very specifically chosen because it’s “the planet of joy”, she says. “It’s a planet of good fortune and good luck. And I really wanted to bring that into my life.” She singles out the balm-like Happy People, which glides around a sun-kissed Afrobeat lilt, as a key song. “It came from realising who was important to me in my life,” she says. “I think when you’re in your 20s you’re trying to make as many friends as possible. Then you get into your 30s, you have big transitions in life, and actually the fewer people the better.”

Her candour is refreshing. When I say that she is underrated and that collaborations with the likes of Stormzy, Mura Masa, Chic, Lianne La Havas, Disclosure and Ezra Collective should have made her a household name, she doesn’t see it as a compliment. “It’s like saying you’re good enough to succeed but you haven’t quite yet. I get a lot of comments saying I’m underrated, which is fine, but I’ve had to work a lot on what my idea of success is.” While she’d love to “stream in the billions”, she’s also happy with where she’s at. “I just have to become present and think actually you’re doing all right. You’re all the things you wanted to be; you’re, I hope, still credible; you make the music that you want; you still sell out your tours, but also you’re a mum and you get to pick up your kids from school and drop them off.”

She thinks doing things at her own pace – she didn’t sign a record deal until she was 27 – has helped with her outlook. Born in Nottingham and raised mainly in London, Nao saw her early music career take place behind the scenes. At 18 her voice won her a place at London’s Guildhall School , but she struggled to believe in herself. “I’m not really sure how I got in,,” she says. She compares it to the 2014 film Whiplash, in which a jazz drummer is pushed to the brink by his instructor. “I was working at 5am in the morning to basically not be embarrassed and not be humiliated by the teachers. That definitely stayed with me for a long time.” She felt she had to “work and overwork and overwork to be on top of it”.

Before moving onto three albums from 28th February, there are two more from 21st that I want to discuss. The next is Sam Fender’s People Watching. You can pre-order it here. There is precious little written about this album, so I have to go back last year when the album was announced. This article from CLASH tells us a little bit at least:

“Sam Fender will release his third studio album ‘People Watching’ on February 21st.

The North East songwriter goes back out on the road this winter, completing an instantly sold out arena tour in December. Set to play a no doubt emotional hometown show in Newcastle, highlights include London’s huge the O2 Arena.

2019 album ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ took Sam Fender to the next level, backed by some titanic live shows. Work on his third LP has been progressing behind the scenes, with sessions spread across two years alongside bandmates Dean Thompson and Joe Atkinson.

The musicians worked firstly in London in 2023 with producer Markus Dravs, and then earlier this year in Los Angeles with The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel – Sam is a long-time fan of his work”.

The final album from 21st February you will want to own is The Murder Capital’s Blindness. Another tremendous album from a band that are going from strength to strength, you can pre-order Blindness here. They are a force to be reckoned with. One of the very best bands in this country right now:

“Blindness is the vividly realised, clear-sightedly ambitious new album from Irish band The Murder Capital. The sound of a band firing on all cylinders that bristles with energy yet intimate and simultaneously expansive. Eleven songs that don’t hang about in terms of grabbing the listener.

There’s a wider, richer perspective animating the Murder Capital’s new set of songs, brought on from the diverse insights the five members were bringing to the creative process, differing worldviews arising from their literal new positions in the world. Drummer Diarmuid Brennan was living in Berlin, bass player Gabriel “g” Paschal Blake was in Letterkenny, guitarist Cathal “pump“ Roper was in Donegal, and guitarist Damien “irv” Tuit and Mcgovern were in London. The album prioritizes urgency, energy, freshness – all baked into the songs from their earliest incarnations, recorded in la with the help of grammy-winning producer John Congleton”.

One of the biggest albums of this year arrives on 28th February. BANKS’ Off with Her Head is one you will want to pre-order. If you do not know about BANKS or have not listened to her music then I would suggest you to. She is a phenomenal artist. Off with Her Head is one you will not want to miss out on:

“California-bred singer-songwriter, Jillian Rose Banks, aka Banks, crafts moody, alternative pop with shades of contemporary R&B. Emerging in the early 2010s with a handful of downtempo, alt-R&B tracks, Banks created a signature sound that helped build a cross-genre audience. Her critically acclaimed and gold-certified debut album, Goddess, featured songs like “Before I Ever Met You,” “Warm Water,” and “Fall Over,” as well as collaborations with producers Justin Parker, Shlomo, and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. The album peaked just outside the Top Ten on the Billboard 200. In 2016, Banks released her highly anticipated sophomore album, The Altar, which featured singles “Fuck with Myself,” “Gemini Feeed,” and “Mind Games,” and peaked at number 17 on the Billboard 200.

Banks returned in July 2019 with her third studio album, III, which featured her synth-heavy single “Gimme.” Additional contributors 2 included Francis and the Lights on “Look What You’re Doing To Me” and producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Rihanna) on “Hawaiian Mazes.” She released a short EP entitled Live and Stripped in 2020, followed by her 2022 album Serpentina, which Banks recorded amid the pandemic during months of isolation and is tied to themes of shedding old skin and embracing the new. Banks’s artistry stands out through the rawness and vulnerability that shines earnestly through her music. With so much success under her belt already, Banks is looking forward to an exciting future ahead”.

The penultimate album that you will want to pre-order is Everything Is Recorded’s Temporary. You can pre-order it here. I am really interested to see what the album delivers. Another artist I am quite new to, I am going to listen closely. The list of collaborators on Temporary is really impressive and eclectic:

“The third studio album from Everything Is Recorded, the collaborative music project centred around producer Richard Russell.

Temporary features an incredible roll call of collaborators including Sampha, Bill Callahan, Noah Cyrus, Florence Welch, Maddy Prior, Berwyn, Alabaster Deplume, Jah Wobble, Yazz Ahmed, Laura Groves, Kamasi Washington, Rickey Washington, Roses Gabor, Jack Peňate, Samantha Morton, Clari Freeman-Taylor and Nourished By Time. Created over four years from 2020 to 2024, Temporary was recorded at Russell’s own west London Copper House studio, alongside sessions in Tottenham, Cumbria, Dorset, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and is set to build on previous acclaimed releases including 2018’s eponymous, Mercury Prize-nominated debut album.

On Temporary, Russell reboots his musical DNA: while his music had previously been about rhythm, words and melody in that order, on Temporary he swaps rhythm and melody, the rhythm taking up less space and the melody coming to the fore. Musically some songs are inspired by the sonic thought experiment “what if folk music had ‘gone digital’ in the 80s, just as reggae had?”, while spiritually and lyrically the themes encompass grief and loss. The results – elevated by an intriguing and diverse set of collaborators who sound like the best and freshest versions of themselves – are the most luminous and relaxed compositions of Russell’s career. Every song sounds washed in sunshine and graced by tenderness. More fragile and quieter than previous Everything Is Recorded output, it might be one of the gentlest records ever made about death. In Russell’s own words “making the album was joyous, a way of hallowing life”.

The final February album you will want to pre-order is Sports Team’s Boys These Days. In a month that offers some really strong albums, Sports Team are going to give us an album that will get a lot of critical praise. You can pre-order it here:

“Hand-break off, Sports Team are back. With musical pedals to the metal and saxophones at full throttle, the Mercury-nominated six-piece bring us their third studio album, Boys These Days. After their first two, Top 3 records – the Mercury Prize-nominated Deep Down Happy (2020) and Gulp! (2022).

Think Prefab Sprout meets Roxy Music the band ally a seer-like lyrical insight with their most dynamic musical performances to date, Sports Team are piercing the content abyss. A “carousel of 21st-century sins”, this witty and insightful examination of modern life is both a critique and a celebration of its times. Yes, ‘Boys These Days’ takes aim at everything from advertising hype to relationship dysfunction, stationed at the point where the digital tide crashes onto IRL shores, but their perspective is fuelled by immersion in that landscape as Sports Team are scrolling along with the rest of us.

Though recorded in Bergen, the birthplace of black metal, the sessions at the start of 2024 saw Sports Team create their brightest and most beguiling record yet”.

This is a selection of albums out this month that are going to be worth your time and money. Such a packed and exciting one for new music, I hope my recommendations have been useful. The artists and albums listed above prove that February is…

A really strong month.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A Self Esteem Mixtape

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Rosaline Shahnavaz/The Guardian

A Self Esteem Mixtape

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AHEAD of the release…

of her anticipated third studio album, I wanted to put together a Self Esteem mixtape. The moniker of Rebecca Lucy Taylor, A Complicated Woman arrives on 25th April. There is a pre-sale that I would advise people to check out. Self Esteem has a run at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London from 16th-19th April. On Wednesday at 10 a.m., you can get the chance to be a part of a phenomenal experience. Released in October 2021, Prioritise Pleasure was the second album from Self Esteem. Hugely acclaimed and nominated for the Mercury Prize, I think A Complicated Woman will be among the most acclaimed albums of this year. I want to quote from a recent interview with Self Esteem from The Guardian:

“That is no surprise. Like Taylor, the album was funny, frank and highly literate, in both art and pop. Its choreographed live performances nodded to Blond Ambition-era Madonna, while its diary-esque spoken-word lead single I Do This All the Time combined aphorisms about life as a British millennial woman with things that men have said to and about Taylor. “All you need to do, darling, is fit in that little dress of yours / If you weren’t doing this you’d be working in McDonald’s,” runs one vivid couplet. A fan got the line “You’re a good, sturdy girl” tattooed on their arm. Its overall mood was one of defiance, and shortly after its release, in April 2021, it became established as a modern classic. As a result of that song, she says, “everything I ever wanted was offered to me”.

I just worked nonstop; didn’t listen to anyone telling me to have a day off. But obviously, I was burned out

I tell her I feel as if I’m reading her diary when listening to her music, but is that fair? “Ummm,” she replies, then answers firmly. “Yeah. It is.” Her first album, 2019’s Compliments, Please, was the truth, “but I did dress it up in different narratives in order to say it, because I was too scared. Prioritise Pleasure was the first time I didn’t do that. Honestly, I can’t say boo to a goose, but I will say it in a song, and I’ll keep it vague enough so no one can send me a nasty text message. I want them to have that step and go: ‘Oh, is it art?’ But it’s not. It’s me.”

The success of Prioritise Pleasure panicked Taylor into saying yes to everything she was asked to do. “So I just worked nonstop; didn’t listen to anyone telling me to have a day off. And I hate, like, ‘burnout’,” she says, cringing. “But obviously, I was burned out. I really was. I felt nothing. It was horrible.” She had been diagnosed with depression in 2013, and started therapy and medication then, but at the end of Prioritise Pleasure, she went to see a psychiatrist again. “I didn’t feel all right, and I still don’t know what I feel like, really. I’m really low, a lot.” A chronic overthinker, she has been trying to work out why, now she has achieved everything she wanted to achieve, she’s still struggling. “Is that a natural human reaction? Like, be careful what you wish for? Everyone being like, ‘Well, what are you whingeing about, you’ve got everything you’ve banged on about wanting, your whole life?’ But I couldn’t explain it. I just felt nothing. And I flatlined. With the internet, you can diagnose yourself with anything. And now it’s like, burnout, or, you know, dopamine addiction. I probably have all these things, but it doesn’t really help me,” she says. “What do I do now, then?”

The answer is A Complicated Woman, the third Self Esteem album, due at the end of April. It is her best yet. The pop bombast and sloganeering of its predecessors has evolved into a more complex, but no less immediate, beast. It ranges from more spoken word (I Do and I Don’t Care, a natural successor to I Do This All the Time) to anthems about getting your shit together (Focus Is Powerful) and working out how she feels about drinking (The Curse, which builds to a rousing choral climax of: “I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t fucking work”, and sounds like an X Factor winner’s Christmas single from an alternate universe).

She says the album was written “through gritted teeth”, and that in an ideal world, she’d have had two years to think about it. Why not wait? “For money, and time, and the big thing that I’m, sort of, not 25.” She is 38 now, and both strident and self-conscious about it. Not for the first time today, it’s obvious why she has given the album that title. “Also, no one actually said this to me, but I was like, I need a nose job, and I need to do bleepy-bloopy pop girlie. I thought, the only way to capitalise on this is to come back as a hot girlie pop star.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Rosaline Shahnavaz/The Guardian

Taylor doesn’t need me to point out the irony. The project is called Self Esteem. Prioritise Pleasure’s most streamed song, Fucking Wizardry, calls an ex lucky to have got anywhere near her in the first place. She performed it with an expert dance routine on the Graham Norton Show and then explained to Kate Hudson what a Boots Advantage card is. She talked to magazines and podcasts about accepting and celebrating her body, recreating the 1999 Rolling Stone cover of Britney Spears for the NME. Her lyrics have always been more nuanced, but her image was that of an empowered woman, riding high on a wave of self-acceptance. That heightened version of Self Esteem was part Esther Perel, part Barbara Kruger collage, part barmaid at the Rovers Return. You wouldn’t necessarily expect her to have come away from the biggest success of her career deciding to get a nose job and soften her edges.

She is in the middle of buying her first home, a two-bedroom flat. “I’m freezing my eggs, buying a flat, finishing the album. These three things have been what I’ve been doing for the whole of 2024 and none of them are done yet,” she laughs. “So I’ve been going a bit mad. As a very impatient person, it’s been hard.” The flat, she says, is a dream come true. “But the price – it’s insane. I will have to live like I’m living in my 20s. But I’ll have four walls that no one can kick me out of, at least. I’m fucking excited about the idea I might have a kitchen island. That’s more interesting to me than having sex with three different people this week.”

Is she contrary? “Yeah! ’Course! Isn’t everyone, though? I hope you can hear that on the record. The point of the record is to go: it’s never fucking over. It’s not as simple as, ‘boss bitch, here we go!’ It just isn’t. You might exercise for six months every day, and then you might just fucking not for a bit. I still go, oh, there’s this person I should be, and I’m not, and hate myself for that”.

There will be a lot more coming from Self Esteem very shortly. New music and tastes of A Complicated Woman. It will be interesting reading new interviews and hearing what Rebecca Lucy Taylor says about her new material. One of the most loved and respected artists in this country, below is a selection of her brilliance. An artist about to unveil her next chapter, it is going to be fascinating seeing…

WHAT comes next for her.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Friedberg

FEATURE:

 

Spotlight

Friedberg

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EVEN though…

they have not released new music since November, there are signs to suggest that Friedberg are going to have a big 2025. Their debut album, Hardcore Workout Queen, was released in November. I am familiar with Anna Friedberg, who I have covered in the capacity of a solo artist. As a band member, I was keen to check out Friedberg. They have some live dates coming up this year, including a spot at The Lexington on 5th March. I think that a lot more eyes will be on Friedberg as we head through the year. The band formed in 2019, though Hardcore Workout Queen is their first album, so many are highlighting them as a new band. Even if they have been on the scene for a while, this year is going to be a new stage. One where they will cover a lot of ground and release new music. I want to start out with this interview from House of Solo, where Anna Friedberg talked about the group and their then-upcoming debut album:

“Friedberg was formed in 2019 by Anna Friedberg. Could you share with us the story behind the band’s formation? What brought each of you together, and how did you discover your shared musical vision?

I had written a bunch of songs in Joshua Tree, and when I came back from the U.S., I spent some time in London. I didn’t know anyone there at the time, and I wanted to have a band to play those new tracks live with. A friend recommended Emily, the guitar player, and Emily lived with Laura, the drummer, at the time. I bumped into Cheryl, the bass player, in a bar in Lewisham, and one week later, we rehearsed those new songs for the first time and played a secret gig in a pub in London.

The band’s lineup consists of members from various locations, including London, Berlin, and Austria. How does this diversity influence the band’s creative process and sound?

I think traveling to different places and meeting new people has always been the biggest inspiration for the writing and sound of Friedberg.

Congratulations on the release of your new single, ‘My Best Friend’! Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the song and what it was like working with Dan Carey and the Nüesch Sisters on this project?

Sure. The song is about non-commitment in modern life that I seem to experience more and more. And I’m not a big fan, as you can probably tell from the lyrics. Working with Dan was amazing. I knew it was going to be amazing when I first walked into his studio. We just started to jam with two guitars and a cowbell, and half an hour later, we had written and recorded the first draft of the song. I like that Dan works very quickly and really knows how to capture the energy of that first moment when you write something. Because if you try to recreate that later on, it never really has that same vibe again.

‘My Best Friend’ explores themes of non-commitment in modern society. Could you elaborate on the message you’re conveying through this track?

I feel like in all aspects of life, people tend to commit to anything less and less. Be it a party, relationships, or a simple dinner appointment. I’ve especially experienced this in the U.K., and I’ve also learned that, ‘let’s have dinner at some point’ means ‘let’s never have dinner.’

The music video for ‘My Best Friend’ takes place in the London Underground during rush hour, which sounds like quite an experience! What was the creative process like for developing the concept of the video with the Nüesch Sisters?

When Kim Nüesch first told me about the initial idea of having a rammed Underground and us amidst the chaos trying to perform the song, I thought it was genius. I then suggested bringing in the cowbell theme again (as there’s no Friedberg music video without the cowbell). I especially love the moment when the cowbell falls to the floor and I’m looking for it, crawling between the legs of all the passengers. It was super fun to work with them. The whole video was basically created by all my best mates, so I couldn’t have wished for more.

The chemistry within a band is crucial for creating great music. How would you describe the dynamic between the members of Friedberg, both musically and personally?

I think personally, as well as musically, we are four completely different characters with completely different tastes, styles, and priorities, which is quite funny. Together we cover loads of different things, which makes it so good and fun.

Your debut album is set for release later this year. Can you give us any hints about what listeners can expect in terms of musical style and themes explored in the album?

Noooo, they should have a listen. I’m not going to say any more than that for now.

Your music has been described as having a distinctive sound that’s uniquely Friedberg. How do you approach experimentation and innovation while still staying true to your musical identity?

I’m trying not to think too much about what it should sound like, but just do whatever feels right for each song and have fun with it.

Friedberg has had some remarkable achievements, including having your single ‘Go Wild’ featured in FIFA 2020 and BBC’s Normal People. How do you feel about the reception your music has received from such diverse audiences?

Honestly, it has exceeded my expectations, especially that we got such a good response with only the second single. I couldn’t be happier about that.

Friedberg has garnered a significant following on social media platforms. How do you think platforms like Instagram and TikTok have impacted your music and the way you connect with your fans?

I don’t think it has influenced the music, but it has certainly influenced how you promote your music. Nowadays, as an artist, you not only have to make the art but also promote it yourself (or more or less). Social media has become a powerful tool for musicians to share their work and interact with their audience.

As a band that has already achieved success in Europe and is now making waves in the U.S., how do you see your music resonating with different audiences across various regions?

I have to say that the response we are getting in the U.S. is incredible and probably the most enthusiastic response we’ve ever received in live shows. So I would love to come back here for a headline show as soon as possible.

You’ve had the opportunity to perform at various festivals and venues across Europe and the U.S. Which performance stands out to you as particularly memorable, and why?

I think the tour with Hot Chip and the current U.S. tour as a whole were the most memorable shows so far. NYC, Chicago, and Montreal have always been amazing cities for Friedberg, but every show on this tour has been incredible.

What are your aspirations for Friedberg in the coming years, and is there anything you’re especially excited about in terms of future projects or collaborations?

I’m most excited to release our first album this year. And I’m always super excited about live shows. So yes, it should be a good year”.

Anna F. (is how she is referred to in interviews rather than Anna Friedberg) and Emily Linden talked to Guitar.com about the development of the band’s sound. The interview then went on to explore the use of cowbell in their music. Perhaps not the most obvious instrument, it was interesting what they said (“From there, things started to snowball. Emily notes that while she may be the guitar curator, Anna remains the cowbell curator. “We only started off with one cowbell, which is actually still with us,” says Anna, “and now we need a whole flight case just for cowbells! At our last rehearsal, we were extending some songs, and I was thinking, is this too much cowbell? But, then it’s like… can there ever be too much cowbell?”):

“Friedberg’s debut album has been a long time coming. Frontwoman Anna F. led a solo career in a different time, with a different sound – but after a roadtrip across California in 2017, she came back with a set of songs that called for a change in approach. “I had my solo career before that, but I didn’t really want to proceed with that because the new sound of these songs was so different. I thought, I want to have a band. I don’t want to be just ‘Anna F.’”

Upon her return she quickly assembled the lineup for Friedberg (named for Anna’s hometown in Austria) in London, and as she explains, the songs had clearly found their place. “We went to rehearsal, tried the new songs, and it sounded amazing. So the next thing was, just ‘let’s try a gig, just try it out, play a gig in some shitty pub’… well, it turned out it wasn’t actually shitty, it was nice in the end.”

Either way, the project was vindicated by the audience response. “We played Go Wild as the first song, and at the end of it, people were jumping up from the tables and cheering for us – I remember feeling at the time like, ‘oh my god, maybe something’s happening here’”, says Anna.

Following some singles, the band’s debut EP Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah arrived in 2021. But they’re now gearing up to release their first full-length, Hardcore Workout Queen. The album is an awesome collection of angular indie-rock, with propulsive, dancey drumbeats underpinning chaotic, sharp guitar lines. And that guitar-forward approach, for Anna, is something enabled by forming a band rather than keeping Friedberg as a solo project: “The songs just developed in a different direction. I still had a band with me before, two guitarists and so on – but it was a different kind of sound. It wasn’t as guitar-focused – the songs moved into that guitar-heavy direction.”

As for how to pin Friedberg down by genre? Well, Friedberg’s guitarist – and as we’ll discuss later, Anna’s ‘gear curator’ – Emily Linden explains: “It’s hard to say it’s one thing. On some of the new tunes, there’s quite a lot of synth stuff, but then live we have the setup of two guitars, bass, drums and many, many cowbells. And the live performance is different to the recordings, too – we extend things, we put in percussion breaks, and instrumental breaks too.”

“Also live it’s a lot heavier too, at least that’s what many people say after they see us live,” Anna adds. She laughs as she then recalls the last attempt at pinning Friedberg down to a set of standard genre markers: “The latest was ‘alternative rock with slices of dance punk’ – that was our latest attempt!”

PHOTO CREDIT: Lewis Vorn

Gear Curation

When it comes to crafting the band’s live sound, the two guitarists take very different approaches. Emily takes the lead on the more expansive, synthy side of things. “When I first started playing live with Friedberg, the approach was that we didn’t want all the synths to come from a track. ‘If we can get it on guitar, then we get it on guitar’ – so I’ve got a good few pedals to make lots of different sounds, sometimes to replicate synths, sometimes to just add noise and so on. So I’ve got a Strymon BigSky that I use for lots of different reverbs. I’ve also got an EHX Mono Synth – we’ve used that on the record before, and then there’s a TC Electronic one with chorus and flanger in one, the SCF. So I play around with those for different synth sounds.

“And then for the guitar sounds, I’ve got a Cali76 compressor, and also a Fulltone OCD. I want to get rid of my OCD, really. Only because with the new songs we’ve dialled down the amount of distorted, crunchy rock tones. So I want to get something to replace that! I’m using the Spark booster set quite clean really to just give it a low-key crunch.”

Anna adds that she also has an OCD (“and I hate it too!”), but explains that her approach is a lot more straightforward, and basically consists of that OCD as an always-on drive. “I have so much to do on stage – I have to play a million cowbells at the same time, I’m singing, playing guitar and swapping between things. So I basically just have one setting that I use throughout the set.”

When it comes to amps, Emily is also clear on her preference for the analogue approach. “Because we play a lot of gigs in Germany and Austria and we’ve been to America a few times, I was always thinking that it’d be so much easier to fly with a Kemper – everything’s all set. But I just missed the analogue thing. You can become limitless with a digital board. The realms of possibility are massive. But… when you bring it down and you are limited, and trying to get as much as you can from what you’ve got – I love doing that.”

Anna concurs. “Yes, it’s always better, that limiting – there are so many options in these current times. Like everything – 10 oat milks and so on,” she adds, and laughs – “but there’s definitely more excitement, more potential for something unexpected to happen with the analogue stuff.”

Emily’s passion for her gear has clearly let her slide into a natural role within Friedberg, as Anna explains: “Emily is basically my pedal curator , because I’m not a geek about it at all – I’ve got a lot of other things on stage, so I’m always happy to hand that over to her!”

As for actual guitars, Anna has a similarly straightforward approach, in that she’s found her number one guitar and has stuck with it since. “I have a Duesenberg Starplayer – and I like the sound of it. I’ve had it for 10 years now, back in another time when I had another curator! I just asked, what guitar should I get? And he said this one, so I did – and I love the sound of it. Whenever I have to use another guitar live, if I break a string or something, the guitar lines don’t sound as good”.

I am going to move on to an interview from New Noise Magazine from last year. The most recent interviews I can find are from 2024. I think we will start to see some more as Friedberg head out on live dates. Get an update regarding their plans and what comes next for them:

“Hardcore Workout Queen has a pretty funny spin on living up to impossible standards, a concern that a lot of musicians will sing about more gravely. What sort of headspace were you and your bandmates in when you were making the record? Or were you caught in between two headspaces?

Anna: I started it on a road trip from the East to West Coast, following the path of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and the other Beat poets. [Hardcore Workout Queen] ended up being a good album to listen to while you walk around the city, or drive around in a car, maybe along a coastline.

The humor helps me stay sane too. I’m actually super anxious most of the time, but I try to always tell myself ‘life is a game, life is a game’ and try to make it more fun for myself. I like to watch fun stuff where people don’t take themselves too seriously; that’s also where the video ideas came from.

Speaking of road trips, how does the touring experience change from Europe to America, as a European artist? There are spots like the petrol stations here that you’ve expressed a fondness for, whereas so many Americans will go to Europe and feel relieved not to see them everywhere.

Anna: Yeah, it’s great, it’s so insane. First of all, how big it is, how many different landscapes, how many different people…and then you’re in the middle of nowhere and there’s only petrol stations and you can’t get anything healthy to eat. It’s literally crazy. But also, I remember, once I fell asleep in the desert, and woke up and it was green everywhere. I find it inspiring to be on the move constantly, and just looking out the window and seeing all this craziness.

All the things you get to see between the big cities where we play the shows…I found crazy little cowboy cafes in the middle of nowhere. And then I’m like, “Okay, I have to go in there. Even if it’s a bit scary, I just have to see what’s inside.

You’ve cited British exports like Wolf Alice and Wet Leg as influences on the album, and that comes through not just on the lyrical front but in the instruments. What of those influences would you say came from your British bandmates in Cheryl, Emily, and Fifi, vs. being in a new place and hearing different artists on the airwaves?

Anna: How it always worked from the beginning…I wrote and even recorded most of the songs before I even met the girls. I brought the songs in and we worked on the live arrangements together.

So far, we haven’t really done lots of studio work together, but we always come up with all the crazy live arrangements, which are quite different to the recordings: much more energetic and heavy. We also do extended versions with long percussion breaks and stuff like that.

Given that you had the songs written before meeting the rest of the band, are there any songs where you look back on when you wrote it, and it’s taken on a new meaning from when you first envisioned it?

Anna: Some of the songs are brand new. But for some of the songs that are older, like “Hello” and “My Best Friend,” it was interesting because you never, ever normally get the opportunity to record something, and then play it live, and then record it again.

Usually you release a record and then you start touring it. And then you think “ah, fuck, it’s so much cooler now that we’ve played it live, it would be a good time to record it now.” But we actually did that with a few songs, because we didn’t release them yet. They were a few years old and we played them several times.

Most bands don’t have the opportunity that we did. We had that chance since we took such a long time with our record.

Yeah, that definitely comes across. In particular, I think the cowbell you guys use is such a great live instrument. It just has a way of getting people moving, a je ne sais quoi to it. A few studio tracks off HWQ sound like the cowbell was decided on after a great live take.

Anna: We tried also to do full takes of drums and bass together, not edited too much, just like jam sessions. I learned that from Dan Carey, who [produced and co-wrote] “My Best Friend.” He only works like that. He has the band do a full live take; even if there are mistakes, leave them in. Just get that energy on the record and do some additional stuff on top.

A couple closing questions. I know you don’t want to impose anything too preachy on the listener, but what do you hope people can take away from the record?

Anna: Hmmm…maybe that the record could be a safe space, for however long it is, to escape on a nice little trip where the world is a better, saner place. I dunno. Maybe that.

What’s next for the band? Having toured, and then released the album, is there another round of touring planned?

Anna: Yes, we’re already planning lots of shows for next year! I hope we will come back to the U.S. very soon, because we have some very hardcore fans who have our cowbells tattooed. Touring the U.S. might be my favorite thing so far. We’ve got an agent in the U.S. now, so I hope we can work it out.

My dream is to tour with LCD Soundsystem, but whose dream isn’t that?”.

I am going to end with a review for Hardcore Workout Queen. Crucial Rhythm spent some time with one of the best debut albums of last year. I think that they will go from strength to strength. A group that you will want to keep an eye out for. I am keen to see them perform this year. I might try and catch them in London. This is a band with a bright future:

“Alt-rock outfit Friedberg is back with their debut album, Hardcore Workout Queen, set for release on November 8, 2024, via Clouds Hill. With Hardcore Workout Queen, Friedberg steps boldly into the alt-rock scene with a spirited, genre-spanning debut album that celebrates imperfection, humour, and introspective road-trip anthems. Frontwoman Anna Friedberg and her bandmates—Emily Linden, Cheryl Pinero, and Fifi Dewey—have crafted a debut that feels both deeply personal and universally relatable, blending indie-rock, psychedelia, dance-punk, and pop hooks into a seamless journey that’s as much about self-discovery as it is about having a good time.

The album opens with the lengthy track, “100 Times,” a pulse-quickening track that sets the tone with driving rhythms and candid lyrics, inviting listeners into Friedberg’s world—a place where self-reflection is met with a wry sense of humour. The title track, “Hardcore Workout Queen,” epitomizes this balance. It’s simultaneously an homage to the driven “workout queens” and a cheeky anthem for those who'd rather cheer from the sidelines. With a solid bass line and dreamy production, Anna’s lyrics portray a playful rivalry between different lifestyles, embodying the album’s ethos of self-acceptance. This track in particular captures Friedberg’s skill in combining infectious, festival-ready energy with introspective themes.

“So Dope” offers a contrasting perspective by critiquing the shallow nature of social media, the perpetual “highlight reel” that many present online. The song’s upbeat melody plays against its critical lyrics, crafting a piece that’s as catchy as it is thought-provoking. Anna’s commentary on the pressure to display a flawless self feels refreshingly honest and introspective, balancing the album's high-energy tracks with a raw look at the pressures of modern life.

A couple of the album's earlier singles “Hello” and “My Best Friend” make their appearances as pillars of the band's debut album, showcasing Friedberg’s knack for creating catchy, memorable tunes. "My Best Friend," in particular, leans on humour with its music video—a playful take on magazine fitness covers where the band strikes ironic poses as “lazy” workout warriors. This satirical take reinforces the album's message of self-acceptance and staying true to oneself in a society obsessed with appearances.

The introspective journey continues with “Pull Me Off The Passing Line” and “Venice 142,” tracks that invite the listener to slow down and reflect. Anna describes Hardcore Workout Queen as a “road trip with no destination,” and these tracks amplify that feeling, creating the perfect soundtrack for a late-night drive or a conversation-filled road trip.

With production spanning studios from Berlin to Los Angeles, and sessions with renowned music producers like Dan Carey and Oli Bayston, Hardcore Workout Queen encapsulates a unique global sound that retains Friedberg’s signature European indie-rock sensibility. The result is a polished yet raw album that sounds equally at home in the studio and live on stage.

Friedberg’s Hardcore Workout Queen is a thoroughly enjoyable debut album that plays with the line between sincerity and irony, making it a perfect soundtrack for those who take life seriously without always taking themselves seriously. It's an album for the road, for endless conversations, and for embracing both the active and lazy sides of life”.

I shall wrap things up. If you art not aware of Friedberg, then make sure you check them out. A brilliant and incredible close-knit group (Anna Friedberg (writer, vocals, cowbell, guitar, and more cowbell), Emily Linden (guitar, vocals), Cheryl Pinero (bass, vocals) and Laura Williams (drums) that are producing music that stands out and marks them as an incredible proposition, I think they will stick together and put out phenomenal music…

FOR many more years.

_______________

Follow Friedberg

PHOTO CREDIT: Lewis Vorn

Official:

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FEATURE: The Anonymous Emily: Kate Bush’s Wow at Forty-Six

FEATURE:

 

 

The Anonymous Emily

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

Kate Bush’s Wow at Forty-Six

_________

I will repeat…

some information I have included before prior to moving on. As Kate Bush’s Wow turns forty-six on 9th March, it is worth spending some time with one of her greatest singles. I shall end with some links to features where Wow was ranked highly in the list of the best Kate Bush tracks. The second single released from Bush’s underrated second studio album, Lionheart, Wow reached number sixteen in the U.K. It was a bigger chart success than its predecessor, Hammer Horror. I love that Wow features Brian Bath, Del Palmer and Paddy Bush. Close friends and family. Players in the KT Bush Band. Bush originally wanted her band and players for Lionheart but they were replaced by Andrew Powell’s suggestions. Musicians who performed on The Kick Inside. I love the fact that the video for Wow was censored by the BBC because the song was considered risqué. The video depicts Kate Bush patting her bottom while singing "he's too busy hitting the Vaseline”. Before I move along, I want to bring back in some interview samples where Bush spoke about Wow and its inspiration:

“I’ve really enjoyed recording ‘Wow’. I’m very, very pleased with my vocal performance on that, because we did it a few times, and although it was all in tune and it was okay, there was just something missing. And we went back and did it again and it just happened, and I’ve really pleased with that, it was very satisfying.

Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978

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

Kate Bush Club newsletter, Summer 1979”.

There is surprisingly little written about Wow. One of Bush’s signature songs, it would be nice to see more articles published. I am going to feed in some details from an article I have referenced before when investigating Wow. It is a shame also that people write off Lionheart and feel it is a bad album. I think it is a wonderful album that has a few real standout songs…and the rest is pretty solid. It is a pity and regret that Bush was not given more time by EMI. She could have created something richer where she could write all new songs. As it was, Lionheart’s ten tracks features only three new songs. Wow is an older track that I think would have been considered for The Kick Inside. I want to come to an article from The Guardian that talked about the amazing and wonderful Wow:

“In late 1978 the 20-year-old Bush still seemed an ingenue and it was always going to be tough following an album that contained Wuthering Heights and The Man With the Child in His Eyes. She later complained she felt under pressure from EMI to release Lionheart too early, a problem she made sure she never experienced again. But Wow was always a song that stood on its own merits. It contains many of her trademarks: enigmatic intertextual lyrics, unfeasibly high-pitched vocals that fall unexpectedly to an absurd low note (the last "wow" of each chorus is particularly amusing), tantalising verses followed by a cascading chorus. Musically, Wow is typical of her early work, with pretty woodwind, piano and strings complementing a lyrical bass line.

The song, as far an anyone other than its author knows for certain, appears to be about struggling actors and the disappointments of fame. In the video its most famous lines – "He'll never make the scene/ He'll never make the Sweeney/ Be that movie queen/ He's too busy hitting the vaseline" – were expressed through her much-parodied mime-the-lyrics dancing style. The word "Sweeney" was accompanied by her firing a gun and "hitting the vaseline" by her tapping her backside. Viewers were invited to draw their own conclusions.

Bush is such a singular talent it has become too easy to dismiss her as an eccentric, peripheral figure. It was around the time Wow was released that the pastiches began, most famously by Pamela Stephenson on Not the Nine O'Clock News. But those memories would not do justice to her achievements in carving out a career of complete artistic independence and integrity after starting out as a teenager in a male-dominated world, chaperoned by members of England's prog-rock elite. Her influence on so many female (and male) songwriters, musicians and performers since has been enormous, even if they don't know it themselves”.

The critical response for Wow was largely sexist and dismissive. Sounds were appallingly crude and insulting in their review: “I hear this mediocre chanteuse crooning her way through this silly song. (…) I realise that a lot of people would like to go to bed with her, but buying all her records seems a curious way of expressing such desires”. Record Mirror felt that the song was eerie and interesting but the “verses still sound a little muddled but get better with playing”. That was one of the more generous assessments. In years since, Wow is rightly hailed as a brilliant song. One of the gems from Lionheart. I am not sure if I have quoted from Dreams of Orgonon and this take on Wow:

“Bush understands true fandom, where someone gets to enjoy the beauty of a creator’s work in private. It also pertains to going out and seeing them in concert, having your favorite singer onstage in front of you and hearing your favorite songs live. This is the kind of invigoration that’s present in a number of Bush’s songs of the period: allowing yourself to be a swooning fangirl.

“Wow” is the paragon of Bush’s sometimes loopy and adolescent enthusiasm, in the vein of “Violin.” Its chorus of “wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, WOW! UnbelIEVable!” sounds like scribblings on an asylum wall, bolstered by the singing of a dame who’s had a bit too much MDMA. It’s almost like Bush is asking to be made fun of, with her play at wide-eyed innocence at the wonders of showbiz. Yet Bush is clearly winking at the audience, as her all-too-knowing performance in the song’s music video makes clear. In this era, Bush has a habit in videos of staring directly into the camera like she expects to shatter the lens with the sheer power of her gaze (she later supplants this strategy by staring past the camera longingly). As memorable as her early videos are, a lot of their longevity comes from Bush’s goofy miming. This may be why the “Wow” video has the reputation it has, with Bush flailing her arms around in circles while repeatedly crying “wow” like a maniac. The song is sheer mad giddiness, sounding like Nina Hagen let loose in the Hammersmith Odeon.

The elation of the chorus is belied by the knowing facetiousness of the verses, with the shit-eating grin they flash at showbiz. Bush’s sweet-natured delivery of “we think you’re amazing!” efficiently hides the fact those lines are probably written with gritted teeth. It’s not that “Wow” is bitter, but it’s taking a few potshots as it falls through showbiz. The first verse is rife with tension, laden as it is with the song’s intro, acting as something of a rehearsal for the chorus. There’s a clash of the rehearsed tendencies of the song with Bush’s more communal ones. To her, creativity is a collaborative act, where the audience and artist unite to move each other. “We’re all alone on the stage tonight” sounds like Bush’s invitation to the audience, as if the stage is an arena for both player and spectator”.

I have asked before who the ‘Emily’ is Kate Bush mentions right at the start of the song. I am not sure if she has been asked about that before. Wow has risen in critics’ estimation since its release. Last year, when ranking her fifty best songs, MOJO placed it ninth (“TOTP dimmed the lights when she sang “Vaseline” and patted her bum. Whether or not the period’s pisstaking about her hippy-throwback exclamations of “Wow!” and “Amazing!” provoked the song, she made the most of it with a grotesque Guignol demolition of showbiz bullshit flattery and backstabbing (“We’d give you a part, my love/But…”). The staying power comes from the emotional distance between those squealing to grande-dame-contralto chorus “Wows” and the melancholy strings when she hesitantly begins and then fades to vanishing at the end with the fear-ridden, “We’re all alone on the stage tonight”). In 2020, when The Guardian ranked Bush’s singles, Wow came in thirteenth. In 2023, this is what PROG said about Wow: “‘We’re all alone on the stage tonight,’ sings Bush in her musings on the highs and lows of a life in showbusiness, as an actor dreaming of stardom endures ignominy and being used for sex, cheekily implied in the lyric about ‘hitting the Vaseline’. Robin Armstrong, Cosmograf: “It’s super-proggy in terms of theme and modulation yet somehow manages to stick to a pop record structure. It’s a masterclass of concise epics. The lyrics are so poignant, and to me they speak of a tortured artist, underappreciated, and forced to live up to expectations as an entertainer. “I think she’s one of the most underrated piano players ever. I’m always drawn in by her beautiful chord structures and motifs. She just has a way of laying down this beautiful carpet of piano for her vocals”. Last year, Classic Pop ranked Kate Bush’s forty best songs. Wow came in seventh.

I am going to end with this feature from Far Out Magazine. They discussed Wow and its merits back in January. After a somewhat disappointing chart position for Hammer Horror (forty-four in the U.K.), there is no telling what could have been if Wow had done poorly. Would a third album be possible? Would Bush’s career have ended? Even if Wow didn’t quite do anything as dramatic as save her career, it did show that she could not be written off. Someone able to engage the public in spite of parody and criticism from the press:

“As with all sophomore releases, the label normally wants the product as fast as possible, which means digging in the vaults to pull out songs that might not have been able to be fleshed out for the first record. Although Bush could still whip any idea into something magical, ‘Wow’ is one of the stranger offerings that she made around that time.

Despite the chorus itself being singled out for repeating the same word over and over again, Bush is seething about the pressures that come with being in the music business. Since her mentor, David Gilmour, already knew the ins and outs of what the industry had to offer, seeing her ridicule the corporate suits for only wanting a piece of her and not caring about the music is the closest thing to a punk rock statement she was ever going to make.

In the background, though, Bush was already looking to move things around. If the industry didn’t have her best interests in mind, she was going to build her own company around her, eventually working out deals where everything was kept in-house, whether that was her putting together her one and only major tour or having complete freedom whenever she made another record.

And musically, ‘Wow’ is also a sneak preview of what Bush would be doing on some of her later records. Nothing that she ever made could be considered safe and radio-friendly from front to end, but given its weird structure and often-parodied chorus, there are bits and pieces of the studio wackiness that would appear on albums like The Dreaming later, especially when she starts singing outside of her usual range.

But that’s the beauty of Bush’s music, to begin with. Most people can stare on in stark amazement at someone willing to have the guts to do something so weird on the world’s stage, but Bush never seemed to make some kind of bold leap unless she had a good reason. That way, the music was less about the commercial appeal and more akin to a spirit that was being driven out of her.

So when people look back on the music video and her wild dance moves, they might want to look a little bit closer. Anyone can look at that kind of performance once and think it looks a little bit goofy, but if they start listening to what the song is about, Bush is being fairly on the nose about becoming a borderline puppet for whatever some so-called “commercial music expert” wants to see out of their talent”.

With a shorter single edit compared to the album version (about twenty seconds shorter), I think that Wow remains underplayed and under-discussed. Even if it did get parodied and there was this sense of ridicule from some, there is no denying the brilliance of the song. Perhaps the standout song off of Lionheart, it stands proudly alongside Kate Bush’s best records. An idiosyncratic and memorable single that was an international chart success. A simply unbelievable song, it still sound startling and phenomenal all of these years later! If Hammer Horror took Bush slightly into the critical and commercial shadows, Wow brought her right back to…

CENTRE stage.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Karen Carpenter at Seventy-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Karen Carpenter photographed in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Harry Langdon

Karen Carpenter at Seventy-Five

_________

ON 2nd March…

IN THIS PHOTO: Richard and Karen Carpenter in Copenhagen in 1974/PHOTO CREDIT: Jan Persson/Redferns

the music world marks what would have been Karen Carpenter’s seventy-fifth birthday. She sadly died in 1983 at the age of thirty-two. A phenomenal drummer, she formed Carpenters with her older brother Richard. As the lead, these incredible and timeless songs were blessed with the sublime vocals of Karen Carpenter. Although she died young, her legacy will endure for generations to come. She is one of the most remarkable singers ever. One of the best and most underrated drummers ever. Because her seventy-fifth birthday is approaching, I wanted to salute her brilliance with her a mixtape of Carpenter songs. Prior to that, IMDB provide a biography of an artist that left us too soon:

“Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Karen Carpenter moved with her family to Downey, California, in 1963. Karen's older brother, Richard Carpenter, decided to put together an instrumental trio with him on the piano, Karen on the drums and their friend Wes Jacobs on the bass and tuba. In a battle of the bands at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966, the group won first place and landed a contract with RCA Records. However, RCA did not see a future in jazz tuba, and the contract was short-lived.
Karen and Richard formed another band, Spectrum, with four other fellow students from California State University at Long Beach that played several gigs before disbanding. In 1969, Karen and Richard made several demo music tapes and shopped them around to different record companies; they were eventually offered a contract with A&M Records. Their first hit was a reworking of The Beatles hit "Ticket to Ride", followed by a re-recorded version of Burt Bacharach's "Close to You", which sold a million copies.

Soon Richard and Karen became one of the most successful groups of the early 1970s, with Karen on the drums and lead vocals and Richard on the piano with backup vocals. They won three Grammy Awards, embarked on a world tour, and landed their own TV variety series in 1971, titled Make Your Own Kind of Music! (1971).

In 1975 the story came out when The Carpenters were forced to cancel a European tour because the gaunt Karen was too weak to perform. Nobody knew that Karen was at the time suffering from anorexia nervosa, a mental illness characterized by obsessive dieting to a point of starvation. In 1976 she moved out of her parents' house to a condo of her own.

While her brother Richard was recovering from his Quaalude addiction, Karen decided to record a solo album in New York City in 1979 with producer Phil Ramone. Encouraged by the positive reaction to it in New York, Karen was eager to show it to Richard and the record company in California, who were nonplussed. The album was shelved.

In 1980, she married real estate developer Thomas J. Burris. However, the unhappy marriage really only lasted a year before they separated. (Karen was to sign the divorce papers the day she died).
Shortly afterward, she and brother Richard were back in the recording studio, where they recorded their hit single "Touch Me When We're Dancing". However, Karen was unable to shake her depression as well as her eating disorder, and after realizing she needed help, she spent most of 1982 in New York City undergoing treatment. By 1983, Karen was starting to take control of her life and planning to return to the recording studio and to make public appearances again. In February of 1983, she went to her parents' house to sort through some old clothes she kept there when she collapsed in a walk-in closet from cardiac arrest. She was only 32. Doctors revealed that her long battle with anorexia nervosa had stressed her heart to the breaking point”.

When discussing Karen Carpenter, there is always this note of tragedy. People focusing on her early death and health issues. People not discussing her drumming, vocals and artistry. The people she has inspired. This Wikipedia article discusses the legacy of Karen Carpenter:

“Reacting to Carpenter's death, songwriter Burt Bacharach said that she "had a sound in her voice that was very unique, that I haven't heard before."

Carpenter's singing has attracted critical praise and influenced several significant musicians and singers, including Madonna, Sheryl Crow, Pat Metheny, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Shania Twain, Natalie Imbruglia, and k.d. lang. Paul McCartney has said that she had "the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and distinctive". She has been called "one of the greatest voices of our lifetime" by Elton John. In the BBC documentary Only Yesterday: The Carpenters Story, her friend Nicky Chinn said that John Lennon walked up to her at a Los Angeles restaurant and told her "I want to tell you, love, that you've got a fabulous voice." Her drumming has been praised by fellow musicians Hal Blaine, Cubby O'Brien and Buddy Rich, and by Modern Drummer magazine. She appeared in the drummer rankings of every Playboy annual music poll from 1974 to 1980; Playboy's readers voted her as high as tenth best drummer in 1975 and tenth best pop/rock drummer 1976”.

As this music legend was born on 2nd March, 1950, I want to mark her seventy-fifth birthday. Collate songs that are enriched by her singular vocal talent. Although she died young, what she recorded and left the world was immense. The wonderful Karen Carpenter left behind…

AN enormous legacy.

FEATURE: Live and Let Live: Could Kate Bush Ever Step Back on the Stage?

FEATURE:

 

 

Live and Let Live

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Under Ice (from Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave) during the 2014 residency, Before the Dawn/PHOTO CREDIT: Gavin Bush

Could Kate Bush Ever Step Back on the Stage?

_________

THIS is a question I have asked…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on stage for 1979’s The Tour of Life/PHOTO CREDIT: Jorgen Angel/Redferns

a few times before. There was a time, fairly recently in fact, that this possibility seemed remote to impossible. I can’t remember the last time is that I wrote about it. What it would be like if Kate Bush returned to the stage. Rather than speculate as to what a live set now would look like and how it would be constructed, I am asking whether the possibility is more alive now than recent years. Back in October, there was reaction to an interview that The Guardian conducted with David Gilmour. One question asked was whether Kate Bush would perform live again:

“I’ve tried persuading her recently. Gently.” Pink Floyd legend David Gilmour has been trying to encourage his friend and former protégé Kate Bush to play live shows again

David Gilmour wants to see Kate Bush back onstage, won't be sharing a stage with former bandmate Roger Waters again, ever

David Gilmour says that he's been “gently” encouraging his friend and former protégé Kate Bush to play live shows again.

Gilmour 'discovered' Bush, the sister of a friend of a friend, when she was just 15, and paid for her to professionally record three songs at Air studios in London with producer/arranger Andrew Powell, and engineer Geoff Emerick, who worked with The Beatles at Abbey Road. Gilmour selected which three songs - among them The Man with the Child in His Eyes - the teenage singer should record from “40 or 50” Bush compositions he had heard and helped broker a record deal for her with EMI.

“I was convinced from the beginning that this girl had remarkable talent,” Pink Floyd's vocalist/guitarist told The New Statesman in 2005.

The two musicians have remained friends ever since, memorably appearing onstage together in 1987 to perform Running Up That Hill at the Amnesty International benefit show The Secret Policeman's Third Ball at the London Palladium”.

Emma Barnett raised the subject of live performance and name-checked that interview from The Gurdian. The two spoke late last year when Bush released the Little Shrew (Snowflake) video and announced she was open to working on a new album. Rather than shoot down the possibility of live music, Bush said that she was not there yet. A bit of a wink or laugh in her voice. That does not mean Kate Bush is planning something. Think about how intense her two live productions have been. 1979’s The Tour of Life saw her perform around the U.K. and Europe. Huge shows that were intense and energetic. Some nights she was almost lifted off stage and could not stand up. It is understandable she would not want to repeat that experience in a hurry – even if she did actually enjoy the tour. In 2014, Before the Dawn was mounted. I will talk about it for another feature shortly. This was a residency at the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith. A nerve-wracking proposition where Bush and her team were pretty much on edge until the shows finished, it did take a lot out of her. Not only in terms of the twenty-two performances. Just conceptualising the show. Figuring out how it was all going to come together. Perhaps a more rigorous and labour-intensive proposition in 2014 compared to 1979! Nearly eleven years after she announced her residency, one asks what circumstances have to change for Bush to consider more live work. Touring would definitely be out of the question.

IN THIS PHOTO: Albert (Bertie) McIntosh during 2014’s Before the Dawn/PHOTO CREDIT: Gavin Bush

She is now sixty-six and is definitely not going to travel far to perform. If she did do something then one would imagine it would be at a London location. There would be multiple considerations. What albums would she play songs from? Would she need to realise another album first to have that impetus? Could she do another big live prediction without repeating herself? Does she have that desire anymore? Kate Bush knows that she has a new generation of fans. Those who have never seen or live or never got the chance. Even if she has not confirmed any plans to perform again, I was intrigued by her response to Emma Barnett last year. An answer that was open-minded and not definitive. The music industry is still ageist. When an older artist like Madonna goes on tour, there are articles that ask if she is too old. Criticising her and thinking she is embarrassing herself. It affects women more than men. There was some ageism and misogyny towards Kate Bush when she announced Before the Dawn. The reason for The Tour of Life was expectation. After releasing two studio albums in 1978, there was demand. Bush was definitely keen to perform live. There were various rumours and plans before 2014. Bush wanting to perform live and tour in the 1990s. It was her young son Albert that persuaded her to perform live for Before the Dawn. Encouragement to his mother at the time. He is in his twenties now, so there would not be that same impetus. Bush wanting to do something for her fans but also knowing her son thought it was a good idea. I guess new popularity and love of her music could see her given that push. You know that, if she did do more live work, it would be the final time. I don’t think Bush would want to do any live performance after a hypothetical next residency.

Would it be a residency? Bush said how nervous she was during the shows. She loved the audiences and they were a dream. However, it was a massive undertaking and I think, after releasing two albums in 2011 (Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow), doing something new was very much in her mind. That was a big motivation. After releasing two albums, that desire to do something different and fresh. A project that would not tie her to the studio. Wanting to connect to an audience. If anything was going to get Kate Bush back on stage, then it would be her fans. The love and admiration they expressed every night in 2014. Bush could release two more albums and then decide. However, things are different now to 2014. In terms of how there has been this resurgence. From the success of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 2022 and the whole Stranger Things success. This younger generation now discovering the music. Bush also did not perform songs from 50 Words for Snow and Director’s Cut (technically Bush reworking songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes). Well, she did perform Among Angels (50 Words for Snow). However, new albums would not necessarily be the ammunition for live work. More than it being about new material to showcase on the stage, it is the need to connect with her fans. The pandemic has happened since 2014. Her music has been shared on social media and her career has enjoyed this new phase. One where she is tempting us with possible new music. Maybe after that is complete she would be in the headspace to think about live work.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured during 1979’s The Tour of Life/PHOTO CREDIT: Jorgen Angel/Redferns

I realise that circumstances are different now to how they were in 1979 and 2014. The motivations different today. Bush has spent a long time working on the Little Shrew (Snowflake) video. She directed and wrote it. If she is working on new material, when might an album materialise? This year or next one would imagine. Would live work be a possibility before, say, 2027? Bush knows that artists in their sixties and seventies can perform live. Many of her musical idols have. People like Elton John and Paul McCartney show that there is still desire from fans. She might cast her mind back to 2014 and how she felt before each show. The sheet effort of bringing Before the Dawn to life. I don’t think there is any question as to whether she could go back on stage. Physically and emotionally she would be more than capable of delivery something spellbinding. I guess it is the question of whether she would. I don’t think she has closed the door on that possibility. However, now is a time when she is more in album mode. Maybe once that has been completed then she will be more open-minded to live work. I have never seen Kate Bush perform live, so obviously there is that selfish desire. Perhaps we would need to wait until albums were out. Bush keener to be in the studio for the time being. I don’t think we can rule out Bush returning to the stage. Though it would be impossible to give a date or say when. David Gilmour has gently tried to persuade her, so she knows that people want to see it happen. As she is not there at the moment, perhaps other factors needs to change. A new reason to embark on another huge live project. Maybe the swell of new fans and people picking up her music. Bush coming up with a new concept or wanting to do one final residency or even a single show. Perhaps a small run of dates. Kate Bush being Kate Bush, it may never happen or it could be announced at any moment! She does keep us all on our toes that is for sure. That image of Kate Bush once more being on the stage as the audience before her goes wild and shows her such love. We would all dearly love to…

SEE the day.

FEATURE: Her Deal with Gods: Kate Bush and the Spiritual Divine

FEATURE:

 

 

Her Deal with Gods

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

Kate Bush and the Spiritual Divine

_________

IT is not a revelation…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1983 (recreating the cover of Depeche Mode’s 1982 album, A Broken Frame)/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin

to say that Kate Bush has woven spirituality and religion through her music. There are cases of Bush’s putting God(s) and religion through her music. If you think about her most famous song, Running Up That Hill. Originally called A Deal with God, it was ridiculously changed because it was feared that the title would cause offense. That it was blasphemous somehow. Now, there would not be a hesitation putting out a song with ‘God’ in the title. However, Bush’s song was not insulting or blasphemous. Indeed, she was doing a deal with God. That men and women could swap places and know what the other was going through. Share the experience, as it were! Bush was raised as a Roman Catholic and although her music is not especially devout or religious in tone, faith and spirituality has been a part of her music from the very beginning. That compromise with Running Up That Hill. Bush was told that at least ten countries would not play the song if it was called A Deal with God. It was one of the few compromises she had to make for the sake of her career. Bush has said that when she was younger she felt like she was on a mission from God. That music was really her calling and she had a bigger purpose. I will explore different sides of Bush’s spirituality and creative curiosity. How she is someone who is very spiritual and compassionate yet is not necessarily tied to one viewpoint or belief. Someone who has in fact woven aspects of different religions through her music. Although Bush was raised in a Roman Catholic household, she didn’t feel that the Church was the right fit for her. Bush has mentioned God in her music and in interviews now and then, yet I think that Bush’s music is her attempt to become more complete and understanding. That is what you get from Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Bush using that plea. An opportunity to speak with God and do a deal. In a larger sense, it is about understanding and making humans more empathetic. Spirituality has clearly been a big part of Kate Bush’s life.

This creativity was a way of filling an emptiness. That mission from God. Rather than her literally doing her own deal with God or there being this religious destiny, I think Bush did feel that her creative drive and love of music was connected to religion. She has said how Breathing was a case of something working through her. She observed: “When I was writing it, it felt like: Hang on, I don't think I'm writing this–this is a bit too good for me! Rather than the song being my creation, I was a vehicle for something that was coming through me”. I want to widen this out and think of Bush in spiritual terms. Despite the fact her Roman Catholic upbringing gave her a sense of destiny and drive – and she felt God working through her for some songs -, you can also feel Bush embracing multiple faiths. Consider how she put the words “Om mani padme” in The Kick Inside’s Strange Phenomena. It is part of a Sanskrit mantra that is central to Tibetan Buddhism. It is associated with Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Bush has expressed interest in several spiritual paths and throughout her life. These include astrology, the paranormal, and New Age beliefs. There is no one path or option that has struck her hardest. In an interview with Q from 1999, Bush remarked the following: “People who create feel a great empty sense of hunger, a feeling of emptiness in life. And by being able to create, you can somehow express yourself in a way that maybe you can't in the ordinary realms of life...so many people are looking for God...In your creativity there can be quite deep attitudes, and I think it's got to be linked somehow with the subconscious that you're tapping into”. If it is not necessarily spirituality that Bush projects and promotes, it is a curiosity for things bigger than us. The unknown.

I have written about this before. How ghosts, mythical creatures and oddities are fascinating to Bush. Ghosts and spirits especially have been the subject of several of her songs, from Wuthering Heights to Get Out of My House. A Yeti or mythical creature in Wild Man. The afterlife and Heaven coming into Blow Away (For Bill) from Never for Ever. I see a lot of spiritual and religious influence through Hounds of Love. The Ninth Wave where the heroine is lost at sea and struggles to stay alive. Moments where she is floating above the water or a sense she is watching from high above to the sea. Maybe going back to Bush’s upbringing. If she has not explicitly aligned herself to one religion or is a particularly religious writer, one can see God, the spiritual and the divine in nearly all of her albums. Bush has noted that there’s a lot of suffering in Roman Catholicism. ”You hear that in “Running,” the quiet desperation to its sound, a yearning that seems like it has just about given up hope, much like Max” (Max Mayfield is played by Sadie Sink on the Netflix show, Stranger Things). I did cover this in 2020. However, rather than repeat that feature, I wanted to look more about spirituality. This love and compassion for multiple faiths. How many other artists have done this in their career? It can be quite divisive if you put religion or faith in your music. Bush never does it explicitly or overtly. There are sprinklings here and there. This feature asked if Bush was a Rosicrucian (Rosicrucianism is a spiritual and cultural movement that arose in early modern Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts announcing to the world a new esoteric order):

“Is she actually a lifelong Rosicrucian? I could make a list fifty items long. Her appeal crosses age, gender, taste; she’s taken on a quite distinct mythic life in our collective dreaming. People who would usually have nothing to do with mainstream rock music (like Rushton) are smitten. She has a huge gay following (queer pagans, radical faeries). Ex-punks and one-time surly troublemakers line up to hymn her praises, when not so long ago she would have been the very model of everything they professed to despise, what with her taste for fuzzy ‘spirituality’ – ley lines, yetis, orgone energy – and tendency towards heavy concept albums. (One side of Aerial has both a Prelude and a Prologue.)”.

One of my favourite aspects of Kate Bush’s writing is how she can write personally and about universal feelings but also go beyond that. To a more spiritual plain. Bush has said how she believes in angels. Although she could have been referring to angelic people, 50 Words for Snow’s Among Angels offers these lines: “I can see angels around you/They shimmer like mirrors in summer”. I am going to move on, though I want to refer to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) one more time. This feature offered a spiritual perspective on the song’s video:

“The chorus has the power of a mantra which I bet many of you found yourself repeating incessantly, switching roles with the singer only to realize by the end of the song that you too made a deal with God.

A deal with God, in this case, represents a karmic soul contract between Kate and her lover which would allow them to attain a better understanding of each other.

The scenes in which Kate Bush dances with Michael Hervieu seem to take place in an aesthetically pleasing purgatory. A place not of this realm, in between lives. That is why both of them are dressed in gray, to emphasize their lack of earthly individuality. The dance is a visual representation of how the “swapping of places” occurs. Both of them are wearing hakamas, a traditional Japanese garment worn by samurais, a detail which emphasizes through the garment’s symbolism that the pact is official.

In my view, the deal with God is already made, and the video shows not only the symbiosis between the two but also her confusion and fear when she’s swept away by the current of her and his potentialities getting ready for incarnation. By that moment she doesn’t know who she is. She can’t recognize herself in her energy, represented by the extras that wear masks of her and neither in his energy, represented by the men wearing masks of Hervieu”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Katre Bush shot for The Ninth Wave (the conceptual suite on the second side of 1985’s Hounds of Love)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

One cannot escape a certain divinity and spirituality running through The Ninth Wave. I always think of that suite as less about human survival and strength and this being more like a woman experiencing death and a rebirth: “Kate Bush experiences a death and rebirth, though hers is in the water. According to Carl Jung, water symbolizes the subconscious mind into which one must descend before aspiring to the heights of enlightenment. In dreams, the conscious mind fights the pull of water, just as Bush does. Like the subjects of Jung's analysis who though "spirit" comes from above, Bush is disturbed to be in the midst of the water, "the fluid of the instinct-driven body, blood and the flowing of blood, the odor of the beast, carnality heavy with passion." For Bush, the water is another vehicle for an introspective ordeal”. Maybe, and not in a corny way, Bush’s greatest intrigue is other people. Faith in other people. The human spirit. Whilst Bush does look beyond our world and one can summon fairies, ghosts, spirits and mythical beasts, one of her greatest strengths is empathy and compassion. Not only a positive writer who promotes the joys and understanding of people. Such empathy and love. The more I have been researching around Kate Bush, religion and spirituality, the more I realise how positive that aspect is. When Martin Glover (Youth) saw Bush during her Before the Dawn residency in 2014, he made some interesting observations. Glover played on Hounds of Love and is Bush’s friend. He wrote about her Shivaism, Dionysian and Druid philosophy:

“Opening with Lily was a clue …This song lyrically is an explicit magical ceremony, a literal invocation/initiation, in the style of the Rosicurician Orders, à la the Golden Dawn school of the western magical tradition. “Gabriel is before me, Raphael behind me ….. In the circle of fire”.

This is key to understanding Kate. She has her own cult, her own mystery school tradition. Her unique strand of Shivaism, Dionysian and Druid philosophy, loosely wrapped up in a song and dance tradition. It’s part magical realism, overt nature spirituality and art house ….( Hard to pull off in cynical, post modern narcissistic Britain).

She not only pulled that rabbit out of that hat but also managed to convert each and every one of us to her own personal church of the big sky….a church whose priests are owls, ravens, trees and clouds.
When asked once who her favourite singers were, she replied “Nightingale, Blackbird and Thrush” There is a barrenness in religions today, whether in Christianity, Islam or false prophet new age gurus, humanity is rudderless, bedazzled by materialism. Kate’s communion with nature is the antidote, it is a call to joy, a celebration of the sublime ….it’s about the intoxication of love and the ecstasy that follows… is where wisdom lies, hidden deep within its mystical and poetic roots.

Kate’s “Religion” is the tiny spark of light that defeats the dark forces that seek dominion over the natural world, it’s tooth and claw and blood on the floor …She exemplifies English pagan beauty. A dark timelessness and stillness surrounds her wild abandonment, whilst her voice charges at you like Boudicca returned, riding a golden chariot of weird melody, harmony and bitter dissonance.

Shape shifting her artistry, she played with archetypes. She can access our primordial memory, when we were fish and birds. Her voice, a vehicle for multiple characters. She invokes the triple goddess. Athena, virginal, sensual innocence. Aphrodite, loaded with sexual power or Nimue, motherly, nurturing and “oh so tender ” and finally the Hag, Raven seer.Hecate, Queen of the witches, the dark half of the moon. Terrifying Kali the Crone or Macha in a frenzy, unleashing the furies upon us. All this choreographed into one ritualised, magical, shock and awe vision of an imagined future, all in one performance…..Very elemental, light and shade, earth and fire”.

When promoting Director’s Cut in 2011, Bush spoke with Sinéad Gleeson for the Irish Times. A promotional image of her dressed in what looked like a Tibetan dress and necklace (see the first image in this feature). Maybe a nod to Buddhism. When Bush visited Japan in June 1978, she was seen “attending a Shinto shrine and (apparently) conducting herself with characteristic etiquette”. There is a whole chapter to be written about Bush’s connection to or reference of various faiths and cultures. Her Roman Catholic faith (whether lapsed or strong) and how a sense of spiritual curiosity sets her aside from other artists. Religion and spirituality can be heard through her early work. On Symphony in Blue from 1978’s Lionheart: “When that feeling of meaninglessness sets in/Go blowing my mind on God/The light in the dark, with the neon arms”. Bush’s music has refers to purgatory, Heaven and Hell. She has also incorporated biblical references into some of her songs. I love the more unusual aspects of Bush’s music. How Waking the Witch (from Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave) is about Bush's interest in witch hunting and how she believes the practice is rooted in sexism. Bush’s love of all faiths and people. How substantial Tibetan themes can be heard on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. Bush posted a note to her website in November 2011 for the Tibetan people. A non-political artist, Bush’s exploration of various faiths and spiritual alternatives always intrigues me. It makes her music so much richer and wide-reaching. Someone whose faith and compassion for people is matched by her respect for various religions and practices. I will leave things there. A side of Bush’s character and writing that I have been thinking about a lot recently, I do hope someone writes more fully (and authoritatively) than me when it comes to Kate Bush and spirituality. Religion and faith through her music. Going beyond those realms and investigating the paranormal and mythical. Someone whose mind is open to the inexplicable or unexplained. Rooted in all of this is her compassion for people. A fascination of humans. A big reason why Bush is so loved and revered. It is not a coincidence that her most-streamed song, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), is about this burning desire to do a deal with a deity. If two lovers/people could swap places or be in each other’s shoes, they would have a better understanding. It goes beyond that and speaks to people in general. More tolerance and understanding. So many examples of Bush searching for harmony, connection and empathy through her music. And when it comes to experiences, that is…

ONE worth having!

FEATURE: Feels So Different: Sinéad O'Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Feels So Different

Sinéad O'Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got at Thirty-Five

_________

FOR this feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: Sinead O'Connor performs on Saturday Night Live on 29th September, 1990/PHOTO CREDIT: Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images

I am marking the upcoming thirty-fifth anniversary of the late Sinéad O'Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. The second studio album from the Irish icon, it was released on 20th March, 1990. The album was nominated for four GRAMMY awards in 1991, including Record of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Music Video, Short Form for Nothing Compares 2 U. I want to get to some reviews and retrospective features about this phenomenal album. I am starting out with this feature from 2023 that states, on her second studio album, Sinéad O'Connor communicated the truth:

“When Sinéad O’Connor released her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, in 1990, I was 15. Although too young to really understand it, the album was unlike anything I had ever heard.

Her death on July 26 at 56 brought back those early first impressions. As a teen, this album felt shocking. It left an indelible mark on how I perceived music. Through her voice, I found music could be much more than about love, hate, and relationships strewn across sets of lyrics, a bridge and a chorus. O’Connor was trying to actually say something. What it was I wasn’t sure, but I knew enough to realize she was misunderstood, that her basic freedoms and rights were under attack. Singing was how she communicated her feelings. Her courage in creating such an honest and personal album taught me that it’s OK to speak up even when you think no one is listening, even when others don’t agree.

After years of listening to a broad cross-section of radio hits—groups like Tears For Fears, Wham!, the Pet Shop Boys, Phil Collins, the Beatles; female pop artists like Janet Jackson, Blondie, and Madonna, and “alternative” music like the Clash—O’Connor intrigued me. I was enthralled by her vocals on “I Want Your (Hands On Me)” and the acrobatic way she skewed and bent her words.

She was nothing like her female contemporaries on MTV who were splashed across Teen Beat magazine. Cyndi Lauper was kitschy and colorful and fun. Madonna courted controversy, yes, but made infectious dance and pop hits channeled through provocative images based on sexual desires. Stevie Nicks seemed surrounded by a mystical shroud, while Joan Jett was just one of the guys.

O’Connor shaved her head and wore plain, drab clothes. When she performed, she gesticulated wildly as if possessed. She was not a material girl at all. I needed to know more.

The opening track of I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, “Feel So Different,” set the tone and established her unique, bold style and unabashedly laid out powerful convictions. When I heard her bare voice set against the swirling strings of an orchestra on the opener, I never felt so alone. O’Connor stretched out words like “so” and “different” until hearing it became nearly uncomfortable. Whatever she was going through, it was massive.

As I listened, I began to understand how these songs were highly provocative for the time as well as steeped in Ireland’s history. “I Am Stretched On Your Grave” is based off a 17th century Irish poem “Táim sínte ar do thuama” from this compilation; in the passage “From the Cold Sod That’s O’er You,” the writer never “severs” from the dirt that lays over their loved one. The mental image of a secret tryst over a grave was jarring. Even more so was using a James Brown sample from “Funky Drummer.” The slowed drum pattern enshrouds the song in a darkness and a depth that threatened to bury whoever was singing. As the rain and wind weathered her body away, she stayed. Unearthly collisions of drums and clanging get louder and more insistent, as her body wears down to the bone. The last measures collide noisily with a riot of strings—chaotic and powerful, it goes on endlessly, then is silent.

Conversely, Sinéad O’Connor also created simplicity and quiet on this album. She strummed chords so that every string was heard, and used precious space to let her words breathe and take new shape. It was chilling. She sounded beautiful and ugly and raw at the same time. She whispered words, and sang them as loud as she could. “You Cause As Much Sorrow,” has a melancholic melody with piano and softly plucked acoustic notes that was only slightly brighter than the tone on “Stretched,” but which still left the protagonist tortured.

In “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance,” O’Connor talks in clinical tones about severing ties in a divorce. The tension spills over and explodes into the chorus that echoes, “I’ll talk but you won’t listen to me / I know your answer already.” It shattered me. Now as a mother, I understand “Three Babies” more fully than I did as a clueless teenager. Saying you’ll lay down your life for your child isn’t an outrageous statement—that’s just your job. But singing about gathering your energy from inside, refusing basic nutrients, it sounded radical at first. The song’s meaning remains unclear. The babies’ “cold bodies” hint at miscarriage. Maybe she’s unable to let them rest. These babies were ripped from her for unknown reasons—because the subject was being violent, or was protesting something, and was maybe called a “bad mother.” Much of the lyrics are sung in first person, so it’s difficult to separate the singer from the unknown person in the song. Her first son, Jake, was still quite young when the album was released, and she later had custody battles of her own. Last year, her son, Shane, 17, ended his life, and O’Connor was devastated.

“Nothing Compares 2 U,” penned by Prince, was a worldwide success, but I was more interested in the tunes with global messages that revealed her social activism. On “Black Boys on Mopeds” she unapologetically took her critique to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She shattered the image of a proper and good England and replaced it with the reality: that its underlying culture was draped in racism and deceit. She was well aware she would face opposition for stating her beliefs. Her lyrics proved eerily telling: “These are dangerous days / To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.”

On the a cappella title track, she carefully and measured out every whispered word upon a quiet canvas. Walking through an arid hell to reach some enlightenment, she imagines an ocean and a bird. When she discovers the bird is her, it turns worn and faded. But O’Connor is not deterred. “I am not frightened although it’s hot / I have all that I requested / And I do not want what I haven’t got,” O’Connor says plainly.

O’Connor’s death, days before that of Paul Reubens, another misunderstood “outcast” who is being remembered for his unique style of comedy and love for life, is a reminder that the people we should treasure most are sometimes treated the worst.

Sinéad O’Connor bared her soul to us, yet we’ll never really know her pain. Thank you, Sinéad, for the beautiful music you gave us”.

I am going come to this 2020 feature from Albumism. They celebrated thirty years of I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. It is sad that she cannot see people’s reaction to this album now. O’Connor died in 2023. She left us with one of the most distinct and extraordinary bodies of work in music history:

“There are moments in history that will forever remain unforgettable, no matter the age or generation. Moments that shape an era, a genre or a decade. In January of 1990, an Irish singer by the name of Sinéad O’Connor released a cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 You,” a song deeply rooted in emotion and despair which would go on to certify O’Connor and that song as one of music history’s most unforgettable moments.

O’Connor’s second album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got was not only home to the aforementioned cover, but it also saw a shift in the singer’s attitude. The torment that prevailed on her debut, 1987’s The Lion And The Cobra, was still there. But like all things, O’Connor’s maturity started to come through on this album, giving way to a kind of hopefulness, rather than outright anger.

Listening to this album again is a walk down memory lane, but also a reminder of the depth and beauty in O’Connor’s music. Whilst this album’s breakout star most certainly was “Nothing Compares 2 You,” it may also be the standard that O’Connor never truly surpassed again on any other subsequent album. The simplicity of the video, which featured O’Connor with her trademarked shaved head, allowed for not only the singer’s beauty to be placed firmly in the spotlight, but more importantly, the emotion that O’Connor conveyed with an unabashed rawness was placed front and center. Very few have been able to achieve this since.

Moving away from the album’s standout hit and it is clear to see that O’Connor’s foot is firmly set in mostly folky types of tracks that make her voice the primary focus of each and every song. The album’s opener is the prayer-like “Feel So Different,” submerged in an initial spoken strength (The Serenity Prayer) that plays on the fact that this could easily be for an old flame, but could equally be an approach to questioning a higher power, something O’Connor has never shied away from.

O’Connor’s approach to religion has been well documented over the years, but as the singer herself stated in a recent interview with Tommy Tiernan, “I have always been interested in theology since I was a kid, because we all grew up in this theocracy and I wanted to know what was this book they were using to oppress my Granny.” O’Connor isn’t afraid to go deep with spirituality, and with this sense of curiosity comes a crossover effect that permeates into and throughout her music. I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got is living proof that just having a great song won’t cut it—the subject matter will always be the core that resonates with people.

At its core, there is no denying that this album is about loss and the conflict associated with love lost and the possibility of conflict with a higher power, whatever that higher power may be —the government, society and yes, even God. The album’s second song “I Am Stretched Out On Your Grave” is a 17th century Irish poem translated to English and covered by O’Connor with an old school hip-hop base that works beautifully with her vocals on this grief-stricken track. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” shows a conviction that is part anger and part middle finger to the never-ending judgement the singer faced at the time with her star sky rocketing, scrutiny around her Catholic faith, and her role as a newly single mother.

Politics play a part on this album too, with the song “Black Boys on Mopeds” taking a firm swipe at the Thatcher government as well as the death of a black youth at the hands of the police. A strong reminder that although this album was released in 1990, the conversations that were had then seem to be ones that we are still talking about today. O’Connor’s personal struggles extend far beyond her broken heart and she wasn’t afraid to step into the harsh reality of a world that may not have affected her directly, but most definitely surrounded her as evidenced in this song.

It is no secret that O’Connor’s struggles with mental health and controversies surrounding her relationship with religion have sometimes been at the forefront of her public image, as opposed to her music. But sensationalism aside, O’Connor was—and still is—a woman who was unafraid to sit in front of the world and bare her soul. I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got serves as a reminder of O’Connor’s brilliance, expecting nothing more in return other than to listen and question what didn’t or possibly doesn’t feel right.

On the album’s closing title track, O’Connor speaks with a gentle wisdom, reflecting, “I have water for my journey / I have bread and I have wine / No longer will I be hungry / For the bread of life is mine.” Whilst redemption radiates throughout this song and some may say, most of the album, O’Connor managed to deliver an incredible follow-up that extended her curiosity into the unknown with a fearlessness and honesty that has rarely been matched since.

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got remains a compelling document of a true talent that paved the way toward introspection for other artists to follow, while ensuring her legacy as a singer-songwriter committed to laying things out for all to see, uncomfortable as that may be sometimes”.

I am going to finish with a couple of reviews. AllMusic provided their take on Sinéad O'Connor's second studio album. Although there are different release dates provided online, I am pretty sure it was 20th March, 1990 that is was released (rather than 12th March). In any case, it is a monumentally powerful album that still takes me back and creates shivers:

“I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got became Sinéad O'Connor's popular breakthrough on the strength of the stunning Prince cover "Nothing Compares 2 U," which topped the pop charts for a month. But even its remarkable intimacy wasn't adequate preparation for the harrowing confessionals that composed the majority of the album. Informed by her stormy relationship with drummer John Reynolds, who fathered O'Connor's first child before the couple broke up, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got lays the singer's psyche startlingly and sometimes uncomfortably bare. The songs mostly address relationships with parents, children, and (especially) lovers, through which O'Connor weaves a stubborn refusal to be defined by anyone but herself. In fact, the album is almost too personal and cathartic to draw the listener in close, since O'Connor projects such turmoil and offers such specific detail. Her confrontational openness makes it easy to overlook O'Connor's musical versatility. Granted, not all of the music is as brilliantly audacious as "I Am Stretched on Your Grave," which marries a Frank O'Connor poem to eerie Celtic melodies and a James Brown "Funky Drummer" sample. But the album plays like a tour de force in its demonstration of everything O'Connor can do: dramatic orchestral ballads, intimate confessionals, catchy pop/rock, driving guitar rock, and protest folk, not to mention the nearly six-minute a cappella title track. What's consistent throughout is the frighteningly strong emotion O'Connor brings to bear on the material, while remaining sensitive to each piece's individual demands. Aside from being a brilliant album in its own right, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got foreshadowed the rise of deeply introspective female singer/songwriters like Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan, who were more traditionally feminine and connected with a wider audience. Which takes nothing away from anyone; if anything, it's evidence that, when on top of her game, O'Connor was a singular talent”.

I am going to end with this review from SLANT. Without doubt one of the best albums of the 1990s, I would encourage anyone who has not heard this album in a while to listen to. Ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary on 20th March. O’Connor would follow her second studio album with 1992’s Am I Not Your Girl? It is an album that got some negative press. A collection of covers, it is very different from I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got:

“I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got found Sinéad O’Connor bruised but determined, disappointed yet hopeful. The cause was a combination of burgeoning fame and a nasty breakup (with John Reynolds, drummer and father of O’Connor’s son), and the result was one of the most politically, socially, and spiritually charged breakup albums of the ’90s, if not the entire 20th century.

The album opens with the gorgeous orchestral pop of “Feel So Different,” a meditation on said fame and relationship: “I am not like I was before/I thought that nothing would change me.” O’Connor’s relationship woes are invariably linked to her career, and her breakup with Reynolds is likened to a business transaction on the stunning “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance.” Anger, sadness, relief, and despondency are simultaneously bundled up in O’Connor’s voice on these two tracks, as it is throughout most of the album. Her voice is flawless in its technical imperfections; she begins each song delicately but ultimately erupts with the ferociousness of a punk.

The singer’s greatest vocal achievement is perhaps her interpretation of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a classic torch song she quite simply owns. While it’s the only track on which O’Connor received production assistance (Nellee Hooper gives the song a minimalist yet modern appeal), it sits comfortably among songs like the hip-hop-beats-meet-Celtic-melodies of “I Am Stretched on Your Grave,” and the acoustic protest-folk of “Black Boys on Mopeds” (on which O’Connor’s lyrics now sound prophetic, both personally and politically: “These are dangerous days/To say what you feel is to dig your own grave”).

Throughout the album, O’Connor struggles with these personal tribulations amid the oppression of the world around her: “I will live by my own policies/I will sleep with a clear conscience,” she sings on “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The disc ends even more sparely than it begins; the a cappella title track brings the singer back to a place of prayer and hopeful redemption, but whether it’s God or a lover she seeks on her “journey,” this is clearly the voice of someone who will never stop searching”.

Three years after the release of her magnificent debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, Sinéad O'Connor released another original and personal masterpiece. Her death has left a huge void in music. However, we can remember her through her work. An album like I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. Every time I listen to it I am moved and in awe. What a brilliant and fearless artist Sinéad O'Connor was. It is clear she will never be forgotten! She was at her peak on her…

ASTONISHING second studio album.

FEATURE: Heading Through the Morning Fog: Ranking Kate Bush’s Penultimate and Final Track Combinations

FEATURE:

 

 

Heading Through the Morning Fog

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980

Ranking Kate Bush’s Penultimate and Final Track Combinations

_________

IN terms of Kate Bush’s…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot for Q magazine in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: John Stoddart

albums and dissecting them, I have produced a few features around them. In terms of track order. I have ranked her best album openers. I have also looked at the final tracks. One feature ranked the best first side closers and second side openers. That important combination. In terms of combinations, I have not yet looked at the one-two of the penultimate and closing track. I don’t think there is any other pairing I can look at, so this might be one of the last types of features like this I’ll put out. It is important to leave the listener on a high. Closing an album in style. Kate Bush is brilliant when it comes to sequencing. However, as mentioned in similar features, some albums are better sequenced than overs. Making sure the opening couple of tracks are brilliant. A strong middle and a wonderful final couple of songs. I am focusing on that latter partnership. Ten studio albums to rank. Which one has the best final two tracks. There is tough competition! I am not only taking into consideration the quality of the tracks but how they fit together and the impact they make. Many might disagree with my rankings. However, there is my opinion of which Kate Bush albums have the best…

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

PENULTIMATE and final tracks.

_______________

TEN: The Red Shoes (1993): Why Should I Love You?/You’re the One

“Bush was in a strange place when she met the Purple One. Her close friend and guitarist Alan Murphy had just died of AIDS-related pneumonia, she was going through the motions of a relationship breakdown, and was teetering on the cusp of a break from music, which, when it came, would actually last for 12 years. Prince, on the other hand, was going through one of his many spiritual rebirths. He had just emerged from the murky shadows of The Black Album, a creation he withdrew a week after release because he was convinced it was an evil, omnipotent force. He vaulted out of that hole, into a period of making music that was upbeat, pop-tinged and pumped up. In essence, the two artists’ headspaces could not really have been in more opposite places; Prince, artistically baptised and ready to change the world, and Kate Bush, surrounded by a fog of melancholia and disarray.

Prince had been a huge Kate Bush admirer for years. In emails exchanged in 1995 between Prince’s then-engineer Michael Koppelman and Bush’s then-engineer Del Palmer, Koppelman says that Prince described her as his “favourite woman”. But despite both artists being active since the 70s, it wasn’t until 1990 that they actually met in real life. Bush attended a Prince gig at Wembley during his monumental Nude Tour, asked to meet him backstage, and the rest is God-like genius collaboration history.

Perhaps it was the sheer distance between their headspaces at the time that led to what happened. Bush asked Prince to contribute a few background vocals to a song called “Why Should I Love You”, which she had just recorded in full at Abbey Road Studios. But when Prince received the track, he ignored the intructions and dismantled the entire thing like a crazed mechanic taking apart old cars on his backyard. He wanted to inject himself into the very heart of it, weaving his sound amongst her sound, giving it a new soul entirely. As Koppelman explains, “We essentially created a new song on a new piece of tape and then flew all of Kate’s tracks back on top of it… Prince stacked a bunch of keys, guitars, bass, etc, on it, and then went to sing background vocals.”

Despite being the lovechild of two of humanity’s greatest music minds, the resulting track is not often mentioned on your average BBC3 pop retrospective presented by Lauren Laverne. It’s startlingly brilliant, with sometimes bizarre, musical depths. It begins as a typical Kate Bush creation; her stratospheric vocals rising across a strange organ melody and tumbling drums. But then, about a minute through, it mutates like an unstable element being dropped into boiling water. Prince invades in a huge wave of gospel sound, the pair singing in unison: “Of all of people in the world, why should I love you?” By the time it reaches the 2-minute mark, it has been completely permeated with that Paisley Park flavour; smatters of electric guitar and rich walls of vocals spilling over its borders. The purple sound arrives like a tsunami, seemingly too vivid to suppress” – VICE

“It’s alright I’ll come ’round when you’re not in
And I’ll pick up all my things
Everything I have I bought with you
But that’s alright too
It’s just everything I do
We did together
And there’s a little piece of you
In whatever
I’ve got everything I need
I’ve got petrol in the car
I’ve got some money with me
There’s just one problem

You’re the only one I want
You’re the only one I want
You’re the only one I want
You’re the only one I want

It’s alright I know where I’m going
I’m going to stay with my friend
Mmm, yes, he is very good looking
The only trouble is

He’s not you
He can’t do what you do
He can’t make me laugh and cry
At the same time
Let’s change things
Let’s danger it up
We’re crazy enough
I just can’t take it

You’re the only one I want
You’re the only one I want
You’re the only one I want
You’re the only one I want

I know where I’m going
But I don’t want to leave
I just have one problem
We’re best friends, yeah?
We tied ourselves in knots
Doing cartwheels ‘cross the floor
Just forget it alright

Sugar?…
Honey?…
Sugar?…

Credits

Drums: Stuart Elliott
Bass: John Giblin
Guitar: Jeff Beck
Hammond: Gary Brooker
Vocals: Trio Bulgarka
Fender Rhodes, keyboards: Kate” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

NINE: Director’s Cut (2011): And So Is Love/Rubberband Girl

“Versions

There are two versions of ‘And So Is Love’: the album version from 1993, and the version from Bush’s album Director’s Cut in 2011, on which the key lyric ‘But now we see that life is sad’ is changed to ‘But now we see that life is sweet’.

Music video

The music video for ‘And So Is Love’ was also used in the movie The Line, The Cross and The Curve and features Kate singing the song in a dark room lit only by a candle.

Performances

After the release of the single, it climbed to number 26 in the UK singles chart. The chart entry marked Bush’s first appearance on the chart show Top Of The Pops in nine years. It was a straightforward performance with Kate lipsynching the song in front of the studio audience with two female backing singers by her side” - Kate Bush Encyclopedia

“When Kate returned in 1993, reviews of the lead single of The Red Shoes were positive but not ecstatic.

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

“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 – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

EIGHT: The Sensual World (1989): Rocket’s Tail/This Woman’s Work

“Rock music was really in some state of transition at the time, even though Kate seems always to have functioned on some outer edge wherein the rules did not apply. So many tracks on this album stand out, and it feels like the very personification of Autumn to me.

“Never Be Mine” is filled with the bittersweet yearning of “they’re setting fire to the corn fields as you’re taking me home” which resolves with “the smell of burning fields will now mean you and here/and this is where I want to be, this is what I need/but I know that this will never be mine.” Beautiful and sad. Fall is the time when we put the past to bed and settle in for winter’s nap, or at least a nice cup of tea by the fire. This album is glorious, and is heard to best effect this time of year.

My favorite track from the album is “Rocket’s Tail” for many reasons, but it sets itself indubitably in a particular time by announcing it happened one November night from the very first line. The track opens with the sinuous harmonies of Trio Bulgarka. The ethereal beauty of Kate’s voice threads nicely through the confounding tones of the Bulgarian voices, to magnificent effect.

That November night, looking up into the sky
You said hey wish that was me up there
It's the biggest rocket I could find
And it's holding the night in its arms
If for only a moment
I can't see the look in its eyes
But I'm sure it must be laughing

I once heard that Rocket was Kate’s cat, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s such a pretty story. I mean, it MUST be true, right? Anyone who’s seen cat zoomies can attest that they’d shoot across the sky like a meteor if they could, and who better than a cat can demonstrate a tail on fire?

But it seemed to me the saddest thing I'd ever seen
And I thought you were crazy wishing such a thing

I saw only a stick on fire
Alone on its journey
Home to the quickening ground
With no one there to catch it

The poignance of this set of lines blew me away, that where the intrepid cat saw excitement and adventure and the sheer thrill of adrenaline-inducing hijinks, the speaker would see isolation in the vast chill of space.

Oh, but then she joins in the fun:

I put on my pointed hat
And my black and silver suit
And I check my gunpowder pack
And I strap the stick on my back
And dressed as a rocket on Waterloo Bridge
Nobody seemed to see me

Nutty lady on London’s Waterloo Bridge making like a bottle rocket? I’m down with this. Can I play, too?

Then with the fuse in my hand
And now shooting into the night

A fretless bass has wound through the proceedings at this point. He is not credited on this track, but I feel this can only be Mick Karn, who played on another track on the the album whence this track originates. Superb. Mick Karn was pure magic. Gone far too soon. Just like him to blend into the shadows and let his music coil through the dance.

And still as a rocket
I land in the river
Was it me said you were crazy?

And then we get the full glory that can only be the guitar of David Gilmour. How did this thing go from glorious to impossibly wonderful? Yes. Just like this.

I put on my cloudiest suit
Size five lightning boots too
'Cause I am a rocket
On fire
Look at me go with my tail on fire
Tail on fire
On fire

Between the otherworldly vocals and the stratospheric squealings of David Gilmour's guitar, this track is one for the sci-fi ages. We’re imagining ourselves elsewhere. We’re dreaming and we’re reaching. If we aspire to take the night in our arms, who is there to stop us?” – Raconteur Press

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

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

SEVEN: The Kick Inside (1978): Room for the Life/The Kick Inside

“Room for the Life” is that rare thing in Kate Bush’s early discography: a song presenting a dialogue between two women. You’d think this would be particularly refreshing, but there’s something odd about “Room for the Life”: nobody ever talks about it. That’s not to say there’s not a single person in the world who doesn’t enjoy the song — it’d be astonishing if in the four decades since The Kick Inside was released nobody had liked “Room for the Life.” But the song is hindered by the fact it’s not any good. It’s easily the worst track on The Kick Inside: ham-fisted, embarrassing, and just plain forgettable.

Musically, “Room for the Life” is a trainwreck. Its verse blends into the rest of The Kick Inside, offering little in the way of standing out, and the chorus does little to liven up the song, with its tepid use of beer bottles as an instrument only succeeding in making the track sound flaccid. The worst comes at the end of the chorus, with Bush chiming “mama woman aha!” obnoxiously. This culminates in the song’s outro, with Bush imitating… what is she doing here exactly? Percussionist Morris Pert’s boo-bams (a kind of bongos) bring a light world music flavor to it, amplified by Bush’s grating “OO-AH”s. It’s one of the most tasteless moments on an otherwise sophisticated record, and releasing a track like this instead of “Frightened Eyes” is a downright baffling move on Bush’s part.

In addition to its musical tastelessness, “Room for the Life” is out of touch. Bush has identified herself with male artists, admitting that a lack of interesting female songwriters was the reason (she cites Joni Mitchell, Billie Holliday, and Joan Armatrading as exceptions). When she writes about two female characters in “Room,” things fall apart (this isn’t always the case — my favorite Kate Bush song is a woman-centered dialogue, as we’ll see). The song is addressed from one woman to another, telling of the magical power of women, expressed as a singularity with the oddly agrammatical phrase “because we’re woman.” It’s an oddly naïve little song, and one with strange conclusions on how to be a woman. “Lost in your men and the games you play/trying to prove that you’re better woman,” Bush chides her friend. How dare she try to get ahead of men. The audacity of it” – Dreams of Orgonon

“The song The Kick Inside, the title track, was inspired by a traditional folk song and it was an area that I wanted to explore because it’s one that is really untouched and that is one of incest. There are so many songs about love, but they are always on such an obvious level. This song is about a brother and a sister who are in love, and the sister becomes pregnant by her brother. And because it is so taboo and unheard of, she kills herself in order to preserve her brother’s name in the family. The actual song is in fact the suicide note. The sister is saying ‘I’m doing it for you’ and ‘Don’t worry, I’ll come back to you someday.’ - Self Portrait, 1978

That’s inspired by an old traditional song called ‘Lucy Wan.’ It’s about a young girl and her brother who fall desperately in love. It’s an incredibly taboo thing. She becomes pregnant by her brother and it’s completely against all morals. She doesn’t want him to be hurt, she doesn’t want her family to be ashamed or disgusted, so she kills herself. The song is a suicide note. She says to her brother, ‘Don’t worry. I’m doing it for you.’- Jon Young, Kate Bush gets her kicks. Trouser Press, July 1978” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

SIX: Lionheart (1978): Coffee Homeground/Hammer Horror

“[‘Coffee Homeground’] was in fact inspired directly from a cab driver that I met who was in fact a bit nutty. And it’s just a song about someone who thinks they’re being poisoned by another person, they think that there’s Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it’s got poisen in it. And it’s just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of German [vibe] to try and bring across the humour side of it - Lionheart Promo Cassette, EMI Canada, 1978” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

“Resultingly, Bush’s engagement with Epic Theater is a purely audible one. “Homeground” owes more to Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya than it does to Brecht, as it’s their sound Bush pillages. Bush’s trill becomes a half-spoken warble as she strives to sound like Lenya for a track. It’s not a bad impression — sure, it sounds nothing like Lenya’s voice, but Bush doesn’t do the worst job of imitating her speech patterns. Musically, the strongest resemblance to Brecht and Weill’s work here is the morbid subject matter applied to carnivalesque scoring. The melody contains huge leaps and never sounds quite the same, as the intro and bridge repeat essentially the same phrase in a different key every time they appear. There are little discordant details such as the use of the non existent #VII chord of B flat (A), which doesn’t appear in B flat major or B flat minor. The pre-chorus will make a play at being in A before transforming into some mode of B (possibly mixolydian, or anything with a flattened seventh). Even if “Homeground” lacks conceptual clarity, it’s far from banal.

The decrepit house of “Homeground” is as much a stage for the song itself as it is for Bush. In a period where she’s torn between the obligations of touring and her desire to give her songs the time they need, “Coffee Homeground” is the sort of song Kate Bush is bound to produce. Her shortcomings and her ambition clash violently, and the result is as fascinating and vexed as anything she’s ever made. This has been a challenging period for Bush, and as we’ll see in the next two weeks, it’s about to climax” – Dreams of Orgonon

“The song is not about, as many think, Hammer Horror films. It is about an actor and his friend. His friend is playing the lead in a production ofThe Hunchback of Notre Dame,a part he’s been reading all his life, waiting for the chance to play it. He’s finally got the big break he’s always wanted, and he is the star. After many rehearsals he dies accidentally, and the friend is asked to take the role over, which, because his own career is at stake, he does. The dead man comes back to haunt him because he doesn’t want him to have the part, believing he’s taken away the only chance he ever wanted in life. And the actor is saying, “Leave me alone, because it wasn’t my fault – I have to take this part, but I’m wondering if it’s the right thing to do because the ghost is not going to leave me alone and is really freaking me out. Every time I look round a corner he’s there, he never disappears.”

The song was inspired by seeing James Cagney playing the part of Lon Chaney playing the hunchback – he was an actor in an actor in an actor, rather like Chinese boxes, and that’s what I was trying to create - Kate Bush Club Newsletter, November 1979” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

FIVE: Aerial (2005): Nocturn/Aerial

“For instance, the lyrics of Nocturn is a beautiful description of awakening to – or at least intuiting – Big Mind. God as all and ourselves as That.

Interpreting can only detract from it, but here is a go at it…

Nocturn

On this Midsummer night
Everyone is sleeping
We go driving into the moonlight

Could be in a dream
Our clothes are on the beach
These prints of our feet
Lead right up to the sea
No one, no one is here
No one, no one is here
We stand in the Atlantic
We become panoramic

No one is here – this probably means that there were no others there, but can also be seen as the realization that there is no “I” – there is no one here. I am gone, and there is only God. We become panoramic – the world world is within us.

We tire of the city
We tire of it all
We long for just that something more

Yes, a longing for discovering our true nature. As that which is, with no “I” anywhere. As consciousness and all its manifestations.

Could be in a dream
Our clothes are on the beach
The prints of our feet
Lead right up to the sea
No one, no one is here
No one, no one is here
We stand in the Atlantic
We become panoramic

The stars are caught in our hair
The stars are on our fingers
A veil of diamond dust
Just reach up and touch it
The sky’s above our heads
The sea’s around our legs
In milky, silky water
We swim further and further

The universe happens within and as us, and the stars are caught in our hair and the stars are on our fingers. The can be seen as a beautiful expression of the play of the absolute and relative, as ourselves as Big Mind and a human self.

We dive down… We dive down

A diamond night, a diamond sea
and a diamond sky…

When the realization of no “I” pops, there is indeed a diamond quality to it all. It is brilliantly clear, stainless.

We dive deeper and deeper
we dive deeper and deeper
Could be we are here
Could be in a dream
It came up on the horizon
Rising and rising
In a sea of honey, a sky of honey
A sea of honey, a sky of honey

And here is the bliss that comes with an awakening. The sea and sky of honey that comes with the release from the previous contractions.

The chorus:
Look at the light, all the time it’s a changing
Look at the light, climbing up the aerial
Bright, white coming alive jumping off of the aerial
All the time it’s a changing, like now…
All the time it’s a changing, like then again…
All the time it’s a changing
And all the dreamers are waking

Finding ourselves as the ground, as that from and as the world of form arises, as emptiness dancing, we see clearly how the world of form is always changing. And there is no need to hold onto anything.

This is the dreamers waking. And each one of us is the dreamer waiting to awaken” – Absentofi

“The dawn has come
And the wine will run
And the song must be sung
And the flowers are melting
In the sun

I feel I want to be up on the roof
I feel I gotta get up on the roof
Up, up on the roof
Up, up on the roof

Oh the dawn has come
And the song must be sung
And the flowers are melting
What kind of language is this?

What kind of language is this?
I can’t hear a word you’re saying
Tell me what are you singing
In the sun

All of the birds are laughing
All of the birds are laughing
Come on let’s all join in
Come on let’s all join in

I want to be up on the roof
I’ve gotta be up on the roof
Up, up high on the roof
Up, up on the roof
In the sun

Credits

Drums: Steve Sanger
Bass: Del Palmer
Guitars: Dan McIntosh
Keyboards: Kate
Percussion: Bosco D’Oliveira” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

FOUR: 50 Words for Snow (2011): 50 Words for Snow/Among Angels 

“Years ago I think I must have heard this idea that there were 50 words for snow in this, ah, Eskimo Land! And I just thought it was such a great idea to have so many words about one thing. It is a myth – although, as you say it may hold true in a different language – but it was just a play on the idea, that if they had that many words for snow, did we? If you start actually thinking about snow in all of its forms you can imagine that there are an awful lot of words about it. Just in our immediate language we have words like hail, slush, sleet, settling… So this was a way to try and take it into a more imaginative world. And I really wanted Stephen to read this because I wanted to have someone who had an incredibly beautiful voice but also someone with a real sense of authority when he said things. So the idea was that the words would get progressively more silly really but even when they were silly there was this idea that they would have been important, to still carry weight. And I really, really wanted him to do it and it was fantastic that he could do it. (…) I just briefly explained to him the idea of the song, more or less what I said to you really. I just said it’s our idea of 50 Words For Snow. Stephen is a lovely man but he is also an extraordinary person and an incredible actor amongst his many other talents. So really it was just trying to get the right tone which was the only thing we had to work on. He just came into the studio and we just worked through the words. And he works very quickly because he’s such an able performer. (…) I think faloop’njoompoola is one of my favourites. [laughs]

John Doran, ‘A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed‘. The Quietus, 2011” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

“The title track is the highlight and possibly the most baffling piece of music to be heard all year. Stephen Fry is an unusual choice of guest as he intones 50 different synonyms for snow over a dense tribal backing. These terms for snow are mostly made up, and go from the beautiful (‘blackbird braille’), to the ridiculous (‘Boomerangablanca’). A lot of thought has clearly gone into these linguistic creations and a read of the lyric sheet is strongly recommended. It is an utterly bonkers piece but it encapsulates everything that is so unique and fascinating about Bush” – DIY

“Among Angels’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was originally released on her tenth studio album 50 Words For Snow in 2011.

Versions

There is only one studio version of this song.
A live version appears on the album Before The Dawn.

Performances

The song was performed live as the last encore on Kate’s Before The Dawn shows in London, 2014.

Cover versions

‘Among Angels’ was covered by Grimeland.

Lyrics

Only you can do something about it
There’s no-one there, my friend, any better
I might know what you mean when you say you fall apart
Aren’t we all the same? In and out of doubt
I can see angels standing around you
They shimmer like mirrors in Summer
But you don’t know it

And they will carry you o’er the walls
If you need us, just call
Rest your weary world in their hands
Lay your broken laugh at their feet
I can see angels around you
They shimmer like mirrors in summer
There’s someone who’s loved you forever but you don’t know it
You might feel it and just not show it” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

THREE: Hounds of Love (1985): Hello Earth/The Morning Fog 

“‘Hello Earth’ was a very difficult track to write, as well, because it was… in some ways it was too big for me. [Laughs] And I ended up with this song that had two huge great holes in the choruses, where the drums stopped, and everything stopped, and people would say to me, “what’s going to happen in these choruses,” and I hadn’t got a clue.

We had the whole song, it was all there, but these huge, great holes in the choruses. And I knew I wanted to put something in there, and I’d had this idea to put a vocal piece in there, that was like this traditional tune I’d heard used in the film Nosferatu. And really everything I came up with, it with was rubbish really compared to what this piece was saying. So we did some research to find out if it was possible to use it. And it was, so that’s what we did, we re-recorded the piece and I kind of made up words that sounded like what I could hear was happening on the original. And suddenly there was these beautiful voices in these chorus that had just been like two black holes.

In some ways I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth. And it was the idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from completely above. You know, that image of if you were lying in water at night and you were looking up at the sky all the time, I wonder if you wouldn’t get the sense of as the stars were reflected in the water, you know, a sense of like, you could be looking up at water that’s reflecting the stars from the sky that you’re in. And the idea of them looking down at the earth and seeing these storms forming over America and moving around the globe, and they have this like huge fantasticly overseeing view of everything, everything is in total perspective. And way, way down there somewhere there’s this little dot in the ocean that is them - Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

“Well, that’s really meant to be the rescue of the whole situation, where now suddenly out of all this darkness and weight comes light. You know, the weightiness is gone and here’s the morning, and it’s meant to feel very positive and bright and uplifting from the rest of dense, darkness of the previous track. And although it doesn’t say so, in my mind this was the song where they were rescued, where they get pulled out of the water. And it’s very much a song of seeing perspective, of really, you know, of being so grateful for everything that you have, that you’re never grateful of in ordinary life because you just abuse it totally. And it was also meant to be one of those kind of “thank you and goodnight” songs. You know, the little finale where everyone does a little dance and then the bow and then they leave the stage. [laughs] - Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992 – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

TWO: Never for Ever (1980): Army Dreamers/Breathing

“Since we’re used to Bush being asleep to political infrastructure and class, we can at least turn to her complex politics of domesticity. While she doesn’t interrogate the structural causes of political violence, she’s still centering a song around the vulnerable people whose lives are destroyed by it. Never for Ever is populated by mothers and wives. Five of its eleven songs explicitly focus on maternal and uxorial figures, and that’s if we don’t count the broadly familial “All We Ever Look For.” Bush’s wives and mothers tend towards fatigue over their familial roles, experiencing emotions that contradict their outward actions or social operations. Bush’s mothers are an intrinsic good whose absence or loss is a tragedy, and whose losses are a social catastrophe. Key to the mother’s characterization in “Army Dreamers” is absence. She bemoans not merely her lost son, but his lost opportunities and the things she couldn’t provide for him. “What a waste of army dreamers,” muses Bush, in a ritual mourning of military casualties, which treats them as a cessation of dreams.

Most impressive is the way “Army Dreamers” treats the mother as an individual while also stressing her importance to her family. Stripped of her duties to her son, she is left with no more motherhood to perform. This suggests that while war is horrible, the people who are left behind have their own experiences of it. Men get sent off to die, and the women they leave behind are expected to grieve dutifully. Yet they’re prescribed a performative kind of grief — the actual effects of trauma are widely besmirched and ignored by the jingoistic reactionaries who send civilians off to die. Women are usually seen as broken when their soldiers fail to come home — this isn’t quite what Bush does. Is the mother broken? No, of course not. Has she had a vital part of her life snatched from her? Utterly.

There’s a touch of sentimentalism to this, if at least a grounded and humanitarian one. Violent deaths are often devastating because they cut short the lives of unsuspecting civilians who’ve been planning to go live their lives as usual the next day. Bush’s anti-militarism is hardly strident, but “Army Dreamers” has an edge to it even in its understatedness, blaming the services of “B.F.P.O” for overseas tragedies (although interestingly, her son’s death appears to be an accident — there’s little fanfare of death, no suggestion of the glory of battle). The horror of the death is largely its silence — all the things that couldn’t happen, no matter how much saying them would make them so.

The politics of the situation are left understated, as is typical for Bush, and yet with a light inimical rage, as if Bush is finally turning to the British establishment and shouting “look at what you’ve done!” While “Army Dreamers” is far from an indictment of the military-industrial complex (indeed, it has more to do with the British Army’s consumption of Irish civilians than anything else), its highlighting of war as futile is striking. “Give the kid the pick of pips/and give him all your stripes and ribbons/now he’s sitting in his hole/he might as well have buttons and bows” is a line of understated condemnation that spits on military emblems (pips are a British Army insignia) and consolidates trenches and graves. “B. F. P. O.,,” intone Bush’s backing vocalists again and again. In interviews, Bush backpedals from any perceived anti-militarist sentiments in her work (“I’m not slagging off the army…”), but her song tells a different story: nothing comes with B. F. P. O. except carnage” – Dreams of Orgonon

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

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

ONE: The Dreaming (1982): Houdini/Get Out of My House

“Houdini” is the face of The Dreaming. It’s one of the only Bush sleeves where the image is supplied by the song. Its aspect, another creation of fraternal mainstay John Carder Bush, is a sepia photograph in medium closeup depicting a slightly agrestal Bush with her head tilted to the right, with her mouth open wide revealing a key on her tongue, which she passes to a faceless Del Palmer. This image derives from the lyrics of “Houdini,” which impart the fictionalized yet broadly historical experience of Bess Houdini, widow of premier escapologist Harry Houdini, who tries to contact her late husband through necromancy (“I wait at the table/hold hands with weeping strangers/wait for you/to join the group”). The relevant lyric “with a kiss I’d pass the key/and feel your tongue, teasing and receiving,” is unique among pop lyrics, as the overwhelming majority of them don’t contain idle recollections of Frenching a deceased spouse. It’s a bald-faced and ostentatiously move that flags how uninterested in notions of “normality” Bush is. 

This furthermore indicates the subversive narratology Bush is pursuing. It’s quite boldly literal in the Carder Bush photo, where Del Palmer’s face is turned away from the frame. There’s an occlusion of “great man” narratives to “Houdini.” It’s named after one of the 20th century’s great performers, but it’s largely defined by his absence. As a result, the story has to be about the widowed Bess and her grief. Impressively, “Houdini” avoids elegy for the accomplishments of a Great Man, opting instead for the love Bess Houdini bore for her husband and the ecstatically weird lengths she went to demonstrate that. 

The song is far from a stringent one. “Houdini” is fueled by anguished conniptions rather than melodic coherence. The verse initially sounds like “The Infant Kiss” or some other perfectly normal song with its piano balladry in Eb minor with a progression that finishes on a major tonic chord. It commences as a séance with mourners preparing to reach into the ether (“the tambourine jingle-jangles/the medium roams and rambles”). The refrain is the apex of Bush shrieks, culminating in a gravely, agonized “WITH YOUR LIFE/THE ONLY THING IN MY MIND/WE PULL YOU FROM THE WATER!” The result is hardly melodic — it’s willfully ugly, produced by Bush eating lots of chocolate and drinking milk to sabotage her own voice. Whether or not the experiment works, it doesn’t seem like Bush cares — she wants this to sound raw and ugly” – Dreams of Orgonon

“Uncertainty pervades “Get Out of My House,” The Dreaming’s brutal culmination. Catalyzed by its beleaguering yet urgent drumbeat and a lacerating lead guitar part from Alan Murphy, it is confrontational and purgative in its spectacular vocal menagerie, all in dialogue (often call-and-response) with one another yet seemingly not of an accord, as the bombastic and tremulous delivery of “when you left, the door was…” is answered by the siren-like, low-mixed B.V.’s crying “SLAMMING!” Adhering mostly to 4/4, “Get Out of My House” revolves through dizzying sequences of repetitive chord changes, with its first verse in G# melodic minor, confined to a progression of i-IV (G# minor – C#), moving to the natural minor in Verse Two with a progression of i-iv (G# minor – C # minor), signaling a domination of brutal repetition and minor keys without catharsis. With one of Bush’s most agonized vocals carrying the refrain (a genuinely harrowing and throaty “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”), the song emits agony, trauma, and expulsion.

***

The man who was my father often pontificated about his love for me. Shedding the crocodile tears of a consummate sentimentalist, he would frequently expatiate about how proud he was of me and what a good person I was. This would inevitably happen after he mocked me for my everyday behavior, berated me for having opinions contradictory to his own, treat himself as an authority talking down to a stupid and helpless buffoon, call me a prick, and shooting down pretty much every attempt I made to be my own person. Such is paternalism masquerading as parenting.

In the latter half of 2017, as I was inching away from the upbringing I’d endured and the boy I once was, I was bundled up in my then-father’s living room, watched The Shining for the fifth or seventh or tenth time. I was intimately familiar with the movie, but something felt different this time. I was emotionally attuned to the nuances of Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson’s performances that went beyond visual literacy. The scene that deeply impacted me this time around was Jack’s one scene alone with Danny. It is loveless, leering, and utterly terrifying. “You know I’d never hurt you, don’t you?” says Jack to the child whose arm he broke three years ago. It is not a question, but at once a lie and a threat. Jack clearly means “You’d BETTER know that.” I shuddered,  and for the first time I wept over a horror movie. In the tepid comfort of my sperm donor’s living room, Jack Nicholson’s sneered declaration of love struck intimately close to home.

***

Stanley Kubrick’s film version of The Shining touches on intergenerational abuse, trauma, systemic violence, and spatiotemporal dyschronia more than Stephen King’s novel does. While King labors under the delusion that his story is about a broken alcoholic’s tragic descent into madness, Kubrick’s film presents washed-up writer, domestic abuser, alcoholic, and axe murderer Jack Torrance as a capricious, mean-minded, narcissistic, mendacious, gaslighting bastard. While King has railed against Kubrick for bowdlerizing Jack’s humanity, Kubrick and Jack Nicholson in fact make Jack a more rounded character. While Stephen King’s idea of characterization is two-dimensional (consisting of a crucial flaw and a noble virtue), Kubrick and his actors sketch character in terms of behavior and small gestures that reveal the nature of the Torrances. As a result, Jack’s smug maliciousness in the film is more psychologically choate than his counterpart in the book” - Dreams of Orgonon

FEATURE: A Sea Full of Fish People: A Desire for a New Kate Bush Fanzine, Community or Website

FEATURE:

 

 

A Sea Full of Fish People

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993 during filming of The Line, the Cross and the Curve (wearing the same T-shirt she wore when signing copies of The Dreaming in 1982)/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

A Desire for a New Kate Bush Fanzine, Community or Website

_________

WHEN writing about Kate Bush…

through the years, I have thought about what it would be like if there was a fan club. It might seem outdated and something that would take a lot of money and time. However, as Kate Bush is growing in popularity and there is this new generation of fans, it does seem a shame that this connection exists only online. I know that people hold small Kate Bush events and there are websites dedicated to her. However, as her fan collective – Fish People is what I would name us – is so loving and has this shared bond with an amazing artist, there is a real opportunity to connect us in a direct way. I know there have not been any large fan conventions for years. Bush would not attend one herself, yet it would be nice if there was a gathering. Not to say there is an absence of togetherness and celebration. Tribute acts, tribute shows and special evens are held all year round. However, I do like the notion of naming the fanbase and returning to times past. There did used to be a Kate Bush fan club. A newsletter that she would contribute to. Today, Kate Bush contributes to her official website and posts updates. It is good that we get this interaction. However, I have been looking through a books that collected together old issues of HomeGround. That was the Kate Bush fanzine, It published its last edition in 2012. Not only are old editions a treasure trove of information, career highlights and writing about Kate Bush. I also think that they show how widespread the fanbase was. Today, it is as broad as ever. How wonderful it would be to have a monthly or even yearly fanzine. Fans could contribute writing. There could be news and features. I have mused about this before. Some would argue the cost of making it happen would not make it worth the effort. Fans could pay towards the publication. I do love when magazine articles feature Kate Bush. However, with such a loving and loyal fanbase, having us show that love and appreciation in a fanzine would be amazing. So many people would be on board.

Other than that, an official fan club would be something that could recruit an army of Fish People. Annual events and get-togethers. I am sure Kate Bush would be thrilled. It would be more than annual gatherings or some form of convention. Someone could head it up. There would be this base. A chance to expand things. If Kate Bush were not running it, there is a limitation in terms of instant or obvious benefits. Many fan clubs are designed so that fans gain exclusive information or merchandise about an artist. That could work for Kate Bush. Getting exclusives about her and any music developments. That would be so cool. Also, fan-designed clothing and goodies. Again, people could say it is nostalgia and not realty relevant in the current climate. How everything is digital. Many major artists have fanbases and fan clubs. There are Swifites for Taylor Swift. Kylie Minogue has her Lovers. As I have written before, Kate Bush has her unofficial Fish People. I have also been thinking about another website. There is Kate Bush’s official website, Gaffaweb and the Kate Bush Enclcyopedia. Most of it is archive. All useful information, though there is a lot of modern-day information and details that could be included. Bush’s official website has merchandise and news. Something fresh that collates everything together. All the archives, videos, albums, merchandise, plus a tonne of other stuff. The essential site that fans could contribute to. There is a lot of new love and interest in Kate Bush. This will continue for years. It would be fitting to pay tribute to that somehow. Rather than is being divided online and there being this small pockets of fandom. Events that are quite small. I am thinking wider and larger. Maybe an annual Kate Bush convention or event. Where writers, artists and academics could speak about Bush and her music. Read essays and present talks. All this love and energy for Kate Bush should be channelled somewhere.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in 1989 in an outtake for the cover shoot of The Sensual World/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

How do we go about that in a modern age where digital rules everything? The music print media is still alive, yet it is expensive to maintain. A lot of money needed. How could a fanzine realistically survive? I do know that fans would pay to make it happen. There are some fascinating archives and lots of contemporary news that could be collated. HomeGround covered a lot of it, yet they ended over a decade ago. Archive websites that have maybe stopped archiving and have not been updated for years. Not really any blogs dedicated to Kate Bush. Kate Bush News is perhaps the only website that caters to fans in this way. They have been going for years and do great work. I have been a little restless. This growing legion of fans. A fan club or fanzine could get contributions from high-profile names. At the very least, we do need to name the fan collective. Whether Bush would be on board with Fish People. Is another name more appropriate? As a lot of people are leaving social media and we are become less connected, there should be new initiatives. An official annual convention. Something bigger than what is out there at the moment. A new website that could work alongside Kate Bush News and is full of everything Kate Bush-related. Also, something oldskool. Newsletters or something in the post. Bush herself loves her fans and is so pleased that she is being discovered by new people. How some consider her to be a new artist! There are great websites and books out there. I think there could be a little more. Bringing fans together. Having all the Fish People united would be an incredible thing to see. Conventions around the world or this worldwide fan club that we could all be part of. We do not know when a new album will arrive or what this year holds. However, it is going to be exciting. Great things will happen. A fan club, fanzine or new website would truly show Kate Bush…

HOW much she is loved.

FEATURE: The Blacker the Berry: Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

The Blacker the Berry

Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly at Ten

_________

ONE of the biggest albums…

PHOTO CREDIT: John Francis Peters for The New York Times

of the 2010s has an anniversary coming up on 15th March. Kendrick Lamar’s third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly, turns ten. A move up and switch from Lamar’s 2012 album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, To Pimp a Butterfly blends Jazz, Funk, Hip-Hop, Soul and other genres. It was his most ambitious and eclectic album to that date. Lamar focuses on politics, inequality, racial tensions and depression. It is both personal and universal. It is no surprise that it was highly acclaimed by critics. Ahead of its tenth anniversary, I wanted to spotlight a masterpiece from one of Hip-Hop’s legends and leaders. A number one album in the U.S. and U.K., To Pimp a Butterfly features contributions from George Clinton, Snoop Dogg, Rapsody, Dr. Dre, George Clinton and a range of wonderful musicians and producers. An album that was compared to the best work of Sly and the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, many noted how Kendrick Lamar was angrier than them. In terms of highlighting the realities of modern America. The racism and inequality that remains. A fearless album with an immense scope, it still sound so relevant a decade later. At a time when America is changing and Donald Trump is President once more, you feel like the themes Kendrick Lamar addresses are back under the spotlight. I am going to come to a few reviews of To Pimp a Butterfly before finishing up with a feature that discusses the legacy and impact of Kendrick Lamar’s magnum opus. Celebrating a dense, mournful, powerful, wry and theatrical follow-up to good kid, m.A.A.d city, this is what Pitchfork observed about a modern Hip-Hop masterpiece:

“Kendrick Lamar’s major-label albums play out like Spike Lee films in miniature. In both artists’ worlds, the stakes are unbearably high, the characters’ motives are unclear, and morality is knotty, but there is a central force you can feel steering every moment. The “Good and Bad Hair” musical routine from Lee’s 1988 feature School Daze depicted Black women grappling with colorism and exclusionary standards of American beauty. Mookie’s climactic window smash in 1989’s Do the Right Thing plunged its characters into fiery bedlam, quietly prophesying the coming L.A. riots in the process. In these moments, you could feel the director speaking to you directly through his characters and their trajectories. Lamar’s records, while crowded with conflicting ideas and arguing voices, have a similar sense of a guiding hand at work.

Lamar’s new album, To Pimp a Butterfly, doesn’t explicitly bill itself as a movie like Good Kid, M.A.A.D City did, but the network of interlocking dramas explored here feels filmic nonetheless, and a variety of characters appear across the album’s expanse. The opener, “Wesley’s Theory,” turns the downfall of action-star-turned-convicted-tax-dodger Wesley Snipes into a kind of Faustian parable. Snoop drops by on “Institutionalized”; Dre himself phones in on “Wesley.” The mood is wry, theatrical, chaotic, ironic, and mournful, often all at once: On “For Free? (Interlude)” an impatient woman ticks off a laundry list of material demands before Kendrick snaps back that “This dick ain’t free!” and thunders through a history of Black oppression, spoken-word style, as if to say, “This money you crave, it’s blood money.” The album is dotted with surreal grace notes, like a parable: God appears in the guise of a homeless man in “How Much a Dollar Cost,” and closer “Mortal Man” ends on a lengthy, unnerving fever-dream interview with the ghost of 2Pac.

The music, meanwhile, follows a long line of genre-busting freakouts (The Roots’ Phrenology, Common’s Electric Circus, Q-Tip’s Kamaal the Abstract, André 3000’s The Love Below) in kicking at the confines of rap music presentation. There’s half a jazz band present at all times; pianist Robert Glasper, producer/sax player Terrace Martin and bass wizard Thundercat give Butterfly a loose, fluid undertow every bit as tempestuous and unpredictable as the army of flows at Kendrick’s disposal. The rapper’s branching out, too, exploding into spastic slam poetry on “For Free?,” switching from shouty gymnastics to drunken sobs on “U” and even effecting the lilt of a caring mother on “You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma Said).” It turns out Kendrick’s new direction was every direction at once.

Despite all this, he’s still toying with a narrative on the sly: Just beneath the surface lies a messianic yarn about avoiding the wiles of a sultry girl named Lucy who’s secretly a physical manifestation of the devil. Kendrick refuses to dole out blame without accepting any, however, and on the chaotic free jazz excursion “U” he turns a mirror on himself, screaming, “Loving you is complicated!” and suggesting his fame hasn’t helped his loved ones back home. Kendrick’s criticisms, as they did on Good Kid, come with powerful, self-imposed challenges. As Bilal quips on the chorus to “Institutionalized”: “Shit don’t change until you get up and wash your ass, nigga.”

Kendrick’s principle of personal responsibility has treaded dangerously close to respectability politics lately, especially after a prickly remark about the Mike Brown shooting in a recent Billboard interview that seemed to pin the death on the victim, but To Pimp a Butterfly avoids that trap. (Mostly.) “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” is a tender note of appreciation for women of all skin tones with help from North Carolina rapper Rapsody (whose slickly referential guest verse contains a nod to “Good and Bad Hair”). This is an album about tiny quality of life improvements to be made in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. It might not be the message we want in a year where systemic police and judicial inequality have cost many the ultimate price, but that doesn’t bankrupt it of value.

To Pimp a Butterfly pivots on the polarizing lead single, “I.” Upon release last autumn, the sunny soul pep talk came off lightweight and glib. When it appears deep in the back end of Butterfly, though, “I” plays less like the jingle we heard last year and more like the beating heart of the matter. To push the point, the album opts for a live-sounding mix that ditches out midway through, giving way to a speech from the rapper himself. In tone, the speech is not unlike the legendary 1968 concert where James Brown waved off security and personally held off a Boston audience’s fury after news broke that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. “How many niggas we done lost, bro?” Kendrick shouts over the crowd. “It shouldn’t be shit for us to come out here and appreciate the little bit of life we got left.” Underneath the tragedy and adversity, To Pimp a Butterfly is a celebration of the audacity to wake up each morning to try to be better, knowing it could all end in a second, for no reason at all”.

The Verge were full of love and passion for Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015. Saluting Black America’s Poet Laurette, they had no notes. In the sense the album is perfect. Their observations are illuminating and thought-provoking. It is evident that this album has an incredible legacy. If you have not heard this album before then make sure you do right away:

“To Pimp a Butterfly isn’t just another album, and Kendrick Lamar isn’t just another rapper. Kendrick is different. His first major label album, good kid, m.A.A.d city is one of the greatest rap albums of all time. The last two artists who debuted with albums that redefined the genre were Kanye West (The College Dropout) and Jay Z (Reasonable Doubt). Good kid, m.A.A.d city, was an autobiographical masterpiece that vocalized the struggle of growing up in dire circumstances in Compton and how it affected Kendrick’s perception of the world. It was brilliant and clever, a concept album that still told Kendrick’s "how I got here" story. He could have used the same blueprint for his second album. It worked once, and Kendrick is talented enough to make use of it again. Rappers rapping about their upbringing will never end, but Kendrick Lamar isn’t conventional in the least.

We knew Kendrick was going with a new concept for this album. It wasn’t going to be your traditional 808-laden, two-club-hits-and-a-love-song hip-hop album. But Kendrick was never that to begin with. It was going to be soulful — conscious as they say. He gave us "i" back in September, an uplifting track about self-love — there’s an updated (see: much better) version of "i" on the album that sampled The Isley Brothers. We got a taste of the new musical arrangements back in December on The Colbert Report when he performed an untitled song that if released would probably have been the best song of 2014 (it didn’t even make the album). Then we got the artwork for To Pimp a Butterfly. If the direction of the album wasn’t clear before, it was now. This is about to be some social commentary / Black Excellence music. I wasn’t scared that Kendrick would deliver a flop. I was afraid that he would only dip a toe into the pool of Black Excellence music, that he would hesitate to speak on social issues, or succumb to label pressure to provide a few radio-friendly records. He didn’t. Not one bit.

To Pimp a Butterfly is perfect. There’s no other adjective that can properly convey its greatness. To Pimp a Butterfly is an immaculate amalgamation of rap, jazz, funk, soul, and spoken word. It cannot be restricted by a single genre. It’s the latest evolution of Black Music, and it’s nothing short of genius. (Black Music, inhabited by the likes of Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, Prince, the Fugees, Andre 3000, and D’Angelo. A land where the natural barriers of music don’t exist. A place where the main goal is the advancement and protection of the culture.)

Crafted with a live band consisting of Bilal, Thundercat, Terrace Martin, and Anna Wise — all talented artists in their own right — To Pimp a Butterfly pulls no punches. The first track, "Wesley’s Theory" featuring George Clinton and Thundercat and produced by Flying Lotus sets the tone, opens with a sample of Boris Gardiner’s 1974 song "Every Nigger is a Star." On "Wesley’s Theory" Kendrick tackles consumerism and rampant debt that plagues black entertainers, something that he has (so far) seemingly avoided. Speaking first from the perspective of a young black musician forecasting his downfall into the trap of wealth and greed ("When I get signed, homie I'mma act a fool / Hit the dance floor, strobe lights in the room"), and then from the perspective of "Uncle Sam" who encourages him to buy everything on credit ("What you want you? / A house or a car? / Forty acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar? / Anything, see, my name is Uncle Sam on your dollar / Motherfucker you can live at the mall").

To Pimp a Butterfly succeeds D’Angelo’s Black Messiah as the most important album in black culture right now. In the face of Ferguson, police brutality, and widening economic disparity, Kendrick Lamar tackles social issues through music and does so exceptionally well. It’s a dark album for dark times, right in line with recent projects from Drake and Big Sean, but To Pimp a Butterfly is miles ahead of the competition in its quality and its message.

On "For Free", Kendrick employs spoken word with double and triple entendres better than Jay Z could ever dream of doing. The song is unbelievably complex. It can be interpreted as chastisement of America for its treatment of African Americans, or a Black Excellence anthem, or just as a fight with a girlfriend. It’s a true work of art whose meaning will be debated for years. "For Free" is To Pimp a Butterfly encapsulated in one song. There is no single definition of this album. There is no single genre. There is no single flow. It is unlike anything I’ve heard before.

"u," produced by Sounwave, is a direct contrast to the uplifting "i." Kendrick is speaking to himself, depressed and broken, repeating the hook 10 times ("Loving you is complicated"), and admonishing himself, despite his accomplishments. With "u" and "i," Kendrick depicts the struggle of expressing black self-love better than any artist has done in recent memory — the highs and lows, the inner joy, the self-hate, the bravado, the blame. Kendrick told Rolling Stone "u" was one of the toughest songs he’d ever written. "There [are] some very dark moments in there. All my insecurities and selfishness and letdowns. That shit is depressing as a motherfucker. But it helps, though. It helps." Sequencing is crucial on To Pimp a Butterfly— right after "u" we get the anthemic "Alright" to pull us out of the doldrums. And that it does.

Even though it’s not an album designed for a wide audience ("I’m not talking to people from the suburbs. I’m talking as somebody who’s been snatched out of cars and had rifles pointed at me," Kendrick told The New York Times), To Pimp a Butterfly has wide appeal, thanks to the excellent beats and production that inject energy into consequential records. The funky bass line turns deep records like "King Kunta" into party songs. "Alright," produced by Pharrell Williams, is a certified hit rap-along. The jazzy "Complexion (A Zulu Love)" featuring Rapsody will make your grandmother shimmy, even with its powerful lyrics ("Dark as the midnight hour, I'm bright as the mornin' sun / Brown skinned, but your blue eyes tell me your mama can't run").

To Pimp a Butterfly is the best album of the 21st century, the best hip-hop album since Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die and Nas’ Illmatic in 1994, and it cements Kendrick Lamar’s spot as an all-time great. Those whispered conversations about Kendrick’s spot in hip-hop history can begin in earnest. The last artist who debuted with two classic albums was Notorious B.I.G. That’s where we’re at. That’s where Kendrick Lamar has brought us”.

The immediate impact of To Pimp a Butterfly is explored in this Wikipedia article. The fact that it inspired artists like David Bowie shows how powerful and important it was. An album, as mentioned, that it is still relevant. The world not learning from Kendrick Lamar’s words. I hope tenth anniversary retrospectives lead to cultural and political change:

“The album's immediate influence was felt as "a pantheon for racial empowerment", according to Butler, who also argued that the record helped create a respected space for conscious hip-hop and "will be revered not just at the top of some list at the end of the year, but in the subconscious of music fans for decades to come". Writing for Highsnobiety, Robert Blair said, "[To Pimp a Butterfly] is the crystallized moment in time where Kendrick became a generation's most potent artistic voice.” Uproxx journalist Aaron Williams said the album "proved that left-field, experimental rap can function in both the critical and commercial realms". Jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington said that the album "changed music, and we're still seeing the effects of it [...] [the album] meant that intellectually stimulating music doesn't have to be underground. It just didn't change the music. It changed the audience." To Pimp a Butterfly was an influence on David Bowie's 2016 album Blackstar. As its producer Tony Visconti recalled, he and Bowie were "listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar [...] we loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn't do a straight-up hip-hop record. He threw everything on there, and that's exactly what we wanted to do”

I am going to finish off in a minute. I wanted to highlight this Rolling Stone review. The Compton-born MC’s second major label album is full of “fiery outrage, deep jazz and ruthless self-critique”. Without doubt one of the best albums of the 2010s. Some might say Kendrick Lamar reached the same peak on 2017’s DAMN. and 2024’s GNX:

“Hashtag this one Portrait of the Artist as a Manchild in the Land of Broken Promises. Thanks to D’Angelo’s Black Messiah and Kendrick Lamar‘s To Pimp a Butterfly, 2015 will be remembered as the year radical Black politics and for-real Black music resurged in tandem to converge on the nation’s pop mainstream. Malcolm X said our African ancestors didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us. The cover of Lamar’s second major-label LP flips that maxim with a fantasia of bare-chested young hoodrocks flashing cash and booze on the White House grounds, Amerikkka’s Most Unwanted victoriously swarming a toppled symbol of pale-skinned patriarchy.

The party begins in earnest with George Clinton’s blessings and bassist Thundercat’s love for Bootsy Collins. “Wesley’s Theory” is a disarming goof that’s also a lament for the starry-eyed innocence lost to all winners of the game show known as Hip-Hop Idol. “Gather your wind, take a deep look inside,” Clinton says. “Are you really who they idolize?” Lamar’s got plenty of jokes and jeremiads to launch at himself, us and those malevolent powers that be. “I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey,” he raps later on. “You vandalize my perception, but can’t take style from me.”

He’s also made hella room for live jazz improv on this furthermucker, from the celestial keys of virtuoso pianist Robert Glasper to the horns of Terrace Martin and Kamasi Washington to Thundercat’s low end. Black Musicians Matter majorly here – their well-tempered orchestral note-worrying a consistent head-nod toward Sun Ra, which producers including Flying Lotus and Lamar’s right-hand Sounwave smush into a lush volcanic riverbed of harmonic cunning and complexity. Only a lyricist of Lamar’s skills, scope, poetics and polemics would dare hop aboard it and dragon-glide. His virtuosic slam-poetic romp across bebop blues changes on “For Free?” harkens back to LA’s Freestyle Fellowship.

Clearly, this is Lamar’s moment to remake rap in his own blood-sick image. If we’re talking insurgent content and currency, Lamar straight up owns rap relevancy on Butterfly, whatever challengers to the throne barely visible in his dusty rear-view. He relishes and crushes the gift he’s been handed by CNN in the national constabulary’s now weekly-reported racist tactics, 21st-century apartheid American style: “It’s a new gang in town, from Compton to Congress/…Ain’t nothing new but a flow of new Demo-Crips and Re-Blood-licans.” This tactic is nowhere more resonant than on the studio-rigged beyond-the-grave convo with 2Pac he conjures up on ”Mortal Man,” letting Pac deliver the album’s most-fatalist mad-prophetic zinger: ”Next time it’s a riot, there’s gonna be bloodshed for real. . .I think America thinks we was just playing, but it’s gonna be murder. . .like Nat Turner 1831 up in this muthafucka.”

But Lamar’s own fears of assuming a messiah position are upfront and personal. “I been wrote off before, I got abandonment issues,” he says on “Mortal Man.” “How many leaders you said you needed then left ’em for dead?/Is it Moses, is it Huey Newton, or Detroit Red?” You can imagine Chuck D or Dead Prez going in as hard and witty against white supremacy as Lamar does on “The Blacker the Berry” and “King Kunta” – but you can’t picture them exposing the vulnerability, doubt and self-loathing swag heard on ”Complexion (A Zulu Love),” “u,” “For Sale?” and “i.” What makes Lamar’s bully pulpit more akin to Curtis Mayfield’s or Gil Scott Heron’s than any protest MC before him is the heart worn on his hoodie’s sleeves”.

I am going to end up by quoting heavily from a 2020 retrospective feature from High Snobiety. They wrote about how Kendrick Lamar’s masterpiece changed music, culture and lives. Go and invest some time in this album today. It is such a moving and unforgettable listen:

“The beginning of 2015 was a transitionary period for hip-hop. As much of the East Coast’s new breed mourned A$AP YAMS, Pro Era’s Joey Bada$$ was coming of age on his major label debut. Heading southward, internal conflict between Lil Wayne and Birdman became public knowledge, while Young Money’s golden child Drake racked up another triumph with If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.

Amid these tremulous events, and with Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradise holding court at the top of the charts, a crucial component of what made the genre vital was missing. Previously defined by Chuck D as “black America’s CNN,” most of the biggest hip-hop albums in recent years had felt apolitical or, at worst, consciously apathetic.

Lacking its informative might, hip-hop’s retreat from the frontlines of social discourse was incongruous at a time when Black Lives Matter’s hashtag activism and police brutality demonstrations had reached a fever pitch. Overrun by triviality and self-obsession, relief would come in March 2015, courtesy of a Compton-born artist who used his platform as his forebears had intended. Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly arrived with the force of a sledgehammer, remaining just as (if not more) impactful now as it did on first arrival.

“I started this album already knowing what I wanted to talk about, just based off the idea of feeling like you’re being pimped and manuevered in the industry,” Lamar reflected to MTV. “Thinking ‘how can I make that something positive for my community?’ As I’m doing this, all these events are happening. Trayvon, Ferguson… I couldn’t write these songs after these events, it’s too intricate.”

Rather than mimicking the formula that had taken him from obscurity to superstardom with Good Kid M.A.A.D City, Kendrick funneled his energy into crafting a musically and thematically rich project which surveyed a crumbling society and all of its grotesque, systemic ills.

Nowadays, most albums are ingested by their intended audience before being discarded to the wayside. Routinely overloaded with material in order to flood the market and maximize streaming revenue, everything from Drake's Scorpion to Migos' Culture II has lived and died on the strength of name recognition as opposed to a clearly-defined sense of purpose. Yet in the case of Kendrick’s enthralling Butterfly, the project has refracted in so many directions over the past five years that its allure and central message has only magnified with time.

No enduring piece of artistry was made without a degree of risk. But when it came to the musicality of Butterfly, Lamar threw caution to the wind like few before or since. Dabbling with horns and other brassy inflections on both his breakout mixtape Section 80 and Good Kid M.A.A.D City, Kendrick renounced the relative safety of the 808-laden bombast that defined his work in favor of a sound that more closely resembled the former project’s "Ab-Soul Outro." A fusion of hip-hop and jazz orchestrated by Terrace Martin, it was this decorated multi-instrumentalist who first acknowledged Kendrick’s unconscious tendencies.

“He was like, man, a lot of the chords that you pick are jazz-influenced,” Lamar told GQ. “You don't understand: You a jazz musician by default... he just started breaking down everything, the science, going back to Miles, Herbie Hancock.”

Incorporating dashes of blues, soul, funk and spoken word, Butterfly’s emphasis on eclecticism culminated in a sound that essentially doubled as a whistle-stop tour through the history of black music in America. After unveiling The Isley Brothers-sampling, self-love anthem "i" as a prelude to the album, Ron Isley and Kendrick discussed “the experiences his mother had with our records” that wouldd pave the way for his contribution to the sorrowful album-cut "How Much a Dollar Cost?"

Meanwhile, another icon was forced to place his preconceived biases aside while at work on the project. Before providing an uproarious vocal on the Flying Lotus-produced “Wesley’s Theory," P-Funk originator George Clinton had only heard Good Kid’s "Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe" and thought "it sounded silly as hell.” After grasping Kendrick’s vision, his perception changed, stating “he was saying things in brand new metaphors that I knew was going to fuck people up.” Operating in a reciprocal space between genres, time periods, and demographics, this intersectionality would be key in sculpting both the album as well as the diverging branches of its legacy.

“[Butterfly] changed music, and we’re still seeing the effects of it,” proclaimed Lamar-collaborator turned jazz titan Kamasi Washington. “It meant that intellectually stimulating music doesn’t have to be underground. It just didn’t change the music. It changed the audience."

By enlisting virtuosos who were “as fluent in J Dilla and Dr. Dre as in Mingus and Coltrane,” Butterfly uplifted the careers of those who aided in its inception while simultaneously broadening the scope of what modern hip-hop can co-mingle with. Prior to Butterfly’s arrival, the swell in non-specialized engagement with jazz that precipitated Washington’s instant notoriety on 2015's The Epic wouldn’t have been imaginable, while Rapsody’s verse on "Complexion (A Zulu Love)" had a similar effect in plucking the Carolina MC from obscurity. Now revered as a generational great, she’s been candid with DJ Booth about how “everything snowballed” after she accepted the summons from K-Dot.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images/Scott Dudelson

Enlisted as both a musical focal point and a welcome flourish throughout, no one reaped the rewards of their toil on Butterfly quite like Thundercat. “Pretty much on the entire album,” the presence of his bass at the heart of the project raised his profile to such an extent that 2017’s Drunk peaked 144 chart places higher than his previous albums. On a personal level, the profound effect the album had on him far outweighed any success that it’s yielded since: “I just broke down in tears when I got home after hearing it,” Thundercat recalled. “So much information was passed and conveyed... There wasn’t a misfire. Everybody put their best work forward, and you could feel it, I think.”

As we now know, this was an understatement on his part. Rather than just feeling it, Butterfly became a conduit through which the disenfranchised and grief-stricken contextualized their own experiences. No where was this more evident than the liberating refrain of "Alright." Essentially a "The Times They Are a-Changin'" for the era of Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and Alton Sterling, it became a familiar rallying cry at Black Lives Matter demonstrations, as well as emanating from speakers in suburbs and section-8 housing alike. Unsurprised by its resonance, Kendrick felt that the song’s jubilant tone amid such injustice tapped into an ancestral coping mechanism.

“Four hundred years ago, as slaves, we prayed and sang joyful songs to stay level-headed with what was going on," Lamar told NPR. “We still need that music to heal. And I think that 'Alright' is definitely one of those records."

Defiant and rousing yet quietly cognizant of the uphill battles that still need to be waged, "Alright" isn’t a piece of music so much as a public service announcement appealing for calm amid a time of crisis. A record that he was “sitting on” for six months after Pharrell crafted the now iconic instrumental, Kendrick’s cultural presence grew alongside the track and, in turn, allowed him to understand how its power surpassed all traditional barometers for a ‘hit’ song.

Tackling hypocrisy, drug abuse, societal entrapment, mental health, imposter syndrome, and Demo-Crips & Re-Blood-licans across the project’s immersive hour-plus runtime, To Pimp a Butterfly was rightly awarded the Grammys that had previously eluded him, and it was instrumental in informing David Bowie’s final album Blackstar. Yet while the late icon and producer Tony Visconti strived to “avoid rock & roll,” Butterfly wasn’t born of some self-congratulatory whim to stretch artistic horizons. Instead, it aimed to expand minds and empower those who had borne the brunt of this uncaring and hostile world”.

On 15th March, it will be ten years since Kendrick Lamar released To Pimp a Butterfly. I am interested to see how the music press writes about this album ahead of the anniversary. New context and meaning. Still relevant and always influential. The supreme and mesmeric To Pimp a Butterfly…

A flawless album.