FEATURE: White Math: Do Fans Expect Too Much from a Modern-Day Gig?

FEATURE:

 

 

White Math

IN THIS PHOTO: Jack White

 

Do Fans Expect Too Much from a Modern-Day Gig?

_________

IT is an interesting…

PHOTO CREDIT: Thibault Trillet/Pexels

question to pose when it comes to gigs. One of the big debates and conversations is the price of tickets. Smaller artists don’t necessarily charge that much, though major artists can sell tickets for a lot more. It depends on the artist and venue, though it is not a surprise to see a single ticket sell for over £100. In some cases, fans can pay a lot more than this! With that sort of price being asked of fans, there is an expectation that the set is going to be epic. Artists such as Taylor Swift putting together these sets that last three-and-a-half-hours. It is a very long time for an artist to be on the stage. When each show lasts this long, it can really take a lot from them. Stringing together so many dates with sets that length, there is this debate between the price of the ticket and the value of the set. I bring it up because Jack White took to Instagram to call out fans who are entitled. Those who expect long sets. This NME feature gives us some more details:

“Jack White has taken aim at “entitled” fans who expect “extra long” shows, arguing that his performances are rock gigs, not “a Marvel movie or a Vegas residency”.

The former White Stripes frontman released his sixth solo album ‘No Name’ last August and is currently in the middle of a North American tour to support the record, with the guitarist set to play the first of two Brooklyn shows on Tuesday (February 11).

On Saturday (February 8), he took to Instagram to share his thoughts on the current state of fan expectations when it comes to setlist length and production values. “Been hearing a lot of chatter throughout the year of this glorious electric touring about how long our sets are “supposed to be” on stage,” he wrote. “As if the length of a show determines how “good” it is.”

“I know that we’re living in a current era where people like to say “so and so played for 3 hours last night!”, and brag about it the next day hahaha, I’ll let our fans know now that my mind has no intention of “impressing” y’all in that context. The Beatles and Ramones played 30 minute (ish) sets, and If I could, I would do the same at this moment in my performing life. That’s actually the kind of show I’d like to put on right now.”

He went on to discuss some fans feeling “entitled” to long shows due to high ticket prices. “I think you’re talking about an arena laser light show with pyro, huge screens with premade videos, singers flying over the crowd, t shirt cannons, etc, that’s not the kind of shows we’re performing.”

“There’s no setlist, and it’s not a marvel movie, or a Vegas residency, it’s rock and roll and it’s a living breathing organism,” he concluded. “See you in the hall tonight friends, love you all so much and thank you for coming to these shows, standing in line and paying your hard earned money to help this train keep rolling. And the crew and the boys in the band are loving y’all as much as me, we are grateful, thank you.”

White’s recent setlists have tended to run between 20 and 25 songs in length, incorporating songs from across his career, including The White Stripes and The Raconteurs.

NME caught his show at London’s Assembly Hall last September, which saw him touch on similar themes. “This is the kind of rock’n’roll you’re not gonna get at Wembley Stadium for £400!” he exclaimed at one stage”.

I guess it is strange that many artists are almost required to do sets that last for hours. However, it comes back to prices. If you are being charged so much, then why would you not want a gig that last a while? It might be wrong for a major artist selling tickets for so much to do a thirty-minute set. For Jack White, whose sets are sharp and spontaneous, he could not play for hours. Maybe it depends on the genre. Also, if White does want to keep his sets to a tidy half-hour, then this has to be factored into the ticket price. As an example, he is playing at London’s Troxy on 28th February. A ticket for that gig is going for £66.41. His recent sets have spanned between twenty and twenty-five songs. That is pretty good value when you think about how long that gig would be. Is White reacting to demand and what is expected of artists today? Think back to gigs years ago and how it was unusual if they lasted for hours. Now, it is almost standard. Can we simply go to a show for half an hour and be satisfied? This desire for everything to be so long. You can see where fans are coming from. They want to see as much as they can from that artist. Jack White has a point when he mentions something like a Marvel film. Fans should be happy with a shorter gig. His ticket prices are not that expensive, so it is a bit much to expect fans to expect White to play for so long. This feature from 2008 argued why gigs should never be over forty-five minutes. The fact that artists would work through every song they ever recorded and you’d get into this test of endurance. This idea of a gig being cinematic in its length and scope. It is not new, however, more and more artists are expected to play for that long. The impact on their physical and mental health could be quite serious. How much it takes out of them.

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift during her Eras Tour/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Is there a perfect balance or gig length? If a three-hour set seems insane and something fans and artists should never be expected to endure, would fans revolt if they got a forty-five minute set and were charged a lot for a ticket? This article from The Independent talks about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and whether overlong gigs are a bit too much:

“But how long is too long, when it comes to live music? Twenty-two-year-old pop prodigy Billie Eilish recently described the prospect of a three-hour gig as “literally psychotic”, telling followers on social media: “Nobody wants that. You guys don’t want that. I don’t want that. I don’t even want that as a fan.” Of course, that’s easy enough for Eilish to say. If you listened to her entire three-album, two-EP discography back to back, it would still fall short of Swift’s marathon set times. But, while the “bad guy” singer-songwriter didn’t call out The Eras Tour by name, it certainly resonates with Swift’s current maximalist streak.

Let’s face it: overlong gigs can be a slog. There’s no escaping the whiff of indulgence when an artist simply decides to claim squatter’s rights on a stage. It’s also a curatorial failure, of sorts. Only the most ardent of Swifties would argue that there’s no fat to trim, no filler padding out the bangers. A three-hour gig presents logistical problems, too, when it comes to getting home at the end of the night, plus biological ones – the perennial Toilet Break Question. Let’s not forget the economic ramifications, either: a three-hour gig is necessarily more expensive to stage, a cost that inevitably falls on the concertgoers to make up. And that’s before you account for the greater spending on drinks over a three-hour period – not insignificant, especially at big stadium venues where a single pint often requires a small loan.

Of course, it’s not as simple as a gig being “too long”. There’s no denying the formidable physical feat of a three-hour gig; if you feel fatigued as an audience member, imagine being up there on stage. In some cases, the extra hour might elevate a gig from a fun night out to one of the best nights of your life. Bruce Springsteen, perhaps the foremost “long gigger” in popular music, has made it part of his very brand. And it works: his two curfew-straining sets at London’s Hyde Park last year were maybe the standout live music event of the year. But Springsteen has the catalogue to back it up – a full half-century of recorded material, enough great songs to fill a days-long residency with no repeats. (Tunnel of Love didn’t even feature at all!).

Assessing the relative merits of Swift’s catalogue may largely be a matter of taste, but the context for the gigs is entirely different: Swift is 34 years old, and yet still manages to subdivide her career into 10 distinct “eras”, most requiring a total costume change. If Springsteen were to attempt the same concept, he’d end up with two dozen eras, 18 outfit changes, and a performance that probably wouldn’t finish until morning. On some level, the very premise of the Eras Tour speaks to the way music is treated in the modern streaming era: we must have all of it, right there, all of the time. The specificity of a setlist is one of the delicate joys of live music. You go in hoping to hear certain songs; you leave pleased, or disappointed, or surprised, but that’s part of the experience. The Eras Tour promises to give you everything, a definitive show – but that’s antithetical to live music’s unique appeal: immediacy.

The alternative, though, is surely worse: there are few things more disappointing than a gig that feels too short. I personally keep a grudging mental checklist of gigs I’ve seen that were brilliant, but ended frustratingly after 50 minutes or less (mostly American rappers, many of whom understandably don’t really see what the big deal is about playing to a crowd of mostly white Englishmen in, say, Shepherd’s Bush). The ever-rising price of gig tickets leaves you feeling shortchanged if it’s all over in under an hour – even if the performance is flawless.

The whining seems more egregious when we’re talking about movies, when meaty, substantive works of art such as Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon or Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer are slagged off for being indulgently long. Often, there are artistic and narrative reasons for the length: it is necessary to tell the story in the way that the artist demands. But then again, this could be said of The Eras Tour, conceived by Swift – a wannabe filmmaker, by her own admission – as something more structured and narrative-driven than simply your average grab bag of hits. In this regard, maybe there’s justification for the indulgence. Or maybe Swift has simply spent too much time watching her boyfriend Travis Kelce play in the NFL, and shouts of “Go long!” have borne fruit somewhere deep in her subconscious. I guess we’ll never know”.

I can see where Jack White is coming from. That sense of spectacle and overlong that you get now. He is not suggesting fans should be happy with a short gig and count their blessings. However, it is this thing of gigs lasting for hours. Does it rob some of the spontaneity and quality? Keeping things relatively brief without having to dip into the back catalogue too deep. It might depend on the genre and artist you are seeing, though fans demanding too much of a touring artist is a bit entitled. Not considering the impact that sort of set has on their health. This Cosmopolitan article asks why gigs are so expensive now. Things such as streaming services, Brexit, COVID-19 and stan culture are contributing factors. This BBC feature also asks about rising ticket prices. They state that longevity and artists feeling like they could be forgotten is a reason why they charge so much. There are a lot of sides to consider. However, it is clear that long gigs are becoming more normalised and, with it, ticket prices are getting out of hand. Whilst a three-hour set is too much and a short gig might not seem value for money, I guess it is all about finding…

A sweet spot.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Alemeda

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

Alemeda

_________

HEADING back to last year…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Kaio Cesar

I want to highlight a few interviews with Alemeda. An artist that I am really excited about, if you have not heard her music, you will do very soon. Someone whose sound and brilliance is really capturing attention and getting plenty of love. I only discovered her a few weeks ago, but I am committed to following where she heads next. I am going to start out with an interview from Galore:

“Sudanese-Ethiopian rock & pop star Alemeda is not only the future of these genres but there is no doubting that she is destined for greatness. Stepping outside of cultural norms, Alemeda always knew she had to follow her heart and live her life for no one other than herself. We chatted with her about her upbringing, music and all things beauty – keep reading below for the inside scoop!

“What are some of your favorite things about your Ethiopian and Sudanese cultures?

My favorite parts of Ethiopian and Sudani culture are definitely the food and the music.

What was it like being raised in Ethiopia and Arizona?

They were very different in many ways but the biggest distinction would probably be the communities and their values. Ethiopian culture is incredibly community-oriented and inclusive whereas Arizona felt very isolating and secluded.

Growing up, what type of music did you listen to?

A lot of radio pop and rock.

When did you get your first introduction into the music industry?

I remember posting covers on Instagram. One day, my now manager reached out and flew me out to Los Angeles for my first real introduction to the music industry.

You’ve spoken about not having much support from your family as an aspiring artist, do you still struggle with that, or have they become more accepting now? How did you persevere with your career knowing the people closest to you didn’t agree with it?

I was the rebellious child in my family so I didn’t really care about going against them. They still aren’t supportive of it and they’ve never heard my music, but I actually appreciate the separation. It was never an expectation of them so it never disappointed me.

What advice do you have for anyone who may be going through the same thing?

My biggest advice that I’ve learned is that it’s your life and no one else’s opinion matters but yours.

Early this year you went back home to Ethiopia for the first time in a decade. Talk to us about what that experience was like and your favorite memory from it.

It was very surreal. I really enjoyed seeing my family and spending time with them. It reminded me of how truly incredible it is to have community and the importance of connection.

What interested you about the rock and pop music genres?

Growing up I wasn’t allowed to listen to music for religious reasons, the only exposure I had to music was from the radio. I would sneak my family’s clock radio into my room when they were asleep so I could listen, and that’s how I discovered artists like Coldplay and whatever was on the top hits in the early 2000s. That time period really shaped my taste today.

In 2021 you released your debut single “Gonna Bleach My Eyebrows” which has over 12 million streams to date. Talk to us about the inspiration for this song and how you felt when it blew up.

The song was inspired by a previous relationship I was in and how I felt about that person trying to rekindle things. I was honestly shocked it blew up. Out of all my songs that was the last one I thought people would like.

The following year you released “Post Nut Clarity” which was well received by your supporters. What was the post nut clarity that inspired this song?

“Post Nut Clarity” was a song I wrote about an issue I feel all women face with men and I felt it needed to be vocalized!

Your latest song “Guys Girl” has an accompanying visual that was released back in May. Talk to us about the concept of this song and the process creating this video.

The song’s video has a storyline of a friendship that begins to suffer due to one of them being boy crazy. It was one of my first storyline videos so it was super fun and different to film and I really love how it turned out.

Are you a guy’s girl or a girl’s girl? What’s the difference between the two?

I would say I’m definitely a girls girl. I never really sought validation from men – if anything that’s the last place I’d look for it!

When can we expect a full project from you?

My EP “FK IT” is out everywhere now!

What rock star would you love to work with one day and why?

Everyone in Coldplay – I can’t choose! I think the whole band makes such amazing music and so many of their songs I would consider my life tracks.

What’s your current makeup routine?

Recently I have been really into black eyeliner and red lipstick. I specifically use Maybelline lipstick and Kajal, which is an Arabic eyeliner.

What are two items in your closet can you not live without?

Cowboy boots and ALL of my denim.

If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Anything from Ethiopia!

You recently announced that you’ve now signed with Top Dawg ENT and Warner Records. What made you choose to sign with these labels and what are you most looking forward to now?

I’m honored to be the third woman ever to join the lineup of groundbreaking talent at TDE. My manager Moosa, who is also TDE’s President, discovered me four years ago and has been instrumental in helping me develop my sound and grow as an artist at my own pace, and for that I am truly grateful.

Being a part of TDE means being a vital contributor to black art and culture, which is something I deeply value. Warner recognizes my vision as an artist, and their long history of success within my genre fills me with excitement about what lies ahead. I believe I chose the right teams to nurture my growth, and I can’t wait to see what we achieve together.

What’s next for Alemeda besides new music?

I would love to branch out and spread my creativity around more industries so we will see!”.

I think more people in the U.K. are discovering Alemeda. It is a competitive music scene, though it is clear that there is so much that stands her out from her peers. It is amazing she has such an incredible and fully-formed sound considering that Alemeda did not grow up around music. Quite unusual for any artist. In NME’s interview from last year, we get to what it was like when she discovered music and what it provided her:

“The 24-year-old has really had to fight for her spot. Her mother is a devout Muslim who banned all forms of music from being played at home – even TV theme songs. Despite this, Alemeda would secretly get her musical fix by tuning into pop radio stations on an AM/FM clock radio and watching culture-defining Disney Channel originals like High School Musical, Hannah Montana and Camp Rock. Alemeda’s dreams of pop stardom frightened her mother, who told her daughter she’d “go to hell” if she continued to pursue it. In the end, Alemeda was 17 when she was kicked out and her mum moved to Africa, forcing her to figure out her music career alone.

After two years of hustling, she found some unlikely saviours: Top Dawg Entertainment. She signed to the superstar-churning label back in 2020, loving the way that they championed dark-skinned people, especially Black women like signees SZA and Doechii. But even this milestone was a struggle for Alemeda as her style wasn’t an instant match with the hip-hop and R&B musical intel TDE had on hand.

Already proving her virality on TikTok with ‘Don’t Call Me’ and ‘Gonna Bleach My Eyebrows’ – tracks which showcase her vivid tales of heartbreak – Alemeda is intent on blazing a path for Black Muslim women in pop-rock music, no matter how long it takes.

How is it like being a Black Muslim woman navigating pop-rock?

“I’m Ethiopian and my dad is Sudanese. There are no Ethiopian women who are in any way mainstream. There are no Sudanese women who are mainstream. It’s crazy that I get a lot of text messages or DMs from people who are Ethiopian or Sudanese and they’re like, ‘Oh my god. You’re gonna be our pop star!’

“There’s a lot of Black women like Rachel Chinouriri and Hemlocke Springs who are killing it. Before, pop-rock was such a white-dominated space. It looked like a club you cannot get into because they are so quick to put Black people in the R&B space, even if you make alternative [music].”

“Music is a therapeutic thing: I get to say my feelings, let it out, and then move past it”

You said you grew up listening to no music at all…

“A lot of Muslim parents don’t like to play music, period, and my mom was definitely more on the extreme side. Even Ethiopian music was awesome, but the only time I would hear it was at a wedding or some sort of celebration.”

What was it like when you discovered music?

“I was addicted. I discovered music at six or seven on the home clock radio where you could switch stations between AM and FM. I knew what radio stations played good music because my stepdad would play it in the car and when nobody was home I’d listen.

“When I started going to high school, kids had iPods and [would ask], ‘Have you heard this song by this person?’ and play it on the computer. That was the only way I could because, if my mom was home, you couldn’t even play a theme song from a show. You had to mute the TV.”

Was music a form of escape or rebellion for you?

“Now, music is more of a therapeutic thing. I get to say my feelings, let it out, and then move past it. When I used to put out covers, my mum would have interventions with me and say, ‘Please don’t do it. You’re going to hell.’ Bro, that was so dramatic. There was a point where I lost respect for her back when I was 17, 18 and had to live my own life. I didn’t think it was going to go well, but there was definitely spite.”

What is it like navigating the music world whilst being a Muslim?

“It’s very contradicting. My personal life is more aligned with my religion. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink – I’m not a rock star in real life. I’m really a boring grandma. I just have my two cats [Cinnamon and Truffles]. I feel like if you grow up in a religious house, you have that guilt. I’m trying to balance it out.”

You finally released your label debut, ‘Fk It’ – what do you think about the response?

“The reception I got has been amazing. I was very anxious at first because TDE fans always expect some quality production, quality lyrics, real storytelling. I had a fear they might think my music was too pop. I definitely had imposter syndrome like crazy and it’s slightly going away [because] I’m starting to feel like an artist. Before, it felt like a game.”

You have a raw emotive way of putting things…

“I’m very dramatic, feel things very deeply and very impulsive so I write how I speak. Most of my lyrics are just straight from my diary. A lot of people try to dumb down their emotions and pretend issues don’t affect them, but shit be affecting people and it be affecting me like crazy.”

Your debut single ‘Gonna Bleach My Eyebrows’ and ‘Post Nut Clarity’ are drum ’n’ bass songs and not your usual pop-rock songs…

“When I was 12, I really locked into the UK’s whole music scene like Ella Eyre: she has a lot of drum ’n’ bass in her music even though it doesn’t sound like it.

“But [when I made ‘Gonna Bleach My Eyebrows’] I had just discovered PinkPantheress. She truly is one of a kind and [her music] in 2020 and 2021 was amazing. I didn’t want to be too late to hop on this cool-ass sound. Drum ’n’ bass is almost like a variation of pop or rock if you think about it, but it wasn’t my sound. I don’t see myself making any more”.

I am going to end with this interview from Grunge Cake. Reading about how difficult it was for Alemeda when she first discovered music and embarked on this path. Consider how far she has come and where she is heading. A truly inspiring story that will motivate other artists and give them strength:

“In a recent in-depth conversation with Alemeda, Richardine Bartee delved into the artist’s journey from her early days in music to the breakthroughs and challenges that have shaped her unique sound. Alemeda opens up about the struggles she faced when starting out, including overcoming self-doubt and a steep learning curve, from being relatively new to studio work to navigating industry expectations. She reflects on the impact of her cultural background, growing up in a conservative Ethiopian-Muslim household where music was limited, and how this shaped her understanding of and connection to various genres and artists over time. Through determination and self-discovery, Alemeda has developed a distinctive voice in the Alt-Pop genre, challenging stereotypes and redefining norms. Her story exemplifies resilience and highlights the complexities of representation and genre classification in today’s music landscape. For those young in spirit or mind, who appreciate exploring diverse musical styles and discovering inspiring journeys to success, you’re in for something special. Don’t miss Richardine’s interview with Alemeda below.

Introduction of Alemeda

Richardine: I would like to start with your beginning. If you could, talk to me about what it was like making music early on. Then, take us through the journey from then till now.

Alemeda: Okay, well, in the very beginning, it was extremely hard for me. Like, I honestly wanted to quit, like, all the time. Like, this is not for me, you know? And I was… I didn’t feel like I was good at it, because when TDE found me, I was so new. Like, when I tell you I had only been in the studio maybe five times… I was so inexperienced. When I first came [to America] I didn’t know who Lauryn Hill was. Now I’m like, one of the biggest Lauryn Hill fans… I didn’t know who Erykah Badu was. I didn’t know all these people.

I know every session I would go through it, and we wouldn’t even make a song. Like, they were like, “Okay, we gotta make you a playlist!” Like, you gotta get tapped in. The first two years… was education. It was almost like college — like the Introduction to Music! It’s been four years now. Yeah, so the second two years is when I really found my sound and actually started to make music.

Richardine: Why didn’t you know about Lauryn and Erykah? Is it because of how you grew up?

Alemeda: Yeah, so, like, the way my mom… she just didn’t like music, even though she’s Ethiopian. We didn’t like any music because in our religion, music necessarily, isn’t forbidden, but it’s just like guitars… stringed instruments. So, she was kind of like, you know, just no music. Like, even, [if] it’s a theme song played on a show on TV. If she’s walking to the room, I have to mute it, because she’d be like, “Hold on, what’s going on here? Y’all trying to start a club in my living room?”

She used to get really angsty about that. But all the music that I knew as a child was just whatever was on the radio in the 2000s which was a lot of Rock, a lot of Pop, Beyoncé, you know what I mean? Like, everything that was just Pop during that time was just straight club music and that’s what I knew. Like, or, you know, Bruno Mars… all these big Pop artists from the early 2000s and late 2000s.

Richardine: Okay, [it] makes sense. And I think it makes sense for it to just be string instruments because if it’s based on religion, there’s really no interruption. It’s like a pure form of music.

Alemeda: Yeah.

Richardine: It’s just you and that instrument. It’s not like all of these other energies. So, I think I understand that.

Alemeda: Yeah.

Challenges and Influences in Music Career

Richardine: Okay, and then, so coming up as an Alt-Pop artist, and a Black one at that, what have the challenges been?

Alemeda: I think the biggest goal for me is like, just establishing myself as it. I’ve made it a huge thing with Warner and TDE to like, just kind of like, make sure that we establish that in the beginning. Because if, if I then go in the future and make a different [genre]… Like, the moment you start making R&B music, or you start rapping, it’s so hard for you to branch out. And, like, one of the biggest things for was kind of The Weeknd. He’s, like, one of the biggest Ethiopian artists out there. I watched him do R&B and then make it one of the poppiest albums of all time. He just… they, just weren’t. You know what I mean?

Richardine: Yes!

Alemeda: It’s like, if you were White, they would like, you know, go in and out of any genre and actually give you the award for that genre. Or, like, call you… call your project that genre at least.

Richardine: Like Post Alone.

Alemeda: Like Ariana Grande. She can do multiple genres. They’ll call her Pop song a Pop song and her R&B song and an R&B song. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I do know for Black people, it’s so much harder for you to be diverse.

Richardine: Yes.

Alemeda: Alternative music is like, the most comfortable music I love making. I actually can listen to the songs and not get annoyed by my voice. So…

Richardine: Yeah, I’m just surprised to hear you even say that you could be annoyed by your voice because we love it.

Alemeda: Listen, oh, man. I used to walk out of studios when people started playing my songs. I was like, “Oh no!”

Alemeda: I’ll tell you. My confidence level built as I… the past four years, in the beginning… I just like, you know, you don’t know what you’re doing. Just have imposter syndrome and just feel like nothing’s good.

Richardine: How are you now? Like, how are you feeling about it all now?

Alemeda: I feel great now. Honestly. I feel so comfortable. I feel great performing my music. I feel great listening to it. It’s so easy to make it. I’m not spending six hours in the studio, just like, stressing about whether or not this studio time money is going to be worth it. You know what I mean? Like, I just go in there and actually create. And it’s like… I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like, making wonderful projects. And like, I don’t know…

Richardine: Okay, but how do you feel as one of the artists that is finally going to be seen as Alt-Pop and not R&B… Because I feel like there have been artists that have tried, but in recent memory, I think that you are the one that is being fronted and presented as such, from early on. And so there, it leaves no room for anyone to be like, “This person is R&B, or this person is Hip-Hop”, or what have you. Like, have you digested that yet?

Alemeda: Yes, because, like, I’ve heard so many stories of other artists and what they’ve gone through. And I see it like, you know? I mean, it’s right there, you’ll see somebody call somebody Alternative R&B. And I’m like, “Bro, that’s literally an indie song!” But whatever, right? Like, I’m so early into everything, and I hope that what we’re doing everything — like, how Warner and TDE are, like, just correctly, doing it — I hope that actually gets put forward. And then [make] other people [a] little open-minded”.

I will leave things there. Without doubt one of the most promising, extraordinary and strong artists coming through, the rest of this year will see Alemeda building her platform and bringing her music to new fans. With a growing fanbase in the U.K., I am sure we will see her soon. I am intrigued and arrested already. Someone with a very big career in her hands, this is an artist that you…

NEED to know.

_____________

Follow Alemeda

FEATURE: Spotlight: Travy

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Travy

_________

OVER the next month or so…

I am going to increase the number of Spotlight features I publish. That is because I have been a bit lax over the past month or two. For this feature, I am focusing on someone who is pushing Irish Rap forward. One of the country’s most exciting talents. Travy is someone you should know about. Before getting to some more in-depth interviews, I want to take from a January interview from THE FACE:

“I like peace. London’s just hectic full stop”, says Travy, reclining on a couch in an oversized hoodie.

The rapper is enduring a trip to the English capital to do a bunch of interviews, but feels much more at home in Ireland. Born in Nigeria, at the age of six Travy moved to Tallaght, an outer suburb of Dublin, where he was sent to boarding school by his mum: ​“I remember bringing J‑rice [jollof] to school. That was my first introduction to putting Irish people on to African culture,” he says. ​“They would try it and I’d just see them running up and down like what is this? This is so crazy! That was one of the first times I thought, maybe I should show my culture more, who knows? They might really fuck with it.”

After dropping out of college in Dublin, Travy pursued acting, modelling and music. Teaming up with his best friend and fellow rapper Elzz in 2022, the pair founded Gliders, a Dublin-based clothing brand, event series and cultural collective. Travy and Elzz have since dropped two hard-hitting collaborative albums, Full Circle (2023) and Doghouse (2024), which reached No.2 and No.1 in the Irish charts respectively. But when Travy went to collect his plaque from the record label’s office, he was underwhelmed: ​“They’re not having meetings to [expand] new areas,” he says. ​“There’s like one person in these offices. Seeing that made me realise that I have to build my own industry”.

Travy attributes his confidence to his mum, a chef and business owner who was the first to introduce African cuisine to the shelves of Irish supermarket SuperValu in the form of ready meals and snacks. ​“My mum’s kind of like the way I am with music – she’s full of belief and nothing can stop her. I’ve seen where it takes her and it’s rubbed off.”

Most recently, Travy’s been working on his upcoming solo mixtape Spooky, a more personal record exploring his experiences as an immigrant in Ireland. ​“People were hearing the music in places like New York and seeing that [though I spoke English] I was coming from a completely different perspective.” The tape is dropping on the 10th January. Don’t sleep on it”.

I am moving onto a deep interview from CLASH. Without doubt one of the breakthrough artists of this year, I am excited to see where he heads next. If this is an artist new to you then make sure you explore his work. I predict the next few years are going to see him grown and conquer the world. It is fascinating reading what Trav had to say about Ireland and how that shaped his career. What the challenges were for him living in Ireland coming onto the scene:

“There’s a dark force sweeping through Dublin. It’s scary. It’s ominous. It’s breakthrough Irish rapper Travy, who jumps feet first into 2025 with his debut solo project, ‘SPOOKY’. Irish rap has undergone a seismic evolution over the years, carving its own singular regional identity. What was once a fledgling scene, often battling misconceptions and a niche audience, has matured into a genre-bending movement. At the forefront of this charge, is man of the people, Travy, backed by his collective, Gliders.

I first became aware of Travy when I ventured to Brighton on a solo trip. I perched up in the nearest fish & chips scrolling through my phone, when a video for Travy and Elzzz’s 2024 hit ‘Blockbuster’ arrived in my DMs. Lifted from their collaborative project, the slick edit correlated with Travy’s charged, staccato verse; the song was bold and punchy, the video striking.

‘SPOOKY’ affirms Travy’s status as one of the most exciting musicians to come out of Ireland in recent years. Having previewed his tape ahead of release, CLASH caught up with the buzzy rapper to talk Dublin rap, the familial inspiration behind his alias and fostering community with his multi-purpose collective.

Who is Travy?

A Nigerian artist raised in Ireland. A very ambitious kid trying to take over the world, using my voice to inspire the ones that don’t really have a voice. That’s me in a nutshell.

What inspired you to pursue a career in music, and how did growing up in Ireland shape your artistic journey?

My friends and the people around me inspired me. Back in the COVID period, we used to freestyle because we obviously didn’t have much to do, so we’d be freestyling every day, rapping over beats. Every time I’d rap, they’d look at me and be like “Yo you actually have a voice for this, there’s something there.” What really pushed me over the edge was my videographer. He got his camera and said, “I want you to rap and I’m going to record you.” Then we recorded my first song. Looking back, the song wasn’t that crazy but the vibe was there. We posted it and actually got a decent amount of engagement. Since then, I haven’t looked back.

I started paying attention to you after watching the video to ‘Blockbuster’, and what was refreshing to see, is that you proactively engage with your audience, rather than react, which is how we got talking all that time ago.

You’re a person first, right? Someone texted me the other day saying, “the stuff that you’re putting out is so insane and yet you’re still so reachable. You’re replying to DMs, you’re actually engaging with the people.” This is how I started. I never took it seriously.

Your music blends UK drill, US rap and Nigerian highlife. How do you balance these genres and cultural signifiers in your sound?

In Ireland, we have a lot of influences from England and beyond. I grew up listening to Skepta and other UK stuff, like what the English people would grow up listening to. I also listened to a lot of American music, as we grew up watching American TV. Ireland is the only English-speaking country now in the EU since Brexit. When I started doing all this stuff, I blended all the influences together. Things would just happen. It was like “Let me add this sound from this American thing but then put it on to a drill beat, or grab this because I like the way he’s rapping on this.” I listened to a lot of music growing up. I listened to loads of 50 Cent.

Tell us about your new project ‘SPOOKY’. How would you describe it?

‘SPOOKY’ is “feel something” music. You’ve heard the sonics and it’s heavy hitting, whilst the bars are punching. It’s something people would want to listen to. It’s my first solo project, so it’s based on all the experiences that I’ve lived. Being from Dublin, it’s a good place to live and it’s a good place to raise kids. It’s very family-oriented but it’s also quite dark. There’s a lot of bad stuff happening. There’s a lot of oppression. Every time I meet people from London, the first thing they say to me is “I swear Ireland’s mad racist!”

I’ve had to go through so many different things that my peers in the UK just wouldn’t have had to face in England because there’s more integration, and Ireland is still predominantly white. We’re pushing and building culture whilst we’re creating it. Making ‘SPOOKY’ was like a therapy session – a massive therapy session. All the experiences, bad or good, I just wanted to cram it all into one project. If you want to feel something, feel alive, just put on ‘SPOOKY’.

Why did you call collective Gliders?

We used to say we’re going on a glide, if we were to go to a party or going to go do something. People would be like “Yo, those are the Gliders.” People gave us the name.

As a co-founder of Gliders, what role does collaboration play in your music and vision?

One voice can’t be the only voice. I feel like in Ireland, when people aren’t collaborating, things don’t really move as fast. When you collaborate, the scene forms. I think people are starting to see that. I’ve made songs with so many different people but at a time where collaboration just wasn’t a thing. People didn’t really clap, they just did their own thing.

I started to collaborate with people because I was trying to bring that out and that’s how Gliders was made. Everything happened organically. Me and Elzzz decided one day to make hats and put the word Gliders on them. They sold out in a day and we carried on the momentum. We found Sam Fallover (artwork and visuals) and brought him on board, and then one of our friends, TJ, but he’s moved on now. That whole period we were creating a brand. Again, collaboration is massive.

You’ve generated a lot of success with your collaborative work with Elzzz and Gliders. What are your plans to grow the movement?

We have ideas for the brand and one of those is that we’re doing a collaboration with Pellador, which is another Irish brand, on the clothes side of things. We’re trying to organise a Gliders fest where we’ll bring other artists on. Hopefully we can get that done within the year. In Ireland, they have funding initiatives to help run all those things. I’m working with some people within the council that are going to try and help.

With Gliders, we have a few things coming and then with me and Elzzz, we’re aiming to do another project – we have one in the pipeline. Once I’m done with ‘SPOOKY’, I’ll be looking to figure out what the next stage is, whether it’s another solo project or another collaborative one. It’s all about picking out which one to focus on.

You touched on it before. What are the main challenges emerging artists are facing in Ireland? And how do they overcome these challenges?

It’s very hard to take music seriously in Ireland because there’s literally no support. I get my support from the people around me. For new artists in Ireland, I give them any piece of knowledge that I have. Find someone that believes in you. That might be your close friend who does videos or does graphics, or does something creative with a camera or makes beats. Anyone can add to the musical journey. For instance, like Liam and Sam, we all came together very organically. Dublin rents are also peak; the housing crisis is a different situation altogether and it makes it very hard to sustain a music career. I don’t even know how I’ve done it. It’s only by God’s grace that I’m even here.

Do you hope your music impacts conversations about identity and more cultural integration in Ireland?

For sure. I posted a TikTok one time, and it started doing the rounds but then I saw it on Twitter. Someone screen grabbed it and they were cussing it out like “look what Ireland has turned into, a load of people from Africa doing dances in front of a memorial.” I didn’t even know whose memorial that was. I was just dancing and rapping my songs. The majority of Ireland is still in its early stages of culture, and we’re the ones bringing culture to it, if that makes sense? It’s still very difficult because they don’t necessarily want to take it in yet. I found out recently that Gliders was blacklisted. I was wondering why we weren’t getting any shows and some guy told us we ask for too much because we roll with an entourage. This is rap culture. I’m living in a place where they don’t understand it yet.

There’s no one that’s like me in these high places to tell them that this is how it is. My mum said to me the other day “You must keep going, you must keep shining. Kill them with success and that’s the only way.” My mum was the first Nigerian lady to bring Nigerian dishes into Irish supermarkets. She basically went through the same thing I had to go through. She just recently opened a restaurant, and will be interviewed by the BBC soon.

Growing up in Ireland, there was a lot of black people that had an identity crisis because they’re told you’re not from here. I’m Irish, though? I’ve lived here my whole life. I’ve done the exact same thing you guys have. I’m on the same corner you guys are, so what’s the difference? Ireland has a mad suicide rate because a lot of people don’t know where they stand. They don’t know where their community is and it’s quite sad. The bigger we grow, the more of us there’ll be. How many generations of black people have been in the UK for time? They’ve grown up with grandparents that were born in the UK and in Ireland we are the first generation.

With that said, how do you feel about leading the charge for the next generation of Irish artists?

I like these questions because they get me thinking. My dad was a General in Nigeria and my mum is an ambitious woman. I get my ambition from them but I’ve always wanted to inspire people. For example, there’s this kid named Baby July from Galway. He popped up on my TikTok one time. I liked his beat selections and the fact that he was doing it himself. I share his stuff every so often. I didn’t have that, so I want to be there for the ones that are coming up in the space”.

I am going to end with an interview from NME that was published earlier this month. Last year’s DOGHOUSE was an album that should have got Travy award-nominated and better represented. Perhaps not completely embraced and accepted in Ireland at the moment, I do hope that the culture changes pretty soon. In spite of the fact there are barriers put up, Travy has achieved so much and is inspiring so many people:

“The 26-year-old is at the forefront of a generation of Black Irish artists forging a new path within the country’s music scene, alongside the likes of Sello, Monjola, and long-time collaborator Elzzz. His first two projects, ‘Full Circle’ (2023) and ‘Doghouse’ (2024), both made with Elzzz, secured the Number Two and Number One spots on the Irish Album Charts respectively, and ‘Spooky’ (produced by Galway-born beatmaker Liam Harris) has further boosted that momentum.

‘Spooky’ was crafted over a two-month period spent renting a flat in Paris, striving for nonstop creativity and endeavour. “Me and Liam had this place in the second district in Paris, and sometimes we didn’t even have a penny bro, I was just chowing on these pasta boxes every day just to keep going!” Travy laughs. “But I knew what I was gonna get from the project, so it was just them graveyard shifts, really being in that creative flow… it was nice having that time and space to record at any given moment. I was thinking, ‘If I record in Paris, will the music sound different?’ But I still have the same vim, so it’s not just the cold weather that’s making me rap like this!”

Travy’s fresh, distinctly Irish rap sound stems from a wide array of sources. He tends to lean on dark, swelling instrumentals that blend the edginess of mid-2010s south London drill with a more upbeat, bouncing UK grime energy, his vocal cadences and calmly-delivered bars akin to Homerton’s Unknown T. A swish braggadocious quality nodding to booming New York drill runs through the project, too. Anchoring it all in his home city are little touches of Dublin slang like ‘FSSH’ (an expression harnessed on the mixtape’s eponymous lead single) and ominous choral samples that transport you to midnight mass in a cold, cavernous Catholic church (‘Meet Spooky’).

But creating this sense of identity hasn’t been easy; Travy has repeatedly spoken up about the lack of music infrastructure he’s had access to in Ireland, and the lack of successful role models to learn from. “What I’m facing, it’s completely different,” says Travy. “That’s why the music might have a bit more vim, because I’m up against more. Trying to push culture in a country that doesn’t care, it’s infuriating!

PHOTO CREDIT: Kyle Bolam

“There’s this festival in Dublin called Longitude which we performed at one time, but never again,” he continues. “This festival was once the Mecca of culture for everyone growing up, but now they’ve got 50 Cent and David Guetta headlining, and it’s so out of touch it’s ridiculous. It was so inspiring seeing people from Dublin tearing up that main stage, but I think the people running the entertainment business in Ireland don’t care enough to look within their own area. If they booked us for these tings, people would be pulling up.”

As a result, Travy has often looked to the UK for inspiration – and recently met legend Skepta at Paris Fashion Week. “He said to me, ‘The only reason I’m still here is because I kept going’. Everything he did in England is basically what we’re doing in Ireland now.”

Travy has often been compared to the Tottenham rapper thanks to the strides taken by his collective, Gliders: “Back home, people would compare Gliders to Boy Better Know or A$AP Mob.” Initially a spontaneous nickname for the group of friends Travy rolled around with in Dublin, Gliders eventually morphed into a collective throwing house parties in the capital. Over time, the group have blended musical releases with a hugely successful clothing line, growing a community of like-minded artists, videographers and illustrators.

The chief musicians are Travy, Elzzz, Harris, while Sam Fallover handles art and visuals for Gliders. Fallover played a key role in the conceptual development of ‘Spooky’, designing the album artwork and helping shape the devilish alter ego Travy embodies on the project.

“Spooky was a nickname my friends gave me growing up, ’cause I was kinda a mischievous kid,” Travy explains. “I knew I wanted to make this project explore who I am as a person, the Nigerian and Irish perspective… I want people to be like ‘This guy’s an alien!’ It’s getting to the stage where I’m starting to believe I’m an alien!”

Sadly, alienation is something Travy has consistently experienced in the Irish music scene. He was absent from the Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTE) Albums of the Year list, despite ‘Doghouse’ making history last year by becoming the first Irish rap project to reach Number One, a snub that understandably angered fans. “I posted about it because the younger generation needs to know what kinda forces we’re working against,” Travy says”.

An artist who should be in your sights, I would urge everyone to check out Travy. Even if you are not a fan of Rap or are not familiar with his sound, I would still encourage you to take a listen. A huge artist who is going to be a major name very soon, all eyes should be trained his way. He is one of the most important voices…

<

IN modern music.

____________

Follow Travy

FEATURE: But This Time It's Much Safer In: Kate Bush’s Breathing at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

But This Time It's Much Safer In

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush relaxing with some extras (including her brother Paddy) during filming the video for 1980’s Breathing/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Kate Bush’s Breathing at Forty-Five

_________

ONE of Kate Bush’s…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot whilst on the set of Breathing/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

finest and most important singles turns forty-five shortly. Released on 14th April, 1980, Breathing was the first single from Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever. Featuring Roy Harper on backing vocals, Breathing debuted on BBC Radio 1 on 11th  April, 1980. The single peaked at number sixteen on the U.K. charts and remained in the charts for seven weeks. I am going to explore the song further ahead of its forty-fifth anniversary. One reason why Breathing was so important is because of its lyrical themes. A tale of a foetus being protected by its mothers womb but still fearful and vulnerable to nuclear fallout. The only performance of the song was during a Comic Relief concert on 25th  April, 1986. It was a solo piano version. The second and final U.K. single from Kate Bush’s second studio album, Lionheart (1978), was Wow. Maybe wanting a more ‘serious’ song to be her next U.K. single, the first statement from an album that reached number one in the U.K. was important. She could have gone for the more commercial and Pop-influenced Babooshka. That was the second single. Instead, Breathing was selected. The closing track from Never for Ever, I guess it was a gamble releasing it as the first single. However, there was criticism from some in the press who felt Bush was a novelty or not someone who could fit in with the Punk scene of the late-'70s. An especially patronising interview from Danny Baker around the time Bush was making Never for Ever – or at least seeds were planted - might have provoked her to react. Army Dreamers, the third single, is also political in nature. The futility of young lives being lost during war. I am going to end with a couple of features around Breathing. Perhaps her most accomplished song to that point, it was an extraordinary achievement for someone who was only twenty-one when Breathing was released. Before getting to some features, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia sourced some interviews where Bush talked about the inspiration behind Breathing:

“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”.

I am going to move to a feature from Treblezine. At the start of a decade where fear of nuclear destruction was strong and very much in the news, few expected an artist like Kate Bush to document or channel some of that anxiety in a single. Forty-five years since its release, it remains this startling song that still affects me every time I hear it:

“Fear of nuclear war dominated the music of the ’80s. It began much earlier, back in the early days of the Cold War in the 1960s, with songs like Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” offering potential warnings of the inevitable destruction that would occur between two or more countries engaged in a nuclear arms race. But in the ’80s, when tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union came ever closer to a boiling point, Cold War anxiety dominated popular music in a way that sometimes revealed itself in subtle ways, like on Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” or Alphaville’s “Forever Young,” and in more overt ways as well, as on Time Zone’s “World Destruction.” For a couple years the threat of total annihilation even seemed to preoccupy Prince, who released both “Ronnie Talk to Russia” and the end-of-the-world party anthem “1999.” If you turned on the radio in the ’80s, there’s a good chance you’d be hearing songs about a coming apocalyptic scenario, whether you realized it or not.

It’s a terrifying thought. Even more so when taken into account that, at least according to the lore, a made-for-TV-movie made the matter one of utmost urgency for then president Ronald Reagan. But then again who can be blamed when the idea of having your nation destroyed somehow becomes real, however absurd the method of communication. Personally, I find Kate Bush’s take on the matter much more devastating.

Five years before releasing her blockbuster Hounds of Love, featuring her iconic single “Running Up That Hill”—which ended up back on the singles charts this year thanks to Stranger Things—Kate Bush released her own song addressing our potential impending destruction, “Breathing.” The final track on Never For Ever, an album that also contained the much more playful “Babooshka,” “Breathing” looks at nuclear destruction from the perspective of an unborn fetus, one that, if it survives, will inherit a world that’s essentially gone, and at best nearly uninhabitable.

True to much of the pop songs with fear of World War III on their mind at the time, “Breathing” isn’t scary on an aesthetic level—and Kate Bush can do scary. Check “Waking the Witch” or any number of moments on 1982’s The Dreaming for proof of that. It’s not tense and climactic like Iron Maiden’s “Two Minutes to Midnight,” either, though Bush’s sense of scale and theatrics at times could stand toe-to-toe with the best of the decade’s metal bands. “Breathing” is, instead, a characteristically dramatic ballad for Bush, one of the most powerful songs she’d written just two years into her career, made all the more unnerving by a closer read of the details within the song. Its first line tells us the stakes, the fate of the child wholly dependent on the life of the mother. “Outside gets inside,” she sings, at once extolling the safety of the fortress inside the womb, while offering reminders of the vulnerability therein, like breathing in the nicotine from her cigarettes.

The sense of doom and desperation grows deeper into the song, Bush lamenting, “We’ve lost our chance, we’re the first and the last” in its third verse, and in its final chorus—just before the image of a not-subtle-at-all mushroom cloud in its Bush-in-a-bubble music video—she desperately pleads, “Oh God, please leave us something to breathe.” Bush scales up from the most intimate and vulnerable to a more universal appeal for mercy, from the fetus that’s at the mercy of the life of its mother—which in this scenario is arguably every bit as helpless—to the civilization at large that stands to be wiped out with the press of a button.

It’s a masterful kick in the gut. Bush described the song as her “little symphony,” and though she’d released songs prior that carried a similar sense of ambition and grandeur, all of that escalated on “Breathing.” The thread of fear and anguish, as well as a subtle sense of anger at the power-hungry world leaders in dark rooms that would seal millions of innocent people’s fates without remorse, persists at every point, including its spoken-word bridge, describing the differences between a small nuclear bomb and a large one—the irony and even black humor of its placement serving only to emphasize that you’d have to be a psychopath to greenlight that kind of devastation. But ultimately it all comes back to that one very basic idea of defenselessness, whether it’s the child, the mother, or simply Kate Bush herself, desperately grasping for air in the fallout, and their pleas falling on deaf ears.

“Breathing,” heavy as the subject matter might have been, was the lead single from Never For Ever, and in doing press for the album, Kate Bush described a moment of revelation about the gravity of living during a time of continued threat of nuclear war. “Til the moment it hit me, I hadn’t really been moved,” she said in a 1980 interview. “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.”

That same year, Bush also sang the hook (“jeux sans frontieres“) on “Games Without Frontiers” from Peter Gabriel’s self-titled “Melt” album, which coincidentally, perhaps unavoidably also carried a similar sense of anxiety about nuclear war and brinksmanship between armed nations. And though that concept didn’t necessarily follow her to subsequent albums, what did was a similar sense of perspective, bringing a more personal, human identity to darker concepts, whether the inner monologue of a soldier desperate to survive in “Pull Out the Pin,” or the conceptual suite of “The Ninth Wave,” which follows a person lost at sea whose will to live is the thing keeping them afloat.

In the aftermath of Kate Bush’s big Stranger Things moment, there have been jokes about newcomers eventually discovering her song about sexual congress with a snowman. The flipside is a newcomer to her music discovering “Breathing,” a beautiful and heartbreaking song whose underlying narrative might just be her most vividly horrifying”.

I am going to end with a feature from Dreams of Orgonon and their detailed examination of Breathing. Forty-five years since it was released to the world, have we taken anything from its messages? Maybe a warning and fear specifically of its time, I think one can read Breathing as a message for all humanity and time. The true horror of warfare. Something that was on Bush’s mind when she wrote Never for Ever, she is still thinking about it now. Last year’s Little Shrew (Snowflake) raised money for War Child. She was affected by scenes of conflict in Ukraine and children being killed and displaced:

“Breathing” is the most unified and conceptually coherent work of Kate Bush’s career. Each aspect of its composition and production strives in a single accord. Its mastering of the techniques it uses can be found as much in its broad strokes as its fine details. Bush’s songwriting makes a huge leap in quality, achieving a new standard. It is one of the greatest British singles of the early 1980s, and its reasonable chart standing (#16 in the UK) is as baffling as it is delightful. Without “Breathing,” there is no The Dreaming or Hounds of Love or Aerial. There are two major discernable eras in Bush’s career: before “Breathing,” and its aftermath.

As a conventional and sane member of society, Bush achieves creative apotheosis through a fetus’s perspective of nuclear fallout. Again, that’s not hyperbole — that is actually what the song is about, if not straightforwardly. “Breathing” contains astounding clarity, with its premise explicitly stated through lyrics such as “outside/gets inside/through her skin,” “last night in the sky/such a bright light,” and “breathing my mother in.” It’s rather clear what’s going on: a fetus (probably human, but easily headcanoned out of specieshood) knows that a nuclear bomb has exploded and is experiencing the slow irradiation of its mother’s body with horror. Its fears are expressed in primal terms. It hasn’t gone to school. Nobody has told it what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All it perceives is a bright light that destroys everything that even its mother can’t protect it from. Bodies are destroyed — the emotional reality takes over, and no rational mind will help.

On a technical level, “Breathing” is Bush’s magnum opus. Her mastery of her own voice is as impressive as the achievements of The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. Throughout the first verse, she sounds as if she’s holding her breath (“out-SIIIIIDE” sounds like shallow inhalation), crooning in a way that’s both innocent and haunting. The two refrains largely follow the first verse’s lead, while the second one sees Bush push her range upwards, making “we’ve lost our chance” a guttural invocation. By the song’s coda, she’s outright screaming at the top of her lungs for breath. Melodically and rhythmically, “Breathing” is on similarly breathy wavelengths. It’s in Eb minor, excepting a few detours into Eb major: the verse commences with the i chord (Eb minor), joins an augmented fifth to it (B) to create a VI chord, and then inverts the i chord with its parallel major (a favorite technique of hers — see also “The Infant Kiss”). The verse ultimately comes out largely to i-VI-I-iv-I (with some tricky slash-chord articulates of E flat major). Rhythm is consistent throughout the verse, with shifting time signatures of 2/4, 4/4, and 3/4 changing by the measure, at a pace consistent with breathing. The refrain is almost entirely in common time, excepting its final measure (2/4). The refrain’s breathing is done by its chord progression (i-III-VI), rising and falling, like an agonized chest not quite inhaling enough oxygen to keep living. Sonically, there are echoes of earlier rock songs: the bridge sounds like Bowie’s similarly cosmic “Space Oddity” in places, and a mechanical hum in the second verse evokes memories of Pink Floyd’s luddite threnody “Welcome to the Machine.”

If your reaction to this isn’t “hey, Kate, who’s your dealer?”, you are a liar and you should be ashamed of yourself. But as we aren’t in East Wickham’s social circle of 1980 and thus lack access to whatever strain Bush smoked at the time, we can interrogate more pertinent issues of why the fuck Bush is using this perspective to explore nuclear war. Since the emotional state of fetuses is pertinent to some deluded members of society, we should probably address that particular discourse. If “Breathing” were released right about now, the pro-life crowd wouldn’t latch onto it (it’s much too weird for a group of people who are busy mutilating their eardrums with MercyMe), but one could see its subject matter being twisted for reactionary ends. The song does cope with fetal autonomy, or lack thereof, but it’s incredibly abstract and fails to resemble abortion in any way (the metaphor would be weird, too: “hey Del, you know what abortion reminds me of? The fucking H-bomb!”). Furthermore, abortion, while still a major topic of conversation in the UK, where abortion was only legalized in Northern Ireland in 2019, is a fundamentally different conversation than it is in the United States. Bush was clandestine about her thoughts on abortion, although one can deduce through an interview where she opines “that life is something that should be respected and honored even in a few hours of its conception” that her private opinions on the matter are on the reactionary side. But that’s not the subject of the song. The issue goes deeper than that — to the dredges of consciousness, the origins of human life, and the human mind’s need for survival.

Like a breath, the fetus in “Breathing” inhabits its mother (although unlike breath, it needs its emissary to survive). While it doesn’t treat a fetus like a parasite, the sheer weirdness of having a burgeoning organism inside one’s body receives emphasis (before you ask, Kate Bush did see Alien. More on that in “Get Out of My House” in August). Rather, the fetus emblematizes the earliest vestiges of human form — hints of consciousness, a complete unfamiliarity with the world. Certainly Bush’s fetus isn’t human, and perhaps only semi-corporeal — “I’ve been out before/but this time it’s much safer in” infers extraordinary capabilities beyond what we’d expect from a human fetus. Contemporary quotes from Bush support this reading: “it’s more of a spiritual being… it has all its senses, and it knows what’s going on outside of the mother’s womb.” A clairvoyant specter, one could say. What a weird epistemology.

“Breathing” contains the body horror of crass jingoism’s mutation of human life. “Breathing my mother in” summates what fetuses do normally while warping it into a desperate gasp for breath. A fetus contains nascent vestiges of human form — we all have to start somewhere. But we have to end somewhere too. “Breathing” offers no hope for survival. Its coda is a macabre apocalypse — Middleton’s dolefully frightened keyboard and Bath’s grimacing, sustained guitar licks underscore predator Roy Harper’s calls of “what are we going to do without?” as Bush’s gasps of “LEAVE ME SOMETHING TO BREATHE!” tear the world asunder. Earlier, the second verse is similarly pessimistic about the possibility that “we’ve lost our chance/we’re the first and last.” This is where it starts and where it ends — the bomb destroys bodies and ends the possibility of life.

Sensationalism often takes over conversations about nuclear war. Human casualties are often excused or minimized in the name of military power. Even without taking long-term deaths into account (not to mention cultural trauma), the explosion and firestorm of Little Boy alone are estimated to have killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people in Hiroshima. And that’s not accounting for the immediate deaths in the bombing of Nagasaki, which has a far broader but still ghastly casualty count of 22,000 to 75,000. The victims weren’t merely blown apart either or shot either — they were incinerated, burned alive, hardly recognizable as recently living people. This is the greatest body horror ever wrought by humanity. And nuclear warheads’ harm to people isn’t limited to civilians in wartime either. The United Kingdom gave countless British soldiers cancer, infertility, and children with birth defects in its postwar nuclear tests. Far from being a national security interest, this is fundamentally a weapon that changes the makeup of human biology.

Throughout the years, Bush has sung about the power and vitality of the body. It’s perhaps her most crucial theme: the body is the most beautiful organism we encounter and should be preserved. “Breathing” is fully in line with this idea, and yet it’s a radical departure because the body doesn’t win. It’s turned against itself and destroyed. Never for Ever ends on a note of nihilism.

Where do we go from here? Bush’s dream (of Orgonon?) has been corrupted and will never be the same. The Dreaming reels from the trauma of “Breathing.” The body keeps fighting, but the soul has been weakened. Emotions are less straightforwardly positive than they used to be. But they’re also crucial: “Breathing” is pervaded by emotional reality as well as bodily pain. A scary light in the sky is scary because of its emotional reality.

Bush claimed that the political content of “Army Dreamers” and “Breathing” only served to “move [her] emotionally.” Characteristically, Bush is both wrong and insightful here. The idea that songs are less political because you’re emotionally invested in the political issues they discuss is utter nonsense. But… of course political issues are emotional. Bush even acknowledges this in the next part of the quote, saying “it went through the emotional center… when I thought ‘ah, ow!’ And that made me write.”

Perhaps nothing is more political than personal emotions. Emotions are always present in a person’s values, decisions, choices, and aesthetics. Human beings are ventilation devices for emotions. Perhaps without realizing it, the entity that moved Bush is the radical politics of emotion in the service of bodily liberation. Emotions are political. Everything is political, as no man is an island. And crucially, breathing, and who gets to do it, is political.

Recorded in March 1980 at Abbey Road. Released as a single on 14 April 1980, then as the closing track of Never for Ever on 7 September that year. A censored version of the music video was aired on Top of the Pops on April 14. Performed live by Bush (solo) at a Comic Relief concert in 1986. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, piano, production. Stuart Elliott — drums. Jon Kelly — production, engineering. Max Middleton — Fender Rhodes. Alan Murphy, Brian Bath — electric guitar. Larry Fast — Prophet. Morris Pert — percussion. Roy Harper — backing vocals. Image: Hiroshima immediately after the dropping of “Little Boy” (photographer unnamed)”.

I will finish things there. Maybe repeating words I have published about this song before, Breathing turns forty-five on 14th April. It is a hugely atmospheric song that should be better known and highlighted. It is a shame that Bush never performed the song live around the time of its release. I would be interested in another album like Director’s Cut (Bush reworked/re-recorded songs from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes), where Bush revisited Breathing. Last year, when MOJO ranked Bush’s best fifty tracks, they placed Breathing twentieth. In 2018, The Guardian placed Breathing tenth when they ranked Bush’s singles. In 2023, PROG examined Kate Bush’s best forty songs. This is what was written about Breathing:

“A startling reaction to the prospect of nuclear war, told from the perspective of an unborn baby that doesn’t want to leave the safety of the womb to face the horrors of the world outside.

Marjana Semkina, Iamthemorning: “It’s heartachingly beautiful, fragile and dark at the same time, which is a juxtaposition I very much appreciate and always try to achieve in my music. The subject of the song is especially dark and resonates with me in the light of the political events of the past months, since it’s a song about a foetus experiencing the world outside during the nuclear fallout.

“Kate Bush calls us to turn to the most basic of all human needs: breathing, for no matter how bad things get, you need to breathe. The studio version also features some spoken word about what a flash from a nuclear bomb looks like, and listening to it now has a very strange effect on me – it’s almost too scary to keep listening. But it’s also absolutely beautiful how the song shifts from being ominous and dark to light and hopeful, telling us that not all is lost yet, as long as you only keep breathing”.

In 2021, Dig! published a feature where they wrote about twenty must-hear examples of Kate Bush’s work. Breathing is a song that might not be as regarded as her work on Hounds of Love. However, it is an early-career masterpiece that should be seen as such. A song that showed just how phenomenal Kate Bush is:

“Recorded in early 1980 and released as Never For Ever’s lead single in April that year, Breathing is written from the perspective of a foetus preparing to enter a post-apocalyptic world. As she told Smash Hits at the time of the single’s release: “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.” Again, despite the foreboding subject matter, it’s a gorgeous-sounding entry among the best Kate Bush songs – a sumptuous prog masterpiece that showed her musical ambition”.

If you have not heard Never for Ever and do not know why Breathing is so well placed and important, then listen to the album. The first single from her third studio album, it was as big step forward. Not just in terms of the composition sound. Bush’s vocals at their peak. Her lyrics concise and terrifying. Vivid and haunting! The combination meant Breathing should have done better than number sixteen in the U.K. Regardless, it is a masterpiece that I wanted to shine a spotlight on. It is undoubtably one of Kate Bush’s…

GREATEST achievements.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Lola Kirke

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 

Lola Kirke

_________

BEFORE getting to her music…

IN THIS PHOTO: Domino, Lola and Jemima Kirke/PHOTO CREDIT: Jason Bell

it is worth pointing out that the amazing Lola Kirke released Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1) at the end of last month. The acclaimed musician and actor has been discussing her book. I am going to start with an extract from a recent piece she published for Vogue. I am spotlighting Kirke again because she has achieved a fair bit since I last featured her. I am a big fan of her music so wanted to circle back around:

“For most of my life, whenever I heard a woman claim to be “best friends” with her sisters, I’d smile sadly at her, then change the subject. Obviously this meant she’d been home schooled or locked in a basement for much of her childhood. Obviously, I was desperately jealous. I wanted to be closer with my two sisters and spent years trying to mold myself into the kind of girl I imagined they’d want to be near. I embraced their hobbies (lying to our mother and ballet). I pledged allegiance to their favorite bands (Elvis and Jeff Buckley). I regurgitated their ideas (tan lines were awful and I was annoying). But at 17, after getting caught up in a fist fight between them (one came home with the other’s ex-boyfriend’s name tattooed on her bicep), I gave up. What I never could have foreseen was that the unity I yearned for would come readily years later, when I stopped trying to recreate their experiences and started to write honestly about my own.

Between Jemima and Domino, who are five and eight years my senior respectively, and my mother (mystically nine years my junior, celebrating her twenty-fifth birthday annually), it is safe to say I was raised by the ultimate “cool girls.” Not cool as in chill (they are not). But cool as in beautiful, rebellious, and, when they need to be, icy. Constantly smoking and consummately glamorous, the women in my family were more Ab Fab’s Patsy and Edina than June Cleaver. I couldn’t wait to grow up and be exactly like them. Incidentally, my friends couldn’t either. My sisters’ hand-me-downs were highly coveted by us all. Vivienne Westwood pirate boots. Betsey Johnson hot pants. Shredded vintage T-shirts, complete with holes exactly where your nipples were. Once the goods made their way to me, I’d be drunk with a power I rarely felt otherwise. Endowed with the keys to my sisters’ kingdom, it was no longer just them but also I who could transform a young girl in a racer back Speedo into a harlot in threadbare Eres. But while on the surface I yearned to be like my sisters, deep down, all I wanted was to feel loved by them. In my family, however, between the affairs and addictions, love was often lost. Not gone—just misplaced. We all tore the house apart looking for it.

As I got older, I was able to find a lot of that love through writing what would become my first book, a memoir-in-essays largely about growing up in the fun and dysfunction of our squint-and-it-looks-like-you’re-in-an-expensive-French-brothel West Village brownstone. On the page, I could make sense of the chaos and characters that had so mystified me in life. With the freedom to express myself came the freedom to forgive others and even see my part in things. Perhaps I hadn’t felt my sisters’ affection for me because I hadn’t really let them know me. I seethed with unspoken resentments well into adulthood. (Why had I spent so many of my spring breaks at their rehabs?! How come they still didn’t remember any of my friends’ names?) I was a grown woman replete with the same sense of ineffectiveness I’d felt as a little girl. But was it them relegating me to the old role in the family system? Or had I just been reluctant to grow out of it?

After sharing the manuscript of my finished book with my family last summer, I was filled with a sense of dread. No matter that I’d attached a very intentionally worded email I’d crafted with my therapist, a sage man somewhere in Oregon I’ve never actually met in person but who I understand has a predilection for sweater vests. I knew that my writing could be hurtful to them, even if it had been healing for me. For so long, I’d believed my value was contingent upon my seemingly unique ability to steer our family’s ship towards safe harbor. I was the voice of reason in screaming matches. The champion of the underdog in any fight. Perfect when they were imperfect, or so I thought. Now I was the one rocking the boat.

When my parents first read my book, my worries were affirmed. I would have never done that. What about the good times?! They wrote. You weren’t 11 pounds when you were born! The way I saw my feelings clashed with the way they saw the facts. I yearned to talk to the only other people who knew my parents the way I did—my sisters—though I feared they’d feel similarly. I braced myself as I dialed Jemima.

“It’s your perspective, Lola,” she said emphatically after I explained my situation. “You don’t have to change it just so it matches someone else’s. You’re an author. Not a stenographer”.

I am going to move on in a minute. First, another interesting interview that caught my eye is from People. It is a really interesting interview that I would urge people to check out in full. For the purpose of concision (which might be ironic given the word-count for this feature!), I have chosen a short section for highlighting:

“How did your want or need to fit in with American culture help you connect with country music?

Well, I don't think there's anything more American than country music. It's maybe a little on the nose, but one of the things I don't necessarily name in the book is that I think country also is synonymous with freedom, whether it's the capital “F” freedom, that “freedom isn't free” idea or this idea of like "I'm going out into the country, into the wild and the Wild West.” There's a part of me that has craved freedom, whether it's freedom from my own ego or freedom from the intense freedom that I think the privilege I grew up in smothers you in, almost. So beyond just the America that country sings about, it’s the freedom within the idea of America that I was really drawn to, if that makes sense.

Why was it important for you to conclude the book with your Grand Ole Opry performance?

I couldn't believe, in a way, that performance and experience coincided with when I was writing the end of my book. The ending for the book actually was the chapter before. [Originally], it was like, I live in Nashville now [and] I realize it's okay to like be me. And then I had my Grand Ole Opry debut, and I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. But after, my whole family descended upon Nashville and then left. And through writing this book, I really learned how much writing helps me not only understand the world around me, but myself, and how healing writing could be. So I was like, “What do I do with this experience?” And I wrote about it. This incredible circumstance [at the Opry] really got to articulate so much about what my life has become and where my life has been. That just felt like a really better ending.

What was your experience like working with Greta Gerwig on Mistress America?

Oh, it was fantastic. Greta is incredible, and it doesn't surprise me at all that she absolutely has become one of the most sought-after and powerful directors. I certainly have continued to use some of her mannerisms. I mean, she's just such an inspiration. And now that I'm 34, I can't believe that she was 29 when she wrote that. I'm like, “Oh, f—, she was so driven and so talented even then.”

Have you discussed working together again?

We were supposed to do an ill-fated production of The Three Sisters in 2020 that then got postponed for like two years, and that ultimately [was] canceled. So, not since then. But I would love to”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ohad Cab

I might circle back to the book to close things out. Her latest single, Raised by Wolves, is one of Lola Kirke’s best. Here are some further details: “Raised By Wolves’ is the first song I wrote with Daniel Tashian,” Kirke explains. “I’m a huge fan, so I was extremely nervous for our session and weirdly decided to break the ice by forcing him to let me read the first chapter of my then unfinished book, in which I say ‘I was raised by wolves in the wilderness, but the wolves in question repurposed vintage nightgowns as dinner dresses and the wilderness consisted of various brownstones scattered below 14th street.’ Fortunately, he found this inspiring, not self-indulgent, and we wrote the song”. I am not sure whether Country music is genuinely in fashion or whether it is a reaction to Beyoncé and the success of her 2024 album, COWBOY CARTER. I maintain it is a genre that people should listen to and give time to. However, for artists like Lola Kirke who are not new to Country and have been part of the scene for a long time, how easy is it to ‘convert’ people?! I want to take us back to last year and Kirke’s interview with Building Our Own Nashville. Lola Kirke discussed the Country 2 Country (C2C) Festival, her Country E.P., Country Curious, and more:

“Actress and singer/songwriter Lola Kirke made her Country 2 Country (C2C) Festival this year (2024) and made such an impact on the country music fans that she will undoubtedly return to the C2C Stages in the not too distant future! But fans of the genre and of Kirke won’t actually have to wait long for her return to the UK as she is back in August for a headline tour including an appearance at The Long Road Festival.

Kirke has been making country music for a fair few years now! More recently however, Lola Kirke released her EP titled Country Curious which features First Aid Kit, Roseanne Cash and is produced by Elle King! A wonderful combination of traditional and modern country, the EP is smart, witty and highly relatable!

We caught up with Lola just after her set on the Wayside Stage. Her set was met with great reception and she showcased a few new songs which made for great conversation. Lola Kirke was great company and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with her. If it hadn’t been for my having another interview straight after, I could have honestly chatted for hours! A very laid back and cool country woman, Kirke speaks with such ease and passion about the country music genre and we are so excited to follow her journey from here on!

How are you? How has your C2C Experience been so far?

It’s been good. I was born in England, my family is from England so I have had this incredible time seeing family and friends and places that I grew up in! Then randomly getting to come to the O2 Arena and play on small festivals stages. It’s been a real lovely trip and the weather’s been amazing!

Is it London that your family are from?

Yes!

Oh that makes it easy then!

Yeah it’s great, it’s been a homecoming and I think part of it is getting to play country music in London, it’s a lovely marriage of things I love and music has brought me back to England than anything has in my adult life.

I just saw your set on The Wayside Stage which was incredible! I have written down a new song that you performed and all I have is mum, Madonna, Malboro’s….

Yeah, ‘Malboro Lights and Madonna’. I just wrote that song with Natalie (Hemby) and Jason Nix. I had run into her at the Brandi Carlisle ‘Girls Just Wanna’ weekend in Cancún. For whatever reason, I told her this story of when I was a little girl about 5 years old and how Madonna had been at the same restaurant as us in Miami on a family vacation. My mum was like “go up to her and get her autograph” and I was like “what would she sign? We don’t have anything?” My mum said “oh take this” and gave me her empty Malboro pack and I went over to Madonna like a five year old girl and asked her to sign it for me and she did. I told that story to Natalie Hemby and we were writing together a couple of weeks ago and we were just about to get into it and she said “wait, remind me of that story, it was so funny”. Then I re-told her the story and she said “Malboro Lights and Madonna, that’s a great title”. When I think of my mum, I think of Malboro Lights and Madonna and yeah, we wrote that song. I love how songs fall out of anything if you’re looking at them the right way.”

I don’t think that there’s a better premise for a country song than that!

Thank you so much I really appreciate that!

It’s very Natalie Hemby too

It is, it is so her! I love Natalie!

I love that line in the song about your mum. “always on a diet as she thought she was fat” that’s a line so many women are going to relate to!

We had a bunch of other lines in there too and then I was like “well this is the truest one, that’s not weird right?” And Natalie was like “that’s every mother in the world”. It makes me sad, my mum is so beautiful and I think watching beautiful people think they are not beautiful is just the world we live in. It’s the fuel for every industry and age of capitalism that we live in, and what I love so much about writing, whether it’s songs or other forms of writing that I do, is the ability to bring light and humour to these things that are the subtle underbelly of everything that we do and make them relatable. I do know that’s everyone and that is something that country music has always done for me. I think that my kind of mission within country music is ( I’m not from places that a lot of people from country music are from, I am from New York City and I was born in London, ) to expand on that accessibility of another corner using the country form which is so fun and that was visible playing new songs for people today and by the end they are singing along because there is rhythm to the music that makes it able for people to enter into much easier. I just want to expand on what you can write a country music song about!

Another song that caught my attention during your set which is also not released is Tennessee Sober…

Yeah! Tennessee Sober I made up haha, it’s the opposite of California Sober. California Sober is a term for like “I don’t drink but I smoke weed”. Willie Nelson and Billy Strings just did a song called California Sober so you can refer to that one for the reference but Tennessee Sober was my play on that because I’m drunk all the time haha. I only drink, I drink all day long haha!

Really?

No haha I’m joking!

Haha good – I see that Pistol Annies are an influence of yours and I can hear that in your music, what is it about them that draws you in? Have you worked with any of them?

I have actually written with Ashley (Monroe) and Angaleena (Pressley) I love them so much! That has been one of my favourite things about Nashville, getting to write with my songwriting heroes and singing heroes. Their voices are voices of angels I just adore them. What I love about them is their ability to be tough and funny and heartbreaking. That’s to me what I love so much about country music, about women in country. You don’t see it all the time but for those that are drawn to do that in the genre, they really can. It’s really cool. I love Miranda Lambert for that reason, she is just who she is.

Tell us about ‘Country Curious’ because that is such a great EP!

So Country Curious, I have always been drawn to country music, it has always been an inspiration for my music and slowly over time it’s just got more and more country. I made a duets record back on 2019 (Loka Kirke and Friends and Foes and Friends Again) and that was more classic country influenced and then my record Lady For Sale that came out on Third Man Records on Jack White’s label was much more 80’s country with a lot of Judd references, a lot of synth, pedal steels stuff, it was really fun but it was pretty niche. I started challenging myself after that to write music that was much more in my mind what I was hearing on country radio. I live in Nashville now and listen to a lot of country radio because why not? I wrote all these songs that I wanted to be like bro-country for women. That felt really exciting to me. You just reflected that there was that line in Malboro Lights and Madonna that speaks to you. I wanted to expand on what we can talk about in a country song and I wanted to talk about women taking back their house (song My House) and hiring strippers and going on adventures. Elle King (produced Country Curious) felt like a really great and perfect partner on that, I have always loved how she has blended a rootsier, influenced with a more contemporary sensibility, we had a lot of fun!”.

Even if Lola Kirke moving into Country territory for Country Curious was a surprise to some, it is actually authentic. This is an artist not new to the genre. Even if previous work is more Pop-based, she is someone not jumping on a bandwagon or experimenting. This is music pure to her. I can see her recoding more Country music for years more. I want to move to an interview from GRAMMY, who featured Lola Kirke last year. Chatting about her stunning E.P., it made me think this is an artist the whole world should know:

“On its four songs, Kirke goes from gushing over a southern accent ("He Says Y'all") to saying adios to those not worth her time ("All My Exes Live in L.A." and "My House"). It's been a calculated adventure for Kirke, who's slowly expanded on her country sound with each passing record, moving from the glimmering 70's and 80's influenced Heart Head West and Lady For Sale to the empowered contemporary stylings that dominate Country Curious.

The title of her EP also stems from a childhood infiltrated with country music that she credits to her father, who played in classic rock bands and introduced her to artists like Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, and Patsy Cline. Despite her long fascination with the genre — and even fronting an all-female country band in college — Kirke acknowledges that, from the outside looking in, she doesn't look the part of a cowgirl.

"As a girl from New York City who was half Jewish and half English, it wasn't exactly up there," she jokes about the possibility of a career in country music. "For whatever reason I delusionally believed I could be an actress and that would be easier, and it worked for a while. One thing I've always loved about music is that I don't need a green light from people like I do as an actress, I can always raise hell and sing a song."

Calling from her Nashville home between rehearsals for a new acting role, Kirke spoke candidly about her path to country music, imposter syndrome and how acting and making music compare.

Country music is often tied to a place, but it can also come from the heart — something people often neglect when debating authenticity in the genre. Is that idea what you're hitting back on at the beginning of "He Says Y'all" when you sing "I've got my Wrangler's starched and I'm pearl snap pretty, which is kind of strange 'cause I'm from New York City?"

I definitely want to empower more people to listen to country music. But these days it doesn't seem like I have to because it's becoming increasingly ubiquitous, which I love since it's my favorite kind of music.

The most authentic thing we can do in this world is love something with every ounce of our being. That's what should be the price of entry, because in the end that's all that really matters. If you love something then you're going to do right by it — and I love country music, so I hope to do right by it.

What are some differences and similarities of how you approach acting and musical pursuits?

Well, for acting I would never take a shot of tequila before I did a scene, but maybe I should because it could be very fun! [Laughs.]

I'm able to do that more when I'm performing due to the social element of it, which is really exciting. I do try to bring my whole self to whatever it is I'm doing, whether I'm on a stage singing or I'm in front of a camera acting. That being said, the Lola Kirke that I am when I'm playing music is not the Lola Kirke that I necessarily am at home.

For one, I look like s— when I'm at home, but on stage I really love wearing fun costumes. On that note, with acting, I was starting to get a lot of feedback about the way I looked that wasn't positive and made me sad, hearing I was too fat for roles. I didn't want to be part of an industry that did that. I'm not naive to the idea that music can be kinder to female artists, but so far I haven't felt that same pressure in my music to look a certain way because I have a lot of control in how I look when I'm doing it.

There was always this confusion with me as an actress where I felt like a really glamorous person even though I was constantly playing an assistant. You can be a glamorous assistant for sure, but there was a leading lady role I wanted to step into that I just wasn't being cast as. I feel like with the role I've created for myself with my music that I've been able to embody that.

In some of your songwriting and in past interviews you've alluded to your battle with imposter syndrome, especially in terms of your music and moving to Nashville. What's motivated you to be so open about those struggles?

It's really important to try new things in life and to test your own limits of what you believe is possible. If you get into the habit of doing that a lot, you'll often find yourself feeling like an imposter because you're constantly learning and growing. There's a healthiness and bravery in allowing yourself to feel like that.

However, that feeling of not deserving anything I have is something I've also dealt with a lot.  It can seem self-centered at times, but it's made me realize that life doesn't have to be as hard as I make it. You don't have to be scared all the time that everyone's gonna come down on you for doing something wrong.

Overcoming my imposter syndrome has been a lot of looking at my own judgmental nature because I have a lot of negative self-talk that I'm working on. While it's nice when somebody else validates you, that ultimately has to be an inside job.

Is that what you're singing about in "My House," not only getting toxic people out of your life but your own toxic thoughts and insecurities as well?

I think all of my romantic or heartbreak songs have a double meaning. On "All My Exes Live In LA," while it is a true story, it's also about leaving behind the proverbial abusive ex-boyfriend of Hollywood and being like, "I don't want this anymore. I'm gonna go find my own place in this world and maybe I'll come back, but if I do it'll be more whole and not defined by you."

Sometimes it's easier to write about these bigger ideas through the foil of a man or love because somehow it sounds less cheesy — even though we break up with a lot of things in this life, not just romantic partners. I hope listeners find double meaning in all of my songs about breaking up with a man, or being empowered by a relationship, to be a different thing because we have relationships with a lot more things than just lovers.

Regarding "Exes in LA," I love the inclusion of First Aid Kit on the song. They're not a band that I necessarily think of when country music comes to mind, but I love them jumping on these and feel like they really nailed the vibe. How'd the opportunity to collaborate with them come about?

It all came from a mediocre 6.4 review that Pitchfork gave my last record, Lady For Sale. Overall it wasn't a bad review aside from mentioning it was egregious that someone from New York City like me was making country music. That became the thesis of a TikTok I posted that the First Aid Kit gals commented on jumping to my defense, saying they loved my music and would be interested in hearing what Pitchfork had to say about them making country music from Sweden.

After that we became close friends online and I got to go on tour with them throughout the UK, which was so special. A real friendship blossomed from that, so when I was dreaming up collaborations for [Country Curious] they were at the top of my list with Rosanne Cash.

I imagine that your collaboration with Rosanne, "Karma," was a pretty serendipitous and full-circle experience, since she's one of your biggest country influences?

Many years ago during a moment of heartbreak, I was consulting a psychic — as one does — and she told me that I really needed to listen to the song "Seven Year Ache" because it'll be a huge window into my future. The song doesn't have the most optimistic perspective so I thought that was weird.

Then when I was sitting down with [Lady For Sale producer Austin Jenkins] he mentioned it'd be really fun to make a record like Seven Year Ache and it brought me back to that moment. We ended up making this record that was very inspired by Rosanne's.

Eventually, I got back on the phone with the psychic again, where she re-emphasized the importance of working with Rosanne Cash. I remember thanking her but inside thinking she was crazy — until a couple years later and I was lying in bed one night after a pretty rough day professionally, and refreshed my email one last time to see if any opportunities trickled through. Lo and behold, a message popped up from Rosanne Cash.

She said she'd been trying to reach me for a while to see if I'd like to do this workshop project in New York with her for a theater piece. It was such an honor and such a beautiful experience as an actress and musician to get to work with her in both capacities. When it came to this dream EP I reached out fully expecting a no in response, but to my surprise she said yes.

I love "Karma," particularly for its double-edged sword dynamic that has you referring to karma as your friend one moment and declaring you don't mess with her because she can be a b— moments later.

That's a song I wrote for a dear friend of mine. I originally thought of it as more of a quippy Pistol Annies upbeat number, but when my co-writer Jason Nix sent me a tape of him playing it in this really sad way that I thought was brilliant, so we did that with it instead.

You talked earlier about being steeped in old country influences growing up and on past recordings. I feel like "Karma" very much sees you with one foot planted in the nostalgia of '70s and '80s country and the other in its contemporary, pop-tinged present.

A lot of that also came from Elle King's influence as producer of Country Curious. She has much more of a rootsy sensibility that I was really happy she brought because it was able to ground this more contemporary sound in a lot of the classic country influences that I really love”.

I am going to end with a feature from Cultured. Apologies is tonally scattershot and random! I wanted to talk about Lola Kirke as an artist. However, with a book out, I cannot avoid that. It is important. Another side to her that needs to be explored. For Cultured, they write how for “Boots on the Ground,” Emmeline Clein takes readers to a Perverted Book Club and catches up with one of its more surprising guests”:

“Speaking of beauty, you write a lot about the allures and dangers of defining oneself via physical appearance––about beauty as currency with an ever-fluctuating exchange rate, or perhaps even a currency revealed to be counterfeit when you try to spend it, and as one earned through pain and excruciating labor. What does beauty mean to you today?

What beauty means in my life is constantly evolving. Mostly, I would say that it's internal. Beauty in my life today means looking like the main character in a neo-noir '90s film. They're wearing librarian glasses and tweed jackets with shoulder pads, and they're still somehow the sexiest women in the entire world. I think that something the '80s and '90s really promoted about beauty was beyond the all-encompassing thinness that still defines a lot of beauty standards. Instead, it was like, no, it's the woman's intelligence that is really the sexy thing about her. But I think true beauty is love, caring for yourself in a deep way. And wisdom. We've always privileged youth, and I don't think that that's particularly interesting. I'm more interested in being a woman than I am a girl.

I love that, especially with all the cultural emphasis on girl-ifying everything. Let’s have "woman dinner" for once. This book is also obviously pretty rife with tea in a fabulous way, and I was curious whether you were worried about the reactions of the people you wrote about? Are you of the school of letting people in the book read drafts or are you engaging in ask-forgiveness-later culture?

I definitely let people read drafts. For the most part, my rule was, I'm only going to talk about something that happened to another person if they've talked about it themselves, publicly. But I was absolutely terrified. I think I really terrified my family too. I talk about that a little bit at the beginning of the book, but I don't think it was the news that everyone wanted, particularly my parents, when I was like, "Hey, I got a book deal…" They were like, "Um, is it fiction?" My friends would be like, "Well, why didn't you turn it into a novel?"

As we’ve seen with a lot of autofiction, it would probably have been pretty legible.

Yeah, exactly. Welcome to the "Jirke family." Also, you have a lot more freedom when you're writing fiction. I think in a way people might be a little bit more protected, at least with me as the writer, with it being non-fiction.

I was really interested in the way you write about the country music genre as one that rigidly adheres to rules, and compared it to Manhattan’s grid. Your book felt so much like a story of unlearning rules and roles that constrained you, so I’m curious to hear your thoughts on both the comforts and dangers of genre––in music and in books.

I appreciate that reading. I think it comes back to the corny acting truism: you can live more truthfully through the mask. Oftentimes, limitations can give us a lot of freedom. So, I appreciate all the limitations. Something else about growing up with privilege, as I talk about in the book, privilege is a form of freedom. But it's a very privileged thing to do away with your freedom. Genre, whether it's noir or country, actually offers a lot of freedom within limits.

You live in Nashville now, but so much of the book and your life takes place in New York? Are you planning to be in Nashville forever?

I will always go back to New York, and I love New York, but I have really enjoyed not living there. Growing up the way that I did, there is the kind of storied closed-mindedness of people who believe they're very open-minded, i.e. bougie New Yorkers who think the world is as big as New York, LA, and London, and wherever else there are flagship stores of luxury brands. Growing up thinking I was going to be an actress, I never believed that I could live outside of those places. But I always did have great reverence for the South, whether it was because I loved country music or because I loved barbecue.

Okay, last question, which I’ll bring back to sex, since I did get to hear you read erotica recently. I thought your description of your own sexual stance as “largely unskilled but enthusiastic” at a certain point in your life to be iconic and relatable. I was curious if you could talk about your experience writing about sexuality, which can be so fraught for so many women, and which you handled with so much grace and wit.

I typically do feel like sex is just moving around a bunch. That is the best way I could describe it. Despite growing up in a highly sexualized home––not that we were sexualized early, but because we were made into beautiful girls and we modeled our mom's clothing, and there was a lot of emphasis on beauty––there was never a discussion of sex. No one ever was like, "Here's what you do. Here's how you don't get pregnant." I'm always so impressed when I read writer friends of mine write about sex in such a sexy way. Like, oh my God, you know what you're doing?”.

With Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1) and a new single out into the world, this is a perfect time to discover and bond with Lola Kirke! I have been following her music for a few years now. Perhaps better known in the U.S. than here in the U.K., I do hope that she comes and plays here soon. She does have a very brief stop-off here on 12th March at Next Door Records Two in Stoke Newington. Either side of that she has dates in the U.S. and plays a string of North American shows through to late-June. If you have not discovered this phenomenal musician, actor and writer, then make sure you acquaint yourself with her. Born in the U.K. and based in the U.S., this is a very special talent that now…

BELONGS to the world.

____________

Follow Lola Kirke

FEATURE: Standing at the Bottom of the Hill: Kate Bush and the Foundations of Hounds of Love

FEATURE:

 

 

Standing at the Bottom of the Hill

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in November 1985 performing The Big Sky on the German T.V. show, Peter's Pop Show/PHOTO CREDIT: ZIK Images/United Archives via Getty Images

 

Kate Bush and the Foundations of Hounds of Love

_________

I have been leaning on…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

some essential Kate Bush books for a number of features. I am once more returning to Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book on Hounds of Love. I will be returning it multiple times as I am leading up to the album’s fortieth anniversary in September. Forensically looking at the tracks and discussing the legacy of the album. For now, I wanted to look at the foundations of the album. A little bit of background to the 1985 classic. I want to start with a detail from the book that I did not know. Not necessarily significant, it did interest me when I read it. By the end of 1981, Bush revealed that she was taking on a lot for The Dreaming (her fourth studio album was released in September 1982). She was throwing everything into it so was losing sight of her direction or what she wanted to say. In a rare break from recording, Kate Bush attended Sotheby’s annual rock memorabilia at the end of 1981. She picked up a Perspex of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in their famous Two Virgins pose. She also bought a copy of the shooting script for The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour film. Leah Kardos notes how the imagistic and colourful textures of The Beatles’ film combined with the spectre of John Lennon’s recent death (he was killed in December 1980) impacted the final stages of The Dreaming. Released in September 1982, there is this blend of emotions and themes. Raw, intense and layered songs together with lighter and more accessible numbers. How a track like Get Out of My House and its incredible intensity and energy sits with something comparatively gentle like Suspended in Gaffa or There Goes a Tenner. Night of the Swallow alongside the violence and smoke of Pull Out the Pin.

It is interesting to note that Bush achieved so much with Hounds of Love. It was an album that was very much guided by her. Not an album where others were directing things. There was collaboration and interaction but, at the end of the day, this was Kate Bush producing an album in her own vision. None of her female peers were doing this. The only other artists at the time who had access to technology like hers and their own studio would have been Prince. Bush had a 48-track console in the childhood barn where she used to play a pump organ (one that has more than a few mice living in it!). I think home and family are the seeds of Hounds of Love. Bush stepping away from London and connecting with her childhood home once more. Spending time in Ireland to write lyrics. She spent precious time there in a country her mother was born in. Family connections very much crucial. I have mentioned some of the kit that was in Bush’s studio. Her father Robert helped manage the constructing the studio alongside Del Palmer (who engineered and played on Hounds of Love). It was ready by 1984. There was no line of sight between the control room and the recording space. Communication was achieved through walls via mic and foldback monitors. This made Bush perhaps less inhibited and nervous. Not wanting to be watched when she performed. A bespoke studio at her family home very much integral to the sound and brilliance of Hounds of Love. Not beholden to studio costs and the rush of the city, this was a setting that was a lot more conducive with productivity and an easier recording process. That said, it was an ambitious album, so there were moments of stress.

The control room in the studio was very much made up like a living room. Blue wallpaper with fluffy clouds. It is a shame there were not a load of photographs taken by Bush’s brother, John. No cameras in there filming this wonderful studio and the making of Hounds of Love. Windows let Bush and her team see the sunshine, garden and trees. It was a perfect environment that seemed a contrast to the more closed-in and stuffier environment that Bush experienced when making The Dreaming. A Soundcraft 2400 series mixing desk, two 24-track Studer tape machines synced with a Q Lock 310. A 48-track recoreder might sound excessive but Bush said in an interview with Keyboard how 24-track was limiting. It didn’t seem to go anywhere. There was also a pair of AMS speakers. The control room had a Grotrian-Steinweg grand piano. Bush shifted between the studio and her home eight-track home recording setup. There she had her Fairlight CMI, a second sampler, an E-Mu Emulator and a Yamaha CS-80. Outbound equipment in the control room had a range of processing options. There were the Urei 1176 and 1178 compressors, Drawmer and VP Gate Keeper II noise gates. Scamp filters and A&D F760-RSA compressors/expanders. Essential for ensuring that Bush’s vocal performances could go from a whisper to a scream. There were also racks of reverb effects: some AMS units, a Lexicon 224 and Quantec Room Simulator. This sounds like an expensive set-up and financial burden. Rather than Bush moving between London studios and spending £90 per hour (£375 per hour in today’s money) in the studio, she could work without having to worry about fees. She could be more creative and was not limited. It was mainly Kate Bush and Del Palmer in the control room. Hounds of Love was sleeker and more economical compared to The Dreaming. Del Palmer downplayed his role in Hounds of Love. He would set up a sound for Kate Bush and she would then record all the vocals and call him to get them all put together.

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

In a recent feature, I did say how there was room for improvisation and collaboration on Kate Bush albums. True I think on Never for Ever (1980), The Sensual World (1989) and Aerial (2005). Hounds of Love did allow that, though Bush gave specific instructions to musicians. There was a lot of respect in the room for Kate Bush, so there was this easy relationship. Youth (Martin Glover) recalls Bush instructing him and also let him do what he liked. This combination of clear instructions and some freedom to add something personal. Bush as this wonderful producer and Youth as a skilled musician. I want to talk about the foundations of Hounds of Love. The feel of the studio and the equipment in it. Alongside all the impressive kit was an invaluable Nagra recorder. Nature very much playing a crucial role. This recorder was a unit that could be taken outside to record environmental sounds. Bush could get sounds of the sea and wind without relying on somewhat inauthentic sound effects. Even though Kate Bush’s vocals on songs such as Waking the Witch and The Big Sky are hugely evocative and powerful, she did feel inhabited. She had to psyche herself up to get that level of drama. I have written about this before. How Bush, emotionally or literally, got a little drunk. Bush’s vocals on Hounds of Love sound different to those on The Dreaming. Del Palmer revealed in a 1993 interview how a Neumann U47 was positioned in a reflective live room with stoned walls and a bricked floor. The sound was then proceeded through what was described as an ‘overdose of compression’. That was engaged with a noise gate to clean up the spill. Bush moved away from the microphone to breathe and “managed her distance based on the volume of her performance”. Not technically perfect or right, Bush and Palmer did love the results. Leah Kardos notes how Bush works well with a lively room to change her vocal performance, often mid-lyrics. Bush’s high register notes in the verse of Hounds of Love melting into a low croon at the end of a phrase. No loss of focus in the mix. No diminishing of volume.

Key to the foundations of Hounds of Love is the colour scheme. Consider the album cover where Bush is pictured laying with her Weimaraner dogs, Bonnie and Clyde. Shot by John Carder Bush (her brother), Bush’s face is made up with shades of lilac, blue, pink and coral. A streak of purple in her hair. Hounds of Love as this purple album. If red is the colour of love, then Bush mixed in some blue. Maybe representative of water or sadness. Not only is the album cover purple. The sound of the album is purple. Lush and mysterious (thanks again to Leah Kardos!). According to the Maitreya School of Healing, which was co-founded by Bush’s friend, the healer Lily Cornford (who is honoured on The Red Shoes’ Lily), the colour (wisteria amethyst) promotes “strength, dignity, spiritual growth and courage”. Water, sky, storms, the dream world, passion, fears and contrasts. Chills and warmth. Passion and restraint. Bush both soft and strong. It is important to think about these aspects when we discuss Hounds of Love. I will talk about in another Hounds of Love feature. The legacy of the album. It inspired artists like Tori Amos. Her 1992 debut album, Little Earthquakes (which Amos co-produced), mixing in big, gated percussion sounds (hear Precious Things and Crucify). Vocal similarities on her Crucify and Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting. Cloudbusting strings connecting with Amos’s Girl; Bush’s Hello Earth – a chillier vocal sound and sweeping orchestra – and Tori Amos’s China.

Amos’s Little Earthquakes influenced Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album, Jagged Little Pills. In a 1998 interview, Tori Amos talked about the effect of Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave on her. How it changed her life. How she left a man she was living with. Amos has recognised the debt owed by covering Kate Bush songs in her set (And Dream of Sheep and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), both from Hounds of Love). In 2016, Grimes named Kate Bush as one of her two biggest musical influences (the other was Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor). Bush’s lead of building her studio, producing her album and controlling the aesthetic is inspiring to D.I.Y. artists the world over today. In 2019, Grimes campaigned for the recognition of ‘Ethereal’ as a genre. These auteur artists who direct their videos and produce their own work. In 2019, Spotify partnered with Grimes and there was a seven-and-a-half-hour playlist dedicated to experimentalism. Naturally, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was in there. Artists that no doubt were inspired by Hounds of Love also in there. Caroline Polachek, SOPHIE, James Blake, FKA twigs, and Imogen Heap. In 2022, Björk talked about Kate Bush creating this matriarchy in music. Producing her work and being emotionally expressive but also autonomous. How the success of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) following its Stranger Things placement (in 2022) kicked down doors and changed the scene. Gave strength and agency to women. It can be traced back to hose foundational moments of Hounds of Love. Bush designing the studio and creating this wonderful environment. Great technology and calming colours overlooked by nature and the open air. All crucial building blocks that would lead to this monument of an album. One that turns forty on 16th September. In the first of a run of fortieth anniversary features, I wanted to show love for one of the…

GREATEST producers of all time.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Lifestyle Changes Heading Into 1989

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989 in a promotional photo for The Sensual World/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Lifestyle Changes Heading Into 1989

_________

I am in a position myself…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with dancer Stewart Avon-Arnold in a promotional image for 1993’s The Red Shoes

where I need to overhaul my diet. Less active than I was last year, I have been eating too much and not able to exercise as much as I should. Eating too much sugary food! I know it is hard to reverse but, feeling lethargic and bloated – and not in as good as a shape as I would like –, it is time to act. It is something we all face in our lives. When thinking about Kate Bush, there were times when she was working intensely, dancing and keeping fit. If she is busy recording an album and spending a lot of time in studios then there is not the same opportunity to keep up with dance and fitness. I have written about Kate Bush’s diet before. How there were periods when it slipped but, for the most part, she had this healthy vegetarian diet. Something that was crucial when it came to her mind and body. As a dancer, diet and wellbeing was near the top of her priority list. I think there were moments in Kate Bush’s career where the work-diet-exercise balance was skewed. I know that Bush took up dance, changed her diet and spent more time with family and friends before recording Hounds of Love. She was in better physical and mental condition following intense recording for The Dreaming. After the promotion of that album, something had to change. It was not really a radical change required. Bush is such a physical performer, so it would have been easy to let her muscle memory fade. If Bush is in the studio all the time then she has little time for exercise, dance or even spending a lot of time outside. Another shift needed to occur just before she started work on The Sensual World (1989).

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush cuts her thirtieth birthday cake at Blazers Boutique, where she was raising money for AIDS Victims on 30th July, 1988/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix

One of my favourite points in Kate Bush’s career is when she turned thirty. That was 30th July, 1988. Rather than having a big party or it all being about herself, she spent the day volunteering for charity. She spent the day working at Blazers in London alongside a host of celebrities to raise money for an AIDS charity. The disease would impact Bush’s life directly as she lost friends to it. One of many occasions where Bush donated her time to charity. It is interesting thinking back a year to 1987. At The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball in April 1987, or when she performed a duet with Peter Gabriel for Don’t Give Up. The reason I mention this is because there were cheap shots and rumours about Bush. That she might be pregnant; It was something that Bush had to face from the misogynistic press. Just before she released Hounds of Love, rumours she had retired. Shots about her weight, a possible drug habit and other rumours. When it was revealed in 2000 that Bush had a child, the press talked about this secret child and this reclusive artist hiding him away. She was not immune to it in the late-1980s, when she was arguably at her commercial peak. It is something that is a problem for all artists. Getting that balance right when it comes to exercise, work and relaxation. Most artists tour quite a bit so their mental health might suffer. For Bush, she was not touring but in the studio recording a lot. Not getting the same physical workout as her peers.

In reality, there was nothing dramatic happening for Bush. As mentioned, she had been through this in the 1980s. 1983 was a year when Bush built her own studio and recommitted herself to dance and exercise. Her diet changed. Bush began work on The Sensual World in 1987. She was immersed in this new album so was probably not spending enough time to put her physical health first. It was all about new music. Dancer Stewart Avon-Arnold was drafted in. He had worked with Kate Bush since the 1970s. A good friend of hers, he was interviewed for the Kate Bush Fan Podcast in November. Having danced with Bush for almost a decade, he knew that she was capable of getting right back into the swing! The regime put forward was not too strenuous. Again, Bush had really not gained much weight. It was about keeping her body active and engaged which, in turn, would benefit her mind and creativity. Avon-Arnold put together quite an intense workout, though not one that lasted too long. A couple of times a week he would come round and Bush would be totally engaged. She would finish the class (as he ran it like a professional class) sweating and worn out. This ninety-minute workout was definitely beneficial. They would end the class and then sit around having a cup of tea.  A nice chat and relax was something to look forward to. Bush, at a stage in her life when she was working on a new album and there would be videos coming, had to reconnect with her body. It is awful that the press speculated that Bush was pregnant. Any woman who put on weight got these jabs and horrible comments!

I am getting information from Graeme Thomson’s book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. One might think that Bush, in the lead-up to The Sensual World, completely transformed. In reality, it was a fractional change. She cut out her Benson & Hedges and switched to the milder Silk Cut. She was not going to give up a vice like that! Bush was and never has been a recluse. She was going out to shows and changed her diet to include fish. A vegetarian since childhood, Bush did change it up slightly. I think this, plus her new exercise regime, did help when it came to recording The Sensual World. That connection between her physical health and her creativity. She took a break with her family to France but nothing more exciting than that. As I mentioned in another feature, gardening was in her life. She gardened before making Hounds of Love and no doubt before Aerial (2005). Bush was to be found gardening in 1988/1989. In August 1988, she briefly appeared on the BBC’s Rough Guide to Europe, where she shared her sightseeing favourite spots in London. I would love to know if this footage still existed. Bush was back in the city and resided in Eltham. I am going to explore her homes and where she lived through her career for another feature. However, it is interesting thinking of the changes in 1988. From getting back into shape, to reconnecting with London. Again, and something I can explore at another time, Bush’s thirtieth birthday (30th July, 1988) saw not only a change in her personal life. Her music has always sprinkled in the darkness, fear, horror, the macabre and spectral. However, something more human and perhaps less tangible was coming in. The loss of people; separation and a sense of morality.

Bush, maybe perceived as child-like and immature by some, was definitely a woman. It would impact her next two albums. The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes were very much more about personal relationships and loss. Bush worked with the Trio Bulgarka for The Sensual World. She first heard their work in 1985. Three Bulgarian women (Yanka Rupkina, Eva Georgeieva and Stoyanka Boneva) who contributed to the album, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. That album was first released in 1975 but reissued in 1986. Significant as this was the first time that Bush collaborated with female singers. Another shift that happened in her life. She would work with the Trio Bulgarka again for The Red Shoes. I am interested in the years 1988 and 1989. How there was this definite change. In terms of her priorities and what she would write about. Bush in this collaborative mindset. Folk music playing more of a peart. If Hounds of Love is defined by technology and particular sounds, her palette would have different colours for her sixth studio album. In her thirties, this was a woman writing more about matters of life, love and loss. There is some of that in Hounds of Love, though it sounds more personal and tangible on The Sensual World. Even more pronounced on The Red Shoes. Bush was still intensely studio-based, yet there work-life-exercise balance was healthier. She filmed The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1993 and there was a lot of dance and movement in that. Bush was dealing with the loss of friends and her mother (in 1992), so it was a pretty intense period. It is clear that there needed to be changes after 1987. More than shedding a few pounds and working with Stewart Avon-Arnold, there was this transformation that ran deeper. Bush more aware of her age (even though she was only thirty!) and her embarking on this new phase of life. It is fascinating to dissect The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. What Bush was writing about and the shapes her songs took. What was happening around her in terms of her relationships and working in the studio. What started with Stewart Avon-Arnold and his regimented classes then led to so many significance changes and alterations. This fascinating artist and woman…

IN new bloom.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Lambrini Girls

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: Joseph Bishop for NME

 

Lambrini Girls

_________

I am doing some…

PHOTO CREDIT: Jessie Morgan

features where I update and revisit my older Spotlight inclusions. Artists who I tipped for big things who, whilst further along their career than they were before, are perhaps not known to all. I want to make sure that those unfamiliar discover them. My next feature will revisit Lola Kirke. An artist I really love. For now, Lambrini Girls are back under the spotlight. Their incredible album, Who Let the Dogs Out, came out in January and is already an album of the year contender. One I think will definitely be nominated for the Mercury Prize this year. I will end with a couple of reviews for that album. Prior to this, I am including some 2025 interview from the Brighton duo of Phoebe Lunny and Lily Macieira. After some tour dates in Europe, they will be playing in the U.K. from 1st April. I would advise you go and see them live if you can. I want to start with an interview from DIY. In an interview from earlier this month, we learn more about one of the most important acts of their generation. Such an inspiring and empowering duo:

“Lambrini Girls, their vocalist and guitarist Phoebe Lunny explains, has always been “a passion project”. Born from the bones of a different band and a frustration with the Brighton music scene (and beyond), the project started in earnest when Phoebe met bassist Lilly Macieira-Bosgelmez - who’d been given 24 hours to learn the band’s set from scratch - and “something just clicked”.

Both were ambitious, determined to try and make music their career. More importantly, both were angry: about the ubiquity of misogynistic and homophobic ‘lad culture’; about the widespread occurrences of sexual assault at gigs; about the musicians and fans who perpetuate these behaviours. And so they set about addressing all these issues and more via the medium of fiery, three-minute punk scorchers - music that is virtually unignorable, intensely powerful, and utterly memorable.

“Hey mum / Why haven’t I had a boyfriend? / Um, maybe it’s because I’m potentially a lesbian?” Phoebe intones on debut single ‘Help Me I’m Gay’. Live, its performance involves asking the crowd to “put your hand up if you’re gay!” - something which can variously be “a celebration of people’s queerness” if there are lots of hands, or simply a way to show people that they’re not alone. And in encouraging this sort of community in others, the pair have gained confidence in their own identities, too. “I was a little bit more of a late bloomer with my sexuality,” says Lilly. “I started off saying ‘I’m half gay’, because I’m bisexual, and then with time I learned that actually, that’s not being half gay - [bisexuality] counts just as much. There are some parts of the queer community where you can be made to feel a bit invalidated as a bisexual person, so the band really helped me in that sense.

Elsewhere on Lambrini Girls’ 2023 EP ‘You’re Welcome’, tracks like ‘White Van’, ‘Lads Lads Lads’ and ‘Boys In The Band’ take aim at society’s deeply embedded problems with sexual harassment, with the latter placing the alternative music scene under particular scrutiny. Do they think that any significant progress has been made with tackling abuse culture within the industry? “In Brighton, it seems like people are being a lot more vigilant of it and opening dialogues,” muses Phoebe. “But I think there’s a lot of work to be done in London. It’s not a safe space; there are bands that are actively known to have done very dodgy stuff who still get to play the venues everyone else does.”

The first step towards stamping out these sorts of behaviours, the band believe, is “calling out your mates and believing victims.” Lilly explains that “we’re not trying to peddle a sort of inconsequential cancel culture where you hear something bad about someone then immediately cut them out. If someone is willing to take responsibility or explore the ways in which they might have hurt someone, that’s something really positive to go off.” The same can be said for their attitude towards the social discourse surrounding trans rights; in an era where social media has us primed to think in absolutes, it’s important to give people the grace to get it wrong (misgendering someone, for example) - providing they’re willing to learn.

“There’s ignorance on one hand,” says Phoebe, who is currently sporting a Lambrini Girls cap emblazoned with the words ‘FUCK TERFS’. “Then there’s wilful ignorance. There are people who are being actively hateful and are trying to stop other people just having human rights.” But, as Lilly acknowledges, “fifty years ago we’d be having this conversation about homophobia rather than transphobia. So I’d like to hope that [trans rights] will change with time.”

Phoebe also points out that these conversations shouldn’t centre around the band. Rather, their goal is “to show allyship and use [their] platform to bring these conversations into a slight mainstream” - something they believe is intrinsic to being a punk artist. “If you’re building your platform off politics, you have to put your money where your mouth is. If you’re a political punk band, then you do have a degree of responsibility to use your platform for good.”

So, having taken on the Twitter TERFS and a whole host of fragile male egos, next on the agenda is dismantling toxic patriotism and romanticised notions of national identity. Their upcoming new single, ‘God’s Country’, paints traditional ideas of ‘Englishness’ as stories we tell ourselves to distract from the grim reality. “It’s delirium,” shrugs Phoebe. “I think it’s embarrassing to be from England. We’re extremely racist; we’re extremely xenophobic; our government are fascists. I don’t understand why anyone would be proud to be part of that.” Lilly herself is Portuguese and Turkish, but notes that “these dynamics exist in every country, and it doesn’t really look that different. Patriotism is really dangerous because it’s a huge generalisation of a really complex thing, and because [it means] you’re not actually looking at what’s really going on.”

No topic, it seems, is off limits for Lambrini Girls - and with more new music in the pipeline, they’re only going to get louder. “I think how you incite positive change is by making sure you’re not just preaching to the choir,” nods Phoebe. “As much as it is about enforcing safe spaces and making people feel validated, it’s also about making people question themselves. I wanna piss some people off; I want Rishi Sunak to be in the back of his fucking limo and hear Lammy [Steve Lamacq] play ‘God’s Country’ on the radio and shit his fucking pants.” She pauses. “Actually, I reckon he listens to Radio Four or Radio Two.” What about getting Lambrini Girls on Woman’s Hour? “That’s the plan,” Lilly smiles. “Unironically, it kind of is - to get to a position where we’re reaching the people who need to hear it”.

I have been a fan of Lambrini Girls for a while now. It is great to see them succeeding and getting huge love. Their debut album was taken to heart. It is one of the most impressive and important debut albums I have heard in years. Next, let’s go to CLASH and their interview with Lambrini Girls. Things are blowing up for them right now. Such huge demand and attention coming their way:

“You’ve been on the go quite a lot – it must be pretty intense at the moment. How are you doing?

Phoebe: That’s a question! To be brutally honest, obviously very happy, very excited with how everything’s gone. And quite burnt out and overwhelmed by everything!

I haven’t left my house since Sunday, I’ve just been in bed. But that’s also on me for drinking loads of pints when I should be resting. All in all, very happy, just a bit frazzled.

Lilly: Pretty much that! This is the first time we’ve had some downtime in a long time, and I fear it will be the last probably until September. It’s been really exciting – much more exciting than I anticipated with the album. So I guess we have to do as much as possible now and then rest when we die.

How did it feel to see the sort of reception the album got – Number 16 in the charts?

Phoebe: The charts said they were predicting us to be number three. So it meant managing expectations kind of went out the fucking window. 16 is amazing news. We’re very happy, and thanks to everyone who bought the album, we got number one in the Rock Charts, which means we have a trophy. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about the cultural impact or the art, it’s about trophies!

What’s it like creating an album as opposed to, say, an EP?

Lilly: I mean, it’s more songs, innit! [laughs] I think the campaign surrounding the album was also a lot more rigorous than an EP campaign. I suppose albums are the first major stepping stone in any band’s career. 

It’s felt like the first big thing we’ve brought out, and it’s something we’d not really experienced before – like, the amount of press and photoshoots we’ve been doing was pretty unexpected. We’re extremely happy about it, because it’s nice that people care about the album and want to know about it. It would be terrible if that wasn’t the case, to be honest!

In terms of the writing and recording process, it’s pretty similar. It’s just that you’re in the studio for longer and there’s a sense of finality about it, because you know that a debut album is so important in the industry and people really look out for it. You feel like it has to be perfect. You’re showcasing yourself more so with an album than with an EP. It’s just very intense. 

Phoebe: I think there’s more pressure, because as Lilly said, it’s seen as the first stepping stone. It’s a hallmark of a band’s career – how it’s received, the reception that you get, how many sales it makes, all of that can have a massive impact.

I found it really fucking scary. Luckily, we didn’t have this problem, but my biggest fear was that if it didn’t go well, everything would stay the same as in, us going to the Netherlands for a month and playing 30 shows there, and doing the same thing over and over again, and not being able to get better gig slots.

So it was scary to think that might not end if the album didn’t go well, but it has! And now, I feel very optimistic and excited for what’s going to come of this year.

You’ve got a lot of live dates coming up, how are you preparing? 

Lilly: I’m still recovering, to be honest, from the year that we’ve had, and I’m trying to get in as much ‘me time’ as possible. You don’t lead a very normal life when you’re doing what we do, so I wouldn’t say I’m ready just yet. I need this next month to mentally prepare and regain my strength and my energy a bit, just because it has been really intense and non-stop. I think if we were to go out now, I would have a really bad time. 

But nonetheless, I’m excited to play shows consecutively again, because we’ve been doing a lot of one-offs, which meant a lot of travelling for not a lot of playing. We’ve been doing lots of, as I call it, extra-curricular, in the sense that we’re doing loads of press and photo shoots and interviews more so than playing gigs, by far, over the last few months.

I’m definitely still trying to get rest in, trying to mentally prepare, trying to organize things for myself to do to keep me grounded on tour. I’m gonna start a new book series to help me get through and give me something permanent to take with me.

What do you do to unwind?

Phoebe: Um, I’m not very good at unwinding! So when it’s really, really busy, or we’ve been doing loads of shit every day I really struggle to switch off. 

So if I come home to an empty, dark room, I’m like, ‘Absolutely not. That’s not happening. I’m going down the pub.’ I’ll do that, and then I’ll burn myself out even more. It gets to a point where I can’t leave my bed, and I’m like, ‘Oh shit, I’ve done it again.’ I have to rot for a few days, and then it gets really busy again, so I do it all over again. When it comes to unwinding, I haven’t really got that figured out, and I don’t know when I will, but that’s what I do.

Lilly: I don’t think I do such a thing as unwind, because I get so burnt out that I’m the complete opposite to Phoebe. As soon as I step through my front door and it’s just quiet and home, I just deflate completely; I’m essentially rendered entirely useless for five to seven business days. 

And it takes me time to wind back into normality again, you know? I come home and I can’t do anything. I can’t do laundry, I can’t tidy, I can’t cook food for myself. I just sleep as much as possible and do nothing. And I’ve got nothing going on behind the eyes. So I do that for a few days, and then slowly introduce normal things back into my life, like having breakfast or doing my laundry. It’s not really a case of winding down and more just internally imploding.

In terms of the album, have either of you got a favourite track at the moment? 

Lilly: I think for both of us, our favourite track is ‘Special, Different’. Oddly enough, we seem to be the only ones! But I’m not surprised, because I am the type of person to really, really love and be obsessed with the one track from an album that isn’t the popular one. And that’s never on purpose. There just seems to be something about those kinds of tracks where I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I really like that.’

For me it’s both because of the lyrical content and also the the musicality and the musicianship of it. For example, it’s the only song I’ve ever played where I play all four strings of the bass. I’m usually a one note type of type of girl. I think the parts are really interesting, the dynamics are really impactful, and I think it shows off some versatility in our playing.

I find the lyrics especially moving. We have angry songs, we have uplifting songs, we have upbeat songs, but this one feels quite dark, which I think makes the lyrics stand out even more. I’m a very emotional person and I really like very emotional music, also on the sad side. I hear a lot of pain in the lyrics, and I really relate to that pain, and that makes the song very special and very different to me [Phoebe laughs].

On that note, when you’re making music, do you tend to come up with the music or the lyrics first? 

Lilly: I think it’s different for every song, like, sometimes you’ll have a bunch of lyrics in your notes that are ready to go, and sometimes Pheebs will just write on the spot, like, with ‘Bad Apple’ I know that that was an idea that [Phoebe had] already been working on. And when we wrote that, it was me and our drummer, Jack Looker, who wrote and recorded the album with us – we were pissing around together and came up with a rough instrumental.

Phoebe went silent for about 20 minutes, half an hour, and came in like, ‘Right! I’ve got lyrics. Let’s do this.’ So, I think it differs. I’ll let [Phoebe] explain.

Phoebe: I think you’re putting it really well – it does change, like, sometimes I’ll have a bank of lyrics, sometimes we’ll start the songs with Lills coming up with a bass riff and work around that, I’ll fit lyrics to it. Sometimes it’s a guitar riff, which I’ll try and fit lyrics to. 

Sometimes, like with ‘Bad Apple’, it’ll be a case where lyrics are written to a track even if there’s already a theme that I’ve got for an idea of a song, but usually it is sort of a cut and paste with lyrics and instrumentals. 

It’s just like a kebab. And sometimes it feels like throwing shit at a wall with me and my lyrics, I throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. Sometimes things flourish and come together super easily. But it sometimes just feels like a bit of a mix-and-match, I would say. That’s a good consensus for how we go about it when it comes to marrying the two”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jessie Morgan

Before getting to a couple of reviews for Who Let the Dogs Out, I want to come to an interview from Kerrang!. As much as anything, Lambrini Girls want us to drop the ‘women in music’ genre. Not singling women out that way. If you have not followed Lambrini Girls yet then make sure that you do as soon as possible:

“Homophobic attitudes were pretty rife in the era Lambrini Girls grew up in. The 2000s may be looked back on through a rose-tinted lens of Motorola flip-phones, baggy jorts, and the golden era of emo, but the only household name gay rights hope? Hillary Duff in that one ‘Think Before You Speak’ TV campaign.

Internalised misogyny also pressured a generation of young girls into thinking they shouldn’t be like other women, and it was near impossible to escape harmful narratives of fat shaming and diet culture throughout the media.

In what is possibly the most personal song on the record, Nothing Tastes As Good As It Feels dives into how this dangerous fascination with body shape tragically affected many young minds.

“I think most young women have been conditioned their entire life to have your total sort of idea of what’s healthy and beautiful be totally distorted,” Phoebe explains. “I think it’s also very hard to know when you’re actually struggling as well, because you’re ultimately praised and encouraged to do it more. I thought if you can hear someone singing about it albeit quite graphically, it might help you feel a little bit less alone. Maybe it [will] encourage people to feel like it’s okay to talk about a bit more. It’s very lonely, extremely lonely. People suffer and don’t reach out.”

Who Let The Dogs Out is a huge stride forwards from You’re Welcome, and an album the pair hope spotlights their instrumental work just as much as the messaging within it. Not only does it unpick a litany of issues close to Lambrini Girls, but it shatters any assumptions made about their artistry as a punk band. 

Phoebe and Lilly deserve their flowers as guitarists, and their ear for crafting and producing songs is far more tangible through experimental instrumentals, deft finger-plucked motifs, and dynamics that chop and change to support the narratives they lie beneath.

“I personally want people to listen to our actual music a little bit more,” shares Lilly. “We get labelled a three-chord punk band a lot, and that irks me a little bit because I don’t think we are. I’m hoping people get more involved in the music and the songwriting. Obviously, we’re a really outspoken political band and that’s kind of at the core of our identity, but I think sometimes people forget that we’re, first and foremost, musicians.

“I think another layer to it is that we’re also two very femme-presenting people, so naturally when people make comparisons about our band, we get compared to other political bands that sound absolutely nothing like us, rather than being compared to bands that we actually sound like. I find that a little bit frustrating sometimes.”

Since their inception, Lambrini Girls have often been touted as a riot grrrl band, taking inspiration from the era born in the '90s, and trailblazed by bands like Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear. In its time, the movement was instrumental in creating space for women in music.

Now in the 2020s, as our musical landscape is growing richer with brilliant and diverse bands, highlighting the presence of women can sometimes feel tokenistic. Bringing their gender into the conversation, Lambrini Girls feel, is counterproductive to equal representation and opportunity.

“Getting called a riot grrrl band is very much not a sign of the times anymore,” says Lilly. “We’re not a riot grrrl band, we sound nothing like the riot grrrl movement. The movement was very political so I see why people would draw parallels, but at the end of the day it does feel like we only get called riot grrrl because we’re women. I think it’s time for the genre of ‘women in music’ to be put to bed and to just let queer people and women make music and stop differentiating it from men making music.
'Female-fronted', 'female guitarist' – these are the prefixes that make the pair groan and share an eye roll.

“I’d love it if people stopped doing that and maybe compared us on the basis of what we actually sound like rather than the fact that we’re women playing alternative music.”

As our interview progresses, it slowly shape-shifts into a weird form of group therapy. Going in, we were prepared to chat all kinds of nonsense about the sense of party that is bottled inside Who Let The Dogs Out, but beneath the noisy aesthetic is two human beings.

To assume they’re always “on” in this manner would be foolish. The more we delve into the thoughts and feelings of Lambrini Girls as people behind the music, and not the music itself, a calmer energy lends itself to us, where eyes can become a little teary and a sense of compassion can be shared among the two friends.

Lambrini Girls is their greatest escapade, and one of euphoria, triumph, and chaos. Our biggest achievements are often the result of upheaval and 'the grind', but with musicianship the struggle can feel never-ending, even when you’re smashing the festival circuit or earning loads of streams.

Conversations surrounding the constant pressures put on an artist opened up on a much wider scale in 2024. In the pop world, Chappell Roan was both praised and criticised for setting her own boundaries around self care and safety as an artist. Lambrini Girls feel it’s also important that we talk about these things, and there should be no shame attached to the discussion.

“It gets really fucking hard and sometimes you’re like, ‘Am I going to have a mental breakdown? Am I already having a mental breakdown? I don’t know!’” Phoebe questions. “For me personally, the thing that keeps me going is a deep need to want to do it, and also, what am I going to fucking do”.

I am ending with a couple of (the many) positive reviews for Who Let the Dogs Out. In a year that has already seen masterpieces from the likes of FKA twigs and Heartworms, Lambrini Girls have dropped an album that gained huge critical acclaim. As I said, this is going to be an early frontrunner for the Mercury Prize. NME awarded Who Let the Dogs Out five stars and had this to say:

“The world is currently on fire. Donald Trump has been re-elected as president of the US, women’s rights are under threat, transphobia is rampant across the world and violence continues to rain down on Gaza. To ring in this new year, Brighton punk duo Lambrini Girls come bearing a gift: ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’.

After opening for IDLES and playing huge festivals like Glasto and Reading and Leeds, Lambrini Girls are unleashing their balls-to-the-wall debut album. Packed with anger and raw energy, ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ is a giant “fuck you” to the state of the world right now.

Guitarist and vocalist Phoebe Lunny and bassist Lilly Macieira get straight to the point with album opener ‘Bad Apple’, a distorted riot of a track that calls out rotten cops. “Officer what seems to be the problem? / Or can we only know post mortem?” Lunny demands in her signature raspy screech. It’s a haunting reflection of modern police brutality and misconduct which saw a 50 per cent rise in the number of police officers sacked and barred in the UK last year. Meanwhile, 956 civilians were reportedly shot to death by authorities in the US over eight years.

A bulk of the album sees Lunny and Macieira hold a mirror to the current fractured state of society. They take aim at gentrification in ‘You’re Not From Round Here’, where Lunny’s howled protest against the destruction of neighbourhood identity makes you want to unleash yourself in the middle of a mosh pit: “Town hall becomes a brewery / Furthering disparity / Drowning out sense of what was community.” Meanwhile, ‘Company Culture’ addresses sexual harassment within the workplace, and the electrifying ‘Big Dick Energy’ highlights dangerous male entitlement.

However, softer, personal moments from Lambrini Girls still shine through. Complete with a rolling, fuzzy bassline and pounding drumbeat, ‘Nothing Tastes As Good As It Feels’ takes on the struggle of an eating disorder, Lunny declaring:“Kate Moss gives no fucks that my period has stopped / I wish I was skinny / but I’ll never be enough.”

The anthemic ‘No Homo’, reminiscent of The Donnas’ early discography, sees the rockers infuse deep basslines and a fierce guitar solo with cheeky and witty yet vulnerable lyrics about a same-sex relationship: “I said I liked the way she talked / But then I said no homo / But her eloquence a renaissance / The softest tone well spoken”. It’s a bright and refreshing take on a topic that can be deeply, dauntingly personal and daunting.

With ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’, Lambrini Girls prove punk is alive and kicking. They’re unapologetically amplifying chaos, calling out societal wrongs, and daring us all to feel something. This record is loud, raw, and impossible to ignore”.

I am going to finish off with a review from The Guardian. Even if they awarded it four out of five stars – and there are plenty of reviews that show more love -, I did find Alexis Petridis’s take particularly interesting and relevant. I am excited to see where Lambrini Girls go from here. World domination lies ahead for sure:

“For the most part, Lambrini Girls’ debut album barrels along in roughly the style that’s hoisted the Brighton duo to cult success over the last few years. There are huge, distorted basslines courtesy of Lily Macieira and equally distorted guitar playing from Phoebe Lunny that flits between post-punk angularity and occasional bursts of poppier, Ramones-y chords. The rhythms are frantically paced, and there are lyrics that focus on societal ills, delivered in Lunny’s distinctive vocal style: she sings like someone angrily trying to make their point in a particularly noisy bar, as a bouncer struggles to usher them out of the door.

Combined, this music has drawn appreciative nods from a range of forebears including Iggy Pop, Kathleen Hanna and Sleater Kinney’s Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein. Iggy is so enamoured of the duo that he got them to collaborate on a version of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus that appeared alongside tracks by Andrea Corr and Rick Astley on a Trevor Horn-helmed covers album: improbable company in which to find a band whose first EP arrived in a sleeve featuring a pile of shit on fire.

But Who Let the Dogs Out’s closing track takes a different tack. There are synths, a four-to-the-floor disco beat and a hooky, chant-a-long chorus. In place of the aforementioned litany of societal ills, the lyrics offer a list of positive actions and scrappy pleasures: if you wanted, you could view it as a kind of Brat-era successor to Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ beloved Reasons to Be Cheerful (Part Three). In theory, it could be a cunning bit of career-building entryism, a shift from confrontation and aggression that could move Lambrini Girls away from 6Music’s recesses and playlists called things like New Noise, and towards a broader audience. In practice, not so much. The track is called Cuntology 101, it uses the word “cunt”, or variations thereof, 32 times in just over two minutes and ranks among its list of life’s small delights getting semen on your clothes, “shagging behind some bins”, “having an autistic breakdown” and – congratulations, we have a winner – “doing a poo at your friend’s house”.

You might thus surmise that Lambrini Girls aren’t at home with the concept of subtlety and you would have a point: in fairness, few punk bands ever did much business due to their refined understatement. But for all its unrelenting full-throttle approach and its way with a jagged riff – and Lambrini Girls are very good at coming up with jagged riffs – there’s a richness to Who Let the Dogs Out’s sound that suggests a range of potential routes forward. The rhythm of Bad Apple veers towards a drum’n’bass breakbeat. No Homo’s examination of flexible sexuality is spiked with sudden bursts of surprisingly sweet harmony vocals. Love twists and turns, dies away and gradually rebuilds itself, mirroring the narrator’s fretting over a failing relationship: “I love you so much it makes me feel sick, so hold back my hair until I stop.”

Most of the time, the lyrics focus on the kind of topics that have fuelled bands like Lambrini Girls for decades: police brutality (Bad Apple), toxic masculinity (Big Dick Energy, Company Culture), and what a generation of spittle-flecked Roxy-goers – now theoretically old enough to be Lambrini Girls’ grandparents – would have called “poseurs” (Filthy Rich Nepo Baby). Meanwhile, You’re Not From Around Here tackles gentrification, a topic so prevalent in recent US punk releases that one waggish writer dubbed it “the new Ronald Reagan”.

Of course, the fact that these topics are well worn doesn’t mean that they’re not still depressingly relevant. Bad Apple has very clearly been written in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder – “hang the pigs that hunt your daughters,” Lunny rasps – while the issue of poseurs is compounded by issues of access in the 21st-century music scene, an era in which it’s substantially easier to get ahead if your parents are bankrolling you. More importantly, they tackle these issues with appealing scabrous humour: “Michael, I don’t want to suck you off on my lunch break,” snaps Lunny on Company Culture. The Kate Moss-referencing Nothing Tastes As Good As It Feels, a song that deals with eating disorders, balances its harrowing reportage with unexpected humour: “Also, diet drinks taste like absolute fucking shit.”

It makes you laugh even as it’s confronting you about something horrendous, which is not easy to do. Nor is seeding music that is nasty, brutish and short – that effectively spends half an hour screaming in the listener’s face – with this much depth and variety. It hints at a bright future: Lambrini Girls might be in the process of quickly screaming themselves hoarse, but you wouldn’t bank on it”.

An incredible duo who are definitely known to many but not all, I wanted to revisit them. Update my previous feature. Urge people to check out their music. Lambrini Girls are very much here to take over and be heard. It would be a fool who dares to…

STAND in their way.

______________

Follow Lambrini Girls

FEATURE: Shout: Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

Shout

 

Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair at Forty

_________

THE mighty Tears for Fears…

IN THIS PHOTO: Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears in London/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland/Getty Images

released their debut album, The Hurting, in 1983. I was born that year. I have listed to it in years since and there is a marked difference between the sound of that album and what they produced in 1985. Their second studio album, Songs from the Big Chair, was released on 25tth February, 1985 by Mercury. Songs from the Big Chair was a stylistic and sonic shift from The Hurting. That album contained darker, introspective Synth-Pop, whereas Songs from the Big Chair includes a more mainstream, guitar-based Pop-Rock sound. Reaching two in the U.K. and one in the U.S., this was a massive success story. I have written about this album before though, as it turns forty soon, I wanted to spotlight it again. A more politically conscious effort from  Roland Orzabal and Ian Stanley, Songs from the Big Chair has endured to this day. I want to bring in some reviews and detailed features for this album. I am starting out with the full feature from Classic Pop. Writing in 2022, they observed how Tears for Fear made major waves on their debut but their follow-up made an even bigger impression:

“Having achieved a level of success which far exceeded everyone’s expectations with the synth-pop and psychoanalysis of 1983’s The Hurting notching up sales in excess of a million copies and scoring three Top 5 singles, pop’s patron saints of outsiders found themselves experiencing pressure of a different kind when it came to follow it up.

“I suppose our whole thrust, musically and philosophically, as Tears for Fears came out in The Hurting,” Roland Orzabal told Las Vegas Weekly. “When we finished that album, it was almost like, ‘Okay, well, we’ve kind of said our bit. What are we going to do now?’ But, of course, we were successful, and the record company was pushing us to come up with another single.”

Bowing to record label pressure to “strike while the iron’s hot”, the band returned to the studio to work on new material, the result of which was standalone single The Way You Are. Peaking at No.24, it was a commercial disappointment following the momentum they’d achieved from The Hurting – though the band themselves thought even that lowly chart position was better than it deserved, feeling angry that they had compromised themselves artistically to fulfil a commercial obligation.

“The Way You Are was the least favourite song of either of ours,” Curt Smith later told Consequence of Sound. “Definitely one of the worst recordings we’ve done. We were basically coerced by the record company to go in and do something to release quickly after The Hurting was successful and that’s what we came up with. The A&R guy behind us at the time thought it was the best thing we’d ever done. It was just so fragmented to me and so not a song; it’s just something created in the studio.

“We realised for us it’s the song first and then you produce it. With that we definitely produced it, made it different, made it clever, and I think it was a failure. For us personally, I don’t think it was anything we enjoyed. And I think it was listening to other people, and what we tend to do, and what we prefer to do, is just go away and make our own records.”

Writing in the liner notes to the B-sides and rarities compilation Saturnine Martial & Lunatic, Orzabal describes the song as, “the point we knew we had to change direction”, though they were unsure of which direction, feeling unsettled by the failure of the song. “It was a stuttering beginning to the whole Big Chair thing,” he said.

“The Way You Are didn’t do very well and that got us a little bit worried. And then we almost did the same thing with Mothers Talk, but the record company at that point said: ‘No. Stop. You’re not doing this kind of music. We need more oomph, more of a human side than what you’re doing. We want more guitars, we want more force.’ And it was like, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ We re-recorded Mothers Talk in a much more robust way, but that set the tone then for the songs that followed. We had sort of broken the back of, in a sense, a new direction, which was less precious, less shoegazing, less moody, less black, as in a black mood.”

In order to create their desired sound described by Smith as, “a little more bombastic and a little more proud”, the band enlisted new musicians and worked briefly with Jeremy Green before reuniting with The Hurting’s producer Chris Hughes.

“After the first album was released, naturally, they went off and did their own thing,” Hughes told RBMA. “They were young pop stars, so they were doing tours, TV, and all that kind of stuff. I went off and did a Wang Chung album. When I finished that, I got a call from the group saying that they were looking to start their second album. They asked me if I wanted to hear some songs and to become involved again. It was quite easy, because by then, I knew them very well. When you’ve shared some success, those dialogues are always easier.”

To create something so different to The Hurting, the environment in which it was written and recorded was also markedly different.

“Making The Hurting had been a very, very painful process,” Orzabal reveals to Las Vegas Weekly. “We were young kids and spending a lot of time away from home. And it was just the way we were recording with Chris Hughes and Ross Cullum; there was so much analysis on every aspect of the recording, it just became a little bit too tedious. This time around, I bought a recording console and we put it in our keyboard player Ian Stanley’s house. And then all of a sudden we were going home every night and had familiar surroundings, surrounded by our girlfriends, wives, whatever. It was just so much easier.”

“It was a kind of hobby studio, really,” producer Chris Hughes told RBMA. “It wasn’t like a professional recording studio. We just built the record up over time at his place. It was essentially Roland, Ian and I working together as a three-piece. Then, Curt would come in and be involved with vocals and other ideas, but essentially, the day-to-day operations on that record was Roland, Ian, and I with Dave Bascombe who was the engineer.”

As well as having a base where they were surrounded by family and friends, the fact that they weren’t in an expensive studio paying by the day lent the sessions a laid-back feeling and allowed the song ideas to develop organically.

“Some of this music was worked out on a sofa,” Hughes recalls. “We weren’t in a big corporate recording studio, there would be people hanging around, our friends would come by – the house was quite large. During the evenings, girlfriends and friends would turn up. It wouldn’t be party time, but there was a good social scene – the vibe working on the album was great.”

“We would start working in the studio around 10am, and would finish around supper time at about 7 or 8pm. It would depend, though – obviously, if we were on to something and didn’t want to let it go or finish a section of [a track], our session would go on later and then we all might hang out and have a beer and maybe play some board games or something.”

Although Tears For Fears had evolved musically and adopted a much more upbeat sound for the record, they continued using psychotherapy as a source for their lyrics. Having been heavily influenced by Arthur Janov’s primal scream therapy for The Hurting, they continued the theme of catharsis on the second album.

Feeling that each of the eight songs (as some were over six minutes long they could only fit eight onto a vinyl album) that made the album’s final tracklisting had its own unique personality so different to the other songs, they decided to title the album Songs From The Big Chair after the 1976 film Sybil in which Sally Field played a woman with multiple personality disorders whose only place of comfort is her therapist’s big chair.

“The title was my idea,” Curt Smith told Melody Maker upon the album’s release in 1985. “It’s a bit perverse but then you’ve got to understand our sense of humour. The ‘Big Chair’ idea is from this brilliant film called Sybil about a girl with 16 different personalities.

“She’d been tortured incredibly by her mother as a child and the only place she felt safe, the only time she could really be herself, was when she was sitting in her analyst’s chair. She felt safe, comfortable and wasn’t using her different faces as a defence. It’s kind of an ‘up yours’ to the English music press who really fucked us up for a while.”

Although Orzabal flippantly remarked that he believed fans “didn’t listen” to their songs’ message, his refusal to dumb down his lyrics when the band gravitated to a sound with the unabashed goal of trying “to sell more records” ensured his songcraft maintained its integrity however it was packaged. On face value, Songs From The Big Chair contained upbeat happy material, but under analysis, themes of war, loss, power and corruption remained prevalent.

Released on 25 February 1985, after Mothers Talk and Shout had become hits (No.14 and No.4 respectively), Songs From The Big Chair was met by a string of begrudgingly positive reviews from critics who’d been sharpening their knives for the almost unheard of two-year gap between albums.

The huge success of the LP’s third single, Everybody Wants To Rule The World sent it to its peak position of No.2 and ensured its omnipresence in the Top 10, where it remained for over six months and spawned two further hits in Head Over Heels and I Believe.

The success of the album translated internationally, with massive sales following across Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the US, where it topped the Billboard album chart and gave them two US No.1 singles in Shout and Everybody Wants To Rule The World, dictating the itinerary of a world tour that lasted almost a year.

Returning home in 1986, the band picked up the Brit Award for Best British Single for Everybody Wants To Rule The World, a song which returned to the charts later that year as Everybody Wants To Run The World, a re-recording of the track which was the official single for Sport Aid, something the band agreed to do after being forced to cancel their Live Aid performance.

The pinnacle of Tears For Fears’ success, Songs From The Big Chair went on to achieve eventual sales of more than eight million copies – definitely something worth shouting about”.

If you have never heard the album or know only one or two songs from it then I would encourage you to listen to it. I think so many of its lyrics are relevant today. I will move to Albumism and their words regarding one of the best and most important albums of the 1980s. Tears for Fears would follow Songs from the Big Chair with 1989’s Sowing the Seeds of Love:

“With Hughes and Stanley ever present to contribute and bounce ideas off, Orzabal is more adventurous with his writing and arrangements. Striking a fine balance of collaboration and contribution, he plays to his strengths as well as those of Curt Smith.

This is evidenced in the ambitious departure that was “Everybody Wants To Rule The World.” With a shuffling back beat and bouncy bassline, the song was a manifestation of their desire to become more pop focused. On first listen, the twinkly guitar line, the sing-song nature of the hook, and shimmering production belie the darker content of the lyrics. Addressing greed, a lust for power, and the politics of the cold war, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” is the cheery song you sing amidst the destruction, “holding hands while the walls come tumbling down.” In a moment of pop-meta, they even manage to reference the success of “Shout,” its truncation, and the ambition that accompanied its release with the quip “So glad we’ve almost made it / So sad they had to fade it.”

In a way to perhaps soften the content of the lyrics, Orzabal hands over the lead vocal duties to Smith who adds a sense of innocence and romanticism to the narrative; suddenly lines like “holding hands while the walls come tumbling down” have a tender element to them, a sense of surviving whatever the world throws at you, as long as you are together.

“Everybody Wants To Rule The World” would become a worldwide smash, and in a twisted act of self-fulfilling prophecy, it became the song that would indeed rule the world, helping the band realize the success they longed for.

If “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” was Tears For Fears’ shimmering pop at its apex, then “Mother’s Talk” was its antithesis. In its rerecorded form, it dials everything up. Opening with Barry Manilow sampled strings (itself a bold move) and pounding, hard-hitting industrial beats as its constant, “Mother’s Talk” captures the paranoia of the Cold War era and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Drawing from the 1982 graphic novel When The Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs, “Mother’s Talk” is an almost romantic telling of life under threat of the mushroom cloud mixed with the usual teenage angst reflecting on the pressures of growing up. Lines originally written about the Nuclear extinction, today play as observations on pending climate change where “Some of us are horrified / Other’s never talk about it / But when the weather starts to burn / Then you’ll know that you’re in trouble.” With a swirling cacophony bleeding through the track, the pressure of the song builds and feels pleasantly unrelenting. But with each circling of the chorus, there is an underlying optimism and sense of hope as the refrain “We can work it out” sounds.

As a way of closing out Side A, “Mother’s Talk” presents all the brash ambition and experimentation of Tears For Fears, front and center. It’s a whirling exploration of the sonic landscape and is the exclamation point on their new direction.

Side B by contrast begins with the quiet confidence of “I Believe,” a soulful, sparse arrangement of climbing piano notes, soothing chords, jazz time drums and Orzabal’s searching voice. It’s a raw and honest song that nods to the stylings of singer-songwriter Robert Wyatt (alluded to in the liner notes and on the single’s B-side retelling on Wyatt’s “Sea Song). “I Believe” is a song that provided a sense of comfort and warmth and seemed tailor made for late night listening sessions with the song on endless loop.

“Broken” returns the focus to strong, pulsating tracks. Without knowing Smith and Orzabal’s affinity for Arthur Janov’s “Primal Scream” therapy references, the song was still an obvious nod to the idea of “If you show the boy I’ll show you the man” and the pangs of youth and growing up. There’s also the melodic foreshadowing taking place with the signature melody of “Head Over Heels” sprinkled throughout, and both songs share the final line “One little boy anger one little man / Funny how time flies.” Lyrically there was a kind of comfort in the admission that life isn’t perfect, that we can stop “believing everything will be alright” and that despite the best intentions of our parents—or in some cases as a direct result of their actions—we are all broken. Life isn’t perfect. It’s messy. But within are moments of realness and beauty.

This is melodically represented by the “love song” of the album, “Head Over Heels.” I place “love song” in inverted commas because as Orzabal confesses, it “goes a little perverse in the end.” As, surprisingly, the only song on the album written by the duo, “Head Over Heels” presents a yin-yang approach to the idea of love. There’s a skepticism present and an element of surprise with love as inertia, creeping up on its subject and then, bam—“Something happens and I’m Head Over Heels / I never find out ‘til I’m Head Over Heels.” Melodically beautiful and captivating, “Head Over Hills” features some of Smith’s best bass work and the lyrical trade-off between him and Orzabal give the song a greater sense of support and purpose. A gorgeous example of the duo’s songcraft, “Head Over Heels” mixes ‘80s production with “Hey Jude” inspired singalong “La Las” and is joyous pop perfection.

Bookended with “Broken” (Live), this triplet of tracks takes you on a trippy, winding musical journey. One filled with a sense of exuberance with the final retelling of “Broken” as if somewhere in the middle, love made things bearable.

When you think back to Songs From The Big Chair, most people will recall the more pop oriented hits of “Shout” or “Everybody Wants To Rule The World.” What most forget is that in the full collection of songs, there’s quite an exploratory, experimental edge to the album. “Listen” is a prime example of this, with its multilayered ambience meets world music ethos. Ethereal and almost otherworldly, “Listen” binds political unrest to personal suffering in a beautifully haunting way. If “Shout” was the song to wake the world up, “Listen” is the one that will soothe its turmoil and let it drift off to dream.

With their second album, Tears For Fears had big ambitions. They set about making an album that cemented their place in the pop landscape. In doing so, they delivered an album that transcended it. A timeless album of prog-pop that still holds its vitality and urgency today, losing none of its luster, Songs From The Big Chair remains a must-own album for anyone passionate about music”.

I am going to end with a review from Pitchfork. They reviewed the album in 2017 and wrote how Songs from the Big Chair features “personal psychology, meticulous compositions, and world-sized choruses evoked the loss of control in an overwhelming era”. It is a work that still moves and creates reactions to this day:

“On their second LP, 1985’s Songs From the Big Chair, Tears for Fears took a cue from Lennon and applied what they’d learned from Janov toward studies of single subjects: money, power, love, war, faith. But where Lennon went small, Tears for Fears went huge. They took the goth and synth-pop foundation they constructed on their debut, 1983’s The Hurting, and piled on saxophone, Fairlights, guitar solos, samplers, and live drums on top of drum machines. They wrote cresting choruses, arena-ready anthems, elegant ballads, and multi-section songs that have more in common with prog-rock than most of new wave. And they improbably created not just one of the biggest albums of the 1980s, but an album that manages to exude the 1980s in the same way that Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours conveys the lonely narcissism and hedonism of the ’70s, or Love’s Forever Changes captures both the bliss and the ominousness of the Summer of Love.

When Smith and Tears for Fears co-singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter Roland Orzabal went to record Songs From the Big Chair, the two possessed the kind of ambition necessary to produce an era-defining album. More than anything, Tears for Fears felt like they had something to prove to both critics and to themselves.

The Hurting went to number one on the UK album charts, sold a million copies, and yielded three top-five singles—“Mad World,” “Pale Shelter,” and “Change”—but the UK music press approached it with near hostility. In his review of the album for NME, Gavin Martin writes, “Sure, they may be popular—so was the Reverend Jim Jones when he took 5,000 followers to Guyana to commit mass suicide.” Orzabal told The Quietus, in an interview, “We weren’t particularly liked by some of the music journals. If you were on the front cover of Smash Hits, you were doomed.”

Part of the problem was that Tears for Fears came off as being too sincere—The Hurting was so explicit about its debt to Janov and The Primal Scream, and so lacking in subtlety, that the album cover depicted a child holding his head in his hands. But that sincerity belies the cosmetic gloss of the music. With its gleaming synthesizers, tight drum-machine programming, and minor-key melodies, The Hurting is a hallmark of early-80s dark wave and goth. That beauty came with a price: “It ended up taking a lot of time and costing a lot of money because we were fussy,” Smith told Hall. “The problem with it taking so long was that when we looked back at tracks we’d done months before we’d think, ‘Ooh, I don’t like that.’”

For Songs From the Big Chair, the band regrouped at their keyboardist Ian Stanley’s home studio in Somerset and rehired Chris Hughes, who also produced The Hurting. After a few false starts, Orzabal formed a brain trust of himself, Hughes, and Stanley, with Dave Bascombe providing engineering assistance and Smith signing off on ideas and making suggestions. They took inspiration from the music they were listening to, cerebral art-rock by Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt, and Peter Gabriel. Smith confessed that his favorite album at the time was the Blue Nile’s A Walk Across the Rooftops. He could tell the Blue Nile had total artistic control—the music sounded calculated, finessed, meticulous.

In the documentary Scenes From the Big Chair, Orzabal revealed that the method Tears for Fears adopted was “fitting songs into interesting sounds.” To create the sounds, the squad in Somerset set up a formidable assembly of equipment: “a LinnDrum II box, a Drumulator drum box, a Roland Super Jupiter synthesizer, a Fairlight synthesizer, a DX7 keyboard, a rack of guitars, a Steinberger Bass, a Fender Stratocaster and a Gretsch maple drum kit,” according to Hughes. The main foursome would go in the studio from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., five days a week. They started by experimenting with individual fragments and then building them out. They took their time and loosened up their approach. Most importantly, they enjoyed themselves.

No track on Songs From the Big Chair exemplifies this free-roaming, tessellating approach more than its opener, the No. 1 single “Shout.” As Hughes told RBMA, “[Roland] set up a little drum box and a little synthesizer with a bass tone. He pressed the button on the drum box, and he programmed this little beat and it had these little chimey bells and a clapping drum beat. He pressed one of the keys and started singing, ‘Shout. Shout. Let it all out.’”

The template was an opportunity for Hughes, Orzabal, and Stanley to indulge. The structure of “Shout” is minimal, just one or two vocal melodies played over a steady drumbeat for around six-and-a-half minutes. But the thrust of the song is repetition, because as the hook grows and grows, the band keeps adding patches and instruments that compound the potency of the songwriting: a Fairlight-programmed ghostly synth-flute line, chippy guitar licks, and then a perfectly timed breakdown at 2:40, with a warped keyboard patch followed by a huge rush of Hammond organ and then a return to that earlier synth-flute, in a sequence that sounds like a brass band bursting through, then all of it blanketed by heavy-feedback guitars and backup vocals, a knifelike guitar solo running on top, and Orzabal and Smith still singing: “Shout. Shout. Let it all out/These are the things I can do without.”

“Shout” sounds tough. The drumbeat has an industrial, boxy shape and texture that resembles a march, with Orzabal and Smith’s joint vocals delivered almost as a chant. The song is just as explicit about primal therapy as virtually any other Tears for Fears track that predates it. But it’s less egregious, even though the execution is more direct. From the outset, Tears for Fears sound like they have a real purpose. The end of the verse is a declaration: I’m talking to you.

Tears for Fears named Songs From the Big Chair after the 1976 TV movie Sybil, in which Sally Field plays the title character, a woman with multiple personality disorder who could only prevent herself from using her different guises as defense mechanisms when she was sitting in her analyst’s chair. But the title also smartly references the music—because the songs all pertain to different sides of Tears for Fears’ personality—and that the band are delivering the album from an assured psychological state.

Tears for Fears could harness their self-confidence for a variety of tones and subjects, something that’s evident on “Head Over Heels,” another one of Songs From the Big Chair’s major singles. Whereas “Shout” is brooding and martial, “Head Over Heels” is dreamy and skeptical, with its glimpses of the joys of relationship chitchat (“I wanted to be with you alone /And talk about the weather”) and its swooning chorus, clouded in the band’s heavy, misty production. The music contradicts the narrative, in which the protagonist sabotages courtship because of his own self-hatred (“I made a fire, I’m watching it burn/I thought of your future”) and doubts that he can ever truly be in love (“I’m lost in admiration, could I need you this much?”). At this point, Tears for Fears could address their own insecurities without appearing wimpy or self-absorbed”.

Produced by Chris Hughes and released on 25th February, 1985, we are about to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Songs from the Big Chair. Everybody Wants to Rule the World is the first song I ever heard and, as it has a special place in my heart, so too does the album it came from. Tears for Fear released their seventh studio album, The Tipping Point, in 2022. It is great that they still tour and play songs from their second studio album. Many people’s favourites. When they do deliver these epic songs, they reach new listeners. Songs from the Big Chair is a masterpiece that will endure and resonate…

DECADES from now.

FEATURE: Radiohead’s The Bends at Thirty: The Legacy of Their Second Studio Album

FEATURE:

 

 

Radiohead’s The Bends at Thirty

IN THIS PHOTO: Radiohead in San Francisco in July 1995/PHOTO CREDIT: Jay Blakesberg

 

The Legacy of Their Second Studio Album

_________

ON 13th March…

we mark thirty years of Radiohead’s phenomenal second studio album, The Bends. I have already written a feature about it. I want to revisit it ahead of its thirtieth anniversary. Whilst many rank it below OK Computer (1997) and Kid A (2000) in terms of the Oxfordshire band’s greatest moment, The Bends is my favourite album of theirs. I want to include some features that discuss the legacy of a classic that arrived in 1995. One of the greatest years for music, few more important albums were released that year than The Bends. Its legacy today is so strong. In terms of the bands its influence and how it changed British Rock and Alternative music. I want to start out with this feature published last year that celebrated twenty-nine years of The Bends:

“The Emergence of a Masterpiece

When Radiohead released The Bends in March 1995, few could have predicted its seismic impact on the music industry and the alternative rock genre. Coming off the back of their hit single “Creep,” the band was pigeonholed as one-hit wonders. However, The Bends shattered these expectations, weaving intricate guitar work with expansive sonic landscapes and Thom Yorke’s haunting vocals. But what makes The Bends such a revered album? Let’s dive in.

The Genesis of The Bends

At the heart of The Bends is a story of transformation. Following Pablo Honey’s unexpected success, Radiohead found themselves under immense pressure. This section explores the band’s journey from their grunge-influenced roots to creating an album that defied the expectations of critics and fans alike.

The Struggle and the Breakthrough

The recording process of The Bends was marked by tension and dissatisfaction. The band struggled to find a direction, experimenting with various styles and sounds. This period of trial and error led to the album’s diverse track list, from the anthemic “High and Dry” to the introspective “Fake Plastic Trees.”

Collaboration with Producer John Leckie

Key to the album’s sound was the collaboration with producer John Leckie. His experience and vision helped the band refine their ideas, pushing them to explore new sonic territories. This partnership was instrumental in creating the album’s richly textured soundscapes.

The Bends’ Key Tracks

The Bends is an album where each track contributes to a larger narrative. This section offers a detailed analysis of the album, highlighting the thematic and musical continuity that runs through its 12 tracks.

“The Bends”

The title track, “The Bends,” is a powerful opener setting the album’s tone. Its explosive energy and intricate guitar lines capture the sense of urgency and disorientation that permeates much of the album. The lyrics reflect the band’s discomfort with sudden fame and the shallowness of the music industry, themes that recur throughout the album.

“High and Dry”

“High and Dry” is one of the album’s most accessible and beloved tracks. Its melancholic melody and Yorke’s emotive vocals deliver a poignant message about vulnerability and disillusionment. The song’s mainstream appeal did not compromise its depth, as it continues to resonate with listeners for its sincere depiction of human fragility.

“Fake Plastic Trees”

Perhaps one of the most iconic tracks on The Bends, “Fake Plastic Trees,” is a haunting ballad that showcases Radiohead’s ability to blend emotional depth with musical simplicity. The song’s lyrics, dealing with artificiality and superficiality, are delivered by Yorke with a raw, moving, and profound intensity.

“Street Spirit (Fade Out)”

The album’s closing track, “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” encapsulates The Bends’ essence. Its haunting melody and introspective lyrics speak to the theme of despair and hopelessness, yet there’s a certain beauty in its melancholy.

Shaping the Sound of a Generation

In the years following its release, countless artists cited The Bends as a major influence. Its experimental approach to songwriting and production set a new standard for what could be achieved in the studio. The Bends inspired a generation of musicians, from Coldplay to Muse, by proving that rock music could be introspective, experimental, and commercially successful.

The Bends in Radiohead’s Discography

Positioned between Pablo Honey’s rawness and OK Computer’s experimentalism, The Bends bridges Radiohead’s evolution. This section reflects on its place within the band’s body of work and its role in setting the stage for their future innovations.

The Enduring Legacy of The Bends

Over two decades since its release, The Bends remains a pivotal album in Radiohead’s catalog and alternative rock landscape. Its exploration of human emotion and innovative sound has cemented its status as a timeless classic. As we reflect on its legacy, it’s clear that The Bends is not just an album; it’s an emotional journey that continues to resonate with listeners worldwide”.

Not only was The Bends important in how it changed music and fitted into the climate of the mid-'90s. It was also important in how it changed the perception of Radiohead. After the lacklustre 1993 debut, Pablo Honey, The Bends marked a confident leap forward. Feeling much more like a debut album. Their confidence from there grew and they took this into their following two albums. I want to move on to this feature from 2021. They discuss Radiohead’s The Bends as an album that changed music:

“The Bends was Radiohead’s Big Leap Forwards into unknown musical territory, and also distinguished them from the Britpop movement. The song writing is incredibly strong throughout and is enhanced by striking arrangements, extraordinary sonic landscapes, and a majestic production, courtesy of producer John Leckie. The Bends is Ground Zero for what has been called “the Radiohead aesthetic.”

PRESSURE

So how did Radiohead manage to make a masterpiece with their second effort? By all accounts, by the middle of 1993, the band found themselves in an odd place. They’d enjoyed some minor success with their debut album Pablo Honey, which had been released early that year, but lead single “Creep” had bombed in their homeland, as it had been declared “too depressing” by the BBC and was excluded from radio playlists.

Following an iconic performance of “Creep” on MTV in the summer of 1993, the song became a hit in several countries, and even gained popularity in the US as a “slacker anthem,” similar to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and Beck’s “Loser.” EMI re-released “Creep” in the UK in September 1993. It promptly went to number seven.

As a result, the pressure was on for Radiohead to capitalize on the success of “Creep.” The band did not feel comfortable with this at all, and after a cancelled concert, Thom Yorke stated, “Physically I’m completely fucked and mentally I’ve had enough.”

TRYING TOO HARD

Pablo Honey had been engineered, mixed and produced by Americans Sean Slade and Paul Q Kolderie. For the new album, Radiohead chose British producer John Leckie to work with, who by 1993 was a big name in the UK alternative rock scene, having worked with XTC, Be-Bop Deluxe, Simple Minds, The Fall, Dukes of Stratosphear, The Stone Roses and countless others.

Radiohead and Leckie started work in RAK Studios in North-London in February 1994. Helping Leckie out was RAK tape op Nigel Godrich, who went on to produce all future Radiohead albums. With Radiohead resenting the pressure to create a hit, tensions grew high. Sessions were not working out, the band’s manager at one point nearly quit. Leckie concluded that they were “trying too hard.”

The sessions could easily have broken down or yielded substandard material. However, despite the stressful circumstances, progress was eventually made. Leckie had set the band up in the huge live room of RAK Studio 1, which is a former ballroom, with tons of space and daylight. The band members were separated by sliding doors and baffles.

COLLABORATIVE

Leckie remembers that the microphones on the drums involved were: on the kick AKG D25, AKG D12, Electrovoice RE20 or Sennheiser MD421, on the snare Shure SM57 or Neumann KM 84, on the toms Sennheiser MD421, on the hi-hat Neumann KM84 hihat, overheads varied between pairs of Neumann U-87, KM-84 or U-47, Coles 4038, AKG C414’s and C451’s. The bass was recorded via DI, and using an AKG D12, Electrovoice RE20 or NeumannU47. Guitars were recorded using a Neumann U67 and a Shure SM57, recorded without EQ and the final sound being a balance between the two mics. Some of the outboard that was used include compressors like the Urei 1176 blackface and DBX160.

Bassist Colin Greenwood used a 1972 Fender Mustang, and occasionally an Aria bass, going through an Ampeg SVT. Many reports state that a lot of time was spent on getting the right guitar sounds, with different guitars, amps and effects. Nevertheless, guitarist Jonny Greenwood eventually went back to his tried and tested Fender Telecasters. He used two Telecaster Plus models, one with a Tobacco Burst finish the other in Ebony Frost, going through Bluesbreaker and DigiTech Whammy WH1 pedals and a Fender Twin Reverb amp.

Ed O’Brien played a guitar that he had made with the band’s guitar tech, Plank. The guitar was appropriately called the Plank ED1, and his amplifier was a Mesa Boogie. Acoustic guitars were recorded with a Neumann U67 and maybe a Neumann KM84, no DI, but using the API’s EQ.

The band later recognized that Leckie had taught them “how to use the studio, and how to get the best out of our material.” Using the studio as a musical instrument became a major part of their approach. There also was a shift in their song writing, which until then had been more or less the domain of Thom Yorke. On The Bends it became a much more collaborative effort.

In addition, they had worked out a labour division between the three guitar players. Whereas on Pablo Honey the tendency was for all to play similar parts, creating a wall of guitar sound, on The Bends Yorke started focusing more on rhythm guitar, O’Brien on textural, effect-laden parts, and Greenwood on lead guitar. Greenwood also extended his palette to playing  keyboards and synthesizers, and writing string arrangements.

CONFIDENCE

The sessions were halted in May and June with the album still incomplete, because the band went on tour, in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand. It also appeared at several summer festivals, including Glastonbury and Reading in England, and Roskilde in Denmark.

Radiohead and Leckie, without Godrich, reconvened in July at The Manor, a residential studio with an SSL, located close to Oxford. The sessions at The Manor lasted a mere two weeks, but were extremely productive, because the band had enormously gained in confidence during their world tour, and had worked out new arrangements for many of the songs.

It has been widely reported that “My Iron Lung,” was based on an MTV live recording by Radiohead at the London Astoria, on May 27th, 1994, released on VHS in 1995 and on DVD in 2005 as Live At The Astoria. Leckie explains that it in fact is a combination of live and studio recordings.

Following the Manor sessions, Leckie and Chris Brown went to Abbey Road Studio 3, where they started mixing the album. Reportedly because EMI felt that Leckie was taking too long over the mixes, the company decided to have the songs mixed by Pablo Honey producers Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie. Leckie ended up with a mix credit on just three songs.

The Bends was finally released on March 13, 1995 in the UK, on Parlophone Records, and on April 4 in the US, on Capital Records. Featuring artwork by Stanley Donwood, it was immediately successful in their homeland, spending 160 weeks in the UK album charts and reaching to number 4, but it was much less recognized in the US.

The reviews in the UK also were overwhelmingly positive, with The Guardian writing that Radiohead had “transformed themselves from nondescript guitar-beaters to potential arena-fillers.” Q magazine called the album a “powerful, bruised, majestically desperate record of frighteningly good songs.” And the New Musical Express praised it as “a classic” and “the consummate, all-encompassing, continent-straddling ’90s rock record.”

The Bends put Radiohead on course to become the biggest and most influential rock act in the world. The band itself recognized the album as a “turning point” in their career, and were aware that it had an immediate impact on their contemporaries.

The legacy of The Bends continues to shine. In 2006, it was included in a list of “50 albums that changed music,” that was published in the prestigious British newspaper The Observer. Today, twenty-six years after its release, many regard it as Radiohead’s magnum opus”.

 I am finishing off my second anniversary feature of The Bends with this feature from The Quietus. Thirty years after its release, I don’t think we have heard an album quite like it. It is a masterpiece that never gets the sort of love and attention albums like Kid A have. I hope that the thirtieth anniversary of The Bends changes that. For anyone who has not heard the album in a while, make sure you listen to it now:

“The Bends was made as Radiohead first began on this treadmill, and already they wanted off. It was, one suspects, a record upon which they knew they’d stand or fall, informed by everything that preceded it. In many ways, it feels more like a debut album than Pablo Honey – with its mixed bag of strengths – ever did, as though it were the culmination of a lifetime’s work. Second albums are notoriously difficult to make, and by all accounts The Bends suffered a more than troubled gestation, yet it still comes out sounding fully formed, defining them in a way that Pablo Honey by and large failed to do. The privileges and the prejudices, the accolades and the rebukes, their pasts and their presents: all of these and more converged as one, crashing and grinding into each other until they found their place, only to soar off on a new, graceful trajectory. It was the end of a rite of passage.

The songs themselves only need to be recollected here because The Bends became so omnipresent and inescapable, so much a part of the sound of summer and winter 1995, that its overfamiliarity bred a certain degree of fatigue. At the time of its release, however – in the wake of Definitely Maybe and Parklife the previous year – it appeared unusually literate and accomplished, and, in some people’s minds, it towered above everything championed by an over excitable press for years. If they’d been little more the sum of their influences on Pablo Honey, now Radiohead were like no one else at all – like no one apart from Radiohead, that is. Even this was a concept that would soon be demolished: each new record from the band would swerve passionately away from where they’d last paused. They’d reinvent themselves repeatedly, first reshaping alternative rock, then dragging intelligent techno and electronica into the mainstream, before exploiting their well earned, hard won independence by at least attempting to disrupt conditions precipitated by the arrival of the internet.

That was to come, though: in March 1995, they staked their first real claim to greatness with a 49 minute collection of accessibly timeless, visionary songs that may have gathered a little dust since, but which stand up remarkably well. Admittedly, The Bends was only quietly revolutionary: there were no heroics, no ill-suited bursts of attention-grabbing histrionics, merely layer upon layer of intriguing arrangements that demanded repeated plays to unravel. But that mysterious sound of empty space being filled by shimmering guitars at the start of opening track ‘Planet Telex’ now seems prescient: Radiohead were taking up camp in territory few people seemed interested in investigating.

This worked because The Bends‘ lyrics were more elliptical, and the songs more intelligent, than anything they’d ever tried. Indeed, they were smarter that almost anyone in mainstream ‘alternative’ music was trying to be, a far cry from the wilful idiocy and tabloid realms in whose direction every other band seemed to be drunkenly heading. The sonics of the album, too, were polished, yet rarely drew attention to themselves. Yorke’s voice, meanwhile, still seemed to slur from note to note in his quieter moments – though he continued to rage bitterly at other times – but he seemed to be inhabiting the songs rather than testing out a role, whether amid the crunching guitars of the title track or the tender acoustic strums of the heartbreakingly puzzling ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. On ‘Just’, the band might have given in to their American influences, but they still packed the song with colourful fireworks, and ‘Bullet Proof… I Wish I Was’ boasted a haunting, peculiarly English desolation. Then there was the lilting grace of ‘Nice Dream”s strings and Yorke’s impressively feminine falsetto, which gave way to an impressively dramatic flurry of squealing guitars, while, in ‘High And Dry’ and ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, they mapped out a terrain towards which a pack of other songwriters would soon rush: anthemic, gutsy, midpaced songs of unapologetic, but never over-egged, sentiment. Few would ever do it so well”.

On 13th March, it will be thirty years since The Bends was released. A masterful statement from Radiohead, it is the album that launched them to the wider world. In a year defined by Britpop and the war between Blur and Oasis, Radiohead offered something alternative. With a lower-case and capital ‘a’. I have loved this album ever since it came out and do not get bored of it. Influencing artists to this day, The Bends should be held in the highest esteem. It is a majestic album that ranks alongside the…

BEST of the 1990s.

FEATURE: First We Take Berlin… An Idea for My 1,000th Kate Bush Feature

FEATURE:

 

 

First We Take Berlin…

IN THIS PHOTO: A 1985 image of Kate Bush in an on-set promotional photo for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) with dancer Michael Hervieu

 

An Idea for My 1,000th Kate Bush Feature

_________

THIS is my 954th Kate Bush feature…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Holland during spring 1978

so it is not long until I will publish the 1,000th. Although in the grand scheme of things it is not important, I think it would be good to mark the occasion somehow. As the feature will be published in June, that month marks fifty years since Kate Bush stepped into AIR Studios to record three songs. Two of these songs made their way unedited/unchanged onto her debut album, 1978’s The Kick Inside. One of the songs, The Saxophone Song, was called Berlin when Bush recorded it in 1975. Of course, one of the three tracks was the astonishing The Man with the Child in His Eyes. In 1975, AIR Studios was based in Oxford Street. If you stand by Oxford Circus tube station and look at a building with Nike Town written on it, look up to the fourth floor and that is where AIR Studios used to be. I imagine Kate Bush excitedly and nervously hopping off a bus and walking up the stairs to AIR Studios ready to record. There were some quality session musicians booked to play with her (including Alan Parker and Barry De Souza). Recollections from some who played with Kate Bush that day – including saxophonist Alan Skidmore – are blank as to what it was like. At the time it must have seemed like any other session. Bush was a month or so shy of her seventeenth birthday when she recorded at AIR Studios in June 1975. Engineer Geoff Emerick has clearer recollections of the day. As Graeme Thomson writes in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, Emerick was blown away. Bush being this breath of fresh air. This sweet girl walked in and said she was thirsty so was brought some water. There was a bit of small talk before producer Andrew Powell met her and recording began. Two three-hour sessions commenced where three songs were recorded. Un updated version of Maybe – which is an overlooked gem -, together with Berlin and The Man with the Child in His Eyes. Even if the later song was recorded in June 1975, it can be traced back to 1973 or earlier.

Some of the poetry that Bush wrote whilst at St. Joseph’s making their way into her music. The Man with the Child in His Eyes had a basic version recorded back in 1973. Bush was backed by players from the London Symphony Orchestra whilst at AIR Studios in 1975. I love to imagine Kate Bush make her first professional recordings in June 1975. I am not sure if Bush was driven to the studios. If she got a bus then she would have gone from Welling maybe up to Greenwich. Maybe then getting the Tube from North Greenwich to Bond Street and then walking from there. Perhaps there was a drive of seventy minutes or so down the A2. She must have had so many conflicting emotions as she made her way there and back. The feeling of anxiety and nervousness but this excitement of going into London. Some of her earliest exposure to the city. The noise and pollution must have been different to what she experienced at East Wickham Farm. However, stepping into AIR Studios – with three other leading record producers, Ron Richards, John Burgess and Peter Sullivan, George Martin established Associated Independent Recordings and opened AIR Studios in 1970 – must have been a thrill! A part of Kate Bush history was captured back in June 1975. I wonder whether anyone will mark that fiftieth anniversary very soon. Maybe there will be some magazine articles, though I am not sure how many people are aware that Bush recorded at AIR Studios in June 1975. It was a historic and seismic moment in my view. The very first professional recordings recorded nearly fifty years ago. It deserves some celebration and commemoration!

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

I want to focus on June 1975 for my 1,000th Kate Bush feature. I am not sure whether I should record something. However, I am a bit low on cash you cannot afford too much. Whether that idea would engross and intrigue people. Maybe use that June 1975 focal point as a jumping off point and then talking about Kate Bush more widely. I do know that I can go beyond that and celebrate Kate Bush’s legacy and impact. It is amazing to think that nearly fifty years ago, Kate Bush stepped into AIR Studios as a teenager and that would be the start of a professional recording career that continues to this day. I do want to do something special. This year is one where some special anniversaries are occurring. Hounds of Love is forty in September. There are so many possibilities to explore. My budget is not huge, so I am conscious of spending quite a bit of money on a podcast. Finchley Production Studios offers competitive prices. Even so, for a ninety-minute podcast filming and a decent editing option, the cost would be about £500. As I do not generate any revenue from my website, it would be a loss of £500. It might be worth it for the thrill of recording a podcast and getting to mark a fiftieth anniversary and chat about Kate Bush. However, it will be quite a financial hit! However, I don’t really want to do an ordinary blog feature. For the 1,000th, I do want to go all out and honour Kate Bush. I am conscious there are a couple of huge anniversaries coming up that should be highlighted. Fifty years since Bush stepped into AIR Studios to record songs that would appear on her debut album. Forty years since Hounds of Love was released. I am looking forward to my 1,000th Kate Bush feature. I want to honour this artist that is so important to me. Whether a podcast or something filmed, I am determined to show sufficient love and respect to an artist that has…

CHANGED my life.

FEATURE: Room for the Life, Somewhere in Between: Space for Improvisations and Collaborations in Kate Bush’s Music

FEATURE:

 

 

Room for the Life, Somewhere in Between

 

Space for Improvisations and Collaborations in Kate Bush’s Music

_________

MOST people have this view of Kate Bush’s music…

that has not shifted. I will talk about this is in another feature. How so much of the perception and views around her are guided by the media and their misunderstanding and ignorance. How well do they know Kate Bush?! There is this casual misinformation and misperception of her. When it comes to her music, maybe many think that everything was guided by Kate Bush and there was no space for input. Perhaps others feel that she was being guided by others. Kate Bush is one of the few artists who has ever lived who has written every single one of her album tracks. All songs on her ten studio albums credited to her. For sure, there are other people adding things. Whether it is a string arrangement or guitar part of something else, Bush has had help from those around her. However, when it comes to her music, this is very personal and important to her. Someone who would hate co-writing. How difficult and strange that would be. Few artists who have ever lived have written all their own music. When it comes to their studio albums. Bush has covered artists before but never includes a cover on her own albums. One could say that songs like Flower of the Mountain (from 2011’s Director’s Cut) or In Search of Peter Pan (from 1978’s Lionheart) had some help from distinct sources. It is impressive to consider how Bush’s music has been guided and shaped by her. This is especially true when she became a producer and was more in control of how her songs would sound. Not to say she was controlling and did not allow for flexibility. In fact, on all of her albums, there has been room for improvisation and suggestions.

When it came to the studio, there was this collaborative spirit. Despite the fact Bush was calling the shots, players would definitely be able to have their say. Returning to Aerial briefly. Released in 2005, there was a degree of looseness to some of the songs. Of course, there was also a lot of secrecy. Musicians would be invited in and there was this need to keep things private. However, musicians were invited to improvise on tracks. Steve Sanger, a friend of Bush’s husband, Danny McIntosh, came to Dorset (where Bush lived) to play drums, bells, shakers and percussion. If something worked then that was wonderful. If not, then no harm was done (I am paraphrasing Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush). Bush would lay down her basic vocals the day before musicians would play on some tracks. They would play along with what they heard through headphones. It gave this natural freedom. Musicians could improvise and add things. They were not rigidly being led or having to work with all these strict measures. I think that this is something that was not unique to Aerial. Maybe The Dreaming (1982) was a little more inflexible in terms of how loose and natural the sessions were. However, through nearly all of her albums, there was this sense of Kate Bush being this mother figure. Wanting to nurture the musicians and hear their thoughts. She would veto and pull rank sometimes if she knew best. However, there was space for improvisation and some alternate takes. People who played on a Kate Bush album noted the familial atmosphere. How she would offer them tea and there would be food served and wonderful hospitality.

Aerial is an album that very much strikes me as one that was warm and familial. Bush had this vision for the album but the beauty of it is all the different colours and shades. Various musicians adding their own flavours and suggestions. They could add something to the mix because there was this openness. Bush experimenting but not in a gruelling way. Maybe The Dreaming is a slight anomaly in the sense thar there is a denseness to the sound. Even so, she was this supportive and open-minded producer who would welcome collaborative spirit. As mentioned, if she was determined to have her way or sound on record, she would say so and gently, politely shut the conversation down. I would have loved to have watched her in the studio when recording albums like Never for Ever (1980), The Sensual World (1989) or The Red Shoes (1993). Bush is not really a perfectionist. That is what people say. She is exacting and will spend a while with songs. This does not mean she was writing privately, handing instructions to musicians and that was it. In the studio, there would be various players coming up with things in the moment. Perhaps not what Bush has envisaged, some of this naturally appears on the albums. When Bush started producing her own albums, she understood that there needed to be this blend of leadership and collaboration. I have written before how there was this good vibe and happy environment when she was recording out of Abbey Road. Despite Bush auditioning parts and using several players, part of it was so she could get something unique. Musicians coming in and playing something that may not have been concrete in her head. On her first couple of albums – 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart -, Kate Bush was working with experienced musicians and was fascinated by the studio. She was getting advice from them but she was also making them think and play in a different way. Mutual respect that was hugely beneficial to the overall sound.

It all goes back to the way Bush ran her sessions. So warm and supportive, she genuinely cherished and valued everyone who appeared. Even if it is her at the front, things were never purely professional and there was always communication and exchange. I think there remains this misconception. Bush being slavish in the studio and there not being any space for collaboration and improvisation. Circumstances changed from about 1985. Before that, maybe Bush was aware of how much studio sessions were costing her. Her musicians could add their own interpretations and there was definite flexibility. There would be this clash of wanting to nurture collaboration but Bush being aware of the cost and that niggling – and making sure her voice was the most prominent. However, I feel Hounds of Love, The Sensual World and even The Red Shoes saw a shift. From players on Hounds of Love being given some license to take a song where they wanted to (to an extent). Singers like the Trio Bulgarka improvising and guiding things on The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. Players on Aerial playing different parts and if it didn’t hit the mark there was no real stress. Far from Bush’s recording being tense and honed to within an inch of its life, she was a professional and genius producer but also there was this generosity of spirit. Kate Bush is not done recording. One imagines a new album might be more scaled-back in terms of people who play on it. Even so, Bush will not alter how she approaches sessions and those who work with her. There will be opportunity for some improvisation and feedback. Bush is fascinated by people so it is only natural she welcomes communication and collaboration. This is one of many reasons as to why…

SO respected and admired.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Reel to Reel: Songs from Incredible Film Soundtracks

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Olga Shenderova/Pexels

 

Reel to Reel: Songs from Incredible Film Soundtracks

_________

I have done this before…

PHOTO CREDIT: Donald Tong/Pexels

but I want to return to the idea of film soundtracks. How great they are. I have respect for a soundtrack that perfectly compliments a film. Everyone will have their own favourites and those that they hold dear. From some older ace films to some more modern classics, I have combined some of the best film soundtracks together in a mix. Whether you are a film buff or not, nobody can resist a good film soundtrack! Because of that, I have enjoyed listening through some amazing soundtracks and rediscovering songs that I have not heard for a long time. From some personal favourites to the most acclaimed film soundtracks ever, this is a nice mix that should provide plenty of treats. Some of the songs in the mixtape do not say which film they are from, so you may need to do a bit of digging if you want to pair the track with the film. Regardless, sit back and enjoy a…

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

FILM soundtrack mix.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Lay Bankz

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Lay Bankz

_________

A native of Philadelphia…

that you should definitely know about, Lay Bankz is someone who I am new to but instantly bonded with. There is not a lot of press around her so far this year. I will go back to last year and quote from a few interviews. Her latest album, After 7, was released last May and received a lot of acclaim and love. This year she has already released incredible cuts such as Graveyard. One of the most promising voices in Hip-Hop at the moment, I am going to start with an interview from XXL Mag:

“NOTABLE RELEASES: Songs: “Na Na Na,” “Ick,” “Sloppy Seconds (Ick Pt. 2),” “Tell Ur Girlfriend”; EP: Now You See Me ; Project: After 7 ; Guest Appearances: Ciara’s “Da Girls (Dance Mix),” Kyle’s “Woah,” Bandmanrill’s “Piano”

LABEL: Artist Partner Group

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Untitled project dropping later this year.

WHO ELSE SHOULD BE PART OF THIS YEAR'S CLASS: “Karrahbooo. Anycia. I think both of them are really talented. They be on some cool sh*t, and I’ve really been on that chill music vibe, recently. The Detroit chill vibe. So, yeah, I think they should have made it. I think they would have killed sh*t.”

INFLUENCED BY: “Lauryn Hill, if we’re talking about hip-hop music. Lauryn Hill is just amazing. Like, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I’ve been listening to it for, like, two months straight now, back-to-back. Missy Elliott is just dope all across the board. Her music is very artsy, and I feel like I have an artsy style of music. And, yeah, just the crazy ad-libs and the crazy sounds when they come on, it’s just very captivating.

Beyoncé ’cause she’s just an amazing performer. She’s an amazing artist. Just the development of her career. I’ve been a Beyoncé fan since the beginning of my life. Aaliyah. I think her style and just how sweet of a girl she was, just very inspirational.”

AS A FRESHMAN IN HIGH SCHOOL: “I was the cool kid. I was funny. I was quirky. I loved anime. I still do love anime. I skateboarded. I was in musical theater, and I’ve been a singer. The artsy, fun girl. I was just having fun, experimenting, trying sh*t and just being myself.”

TRUTH ON BEING AN XXL FRESHMAN: “I seen me on the fake list and I was like, No, no, no. If I made a fake list, I gotta be on a real list. I called my team and I’m like, ‘Yo, did y’all see this?’ I said to the group chat and like, ‘Is this real?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, no, the list is fake, but you did make it this year.’ I’m like, ‘Yo, that is f**king crazy.’

I started [paying attention to the Freshman Class] probably when I was like 12 or 13. Around that time, Lil Uzi Vert and PnB Rock came out. That class was what really opened me up. Five years ago, I started making music and I started wanting to be a Freshman. If you’re not a Freshman, what are you doing?

It’s time for me to be in people’s faces and show them who I am along with the music. I think that everybody has their own sense of individuality, but mine stands out in my own way because of what I do. I dance, I sing, I rap, I write. And I’m just original with doing it. I freestyle in the booth, I produce.

[When the cover is released, I’ll] probably turn up with my girls, my family. I gotta turn up with my team, too, because I wouldn’t be this far without them. I think [my fans are] gonna be hyped. You come with a look, you take the picture for the cover, then you do the freestyle. And the freestyle is really the build-up moment. But I think the cypher is like, this is how I’m coming. I feel like this is gonna open the door for the hip-hop world for me. I feel like the hip-hop world knows me, but after this, they’re gonna really know me.”—As told to Bianca Torres. 

Lay Bankz is a playful amalgam of what hip-hop looks like in 2024. A confident rapper who sings, dances, and has the kind of zeal that leads to superstardom. She's a bit spicy, too; don't sleep on her clap-back game. And she does it all with that Cheshire Cat-like smile that lights up a room. While TikTok can get a bad rap for making artists popular that don't necessarily deserve the acclaim, the 20-year-old Philadelphia native has used the platform to her advantage by showcasing her personality in myriad ways. The songs that got her noticed—"Left Cheek (Doo Doo Blick)," "Na Na Na" and "Tell Ur Girlfriend"—are full of the lively lyrics and upbeat energy that complement her spirit. But she does things a little differently for her 2024 XXL Freshman freestyle by bringing her serious side to light.

"Lately, it's been a lot on my mind," Lay expresses in the video below. "Fighting battles internal inside/There be some days I can't talk to my mom/’Cause I'm dealing with so many feelings and really I'm feeling like I should unwind/And just speak on the thoughts that I bury, like if I don't make it at least I was trying."

The rising rhymer, whose signed to Artist Partner Group, puts her struggles out in the open. From burying loved ones to pulling back on unfulfilled dreams, Lay keeps it real on what she's going through. "I can't give in, I can't give out/And when the pressure caving in, I make some diamonds out of dirt/Ghetto angels protecting me from sin, but I buried some bodies and it hurt/Have you ever been f**ked up, that's the worst/All the sh*t I'm accomplishin' my first/I was doin' the most to get close to my dreams and abandonin' hope ’cause it don't work."

She even switches up her flow, giving more life to her bars: "Bad grades now they on to me, city hated me now they all proud of me/And the music kept a smile on me/But the industry fake, they lied to me."

Lay Bankz takes a page from one of her inspirations with these rhymes. "Lauryn Hill, if we’re talking about hip-hop music," she shares of artists she's influenced by. "Lauryn Hill is just amazing. Like, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I’ve been listening to it for, like, two months straight now, back-to-back. Missy Elliott is just dope all across the board. Her music is very artsy, and I feel like I have an artsy style of music. And, yeah, just the crazy ad-libs and the crazy sounds when they come on, it’s just very captivating."

Singers also play a part in Lay's artistry. "Beyoncé ’cause she’s just an amazing performer," Lay says. "She's an amazing artist. Just the development of her career. I’ve been a Beyoncé fan since the beginning of my life. Aaliyah. I think her style and just how sweet of a girl she was, just very inspirational."

But don't get it twisted; she's doing it all in her own way. "It's time for me to be in people's faces and show them who I am along with the music," she maintains. "I think that everybody has their own sense of individuality, but mine stands out in my own way because of what I do. I dance, I sing, I rap, I write. And I'm just original with doing it. I freestyle in the booth, I produce”.

I am going to move to Billboard. This phenomenal talent discussed taking notes from Beyoncé and repping Eritrea. She also reflected on the success of Tell Ur Girlfriend and how that has gained this huge traction and loving fanbase. I am new to her music but it has been really interesting finding out more about her. Someone that I hope spends some time in the U.K. soon enough:

“At just 19 years old, the Philly native is part of a generation that’s acutely aware of how they are perceived. Thanks to social media, they hear – and sometimes internalize – every last compliment and piece of criticism. But it takes an artist like Lay Bankz to harness the beast that is the Internet, and transform it into a self-promotional tool to fully realize her childhood dreams.

“I’ve always known this is what I wanted to do since I was a baby, and everybody around me can vouch for that,” she says over Zoom. “I’ve been doing this my whole life. This is nothing new. I played the violin, I played piano, I was in orchestra, I was in vocal [lessons], I did musical theater, I took poem classes and I learned how to write poems and write raps. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”

Before the sugary ‘00s-indebted “Tell Ur Girlfriend” conquered TikTok and became her first Billboard Hot 100 entry (No. 58), Bankz’s “Ick” took the Internet by storm – for better and for worse. Despite vocal critics deriding the lyrics and sound, as well as her hip-rocking Jersey club-inspired dance moves in the accompanying music video, “Ick” became the soundtrack to over 200,000 TikToks, reaching No. 8 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 and earning 73.1 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate.

“Ick” followed a string of smaller regional hits that flaunted Bankz’s versatility, and its success even landed her a surprise performance at Houston rapper Monaleo’s 2023 tour, during which the headliner brought out Bankz alongside fellow ascendant female rappers Cleotrapa, Maiya the Don and Connie Diiamond to perform their respective hits during her Brooklyn stop. Bankz’s performance of “Ick” was electrifying; if people weren’t convinced of her star power before, her seemingly effortless balance in spitting verses and executing full-body choreography certainly changed their minds.

A gifted rapper and singer, Bankz’s growing catalog pulls from myriad genres and influences, but R&B and hip-hop — by way of ‘00s heavyweights like Beyoncé, Ye (fka Kanye West) and Brandy – reign supreme. Those influences shine through on “Tell Ur Girlfriend,” which leveraged its Timbaland-nodding production to success beyond TikTok, landing on additional Billboard rankings such as Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (No. 17), R&B/Hip-Hop Streaming Songs (No. 10) and Hot Rap Songs (No. 14). “Girlfriend” has logged 53.4 million on-demand official U.S. streams since its Feb. 7 release.

Between her live performance abilities, her ear for melody, her innate understanding of how to most effectively use the Internet and a support system in Artist Partner Group (APG) and manager Kenney Blake – whom she connected with after he challenged her to sing on the spot in front of a crowded barbershop — Bankz has collected practically every infinity stone necessary to ensure that she’s “here for a good time and a long time.”

Billboard spoke with May’s R&B/Hip-Hop Rookie of the Month about her “messy” relationship with music, putting on for the Eritrean girlies, and her favorite songs from the Kendrick Lamar–Drake beef.

Walk me through how you created “Tell Ur Girlfriend.”

I make songs based off of real-life experiences and “Tell Ur Girlfriend” is truthfully something that I went through. At the time, I knew what I was going through, but I didn’t have a song for it, and I feel like I have a song for everything at this point. Well, at least I’ve made a song for everything. I walked in the studio with Johnny Goldstein and Ink – a dope producer and a dope writer —  and I told both of them, “Yo, I had this idea!” Johnny played me the chords for “Tell Your Girlfriend,” but there weren’t any drums.

I’m like, “I want to talk about how I’m feeling right now, and I basically sat there with Ink and Johnny for two hours before we made the song and I broke down the situation that I was going through. We were sitting there like, Alright bet like this is what we’re going to talk about.

I got on the mic, freestyled some melodies, came up with some things that I liked and then [Ink] helped me write some lyrics and piece together the hook. I freestyled verses, so I just went in and said how I felt. I actually had to re-record [the song] from the first time I recorded it because I felt like some things needed to be changed to make it a little more truthful. It was probably a two-week process to get this song where I really wanted it to be, but I actually recorded [it] two months before I dropped it.

You really do tend to eclipse your big moments with even bigger ones, even when you were gaining traction online as a personality. How do you think you’ve used the Internet to your advantage?

I think the Internet is a playground, and it makes everything easier to market yourself if you use it the right way. [It’s] a gift and a curse, because without it, I think we would be back in the old times where star quality was higher — like Michael Jackson star quality, where people faint when they see artists. Stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore, because if someone wants to see you, they could just see you on their cell phones. And there’s beauty in that. There’s also a downside to it, but it’s really been the easiest way [for me] to promote myself. I control my social media narrative, and nobody could convince me otherwise.

Has your relationship with the Internet evolved in light of your recent success?

Honestly, I don’t find it stressful now. I think when I first started, it was more stressful, because I wasn’t used to all the attention and people commenting on my everyday life, how I look, how I dress and what I do. Then again, I’m from Philly, so people judge you by everything and that’s just how we are here. I got a tougher skin.

The Internet really can’t get to me, because at the end of the day, don’t none of these people know me in real life. All y’all doing is streaming my music and that’s helping me. I learned that [by] being yourself unapologetically, you’re going to be more happy than trying to please a bunch of people on the Internet who don’t know you anyway.

You mentioned growing up in Philly, which, of course, has its own lit music scene. What are your earliest musical memories of your hometown and what from Philly do you want to carry with you throughout your career?

My earliest memory of music is probably being in the car with my mom on our way to daycare. We would listen to albums on top of albums early in the morning because she worked outside of the city. She wanted me to go to this really good daycare, so we used to drive 45 minutes outside the city every morning. I remember her playing a bunch of Beyoncé, and that’s one of the reasons why Beyoncé is one of my favorites. We listened to Keyshia Cole a lot, Sevyn Streeter, a lot of what was popping in the early 2000s.

What I want to take with me from the music scene from Philly is that authenticity, never losing sight of who I truly am. Everybody from Philly is truly unique, and I think growing up in such a nitty-gritty city, if you’re not yourself, they’ll knock you down for not being yourself and they gon’ try and say you trying to be like somebody else. I’d die before I try to be like anybody else and I mean it.

You’re also putting on for the Eritrean girlies. What does it mean to you to be able to pursue your dreams to this extent, while still honoring all the different parts of your identity?

I think it’s amazing because there’s not that many of us — Habesha, Eritrean, Ethiopian people – in the industry. Putting on for Eritrea and letting people know, Hey, this is a country! This is where I’m from, what I grew up eating, what I grew up learning, this is my second language, this is a part of me.

That’s super important to me — because I got family in Eritrea that watch me on their phones, and don’t have half the things that I have, or aren’t as fortunate as a lot of people that I know. I want to let them know that they can do this too, it don’t matter where you’re from, what you look like, or anything. Anybody can do this as long as you believe in yourself!

Your big song before “Tell Ur Girlfriend” was “Ick.” Did you learn anything from that song and its success that you brought to the campaign for “Tell Ur Girlfriend?”

When I first posted “Ick,” nobody liked it! I kind of shied away from it because I was like, Wow, nobody likes it — oh s—t, am I doing something wrong? In reality, I’m just being myself. I didn’t let it get to me, so I’m like, All right, I’m still going to promote, I’m just not going to feed into it. But when I start looking at the bigger picture, I [decided to] start replying to hate comments with videos of myself. When I started doing that, I started controlling the narrative. Whether y’all like me, hate me or whatever, y’all still listening to it.

“Tell Ur Girlfriend” was the same thing. When the song really started blowing up, everybody was making comments like, “Oh, we can’t condone cheating songs.” I’m like, “Whatever, y’all listen to Keyshia Cole’s ‘I Should’ve Cheated’ and y’all listen to ‘Break Up With Your Girlfriend’ by Ariana Grande.” Music is a form of expression. There are people who felt exactly what I said in the song and they’re just afraid to say it. I’m not afraid to say those things. Once I really leaned into not being afraid to say what it is that I felt and stand on it, I think that’s when it really changed for me.

What is it about your relationship with music that gives you that kind of fearlessness to say what you want to say?

Music is my first love. I’ll be mad and I’ll be like, oh my God, I don’t want to do this no more, but, in reality, I wouldn’t want to be anything else. I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else. When I cry, I could cry in the booth and cry on the song. When I’m in love, I can be so in love and make a love song so beautiful that every time I listen to the song, I feel the embodiment of that emotion, just from my lyrics. I think that’s powerful. My relationship with music is intricate and it’s messy, but it’s my first love. Music is always going to be that.

What’s the messiest thing about your relationship with music?

I think that it’s not perfect, but nothing is perfect. And I’m not perfect. Sometimes, I might get writer’s block, or I might be so hurt and so mad that I make a song and it feels so good because I’m letting my emotions out… but then I can’t never listen to the song again because it might hurt me too much to listen [it]. At this point, throughout the five years of me making music, I have over 10,000 songs, and all of them are unique and mean something to me. I don’t know what I’m going to wake up and want to talk about. I don’t know [how] I’m going to wake up and feel tomorrow or how I’m going to go in the booth. It’s messy because it’s all over the place.

When it comes to making music, shooting music videos and crafting your live show, who are your biggest influences?

I have to say Beyoncé, 1000%. I love Beyoncé, just from growing up and seeing her artist development from Destiny’s Child to now. I went to the Renaissance Tour, and it was amazing. I literally could not believe it. I was so astonished. I just love Beyoncé! Everything about how she performs and how she gets on the stage is so captivating when you see her. You can’t look at anything else and she makes you believe what she’s saying. You believe how she’s performing and how she’s dancing. That’s really what inspired me to be the performer I am. I’m still growing and I’m still learning, but if I’m going to be like anybody, it’s gon’ be like her.

So what’s next for Lay Bankz? When can we expect your next project?

My project will actually be coming out in a few weeks at the end of the month (May 27). It’s raw and it’s me and it’s uncut. Versus my first project, Now You See Me, I feel like this project is way more innovative. I really sat down and thought about how I wanted my project to sound and how I wanted it to feel. I got the most raw, uncut version of After 7 – that’s the title of my project. This is going to be the project where people really have open ears, and I’m standing on that. People going to really listen to this jawn, and I’m believing in that.

What’s one thing you want to have five years from now?

I want to be able to put the people that I love in a better situation. I think I got a lot of people that rely on and expect a lot from and out of me. Without my people, I’m nothing. I just want to make sure that in the next five years, whether I’m giving them a job or I’m buying a car or a house, it’s all for the people who helped get me where I’m at today”.

I am going to end with an interview from Uproxx.  An artist that definitely wants to grab our attention, I think that this year is going to see her building her fanbase and proving herself to be one of the queens of modern Hip-Hop. A genre still dogged by sexism and misogyny, Lay Bankz is striking hard and paving a way for other women coming through:

“For the past few months, Lay Bankz has been a mainstay on all social media platforms. Whether it be X (formerly known as Twitter) or TikTok, Lay Bankz’s reach continues to grow by the month. The rapper, who hails from Philadelphia and is just 19 years old, follows a simple philosophy: Make good music and make sure it lands in people’s faces. It’s an idea that’s become the status quo in today’s social media era, especially in recent years with the presence of TikTok. It also presents the harder task of not being too much in the faces of the audience where they feel trapped, get annoyed, and run for the fences. There’s a balance to be mastered here.

Time will tell if Lay Bankz masters this, but it’s been so far so good for her. Her rise to fame kicked off last summer with the release of “Ick.” The bass-thumping addresses the “sassy man apocalypse” and begs men to “tighten the f*ck up.” The song went viral thanks to a video of Bankz dancing to it at a gas station. Her moves, which were energetic to say the least, forced you to stop and watch. The same could be said about her latest viral moment, pushed by her new single “Tell Ur Girlfriend.” The hype single is wildly infectious and begs for a few listens before moving on to something else. Both records, as well as her debut EP Now You See Me, are proof that Lay Bankz wants your attention, and she knows just how to get it.

With more music on the way, we caught up with Lay Bankz for the Uproxx Music 20 series. Scroll down to learn more about the rising Philly rapper.

What is your earliest memory of music?

I remember music from the time I was 3 years old. The first song I ever sang was “Irreplaceable” by Beyoncé.

Who inspired you to take music seriously?

Honestly, myself. Music is a form of expression and it’s subjective. Once I learned I could say how I felt in another form of conversation, I took advantage of that.

What is your most prized possession?

My voice. It’s a gift that I can’t see or touch. Intangible, but not unattainable. It’s brought so much to my life and I couldn’t hold anything else to such high value.

What is your biggest fear?

Not being able to sing. Or not being able to take care of the people who rely on me.

Who is on your hip-hop Mt. Rushmore?

Missy Elliott, Kanye West, Lauryn Hill, and Jay-Z.

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

Beyoncé, the way she controls any narrative placed upon her on any platform is admirable as ever. She always shows a sense of resilience, and she never does too much nor does she try hard to be herself. I love that about her.

Share your opinion on something no one could ever change your mind about.

Black-own everything.

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

That’s hard to say, there are so many songs I love. Doubling down on only one would be unfair because I grew up on so much music that I love for different reasons. Even to this day, I hear new music all the time that I appreciate for different reasons.

If you could see five years into the future or go five years into the past, which one would you pick and why?

The past, just to visit moments and feelings I feel like I didn’t get to feel entirely because of how fast they happened. I experience so much every day and my life moves so fast that it’s easy to not entirely take in what’s happening to me. I wouldn’t want to see the future because I’m gonna always get there. Why rush to see what’s already written?

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

Love yourself first, because not everyone will love you how they say they do”.

I am going to wrap things up. If you have not heard and followed Lay Bankz then make sure that you do. She is someone who is a singular voice. I can see her going a long way and achieving a lot in her career. I am sure another album will be on its way soon. Do yourself a favour and endure that you…

KNOW her name.

____________

Follow Lay Bankz:

FEATURE: A Tear That Hangs Inside Our Soul Forever: Inside the New Documentary, It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley

FEATURE:

 

 

A Tear That Hangs Inside Our Soul Forever

IN THIS PHOTO: Jeff Buckley in 1994

 

Inside the New Documentary, It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley

_________

AS a massive fan…

IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Berg, Mary Guibert (Jeff Buckley’s mother) and Ben Harper/PHOTO CREDIT: Robin Marshall/REX/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival

of Jeff Buckley, any documentary that shines a light on his talent is fascinating to me. Buckley recorded one studio album, Grace, in 1994. He died age thirty in 1997. He was in the process of recording songs for a planned second studio album. To be called My Sweetheart the Drunk, it was an indication of what his next moves would sound like. A staggering talent who left us too soon, a new documentary, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, has won acclaim and praise from fans and the media. Featuring never-before-seen footage, exclusive voice messages, and accounts from Jeff Buckley's inner circle (including his mother), it got its premiere at Sundance on 24th January. I suspect that it will be released to a streaming site soon enough. I would urge everyone to catch this documentary when they can. Although it has not got a wider release date yet, I wanted to provide an insight into what we could expect. To do that, I have found reviews for It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley. I want to start out with Variety’s assessment of a portrait of a young artist who lived a brief life but has inspired countless artists since his death:

“In “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,” Amy Berg’s rapturous documentary about Buckley’s extraordinary rise in the ’90s and his tragically cut-short life, we hear Buckley sing in every conceivable context: in clubs, in stadiums, in the recording studio, and when he’s just sitting around. And as we drink in the majesty of his voice, the film lays bare a paradox about him that isn’t nearly as apparent if you just listen to “Grace” (1994), the only album he ever released.

When you envision the quintessential Jeff Buckley sound, you tend to think of one of his slower, meditative drifting numbers — like, famously, his cover version of “Hallelujah,” which is so spellbinding in its deliberation that he seems to be weighing and burnishing every word. That’s the Buckley who first wowed small audiences at Sin-é, the East Village hole-in-the-wall venue (it sat 30 to 40 people) where he was discovered. Someone recalls that when he was performing at Sin-é, you

But Buckley was as much of a rock ‘n’ roller as he was a hipster chanteuse. In the documentary, there’s a clip where someone asks him what his influences are, and he says, “Love, anger, depression, joy…and Zeppelin.”

He wasn’t kidding. Robert Plant sang way up high because he was following in the tradition of Black blues singers who sang in women’s ranges as a form of empathy and seduction. Of course, Plant also used those keening high notes to express an appetite for destruction. With Buckley, his sound was even more layered. There was a side of him that wanted to sound like a woman — but he also wanted to sing like the ’70s metal god whose voice was a pure assertion of male power. When Buckley sang slow, he was lulling and hypnotic, but when he placed that voice atop an up-tempo rock ‘n’ roll song (like, say, the title track of “Grace”), the result was every bit as transcendent. He came up in the era of grunge, but he expressed something much different: an abandon that was lyrical.

Jeff Buckley, during the time he was alive, was thought of as a cult rocker, a kind of “musician’s musician.” In the movie, there’s a quote from David Bowie saying that he thought “Grace” was the greatest album ever made. We see photos of the time Paul and Linda McCartney went to visit him backstage. And what the documentary captures, I think, is that Buckley was on his way to becoming a staggeringly huge star. I defy you to see “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” and not fall in love with Jeff Buckley’s voice. By the time the film is over, you want to find a way to go back and rescue him to let him live the life he should have.

Buckley’s intense identification with singers like Nina Simone and Edith Piaf — and his ability, almost unheard of in a male singer, to evoke their artistry ­— was about the music he loved, but it also carried a psychological component. He was in thrall to what he saw as the preeminence of women. His every soaring note was an homage to their majesty. On some level, this aspect of him was formed by the father who had abandoned him. He loved women and didn’t trust men.

But what of his own male energy? He was a gorgeous icon of rock stardom, but he had a profound ambivalence about his own male spirit. He grooved on it, but he was also, while not a grunge rocker, part of the Kurt Cobain generation. Cobain, who sometimes wore dresses onstage, had a relationship with his own masculinity that was so self-critical I would argue it bordered on the masochistic.

In many ways, these young male rockers were ahead of their time. They wanted the future to be female. But as we watch the documentary, what happens to Jeff Buckley in the last part of his life is at once mysterious and patterned. He becomes subject to mood swings, and reckless behavior, to the point that the theory is floated that he may have been bipolar, or even had a psychotic break. That’s all conjecture; we’ll never know. But what the film shows us — and this is not conjecture — is that during the weeks before his death, he made a series of phone calls to many of the people he knew, and what he did in those conversations, one after another, was to apologize and seek closure; it sounded like he was saying goodbye. Mary Guibert plays us the last voice-mail message he ever left for her, and there, too, he seems to be paying tribute to his mother with an eerie finality. There’s a clip in the movie of Jeff chatting with his buddies, and when the subject comes up of where he thinks he’ll be in 10 years, he draws a weird kind of blank. He says he can’t imagine it”.

I am going to move to a review from The Guardian. Before I wrap things up, I want people to get an idea of what to expect from this documentary. If you have not heard of Jeff Buckley then you can get an impression of why he was so special. An artist who is one of the most influential and important of his generation. I have been a fan of his for many years now and cannot wait to see It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley:

“The film, executive produced by longtime fan Brad Pitt, attests to Buckley’s fanatic interest in music at an early age; Guibert, the child of Panamanian immigrants to Anaheim, California, who had Buckley at 17, recalls that she first heard him sing while he was still in a bassinet, harmonizing with the radio. His father, avant garde folk rocker Tim Buckley, left when he was six months old.

It’s Never Over evinces Buckley’s fraught relationship with his famous father, with whom he shared a striking resemblance and a four-octave, dextrous voice, yet barely knew. Buckley spent just a few days with him before Tim died at age 28 from a heroin overdose; the young musician was not mentioned in Tim’s many obituaries, yet first gained attention for his talent at a starry 1991 tribute concert in New York.

The comparisons to Tim – which, given his early death, continue to the persist, though multiple close friends remind that Buckley was not an addict and only had one beer in his system when he drowned – irked the singer throughout his career. Asked by an interviewer what he inherited from his father, Buckley visibly bristles before answering: “People who remember my father. Next question.”

As the film illustrates, Buckley’s musical influences were ardent and varied, from Judy Garland to Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Soundgarden to Bill Evans and Shostakovich. Moore, his first girlfriend in New York, and others recall how Buckley’s eclectic taste melded with the eccentric and experimental East Village art scene in the 1990s, leading to a residency at a small cafe, Sin-é, where Buckley would riff and mostly play covers. Word spread quickly, especially once he began performing original music; a record label bidding war ensued. He signed with Columbia, the same label that signed another downtown upstart, Bob Dylan, three decades prior.

It’s Never Over surveys the making of Grace, now widely acclaimed though it performed moderately in the US at the time, as well as his continual discomfort with fame, which impeded his creative process – “Without ordinary life, there is no art,” he says in archival voiceover. Even with commercial success, “that really insecure person was always there”, says Moore.

The pressure to produce a second album was intense, both from himself and from his record label. Several film participants say the stress contributed to his self-diagnosed manic-depressive disorder, which worsened during his late 20s and influenced his move to Memphis.

While numerous loved ones attest to Buckley’s dark moments, they also recall a lighthearted, witty, fun-loving and open soul. His sensitivity, recalls Wasser, “wasn’t crushed like some other men’s had been”.

His death at age 30, just as recording on his second album was set to begin in earnest, left behind a trove of unfinished recordings, a substantial debt to his record company and a few poignant voicemails to loved ones that are played in the film, leading to much sniffling in the Utah crowd. It also left behind the question of how to handle a posthumous career, incalculable broken hearts and an open-ended legacy still in flux. Since his death, eight live albums and multiple compilation albums have been released; Buckley’s transcendent cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah reached No 1 on the Billboard charts in 2008. New listeners born after his death are now discovering Grace on TikTok, ensuring Buckley’s virtuosic singing and poetic vision carry on.

With the film, “I was trying to understand and articulate why I love him so much”, said Berg. But as she noted: “There just aren’t words to explain Jeff Buckley”.

I am finishing off with a review from The Wrap. Everyone who has seen It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley has attested to its power and impact. Although the documentary is fairly straightforward, it does provide plenty of depth into a musician that was among the most captivating of all time:

“Director Amy Berg’s “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” reveals itself as a straightforward documentary, complete with interviews from Columbia music executives, Jeff Buckley’s mom, his ex-girlfriends, friends, contemporaries, and those who knew him best. The film includes archival footage of Alanis Morissette disclosing her appreciation for Buckley’s music and pull quotes from actor Brad Pitt and fellow icon David Bowie sharing that “Grace” is the best album in music history. These interviews and musings are touchstones that provide color to Buckley’s life and influence on other artists, but it’s footage of the man himself that lets the audience in on what makes a man like him tick.

As friend and fellow singer Aimee Mann says at one point in the film, “He has a boundaryless, liquid quality.”

Berg’s fascination with Buckley’s octave range and tumultuous past makes for an electric documentary that harkens back to an era of opposition in the face of pop music. Raised by a teenaged single mother, Buckley’s estranged father, Tim, was a moderately successful singer in his own right but died of a drug overdose early in life. Rather than looking up to his father in a musical sense, the younger Buckley was instead heavily influenced by other artists with seemingly no connection to one another: Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, the Smiths, Led Zeppelin and Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

But fate has a tricky way of catching up with a burgeoning artist, especially one who repeatedly foretold his future demise to his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca (also another major influence in his songwriting). Berg captures Buckley’s fraught relationship with his own mortality, as the singer became irritated with those he admired in the music industry who suddenly admired him back. The idea that the influences in his life were influenced by his work was too much for Buckley to take in, and Berg does a remarkable job of demonstrating the psychological break the musician had toward the tail end of his life as a result.

“It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” doesn’t reinvent the documentary genre, but it does offer a unique perspective on the varying music of the 1990s, an experimental time where lonely artists like Buckley could buck the system and create a new brand of music under the guise of major labels like Columbia.

Sometimes, when a person flies too close to the sun of fame, it’s possible they fall into trouble with drugs and alcohol, a cliche to which Buckley himself was not immune. But his life and career aren’t defined by the extracurricular activities that made him difficult to work with, nor does his untimely death define it”.

I will end things there. An artist I have so much admiration for, I cannot wait to see It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley. It seems like a fitting tribute and salute to an incredible musician. It is clear that, when it comes to Jeff Buckley, we will never see…

ANYONE like him again.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Quarter-Century Playlist

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Jorge Fakhouri Filho

 

The Quarter-Century Playlist

_________

AS we are in 2025…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

we have reached the quarter-century mark. Because of that, I have been thinking about the best albums from the past twenty-five years. It has been an incredible century so far for music. We have seen so many changes. The Pop scene alone has undergone massive evolution. Genres have come into fashion and fallen back out. One can argue whether the music at the start of this century was better and more consistent than it is now. One cannot argue against the fact that technology has made it easier to discover music. The way we listen to music has drastically altered to how we listened right at the start of this century. I wanted to assemble a mixtape featuring a song from the best albums from each year of the century so far. You may be aware of many of the albums, though there are going to be some you are not familiar with. Below is a mixtape featuring tracks from the best albums of…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

THE twenty-first century.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Chloe Slater

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Gunning

 

Chloe Slater

_________

IF you get the chance…

PHOTO CREDIT: Hayley Thompson

to see Chloe Slater on tour, I would recommend it. This is a fabulous young artist who is tipped for big things. You can see where she is touring here. I want to come to some interviews so we can get to better know Chloe Slater. To start, I am heading back to May and NME’s chat:

“For all the debate about TikTok’s negative impact on music, sometimes the algorithm does latch onto some jewels. That was the case with Chloe Slater, a Manchester-based indie artist whose videos teasing her buzzing, sprechgesang-style single ‘24 Hours’ were unexpectedly pushed by the platform, her cropping up on For You pages lip-syncing to its addictive first verse that begins: “It’s not clear if I am ripening or rotting.”

‘24 Hours’, which was released in February, wasn’t the 21-year-old’s first experience of sharing her music – that came in 2023 with the downcast whirl of the indie-meets-stormy-electronics ‘Sinking Feeling’ – but it was her first time gaining an audience. “When I put my first single out, no one listened to it,” she tells NME over Zoom from her bedroom, the wall behind her decorated with a Camel cigarette packet, art prints and postcards.

“You’ve said you want to speak about issues that often aren’t spoken about in music – other than influencer culture, what does that include for you?

“Definitely the biggest thing at the moment is class disparities and how massive the gap between the rich and the poor is getting, because it’s actually insane. I was just looking at the Met Gala. I’m seeing it all over my TikTok and it literally looks like the Capitol in The Hunger Games. I found out they all have to pay £75,000 for a ticket, which is insane.

“It just annoys me because I think all these people with this much money, all the things that you could be doing with it – why is it going on stuff like that? But that’s definitely a big one, and then feminist things as well. It’s just mainly all of the things that concern young people today – not necessarily just young people, but it’s from my perspective and all of the things that make me angry about the world and all the things that I wish I could change.”

You have got people debating postcolonial views and misinformation in your TikTok comments. Even if those debates often come from negative intentions, does it feel like your music is starting conversations?

“Yeah, 100 per cent. One of the criticisms I get is ‘you’re not saying anything groundbreaking, this is just the most basic left wing propaganda’. But I think politics can be quite inaccessible in this country and a lot of people were not really taught it in schools – it’s typically private schools that teach politics more.

“So I think it’s also given a view of being a really boring thing – when I was 16, I thought politics was really boring because I didn’t know anything about it or understand that everything is politics. It’s not just like stuffy men in suits,  it’s the whole world and everything that you care about. So if I can make it digestible in my music, it’s like a stepping stone to starting to think more about the world that we live in rather than just having absolutely no idea at all.”

When did you first start getting interested in politics?

“Probably when I was 17. It was when it was Boris Johnson versus Jeremy Corbyn. I wasn’t old enough to vote. I just remember being so angry because there’s so many young people that are so educated on issues – more than a lot of people who can vote. It’s really frustrating for young people sometimes to see people making decisions for the world that they’re gonna grow up in, and they can’t do anything about it.”

Are you hoping you can use your platform to encourage young people of voting age to vote in the next general election, whenever that may be?

“That’s what I want to do with this, so yeah, I’d love to do that. It’s crazy because there were the [local] elections the other day, and none of my friends knew it was happening – they hadn’t registered to vote in time. I think it’s ridiculous how hard it is to actually be aware of these things – it should be on billboards everywhere. The amount of crap that’s on billboards now… why not put actually important things on there? But yeah, I want to be able to really make a difference”

This is an exciting moment for Chloe Slater. She announced a new E.P. last month. Before getting to other interviews, CLASH shared news of the release. Since its release, the E.P. has been getting a lot of love and positive feedback. If you have not heard it yet then I would urge you to listen to it now. It is a phenomenal E.P. from an artist with a bright future ahead:

“Out now, the EP follows a string of ace singles, blending her imperious ambition with unbridled honestly. Making her debut with ‘You Can’t Put A Price On Fun’ last year, Chloe has taken huge strides, and now shares her brand new EP.

‘Love Me Please’ speaks from the heart – ‘Fig Tree’ channels an inspirational reading of Trainspotting, while ‘Imposter’ and ‘We’re Not The Same’ are all-out pleas of independence.

In a note, Chloe Slater calls the EP “amped-up indie music, all centred around love and life in the 21st century…”

The first three singles explore themes like influencer culture, feminism, and social class, while songs like ‘We’re Not the Same’ and ‘Imposter’ reveal a more personal side to my music—one I haven’t shared as much before.

I feel like my sound, as well as my confidence in my own opinions and interests as a young woman, has really grown throughout this project. I’ve poured my heart into every song, and seeing how my audience has grown with me has been incredible. The response to the releases so far has never ceased to amaze me!”.

The penultimate interview is from DORK. They included Chloe Slater on their Hype List. They highlight an artist who is writing tracks about class struggles, crooked landlords and universal themes that are giving voice to these important subjects. Her music connecting hard with people. An artist very much for the people:

“There’s an awful lot to get riled up about these days. A one-second glimpse at the latest news headlines is enough to stoke a fire in many of us, with little sign of it dying out any time soon. Often, we turn to music as a distraction, an escape, a place to find comfort. Chloe Slater offers something completely different – she throws fuel on the fire and dials that anger up to the absolute maximum, and rightly so. Her music is somewhere you can be interrogative and justifiably annoyed without feeling the need to stifle any of it.

She may have only released her first single last year, but Chloe has already created a storm with her incisive, incendiary tracks. Her debut EP, ‘You Can’t Put A Price On Fun’, saw her wittily criticise everyone from influencers doing endless unboxings to the uber-rich unaware of their privilege, pretending all is well. She’s mastered the art of a track that stirs something in you, equally explosive lyrically and sonically.

“A lot of the main stuff people write songs about is love,” Chloe says. “I still write songs about that, but there are so many other things in my brain and in my life that I want to express. When I write a song, it’s usually because I’m angry. That’s the motivating factor, and the stuff I’m angry about is all that weird societal stuff that we experience.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Gunning

From crooked landlords to the gulf between the classes to the capricious beast that is internet fame, they’re the kind of discussions that wouldn’t be amiss in any group of mates, delivered in the pub with an exasperated tone and an eye roll. Granted, Chloe writes them much more eloquently than most, but that sense of frustration is shared.

“I really struggle to write about stuff that isn’t real or stuff that I haven’t felt,” Chloe explains. “It’s always been about my life, and I like to make it fairly obvious. It’s not always super poetic, but I think the truthfulness of it connects with people.”

Whether it’s a conversation that is already being had or a new one being sparked, the unendingly catchy nature of tracks like ’24 Hours’ makes these everyday experiences and injustices that bit easier to swallow. Chloe provides solidarity and space to let your fury rise to the surface, be it at the government or an out-of-touch video on your For You page. Within those few minutes, emotions are validated, and the need to speak up and contribute is more keenly felt.

“Women are socialised to be really agreeable, and nice, and not too angry,” Chloe reflects. “If you are angry, then you’re a bitch. I definitely feel that in my everyday life. I’m quite anxious about speaking out about stuff. I’ve got a lot better, but my music is a place where I feel the freedom to express all of those feelings. It’s helped me become more like that in real life, which is really nice.”

What began as an alter ego of sorts acting as a vehicle for Chloe to express these feelings has become more and more entangled with who she is – her music has been an act of empowerment – for her listeners, too. Having this environment to find yourself in the throes of anger despite being consistently to suppress it is vital, and Chloe encourages that for the young women listening to her. It’s hard not to feel incensed when closely listening to her lyrics, but there is some release in there, too. With each new track, things become heavier and more anthemic – the songs lend themselves increasingly to jumping around and unleashing those emotions in full force rather than bottling them up.

PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Gunning

“It’s a good mix of wanting to spread awareness about certain issues and make people feel seen that are struggling with these things, but I want them to come to my show and let it all out in the chorus and know that everything is going to be okay. That’s the kind of vibe.”

She’s already begun curating that atmosphere in her live shows. Across festival season and impressive support slots with the likes of Kings of Leon and The Beaches, the last year has seen Chloe really begin to find her feet onstage and continue to communicate her message. Watching those artists further ahead in their careers perform in front of a crowd has seemingly been a huge source of inspiration for Chloe, too.

“Especially with The Beaches, their show is just so much fun,” Chloe recalls. “They’re all jumping up and down and running around. I think they were even crowd-surfing. I might try and crowdsurf… who knows? I’ve learnt to just have fun and connect with the audience.”

Her music is increasingly written with the crowds in mind. The huge choruses of tracks like ‘Price On Fun’ truly lend themselves to being passionately sung as part of a crowd of similarly-minded people – Chloe has become more and more adept at crafting an infectious but incredibly relevant hook.

“When I’m writing, I always think about how I want a song to be massive in a live setting,” says Chloe. “I love the big choruses and instrumentals. That’s my aim with everything I release, just to be a bigger version of what it was before.”

Her latest single, ‘Tiny Screens’, is exactly that. A formidable look at internet fame with smirking references to “Marilyn Monroe with Turkey teeth”, it’s bold and sardonic, the guitars wilder and more irate than any of her previous releases. It’s a thrilling taste of what’s to come, perfectly at home in a riotous festival set.

Chloe’s origins couldn’t be further from the packed-in crowd of a tent in a field, though, where the masses start to merge together. Moving from Bournemouth to Manchester a few years ago was a major catalyst for Chloe’s foray into music properly, as she crucially found like-minded music lovers and threw herself into the gig-going culture of the city. Even more vital was her experience in Manchester’s open-mic scene.

“It’s been so important,” Chloe explains. “I had never really sang my songs in front of anyone ever, before I moved. Everyone is so welcoming and just sits and watches each other, and you make friends there. It’s a really nice way to build up your confidence in performing in front of people. Performing in those small rooms where everyone is looking straight at you is more scary than playing a gig. I went back and did an open mic a couple of months ago after doing the Kings of Leon show, and found it more scary. Everyone is so focused on you; you can see everyone and look in their eyes. It is almost awkwardly intimate, but I think that’s really good for building my confidence live”.

I am finishing with an interview from DIY. They spoke with her in January. Heralding an artist who is whip-smart and creating these Indie earworms. Marking herself as someone to watch very closely. I do hope that people connect with Chloe Slater’s music. Go and see her live if you can:

“Describe your music to us in the form of a dating app bio.

Feminine, loud, outspoken and always fun on a night out… but might cause an argument with your parents x

What’s your earliest musical memory?

It’s definitely my mum singing, we’ve been singing together my whole life - I think the earliest memories are of us listening to Beyoncé, Rihanna and Katy Perry.

You’re based in Manchester, which obviously has a very rich musical history. What do you think of the city’s scene at the moment? Are there any other artists breaking through at the moment you take inspiration from?
There are loads of really cool acts in Manchester at the moment! I think a lot of people get stuck on the heroes from the ‘90s but there’s loads of cool new stuff: you should listen to my friends, vincent’s last summer, if you haven’t already - they’re the best.

You’re set to embark on your debut headline tour this Spring - congrats! What are you most looking forward to about being on the road? Where are you most excited to play (and why)?

I’m most excited for the Bristol show because it’s my birthday - best party ever! I’m also excited for Sheffield and Brighton because we’ve never played there before :) I think the whole tour is just gonna be the best time ever though.

From anti-capitalism to feminism, your music excels at exploring political topics in the age of internet culture. Why do you think it’s struck such a chord with fans, both online and in person?

I think a lot of people go to music for escapism, which is so important and also something I do, but sometimes that leaves a gap for truly cathartic music that expresses the things that make you angry, or things that impact normal people in their everyday lives. So I think it’s nice that I can make music for people like me, and that we can all connect over the way we feel and our desire to make some change in the world”.

I will leave things there. This is just the beginning for Chloe Slater. You can tell she is someone who has something very special. Music that people need to hear. It won’t be too long until she is commanding massive stages around the world. Although she is a rising artist embarking on her first steps, Chloe Slater is going to be a worldwide name…

VERY soon.

_____________

Follow Chloe Slater

FEATURE: Spotlight: Isabel LaRosa

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Isabel LaRosa

_________

HAVING just completed…

some great shows in Australia, she is looking forward to a date in India and then back in the U.S. Isabel LaRosa released the E.P., favourite, last year. I think this year is going to be a big one for LaRosa. She is an inspiring Cuban-American artist who rose to public prominence after her 2022 single, i’m yours, went viral on social media. A big success on TikTok. I want to bring in four interviews that show different sides to Isabel LaRosa. A lot of eyes are trained her way. I will start out with CLASH and their interview from October. They spotlighted an artist who was trying to build a world that people could get lost in:

“Isabel LaRosa – whose dark-pop first blew up on TikTok in 2022 – writes and directs all her music videos. They take place in cars on empty roads lined with ominous woods, at house parties, or on silent, dark suburban streets whose quiet flatness you dream to escape from, but romanticise when you do. “We film almost all my videos in Atlanta or upstate New York because I’m like, this needs to look like where I’m from, and it has to have the east coast woods,” LaRosa laughs. “I was home-schooled for a really long time, and I was the weird, outdoors-y kid, like I would literally sit in trees all day, writing really cryptic stories.”

LaRosa, who turned 20 in September, has been performing since childhood, when her saxophonist father would take her and her brother, Thomas, to “jams and open mic nights”, where she’d sing jazz standards while Thomas played guitar: “I’m very grateful for all the experience I had performing because now it doesn’t feel like a foreign thing.”

But she kind of laughs when she thinks back to those wholesome moments. These days, her show is bathed in blood red light – very Carrie – and spiky with white strobing. Her name fills the wall behind her in an Akira-style font with the final ‘A’ forming an inverted crucifix. It’s just her, a backing track, and Thomas, his guitar riffs slicing through the synths. On record, she has a sensual falsetto but, live, the duo toe the line of a rock show, upping the pace and letting LaRosa dig into her lower vocal register.

Before her 2022 breakthrough track, ‘I’m yours’ (currently sitting on 426 million Spotify streams), LaRosa had released a handful of singles. Some, like ‘Therapy’ and ’16 Candles’, contain faint echoes of the yearning that would become one of her hallmarks, but, for the most part, she was simply experimenting.

“With ‘16 Candles’ and ‘Game Boy’, I was really trying to find the lane that felt right and I didn’t know what it was yet. Then I wrote a song called ‘HAUNTED’ and that matched the vision in my head of what I wanted my visuals to be like. Dark. Moody. That was where it clicked for me.”

Much of LaRosa’s music is built around dreamy choruses that soar, cathedral-like, and evoke the mind-altering, stomach-knotting desire that one feels only a few times in life. It’s no surprise then that her viral tracks – ‘older’, ‘favorite’, ‘i’m yours’ – are beloved of fan editors on TikTok, who use them as soundtracks for artful and incredibly thirsty montages of their favourite singers and actors.

LaRosa laughs. She’s seen plenty of them over the years. “I want my music to feel like it could be in a movie, and that you’re the main character. That’s what I like listening to, you know, it’s the most fun thing. When I lived in my hometown, I’d bike at 3am around the city and blare music in my ears. You want something that makes you feel cinematic.”

This is why her videos are miniature movies and why, for a brief moment (“One month, when I was fifteen,” she laughs), LaRosa considered changing careers from music to film. She created a visual trilogy for ‘HAUNTED’, ‘HELP’ and ‘HEAVEN’, and plugged into her love of horror in “older” where she’s not alone in her secret crush on a teacher as her schoolmates vie for his attention.

“Everyone has [probably] had a crush on a teacher at some point, but I wanted to play on the simplicity of that with a plot twist. In middle school – the worst time to go to school – girl relationships during that time are so insane. It’s brutal. I didn’t go to school for a long time for a reason. I had best friends that hated me. I wanted some relatability [in that video] where she’s your friend but there’s this intense competition under the surface, I feel like a lot of girls can relate to that.”

When meeting LaRosa in the big, shiny London headquarters of her label, she jumps out of her chair, all smiles. She asks each person how their day is going. For someone with over 1.5 billion Spotify streams on a handful of songs, LaRosa is solidly down to earth, but LaRosa doesn’t feel much like a famous person. TikTok’s creation of monster hits is effective but it often comes with a facelessness that makes it increasingly harder for artists to gain traction long-term.

“I always thought if you have a big song, you’ll be more of a celebrity but it doesn’t work like that now. There can be such a disconnect. It takes so much time to build awareness of who you are and your visual world. I just have to remind myself that this is a long game and I’m not doing it for that. The faster you go up, the faster you can go down,” she says. “So I’m trying to slowly build a world that people can get lost in. I want to have a very strong artist image and persona so that it’s easy to understand what that world is besides the music”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Monendo

I am going to move to DIY. Their interview with Isabel LaRosa shone a light on her Muse single. Another wonderful song from an artist who is showing that she could be a huge mainstream artist of the future. Surely someone who is going to be headlining festivals stages soon enough. She is going to go a very long way:

“Her ethereal, infatuated new single ‘Muse’ – teased for ten months before its release – did in fact ‘do numbers’. Videos using the track’s snarling riff racked up hundreds of thousands of views, including one sharing photos of LaRosa at this year’s VMAs. That night was her first time on a red carpet; an exciting but daunting early career highlight. “I feel like, in moments like that, my brain shuts off,” she says. “I’ll get off the carpet and I don’t remember anything that just happened.” She did at least remember not to smile (“The most off-brand thing ever”), and came away determined to return as a performer. “It’s cool to have those moments where you’re like, ‘Oh shit, I’m at the VMAs right now!’” she grins. “It’s very inspiring.”

The 20-year-old from Annapolis, Maryland may have mastered the non-smiling, effortless cool girl look online, but behind the spiked boots and sparkly eyeshadow there’s a palpable anxiety about making the most of her ascent. “It sounds grim, but I try to operate like I may never have another song again,” she explains. “I’m always trying to just keep people interested and entertained, while also maintaining what I want to do.”

Away from the internet, she’s currently seeing a far more tangible version of her fanbase in the sold-out rooms of her ‘Heaven Doesn’t Wait’ tour. Last month, she played London’s Heaven: a bucket list gig since she saw Tate McRae perform there last December. But even with her audience physically in front of her, LaRosa feels the same urgency to keep them onside that she does online. Once they start cheering, she needs to make sure they don’t stop.

“I think I have to learn how to relax onstage,” she admits. Last month she shared a bill with McRae and others at the Prudential Center Arena in New Jersey, but the Heaven headliner was still the more nerve-inducing. “It’s less pressure when I’m like, ‘They’re here for Tate McRae, they’re not here for me!” she says. “Sometimes I think, ‘Damn, why do you guys care? I wouldn’t care this much if I were you’. I don’t know what the phrase is… is it imposter syndrome?”

It’s no surprise that life can feel overwhelming for LaRosa given how much her platform has grown in the last few years. She credits the people around her with helping her stay grounded, particularly her brother. Their ‘alternative younger sister, producer older brother’ dynamic has already prompted countless comparisons to Billie Eilish and Finneas; “Oh my God – literally, I can’t escape it!” she laughs. “Sound-wise I feel pretty different from [Billie], but in terms of who I look up to as an artist – and Finneas as a producer and writer – I absolutely am such a huge fan of them.”

Like the O’Connells, the LaRosas were encouraged to pursue music by their parents, armed with jazz standards and taken to open mic nights by their father. When Isabel turned ten, access to YouTube allowed her to expand her musical horizons to the likes of Melanie Martinez, Ariana Grande and The Neighbourhood, leading to her love of alt-leaning pop. “All my stuff is pop hidden with cool production,” she suggests. “They’re all just pop songs — it’s not that alternative.” She did have a few dead-ends on the path to her current sound, which finally “clicked” in 2022 with the eerie, thumping ‘HAUNTED’. She admits she tries not to think about ‘GAMEBOY’, for instance: a bouncing hyperpop track from 2021. “I think it’s a cool song,” she clarifies. “It’s just SO different from what I do now. But I’m very grateful for any step that helped me find what feels like myself”.

A couple more interviews before wrapping up. I am moving to 1883 and their interesting discussion. Isabel LaRosa discussed keeping the momentum going, a big European tour on the horizon and the packed schedule awaiting her. I am new to her music but am really hooked. An artist with her own sound yet one that can translate and cross genres:

“Your music has a very cinematic, darker pop vibe. How did you first get into music, and why did you choose this particular genre?

I’ve always been around music. My dad is a casual jazz musician, and he was big on teaching us jazz standards when we were little. My brother Thomas and I used to jam with him when I was about seven — Thomas on guitar and me singing. But as I got older, I discovered artists like The Neighbourhood, Lady Gaga, and Melanie Martinez on YouTube, and I was hooked on that darker, alternative pop sound. It just felt like home to me, more so than bubblegum pop, even though I’m a huge fan of that genre too. It’s just not what I feel aligns with my own style.

You’ve said in another interview that some shows like Euphoria and Stranger Things inspired the sound and visuals for other songs. What’s the specific influence that comes to you from these shows?

In terms of visuals and shows, they’ve always been something closely intertwined with the music — Euphoria, True Detective are darker shows. There was a second when I was in high school when I was debating on just going into film and directing. Obviously that didn’t happen, but my goal is to make sure my music feels grand and cinematic. That’s the kind of music that I love.

As a Cuban-American, has your heritage influenced your music in any way?

I grew up surrounded by Cuban music, especially salsa, which is such a huge part of my childhood and my life. I’ve always wanted to do something that felt more Latin but I wanted to find a way to incorporate it in a natural way into my sound because my music and traditional salsa are very different. My brother and I are still exploring how to do that in a way that feels authentic to both of us.

Your recent songs — “favorite“, “pretty boy“, “i’m yours“ — have gained a lot of traction on social media, especially TikTok. Do you feel any pressure to keep that momentum going?

Definitely. The great thing about social media and TikTok is that, honestly, I wouldn’t have my career without it. It’s given me so many opportunities, and it’s amazing how quickly things can go viral. You could have something blow up overnight, and suddenly it’s a number-one hit—all from just one video. But the flip side is that everything moves so fast, and you’re always trying to keep that momentum, which can get a little stressful. Still, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m so grateful for the platform and the career it’s helped me build.

Fans have been dying for you to release more music, especially songs like Muse and Home which you teased during your tour. And “Evil,“ which you said you wrote for the Wednesday TV show. What can you tell us about them?

See, I love lying on TikTok because I didn’t even write that song for Wednesday. But hey, maybe they’ll see it and actually want to use it, then it could become real! I’m also releasing a new track called Muse, which everyone’s been asking for a while now, and I’m excited to finally get it out there. I do feel a bit bad it took so long, but it’s happening. As for Home, it’s definitely coming out — just not sure when yet, but it’s on the way. All these songs I’ve teased will come out; it’s just a matter of timing.

Since it’s titled Muse, who’s the inspiration behind it? Are you your own muse or is there a different one we don’t know about?

I definitely have a muse who’s inspired the song. He inspires a lot of my songs and my fans know who he is. He’s an artist, so we write songs about each other and it’s great”.

I will end with an interview from Women in Pop. She talked about how she has always been attracted to alternative sounds and sides but is a Pop girl at heart. I am really keen to see what comes next. I think that the rest of this year will see Isabel LaRosa go from strength to strength. This is an artist that you need to keep an eye out for:

“The themes that you explore, both in your music and also visually in the gorgeous music videos you create, is love, but it is a shift on love. You sing about obsession, but from various angles, which I find really interesting, and feeling stuck and having so much time to pour into certain emotions. Are you writing predominantly a from personal experience, or does this all just come from a world you have created?

Honestly, most of it is based on my own life. There are certain songs that I've written from a less honest place, and I can just tell, it's more obvious to me. Me and my brother write everything together, and we tend to write the best stuff when it's closer to home. So honestly, yes, the vast majority of stuff is, my own experiences, and talking about those.

Beautiful, and because you're writing them with someone that knows you so well, you can catch each other up.

Seriously, it's funny because we'll be writing about maybe a situation that's happening in my life, and he'll be writing lyrics too, and it sounds like I would have written them because he knows me and my life so well. I'm so lucky to be able to work with somebody that like, he’s my best friend and we get the best product when we write together. It's just fun, I love it.

I do love that you have this bold and dark pop. I don't like genre because I don't think it's really a thing so much anymore, but you definitely have a signature sound. I'm curious how you feel your sound is evolving as you're navigating this industry, particularly with the single from last year ‘muse’?

The hope is that the sound is always evolving. I feel like it's definitely changed, and the goal has changed since ‘I'm Yours’. Oftentimes we're trying to capture a similar feeling, but just in a different way, but I feel like ‘muse’ is so different feel wise than an ‘I'm Yours’. It’s also fun to incorporate sounds that feel more fitting to our live show, because our live shows are more intense than you think that it would be based on songs like ‘I'm Yours’. So I feel like having songs like ‘muse’ in there is really fun because it adds to the live show when we do play. But honestly, it's just experimenting and always continuing to move forward. It's never good when you're trying to do the same thing over and over and over again, I just like switching it up.

Absolutely, I believe that the world of listeners are much more they're much kinder than my generation were to artists switching it up. They allow room for a shift in sound.

Yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like now the playing field is so even because it's all social media, and so many different things are doing well at the same time. It’s not like there's one sound right now that’s ‘the thing’. It's not like early 2000s pop and that's it. Everything is massive, and I think it's really cool to see.

Speaking of which, your music gives a nod to the darker tinges of beautiful moments. Pulling apart beautiful things and seeing the gray, seeing the bad and the good equally. Was this also present in the kind of music that you listened to and that got you into music in the first place? Music that was a little off kilter?

Yeah, totally. I grew up on a lot of different things, I grew up on a lot of salsa - oddly enough! - and classic rock, because that's what my mom listened to. I also grew up singing jazz standards because that's what my dad listened to. But once I started to get older and was able to understand how to work YouTube, the artists that I gravitated towards were Melanie Martinez, The Neighbourhood, Arctic Monkeys, early Lady Gaga. I've always naturally felt attracted to the alternative, but I still love the songwriting of pop. I love it and I'm a pop girl at my core, but I also love when it has off kilter elements to it too.

Gorgeous. And again, it's the drama. You mentioned your live shows, and you must be absolutely loving it, because they seem to be, just from a viewer's perspective, incredibly physically demanding on you as well, like you really hurl yourself around that stage!

I really do! By the end of it, I'm like, I'm going to pass out. But they’re so much fun. I definitely do a lot of running and a lot of jumping and moving around. I am also such a massive fan of 21 Pilots and I grew up wanting to put on a show like they do, because they were always so high energy and I always admired the fact that it was only two people on stage, and they still put on that intensive show. And I was like, ‘I want to do that’. So it's just [my brother] Thomas and I on stage, and hopefully it's energetic enough. I gotta take up the amount of stage space that a band would take up, so I have to run around”.

If you have not discovered Isabel LaRosa then make sure you follow her on social media. With such a tremendous sound that has won hearts and minds around the world, you will want to check this artist out. There is no telling just how far LaRosa will go. In a competitive Pop market, she has the promise and talent to mix with the very best and brightest. Make sure you do not overlook…

A future icon.

_____________

Follow Isabel LaRosa

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Michael Powell, New York, 1989

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

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

 

Michael Powell, New York, 1989

_________

FOR a start…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I love to picture Kate Bush in America. A country that she visited a few times but never really captured the heart of until recently, there is a whole new chapter to write about Bush’s time in the U.S. From 1978 when she performed on SNL, to promoting Hounds of Love there in 1985 through to her returning in the 1990s when she was doing a brief promotional jaunt for her short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve (and The Red Shoes, I guess), there were mixed fortunes and blessing there. Perhaps it was harder navigating the press in America. They had never experienced anyone like Kate Bush. Some of those interviews in 1985 were excruciating! Bush doing her best to keep it together. At times, you can feel the frustration getting to her. She was in a bad headspace when she visited the U.S. I think there were plans in 1994 for her to tour. The Red Shoes in the spotlight. It was abandoned because of various factors. Bush’s mother died in 1992. She lost friends and was exhausted from work. It wasn’t viable. I think she was out of energy and very much wanted to step back. It is a pity that there was not a tour, as it would have been interesting to think what it would encompass. Even so, Bush did spend a bit of time in America. I do know that she was over there in 1989. The Sensual World was released that year. The Sensual World reached number forty-three on the Billboard 200 in 1989. Quite a big success story! Although Bush was not there for a massive campaign drive and extensive interviews, there was this one meeting that warms my heart and raises a lot of what-ifs! Bush meeting someone that was very important to her. For this Kate Bush: The Tour of Life, a brief little look at an event that could have led to something big. I will also drop in part of an interview from 1989 just to add some context and background.

The event I am referring to occurred in New York. Chapter thirty-four of Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush is about this meeting between Bush and the legendary director Michael Powell. He died on 19th February, 1990. Moments of Pleasure (from The Red Shoes (1993) is in part a documentation of their encounter. In fact, The Red Shoes’ title is inspired by the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film, The Red Shoes. It came out in 1948. The Line, the Cross and the Curve also influenced by that film. I am not sure whether this one meeting alone compelled Bush to title her seventh studio album, The Red Shoes. One of her most beautiful songs, Moments of Pleasure talks about this chilly winter day when she had a brief meeting with a hero. As Tom Doyle writes, Kate Bush stepped out of the lift at “the Royalton, the Philippe Starck-designed New York hotel on Manhattan’s W. 44th Street”. Michael Powell was waving his cane in the air trying to alert Bush to his presence. Amazing that such a revered filmmaker would recognise Bush and want to meet her. Bush was a fan of the Powell-Pressburger cannon. The fact that there was magic and excitement in their films but they also cast strong female characters. No wonder The Red Shoes was very much in Bush’s mind and would materialise four years after she met Michael Powell. Their films also had great visual effects. All of this ticked boxes for Bush! There is no doubt she embarked on writing, directing and starring in her own short film with the energy and inspiration of Michael Powell in her mind. This was not the first time Bush and Powell had made contact

Before their meeting, Bush wrote to Michael Powell to see whether he’d be interested in working with her. Whether that was a film venture or her music being used in one of Powell’s films, it is a tragedy that this never came to pass! Bush was bowled over by how charming he was. Powell wanted to hear Bush’s music so she sent him cassettes. They exchanged letters several times. This temporary friendship but a lasting legacy. Michael Powell’s spirit and kindness made a lasting impression on Kate Bush. Just after she released The Sensual World and would have been thinking of her next project, there is no telling how impactful this chance New York meeting was. When Bush met Powell in a New York lobby, it had begun to snow outside. An older man who was very ill, it must have been quite a struggle for him to navigate the New York cold! However, he was positively warmed when he saw Bush emerge from a lift. The two embraced and there was this last meeting. Bush, back in England, wrote alone at the piano – something she had not done for some time – and saw it snow outside. The song must have come quite freely and easily. Tom Doyle observes how Moments of Pleasure is like a Powell-Pressburger film in song. The fact that the song did not get toured and staged is a shame. To see it come to life as part of a suite.

I do wonder whether Bush considered it for 2014’s Before the Dawn. Bush did revisit the song for 2011’s Director’s Cut. Giving the song an extra dimension of poignancy. Some might hear other emotions. I do love the track and have dissected it before. The song is about the people she loved and touched her. Those who made her laugh. The spirits of friends past and present on Moments of Pleasure. Including her aunt Maureen; her dancer friend, Gary ‘Bubba’ Hurst; Alan Murphy (who, like Hurst, died of AIDS-related complications) and Bill Duffield (who was first immortalised in Never for Ever’s Blow Away (For Bill). Bush gently asking Duffield to light and illuminate the close of the song. In 2011, Bush approached the song in a lower key. A slower version. New depth after the passing of more than twenty years. MOJO’s Keith Cameron interviewed Bush about Director’s Cut and noticed the new version omitted some of the names included in the original. Bush laughed and said it wasn’t deliberate. When she went to redo the piano part, she didn’t make it long enough - so some names fell by the wayside. The irony that the song mentions George the Wipe. There is a bit of mystery as to who this person is. Some say it was a man who accidentally erased the master tape of a song (like Steely Dan faced with Gaucho’s The Second Arrangement). Others say Kate Bush and Del Palmer (her boyfriend at the time, Palmer was also her engineer and played on her albums) asking him to erase a tape that was not needed and then informing him he'd erased the wrong one! I suspect it might have been the second one. An in-joke/prank that shows Bush could write a song with heavy emotions, departed friends and this sadness but also humour. Bush recalling the tale of George the Wipe. How she cannot stop laughing.

I think about how Michael Powell was also included in Moments of Pleasure. I was eager to explore their meeting and how there was this possibility of the two working together. I did not know that they had exchanged letters prior to meeting in New York in late-1989. Thinking about that meeting, I want to quote an interview from Pulse!. Included in their December 1989 issue, Pulse! was an in-store magazine of Tower Records in America:

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

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

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

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

I think about Kate Bush and Michael Powell meeting in New York in 1989. With snow falling, there was this combination of magic and tenderness! Also this sense of sadness as Powell was ill and would die a not that long after they met. That encounter impacted Bush hugely. Just before Kate Bush ends Moments of Pleasure by asking “Hey there Bill/Could you turn the lights up?”, she sings “Hey there Michael/Do you really love me?”. Sweet words. Even if that meeting in New York was short, as Bush also sings on Moments of Pleasure: “And these moments given…

ARE a gift from time”.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Aliyah's Interlude

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Kirt Barnett for Polyesterzine

 

Aliyah's Interlude

_________

AN artist who shone…

PHOTO CREDIT: Kirt Barnett for Polyesterzine

through 2024, I want to spend some time with Aliyah’s Interlude. Aliyah Bah is someone who should be on your radar. Tipped by many as a name to watch this year, I will come to some interviews with her from last year. So that we can learn more about a sensational talent. I will start out with a GQ interview. They spoke with the artist behind the viral #AliyahCore trend on her move into music:

“In 2020, irl subcultures collapsed and were replaced by a deluge of TikTok aesthetics: cottagecore, goblincore, corecore. We -core’d to the point of absurdity, turning anything into a rigid aesthetic templates. One Georgia-based teen, with a penchant for fishnets, moon boots, and fluffy accessories, even -core’d herself. Her name? Aliyah Bah, the 20-year-old inventor of the ultra-viral ‘Aliyahcore’. With a mission to open up the gates for alternative Black girls, and to bring chaos and camp to a global audience, Bah kept blowing up.

After styling the likes of Cupcakke and Lizzo, as well as walking for Mowalola, Bah expanded her Aliyacore empire even further with the release of her first single “IT GIRL” in October of last year. For months, you’d hardly be able to make it through a doomscroll without hearing it. Now, she's looking to repeat that success again with her second single “Fashion Icon”. As Bah says, straight-faced, “it will be the greatest release of all time.”

Ahead of the stalwart MC's new album, On Purpose, with Purpose, he shares his thoughts on the UK rap scene and why there's nothing quite like recording in Gucci slippers

How long have you been making music for, and how long were you working on your sound before you allowed the world to hear the result?

I started like a year and a half, two years ago, but I was trying different things and nothing was really sticking out to me. Once I got into the house genre, dance music, I was like: this is where I need to be. I just loved it.

How did you work our your cadence and flow?

I listen to so much music, from Azealia Banks to Latto to Flo Milli — all of these people inspire me in so many ways. I’ve been studying Nicki [Minaj’s] old videos, her old mixtapes, even before I got into music myself.

What other music did you listen to growing up?

I actually grew up in a very straight Muslim household. My mum never let us listen to the radio or anything. I would just listen to whatever they would listen to, which would be a lot of Michael Jackson, a lot of early 2000 Destiny's Child, African music all day, every day.

Were you named after Aaliyah?

I was, actually.

When did your parents first start noticing that you were an artist?

I feel like ever since I was young, I was extremely fashion inclined. My parents were never the type to take us to the store and let us buy stuff all the time. But I've been thrifting since I was six years old. And a lot of times with thrifting, you have to make do with what you have. So you might find the ugliest material ever, but then if you cut it out, style it, and it can be some real cute shit. My parents probably realised I was this way when I was selling bows or decorating notebooks when I was in middle school. I would just sell them for $1.50, not making no profit, just doing it for fun.

How do you think your music reflects the essence and energy of Aliyahcore?

Aliyahcore and its essence is just not caring about being perceived; being yourself every day, no matter what you're going through in life and loving yourself authentically. The whole purpose of the music is to give off confidence vibes. I hope everyone who listens feels like an IT girl, a fashion icon.

Does ‘not caring about being perceived’ get harder the more eyes are on you?

I've always been the person who didn't fit into any box. I think that helps now that I'm in the public eye. It's something that I’ve always been used to, like, being ostracized or people having an opinion on what I do or wear”.

Apologies if this feature is a little scattershot. I am already a fan of Aliyah’s Interlude. For Polyesterzine, this remarkable artist discussed her personal style, TikTok strategy and #AliyahCore. I think that this year is going to be a breakthrough one for her. Her latest single, Moodboard, was released last September. I think that we will get a lot more material very soon. Exciting to see how she grows and evolves as an artist:

“I’m sorry, I hope you’re not disappointed with my outfit today,” Aliyah Bah tells me when our Zoom call connects. “I didn’t bring too many clothes with me here!”

For almost anyone else, getting glammed up for a Friday afternoon interview might not warrant an apology. But for the 21-year-old Georgia native, fashion has never been merely incidental – it has become a metonym for her brand.

Over the last few years, for anyone in possession of a TikTok account, it has been impossible to escape the mesmerising sartorial world of #AliyahCore. It started during the 2020 Covid lockdown, when Bah was in her freshman year at Georgia State University. Living at home and taking classes online, she started documenting her outfits on TikTok under the soubriquet Aliyah’s Interlude, inviting viewers to get ready with her, and showing off her addictive personality.

The content was fresh and, crucially, the fits were fire – each video brought a new maximalist, pink look inspired by Harajuku and Y2K culture, replete with earmuffs, furry boots, bikini tops, miniskirts, leg warmers and fishnets. Since then, her star has grown exponentially, with a barnstorming foray into the music industry led by her viral 2023 single IT GIRL, and her latest hit Moodboard.

When Bah calls me from a family gathering in Maryland, while her look is markedly more understated, the yellow Harajuku-style beanie and pink hoodie she is sporting still betray a hint of her signature style. Unsurprising, since, while #AliyahCore might seem made-for-TikTok, its genesis was entirely organic.

“While I was growing up, my parents owned a recycling business, like this thrift store where I would get all my clothes,” Bah says. “My mum was always against me buying [new] clothes, so I thrifted from there. But they wouldn't be clothes that kids my age were wearing, it was older stuff that you really had to upcycle and make personal for it to look nice.

“So I think that's kind of how I built my personal style, just by kind of working with nothing and then trying to make it look cute,” she continues. “Also, I was online a lot as a kid, watching Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Rihanna – just that type of like, miniskirt energy… I used to love all of that shit.”

While Bah’s fashion might not have been contrived, her TikTok strategy was certainly purposeful. The now 2.8 million followers she has accumulated on the platform, and the recognition she has since received from celebrities including Lizzo, Doja Cat and SZA, were not a happy accident. At 21, she is part of a generation preternaturally adept at gaming social media’s sphinxlike algorithms.

“I really put in that work, I figured out the formula for that shit because I understood how the app works,” Bah says, with impressive insouciance. “When I tell you I was posting like up to six times a day when I first started.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Kirt Barnett

As well as her “FaceTime Call Get Ready With Me” videos, Bah’s most popular TikToks were the ones where she was just chatting to the camera, waxing lyrical about her outfits or hyping up her viewers.

“I was finding all these trending audios,” she says. “It took me like a full year to really start getting viral video after viral video. But at the beginning I was like, ‘damn do I even really want to do this shit, because I'm not seeing no results’. Thank God I had nothing to do in the house during the pandemic.”

It was last year that Bah’s aesthetic really began to move beyond the woman herself, and beyond her community of online viewers. In the space of a couple of years, Bah has skyrocketed from college student to influencer — now just as likely to be seen sitting at fashion shows or on a PR invite to Coachella than in her bedroom on TikTok. In October 2023, Doja Cat flew her to LA to appear in her Agora Hills music video – “she was cool as fuck!” Bah quips.

“I was eating it up to be honest, I was loving all of it,” Bah laughs. “I came from a small-ass town – I feel like nobody from my town has ever experienced this shit. I felt real cool, like I was really putting on for girls everywhere.”

It is certainly a far cry from her childhood. Her parents moved from Sierra Leone to Fayetteville, Georgia shortly before she was born, a city she describes as “backwards” – “imagine Atlanta but twenty years ago!”. Not, then, an ideal place for an alternative Black, pansexual girl to experiment with her style.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kirt Barnett

“I did get a lot of mean comments and bullying [at school], but I feel like after a certain point when they realised that I'm not gonna change, they kind of backed off a little bit,” she says. “They were just like, ‘oh this is just a girl who comes to school dressed up everyday, period.’”

Despite growing up in a conservative Muslim household, Bah has been remarkably vocal about LGTBQ+ issues, and her own sexuality, which she sees as one of the defining issues of the upcoming US election. “I feel like my entire life I've always been a black sheep…I didn't really fit into any community,” she says. “It's so fucked up that people can't live in their truth just because of somebody else’s bigoted opinions, like y'all need to grow the fuck up honestly. And we need to elect Kamala, period! If Trump comes into office, this is gonna get so much worse.”

Bah also says offhand that, due to their religious beliefs, her parents didn’t allow her to listen to the radio growing up. “The only thing we could ever listen to was like – what's that shit called? – those kids’ CDs from Wendy’s that they used to put in the Happy Meals,” she laughs. “It was like always Michael Jackson and like Beyonce, that's the only shit they would ever let us listen to because they were like, ‘we don't want y'all listening to profanity!’”

It is somewhat surprising, then, that Bah has, in the last year, ventured into that very industry – and with staggering success. “Bitch — you know I’m sexy / (Ugh) Don’t call, just text me,” opens her breakout viral TikTok hit IT GIRL, released in October last year. Crafted from an Azealia Banks–esque beat Bah found on YouTube by producer LxnleyBeat, it is the sonic version of #AliyahCore – oozing self-confidence, a well-deserved paean of praise to herself.

“It was honestly just some fucking around shit, I'm not even gonna lie,” she laughs when I ask her how the song came about. “I used to find beats on YouTube and I was like, ‘let me get into my rapper bag’”. Unlike her fashion videos, IT GIRL was an instant online hit. “I swear to God,” she says. “I posted it [on TikTok] went to sleep and I woke up and it had like 600,000 views”.

I am going to end with an interview from Ladygunn. They saluted the unstoppable rise of a boundary breaker. Someone who is unmistakably and confidently in her own lane and league. I am excited to see what the next few years hold for this artist. I am new to her but I am committed to following her career closely. Make sure you follow Aliyah’s Interlude on social media:

“You started off making humorous content on TikTok, then switched to more fashion focused content, and now you make a lot of music-related content. At the same time, you still make all three kinds of content. How do you balance and prioritize these three aspects of your social media presence?

Because of the way that I started, it’s not as hard to balance all three because I don’t think people are expecting me to ever do just one thing. That was one of my main goals when I started, to allow myself the freedom to do everything so that people don’t box me into one specific genre. Honestly, the content that I make is always true to myself and how I’m feeling on that particular day. And fashion is something that I’m truly passionate about and I have been passionate about since forever, and a lot of my music talks about that too— so they kind of just intertwine with each other.

With music, my first ever song was “IT GIRL,” and I’ve always said that an It Girl is somebody who is authentically themselves and shows up like that bitch every single time they pop out. That was the entire point of a #Aliyahcore in general. It just made so much sense because I’ve been talking about being an It Girl for so long, which played into fashion as well as music.

What is your musical background like? Was “IT GIRL” your first experience making music?

I played the violin growing up for six years, so I know how to read music, and I’m classically trained. Even when I was younger, I used to be in theater classes; I took acting classes and we would sing. I’ve always done and been around lots and lots of music. But when I started going to the studio, I was actually in Atlanta. I went with some of my friends and we would just play around in the studio and make different songs. But I’ve been writing for so long and I think that’s one of my biggest strengths.

The side of Aliyah we see online is always super high energy and confident. How do you maintain that, and how much of it is a created persona?

I am actually a very high energy person in particular— but I will say that when I make content, it’s when I feel like I have the energy to give my all. I’m not gonna get in front of a camera if I’m feeling horrible. If I’m not feeling [confident] inside, it would be wrong for me to express that on the outside. But I really love this happy, high energy because it makes everything more fun.

PHOTO CREDIT: Shervin Lainez

You often credit your success to your hard work and consistency. What does the daily grind look like for you?

I usually wake up around seven or eight every single day. And I plan out my days, usually before the week even starts. I like to know what I’m doing throughout the week. So this week, for example, I’m filming a lot of content, and then I have to work on some of the performances that I’m doing for Pride. I’m very much a consistent person and I think that consistency is the key to everything that you want in life. If I really want something, it’s gonna happen regardless because I work hard for it, period. And that’s just how I feel about everything. I think that anyone can achieve anything if they truly want it. If they work hard for it, it might take a minute, and it might cause lots of rejection in the process, but you just have to know your end goal and be passionate about the things that you do.

You’ve talked about how “IT GIRL” was a very do-it-yourself endeavor, with you sourcing a beat from YouTube. Now, with so much applause and two songs under your belt, how has your process of making songs changed? How about writing songs— do you still build your songs around an initial vibe or idea, as you did with your first songs?

It’s changed a lot because now I’ve been in the studio with different producers. And now when I make music, it’s a whole collaboration effort. I’ll go to the studio, and we’ll make a beat in a studio with a producer, and I’ll tell him, like, I really want a house beat, or this or that.

The [songs], it’s just like when I wrote my first song. It’s really energy based and how I’m feeling on the day, but there’s a lot of times where I already have an idea of what I want to write down and ideas of what type of music I want to make. And that’s the outline from where I go. Usually I’m like, let me write the hook out. And let’s build a song around this. I’ve been trying so many different things recently.

Could you talk specifically about your process of coming up with and creating “Love Me”?

Oh my gosh, ”Love Me” was a song that really came about because as somebody who was on the internet from 17, that comes with a lot of strength, because you are subjected to people’s opinions 24/7. Within fashion, especially being a black woman, a dark skinned black woman, I feel I was forever and always really, really targeted and there’s been times where people, you could tell, really hated that you loved yourself. And the hook goes, “I really love me, have no doubt they tried to make me hate myself.” But I really love me type shit like, it’s really crazy how people have an issue when you don’t care what people think about you. That’s what the song is about. When I was writing it, I was like, I need to make music about loving myself because that’s the whole point of #Aliyahcore and the whole point of what I do in general.

PHOTO CREDIT: Shervin Lainez

Was your sort of ability to turn painful situations like this into something positive and strengthening intrinsic to you or was it something that you had to develop?

No, it’s definitely something I had to develop. I was a very shy person growing up; I was always the girl who had two friends. I didn’t talk to nobody. I got bullied so much growing up, it was really really sick. But honestly, I think when I got to high school and when I got into fashion— and I think this is why I love fashion so much— it really was like an armor for me. When I started dressing and being and showing up as the person that I wanted to be, people started realizing that I don’t care about what they think. That grew my confidence and it made me realize that no matter what you’re wearing, or what you’re doing, people are gonna have something to say about you. So you might as well just do whatever the fuck you want to do.

Where does your name come from?

I’m actually named after the singer Aliyah. My mom was pregnant with me when she  passed away and they were really, really big fans of hers. And they told me that when they decided to name me, they kind of felt as if Aliyah and the stuff that she did on Earth was something that they would love for me to do too.

And what about “ Aliyah’s interlude”?

It’s really just a username. I actually found it from Snapchat when I was in ninth grade, actually. When I was in ninth grade, I remember this one girl I followed on Snapchat had a playlist on Apple Music, and she would update it weekly. And she would call it, [her name] interludes. I was like, wait, this is fire! I’m gonna use this as my username.

Could you tell me more about how growing up with social media impacted you and your music making?

I think it impacted my music for sure— with YouTube, I’ve always looked at mixes on there like Azealia Banks mixed with Nicki Minaj. I remember when I would look stuff up, all these tight beats would come up, and I would listen to them. I was like, huh, I might need to hop on this real quick, but I used to do it for fun. When the time came to do [make songs], I was already familiar with all of these different things and remixing music, and being online. It was all familiar to me already”.

I will end things here. If you have not checked out Aliyah’s Interlude then please make sure you correct that. I feel this year is going to be her biggest yet. Let’s hope that she is able to play in the U.K. at some point. An artist that deserves to be shared…

WITH the world.

_____________

Follow Aliyah's Interlude