FEATURE: Spotlight: South Arcade

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

South Arcade

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ONE of the most exciting bands around…

I want to spend some time with South Arcade. Formed in Oxford in 2021, the band went viral for videos of their band practices. They also performed at BBC Radio 1's New Music Live in Halifax, West Yorkshire in November 2024. Their debut E.P., 2005, was released last year. I am going to end with a review for that E.P. I want to start out with some interviews. Going back to December, South Arcade chatted with Kerrang! about their year and what lies ahead:

“2025 is the South Arcade takeover!”

Vocalist Harmony Cavelle’s proclamation isn’t wrong. While 2024 has been an unbelievable time for the Oxford Y2K core trailblazers, plans are already in place to take the band’s rise even higher. Truly, this time next year, they could be anywhere.

Joined by guitarist Harry Winks, bassist Ollie Green and Oodie-wearing drummer Cody Jones, South Arcade meet Kerrang! amid a “crazy week of announcements” to take a breath and look back at how they got here, as well as what’s on the horizon.

“I think the beginning of the year was pretty tough,” admits Ollie, “because there’s no definites in this world, and especially doing music. But when it all started getting a bit better is when we stopped worrying. There’s a lot of pressure to have a good TikTok or good whatever, and it was the moment we sort of went, ‘Let’s just try and enjoy it, and capture the bits we enjoy.’”

It’s an approach that’s worked wonders. With the quartet picking up new fans and followers thanks to a steady string of superb singles throughout 2024, not to mention behind-the-scenes social media videos inviting people in their brilliantly chaotic world, South Arcade are killing it on every level.

And, crucially, they’ve proven that online numbers can translate into reality, as they found out when they stepped onstage at August’s Reading & Leeds to a packed BBC Music Introducing crowd. (If you want an idea of just how well that went, next year they’re coming back to play the main stage.)

Today, South Arcade cap it all off with their debut EP 2005 – a six-track release that collates their five latest singles, and the new title-track. Here, the band tell us all about it, and reveal why they’re so excited to take it across the world next year.

“I don’t know if I’ve got a suitcase big enough,” laughs Harmony. “I need to buy some new clothes! We’re excited to have a proper plan, and meet all these new people. It’s gonna be incredible…”

How would you rate 2024 for South Arcade? From the outside looking in, it feels like everything’s pretty much exploded…

Harmony: “Definitely! It’d be rude not to give it a 10/10, right? Well, it’s a 10 so far, I don’t know if anything will change in the rest of the month (laughs). But honestly, I don’t think we could have asked for more this year. The support we’ve had – whether it’s from people coming to gigs, or online, or whatever – we’ve been so lucky. People have really been reacting to the videos we’ve been doing, and the music… I don’t want to jinx anything, but it’s all gone very well! We’ve been very lucky.”

Has it all caught you off guard, or did you start the year like, ‘Things are going to happen for us’?

Harry: “I think stuff like numbers online doesn’t really feel real until you see people in the crowd. We had our first gig back at Reading & Leeds after some stuff had happened on TikTok, and we got to see the new audience that we’d gained for the first time, and that was really special.”

Cody: “I cried. In a good way! It was one of those things that you can’t really comprehend – it’s just, ‘Oh my god, this is crazy.’”

The whole year has probably been like that – just constantly going, ‘How do I process this?’

Harmony: “Oh yeah, definitely. We totally set out at the start of the year, ‘Come on, guys, we’re gonna really hammer this home and do everything we can.’ But like Harry said, until you step out on that stage and see people’s mouths actually moving along, it feels so surreal! But also, I think it’s spurring us on for next year, going, ‘How can we take this to the next level?’”

You’re wrapping things up nicely with the 2005 EP. Was it always the plan to get the singles together and put out something a bit more substantial?

Harmony: “It was a really big thing for us to have people see the world and everything that we’re trying to create with the band. And when the singles started falling into the EP – the first one on it is Nepo Baby – it’s the first time when we really started to feel like we’d found our sound. It was like, ‘Okay, this is our lane and we feel strong here.’ We know what we want to create.”

Harry: “It was very natural. Nepo Baby was the first song we dropped in 2024, and it felt like a new era of music, so it was the natural thing to put all the songs together. And it also feels like it encapsulates the whole vibe.”

Harmony: “It’s been such a fun EP to make, and there’s different vibes in each song – they all create a different world. And now it’s so nice to have them all together, and for people to have that as a thing to listen through and know that it’s how we want it to be presented. It means a lot to us, and it’s really exciting.”

Harry: “We’re doing something different with each song. People know that we coined the ‘Y2K core’ – well, I don’t know if we made that, I think I heard it on the radio…”
Harmony: “It’s what I put in the bio of Spotify!”

Harry: “It’s a cool phrase to simplify what we do, but it is more than that. Each song pulls from a different favourite genre of ours from the 2000s – whether it’s nu-metal or pop-punk. There’s a lot of Britney and Gwen Stefani, even if it’s just subtle.”

Harmony: “And then there’s the Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park reference.”

Harry: “With Linkin Park coming back recently, too, that’s spurred us on. That sound is cool again.”

Harmony: “Yeah, it’s like, ‘We’re on the right track!’ But with the EP as a whole, there’s the Y2K core thing, but we also do like to add a modern spin to that. And what we all really want from it is to end up in everyone’s playlists. Whether it’s the people who get the references and are in that demographic, or the young kids who are finding this music for the first time – that’s awesome, too. We just want to be able to provide that nostalgic escapism.”

Do you feel any pressure in terms of this being a proper debut body of work? Or because people have heard most of the singles already, you’re pretty relaxed?

Harmony: “I think because we’ve been waterfalling the tracks, it’s nice to have everyone on this journey with us, from the start to the end. We’ve picked up all these new people on the way, and then with 2005, we’re hopefully introducing even more people. It’s almost like the family or fanbase that have been with us this whole period, it’s a gift for them, and it ties us all together.”

Harry: “We’ve had this journey with the fans, song by song.”

Harmony: “Because they’ve been the ones where, all this amazing stuff that’s coming up next year, they’ve made it possible”.

They have already got off to a blinding start to 2025. Single Supermodels is among their best work yet. I wonder whether the band will release an album later in the year. With festivals ahead, you can imagine South Arcade being invited to quite a few of them. The first one is from Ticketmaster from February. The band explain how a lot of fun is missing from music:

“Within your sound there are obvious nods to 2000s pop-punk and metal, but there are also some great glitchy pop moments and huge rock riffs. Every song you release had a slightly different take on that core sound, but what always sits at the centre is a huge hook. As fans of music, where do you think your appreciation of a simple, undeniable hook comes from?

Cavelle: I think a lot of that comes down to the actual writing process. It starts out with our guitarist, Harry, who is our producer as well. He’ll make about 20 little minute-long song ideas, he’ll show us all of them, and I’ll end up liking one or two out of the 20. Then, we’ll sit for a week trying out all these random words as freestyles, almost like Simlish. There’ll be parts that stick, and I live with my family, so you’ll hear them singing one of them around the house. That’s when you know you’ve got it, and a big thing for us is to not overcomplicate it. We’re trying to make it catchy and not too highbrow. It needs to be enjoyable for people that like heavy music, but also for people who just want a catchy tune.

Green: It’s a feeling as well. If it feels cool, then why over complicate it? We don’t want to do a Jacob Collier and make something crazy, that’s his niche. None of the stuff we love is complicated, it all just has a good feeling. Less is more, and it just makes you feel good.

Cavelle: What we’re realising now with our music is that having that hook is a big thing, but it’s also about having that coolness or sassiness to it. We’ve got some stuff underneath which is quite heavy, so we could easily go down that angry, sad route, but we love putting fun into the songs. We love the tongue-in-cheek stuff, and we love having a bit of promise in our tracks. We’re making them fun, rather than taking the easy route of going angry.

Green: I don’t know what other bands are like, but we’re not really into brooding or making angry songs. We like listening to music that has at least a bit of optimism, a bit of hope.

Cavelle: We feel like a lot of fun is missing from music now. When people come and see us live, we just want to give them a fun night. You should have a good time listening to music, it doesn’t have to be serious, arms folded and highbrow all the time. There’s a time and place for that stuff, but a big thing for us and all of our newer fanbase to is just to have fun with it. Everything else is so sad and depressing right now, so let’s just have a good old time.

We have to touch on the battle between South Arcade and North Arcade that started out in the ‘HOW 2 GET AWAY WITH MURDER’ video. Talk us through the inception of that story and the encounter that takes place…

Cavelle: It was majorly inspired by Scott Pilgrim. The song itself is a bit tongue-in-cheek, even just in the title. If you see a metal band with the name ‘HOW 2 GET AWAY WITH MURDER’ you think, “Oh god, okay. This is going to be some heavy stuff!” We were thinking about how we could put it into a cool concept video, and we have our reality in it, but it links to the cartoon. We love Gorillaz, and you can get a cartoon to do anything. If it was us in the music video, knocking someone over and knocking them off a cliff… I’m not sure if that would fly. Since it’s cartoons though, you can get away with it. It was a super fun one, and the animator that we chose to work with got what we were going for. With the North Arcade thing, that was just a one-off idea we had about some alter-ego thing…

Green: South Arcade is on a sign in Oxford. There’s a shopping centre called the Westgate, and it’s there. We’ve been round and looked at all the other signs, and there is a North Arcade. It became a thing that friends would say as a joke; “What band are you in? North Arcade?” At one point, someone probably had a drink and thought, “Oh, I wonder what North Arcade would be like?” They ended up taking the form that they did as weird alter-egos of ours, which was fun. You don’t want a serious music video for that song. If you do a brooding live performance thing…who wants to see that? You want a bit of fun, and being animated, you can tell much more of a story with it. The possibilities are endless, and Harmony is a big fan of cartoons. That’s another thing [that was better] about the 2000s. Now, you’re seeing 3D live-action Bob The Builder – get me the 2D guy back! We just love that time, as well as the art and culture that was around then.

Cavelle: Everything had so much more integrity and a sense of meaning. It sounds so snobby, but it’s not. Maybe it’s because we were younger and naiver, so stuff from then seems more magical and creative, but now everything seems so soulless.

Right now, there seems to be a cohort of bands focused on bringing the idea of the music video back. Music videos used to be a way to discover new music, and often fans would actually discover songs through seeing these iconic videos. That artform seems to have been lost recently…

Cavelle: When I was younger, the first thing I did when I got home from school was put on the Top 40 music charts. The way you found your music taste was through watching these videos, and it’s so cool because the concept is exactly what the artist wants you to see. The song is playing as well, and it makes you put two and two together. You get the artist; you get what the whole thing is about. That stuff started dying down, and I can’t even find the charts on the TV now when I want to. People don’t care about music videos so much now, and a lot of people argue that it’s a waste of time and money, but I think that visuals are so important in understanding the meaning of the song. You see how a band’s meant to be perceived, if they’re serious or not serious, and you get that from watching one video. That’s how you used to discover stuff from MTV, and I don’t think that’s the way anymore, but we are seeing it through YouTube now. We haven’t even tapped into our YouTube that much. We’ve only posted about 40 videos in total there, but the way that people are finding us through that now is reassuring.

Looking towards the future for South Arcade, obviously it’s a tough time to be in the music industry right now. Despite that, what keeps you waking up each morning knowing that this is something that you want to keep pushing towards?

Green: We just enjoy it. The truth is, and I might be getting a bit overly earnest and sincere here, but we are quite good friends. All music aside, we get on, and there’s a bond between us that’s like siblings. We will gladly bicker to no end, but it’s in the same way that siblings do, it’s never deeper than that. We share a love for what we’re doing, and we share a love for going out and playing. We’re doing it because we like doing it.

Cavelle: As a band, so many people have given us their time and come to the shows. Now, our listeners are going up, and it almost feels like we have a responsibility to provide this music and these shows for people. We’re very grateful and feel honoured to have that responsibility, and we want to be these people’s favourite band. Not just because they perceive us as these untouchable, higher beings – we want to be perceived as everyone’s friends. We’re just trying to have a good time, and I think that’s what everyone needs right now. That’s definitely what keeps us all going, and it is so much fun. We’re grateful for the opportunities we’ve had so far, and a year ago there’s no way I would have thought we’d be doing all of the stuff that we got coming up. It’s surreal.

Green: We were doing it when we thought no one cared, and I think that shows that we’re doing it for the fun of it. We’d sit there and go, “What if no one cares?”, but we enjoyed it, and we liked making music, so we just kept going. We like going out and playing shows together, and even if it’s just to 10 people, that’s fine. That’s cool, because we’re doing what we enjoy, and if other people are getting some enjoyment out of it – job well done. Now, it’s just an extension of that. When you enjoy doing something so much, it’s not a chore. It’s a privilege”.

Before finishing off, I want to drop in a recent interview from NME. Hailed for their incredible and electric live shows, together with their mining of the sounds of the 2000s, it is no wonder South Arcade are getting a lot of attention. The remainder of this year will be very busy:

“Has that blend of nostalgia and newness led to you having fans from all ages and backgrounds?

Cavelle: “That has definitely come across. The blurring of boundaries is not something we were consciously looking for, but it’s exciting because it has created a kind of pendulum effect. We were wanting to bring this nostalgic, real-band sound back… but some of these 13 or 14 year old kids are discovering it for the first time! They’ve never heard that before, they’ve not had the chance to see it live until now.”

Green: “Then there’s the other side of the pendulum. The people telling us that they went to see these great bands back in the day, and that we’ve reminded them of that. It’s funny because we’re not in either camp — we’re in this weird in-between area.”

Cavelle: “It’s because of that placement that we’re making this wide fanbase, though. It’s cool to be received by all camps in such a positive way– and to see that it’s not just us who likes it! Part of the appeal is us not taking ourselves too seriously, though. We just want to revive this fun space.”

What was it like to see that sudden spike in interest when ‘DANGER’ went viral?

Green: “It was quite surreal and a bit daunting. It’s weird too, because we’re inspired by the 2000s, but that era didn’t really have that same ‘viral’ thing that we have now. The idea of everything moving so quickly is overwhelming, but it’s also exciting. It actually came at a great time for us too, because by that point we had the mentality of: ‘we’re going to make whatever we want because we enjoy it.’ So, it paying off felt like a sign that we were doing the right thing. It reminded us to have more faith in our process.”

Cavelle: “It’s easy to fall into that mindset of: ‘this has got to perform well’, and then you start doubting yourself. That’s a dangerous space to get into, so it was a relief that doing our own thing worked out like that.”

You’ve managed to continue that momentum, and now many of your fans are discovering you through your immense live shows. What is it about playing live that makes South Arcade come to life?

Cavelle: “When we’re writing our tracks, we’re so conscious about, ‘will this go off when played live?’ If we can’t jump to it, just the four of us in the room, it’s crossed out. For us, it’s all about harnessing that energy and having a good time. We know that people often discover us from a screen, so when they do take the chance on us and come to see us live, it restores a bit of faith for us.”

2024 was a big year for the band, how are you continuing the momentum into 2025?

Cavelle: “There will be new music, and it will definitely tap into something we haven’t done yet. There’s more of an electronic side coming through now. Something more dance-focused. We have a new single called ‘Supermodels’ and it should be out on the night of our show at KOKO!”.

I am going to finish with a review from Distorted Sound Mag for South Arcade’s 2024 E.P., 2005. I know they will be releasing a lot of music across the coming years. If you have not heard of them yet then do make sure they are on your radar. A band that you will not want to miss out on:

“SOUTH ARCADE are slowly perfecting their soundtrack and it is subtlety shown throughout the record. Their lyrical structure has softened and is more loose and playful with ad-libs and vocal FX, perfectly exemplified on HOW 2 GET AWAY WITH MURDER. The random car key sound effect does feel more like engagement bait for social media than a harmonious audio choice but nevertheless, each song does not feel overly juvenile. All are well crafted and polished, beyond what one might expect from such a green band. Across the board, the content of the songs are playful and engaging if not a little emotionally simplistic. stone cold summer, Riptide (and the rest of their discography) perfectly captured the youthful nature of young adult romances and frustrations and, like all good things, just needs a few years to marinate and mature.

SOUTH ARCADE have bared their teeth with this EP; their flair is starting to show but there is ample room for them to push it even more and lean deeper into the grit and grunge with more adventurous vocal styles and heavier riffs. Whilst their origins have come from jamming together in a garage, 2005 shows that SOUTH ARCADE are ready to evolve and collaborate on a more professional setting. Their teeth may not be fangs just yet, but they are definitely sharp and their milk teeth have long fallen away.

Rating: 7/10”.

I am new to South Arcade so have been doing a bit of catching up. They are a really interesting and promising band that have the sound and chemistry to go a long way. I do think they will be playing huge shows and headlining festivals in the future. For those who have not discovered them, do connect with them and make sure you don’t…

MISS out.

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Follow South Arcade

Official:

https://www.southarcade.co.uk/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/southarcade/

Twitter:

https://x.com/southarcadeuk

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3vEL65ycUboLH76pgdtqlF?si=a1gc-TpkTxWswVFfTp9dVQ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRXsIWqhVxLb971GvIg3jkA

FEATURE: Life on the Screen: Kate Bush: The Satirists, Comedy Connections and Acting Opportunities

FEATURE:

 

 

Life on the Screen

Kate Bush: The Satirists, Comedy Connections and Acting Opportunities

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MAYBE it is a badge of honour…

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

but you do not really have satirists now who take off musicians. Those that parody or mimic them. It was more common decades ago. Of course, Kate Bush being so distinct and unusual, she was instantly met with a combination of critical and fan affection and pot shots from satirists. She had a good sense of humour about it, however, it would have also been a little galling now being seen as serious. I have raised this before. How Kate Bush was subjected to spoofing. Especially early in her career. I think that she was seen as an easy target. Someone who was a bit cosmic and out-there. This middle-class doctor’s daughter, many did not think she was a serious musician. I think a lot of people didn’t understand her. As such, parodies from the likes of Faith Brown and Pamela Stephenson were probably seen a reflection of a view a certain sector had of Kate Bush. That her music was a little ridiculous. However, the satirists maybe were paying tribute in their own way. At least her music was being talked about in a way! Bush’s sense of humour runs through all of this. She is a big comedy fan so wouldn’t have minded too much that people were giving her songs and music a comedic spin. I often wonder too whether Kate Bush was offered many comedy roles early in her career. No shock that she did get offered parts in film and T.V. She was approached to appear in the film Castaway, alongside Oliver Reed. The Nicolas Roeg film instead starred Amanda Donohue. Bush did contribute a song to that film, Be Kind to My Mistakes. Bush was involved in comedy early in her career. On 5th March 1979, Bush appeared for the second time on The Kenny Everett Video Show. She was very much game and was very much in on the joke. The video for Wow was played. A year previous, she appeared on the show and featured in a silly and funny question and answer exchange with Everett. Just before the video for The Man with the Child in His Eyes was shown. It could have been an experience where she was mocked or the butt of the joke, though Bush was very much on an equal footing. Someone who was taken seriously.

It is curious seeing these screen and comedy connections. Though Bush never appeared in a comedy film, she did write the classic song, This Woman’s Work (which appeared on The Sensual World in 1989). That film was 1988’s She’s Having a Baby. Kate Bush did appear in 1990’s Les Dogs for The Comic Strip Presents… It was Kate Bush’s acting debut. When asked about the role, she said that “Peter Richardson worked on the video [for The Sensual World] and it was a lot of fun, and we stayed in touch as friends. When he was working on The Comic Strip series, I got a script and he asked me if I’d play a part. I felt very honoured to be asked”. Even though Bush was often parodied or send up by satirists and comedians, as someone who loved comedy, it wouldn’t have deflated her too much. I wonder whether a career in comedy could have beckoned. She must have been offered all sorts during her career. Kate Bush was a big fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers. However, she was not offered much comedy. Interestingly, she was offered a role in Wurzel Gummidge. That would have been in May 1981. Not long before she released the single, Sat in Your Lap (from 1982’s The Dreaming). With the role of The Wicked Witch in mind, she had to turn it down. It was unfortunately typecasting – the media thinking Bush was some sort of witch! -, and Bush was too busy making an album anyway. Thanks to Tom Doyle and his book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush for some useful biography and information. In a recent feature, I mentioned how Bush took part in the inaugural benefit shows for Comic Relief in 1986. A year later, she played at the 1987 Secret Policeman’s Third Ball.

It is interesting looking over all the comedic links and highlights from Kate Bush. In 1990, Bush wrote a song called Ken for The Comic Strip’s fourth series episode, GLC: The Carnage Continues. A couple of episodes later was when Bush appeared in Les Dogs. Bush tried to convince Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam to direct the video for Cloudbusting. Julian Doyle directed that incredible video for a standout Hounds of Love song. Lenny Henry appeared on the 1993 song, Why Should I Love You?, from The Red Shoes. Hugh Laurie and Dawn French featured in the video for 1986’s Experiment IV. The late Terry Jones appeared in the artwork for 2011’s Director’s Cut. He was playing Professor Need. He was photographed in an old-fashioned train carriage, hooked up to his laptop via a wired device. Eric Idle introduced Kate Bush for her only appearance on SNL in 1978. The late Robbie Coltrane – who, as Tom Doyle notes, was one of the voices heard on Hounds of Love’s Waking the Witch – can be seen in the video for Deeper Understanding from 2011’s Director’s Cut. In the video, Coltrane is catfished by a certain Noel Fielding. I shall come to him soon. For 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, Stephen Fry appeared on the title track, reciting fifty words for snow. Although Bush has not had many comedy connections since, her music did appear in the 2020 sci-fi comedy, Palm Springs (starring Andy Samberg). I will end by thinking about the satirist and early lampooning and Kate Bush’s love of and affection for comedy. There were a couple of occasions where comics took to the stage ‘as’ Kate Bush. Steve Coogan, as Alan Partridge, performed a medley of Kate Bush songs. Wow, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Them Heavy People, The Man with the Child in His Eyes, Wuthering Heights, Don’t Give Up and Babooshka. That was for Comic Relief. Steve Coogan had a lot of fun doing it. Kate Bush actually came to see the last night of his show when it was performed in the West End. She joked to Coogan that it was “nice to hear all those songs again”. Bush did confide in Coogan that she was terrified of being out there as she had not done it for a long time. Maybe self-conscious of being out in public at a high-profile show.

It is interesting that things went full circle. If Kate Bush was seeing satirists like Faith Brown and Pamela Stephenson spoof her back when her career was in its infancy, it was a couple of male comics who were on the stage lovingly spoofing/performing her music. Noel Fielding famously performed Wuthering Heights in a red dress for Comic Relief in 2011. Looking quite the part, it was a more loving tribute to Kate Bush than perhaps the early satirising. Bush was asked by MOJO what it was like being taken the piss out of. Bush loved Fielding’s rendition of her debut single and was flattered. She didn’t mind because the song (Wuthering Heights) was taken the piss out of at the time, so the fact it has endured to be ripe for a new generation of comedic ammunition meant a lot to her. Someone who, in the 1970s and now, was not taking offence to this sort of thing. Being in on the joke rather than being the butt of it. I keep thinking about that early satirising and whether it was completely loving. Whether it was seen as the thing that needed to be done. Bush not really taken seriously in the early days. I know there will be more comedic connections. Comic figures or shows using her music. The Bear included Hounds of Love’s The Morning Fog in an episode from Season 3 last year. Will Kate Bush be represented at Comic Relief again soon? Will we see a figure from the world of comedy included on a future album or in one of her videos? You can never rule it out, because this iconic artist loves comedy and has created this incredible network through her career. Those who have an association with her work. Be damned those early satirists! On The Red Shoes’ Moments of Pleasure, Bush sings “This sense of humour of mine isn’t funny at all”. Given the love she has for comedy and the love the comedy world has for her…

THAT isn’t true at all!

FEATURE: Them Heady People: The Collaborators Who Have Worked with Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

Them Heady People

The Collaborators Who Have Worked with Kate Bush

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WHEN thinking about Kate Bush’s albums…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Phillips

I think about the collaborators. Whether they are well-known musicians or players who were a little less starry, they have all made their own impact on her music. Through the years, I have discussed some of the musicians who have performed on Kate Bush albums. I recently talked about Prince. He appeared on The Red Shoes’ Why Should I Love You? I think right back to the start. Then, Kate Bush did not really have the cache and pulling power to have major artists playing on her albums. I think it was the case that she wanted to keep things distinct and not let her music have too many other voices in the mix. It wasn’t until The Dreaming (1982) or Hounds of Love (1985) where she really started expanding her sound. Bringing more voices into her albums around the time of The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). Even as a solo artist, Kate Bush was not the only player or voice in the mix. Some solo artists strip things back and keep it about them. However, Bush has always worked with other musicians. I guess it was quite impressive that The Kick Inside featured musicians from Pilot (Ian Bairnson), Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel (Duncan Mackay) and The Alan Parsons Project/Pilot (David Patton). Bush had her own musicians that she wanted to work with from the start. Her brother Paddy was in the mix but it wasn’t until 1980’s Never for Ever where she could include people that she really wanted to work with (outside of friends and family). Brian Bath was an old friend. I also love how John Giblin, Del Palmer and Alan Murphy were in the cast of musician. As a producer, Bush could definitely expand her palette and look around to artists and musicians she wanted to work with. I think on The Kick Inside and Lionheart (1978) producer Andrew Powell had in mind some established musicians and did not really want other vocalists. Even though Paddy Bush, Ian Bairnson and other did some backing vocals, there were no big names as such. That changed slightly from Never for Ever.

Roy Harper was one of the first big names to feature on a Kate Bush album. Providing backing vocals to the single, Breathing, he was an artist that Bush admired. Even though Kate Bush was working with Peter Gabriel around this time, he did not (and has not) feature on her albums. Bush sung on You (The Game Part III) with Roy Harper. I do like how Kate Bush was willing to let other vocalists especially into her music. Although there was an absence of female collaborators, Bush knew that other vocalists could add something to her sound. Think about The Dreaming. If there was a more traditional or Rock/Pop sound on her first two or three albums, there was a broader vision on The Dreaming. Not only are there Irish instruments from Liam O’Flynn, Seán Keane and Dónal Lunny. In terms of vocalists who were adding their touch, Paddy Bush, Ian Bairnson, Stewart Arnold and Gary Hurst were in there. Keeping friends and relations very much at the core. However, there was a little bit of magic from David Gilmour on Pull Out the Pin. The Dreaming’s title track having so many layers and effects in them. Gosfield Goers and Percy Edwards. I think my favourite examples of vocal collaborators comes from the final two tracks. Houidini has Gordon Farrell simply saying “Houdini”. Del Palmer voices “Rosabel believe”.

Rather than having a big duet or putting someone too firmly in the mix, Bush very carefully and economically used these collaborators. Think about Paul Hardiman adding braying and donkey noises to Get Out of My House. I think Kate Bush was making albums like The Dreaming and Hounds of Love and not really thinking them as albums to tour. In terms of the dense nature of some of the songs and the scope of them. Perhaps they would not have translated to the stage that easily back then. Hounds of Love saw new vocal and instrumental textures. Irish sounds in there but also the distinct bass sounds of Eberhard Weber and Martin Glover (Youth). Bush switching things up and keeping it fresh. Also, blending established and better-known musicians with those who were not as big. Hounds of Love very much framed Kate Bush’s vocals and she was at the forefront. However, certain songs benefited from other vocalists. The cast of voices that appear on Waking the Witch. Voices trying to wake Kate Bush’s heroine adrift at sea. Included in there are her two brothers, Paddy and John. Hello Earth given swell and grandeur from The Richard Hickox Singers. I do wonder how Kate Bush came into contact with these types of artists. Of course, the more successful she became, the more ambitious she was regarding those working with her. Hounds of Love could have had mainstream artists or music heroes in there. However, I like her choice of vocal and musical collaborators. More about the depth and distinct sounds as opposed any commercial allure. Different genres and styles too. From choral to an Irish frenzy, there is so much explored here.

The Sensual World seems an album more about the importance of the sonics and players rather than vocals. The most notable collaborators on that album are the Trio Bulgarka. The first time that Bush worked with female vocalists. Their power and brilliance one of the most potent elements of The Sensual World. An album that did not need a lot of other voices. Perhaps Kate Bush was thinking about the female voice and did not want too many male voices in there. An album exploring femininity and Bush was now in her thirties. Things did change for The Red Shoes. An album that was recorded with a mind of taking it onto the road. A live feel that runs through it. Sounding like it was recorded quite quickly, it is the most interesting album in terms of the vocal collaborators. One of the first albums where a few big names were in there together. Nigel Kennedy playing violin. Prince of course on Why I Should Love You? Also on that song was Lenny Henry. I do wonder how and why he was chosen. It does like quite a lot of random people put together. Bush also pulling in bigger musicians too. Eric Clapton playing on The Red Shoes. Trio Bulgarka featuring again. Also, Colin Lloyd Tucker. There was more focus and unity on Aerial (2005). Fewer big names lending their vocals. Rolf Harris being a black mark on the album (not Kate Bush’s fault in any way). I do think there is more richness and better economy on Aerial. Like The Dreaming or Never for Ever, vocalists used fairly sparsely but to great effect. Michael Wood on A Coral Room. Lol Creme featuring on π and Nocturn. Which album has the best blend of musicians and singers? One might argue Hounds of Love, though Aerial must be right up there.

On every album, Kate Bush knows what sound she needs. Whether it is the musicians or other voices, Bush’s instincts nearly always right. Perhaps The Red Shoes is a bit messy in that sense. Some might say 50 Words for Snow is another. Musically brilliant, this was an album with some huge names lending their voice. Stephen Fry on the title track. Elton John on Snowed in At Wheeler Street. Andy Fairweather Low on Wild Man. I wanted to explore the musical and vocal guests on Kate Bush’s albums. I am curious to see what will come from a new Kate Bush album. Whether she will choose to have other vocalists on it or not. I suspect that she will opt for her voice to be the main instrument, though there is definitely going to be some collaborations. I think the music guests will be the most interesting. In terms of the players. At  a time when her work is reaching new generations and a range of artists around the world, will she reach out to some of them at all? As this is Kate Bush, you can never say what she will do. I love the richness of her albums and the diversity of stories and shades. Songs that stand up to repeated listens because of the people on them. In all cases, Bush seamlessly blending with these people. Listening through her albums, I love identifying the musicians and singers. How they are slot together. What it would have looked like when they were in the studio together. Kate Bush working alongside…

SOME wonderful people.

FEATURE: Feminist Icons: Laura Bates

FEATURE:

 

Feminist Icons

  

Laura Bates

_________

EVEN though most of the women…

I will include in this series are activists, writers and have so many disciplines to their name, I wanted to highlight feminist writers. As explained in a previous feature, I do worry that there are very few articles written by men that discuss feminism and the next wave of feminism. Even writing about women’s rights and gender equality. It is very rare. At a time when there should be more togetherness and discussion, it is largely women writing about big issues. There is not even a positive men’s movement, so there does need to be greater activism and involvement from men. In this series, I am looking at incredible writers and feminist voices. As I am reading Fix the System, Not the Women, I wanted to talk about Laura Bates. Bates has written many books. Included are Everyday Sexism (2014), Men Who Hates Women (2020) and the upcoming The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny. I am going to come to that new book to end. I am including interviews with Laura Bates. A remarkable and important writer that everyone should know about. At a moment when dangerous men like Andrew Tate are causing an incredible amount of danger and violence, I am finding new relevance and depth in her writing. How there is this crisis. A rise in sexual violence against women. Misogyny that shows no signs of slowing. I would advise people to buy Fix the System, Not the Women. Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project in 2012 to catalogue the spectrum of sexism faced day-to-day by women, from the "niggling and normalised" to "outrageously offensive". In encouraging people to share their stories, the project aimed to show the world that sexism exists in many guises and is a valid problem.

I want to start with a 2023 interview from The Guardian. As they write, Bates is “the author of bestselling nonfiction titles including Misogynation and Men Who Hate Women, as well as novels for teens that grapple with issues such as revenge porn and slut-shaming. Her new YA novel, Sisters of Sword and Shadow, is the first instalment of a pacy duology set in the time of King Arthur, where heroine Cass is destined for an arranged marriage until she joins a mysterious band of female knights”. It is interesting reading her responses to the questions asked:

“Was there a lightbulb moment for you in terms of your awakening as a feminist activist?

In spring 2012 I had a really, really bad week. I was followed home by a guy who was aggressively sexually propositioning me, I was groped on a bus and everybody looked away, and a guy unloading scaffolding turned to another as I was walking down the street and said: “Look at the tits on that!” If those three things hadn’t happened in the same week, I never would have thought twice about any of them because it was so normal.

Coverage of news stories like the Russell Brand allegations can give the impression that things have improved in recent years. Is that misleading?

I find it bizarre that everybody now is pointing to the lads’ mags and Page Three and going: “Well, it was really sexist back then.” Almost as if that condones the allegations. And I just think: have you heard of Andrew Tate? Misogyny has always existed, but the algorithmically facilitated mass radicalisation of young men is lads’ mags on steroids. It’s pumping out extreme misogyny on a scale that we’ve never seen before in terms of reach.

What did you make of how Jenni Hermoso was treated after speaking out against Luis Rubiales’s unsolicited World Cup kiss?

The fact that he came out fighting, and the fact that the Spanish FA threatened to sue her when billions of people had watched it happen, just shows that we haven’t made the progress we like to think we have in terms of everybody recognising what’s wrong. Also, it was really telling that something like 82 of the women players said they wouldn’t play again until Rubiales had gone, and put their careers on the line to stand behind Hermoso, and one male footballer did the same thing.

Bates with Katie Price at the panel debate 'Does Page 3 make the world a better place?' during the 2014 Women of the World festival in London. Photograph: Tim P Whitby/Getty Images

You’re a contributor to Women Under Siege, an online initiative to investigate the use of sexual violence in conflict. How optimistic are you that it can ever be eradicated?

What people don’t realise is that the use of rape as a weapon of war is always connected to cultural sexism and sexist beliefs – it’s such an effective weapon because of the way that women are treated having been raped. One of the big pieces of the puzzle is women being involved in peacemaking, being given political power and authority.

What are we still getting wrong in terms of how we deal with violence against women? Is the phrase itself part of the problem?

It’s symptomatic of the way that we still focus on the victims instead of the perpetrators. As a society, what we find hard to confront is that a woman is probably safer in a short skirt in a dark alleyway, drunk at two in the morning, than she is at home in her pyjamas in her own bed, because 90% of the time the person who’s going to rape her is going to be a partner or friend or colleague.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia Evans/The Observer

How do we correct that misconception?

Partly it’s about institutional misogyny, about recognising it as a systemic crisis that needs systemic solutions. But also a cultural shift is needed in the most minor, normalised sexist behaviour and banter. That, I think, is where storytelling comes in – changing people’s mind by changing who we expect to take different roles within those stories and also what a hero looks like, what power looks like.

Are you still receiving death and rape threats online?

Yes. Last year the police reached a point where they basically said the threats were credible but they couldn’t trace them, so they put panic alarms in my house instead, which feels scary and reassuring at the same time.

You’re married. Your husband must worry.

He is extremely calm and extremely supportive. When we were engaged, a men’s rights activist wrote an open letter on the internet that said if my husband went through with marrying me, he would one day come home to find that I had burned down the house, stolen all his money, murdered our children and absconded with a coven of lesbian witches. That didn’t put him off.

Please tell us how you remain hopeful.

There are so many things that give me hope. Women supporting other women – feminism is so often portrayed as catty, divisive, and it’s just not, in my experience – or auditoriums packed with people who are prepared to give up their time for what isn’t an easy conversation; I aways joke that no one wants to invite me to dinner parties. One of the things that I feel really positive about is we now have a generation of teenage girls who are so much more politicised and aware of their rights. It doesn’t mean that they’re not facing absolute shit, but it does mean that they’re a little bit more armed to fight it than we were.

What advice do you have for anyone raising a son?

Talk to them. Don’t think that it has to be one big scary conversation when they’re 16, because it’s too late then. Start when they’re three and someone gives them a truck and their sister a doll – ask why, question it. Give them the tools to think for themselves and talk about internet literacy”.

I want to end with focus around her upcoming book, The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny. That comes out on 15th May. On 9th May, Laura Bates will be speaking about the book at the Southbank Centre. It is a book that you will want to buy. Even though I cannot cover everything Laura Bates has written and said, I wanted to put in these selections to get a better impression of her amazing work. If you have not seen the Everyday Sexism Project website, then you can see their archive here. It is designed to take a step towards gender equality “by proving wrong those who tell women that they can’t complain because we are equal”. Before moving on, as I am reading Fix the System, Not the Women, I wanted to bring in a review from The Guardian:

“Fix the System, Not the Women is an attempt to highlight “the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality” – and to pull apart the myth that women are complicit in our own oppression. Bates’s central message, which she has developed through her Everyday Sexism Project, the online forum that has now received 200,000 stories of sexism and misogyny from all over the world, and books including Girl Up (2016) and Men Who Hate Women (2020), is that there is a spectrum of gender inequality. Sexist jokes and stereotypes are at one end. Rape, domestic abuse, female genital mutilation and so-called “honour” killings are at the other. Maternity discrimination, workplace sexual harassment, the gender pay gap “and so much more” lie somewhere in between.

What if, Bates asks, none of it is actually women’s fault? What if women can’t network, mentor, charm, assert and lean in their way out of sexism because this is a system that is rigged against them? A system that relies on its own invisibility for its preservation.

Suggestions for reform include apps that track the movements of men convicted of crimes against women

Bates pursues her thesis across five key areas: education, policing, criminal justice, media and politics. The fact that only a quarter of the Cabinet are women might just explain why working mothers lost their jobs at far higher rates than fathers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and new mothers were forced to give birth alone while pubs were allowed to open.

But the most rousing sections of the book are on male violence and the burden on women to keep themselves safe. When a woman is killed, it is often called “an isolated incident”, and yet a woman is murdered by a man in the UK every three days. Bates is scathing about Priti Patel’s support for an app to log women’s movements, on top of managing all the other gear they are advised to carry. As a society “we cannot stop finding excuses for male violence”, she writes. Despite the increased prominence of feminist campaigns, charges in rape cases are now exactly half what they were in 2015–16. Too often, decisions about whether or not to proceed to trial for rape rely on whether the woman fits the societal profile of the “perfect victim”: ie, those who are “sweet and pretty and innocent and careful and didn’t stray off the path or talk to the wolf”. And also, importantly, white.

Fix the System contains plenty of suggestions for reform, including apps that track the movements of men convicted of crimes against women, and banning non-disclosure agreements that gag staff who have experienced maternity discrimination. Bates also reminds us that if we want to tackle oppression in one sphere, we need to be aware of its overlap with others. Black women are four times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth in the UK, yet rarely see themselves represented in campaigns to reach out to expectant mothers. Disabled women are twice as likely to suffer domestic abuse, but just one in 10 spaces in refuges is accessible to those with physical disabilities.

But Bates is adamant that it’s not her job to find solutions. Hundreds already exist, “ignored and unused” in reports and campaign materials of feminist and civil rights organisations. Which made me wonder: how many men will read Fix the System? In recent years, books such as Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and White Fragility have been bought in huge numbers by white people. Because, as Bates says: “this is not our mess to clean up”. Sadly, I suspect the feminist publishing boom has passed most male readers by”.

There are a couple of new interviews that I want to end with. The first is from The Standard. Laura Bates explained how she wants boys to be raised knowing that they can cry and show their emotions when they need to. That girls can grow up without living in fear. That they do not face abuse and discrimination. We are, as Bates says, far from that at the moment:

“Her upcoming book, “The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny,” is set to be published in May 2025. Bates said she has begun to worry about the effect of AI’s integration into everyday life.

“We are hurtling towards a really seismic shift in terms of really every aspect of our society is on the brink of being transformed by emerging technologies and in particular, artificial intelligence,” Bates said.

In her book, Bates said she discusses the ways in which AI will affect change-making due to its repetitive nature.

“AI tech, and the way in which much of it works, is that it is often trained on existing data sets,” Bates said. “Which means that it is absorbing and learning from our already flawed society, and it then risks re-imbedding and exacerbating the racism and the sexism and the existing inequalities of our current society.”

To mitigate this risk, she said AI must be regulated and that “there has to be oversight” and transparency.

Campaigning for policy changes

Bates, alongside other advocacy groups, contributed to the change in the national curriculum around relationships and sex education through campaigning. According to Anglia Ruskin University, they advocated for an emphasis on consent in the health curriculum and, according to the U.K. Parliament, they also urged the government to not remove feminism from the A-level Politics syllabus.

Bates said a modification to the education system felt necessary to include underrepresented topics.

“In the changes, the policies, it was sexual concern, healthy relationships, LGBTQ+ rights and relationships, gender stereotypes, all of that stuff was added and that was really helpful,” Bates said.

Calling attention to sexual misconduct at schools, Bates said she collected stories from girls who were made victims of sexual assault to reveal to people in power.

“I was able to present the politicians with, you know, 1,000 testimonies of girls about what it feels like, in their own words, to be sexually assaulted at school,” Bates said. “It’s really satisfying to see those first-hand testimonies change policy and change people’s minds.”

However, Bates said there are often times when her hard work falls short in the hands of political representatives.

“It’s frustrating and hard, just how much work goes on behind the scenes for any changes to happen, and how many times you put in the work and the change doesn’t happen,” Bates said. “That’s the reality of campaigning and lobbying.”

She said another challenge to creating impact through policy is the frequent change of individual positions in the government, which delays an outcome.

“You might be working really closely with an education secretary and then, suddenly, overnight as a reshuffle, you have to get to know a whole new person and start to work with them,” Bates said.

To achieve a fulfilling result in change-making, Bates said a joint effort is necessary.

“It’s very much taught me the importance of collaboration and building a strong coalition because if you want to get things done in politics, that’s kind of how to do it,” Bates said.

In 2013, Bates, along with other campaigners, successfully changed Facebook’s policies and training guidelines around spreading misogynistic images and comments. Additionally, Bates said stories of harassment on public transport from the Everyday Sexism Project were used to work with the British Transport Police on Project Guardian, an initiative that overhauled the way the force dealt with sexual offenses on public transport.

“Changing Facebook’s policies on rape and domestic violence content, changing the British Transport policies approach to sexual offenses and seeing the number of reporting and the number of perpetrators who were arrested went up, things like that have been really rewarding,” Bates said.

Inspirations and aspirations

Alongside recognized women like Malala Yousafzai, Gloria Steinem and bell hooks, Bates said she looks up to women “whose names other people don’t know.”

“I’m hugely inspired by the women I’m lucky enough to work with who are real women, who are working kind of at the coalface of sexual violence,” Bates said. “These are women who might be working in domestic abuse shelters, they might be frontline service providers, they might be counselors for women who’ve experienced rape or sexual abuse”.

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I am going to end with this interview from We Are the City. The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny is going to be a must-read: “From deepfakes to cyber brothels, this terrifying and timely exposé from the bestselling author of Everyday Sexism and Men Who Hate Women reveals the real and fast-spreading dangers of new, inherently misogynistic techonology and their detrimental effect on gender equality”:

“Why Gender Equality Work is Far From Over

In the UK and beyond, some question whether gender inequality remains a pressing issue. They argue that feminism is outdated, that sexism is a relic of the past, and that initiatives like International Women’s Day are unnecessary. Yet, for those engaged in gender equity work, the evidence tells a very different story.

The Reality Behind the Perception

In reality, women remain significantly under-represented in leadership and decision-making roles. Everywhere from parliament to board rooms, when people are making decisions that impact our lives on a daily basis, they don’t tend to be completely representative of the communities they serve. And the disparity continues across a wide range of fields, from science to art, architecture to engineering.

The Ongoing Impact of Gender Stereotypes

These imbalances stem from deeply ingrained gender norms. From childhood, boys are socialised to believe they must be strong and unemotional, contributing to the stark reality that suicide remains the leading cause of death for men under 50. Meanwhile, women face stereotypes that paint them as overly emotional, impacting their career prospects and credibility in professional settings.

These stereotypes translate into real-world workplace challenges. Women’s ideas in meetings are often ignored until repeated by male colleagues. They are frequently assumed to be less senior, passed over for leadership roles, or expected to take on administrative tasks. Gender bias manifests in hiring, promotions, and workplace culture, contributing to persistent gender pay gaps and barriers to advancement.

The Reality of Violence Against Women

In reality, women remain significantly under-represented in leadership and decision-making roles. Everywhere from parliament to board rooms, when people are making decisions that impact our lives on a daily basis, they don’t tend to be completely representative of the communities they serve. And the disparity continues across a wide range of fields, from science to art, architecture to engineering. AI Adoption and Gender Disparities

AI, structural bias and gendered harm

The rise of AI presents a new frontier in gender inequality. With great opportunity comes great risk, and we are already seeing the impact play out, from women being slower adopters of emerging technology, to the ways in which AI can unintentionally re-embed existing inequalities and forms of prejudice within the building blocks of new systems. Across a broad range of applications, from financial assessments to healthcare and recruitment, we are already seeing the consequences of these biases for women and marginalised groups. There are also ways in which emerging technologies are being harnessed by bad actors for deliberate gendered harms, from the use of deepfake technology to create fake pornographic images of women to the use of smart tech by stalkers and domestic abusers.

The Role We Must Play

As AI reshapes society, we have a critical window to intervene and ensure these technologies do not entrench existing inequalities. Governments, policymakers, and tech leaders must prioritise ethical AI development by:

• Increasing Female Representation in AI development, academia, and leadership to ensure diverse perspectives shape the future of technology.

• Implementing Stronger Regulations to prevent AI from reinforcing bias in recruitment, policing, and finance.

• Developing AI Ethics Frameworks that mandate fairness, accountability, and transparency in algorithmic decision-making.

• Combating Online Abuse by enforcing stricter legal consequences for those who use AI for harassment, coercion, and non-consensual exploitation.

• Raising Public Awareness about the real risks AI poses to gender equality and ensuring that conversations about AI safety include the voices of those most affected.

A Call to Action

Gender inequality is not a women’s issue; it affects everyone. The same stereotypes that hold women back also harm men, particularly in mental health. Tackling these issues requires systemic change, not just individual action. Rather than focusing on how women should respond to discrimination, the conversation must shift toward dismantling the structures that allow inequality to persist.

As long as these disparities exist, the fight for gender equality must continue. Recognising and addressing inequality is not about dividing men and women—it is about building a fairer, more inclusive society for all. The work is far from over, and it is up to all of us to ensure meaningful progress”.

For the first part of this regular series that spotlights feminist writers and activists, I was eager to talk about Laura Bates. An author I am reading at the moment, she is one of the most important writers of her generation I feel. If you have not discovered her writing, then do go and check out Laura Bates. An acclaimed and successful writer, I would advise everyone to…

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OWN her books.

FEATURE: Welcome to the Terrordome: Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Welcome to the Terrordome

Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet at Thirty-Five

_________

I wanted to celebrate…

the third studio album from Public Enemy. Fear of a Black Planet was released on 10th April, 1990 by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. A hugely influential album that was produced by Public Enemy’s production team, The Bomb Squad. Building on the sampling heard on the group’s previous album, 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Baack, there was a definite expansion of the sound. Fear of a Black Planet, among other themes, explores empowerment within the Black community, “social issues affecting African Americans, and race relations at the time. Its critiques of institutional racism, white supremacy, and the power elite were partly inspired by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing's views on color”. I wanted to mark thirty-five years of the album by exploring it in more detail. In 2015, NME wrote why Fear of a Black Planet is more relevant than ever. The righteous energy and anger that is displayed through the album is powerful and impactful:

“Yet in 1989, the group found themselves embroiled in an ugly controversy. Professor Griff, the group’s ‘Minister of Information’, told Melody Maker that: “If the Palestinians took up arms, went into Israel and killed all the Jews, it’d be alright.” When grilled on this point by David Mills, of the Washington Times, Griff went further still, saying: “Jews are responsible for the majority of the wickedness in the world.” Chuck D first apologised for him, then called a press conference to announce that Griff would be suspended from Public Enemy. A week later, the group’s label boss, Russell Simmons of Def Jam, announced that Chuck D had disbanded Public Enemy “for an indefinite period of time”.

Within a couple of months, Chuck D returned to deny that the group had disbanded, but by now a shadow had been cast over the band. This was the context in which they wrote ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ – knowing that their next release could make or break them.

Predictably, they didn’t back down. ‘Welcome To The Terrordome’, released ahead of the album in January 1990, saw Chuck D rapping lines that many took to relate directly to the anti-Semitism controversy: “Crucifixion ain’t no fiction/So-called chosen frozen/Apology made to whoever pleases/Still they got me like Jesus”. Later, Chuck said that he wrote the song over the course of a two day road trip to Allentown, Pennsylvania in the midst of the controversy. “I just let all the drama come out of me,” he told Billboard magazine. “‘I got so much trouble on my mind/I refuse to lose/Here’s your ticket/hear the drummer get wicked”. That was some true stuff. I just dropped everything I was feeling.”

Although rightly apologetic for Griff’s anti-Semitism, Public Enemy didn’t let the controversy stop them writing angrily and graphically about the social problems they’d witnessed in American culture. Most withering of all was ‘911 Is A Joke’, in which a scornful Flavor Flav highlights differing police response times in black and white neighbourhoods. The song is a classic example of the symbiotic writing relationship between the group’s two frontmen: Chuck D wrote the incendiary title and then passed it to his partner to build a song around. “It took a year, but Flavor was saying he had a personal incident that he could relate that to,” Chuck said. “At the end of the year when it was time for him to record he was ready. Keith [Shocklee, Bomb Squad] had the track, and it was the funkiest track I heard. It reminded me of uptempo Parliament/Funkadelic.”

After skewering the police, Public Enemy then reset their sights and took aim at capitalism as a whole. ‘Who Stole The Soul?’ was their furious attack on the commodification of black culture, and Chuck D has called it one of their “most meaningful performance records”. They weren’t just calling for words or token apologies: they wanted action. “We talk about reparations,” he remembered later. Whoever stole the soul has to pay the price.”

The album closes with the incendiary, insurrectionary rage of ‘Fight The Power’. Like the best protest music, it is a song written with a specific political target in mind, which has now become a universal anthem of political resistance. On a recent European tour, Chuck D told NME that the song grows stronger as it takes on the historical context of wherever it is played. “In Belgium, we dedicated ‘Fight The Power’ to the Democratic Republic of Congo,” he said. “The memory of Patrice Lumumba [first democratically elected prime minster of Congo, who fought for independence from Belgium] will not be in vain. You always have to be aware where you’re going to when you step into somebody’s home. That’s the thing that sets us apart as different. We’re not the normal rap group.”

Sonically, too, they were no normal group. Sprawling over 20 tracks, ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’ is hip-hop at it’s most musically ambitious. Having toured as a support act for the Beastie Boys (as referenced in the radio phone-in samples that make up ‘Incident At 66.6 FM’), they were inspired by the sample-laden ‘Paul’s Boutique’, released in 1989, to add soul and jazz influences without dialling down any of the anger of their earlier recordings”.

I am going to move on to a feature from 2020. Among controversy and division, the group released one of their finest work. An album that still sound phenomenal thirty-five years on. On 10th April, I hope there are new features written about Fear of a Black Planet. If you are not familiar with Public Enemy or know much about the album then I would urge you to explore it now. A big commercial success, at the time of its release, critics hailed Fear of a Black Planet as a masterpiece and the best that Hip-Hop can offer:

“Fear of a Black Planet emerged from a swirling cauldron of uncertainty and animosity. It’s a sprawling, messy, politically charged, and ultimately humanistic album. It features the crew’s frontman Carlton “Chuck D” Ridenhour and hypeman William “Flavor Flav” Drayton trying to envision the future, and taking chances as performers.

It’s also arguably the finest production effort by The Bomb Squad, the architects of Public Enemy’s sound. The team, comprised of Hank and Keith Shocklee, Eric “Vietnam” Sadler, and “Carl Ryder” (Chuck D’s production nom-de-plume), takes their “wall of sound” production styles and cranks them up to the maximum, generating a belligerent and harsh aural assault. It’s even more openly hostile to traditional forms of hip-hop production than Public Enemy’s previous two releases.

The musical backdrop they create is a cross between a fever dream and the world’s most powerful pirate radio broadcast. Tracks often flow together with little break or pause between them. This was during the “wild west” era of sampling, when artists would rarely bother to clear samples; Chuck later estimated that they used 200 to 250 samples to create the album. Even the interstitial music between the songs is interesting, as they continuously layer samples, vocals, and broadcasts to form a collage of chaos.

It’s fitting, as Fear of a Black Planet was born out of chaos. The bedlam initially began at what was the group’s earliest peak, during the summer of 1989, shortly after the release of their signature track, “Fight the Power.” The song is an essential component to Do the Right Thing, a Spike Lee Joint that’s not only one of the best films of the 1980s, but one of the greatest films of all time. The track blasts out of the Boom Box of Radio Raheem (as played by the late Bill Nunn), in nearly every scene that he appears.

Decades later, “Fight the Power” is still one of the most popular and beloved songs in hip-hop history, and just as synonymous with politically-charged hip-hop as the group itself. It exemplifies the group encouraging resistance towards traditional power structures, and thumbing its nose at all-American institutions like Elvis Presley and John Wayne. It would show up as the final song on Fear of a Black Planet, a final exclamation point signaling the end of a tumultuous era for the group.

The problem began for Public Enemy as “Fight the Power” was first gaining traction in popular culture during those hot summer months. The Washington Times conducted an interview with Professor Griff, Public Enemy’s then Minister of Information (essentially their media spokesman). During this interview, Griff made some fairly flagrant anti-Semitic comments. After the interview was printed, all hell broke loose.

In the interest of damage control, Griff was fired, re-hired, and then fired again from the group. Or possibly quit. Or possibly never left. It’s never really been clear. Public Enemy broke up and reformed numerous times over the next few months, before coming back together. Or maybe never really disbanded at all. Again, it’s never been clear. It is worth noting that Griff has apologized a few times for making the controversial comments. It was time of great uncertainty for the great group, and as a super-fan, I personally was devastated by the way things were playing out.

When Fear of a Black Planet was finally released, it was a clear artistic and commercial triumph. To this day, it’s still Public Enemy’s most commercially successful album, as it’s certified double Platinum. It features iconic singles that have had a cultural impact that’s gone beyond just music and entered the shared cultural vernacular. While it might not be Public Enemy’s best work (1988’s It Takes a Nation to Hold Us Back is still better than everything), it’s among the greatest hip-hop albums ever released.

I’ve spoken here many times about by deep love for and obsession with Public Enemy’s music growing up, so it was a given that I was eagerly anticipating Fear of a Black Planet when it dropped. The problem was three decades ago I was in the middle of spring break during my freshman year of high school and on a family vacation with my parents and younger brother the day it hit the shelves. We spent most of it in Death Valley, nowhere near a record store.

Towards the end of the trip I remember that I forced my folks to stop at a Rainbow Records outside of Las Vegas so that I could buy the album on tape. I was instantly overpowered by the release. Even its packaging was overwhelming; the cassette’s liner notes were so voluminous that they had to be included on a separate insert. I remember spending that last day or two of the vacation listening to the album on my Walkman, intently reading the lyrics and the lists of emcees and groups that Chuck D shouted out, including but not limited to the “Popular 14,” the “Disciples of the Future 17,” and the “Funky Fellas on the Block 22.”

Fear of a Black Planet still resonates as powerfully today as it did 30 years ago. “Welcome to the Terrordome,” the album’s first proper single, is as “angry” of a hip-hop track as was released in the ’90s and beyond. The song is as central to the group’s legacy as the aforementioned “Fight the Power.”

“Terrordome” focuses on the controversy that consumed the group throughout the second half of 1989, and Chuck D uses the song to vent his frustration with the news media. Public Enemy has had a, shall we say, difficult relationship with the media since the group’s inception, and Chuck rails against outlets throughout the song’s four verses. He’s said that the song was supposed to signify the beginning of what the ’90s would bring for Public Enemy and rap music, and in many ways it’s correct.

The track itself is one of the Bomb Squad’s masterpieces, a churning engine of unholy sonic fury. The guitars and vocals from the Temptations’ “Psychedelic Shack” are transformed into a relentless cacophonic blare, as disorienting snatches of music and other vocal snippets burst throughout the composition as well. The song barely has a hook, with Flavor Flav chanting “Come on down!” when necessary. He also memorably crows throughout the breaks between verses, reciting lines from Scarface, and generally goofing off in his signature style.

The bitterness on “Terrordome” is palpable, but overall, it’s an outlier on Fear of a Black Planet. For all the pandemonium and acrimony that built the album, Chuck shares a generally positive outlook on what the ’90s will be for the Black population of the United States. “Brothers Gonna Work It Out” typifies the message of optimism that permeates much of the album. Public Enemy is generally not thought of as a particularly hopeful group; they made their name reporting on the way that the government systematically oppresses its Black population. 

Long after it appeared that the group would be ripped apart, Public Enemy persevered and created a perfectly imperfect monument to the end of the ’80s and the beginning of the ’90s. For all the effort that went into its creation, it generates even more power and strength in what it gives back to the listener. The fact that the group survived the circumstances that inspired this album has convinced me that what’s happening now, as addressed earlier in this piece, barely rises to the level of a bump in the road”.

I am going to end with a feature from last year. An album, as mentioned, that is relevant today, it is hard to compare Fear of a Black Planet with anything else. A masterpiece that was “issuing calls for a survivable lifestyle”, it brought respect for Hip-Hop from critics. Public Enemy also acquired millions of new fans. It also provoked passionate debate over its political content:

“Pulling no punches

Packed with Public Enemy classics and somehow even louder and rougher than its predecessor, Fear Of A Black Planet, released on April 10, 1990, pulls no punches. As ever, the group were not only concerned with the present and the future of black people, they were steeped in black history and culture. That can be seen on the most superficial level: their samples are a lesson in hard funk and their song titles show PE know music: “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” a title drawn from a 1973 Willie Hutch classic; “Fight The Power,” from an Isley Brothers song; “Power To The People,” perhaps partially inspired by Joe Savage’s “All Power To The People” (a song probably released in aid of the Black Panthers, in 1968), or Joe Henderson’s 1969 album of the same title.

Here is a group at the peak of its powers, knowing what it says is going to be heard and fighting to deliver it in the most uncompromising way possible in the face of criticism, fury, incredulity, and misunderstanding, as heard on the radio clips that appear on “Incident At 66.6 FM.” If their intention, at the least, was to make listeners think, they succeeded.

This time around, one of the biggest tunes was Flavor Flav’s showcase, “911 Is A Joke,” a brassy, rolling groove with a point: people in the projects can’t rely on the help the rest of society takes for granted. “Welcome To The Terrordome” drops like a piano from a skyscraper, with Chuck quoting the titles of other songs for a moment before he kicks off a flow that is the work of a man under attack. Paranoid? Perhaps, but they really were out to get him and his people, Chuck’s rhymes taking in crucifixion, racist killings, heroes assassinated, a lack of black unity, and the whole nine yards.

Fear of a black planet

The album’s title track is a shower of funk, with cartoon-like use of vocal clips while Chuck mocks white fear of black people and points out a few home truths as he sees them. A similar fury simmers behind “Pollywanacracka,” but the approach this time is downbeat, quietly explaining a situation in which black people choose white lovers as a status symbol. “Burn Hollywood Burn” features a dream team of Chuck, Ice Cube, and Big Daddy Kane: Cube would soon be making his own movies in Tinseltown, but here his fire is directed squarely at the West Coast dream factory.

On “Revolutionary Generation” a call for unity between sister and brother is served up with references to slavery and oppression; yes, that is a bit of “Pass The Dutchie” incongruously thrown in amid a tangle of samples that keep the ears alert. Flav lands another showcase in “Can’t Do Nuttin For Ya Man,” necessary leavening amid the polemic and power, with the man who knows what time it is telling a tale of being chased down by hustlers, beggars and dudes who f__ked up.

An album beyond compare

Terminator X drops “Leave This Off Your F__kin’ Charts,” exemplary mixology with a title that didn’t really apply since PE had no problem charting back then. Together with “B Side Wins Again,” this is Fear Of A Black Planet’s most B-boy offering: total hip-hop. “War At 33 ⅓” is a mass of ideas, ranging from cars to fake evangelists, religious divides and African-Americans’ second-class status in a racist America. The album closes with “Fight The Power,” another PE classic, rolling on a diced and re-glued beat from The JBs’ “Hot Pants Road,” left to the end just to make you want to go back to the start and hear it all again. Ah, there is Elvis and John Wayne… you knew they had to be here somewhere, getting dissed.

There is more; the internet isn’t hasn’t got the capacity to cover everything in this record. “Controversial” isn’t a big enough word for it; funky is hardly an adequate description for the firepower of The Bomb Squad’s grooves; Chuck’s lyrics are more than mere rhymes. These aren’t songs, they’re calls for a survivable lifestyle, a series of theories, an expression of what was wrong, and what is still wrong – sometimes wilfully so. It’s like Chuck D anticipated the haters-gonna-hate credo that exists now, and decided he might as well speak his mind anyway.

The result was an album beyond compare: thrilling, infuriating at times, educational, funny, and deep enough to keep you finding new things in it three decades after it was unleashed on a planet that feared, loathed, and loved it”.

On 10th April, Fear of a Black Planet turns thirty-five. With its songwriting partly inspired by the controversy surrounding member Professor Griff's anti-Semitic public comments – and his consequent dismissal from the group in 1989 -, there is something personal, political and universal about the album. There have been so many Hip-Hop masterpieces released through the decades, yet there are…

FEW better than this.

FEATURE: Versions of This Woman’s Work: Covering Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

Versions of This Woman’s Work

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989

Covering Kate Bush

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THIS is a subject…

IN THIS PHOTO: Tori Amos is among the many artists who has covered Kate Bush’s work through the years 

that I was wary of covering. Like The Beatles, I always think that Kate Bush did her songs best. That no matter what, you cannot get close to the original. I think that this is largely true. If you think about the cover versions of Kate Bush songs, very few come close to the original. I cannot list and explore every cover version of her song as there have been quite a few. A lot of minor artists that are hard to find or have not done much. However, it is obvious that artists have been fascinated and arrested by her music and wanted to show their affection. It can be quite a challenging task approaching Kate Bush’s music, as it is so distinct. If you try and imitate Kate Bush’s voice, there are few who sound like her. So it is a case of going in a different direction. Charting the first Kate Bush cover version is difficult. It does seem that the earliest cover versions were perhaps not too serious. As Tom Doyle writes in his book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, a cover of Wuthering Heights was an early interpretation. A comedy Reggae version of Wuthering Heights was released in 1979 by Jan Wurzel on the album, Hybrid Kids – A Collection of Classic Mutants. The person responsible was Morgan Fisher, who compiled a mock four-track compilation that he recorded in his bedroom. I guess it is affection at play. It seemed closer to satire than a genuine attempt to honour Kate Bush. I think about satirists such as Faith Brown and Pamela Stephenson. An honour in its own way, and Kate Bush found it amusing. However, it seemed there was a degree of mockery in the earliest years. Never having heard an artist like her, an instinct to lampoon and treat as a novelty more than a serious artist. The first Kate Bush cover was by Julie Covington. Her smooth Folk Rock interpretation of The Kick Inside was included on her self-titled album in 1978. That was the same year as Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, was released. I do like the fact that there was this early and serious cover.

It was that trick of trying to capture the power and potency of the original without having to mimic her voice. There were some unsuccessful attempts. As Tom Doyle notes, a 1980 cover of Wuthering Heights by Pat Benatar – adopting a faux English accent – was a definite miss. Included on her album, Crimes of Passion, it was a misstep that showed how hard it was to cover Kate Bush. In Julie Convington’s case, she was a friend of Bush’s brother, John (Jay). She loved Kate Bush’s music and did her justice. It was the artists who added their own distinct take on a Kate Bush song that were most successful. Dusty Springfield covered The Man with the Child in His Eyes in 1979 in London. Quite faithful, it was a slowed-down version and arranged for piano, synths and brass. Although a great version, when reaching for a falsetto near the end, Springfield struggled slightly. That obstacle of trying to sound like Kate Bush but artists maybe not having that range of ability. Natalie Cole and Pat Kane also covered The Man with the Child in His Eyes. I would love to hear a playlist or album with Kate Bush covers from throughout the years. A range of artists today tackling a Kate Bush song. Tina Arena’s 2007 version of The Man with the Child in His Eyes was only a half success. The Futureheads released their version of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love in early-2005. They performed it at Glastonbury that year. Even though I do not like their version – the tone, energy and sound drains the original of its passion, beauty and meaning -, it is very popular and was a successful single. Bush spoke to Tom Doyle in 2005 and remarked how she loved their cover. Doing their own thing with her. Pleased artists are covering her songs. In spite of my reservations, Kate Bush approaching The Futureheads’ Hounds of Love should be the only thing that matters!

Ezra Furman tweeted in 2018 how people should listen to Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love (song) every day otherwise there is something wrong with your mental health. She performed it at gigs that year and provided a spirited and passionate take. A lot of Hounds of Love attention in terms of covers. Sergeant Thunderhoof provided a heavy and long take on Cloudbusting. In contrast, The Staves’ version was a lot lighter and more harmonious. Solange Knowles has named Kate Bush as one of her key influences. She performed a version of Cloudbusting at Coachella in 2014. It was a pretty loyal version but showed that huge artists from all over the musical map were keen to step up and show their love for Kate Bush. British artist Nerina Pallot has covered Moments of Pleasure from 1993’s The Red Shoes. This Woman’s Work has been covered a few times. A track from the perspective of an expectant father, it is curious how many male artists have covered the song. Luke Sital-Singh, Greg Laswell and Sam Ryder have all covered the track. Most famously, Maxwell provided one of the best Kate Bush covers with his 2002 single version. He performed it originally at a 1997 MTV Unplugged set. It is no shock that Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) has been covered more time than other Kate Bush songs. Placebo, The Chromatics, Meg Myers, The Wombats, First Aid Kit and Car Seat Headrest are a few of the many who have covered this track. In 2022, at the Governors Ball Music Festival in New York, Halsey covered Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). A huge fan of Kate Bush, she has since spoke about her music and influence. Her recent album, The Great Impersonator, was Halsey writing songs in the style of other artists. Her tribute to her. I Never Loved You was a track influenced by Kate Bush. I will end by discussing a few very recent Kate Bush covers.

Most cover versions have been for more obvious and commercial tracks. However, Nada Surf have covered Love and Anger. That track was from Kate Bush’s 1989 album, The Sensual World. Scroobius Pip produced a Trip-Hop version of Feel It (from The Kick Inside). Tracey Thorn performed Under the Ivy. A B-side for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), it was an opportunity for people to connect with a song they may not know existed. Jane Birkin covered another Hounds of Love song in the form of Mother Stands for Comfort. In 1998, Tom Doyle interviewed Tori Amos and mentioned how pretty much every review for her 1992 album Little Earthquakes mentioned Kate Bush. Amos wanted her music to stand out and not be a pastiche. That was never the case. However, she was listening to Kate Bush when she was younger and singing along to her songs. People mentioning how she reminded them of Kate Bush. The Stranger Things phenomenon of 2022 – where Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) featured in a powerful scene – has meant a raft of new covers of that song (including a terrible one from Rita Ora). Tori Amos include that track (or bits of it) in some of her sets. In 2005, it was sprinkled into a set, bookending her own song, God (from 1994’s Under the Pink). Amos performed the track again in 2022. In 2014, Tori Amos performed And Dream of Sheep. Many artists not straying too far from Hounds of Love. However, the names and covers I have mentioned is only a small representation!

Since 2022, there have been covers of Kate Bush tracks from smaller artists and established acts alike. Rosie Frater-Taylor covered Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 2024. CMAT covered Wuthering Heights the same year. Also last year, BRIT winners The Last Dinner Party released Prelude To Ecstasy: Acoustics and Covers. An expansion of their incredible debut album, one of the covers included – alongside Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game – was Army Dreamers. A rare nod to Kate Bush’s 1980 album, Never for Ever. Many artists not visiting that wonderful album. I have not even mentioned The Puppini Sisters’ take on Wuthering Heights, Chris Anderson (ft. Erin Bentlage)’s version of Joanni (from 2005’s Aerial) or Ada Unn’s version of L’amour Looks Something Like You (from The Kick Inside). Everyone will have their own Kate Bush cover attempt. I have been a bit down by suggesting other artists cannot get close to Kate Bush. Whilst I stand by that, it is impressive how many different artists have approached Kate Bush’s music. I have seen a rise in this over the past couple of years. People showing their respect for an artist who remains untouched and distinct. Something fairly rare in a modern music scene. Especially in the mainstream. Perhaps that is the allure. Kate Bush providing something modern artists do not. The width and breadth of her music brilliance. From Maxwell to The Staves to The Futureheads and Dusty Springfield, so many music greats have covered…

A Kate Bush song.

FEATURE: Alright: Looking Ahead to the Thirtieth Anniversary of Supergrass’ I Should Coco

FEATURE:

 

 

Alright

Looking Ahead to the Thirtieth Anniversary of Supergrass’ I Should Coco

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FEW debut albums…

of the 1990s were as successful and impactful than Supergrass’ I Should Coco. Released on 15th May, 1995, I am looking ahead to the thirtieth anniversary. I am not sure whether a vinyl reissue is planned. Supergrass are marking the anniversary with tour dates. I want to get to some reviews and features about the album. On 17th October, 1994, the lead single from the album – and Supergrass’ debut -, Caught By the Fuzz, was released. Most people associate I Should Coco with Alright. The album’s final single was released on 3rd July, 1995. I am surprised the band did not put Alright out earlier. However, dropping in the summer of 1995, it was the perfect time to launch a feelgood and carefree song about youth and living life to the full without stress or responsability. I Should Coco was recorded in Cornwall and produced by Sam Williams. Released during the peak of Britpop when bands like Oasis and Blur were battling it out, I Should Coco became Supergrass’ most successful release when it reached number one on the U.K. album chart. Before getting to reviews of the album, last year, NME spoke with Supergrass’ lead Gaz Coombes about the anniversary tour:

“Last week saw the Oxford band announce details of a UK tour for May 2025, playing their 1995 album in full for the first time. Cockney rhyming slang for “I should think so”, ‘I Should Coco’ was released when Coombes was just 19-years-old, and his bandmates drummer Danny Goffey and bassist Mick Quinn not much older.

It featured the huge singles ‘Alright’ and ‘Caught By The Fuzz’, peaked at Number One in the charts, sold over a million sales worldwide, and became the biggest-selling debut album from Parlophone Records since The Beatles’ ‘Please Please Me’.

“Well, I should bloody coco!” Coombes told NME, looking ahead to the shows. “It’s cool, man. It’s been about a year in the making. It’s just such a great record and really means a lot of to us. The great thing about it, is that this record is part of our DNA. It’s mad that 30 years later, we’re still able to pull off that energetic, youthful chemistry on stage and read each other in that way. Although it’s a 30-year-old record, we all feel really connected to it.”

He continued: “It’s going to be exciting to get on stage and do that album as a whole for the first time ever. There are a couple of tracks that we’ve never performed live before, so that’s really cool”.

In 2015, the band’s original trio spoke with The Guardian about the making of and memories of their iconic debut album. Released in one of music’s best years, Supergrass made an instant name for themselves in 1995. Number one in the U.K., I Should Coco was nominated for the 1995 Mercury Prize. Alright won an Ivor Novello for Best Contemporary Song in 1996. The legacy of the album is incredible. It has inspired so many other artists. On 15th May, there will be a lot of celebration and discussion around I Should Coco:

“Mick Quinn, bass

The summer of 1993 is when it all kicked off. I’d dropped out of college and got a job at a Harvester and Gaz started working in the kitchen. We’d get off our shift and then jam for hours with Danny, who had been in a band called the Jennifers with Gaz. We put up the money from our day jobs to go down to Sawmills Studio in Cornwall and did six tracks in five days.

The moment we started playing together, we all started playing better than we had in any other band. Danny is a frenetic drummer but has a brilliant melodic sense; with me being a forthright bass player, we just drove each other on. Gaz is more meticulous. Any comic lyric usually came from Danny, although with Alright, I came up with “keep our teeth nice and clean”. It felt like such a throwaway song, like a toothpaste commercial.

At the beginning, we’d play gigs to 60s bikers who were really into it; by the time we had Alright out, it was OK for mums and dads to like us. Alright became a millstone, creatively speaking. It was difficult to get out from under the shadow. Like with the video: we were happy to go down to Portmeirion, and do a Carry On version of The Prisoner. But then you realise people want that again the next time round.

But I Should Coco is a fantastic record. I had my first daughter about six months before it was released, so I had a lot of hormones hitting me. And it was so exciting to travel. Japan was incredible. It was like A Hard Day’s Night, getting chased down the road by screaming fans.

Danny Goffey, drums

I was at school and got asked to leave. I went to Henley College, and got kicked out of there, too. It might have been an allegation of dope smoking. I tried to start my own babysitting service and I was briefly a dinner lady – it was a good way to meet sixth-form girls by giving them an extra baked potato. Then I was on the dole.That was really fun, very free: waking up late, putting some toast on, grabbing a guitar.

My acoustic guitar invariably had strings missing – Caught By the Fuzz was written just on the first three. I was going over the first line, “Caught by the fuzz …”, trying to come up with another one when our tour manager, Daryl, came out the shower with a towel round his waist and said: “I was still on a buzz!” We honed the songs so they were short and full of energy and life.

We set ourselves little goals. When we were teenagers all we wanted was to play a gig in Oxford at the Jericho Tavern; then you think it would be great to make a video, and record. Our tours started to get bigger, and we went up to Scotland. In Dundee there was this huge surge on to the stage, these kids with no tops on snapping up the wood barrier, pouring pints on the keyboards – a sense of slight mayhem, and that we’d struck a chord with people our age.

When we were recording at Sawmills, we’d try and finish at 10 to get last orders at the Fisherman’s Arms. We were professional, but we still thought: this is a bit of a holiday. There was a thing called Forbidden Rum that we were never allowed to drink. After closing time they used to get it out, and we realised why it was forbidden. I’ve still got a scar down my right eye from walking along the railway line after we left – I slipped, banged heads with someone and fell down the bank to the estuary. I burst into the studio a bit later covered in blood.

Gaz Coombes, vocals and guitar

I was a quiet little 16-year-old. School was uninspiring, and I went just to snog girls and smoke behind the art building. But playing music, I felt like I had something cool to say. When you’re hammering through chords, everything changes – you’ve got a weapon.

When you're out on the road, you come up against dangerous situations. We had this escaped convict on the bus in Texas

The early 90s was an odd time for music. Madchester had been massive and those influences crept in. But the louder we turned up our amps to get over Danny’s drums, the more the sound changed. We were heavily influenced by the Beatles and the Kinks. They had a laidback gravitas, whereas our energy came out in a really fast manic way, but the sensibility was the same: strong melodies you can’t get out of your head.

Before we knew it, we were standing on the famous steps of the EMI building where the Beatles were photographed, signing to Parlophone, the label of our heroes. It was completely insane. Then it was a case of getting back to Sawmills and finishing the record. I Should Coco didn’t sound like anything else that was going on – Oasis sounded like they were on Mogadon compared with it. We soon got lumped in with Britpop though”.

I will finish off with two reviews for I Should Coco. In 2015, The Student Playlist shared their views about the amazing debut album from Supergrass. One of the greatest albums of the 1990s. I remember hearing it when it came out in 1995. It still sounds incredible thirty years later:

“I Should Coco, the first album by Oxford three-piece Supergrass, is not only one of the crown jewels of the Britpop era but is usually thought of as one of the most deliriously fun debuts in pop history. Seriously, without listening to the album, just think of all its joyous moments: ‘Caught By The Fuzz’, ‘Strange Ones’, ‘Mansize Rooster’, and ‘Alright’… and you’re grinning already, aren’t you? Revisited twenty years later, two things stand out on I Should Coco. Firstly, the strength of Gaz Coombes’ pop songwriting abilities, already so sharp at such a young age (the band were barely out of their teens by 1995). Secondly, the shades of dark lingering underneath the album’s surface. Though they dispatch thirteen songs at the kind of breakneck speed that only the energy and impudence of youth can fuel, there’s much more to I Should Coco than the two-dimensionality that such a singular approach might suggest.

It’s an aspect of their songwriting that would be explored in much more detail later on in their career, but we get a really good look at an embryonic version of their darker side on six-minute penultimate track ‘Sofa (Of My Lethargy)’, a hymn of self-beration, and the louche blues of ‘Time’. For the majority of the record, though, Supergrass rarely let cynicism infect their endearingly wide-eyed take on British guitar pop music. For the entire first half of I Should Coco, from the opener ‘I’d Like To Know’ through to its twin song ‘Strange Ones’, Coombes and his bandmates Danny Goffey and Mick Quinn deliver precision-targeted pop missiles. The classic single ‘Caught By The Fuzz’, a story of a naïve youngster in trouble with the police over drugs with its metaphor of the world of responsibility and authority bursting the bubble of innocence and abandon, is one of the album’s two major high points, absolutely fizzing with punk-pop energy.

This delirium continues through the glam-rock stomp of ‘Mansize Rooster’, with its chunky piano power chords, the vaguely grungey ‘Lose It’ and the ‘60s pop throwback ‘Lenny’. After the red herring pianos at the start of side 2, ‘Sitting Up Straight’ picks up the pace once more with a lovingly shambolic punk impression, followed by the daft helium vocals on ‘We’re Not Supposed To’. Coombes’ yearning, minor-key vocals on the otherwise spry ‘She’s So Loose’ are about as downcast as the album gets. After ‘Time’ and the perfectly crafted ‘Sofa (Of My Lethargy)’, the back-to-back duo of laid-back moments mentioned above, we get the sub-2-minute vignette ‘Time To Go’, and that’s it. I Should Coco makes it entrance spectacularly and exits modestly, knowing not to undermine its charm by attempting to finish on a grand arena rock exit.

Without question, the album’s exuberant spirit is epitomised by ‘Alright’, by far the band’s best-known song. The major-minor key shift between bridge and chorus introduces a twinge of melancholia amid the positivity, and it seems to acknowledge the fleeting nature of youth even as it celebrates it. While that may be the standout track for the uninitiated fan, I Should Coco burns with the same spirit more or less throughout. The whole record is accomplished but still has the buzz of being new to the music industry. There’s nothing you could add or take away to make this particular type of debut album better.

In addition to its chart-topping success – the only album of their career to reach to summit of the UK charts – I Should Coco lapped up a great deal of praise by a music press now fully signed up to the concept of Britpop. It is, however, one of the records from this period that still stands up today. The likes of Elastica and Garbage, though they were well-received at the time, somehow don’t shine with the same lustre two decades later. It earned Supergrass a reputation as cartoonish, fun-loving rogues like The Monkees, hit-makers upon whom you could depend to churn out fantastic singles on a conveyor belt. But that reputation unfairly masks the quality of their studio albums, which were every bit as interesting”.

I am going to end with a review from the BBC. If you have never heard I Should Coco then I would advise you to do so. There are no filler tracks to be found. Perfectly arranged to deliver the best listening experience, it is no wonder that is created shockwaves when it came out in 1995. Such an original band who were not messing around when it came to making an impact:

“While the latter-day adventures of Britpop bastions Supergrass have seen appearances at the wrong end of the chart, gory accidents and unfavourable tabloid coverage, 1995 debut I Should Coco has left a deeper and longer-lasting footprint than the band’s legacy overall.

Displaying a shoulder-shrugging joie de vivre normally reserved for that heavenly day when the student loan cheque hits the hall carpet, this guise of Supergrass truly channels the same playfulness peddled so successfully by Madness the previous decade. Yet sadly, this retrospective examination also serves to highlight that few bands even come close to adopting that same energy today. The Kooks and The View may play up to such carefree, youthful ideals, but in the wake of the edge carried by I Should Coco, they sound clumsy, contrived and oafish.

While Alright may have been the initial leg-up required to inaugurate the reign of Supergrass, the downside comes from its notoriety as the definitive Supergrass anthem. A deserving tag, certainly, but later treasures such as Moving, Late in the Day and Pumping On Your Stereo remain in its shadow as a result.

However, within the arena of I Should Coco, it functions exceptionally well. Its recognisable blend of cordial and crazy sits comfortably as part of a mezze of eccentric oddities. A hugely diverse collection, its charms lie in its unpredictability, with the only consistent factor being the high level of quality.

We’re Not Supposed To, which could have been lifted straight from the soundtrack of Labyrinth, sits effectively alongside the bluesy flow displayed in Sofa of My Lethargy. Even individual tracks illustrate the diversity of I Should Coco within themselves, with Strange Ones flitting between, trudging along irately and with high-octane dynamism.

Given that I Should Coco was born during the Britpop sovereignty - a time when harmonious, indie-lite high spirits owned the charts - it understandably became part of the overall movement. No bad thing to be allied with, by any means, even if it did eclipse the content slightly as a result. But hindsight is a marvellous thing, and Supergrass carry even more weight outside of the bubble, underlining that I Should Coco stands up on its own as an iconic 90s masterpiece”.

On 15th May, I Should Coco turns thirty. A classic album that is being toured very soon, if you are lucky enough to be going to see Supergrass soon then it will be a magnificent experience. A masterpiece album from a band who would go on to release a wonderful follow-up in 1997’s In It for the Money, cast your mind to 1995 and the debut. The brilliant I Should Coco. I wanted to get a jump on the anniversary as I know it will get a lot written about it soon. When you consider the quality of the songwriting, production and band performances, then it is…

THE least it deserves.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Marisa and the Moths

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Blackham Images

Marisa and the Moths

_________

I am excited…

PHOTO CREDIT: Blackham Images

to spotlight the incredible Marisa and the Moths. This is an amazing band that I hope get played widely on national radio. I have known their lead, Marisa Rodriguez, for many years now and can attest to the fact she is an incredible artist. Her vocal style, playing, writing and dynamic stage presence. She leads a wonderful band who I hope go far. They are on tour at the moment. Together with Liam James Barnes, Alex Ribchester and Alez D'Elia, they need to be on your radar. Their must-hear album, What Doesn’t Kill You, was released last year. One of the best guitar players in the world, Sophie Lloyd, used to be a member of the band. She collaborated with Marisa Rodriguez last year for Won’t You Come. It was among my favourite singles of last year. I am going to get to some interviews with the group. Before getting there, here is some biography about a band who will be playing huge festivals before too long:

“Marisa And The Moths are turning heads with their unique alternative rock sound and powerhouse female vocals. Marisa's lyrics delve into heavy topics such as mental health, toxic relationships, trauma and sexuality, resonating deeply with her fellow misfits and anyone that has ever dealt with

similar hardships.

Since the release of their self-titled debut in 2019, the band has gone from strength to strength, culminating in their second album “What Doesn’t Kill You” reaching No. 1 in the

Official UK Rock and Metal Charts. Their latest album has been described by fans as a deep therapy session you want to singalong with at the top of your lungs.

Both albums have received rave reviews from press outlets like Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, and Kerrang!, and radio plays from mainstream shows such as BBC Introducing Rock on Radio 1, BBC Radio 2's Rock Show, Kerrang! Fresh Blood, Planet Rock, Total Rock, and Primordial Radio. They have also recently recorded a live session consisting of songs from both albums at the iconic Abbey Road Studios, which will be released later in 2024.

Marisa also features on Sophie Lloyd’s new album, “Imposter Syndrome”. The album was nominated for Best Breakthrough Album by Heavy Music Awards, 2024. Their collaboration single "Won't You Come" dropped in November '23, alongside other singles by the likes of Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), Chris Robertson (Black Stone Cherry), Matt Heafy (Trivium), and Michael Starr (Steel Panther). With previous headline tours under their belt, support slots for artists like Kris Barras Band, Von Hertzen Brothers, Those Damn Crows, As December Falls, and Elvana, as well as appearances at festivals like 2000 Trees, Planet Rockstock, and Primordial Radio's General Mayhem, Marisa And The Moths are ready to take the rock world by storm and redefine the genre with their electrifying performances”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rob Campion

I will move to this interview from last month with Palantine. Durham’s official student newspaper, it is a really interesting chat. I have not included all of the interview, so apologies if there seem to be some gaps or it does not hang quite as well as the original. However, there were some sections I was keen to highlight. They spoke with the sensational Marisa Rodriguez. Someone, who I say, I have known for years and can attest to how passionate she is about music. Marisa and the Moths have the strength and talent to go from strength to strength. It is clear that their lead will soon be collaborating with huge artists and can make a real difference in the music industry. An inspiring artist and human who no doubt is giving inspiration, strength and voice to many other people:

“Firstly, I ask Marisa about the genre of the band’s music. ‘You tend to work within the rock and hard rock genres. Why did you choose this genre of music? And what do you think it is about this music that suits your lyrics so well?

Marisa responds by discussing how she came into the band, ‘I didn’t fall straight into rock. I had always loved rock since I discovered it, and I got more into rock in my teens. I had always had a very clean voice to start with, and I’d tried getting into a few bands, which hadn’t worked out. I then tried moving into more acoustic writing and performances, just me and my guitar, and I’d been in a band before The Moths, which was definitely not a rock band as such. It was only when I began writing songs for The Moths that it all clicked, and I realised this is what I’m supposed to do. I’d gained confidence in growing up, and the music industry had already kicked me around a bit, so I’d found myself a lot more as a result of these experiences.’

I ask Marisa a more personal question about being a female-led band in a male-dominated genre. ‘How does it feel to be such a strong female vocalist within a male-dominated rock scene?’

Marisa jumps straight in, ‘You’re definitely right! It is a male-dominated industry. Rock, in particular, is changing a little more now, but I do think that’s one of the reasons I struggled to get into a rock band when I was younger. I mean, when you think about female-led rock bands that are household names, there’s quite a limited number of them. Women haven’t really had much of a chance to come through before, but now we’re seeing a lot more female-led bands popping up everywhere and absolutely smashing it. It’s still tricky, sometimes there’s a lot of sexism still. I feel like women across all careers tend to have different expectations placed on them; a kind of unconscious sexism which is somewhat alarming. It’s a lot better than it was, but there’s still lots of work to do! I actually speak about it a bit in our second album. ‘Pedestal’ discusses my frustrations with sexism in the industry, my own insecurities with this, and how I have to present myself as being strong all the time, always done up, always attractive. Sexism in the industry is a massive industry, and I feel so strongly about it in general, but I would say it is at least getting better.’ .

I ask Marisa about her interview series ‘Time to Talk’ with @thedashcharity, in which the band promoted interviews with survivors of abuse to raise awareness and help their listeners share their experiences. ‘I just wanted to give you the chance to discuss this, and was wondering why you thought it was so important to share other people’s stories ahead of releasing ‘How Did You Get So Weak?’’

Marisa begins by discussing her own experience, ‘In a nutshell, my personal life was falling apart at the time because of a relationship I’d been in, where I’d been struggling with abuse myself. This person was actively trying to destroy my personal life and business, a lot of stuff went up online, and police were involved too. I think because my ex-partner had already destroyed me many times before that, he was expecting me to crumble and react publicly. But I didn’t, and I needed to show he had no power over me. So, instead of sharing my own story, I decided to give others a chance to share theirs and help each other. I thought this was a good opportunity to make a music video about empowerment, instead of making it about me. I just wanted to genuinely help other people. I think that’s where the whole interview initiative really stemmed from, giving other people a very public and powerful voice in their own situation.’

I thank Marisa for her answer and ask her if she’d be open to discussing how this personal experience has impacted the band’s music. ‘In the past, you’ve discussed this non-linear process of grieving an abusive relationship, and I just wanted to ask how you’ve worked to express this non-linearity within the musicality of your album?’

Marisa answers, ‘I decided the order of the songs later on. The guys really wanted to put some of the heavier tracks at the front of the album, but I was pretty adamant that I wanted to open with ‘Cursed.’ I felt that one was different than the others, and I wanted the album to begin with the downfall of the relationship and then grow into recovery. The album felt a lot like a story of survival, as well as getting over grief. And that’s why we called it What Doesn’t Kill You because it leans into that interpretation that these things happen, and it’s what you’re going to do with them that matters. The whole unfinished title, it’s almost a question but also a statement. When you’re going through something like that, there’s a lot of things that you ask yourself, and it’s a process instead of a straight line.’

I again thank Marisa for being so open, and then ask my final question, ‘Do you and the band have anything lined up for the future?’

‘Yes!’ Marisa exclaims, ‘We’re actually finishing some stripped-back recordings of the album, with a bunch of strings that we’re really excited about! We’re also hoping to run a limited number of stripped-back shows as well. We’re also just finishing a mix of a live session we did at Abbey Road, almost two years ago, which the album took priority over. It’s really nice because we’ve got these two products ready to come out soon, with some new video content too, and then we have our main tour coming up! With sixteen dates around the UK finishing in April. And then, between that and a few festivals lined up in Summer, it should be a bit more low-key again, so I’ll be able to get back into a writing phase again. Otherwise, we’re working really hard to get our first show abroad, and then hopefully we’ll be able to build other shows around that too!”.

Before getting to some reviews, I am going to get to an interview from The Indiependent. Again, we get some incredible insight and reaction from Marisa Rodriguez. After their current tour, I wonder where the band will head next. I have seen have they have grown and all they have achieved. They are primed for some worldwide stages and a lot more great things. If you have not heard them yet then make sure that you do:

“THE INDIEPENDENT: I’ve also read before that you have cited bands such as Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins as direct influences. How do you take influence from these artists without directly imitating them, is that a challenge?

Marisa: Well, I always say when people ask “how do you write your songs?” I don’t really know; I don’t know how to read music, I did study vocal performance at uni but I failed almost all the modules to do with theory! It was always just the songwriting and performance that I excelled in, it just comes from somewhere inside me, where I feel things. I listen to a lot of different music, and I will always love that nineties grunge era because of its rawness and emotive side.

THE INDIEPENDENT: Since you formed as a band in 2017 you have released two albums. With your latest album reaching No.1 in the official UK Rock Charts you must have plenty of pinch me moments to choose from, are there any that stand out?

Marisa: Yes, there are a bunch but immediately the first thing that springs to mind is gigs. For me, it’s like a couple of the festivals that we played. We did the prim Primordial General Mayhem a couple of years ago and it was our first big indoor gig. We were all absolutely bricking it! We met so many people after it and so many of our fans. Maybe that’s not what other people would pick as a standout but it really felt like a milestone kind of thing.

THE INDIEPENDENT: You spoke there about how much your fans mean to you and we also spoke briefly about the impact your music has on your fans – it being that “sing along, deep therapy session” as described also by your website, was that the intention?

Marisa: I always write songs structurally. Even if they are not pop, they structurally usually are. We always try to find a hook that will make it memorable for fans, in a similar way a pop song is put together.

THE INDIEPENDENT: You mention pop music there as being a structural influence to your music, is having people try to categorise your music and yourself as an artist something you have struggled with throughout your career?

Marisa: Absolutely! I think everyone wants to pigeonhole a band or an artist. We’ve realised in the last year that it was that “grunge” label that was probably holding us back a bit. It’s really hard to get people to take a chance on something new, so you end up labelling yourself with something they are familiar with to draw someone in.

THE INDIEPENDENT: I suppose that makes dealing with comparisons much more difficult at times?

Marisa: Yes, and I mean this with love when I say it but I think it’s quite common for people to compare female rock singers to the likes of Hayley Williams or Amy Lee because unfortunately, until now, we did not have many other people to compare them to. Not that I will ever be offended with such comparisons but it can be difficult.

THE INDIEPENDENT: I can imagine as well at times there is a pressure to have a certain fan demographic, a sort of ‘cult’ following if you like that is associated with this specific genre?

Marisa: Yes, I say there that it’s difficult and yet at the same time I think we’ve had a lot of crossover with fans because we are not an obvious straight down the middle rock band. We get a lot of people saying “we don’t really like this sort of rock but we love you guys” and so it’s just about getting the exposure.

THE INDIEPENDENT: There’s also been a lot of cultural changes to the way that we discover new music and new artists as well as the way we promote them. How do you feel about that as an independent artist?

Marisa: I was discussing this with my partner, Peter, who produced our album and helps me with bits of management when I’m overloaded and he said you need lots of ‘touch points’ to break an artist. You still need platforms beyond streaming services, such as the media in terms of music magazines, legitimate radio stations and you have to remain consistent with branding. They say it takes ten years to create an overnight success!

THE INDIEPENDENT: You’ve spoken about what a lot of your songs mean to you and hinted at the catharsis involved in your songwriting but is sharing your music with the fans another part of that healing process?

Marisa: Absolutely! It does scare me though, I was just finishing up writing the song ‘Meanings’, but I was kind of putting it off because it’s really hard to talk about some of these things and it’s very exposing for me because those words aren’t made up, they are really thoughts and feelings. It feels like you are standing naked with the lights on saying to people “judge me”.

THE INDIEPENDENT: You have achieved so much as a band already, but I would like to finish the interview by discussing what you have planned going forward beyond the tour?

Marisa: Obviously we want to grow. Our goal, like most bands, is to play bigger venues and grow our fanbase. Another thing coming up is the Abbey Road sessions that we recorded a few years ago, we never released the audio from that, so I re-recorded the vocals on that. Once we’ve done that, another thing we want to do is break out of the UK and play some venues in Europe. It will be an investment but we will do whatever it takes”.

I will end with a couple of critical reviews for Marisa and the Moths’ phenomenal album, What Doesn’t Kill You. The first interview is from Metal Planet Music. There has been so much love for the band and this album. I am going to try and see them live at some point. I hope some stations like BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 Music give some airing to Marisa and the Moths. Their loyal, growing and loving fanbase proves how good the band are and what an impact they are making already:

“UK band Marisa and the Moths release their second album and it is a cracker. A very deep and emotional release but the sheer talent shines through and no matter the lyrical content this made me very, very happy.

I have to put my hand up, I had avoided this band as every time I saw any mention of them I saw that one word that sends chills down my spine…Grunge. I hated that genre at the time it broke through and that emotion has never mellowed in me but how the hell is this band branded as Grunge? They are so far beyond that, so much better than that label and in What Doesn’t Kill me they have an incredible album and I have to say Marisa Rodriguez is my new found voice of 2024.

The album opens with a stunning track in “Cursed”. Think Evanescence with one of those haunting numbers like My Eternal. The piano is there, the outstanding vocals are there and the heart wrenching lyrics are there in spades. Marisa takes on songwriting duties and she is incredible on this song and throughout the album. This could very well be my song of 2024. This operatic and angelic number is just sublime.

Next track “Get it off my Chest” picks up the tempo and takes all the frustrations of the opening number and throws it into anger, aggression and some brutal instrumentation as well as some top notch screaming. As much as I mentioned Evanescence as the album wore on Maria Brink kept coming to mind more and more and Marisa definitely homed in on that woman’s aggression.

A little scrappy guitar opens “Borderline” and as Marissa comes into the equation you can really hear the tone in her voice and the range. This grows into a Pop/Punk number, more upbeat, more uplifting as some outstanding guitar work from Alessio D’Elia.

The Punk feel continues on “Wither Away” but 70s Punk with that scratchy, spit in your face edge. The guitars are on fire again. The songs follows on the bad relationship story and the breakdown vocals are very, very Maria Brink but why not…she is an angry woman.

We go full on Nu Metal with “Gaslight” and boy do I understand that title. This is a very powerful track and it really ramps up the energy and the metal sound. I loved this.

After a short interlude track we get “Who Are You Waiting For” and the opening is as close to Grunge as I could find on the album but it burst in with a ferocity and a kick as Marisa shouts to herself. Even through her own doubts and as low as she is she knows she is better that this, better than half of a disturbing and domineering relationship. The message? We are all better than that and do not just accept what you know for a simple life, pain is no simple thing!

“Pedestal” starts like one of Alice Cooper’s twisted numbers. An Evil funhouse feel to the guitars and Marisa the demented clown there to haunt your dreams for days. The song is a work of extremes like a fight inside your own thoughts.

“Straight Laced” opens like a 90s Punk number, one of the ones that starts slow and you get the up tempo happy mode but that part is missing. There is no happiness here. This is a simple number but when you have a voice like this you are there for the journey.

“Fake it Till you Make it” turns things around with the sound. The chaotic nature is still there but you can feel a change, a battle half won. This is a quirky but beautiful work of art and the guitar work is stunning again.

We get some sloppy, loose fretwork to portray the feelings on “Sad”. Marissa conveys her emotions so well through her singing here. You really do feel exhausted as the song takes us on its journey.

“Serotonin” is just perfection. That guitar, the desperate vocals and the emotions get you angry and when it kicks in the anger is written all over the track. An outstanding musical tapestry.

There is an indie feel on “Just Like Me”, an almost 80s vibe. It is simple, haunting and as catchy as hell. We get another interlude before we get into “Devil You Know”. This felt like a Norse chant before breaking into that Evanesce feel again. This song soars and screams for your attention.

“Lungs” closes the album and the song really has a feel of struggling to breath as it opens. You feel the struggle. The relationship between pain and sanctity. The crawling through a desert of feelings and emotions to get to the sanctuary that only water can quench. The water here is breaking out and standing undefeated on the other side.

What Doesn’t Kill You is not only a brilliant piece of musical work but it is a soul laid bare. It is passing on lessons that cut deep in order to self heal and to hopefully help others recognise their own worth.

This band and this album could very well be my find of the year and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for this talented four piece”.

I will end with this review from Now Spinning. I hope that there are more interviews and features around the band soon enough. That their music reached new countries and potential fans. On the road at the moment, they can take heart from the fact they have this wave of support and faith behind them:

“Firstly, I’m a little late with this album review, with this album having been released on the 3rd of May. What I can say though since then is, after its first week of release, ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’ debuted at No.1 on the Rock Chart in the UK and this week, the band have managed to get their ‘Borderline’ song listed as ‘Track of the Week’ by Classic Rock Magazine. No mean feet for an independently released album and testament to the power of their devoted fanbase. More about that later.

In almost all reviews of this album there will be long passages dedicated to documenting the personal struggles and band splintering that have taken place between the release of the band’s debut album and the aptly titled ‘What doesn’t Kill You’. I’m not going to cover that again, other than to confirm that it’s no hype! And that for such a relatively young band, MATM are already establishing a (Pete Frame) family tree to rival the likes of Fleetwood Mac! All of which have provided Marisa Rodriguez with plenty of lived experience to sing with passion about.

The now established line up of the band are as stable as this band has ever been and seem genuinely committed to each other. Longtime bass stalwart Liam Barnes is a great talent in the band. Singer, bass player, guitar player. He and Marisa herself were among the first acts to fully embrace lockdown live experiences and that time, in retrospect, was so vital in building the hugely devoted following the band has gained.

Alez D’Elia has replaced the revolving door of female guitar players (which included Sophie Lloyd on the first record) and he fits perfectly. Alex Ribchester completes the band on drums. But make no mistake, Marisa herself is the star of the show here.

Marisa possesses a god given voice, reminiscent of Julianne Regan of All About Eve at times, although this is coincidental, as they were not a band Marisa listened to in her formative years. Musically the songs fit into the alt-rock category, I guess. There are as many Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkin influences here as well as other iconic bands from past history

‘Cursed’ opens the album, with Marisa’s haunting and misleadingly frail vocal, over piano and strings leading into the crushing rock of ‘Get It Off My Chest.
Throughout the album Marisa’s voice is just mesmerising, but in a forward move from the debut, the angst in the lyrics sees her able to move from frail to ferocious in a heartbeat. ‘Wither’ is Hole-style grunge, sung from experience. ‘Who Are You Waiting For’ is another highlight, but the biggest surprise shift from the style of the debut is ‘Devil’.

Another hugely personal lyric sees Marisa caress us and curse us with that voice, from the angelic to demonic death style screeches of emphasis. All while the band is given a huge production in what may be their most impressive song yet.

The band have been hitting the live circuit and seem to be making more new friends at every show. The band’s fanbase have funded the independently released album, made it debut at number 1 in the rock chart and now it’s time to take the band to the masses.

Marisa And The Moths deserve every second of success. They have MORE than earned it and are well worth your time to investigate”.

I shall leave it here. I remember back to when I first met Marisa Rodriguez. Quite a few years back now. More or less starting out, I knew then she would go a long way! In spite of some change since their formations, Marisa and the Moths seem settled and hungry. Many more years ahead of them. Make sure that you do not miss on the opportunity to throw your weight behind…

THEIR brilliant music.

____________

Follow Marisa and the Moths

Official:

https://www.marisaandthemoths.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/marisaandthemoths/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Marisa_Moths

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/marisaandthemoths

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4AjGhQCCyOseKcUC5O1U7b?si=2KZouXsHQLCmCoJiAHXMEQ

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/marisaandthemoths

Bandcamp:

https://marisaandthemoths.bandcamp.com/

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Songs from Brilliant 2020 Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Songs from Brilliant 2020 Albums

_________

I am returning…

IN THIS PHOTO: J Hus/PHOTO CREDIT: Olivia Rose

to albums and songs from 2020, as Dua Lipa’s phenomenal second studio album, Future Nostalgia, turns five on 27th March. Maybe five is not a significant anniversary, and it definitely shouldn’t be marked with a vinyl reissue of an album! I think a tenth anniversary is the earliest we can do that. However, this time five years ago, we were in the grip of the pandemic and lockdown. 23rd March, 2020 was when the first lockdown was announced. As such, an album like Future Nostalgia was strange but wonderful. Dua Lipa could not tour it or do much promotion. There were some fantastic albums released in 2020, at a time when things were stopped and we were experiencing music in a slightly different way. I found April 2020 especially interesting when it comes to albums. Works of brilliance from Laura Marling (Song for Our Daughter) and Fiona Apple (Fetch the Bolt Cutters) helping us get through a very difficult time - as were many other artists. We can look back on 2020 albums with a different perspective and set of emotions. However, it is important to recognise how impactful the albums were considering what the whole world was experiencing in 2020. It has been a pleasure to revisit important albums…

FROM 2020.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry on Their Own

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

PHOTO CREDIT: Jason Bell

Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry on Their Own

_________

THE reason…

I am examining Amy Winehouse’s Tears Dry on Their Own is two-fold. For one, it is one of her career-best tracks and a perfect distillation of her vocal and lyrical talents. A stunning song that was included on her second studio album, Back to Black, of 2006. In 2005, twenty years ago, Winehouse began recording songs for Back to Black at Salaam Remi's (who co-produced the album) Instrumental Zoo Studios in Miami. The songs recorded there included Tears Dry on Their Own, Some Unholy War, Me & Mr Jones, Just Friends and Addicted. Winehouse sang while playing the guitar. Remi played the piano and bass guitar, and added other instruments. Vincent Henry played the saxophone, flute, and clarinet. It must have been so spellbinding watching a song like Tears Dry on Their Own come together. As it is almost twenty years since the first recordings for Back to Black were laid down, I wanted to spotlight one of the most celebrates tracks from the album. Tears Dry on Their Own was the fourth single released from Back to Black. It came out on 13th August, 2007 where it reached sixteen in the U.K. Even if the melody and lyrics were composed by Winehouse, the music that backs Winehouse’s voice is an interpolation of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's 1967 song Ain't No Mountain High Enough. That classic was written by the legendary by Ashford & Simpson. The original ballad version of Tears Dry on Their Own is featured on the posthumous album, Lioness: Hidden Treasures (2011). Blending Soul and Motown, it is a distinct and extraordinary song. Track seven on her iconic Back to Black, I wanted to explore the track a little more before finishing up.

It is a shame more has not been written about Tears Dry on Their Own. I haven’t included a review from Drowned in Sound who, when the single came out, were somewhat cynical about why it was released. As the fourth single from Back to Black, they bemoaned artists releasing more than three single. Even if it only just cracked the top twenty, it is a song that deserves its moment in the spotlight. Plenty of artists today release multiple singles from their album. Rather than it being about making money or bleeding an album dry, it was an opportunity for Tears Dry on Their Own to separate from the rest of Back to Black. Get its own amazing music video. I like the fact that Winehouse got the be involved in the video and it looks like it was a good set. I am going to end with an article from last year centred around the release of a lyric video version. One with some unreleased footage. Before getting to that, American Songwriter wrote about the meaning behind one of Amy Winehouse’s greatest tracks:

“In the opening verse, Winehouse tells the listener how her relationship soured. Once it was so right, when we were at our high, she sings, setting up the painful reality of her love story.

“I was with someone that I couldn’t really be with and I knew it wouldn’t last,” Winehouse once said of the inspiration behind this song. “But I think because I knew it couldn’t last, it’s kinda like saying, “I’m upset, but I know I’ll get over it, I guess.”

You can find those themes easily in these powerful lyrics. I knew I hadn’t met my match…I don’t know why I got so attached, she sings in the second verse.

I don’t understand, why do I stress the man?
When there’s so many bigger things at hand
We coulda never had it all, we had to hit a wall
So this is inevitable withdrawal

Winehouse had many songs that were about the pitfalls of love. She often sang about unfaithful men and the pain they caused her. While many artists have delivered similar messages, few are as visceral as Winehouse’s tale of love gone awry.

This song is no exception. She says things that many of us would find hard to say out loud. Even if I stop wanting you, a perspective pushes through / I’ll be some next man’s other woman soon, she says. This song sees Winehouse partially defeated and partially emboldened by her ability to speak plainly about her pain”.

Last year saw the release of the Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black. With Marisa Abela portraying Winehouse; it was an extraordinary performance. Even if reviews were mixed, Abela’s performance was incredible. It also provided a new opportunity for fans to think about Amy Winehouse’s award-winning album. It is brilliant that we got to see new footage of Winehouse for the lyric video for Tears Dry on Their Own. NME reported on the new video:

“The 2007 single appears on Winehouse’s classic second studio album, 2006’s ‘Back To Black’. Today (April 10), fresh visuals for the song have been shared ahead of the new Back To Black biopic hitting cinemas this Friday (12).

Per an official description, the ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’ lyric clip was created by using outtakes from the original David LaChapelle-directed music video, which was shot in Los Angeles, California.

The first scene finds Winehouse kneeling on her bed in a motel room before she walks out onto the street. Later, we see the star fixing her iconic beehive hairdo in between takes as a clapperboard enters the shot.

Further unscripted and unused moments from the shoot show Winehouse laughing on set and rolling her eyes at the camera while singing the chorus.

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, Back To Black tells the story of Winehouse in a feature-length film for the first time. The biopic follows the star from her teenage years, growing up in north London, through her meteoric rise to a Grammy-winning sensation in the ’00s”.

I have been thinking about 2005 and Amy Winehouse out in Miami working on songs with Salaam Remi. Some classics that would appear on Back to Black. Sounding different in production tone to the ones she recorded with Mark Ronson – such as the epic and sweeping title track -, I wanted to mark twenty years of Tears Dry on Their Own. One of the jewels from Back to Black, I know there will be celebrations next year when Back to Black turns twenty. It will be bittersweet. We lost Amy Winehouse in 2011. There has been no one like her since. There never will be! A once-in-a-generation talent whose legacy will be felt for decades. She was a true…

GIFT to the world.

FEATURE: Do Bears…? Kate Bush and a Notable Charity Connection from 1986

FEATURE:

 

 

Do Bears…?

IN THIS PHOTO: Rowan Atkinson and Kate Bush sing a duet, Do Bears…?, at Comic Relief Live, a live comedy show presented on the evenings of 4th, 5th and 6th April, 1986 at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London's West End/PHOTO CREDIT: Comic Relief/Comic Relief via Getty Images 

Kate Bush and a Notable Charity Connection from 1986

_________

IN a recent feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate with Lenny Henry and Dawn French (out of shot) at the launch of the Comic Relief book and VHS video in 1986

I asked why Kate Bush was not invited to perform at Live Aid in 1985. Even though this was a couple of months before Hounds of Love was released, it is not like she was obsolete. However, many of those in the press were writing her off. It was a case of poor timing I guess. If Hounds of Love was released earlier in 1985, I am sure Bush would have been included to perform for Live Aid. In 1984, the Band Aid single, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, was released. Again, Kate Bush was not asked to be part of that. This might suggest she turned down the offers or did not want to be involved. She has said since how she probably would have agreed if she has been approached. Even if Bush was not involved in two of the biggest charity endeavours of the mid-1980s, this would be corrected in 1986. Kate Bush was part of the Comic Relief line-up. Maybe disappointed she was not part of the and Aid/Live Aid collective, Bush was more visible than ever shortly after doing work for charity. Kate Bush fans know how much she has given to charity through her career. Even recently when Little Shrew (Snowflake) was released last year to raise money for War Child. Kate performed Breathing (from 1980’s Never for Ever) and a brilliant duet with Rowan Atkinson, Do Bears...? Recordings appear on the album, Utterly Utterly Live at the Shaftesbury Theatre: Comic Relief. After releasing Hounds of Love in 1985, there was a lot of new critical love and respect for Kate Bush. Rather than tour or taking time off, Bush spent a lot of the period after its releasing engaging in charitable events. Comic Relief is memorable, not only because it was the one and only time she performed Breathing on television. The duet with Rowan Atkinson allowed Bush to display some natural wit and comic timing.

A great pairing with Rowan Atkinson, it must have been a thrill for her singing with an actor who was best-known at that point for his role of Edmund Blackadder in Blackadder II. Comic Relief Utterly Utterly Live took place on 4th, 5th and 6th April, 1986 at the Shaftesbury Theatre. It wasn’t until 1988 when the first Red Nose Day and Comic Relief took place. Blackadder II aired its final episode on 20th February, 1986, so audiences would have been quite surprised to see Rowan Atkinson out of period costume performing alongside an artist who, until that point, had not been too involved with comedy. Do Bears…? is one of the highlights of Utterly Utterly Live at the Shaftesbury Theatre: Comic Relief. 1986 was a busy year for Kate Bush. I shall return to her charity work. Kate Bush was also an award winner in 1986. When she attended the BPI Awards (which would become the BRITs), where she won two awards,  including Best Female Solo Artist. She also performed an amazing version of Hounds of Love that evening.

The same year, her brother John Carder Bush released the Cathy photobook. Black-and-white photos of his sister taken when she was a girl, it was a moment when there was a lot of commercial success and critical acclaim for Bush, so this release found a more willing audience. That book was meant to be the first of a trilogy but, respecting his sister’s privacy and owing to production problems, only one volume was released. Bush featured on Peter Gabriel’s album, So, on the incredible duet, Don’t Give Up. She also appeared on a Big Country track, The Seer (from the album of the same name). Enjoying a great relationship with EMI, David Munns suggested a best of compilation Bush was reluctant at first. Munns argued it would buy her time between albums; it was a great commercial moment to ‘cash in’; it would reengage fans who dropped out after 1982’s The Dreaming but also provide new fans a glimpse back at her previous singles. Munns let Bush know she would have to do little promotion but did want a new song for the album. Offering a big-budget video, this appealed to Bush. EMI mounted a big T.V. and print campaign. Bush agreed and insisted that the album cover be a simple black-and-white photo that was to be shot by John Carder Bush. After providing the world her masterpiece in 1985, the following year saw this mix of retrospection and charity work. Bush wanted to give something back.

On 25th May, 1986, Bush participated in the Sport Aid mini marathon in Blackheath, south London. I look back on the Richard Curtis-written Do Bears…? Comic Relief was co-founded by Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry. Curtis, who co-wrote Blackadder II with Ben Elton, knew Rowan Atkinson would be perfect for the song. However, he would not have known whether Bush would be able to match Atkinson’s chops. She did! Even though Atkinson and Bush definitely looked the part – Atkinson in a gold lamé jacket; Bush in her shoulder-padded suit jacket -, the song wasn’t especially funny. The joke being they were avoiding singing the word ‘shit’. Instead, substituting the words with ‘sha-la-la’. However, it was great to see Bush in comedic mode. Giving up her time for a worthy cause. This comedy connection carried into her music. For Experiment IV, the newly-written song for the greatest hits collection was The Whole Story. The video featured, among others, Dawn French and Hugh Laurie (who appeared on the same Comic Relief bill as Bush). This 1986 appearance lit a bit of a fuse. Bush back on stage. The following year, in 1987, Bush performed at the Secret Policeman’s Third Ball, raising money for Amnesty International. On stage alongside David Gilmour and his band, although Bush seemed nervous or on edge to start, she soon relaxed in and delivered a stunning rendition of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). In think 1986 was one of her busiest years. One where she was still promoting Hounds of Love and very much in the public eye, there was her greatest hits album and the Sport Aid mini marathon that must have been a lot of fun. It was that appearance with Rowan Atkinson and their duet that really strikes me. It proves that Kate Bush had…

A wonderful heart and sense of humour.

FEATURE: To Give Away a Secret: The Solitary Performance of the Majestic Under the Ivy

FEATURE:

 

 

To Give Away a Secret

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

The Solitary Performance of the Majestic Under the Ivy

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IT originally…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

started out as the B-side to Hounds of Love’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). The first single from Hounds of Love was released on 5th August, 1985. I am excited to mark the song’s fortieth anniversary later in the year. Many who bought the single in 1985 were unaware that such a phenomenal song was on its B-side. A month before the album came out, the first taste of it was released. It is a shame that Under the Ivy was not written during the making of Hounds of Love as it would have been a magnificent album track and would have got more exposure and discussion. As it is, this song remains a bit of a curiosity. In my view Bush’s first B-side, not a lot has been written about this gem. Under the Ivy was recorded in the studio in just one afternoon. This beautiful piece of music flowed out of Kate Bush. I am going to come to the solitary performance of this track. Ask why it was not include in Bush’s 2014 residency, Before the Dawn, and why the song has not been given more focus. Before discussing the sole performance of Under the Ivy, here is some background about the track. Kate Bush talking about what Under the Ivy is all about:

“It’s very much a song about someone who is sneaking away from a party to meet someone elusively, secretly, and to possibly make love with them, or just to communicate, but it’s secret, and it’s something they used to do and that they won’t be able to do again. It’s about a nostalgic, revisited moment. (…) I think it’s sad because it’s about someone who is recalling a moment when perhaps they used to do it when they were innocent and when they were children, and it’s something that they’re having to sneak away to do privately now as adults.

Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985

I needed a track to put on the B-Side of the single Running Up That Hill so I wrote this song really quickly. As it was just a simple piano/vocal, it was easy to record. I performed a version of the song that was filmed at Abbey Road Studios for a TV show which was popular at the time, called The Tube. It was hosted by Jools Holland and Paula Yates. I find Paula’s introduction to the song very touching.

It was filmed in Studio One at Abbey Rd. An enormous room used for recording large orchestras, choirs, film scores, etc. It has a vertiginously high ceiling and sometimes when I was working in Studio Two,  a technician, who was a good friend, would take me up above the ceiling of Studio One. We had to climb through a hatch onto the catwalk where we would then crawl across and watch the orchestras working away, completely unaware of the couple of devils hovering in the clouds, way above their heads!  I used to love doing this – the acoustics were heavenly at that scary height.  We used to toy with the idea of bungee jumping from the hatch.

KateBush.com, February 2019”.

Referring back to Tom Doyle’s book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush, he has a chapter dedicated to Kate Bush performing Under the Ivy on The Tube in 1986. This show is not one you would think would platform Kate Bush. There is nothing quite like it now. Free-flowing and chaotic, it was hosted by Jools Holland and Paula Yates. Launched on 5th November, 1982 – four days after Channel 4 was launched in the U.K. -, this live show as untameable and exciting. Rather than being filmed out of London, The Tube was filmed in Newcastle for Tyne Tees Television. One of the most memorable moments in the show’s history was when Miles Davis was involved in quite a strange and stilted interview. Apparently, Jools Holland took Davis to a pub across the road after the show. A grumpy landlord looked at Davis and his trumpet case and said that there was no way he was playing that in here! Even though Bush did not travel to Newcastle for her appearance, she was involved in a pre-recorded performance at Abbey Road Studios, London. Celebrating the show’s one-hundredth episode, Bush was in a safe space at Abbey Road. Somewhere she had recorded before it was the only airing of one of her most overlooked songs. A song that needed to be written quickly so that there was an original B-side for the first single from Hounds of Love, I wonder how many listeners who bought Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) – simply called Running Up That Hill then – flipped over the single and listened to Under the Ivy.

The Newcastle crew came down to St John’s Wood in London to film Kate Bush. Walking across the world-famous zebra crossing, they all started singing The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun. In her introduction, after calling the crew “silly fools”, Paula Yates explained how they were not here “to do The Beatles”. Instead, they were there to “do Kate Bush”. Yates incorrectly said how Bush had her first hit aged nineteen – it was corrected to eighteen in post – and how she broke barriers and crossed boundaries with her music. Even if the tone and wording towards the end of her introduction seemed slightly “piss taking” (as Tom Doyle writes), Bush later said how touched she was. Doyle notes how a song that is about finding a private sanctuary to hide away was appropriate for Abbey Road’s Studio One. A space Bush often hid way in, I did not know that when she was recording in Studio Two, an engineer led her through a secret route into the rafters of the larger room. They would go up over the ceiling, through a hatch and crawl across a high beam, where they could look down on the orchestral players below. Bush said how she loved doing that. How the acoustics were “heavenly” listening from that height. Bush often imagined herself bungee jumping down. In a stripped-back performance of the song, Bush delivered a sublime take. Under the Ivy is about the narrator/her slipping away from the party and under the ivy. To a secret spot to meet a lover or friend perhaps. Whether they were there to fool around or find some quiet, it was maybe two people who used to have a crush in childhood and are picking up this romance. It is a fascinating song that is not often played or talked about.

For the performance (which was broadcast on 19th March, 1986) at Abbey Road, Bush was behind a piano. She looked completely calm and composed – though I can imagine she was nervous – and ended the song by looking up and smiling at the camera. It is a shame that Under the Ivy was never performed live after that. I do wonder why it was not included for Before the Dawn. It would have been good to include in the encore alongside Among Angels and Cloudbusting. There has not been an animated video or anything for the song. Under the Ivy is not available on Spotify. Such a shame that a song as wonderful as this has a brief period of exposure! It came out in 1985 and was performed for the only time the year after. Nearly forty years later, very little engagement with the song. I do think that it deserves a reissue. If there are plans for Bush to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Hounds of Love in September, maybe a new single reissue of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) with Under the Ivy as the B-side again. Without doubt her finest B-side, this gem of a song is worthy of so much more. I would urge people to listen to it now. One of Bush’s most stirring and beautiful vocals. I love the performance she gave for The Tube in 1986. It is a moving and…

HUGELY evocative track.

FEATURE: Can I Kick It? A Tribe Called Quest’s People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Can I Kick It?

A Tribe Called Quest’s People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm at Thirty-Five

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THIS anniversary feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: A Tribe Called Quest. From left to right, Jarobi White, Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Phife Dawg/PHOTO CREDIT: Ernie Paniccioli/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

is about a remarkable debut album. A Tribe Called Quest’s People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm turns thirty-five on 17th April. I wanted to spend some time discussing the incredible debut from the Hip-Hop group. I guess People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm was quite radically at the time. When it came out in 1990, its laidback lyrics and use of samples was not common in Hip-Hop. Similar to an album that came out a year previous: Del La Soul’s phenomenal debut, 3 Feet High and Rising. For their debut, A Tribe Called Quest began recording sessions in late-1989 at Calliope Studios. It was completed in early-1990. In terms of legacy, not only did People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm widen Hip-Hop’s vocabulary and was forward-thinking in terms of its use of samples. All these years later, the album has inspired so many other artists. From Ms. Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo and J Dilla, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm has made a huge impact. I am going to end with a review for the twenty-fifth anniversary release (2015). I am starting out with a couple of features for one of the most influential and stunning Hip-Hop albums ever. One of the best debut albums ever. I want to start out with a 2015 feature from Legacy Recordings. They were marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. It arrived at a time when there was a diversification of Hip-Hop. Even if Del La Soul and their Daisy Age sound was criticised by some, it did offer something more thoughtful and gentle. Not that this sound lacked impact and power. Many expected groups like De La Soul to have the same sort of attitude and sound as Public Enemy and the sound of West Coast Rap. More political and cutting. A Tribe Called Quest arrived in 1990 and provided new colours and layers. Maybe their lyrics sound out of place now and have not aged as well as other Hip-Hop groups/albums. However, it is clear how important People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is:

“But, before they could create legendary hip-hop, they had to locate each other. Q-Tip and Phife did that in 3rd grade, as Jonathan Davis and Malik Taylor, at the Linden Seventh-day Adventist School in Laurelton, Queens. Perhaps the fact that both were transplants drew them together; that they’d both recently changed schools after getting into fights at their former institutions. Their connection was instant. “He was just a funny dude to me,” recalls Q-Tip. “Funny as hell. He just had everybody dyin’.”

Of course, this being the late ’70s, hip-hop was becoming the lingua franca of young Black men. This also bonded them. Tip had discovered the culture at the age of 6, not only as he was dragged to park jams by a sister twice his age, but as the rowdy motorcycle club next to their home blasted beats by night.

Phife’s intro came around age 8, while staying with his grandmother. (He did this throughout elementary school while his parents worked.) A friend from across the street deejayed, and kept tapes of the Cold Crush Brothers, Funky Four + 1, Treacherous 3, on PLAY. “I latched on everything he had. I used to say everyone’s raps. Then, I started making up my own words. And Q-Tip was my best friend, so we started doing it together.”

Around 12, Phife met Jarobi, and introduced him to Q-Tip. Then, in high school — that is, the Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers, in lower Manhattan — Q-Tip would meet Ali Shaheed, and connect him with the others. The quartet was now complete.

Taking the name Quest — it won out over “The Crush Connection,” says Phife — the crew labored to put together a demo. Four tracks — “Funky Fire,” “Routine,” “Bonita Applebum,” and “Pubic Enemy” — soon made their way out to the labels. Needless to say, the companies loved what they heard, and the group was immediately signed. Right?

Nope. The feedback came in both fast and furious. “They totally just shitted on us,” admits Jarobi. “Tip was ‘bad,’ Phife was…something, and I was ‘just horrible.’ All the bad superlatives you can think of (laughs), that was us. They hated us.”

Quest were still in their mid-teens, at that point. Recording People’s was about three years away. However, today, Jarobi chalks up the reviews, not to their youth, but to the labels’ un-youth. “They weren’t ready.” He explains, stressing that, up until then, “there was a more…mechanic sound to hip-hop; not as melodic as the music that we’d started making.” The era’s dominant rhythms were all “straight 4/4, 808 drums, and James Brown samples, everything on the one, very straightforward. It wasn’t until De La, Jungle, us, and a couple of other groups came in that the music started getting movement.”

But that didn’t happen right away. Engineer Bob Power, with Dr. Shane Faber, oversaw the People’s Instinctive Travels recording sessions at the now defunct Calliope Studios. Power says that rap artists were facing fairly widespread resistance at the mixing console, too.

Because of sampling, “hip-hop used different techniques of recording,” he notes, “and different source materials, and the sonic ethic was very different than conventional engineering at the time.” When the culture’s creators showed up at most studios — rough-talking Black teenagers rocking skullies, Carhartts, Tims, and lugging crates of vinyl, their rhyme notebooks, 40s, pagers, and blunts — “the white, male boys’ club of the engineering establishment saw them and said, ‘I don’t understand how these people are dressed, I don’t understand how they talk, and that’s not music,’” he admits, adding, “I think, to some degree, there may have been an unconscious factor of racism involved.”

Perhaps, Power states, because “Calliope was one of the cheapest studios in town, and the engineering staff there, didn’t ever really say, ‘Oh, that’s wrong, that’s not the way to do things,’” they won over hip-hop’s intelligentsia. “Jungle in one room, recording,” recalls Phife, of the period. “De La Soul in another room, recording. Latifah in another room, recording. Prince Paul,” alternately with De La, or his band, Stetsasonic. “Everybody was there.”

As for the process of making the album, says Q-Tip, “it was exciting. We were kinda left to our own devices, pretty much. It was just a great environment, conducive for creating.”

When I ask Tip what he means, he’s reflective. “When we were in the studio, we didn’t have the cell phones, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have a whole bunch of things to tear at us.

“When we got to the studio, the specific job was to make music. There was no TV in there. It was all instruments, all speakers. It was just music. Eat food, listen to music, that’s it. If there was a phone call, somebody would come in from the office and say, ‘There’s a phone call,’ and usually, it would be for the adult engineer. It was just great. And I really believe that’s how it should be, when you’re cre-a-ting.” He sounds out each syllable for emphasis, before summing up. “The process, for People’s Instinctive Travels, to me, was utopia.”

If it was perfection for Tribe, it would prove to be even more so for a number of hardy souls. These are the ones who, on the strength of the singles and amazing word of mouth, ponied up to the registers on Tuesday, April 10, 1990 and bought the premiere album by this untried group.

As a result, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm reached #91 on Billboard’s Top 200, and #23 on the magazine’s Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart. “I Left My Wallet In El Segundo” and “Can I Kick It?” both became Top Ten Hot Rap singles, hitting #9 and #8, respectively, with “Bonita Applebum” achieving Top 5 status, at #4. Finally, People’s Instinctive Travels has been certified gold, having sold over 500,000 copies.

Today, many consider the first time they heard the album a personal, life turning point. Twenty-five years after its 1990 release, it is widely recognized as the seminal statement by artists who are now, unquestionably, legends; their names carved indelibly in the great walls of hip-hop history and culture. We hear their massive influence whenever we listen to the music of Common, Talib Kweli, The Fugees, D’Angelo, Mos Def, Erykah Badu, and Kanye West, among numerous others. And it all started here, on this album. Clearly, Jarobi, Phife, Ali, and Tip did something incredibly right”.

I will get to a review soon. First, Albumism explored People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm as part of a series that looked at one-hundred dynamic debut albums. Published in 2017, they showed a lot of love for a work of genius that has no filler at all. A Tribe Called Quest carried this debut momentum into their subsequent albums. A force to be reckoned with:

“Released in the spring of 1990, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm has admittedly gained more respect as time has passed. But it still resides in the shadows of its two immediate successors (1991’s The Low End Theory and 1993’s Midnight Marauders), relegated to a role akin to the forgotten first child within the broader context of A Tribe Called Quest’s recorded output. Which is perplexing, at least to my ears. For while the album may be understated relative to its more universally lauded counterparts, it is exceptional in its own right, and one of the most imaginative debut albums ever recorded, hip-hop or otherwise.

Harboring neither grand schemes nor lofty delusions of crossover pop grandeur, Tribe’s debut didn’t purport to be anything other than what it is: a cleverly unorthodox and sonically inventive celebration of life, love, and music. Following in the creative footsteps of Jungle Brothers’ Straight Out the Jungle (1988) and Done by the Forces of Nature (1989), as well as De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), People’s Instinctive Travels embodied and expanded upon the Native Tongues collective’s trademark virtues of playfulness, positivity, and pride. Equal measures whimsy and wit, the album exudes an unparalleled bohemian cool, Afrocentric sophistication, and admirable humility, all of which combine for an irresistibly vibrant and soul-affirming listening experience.

Sonically, the album is an intoxicating mélange of melodic sounds and expertly incorporated samples, primarily culled from 1970s jazz, soul and funk records, which together provide the perfect canvas for Q-Tip and the late great Phife Dawg to flex their skills. Clocking in just shy of eight minutes and riding along a sweet Grover Washington, Jr. sample (“Loran’s Dance”), the album’s first track “Push It Along” is an epic way for Tribe to introduce themselves. I’ve always loved Q-Tip’s opening verse, which formally announces Tribe’s noble musical vision and humble disposition: “Q-Tip is my title, I don’t think that it’s vital / For me to be your idol, but dig this recital / If you can’t envision a brother who ain’t dissing / Slinging this and that, cause this and that was missing / Instead, it’s been injected, the Tribe has been perfected / Oh yes, it’s been selected, the art makes it protected / Afrocentric living, Africans be givin’ / A lot to the cause ’cause the cause has been risen.”

Other highlights abound. A document of an impromptu road trip gone awry, “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo was Tribe’s first-ever single and video that cemented their unconventional approach to songcraft and penchant for compelling storytelling. “Bonita Applebum,” the album’s second and arguably most recognizable single, is Q-Tip’s endearing plea to the object of his infatuation, articulated over a fantastic sample of RAMP‘s “Daylight.” The combination of Q-Tip & Phife’s inspired rhymes, the playful call-and-response chorus, and ingenious lifting of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and Dr. Lonnie Smith‘s “Spinning Wheel” on “Can I Kick It?” coalesce for one unforgettable track.

A wonderful ode to an idyllic day spent in the comfort of close friends, it’s damn near impossible to resist bopping your head and tapping your feet to “After Hours,” a feel-good anthem that samples Sly & The Family Stone and Richard Pryor. A tough call, but my personal favorite happens to be “Footprints,” an addictive groove with Q-Tip’s fervent rhymes gliding across a harmonious mix of samples courtesy of Donald Byrd, The Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Stevie Wonder, and Public Enemy”.

I will end with a review from Pitchfork for People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. I have compared A Tribe Called Quest to De La Soul. In the sense of the delivery. However, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is full of conscious rap that they wove through subsequent albums. However, like many of their more energised and ‘angrier’ peers, there was something distinct about the delivery and vibe of A Tribe Called Quest:

“Approaching A Tribe Called Quest's seminal debut in 2015 is a loaded venture. The Queens, N.Y. trio (and sometimes "y" quartet, counting Jarobi) is one of the most revered acts in hip-hop—and with good reason. As part of the Afrocentric and innovative Native Tongues collective—which included De La Soul,  Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, Black Sheep, and others—they created and refined a template for '90s hip-hop that was street-astute, worldly, and more inspirational than aspirational.

Even without the Native Tongues' legacy, Tribe's heritage is not a light one. There's no stretch in saying that, without A Tribe Called Quest, the biggest rap artists of this year—Drake, Future, and Kendrick Lamar—would not exist as they do. Drake would not be Drake without Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak; Kanye would not be Kanye without his Tribe influences. Without Tribe, the Dungeon Family—birthplace of Outkast, Goodie Mob, and Future—arguably does not exist. And the improvisational looseness of Kendrick's opus is unthinkable without the innumerable branches of jazz and hip-hop sprouting from Tribe's experimentation, which differed significantly from the cooler jazz-sample leanings of Stetsasonic and Gang Starr. There's no Mos Def, no J. Cole, no Common, no J Dilla, no Digable Planets, no Neptunes, and no Clipse as we know them. Tribe is that important. And this album—the first ever to receive a perfect "5 Mic" rating from The Source magazine—is where it all began.

Arriving a year after De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm showed Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi to be whimsical yet grounded in reality. They weren't heady, hermetic, and puzzling like De La; in comparison to 3 Feet High's astounding range and informative sound collages, People's Instinctive Travels was clean and focused. Where De La went wide musically, Tribe went deep; where De La was deep and dense lyrically, Tribe went wide and abstract. That both projects managed to do all they were able to do and remain fun is one of the great wonders of hip-hop's first golden age.

Encountered now, in 2015,  A People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm feels like a palette cleanser. Considered with Kendrick Lamar's layered and angsty self-examination on To Pimp A Butterfly, the blunting and numbing escapist bounce of Future's DS2, and Drake's bombastic and moody mythological affirmations from If You're Reading This It's Too Late, it's an album that's largely focused outside of itself and its creators. There are three added cuts for this reissue—remixes by Pharrell, J. Cole, and CeeLo—that are passable and melodic but unneeded. Tribe's music needs no updating, even when it sticks out like a sore thumb, because that's exactly what it did in 1990.

"I Left My Wallet In El Segundo", with its eight-bar flip of the Chamber Brothers' "Funky" and Wes Anderson-like narrative, is sparse and simple. But it more than stands up, thanks in no small part to Bob Power's remastering, which makes everything sound fuller and crisper and which uses the empty space between the newly clarified sounds to create groove and warmth. On a fresh listen, the reason "Bonita Applebum" (powered largely by a generous  sample of  Ramp's "Daylight") is still considered one the best loved songs hip-hop has ever produced becomes clear—musically it's sunny and spry, capturing blushes of virgin courtship. It's objectifying, but respectful; cocksure but awkward; flattering and freaky: Q-Tip praises his desired's "elaborate eyes," promises to "kiss you where some brothers won't" and offers that, "So far, I hope you like rap songs."

The rhymes here are at once conversational and repressed, the topics concurrently large and small. Diet is tackled on "Ham 'N' Eggs" with Tip and Phife rhyming in tandem, "A tisket, a tasket, what's in mama's basket?/ Some veggie links and some fish that stinks/ Why, just the other day, I went to Grandma's house/ Smelled like she conjured up a mouse. " Sexual fidelity and STD's are dealt with on "Pubic Enemy" via "Old King Cole" who "wore the crown but not the jimmy hat" until one day "the fair maiden in the royal bedroom/ Caught the king scratching." Sex and safe sex were at the forefront of Q-Tip's mind—props (women) are referred to often, and the most important thing about retrieving his wallet from El Segundo seems to be reclaiming his "props' numbers" and condoms, or "jimmy hats."

The group is marked for their social consciousness, but not merely because of their awareness, but their ability to wax simultaneously about politics and art. On "Push It Along", Tip traverses police brutality, community unity, and rap dreams in a few bars, managing to be an approachable advocate for responsibility without seeming didactic: "The pigs are wearing blue/ And in a year or two/  We'll be going up the creek in a great big canoe / What we gonna do? Save me and my brothers?/ Hop inside the bed and pull over the covers?/ Never will we do that and we ain't trying to rule rap/ We just want a slab of the ham, don't you know, black?" The lyrics are 25 years old. But were they released today they'd seem right on time, while being out of place—because all these many years later People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is more than a nostalgia artifact. It's a worthy listen, not because of what it was, but because of what it is”.

Even though some sites say People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm came out on 10th April, 1990, Discogs and other sites say it is 17th April. I will go with the latter. Thirty-five very soon, I wanted to shine a light on one of the all-time great debuts. This album kicked off the career of one of Hip-Hop’s…

MOST innovative and influential acts.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Six Sex

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Paula Montenegro for Remezcla

Six Sex

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ONE of the most…

PHOTO CREDIT: Catalina Jacobo

arresting artists of the moment is Six Sex. Although there are not many interviews out there with her, I want to bring in a couple. I will end with a review of Six Sex’s recent E.P., X-sex. If you do not know about Six Sex then make sure that you follow this brilliant Argentinian artist. I am going to start out with an interview from last year. Hailing the “Queen of the Perreo Rave”, it is an interesting insight into someone who I think is going to have a remarkable remainder of 2025:

“Just write mocatriz: modelo, cantante y actriz,” says Argentine perreo vixen Six Sex, giggling from her Buenos Aires bedroom. The cheeky reference to Spanish camp provocateurs Ojete Calor aligns perfectly with her patented brand of sonic and aesthetic irreverence, where raunchy mutant reggaeton meets strobing rave excess. Pull up her music videos, and you’ll see long black tresses cascading down to an exposed washboard midriff, while her decked-out fingernails are longer than the barely-there skirt hems. Six Sex epitomizes the delicious, genre-voracious hedonism flourishing in underground Porteño parties, and her music produces a unique type of synesthesia where instead of seeing sounds, you actually get a strong whiff of poppers.

“Six Sex is kind of a character that comes to life through music and video,” she confides to Remezcla. “I’d love to be a guiding light for any young people who feel lost or confused, and that through my music, can be empowered to do whatever the hell they want without being judged. There’s a song on my new EP called ‘Hot and Perfect,’ and though I don’t always feel hot and perfect, the point is to confidently affirm yourself even when your hair and makeup aren’t fully done up.”

Hailing from Villa Tesei in western Buenos Aires, Six Sex is the hentai avatar of 25-year-old Francisca Agustina Cuello. While she didn’t quite aspire to pop stardom as a child, she performed living room shows for her family and — the consummate hustler — always made sure to pass around a hat for tips. She cites MTV and MuchMusic as foundational in her upbringing, with Madonna, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga kicking open a world of glossy possibilities and preparing her for paradigm-breaking stars like Arca and Björk. She started frequenting clandestine perreos at age 14 and felt an instant connection with Las Culisueltas, a kitschy troupe of young women that melded reggaeton with flashes of house and cumbia turra. Beyond discovering she could throw ass to sounds and hooks that echoed her Porteña experience, the chaotic melange of rhythms broke down any preconceptions that might have otherwise limited her libertine approach to music.

“These days, rave and perreo culture intersect often, but back when I started going out, that wasn’t the case at all,” she adds, noting the game-changing advent of Neoperreo. “I used to work at a place that only played dubstep, and there was no chance they’d ever touch perreo. Even though I can’t really palate dubstep anymore, my time there led me to SoundCloud. I started listening to mixes that were weird and special. That’s where I met Merca Bae, and then we started chatting on Instagram before eventually collaborating [in 2020] for ‘Purple”.

Earlier this month, Six Sex spoke with PAPER. An artist who has been cosigned by Charli xcx, her X-sex E.P. moves into Pop music. If previous work was more club-based, this one has a slightly different sound. There is perhaps not a huge amount of awareness of Six Sex in the U.K. at the moment. That is starting to change. When the summer hits, I think her music will get much more exposure and attention:

“Your sense of humor comes through in a lot of songs and videos, like “My boyfriend is gay,” on “U&ME,” which went viral, at least on my side of the internet. Where does that playfulness come from?

Everything I write is real, but also slightly mixed with fiction. A big part of reality, some [aspects] of fiction. That phrase comes from being on tour and constantly speaking to my gay friends. So it was basically true, you know? A lot of people just see this relationship... some girl and some guy, but there are so many ways that people can relate to each other, and I’m referring to that kind of emotional intimacy that you can have with someone, even if it’s not heterosexual intimacy.

For example, when we were on tour, Leandro Bucha, who is my creative director and my best friend, played a lot of roles, professionally and personally. He will be the one doing the videos and the live show direction, but he will also be the one holding the purse for me when I’m in the toilet... a lot of really important and really simple tasks that make our relationship very special.

You’ve been partying and touring in so many different places. Do you have a favorite in recent memory?

When it comes to a favorite experience, it was the first show of the European tour. Last July, in 2024, in Switzerland, in a small city called Lausanne. They had a festival, and it was a free festival, and we actually didn’t know what to expect, we didn’t know if it was going to be 50 people, 100 people, 200 people. So our hopes and expectations were really low, and we don’t really know how this happened, but apparently word got out that her show was worth watching and the music was worth seeing live. At some point they had to stop letting people in, because there were so many people. For 45 minutes, we had this amazing little rave right beside a cathedral. It was crazy that the first Europe tour started like that.

It must feel good to know that your music has gained such a global audience and reached so many places you didn’t expect, like Switzerland.

It happened in an organic manner, since the beginning of my project, I’ve had small groups of people listening abroad and studying my music. And that crowd began to grow over time. It was not normal, but I was used to it. Even at an early stage, I had more listeners in Mexico, or the US, than in some cities in Argentina. It makes me happy that in a lot of different places with a lot of different people, fans can appreciate my music, even though I sing in Spanish, or even in English, it doesn’t really matter, because what they love is the artistry and the storytelling and the whole package.

PHOTO CREDIT: Catalina Jacobo

You’ve been working on new music, and you’re putting out an EP very soon. What can you tell fans who are excited to hear what you’ve been working on?

For this new EP, it’s a transition, because I have, along the way, done different genres and styles of music. My last EP was definitely club music, and this one has some sparks of that, but maybe transitions a little into pop music. I wanted to try new sounds, and try new textures in the music. I want to know how people react to that, and I’m also getting ready for my debut album, which is a process that will be happening this year. I want people to not take my music so seriously, as in obsessing over labels and cataloging my music, because I will always be changing my style and searching for new sounds.

What inspired the transition to pop?

I’ve put out four EPs, and this will be my fifth. My first was electronic textures and moods, the second was very alternative, very special reggaeton, the third was also reggaeton but more mainstream and also Mexican sounds, because it was made in Mexico. The fourth EP was also electronic, but dedicated to the club. My music is a winding road through the mountains, up and down. There’s definitely different phases.

What pop artists have you been inspired by, or would hope to work with?

When it comes to artists, Brat and Charli xcx had a huge impact last year. Maybe not so much an inspiration for me personally, but definitely an affirmation that when certain big, really valid artists talk about certain subjects like partying or clubbing or going out, drugs, everything, it makes other artists able to talk about certain subjects without feeling overexposed. It was a good impact for a lot of artists, and especially female artists, to be able to talk about subjects we usually wouldn't, and show ourselves in a truthful way instead of hiding some subjects because they are taboo. I think that when more mainstream pop music utilizes subversive esthetics, it creates a really big cultural shift, which maybe enabled my Satisfire EP, in some ways, to reach the virality it did because of timing”.

I am going to end with a review for the extraordinary X-sex. I have only just discovered Six Sex. Someone who very much can fit into the modern Pop scene, there is something extra and different about her. The way she can fuse genres into something that id distinctly her sound. NME note how she doesn’t so much as create music but a sonic riot. I would encourage everyone to go and follow this incredible artist:

“At just 26, Six Sex (aka Francisca Agustina Cuello) has crowned herself the queen of perreo rave. Hailing from Villa Tesei in Buenos Aires, she’s been setting dancefloors alight with her warped, high-octane fusion of reggaeton, dancehall, and club-ready electronic chaos. Her 2022 breakout project ‘Área 69’ catapulted her from underground raves to this year’s NME 100, and now, with ‘X-Sex’, she doubles down on the lawless energy that made her a cult icon. This isn’t just music — it’s a sonic riot.

The first taste of ‘X-Sex’ we got was via its lead single, ‘U&Me’. With pitched-up vocals bouncing over a beat that feels like it’s been jolted back to life with an electric shock, it feels like a sugar rush laced with something much, much stronger. It’s sweaty, messy, and addictive, but it was only a small glimpse of the club-drenched collection that Cuello’s fourth EP is.

‘Performance Actitud (Pose)’ takes a more sultry turn, dripping in menace with its twisted synths and pulsating percussion. The distorted vocals sound like they’re being dragged through a tunnel of strobe lights and static for a hypnotic effect. There’s almost a voyeuristic quality to the track, as though you’re peeking into a hedonistic after-hours world of flashing cameras and salacious acts.

Throughout ‘X-Sex,’ Six Sex proves she’s not here to make palatable, radio-friendly bangers. ‘How To Make Your Ass Bigger’ sees her instructing us to unlock new levels of sex appeal over a nostalgic eurodance-inspired instrumental: “bend your knees, press your hips back” and “press our heels into the floors”. ‘Ahhhhhh’ is a dark and frenzied cut where screeching synths and vibrating percussion take over for an experience that’s equally euphoric and chaotic. And ‘Tócame’ – with fellow rising Argentine star Dillom – cranks up the tempo with a hyperactive blend of reggaeton swagger and glitchy electronic flourishes, spinning you into a hypnotic, feverish haze.

‘Bitches Like Me’ is the brilliantly cheeky highlight of the record. While interpolating the immortal Kylie classic ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, she lets it be known that only “Bitches like me like bitches like me”. Those that get it, get it: Cuello only wants the baddest bosses in her circle.

‘X-Sex’ is a no-holds-barred audio assault, revving up the BPM and refusing to hit the brakes. Six Sex pushes every sound to its limit, proving this fearless sonic agitator thrives in mayhem – love it or hate it, you won’t forget it”.

Six Sex is going to be a sensation. Hailing from Villa Tesei in western Buenos Aires, this artist now belongs to the world. Even if she is still a rising artist, her music has travelled the globe and Six Sex is being tipped to have a very big and long career. You cannot argue against that. It is going to be exciting just how far she can go…

IN the coming years.

__________

Follow Six Sex

PHOTO CREDIT: Paula Montenegro for Remezcla

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/sixsex_bb/

TikTok:

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

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNY7sHgXH9g_OZdhw6tdx_Q

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/29rvPhemBdOLYdLr2xI8dr?si=jFSZntZkRnGi29vgdb9ipg

FEATURE: Odd and Even Numbers: Bringing Feminist Books and Writing More Into the Mainstream

FEATURE:

 

 

Odd and Even Numbers

PHOTO CREDIT: Ricky Esquivel/Pexels

Bringing Feminist Books and Writing More Into the Mainstream

_________

THIS sort of follows up…

IN THIS PHOTO: A mural by Irish artist Emmalene in Dublin, March 2021/PHOTO CREDIT: Artur Widak/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

from a previous feature where I talked about feminism’s next wave, a need for positivity and this desire and requirement for a positive men’s movement. I was inspired by an interview from Cailtin Moran. She discussed how she is putting her next book on hold and instead writing one of positive notes and almost love letters. How there needs to be positivity and hope right now. Moran also discussed how there is not a positive men’s movement. Moran’s book, What About Men?, was sort of her response to this. Writing about issues affecting men. Among other things, the book discusses the effects of pornography use in men, and the interest in Andrew Tate for an adolescent. Some asked why Moran did not write a book about, say, the transgender right’s movement. Caitlin Moran explained, in a recent interview, how she came under attack from left-wing and right-wing men alike. Accusing her of saying men are not in touch with their feelings and attacking her book and motives. It is frustrating that there was this response. In my recent feature, I explained how nearly all feminist authors (of which Caitlin Moran is one) are women. Nearly everything written about feminism or related to it has been written by women. I guess in theory that might be a small number of men who have written about feminism or published a feminist book. However, they are hard to find and I have Googled seeing what the numbers are and I could not see any male authors, journalists or academics who would be seen as feminist writers. It is quite baffling. A real lack of engagement from men when it comes to feminist writing. Many might say men do not have the real-world experiences and perspectives or women so are not qualified. They seem inauthentic or ingenuine. I do understand many might think like this but it is not the case. Nobody is expecting men to walk in a woman’s shoes. Instead, it would be nice if there were books and articles by men published that add to the incredible feminist literature and articles that are out there. Authors like Caitlin Moran. However, given the negativity she faced when published a book about men, it might seem improbable that many men would jump at the chance to write a feminist book, article or thesis. However, I may be wrong and there are some out there – which I would be interested to read!

International Women’s Day took place yesterday (8th March). One of the great things was reading all the celebratory and serious features alike highlighting brilliant women. From politicians to authors through to athletes and those in entertainment, there was so much discussion. There were great articles highlighting incredible women in music. Women and men alike saluting amazing women. Something I am becoming more and more invested in is feminist literature. I am pledging to buy one book a month. Great feminist literature. Not to flex or to appear cool. It is definitely an important thing I want to do. To be a more well-rounded feminist. At a time when there is so more misogyny and gender inequality, I am more compelled to not only read feminist literature but urge other men to. I have just purchased Laura Bates’ Fix the System Not the Women. I want to source from the start of a 2022 review from The Guardian:

“For Laura Bates, it began with a heavy piece of gold jewellery that her mother found on the passenger seat of the family car. It was a gift from her grandparents. Her mother, after two daughters, had been rewarded for giving birth to a son. “I am five years old,” Bates writes, “and have no idea I’ve already been weighed, valued and found wanting.”

This incident is the first on what the feminist writer and activist calls “my list”. She encourages all women to make one, charting a life in sexism, from the playground to the street to the workplace. “By the time I leave university, aged 20,” Bates writes, “I have been sexually assaulted, pressured to perform topless in a theatre production (I stand my ground, but the experience leaves me in tears) and cornered in the street by two men shouting, ‘We’re going to part those legs and fuck that cunt.’”

Fix the System, Not the Women is an attempt to highlight “the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality” – and to pull apart the myth that women are complicit in our own oppression. Bates’s central message, which she has developed through her Everyday Sexism Project, the online forum that has now received 200,000 stories of sexism and misogyny from all over the world, and books including Girl Up (2016) and Men Who Hate Women (2020), is that there is a spectrum of gender inequality. Sexist jokes and stereotypes are at one end. Rape, domestic abuse, female genital mutilation and so-called “honour” killings are at the other. Maternity discrimination, workplace sexual harassment, the gender pay gap “and so much more” lie somewhere in between”.

The reason for writing this feature is because feminist literature is still seen as niche, outside of the mainstream or maybe heavy-handed. You can go to websites like Amazon or Waterstones and search for feminist literature. However, in some bookshops, there is not a specific section for feminist literature. It does seem alarming. I visited a large Waterstones in Piccadilly, London and there is a section for feminist literature. Called ‘Gender Studies’. it does sound more academic. I wonder why they do not go for ‘Feminism’. If it is seen as too narrow or specific. Not serious enough. We are living in a time when feminist literature like Fix the System Not the Women or books from Caitlin Moran – and many of her female peers – are essential and should be part of the curriculum. They are not propaganda or books so heavy and depressing they are hard to read. They also are not angry and attacking men all of the time. Instead, these are female writers sharing their experiences and highlighting statistics. Raising subjects such as gender inequality and male violence that is powerful and designed to change attitudes and society. It is hard to overstate the urgency and importance of these books. It is great that bookstore stock feminist books, though they are often reduce to a very small space. When I was at Waterstones, their Gender Studies section was on the fourth floor of the store right at the further point from the entrance. I wonder why there is not more prominence put on these authors and books. It is brilliant that there is such a broad range of topics around equality, female empowerment and women’s safety. Books that very much should be front and centre at major bookstores. On Saturday, I visited Upper Street Bookshop in Angel. They have an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+/Feminism section. About three or four shelves for the former and I think one fewer for feminism. However, there is a nice selection of books. The fact it is that independent bookstores stock feminist books but some larger bookshops do not. It does seem shocking that, in 2025, feminism is still seen as underground or less important (than other types of books). With Donald Trump President in the U.S. and him removing women’s right to abortions, his attitudes towards women and claims of rape and sexual assault against him, there needs to be greater exposure to feminist literature that is so timely and illustrative.

With his regime filled with alleged sex offenders and there being this seemingly hatred of women, the world’s most powerful nation very much does not care about women’s rights or protection. A lot of the posts I saw on social media on International Women’s Day highlighted this fact. Talking about the rise in violence and sexual assault against women. Celebrating vocal and angry feminists. Saluting brilliant women across multiple fields. It is not only one day of the year when these conversations are taking place. There is a definite demand for writing about feminism and women’s rights. I bought Laura Bates’ Fix the System Not the Women on International Women’s Day because I was appalled and shocked by so many of the social media posts I saw. I wanted to learn more. Her book stood out to me but, as I say, I am going to purchase a new feminist work every month. Even if you can access all manner of feminist articles and e-books online, the visibility of feminist books is low. There seems to be very little prominence or consideration given to it. It is wonderful you can go to sites like Spotify or Audible and listen to great feminist books. However, when it comes to physical books, why is feminism seen as specialist interest or inferior to other types of literature?! Even if there was a great range available at the Waterstones I visited, the fact the books seemed tucked away in a large shop as quite telling. A definite imbalance when it comes to these books. Maybe there is misperception around feminist literature. Not enough knowledge about what types of subjects are addressed. I don’t know. It seems improbable that these books do not sell so giving them valuable or more accessible shelf space is risky. After all the interaction and discussion on International Women’s Day, I wonder if things will be redressed. As I mentioned before, it is crucial, now more than ever, that books around feminism (that tag and word itself may need broadening when it comes to the types of books published) are made more…

PROMINENT and readily available.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Symphony in Blue at Forty-Six: Inside One of Her Most Underrated Singles

FEATURE:

 

Kate Bush’s Symphony in Blue at Forty-Six

Inside One of Her Most Underrated Singles

_________

A reason why…

it is an underrated single as it was only released in Japan and Canada. However, I wanted to mark the forty-sixth anniversary of Symphony in Blue. The opening tracks of her second studio album, Lionheart, this was one of a few tracks newly written for that album. The remainder were older songs that were brought into the studio. One of the greatest tragedies of Kate Bush’s career is how a second album was rushed. How different things could have been if she was given more time and support in that respect. After the huge success of The Kick Inside, Bush was charged with releasing her second album. Both came out in 1978. It was an unreasonable to expect something as good as her first. However, Lionheart contains quite a few gems. Wow, the second single from the album, among them. The highlight of the album for me is Symphony in Blue. A song I have written about before when celebrating its anniversary, I will try and approach it from a different perspective this time around. One of Bush’s best singles, I think it deserves a worldwide release. Wow and Hammer Horror were released in the U.K. but I always wonder why Symphony in Blue was seen as a good single for Japan and Canada but not anywhere else?! It is weird how there used to be this thing of releasing different songs as singles in different countries. A masterpiece that is not really talked about much, I will come to an excellent article that explores this song. Even if Kate Bush said the song was inspired by Erik Satie’s Gymnopedies, this source says “The descriptions of God, sex and the colour blue seem to be inspired by reading about Wilhelm Reich’s theory in A Book Of Dreams”.

Symphony in Blue was performed during her tour of 1979. It also featured in her Christmas special at the end of that year. Whereas Hammer Horror was the B-side of the Canadian release, in Japan Fullhouse was the B-side. There is so much that I love about Symphony in Blue. In terms of the personnel on the record, musicians that played with Kate Bush on The Kick Inside. Most notable is Ian Bairnson’s electric guitar. The song also features some of her most thought-provoking lyrics. One of my favourite verses is this: “I associate love with red/The colour of my heart when she’s dead/Red in my mind when the jealousy flies/Red in my eyes from emotional ties/Manipulation, the danger signs”. I can’t recall hearing Symphony in Blue on the radio. Whereas other deep cuts have been given an airing, why has Symphony in Blue been ignored? Most of the Lionheart gets overlooked. I have heard Wow, Fullhouse, Kashka from Baghdad and Hammer Horror played on the radio. However, nobody really talks about Symphony in Blue. Such a mature song from a teenager. How Bush discusses God, love, sex, reincarnation, changing moods and a range of emotions. Consider these lines: “Blue on the walls, blue out of my mouth/The sort of blue between clouds, when the sun comes out/The sort of blue in those eyes you get hung up about”. I always think Bush wrote this song with every intention of ensuring it opened Lionheart. A newly-written song had to open that album. However, I also think she had this track in mind as a single. It is far too strong to be left as a Japanese and Canadian single. I have not even mentioned the release dates yet! Symphony in Blue came out in Japan on 5th May, 1979. It was released on 1st June in Canada.

I am going to end with part of a feature from Dreams of Orgonon. Some interesting perspective on one of Kate Bush’s greatest songs. A single that didn’t do much in Canada and Japan yet could have been a success in the U.K. A fantastic video would have accompanied it I am sure. If you have never heard this track then go and listen to it and the Lionheart album:

“To Bush, blue is “the color of my room and my mood.” It’s a ubiquitous color for her, present on the walls, in the sky, “out of my mouth” (a possible pun), and “the sort of blue in those eyes you get hung up about,” perhaps an allusion to the ever-growing canon of songs about blue eyes. Bush is making a world of blue, one where external hue, metaphor, and internal state collide in a musical act of mise-en-scène. “Symphony in Blue” is a dive into introspection wherein the act of introspection becomes the entirety of Bush’s world. Bush’s fixation on blue largely rises from dissatisfaction, remaining in a state where all you can grasp is the banal details of your immediate environment.

The second half of the first verse fixates on the thoughts that arise when “that feeling of meaninglessness sets in,” ones that pertain to “blowing my mind on God.” This part of the verse is mostly a list of idioms describing God, from the basically metaphorical (“the light in the dark”) to the scriptural (“the meek He seeks/the beast He calms”) to the bureaucratic (“the head of the good soul department”). Bush’s God always occupies the role of the enigmatic man in Bush’s songs, more an amalgam of resonances and qualities than an identifiable person. He is a presence, but a largely offstage one used by Bush to hurl her anxieties at.

In its second verse, “Symphony” explores red, a more fatal, dramatic, and alarming color than blue. “I associate love with red/the color of my heart when she’s dead.” Bush invokes a sense of viscera, with thoughts of death coming to mind as she ruminates in her room. For a second it looks like she might not survive the song. The rest of the verse is more straightforwardly physical, with Bush delivering the astonishing line “the more I think about sex, the better it gets.” As the song navigates its way out of emotional traps by listing potentials ways out, sex is inevitably going to come up.

The best way for Bush to articulate her ennui is visually: she will compare her mood to something visible. Blue is of course the color of many songs — in many ways, it’s the most musical color. One of the foundational genres of popular music is the blues. Blue is used as a synonym for sadness, a catalyst for innumerable amounts of music. Lord knows there’s no shortage of songs about blue — an even slightly comprehensive list would take up several blog posts. “Symphony in Blue” obviously apes its title from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” yet kicks things up a notch by moving the color up from a mere rhapsody to a whole symphony. Perhaps the most relevant song to “Symphony in Blue” for our purposes is David Bowie’s contemporaneous and relatively similar “Sound and Vision.” From its title to its repetition of “blue, blue, electric blue,” the songs are similar in a way that’s difficult to nail down as a total coincidence (although it is entirely possible Bowie’s influence on Bush in this case was subconscious). Both use the surroundings of blue rooms as reflections of internal dissatisfaction. Crucially, both songs unify sight and sound into a single phenomenon. Bush’s chorus begins with “I see myself suddenly on the piano as a melody,” wherein melody is both a reflection of self and a visual reflection. Bush’s favorite theme of music’s tangibility has reached its apotheosis. Lionheart is paying off a debt to The Kick Inside via one of its fullest realizations of its ideas.

Musically, “Symphony in Blue” references more artists than just 20th century ones such as Gershwin and Bowie. The song deliberately gestures at 19th century French composer Erik Satie’s most famous piano compositions, the Gymnopédies. Like “Symphony in Blue,” Gymnopédie No. 1 is in ¾ and begins with a G major 7th chord. Both pieces are airy and chromatic (a trend in 19th century music to be found in the work of, for example, Debussy, another favorite composer of Bush’s), and Bush’s drifts slowly through G major, often falling onto 7th chords or flattening 6ths. There’s a jazz-influenced airiness to “Symphony” which is also inherited from the Gymnopédies and is clearly evidenced by its use of F7sus4, a true mind-fuck of a chord. The resemblance is intentional — “Symphony in Blue” is a pop song, as its reliance on Iain Bairnson’s electric guitar demonstrates, but it’s outright smuggling classical music into the charts. In Bush’s Christmas special, she begins “Symphony in Blue” by playing Gymnopédie No. 1, dutifully playing the song in G before pivoting on a D minor chord to “Symphony.” Bush is playing the cultural creator, collecting influences and displaying them for posterity. When she draws on tradition, it’s not merely to recreate visions of the past, but to find new directions for preexisting ideas. Bush spends a lot of her time looking at blue, so there was no chance she’d blue it”.

On 5th May, it will be forty-six years since Symphony in Blue was released in Japan. A county that embraced Kate Bush’s music early on, she previously released Moving and Them Heavy People (titled Rolling the Ball for the Japanese release) – both from The Kick Inside – in Japan. They were more successful and lauded. However, we should not overlook Symphony in Blue. It deserves to be written about more as it is without doubt one of Kate Bush’s greatest recordings. Stunning lyrics and a beautiful vocal performance, an overlooked gem that should get a lot more focus, love and attention. Kate Bush’s gorgeous blue symphony is a song that sparkles in gold. It is a treasure that….

MORE people should know about.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Numbers, Astrology, Synchronicity, Otherworldly

FEATURE:

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Image

Numbers, Astrology, Synchronicity, Otherworldly

_________

REVISITING and reapproaching…

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

a subject I wrote about a while ago, I have been fascinated when re-reading a section of Graeme Thomson’s biography, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. I have written about how the paranormal and otherworldly have been present in Kate Bush’s work from her 1978 debut, The Kick Inside, to her most recent album, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. It is amazing to think how she goes beyond the ordinary and puts the strange and spectral in these beautiful songs. It is clear that Bush’s mind is very open to things that cannot be explained. Even if God and religion were really not a large part of her work, there were references to him in some of her tracks. I think the gothic and dark is a particularly appealing subject to investigate. Think about all the songs where there are shadows or darkness weaving through the lyrics. For this feature, I wanted to look at a different side of this colour spectrum. The inexplicable, fictional or otherworldly. If the spectral and gothic are shades of grey, black (I know it technically not a colour) and red, then I want to look more at oranges, yellows and greens. Go with me on this. Returning to that Graeme Thomson reference and he mentions how Kate Bush was always taken with synchronicity and a deeper meaning behind numbers. The fact that both Kate Bush and Emily Brontë share a birthday. Of course, Bush’s debut single, Wuthering Heights, was inspired by Brontë’s only novel of the same name. Well, a 1967 T.V. adaptation of it at least! However, both Bush and Brontë were born on 30th July. Brontë in 1818 and Bush in 1958. Rather than it being a coincidence – which it is -, Bush felt that this connection had a deeper meaning. Maybe seeing it as something bigger and more spiritual than mere coincidence, that strange connection definitely would have opened her mind and imagination. Exploring the meaning and connection between dates and numbers.

Somewhat different I think to the paranormal and ghostly, there was this other side to Bush that was to do with numbers, synchronicity and astrology. I think it dated to before The Kick Inside. One song from that album, Strange Phenomena, is about coincidences and synchronicity. Menstruation and the “punctual blues”. The secret meaning behind women’s moods. I am not sure exactly when Bush started to think this way. Maybe it was something instilled from birth. Whereas most of her peers had one way of thinking about the world, it is clear Bush had this intrigue that meant she had this insatiable curiosity about life beyond the ordinary and everyday. You can trace this side to Bush back to her childhood. Not only did it inspire her most interesting and original songs. I think it impacted everything she did. Bush never really thinking and writing in a conventional and joined-up way. Maybe not until the 1990s at least. I do like Bush’s fascination with numbers. A friend of hers, David Paton (who played bass on many of her songs and contributed guitar and vocals too), noted how she thought it was spooky how he and her boyfriend, Del Palmer, had the same initials. That is common enough. However, the two shared the same birthday – it is not quite true as Paton was born on 29th October; Palmer was born on 3rd November. Maybe it is bad science, though I do like how Bush was curious about the relationship of numbers and synchronicity. How birthdays and star signs were fascinating to her. Bush definitely believes in astrology and thinks there is something in it. How when you were born affects your personality. The movement and relative positions of celestial bodies affects human affairs and behaviour. There are entire websites that talk about Kate Bush’s star sign and draw her natal chart. Kate Bush is a natal Sun-Uranus in Leo person with Scorpio Rising. In her natal chart, Bush's North Node (her destiny) is in a tight conjunction to the Lord of Fame and Success, Jupiter, in airy Libra.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Aris

Coming back to birthdays and coincidence, it does sort of link in to the paranormal. When thinking about the song Strange Phenomena at least. I will move on a minute. However, this article about Strange Phenomena highlights some interesting observations about the song and Bush’s beliefs:

“There’s a philosophical dimension to this as well: Bush once referred to Synchronicity while discussing “Strange Phenomena” in an interview. In short, Synchronicity is psychoanalyst Karl Jung’s concept of the interconnectivity of coincidences. Coincidences bearing similarity but no common cause are termed “meaningful.” This is a pretty easy way to argue for paranormality, and Jung did so (this is not the last time a psychoanalyst will influence Kate Bush. If you’ve read this blog’s title, you already know how). Bush picks up on this, heartily saluting the spectres and weirdness of everyday life.

“Strange Phenomena” is textured with little mysteries and details. Without the Internet at one’s disposal, listeners would go years not understanding some of the song’s allusions. There’s the obscure line “G arrives/funny, had a feeling he was on his way,” which seems inexplicable in context (apparently G was a person Bush knew, while my initial guesses were that G was the Almighty Herself, John Berger’s character G, or David Gilmour himself, most plausibly) yet brings a social instinct to the song, suggesting that people can be just as mysterious as events. The presence of people is mystical to Bush — the living can be ghosts as well. In many ways, “Strange Phenomena” is about clustering: when people gather and events happen close together, magic occurs. “We raise our hats to the hand a-moulding us,” sings Bush, nodding to spiritual forces beyond human understanding”.

It is not only the case that Bush talked about numbers, coincidences and synchronicity in her earliest albums. Think about Pi (π) form 2005’s Aerial. Bush fascinated with numbers once more. This time, she was reciting π to seventy-eight decimal places. The song is about a man’s fascination with reciting π. This is what Bush told Ken Bruce in a 2005 about one of Aerial’s most interesting and overlooked songs:

“I find numbers fascinating, the idea that nearly everything can be broken down into numbers, it is a fascinating thing; and i think also that we are completely surrounded by numbers now, in a way that we weren’t you know even 20, 30 years ago we’re all walking around with mobile phones and numbers on our foreheads almost; and it’s like you know computers…”

I might go into it a bit more in another feature. From her childhood to the present day, there is this depth and side to Kate Bush that not a lot of people discuss. Alongside her embrace and portrayal of the paranormal, scary, gothic and dark is this curiosity about the relationship of numbers and synchronicity. How she and Emily Brontë shared birthdays. Here is what Bush said about Strange Phenomena: “Strange Phenomena” is about how coincidences cluster together. We can all recall instances when we have been thinking about a particular person and then have met a mutual friend who – totally unprompted – will begin talking about that person. That’s a very basic way of explaining what I mean, but these “clusters of coincidence” occur all the time. We are surrounded by strange phenomena, but very few people are aware of it”. Later in life when she was reciting a mathematical constant. Whereas most artists focus on their own life and love, Kate Bush has always looked beyond that. Bringing film and literature into her music. Exploring the paranormal and otherworldly. In addition, the relationship of numbers, synchronicity and coincidences. It is all part of Kate Bush’s…

DEEPER understanding.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Sunny War

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Sunny War

_________

AN artist who…

PHOTO CREDIT: Joshua Black Wilkins

is currently on tour, I wanted to shine a light on the brilliant Sunny War. This is an artist I am new to but wanted to recommend to everyone. I am going to end with her new album, Armageddon in a Summer Dress. This is an album that you will want to check out. I am going to get to a couple of new interviews with Sunny War. First, this feature caught my eye. This is someone whose brilliance and importance goes beyond her music. I do hope that new interviews are published so that we can learn more about this incredible human:

“In 2022, punk-blues innovator Sunny War moved into her late father’s house in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and began making repairs. There was no heat that first winter and the house needed a full electrical rewiring. By winter 2023, she had the money to heat the place, but as the temperature rose each night, Sunny felt a strange impulse to patrol the house in the dark, swinging her grandfather’s machete at the ghosts inhabiting the top floor.

At the start of our Zoom call interview in January, Sunny recounts the bizarre magical realism of the weeks she spent living with an undiscovered gas leak. I ask enough follow-up questions to be reassured that my friend is not still being fumigated in her own home before I allow myself to belly laugh. “I have to fix everything,” she sighs.

Sunny goes on to explain that by the time the city discovered and fixed the problem, the mood had already been set for her forthcoming album, Armageddon in a Summer Dress. I would describe the results as psychedelic and subtly dangerous.

My friend Sunny can be a little hard to read, a fact which she mentions at one point during our call. We first met at Americanafest in 2019. It was my second year traveling from New York to Tennessee for the annual roots music conference and festival. That summer I had made up my mind to bring Black artists together during the festival for our own unofficial day party. I booked Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, cross-referenced names on the festival poster with Google image searches, and sent out a few invitations. Sunny agreed to perform, as did Tré Burt and Milwaukee folk duo Nickel & Rose (featuring Carl Nichols, the artist soon to become Buffalo Nichols). One after another we played our songs then stepped out onto the Madison, Tennessee, porch, most of us meeting for the first time. It was the greatest number of Black people I had ever been around in a professional space since releasing my debut album in 2017.

It was clear to me even then that Sunny was a star. Carl, Tré, and I were on ascendant career arcs of our own, but Sunny was out ahead somehow. She was already well known in songwriter circles for her inimitable movements on the guitar and for her punk rock roots, but it was the intensity of her stage presence that stood out to me most on that first meeting. I watched her suck in the air and light around her as she sang, quietly commanding the audience’s attention. Songs like “Drugs Are Bad” and “Shell” became spells when sung in War’s almost-effortless, warmly breathy style. She appeared peaceful in her own creative world amidst the restless energy of the festival.

2019 was also the year that Sunny founded the downtown Los Angeles chapter of Food Not Bombs, a national network of community groups addressing hunger. In interviews about the movement she was candid about having experienced houselessness herself and how she noticed the disproportionate presence of veterans on the street. She organized weekly meetups in which volunteers made meals and shared them, potluck-style, with their unhoused neighbors on skid row. When COVID hit they switched to burritos and sack lunches. On “Deployed and Destroyed,” one of the outstanding tracks from Sunny’s 2021 album, Simple Syrup, she invites her listener to spend three minutes and 54 seconds in the shoes of a 26-year-old unhoused veteran experiencing PTSD. When I listen to her sing “I still love you/ We’re still friends” I feel like I am sitting beside her. This is what Aristotle and contemporary Marxists call “praxis.”

Sunny is fearless on stage. Six years into our friendship I remain awed by the way in which she commands attention without ever seeming contained by it. Her presence has a kinetic power that you can more easily get lost in than describe. We met up in Chicago on a winter night in early 2023 when Sunny was on tour and I was in between tours. Both of us were depressed, I think. Wide, wet snowflakes were beginning to fall outside while we caught up over drinks. We bribed the DJ into letting us jump the line for karaoke and then launched into a formally unconventional performance of Destiny’s Child’s “Jumpin’ Jumpin’.” The mostly-white crowd of beer-drinking twenty-somethings were amused at first and then bored. I gave up. Sunny stayed the course, winning the audience over with mischief in her eyes.

Later that year Sunny released Anarchist Gospel on New West Records to well-deserved, unanimous acclaim. The album featured Americana heavy hitters Allison Russell, Dave Rawlings, and Chris Pierce. She also toured with Mitski, broadening her fandom to include more indie listeners. I cheered my friend from afar, mostly on Instagram, as her star continued to rise.

When I ask about her memories of that album cycle, Sunny enthusiastically recalls the younger audiences who discovered her music. She expresses gratitude that a 14-year-old at a Mitski concert, someone who “actually is into music for the first time in their life, in the way that you are when you hate your parents and all you have is music” would become a fan. A lot of journalists described her as an “emerging” artist or a songwriter soon to be one of the most beloved in Americana. But for those of us on the fringes of the format, Sunny had been the best around for a minute and the momentum of her career spoke for itself.

Sunny’s latest album, Armageddon In A Summer Dress, comes out on February 21. I ask her to describe the new record in her own words. “Silly,” she responds. I ask if there is a genre descriptor for her music in general. She says, “No.”  I am going to follow the artist’s lead and not do her album the disservice of describing it too much. I will say that Armageddon In A Summer Dress is her seventh full-length effort and contains her most inspired vocal performances yet – and some of her finest lyrics.

There is a haze hovering in the top layers of some of these tunes. The winding guitar melodies often weave themselves into the vocal lines, but sometimes they go their own way. I ask her if audiences are reacting to the Black anarchist content of her songs differently than they did the last time she released a folk album with transparently leftist politics. “I don’t feel like people pay that much attention to my lyrics,” she responds. Her primary musical concern, she reflects, is playing the guitar. And in any case, the best way to metabolize these songs is by listening to them repeatedly.

Sunny, Carl, Tré, and I have remained loosely intertwined in the years since that first Americana kickback. We have toured together. We run into each other at festivals and in thrift shops. Tré and Sunny were roommates for a time and in the summertime can be seen riding bikes like cousins in Sunny’s recent music video for “Scornful Heart.” I interview my friends periodically.

We all continue to embody aspects of the blues tradition while resisting categorization. Sunny continues moving patiently through her own cycles of living, transforming, creating in darkness, and then telling the story. She leaps unexpectedly from now to the future and then doubles back to sample tradition, inviting you to keep up. Her lyrics are disarmingly empathetic. Like all great artists, Sunny moves in her own time, less concerned with debating the canon than she is with creating the future. She looks back on the nights she hunted ghosts with her grandfather’s machete joking, “That wasn’t me!”

There is great integrity in Sunny’s storytelling, which means that no matter how long it has been since we last spoke, she will catch me up quickly when we meet again. I ask her who the narrator of “No One Calls Me Baby” is, trying to signal that I am a feminist who recognizes women writers as authors beyond the world of autobiography. But she quickly tells me that the narrator is her and fills me in on the past few months of her life. She has been single for over a year, and has been learning to enjoy the alone time in a house she owns. We commiserate about being single, but we are both leaned back by this point, looking down on loneliness together. “No one calls me baby anymore/ I hold my own hand now…”.

I want to move to an interview from The Line of Best Fit. Speaking with her around the release of her fourth studio album, they found her at her most maximalist. An artist documenting the American decline. This is somebody that the whole world needs to know about. One of the most compelling and important artists in music today:

“Sunny, born Sydney Ward, was destined to be a bluesperson. “My grandma took me to see B.B. King and I saw Bo Diddley when I was a kid. My whole family is really into blues. Blues and gospel, that’s just what I grew up listening to,” she tells me from her home in Chattanooga, Tennessee on an overcast winter’s morning. But just as her career has already stretched much further than blues singers of the early twentieth century, so too has it meandered into other genres, other modes of working and writing.

“Punk rock is the other side of me. I listen to a lot of trap music. I like a lot of electronic music. Then I also really like bossa nova. I listen to a lot of country. I listen to reggae. Well, only old reggae and ska. I listen to a lot of soul music. If it’s good, I fuck with it,” she says, barely pausing to take a breath. Ward’s string of full-length albums mirror this broad tapestry of taste; while 2018’s With the Sun is sparse and to-the-heart blues songwriting in the traditional mode, 2021’s Simple Syrup adds splashes of jazz to this near-perfected template and 2023’s Anarchist Gospel salutes her Nashvillian roots with a nod and a wink to country.

In 2024, the nonagenarian elder of country music Willie Nelson covered Ward’s own “If It Wasn’t Broken” for his album Last Leaf on the Tree, the track nestled amongst his interpretations of songs by, among others, Nina Simone, Tom Waits, and Neil Young. Like the 91-year-old Nelson, whose battered, bruised, scraped, and scribbled-on nylon-string guitar has travelled the road with him for over half a century, Ward, too, has kept her instrument close at hand throughout. Her commitment to those six strings is such that, like Nelson, she recently developed nerve damage and carpal tunnel syndrome in her hand. “They gave me a steroid injection and I’m supposed to wear a brace every day. It is better than it was. It still kind of hurts sometimes, though,” she tells me. “I’ve been playing for 27 years,” she adds, laughing, by way of an explanation.

Ward’s connection to Nelson is also borne out in her collaborations with Nelson’s son Micah (Particle Kid), with whom she made the 2018 collaborative album Particle War. What is especially remarkable about Nelson’s cover of "If It Wasn’t Broken", though, is how easily it translates into his own style. When sung by Ward, the song is inimitably in her own world-weary but defiant style, but sung by Nelson it takes on a timeless and malleable quality; it becomes, in other words, a modern standard. Fittingly, then, songwriting is what Ward sees as her ultimate vocation, transcending even her role as singer and performer: “I don’t want to be a singer as much as I want to be a songwriter. I want to write for other people. If somebody was like ‘I need you to write a song for Mariah Carey,’ that would be fun.”

These songwriting aspirations speak to the inherent humility at the core of Ward’s music, her eagerness to collaborate and to willingly vacate the spotlight at particular moments. Her latest album, Armageddon in a Summer Dress, contains such an array of open-hearted and open-minded collaboration that it feels near-maximalist when compared with her bare-bones early recordings. Take "Scornful Heart" for instance – a bold and telling choice for the record’s second single that features friend and collaborator Tré Burt on lead vocals rather than Ward herself. “That song is for me and Tré’s band, which is going to be called Smooth Harrisons. That was the only song we finished and I was just like… we should put that on the album – on my album.”

Her work with Andrija Tokic, who produced both Anarchist Gospel and Armageddon in a Summer Dress, has also broadened her sound. “I like Andrija because he’s down to record, like, hitting a can with something and then putting a bunch of effects on it. He's down to do stuff just to see. He’s more experimental. Like, let’s just try this. There’s one song [on the album], ‘No One Calls Me Baby’, where we’re using an autoharp. Just doing fun stuff, fun studio stuff.” This collectivist approach is something Ward says she wants to replicate live, too: “My first two shows of the year are going to be with a five-piece band and I’m hoping that we tour as a band. I’ve never done that before. You can’t even jam when you’re by yourself, and I actually do take solos and shit if I’m playing with other people. It gives you room to just do more fun stuff musically”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Joshua Black Wilkins

I am going to finish with a review for Armageddon in a Summer Dress. Even if I am new to Sunny War, I am determined to discover as much as I can. Her music is so moving and arresting. Some of the most heart-stopping and shocking words on her album arrive on the song, Walking Contradiction: “Doesn’t matter what your silly little signs have to say/‘Cause the genocide is funded by the taxes that you pay”:

“Sunny War has done it again. Her brand new album, Armageddon in a Summer Dress (out February 21 via New West Records), is yet another anarcho-punk-roots masterpiece in her already deep-and-wide catalog of superlative recordings. The project builds on the sonic and rhetorical universe of her critically acclaimed and triumphantly received 2023 release, Anarchist Gospel, further expanding her charming, down-to-earth doctrine of mutual aid, community, and truly radical ideas – musically, and otherwise – exactly when we need them most.

That fact – the apropos timing of this collection of songs and their release – feels most striking because this music wasn’t written expressly to be a response to the current critical mass of fascism, oligarchy, and attacks on human rights in our country and around the world. Instead, the messages and morals in these songs are well-placed, not as slapdash reactions to the current political discourse or as activist-branded cash grabs in a terrifying societal moment, but by focusing on the real day-to-day implications of such imperialism as evidenced within War’s own life and her own inner circle.

On Armageddon’s opening track, “One Way Train,” she sings:

When there’s no one left to use
And no police or state
And the fascists and the classists
All evaporate
Won’t you meet me on the outskirts
Of my left brain
Close your eyes and take a ride
On a one way train

This album is exactly such a refuge on par with the singer’s “left brain” – and stemming directly from it! – in “One Way Train.” Armageddon is a respite from the noise of the news cycle and the sensationalism of consumerist media that needs not deny the realities we all witness and live through in order to be a resting place. This isn’t toxic positivity or “joy” and “hope” as cudgels to smack down criticism of inequalities, corruption, and ruling classes, thereby reinforcing the status quo. The songs of Armageddon in a Summer Dress do feel hopeful– but because they acknowledge and grapple with these issues, instead of willing them away under the rug or into hiding.

The deft and artful positioning of these incisive songs is directly tied to the ways anarchy, mutual aid, and solidarity have been woven into War’s life as an artist – and as a human, since even before she picked up the guitar. These are embodied, real concepts to Sunny, not just intellectual ideas and hypotheticals.

Punk and blues, folk and grunge ooze out of songs ripe for protest and resistance, but never packaged in a pink crocheted pussy cat hat or internet-ready bumper sticker quips. Sunny War knows the violence and tyranny we all face – she has faced it her entire life – and gives it the treatment it deserves, but without ever preaching or finger-wagging. The beliefs evident in Armageddon in a Summer Dress are never contingent on which team, “red or blue,” holds the power. Rather, the hope and tenacity in these songs feels derived from an intrinsic understanding that it’s always been “the many versus the few” and “the powerless versus the powerful” where the battle lines are drawn, instead.

“Walking Contradiction” – which features punk icon Steve Ignorant – is searing in its indictment of toothless neoliberalism having landed us in this exact political and social scenario:

…While the war pigs killed more kids today
Picket signs were made 6,000 miles away
And all the lefties and the liberals were marching so you know
Just because they pay their taxes doesn’t mean that they don’t know
All the pigs and the big wigs foaming at the mouth
Look down at us laughing like we’ll never figure out
All the war outside starts here at home
If they didn’t have our money they’d be fighting it alone
Doesn’t matter what your silly little signs have to say
‘Cause the genocide is funded by the taxes that you pay

Stopping and inhabiting this song, one of the project’s singles, and its message is illuminating. Especially when you realize it was written under the prior administration, but applies to the current one as well. And, perhaps, to every other presidential administration in U.S. history.

Armageddon in a Summer Dress still feels light and rewarding, though. It’s flowing and intuitive, and decidedly charming, even with these stark messages. Because, like most of Sunny War’s creative output, it actually drives to the heart of the issues we all turn over in our minds and on our screens each day, rather than tilting at superficial, sensational windmills that end up reinforcing our oligarchic status quo.

Of course, this album is not solely political and anarchic and intellectual. In fact, it’s not attempting to be cerebral and be-monocled at all. These are songs of love, of grief, of being an individual with a collective mindset in an individualist world with collective blindness.

There are songs of introspection, of perception, of self growth, of regression. Each feels fully realized in production, lush and deep. But there, in the gaps, in the bones of each track, are War’s signature fingerstyle licks, hooks, and turns of phrase on the guitar. She plays banjo throughout the project as well, and though the referenced genres evident on the project are endlessly rootsy, the blues and folk approach that charmed much of the bluegrass, folk, and Americana worlds previously serve a more subtle purpose here. War’s personality on her instruments is still prominent, and is ultimately successful playing more of a support role to the greater whole. Above all else, you can tell creating this album and these songs must have been so much fun to make.

Tré Burt, Valerie June, and John Doe – along with Ignorant – all guest on the record, which was produced by Andrija Tokic and recorded in Nashville, just up the highway from War’s current hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Like Anarchist Gospel, seeing War’s community of collaborators grow and morph on the new project again speaks to the way this guitarist-songwriter-performer’s mission is an active, constructive one. It’s never merely a mantra hung on the wall to be admired from afar.

As we all face an ongoing apocalypse, as we each reckon with the indisputable fact that we are already living in dystopia – and have been – Armageddon in a Summer Dress is the perfect album to bring along with us. Dancing and flowing and twirling through the end of the world is certainly not a winning strategy, but dancing, marching, caring for one another, and lifting each other up despite Armageddon and imperialism might just do the trick.

She perhaps encapsulates this feeling best alongside wailing organ on “Bad Times:”

Had nothing so I had to borrow
What I owe’s gonna double tomorrow
Maybe now or in an hour or so
I’m gonna have to let everything go

So long room and board
And all the other things I can’t afford
You’re overrated anyway
I’ll be good soon as you
Bad times stay away
Bad times stay away
Bad times stay away
Bad times stay away…

This affirmation is not the end game, it is merely the beginning. If we take Sunny War’s ideals to heart, if we sing along at the top of our lungs, if we do mutual aid on a daily basis, if we take each moment, one individual second at a time– we, too, can navigate through Armageddon in a Summer Dress, emerging on the other side in a better, more just, more sunny world”.

I am not sure whether Sunny War is coming over to the U.K. anytime soon. I hope that her music catches the ear more fully of stations like BBC Radio 6 Music. So that there is more exposure for someone who I think is going to have a long career. I will return to her music soon enough.  I wanted to use this opportunity celebrate and highlight…

A phenomenal artist.

____________

Follow Sunny War

Official:

http://www.sunnywar.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/sunnywarmusic/

Twitter:

https://x.com/SunnyWar

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/01GKiTphQwz4guZQntMha8?si=IoOlxYiOR6eYMuRGUN0G_A

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbkvZUD6w-3QWR4qjJQpP-w

Facebook:

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FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Lady Gaga Collection

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

The Lady Gaga Collection

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THE reason for…

PHOTO CREDIT: Domen & van de Velde

highlighting Lady Gaga is because her latest album, Mayhem, is out and receiving positive reviews. I wanted to use this Digital Mixtape to compile a selection of Lady Gaga’s songs. The best-known tracks and some deeper cuts. I am going to get to that mixtape soon. Before that, I wanted to include a review for Mayhem. This is what NME said

“When Lady Gaga first announced ‘Mayhem’ in January, she said it “started as me facing my fear of returning to the pop music my earliest fans loved”. She hasn’t literally tried to recreate the sound of 2008 – there’s no reunion with her ‘Just Dance’ producer RedOne – but Gaga has tapped into her old sense of excess. On her first proper pop album since 2020’s house-infused ‘Chromatica’, she dials absolutely everything up to eleven.

Gaga telegraphed her return to core values on recent single ‘Abracadabra’, a sinewy synth-pop banger that culminates in a truly ludicrous vocal hook: “Abracadabra, amor-oo-na-na!” Thankfully, it’s no red herring on an album that stomps out of the speakers with unselfconscious confidence. We get Gaga delivering a stuttering, ‘Poker Face’-style vocal hook on ‘Garden of Eden’, Prince-ish slinkiness mixed with punk on ‘Killah’ and the dark melodrama of ‘Bad’-era Michael Jackson on ‘The Beast’.

Longtime Little Monsters will find plenty of references to Gaga’s pop past as well. Take ‘Perfect Celebrity’, where she comes across as a battle-hardened version of the starlet she played on her 2008 debut ‘The Fame’. “You love to hate mе, I’m the perfect celebrity,” she sings, before an onslaught of lashing guitars remind you that Gaga’s stage name is a nod to a Queen song.

Co-producing with Andrew Watt (Rolling Stones, Post Malone) and Cirkut (Charli XCX, Rosé), Gaga infuses her bombastic dance-pop sound with stadium rock theatrics throughout. ‘Don’t Call Tonight’, an evocative and anthemic snapshot of a toxic relationship, is begging to be belted out in front of 70,000 lit-up smartphones. Then there’s disco-rap banger ‘Zombieboy’, where Gaga sometimes sounds a bit like a musical theatre kid channelling Blondie’s Debbie Harry – but just about gets away with it.

There’s a nonchalant confidence in the way Gaga sticks to her maximalist vision without pandering to contemporary pop trends. Most ‘Mayhem’ tracks run close to or over four minutes, making them mini-epics in the TikTok era. Only ‘How Bad Do U Want Me’, which has shades of ‘1989’-era Taylor Swift and Yazoo’s synth-pop classic ‘Only You’, doesn’t sound totally and thrillingly Gaga. ‘Die With A Smile’, her relatively restrained soft rock duet with Bruno Mars, is sequenced at the end like a palate cleanser after a feast of bold flavours.

Ultimately, ‘Mayhem’ feels like a great Gaga album because it’s just so much fun. At times, it’s a bit like reconnecting with an old friend who makes sense even when they seem to be chatting nonsense. When she sings “river in my eyes, I’ve got a poem in my throat” on ‘LoveDrug’, it’s just her overblown way of saying she’s sad and tongue-tied. Seventeen years after she broke through with ‘Just Dance’, Lady Gaga remains pop’s foremost agent of impeccably crafted chaos”.

I am going to wrap things up. One of the most original and influential artists of her generation, I wanted to mark the release of an excellent new Lady Gaga album. A look back through her career. Someone who has many more albums in her. If you are fairly unfamiliar with her work or are a huge fan, this mixtape should give you a thorough representation of…

A music great.

FEATURE: Classic Acts and Modern Icons: Reacting to the First Wave of Names for This Year’s Glastonbury Festival

FEATURE:

 

 

Classic Acts and Modern Icons

Reacting to the First Wave of Names for This Year’s Glastonbury Festival

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EVEN though…

IN THIS PHOTO: Neil Young/PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Pfluger for The New Yorker

every year the Glastonbury Festival is announced there is division and wildly differing reactions, this year does have some clear positives and exciting first-timers. At such a horrible, unpredictable and frightening time, I think music and festivals in particular are more important than ever. There are some big takeaways from the names that have already been announced. Of course, there will be more names coming up. The poster will get fuller. What we did get yesterday (6th March) were the three headline acts that will take to the Pyramid Stage, together with those that will headline other stages. Before getting to some reaction, The Guardian wrote about the varied and exciting names that have just been announced:

“This year’s Glastonbury set will feature two first-time headliners in the British pop-rock group the 1975 and the US pop-punk songwriter Olivia Rodrigo.

The band, led by Matty Healy, will top the Friday night billing on the Pyramid stage. Rodrigo will perform on Sunday. In 2022, the Drivers License singer performed on the Other stage, a set that boasted a guest spot from Lily Allen and an excoriation of the US supreme court following the overturning of Roe v Wade a day earlier.

In between on Saturday comes a previously – accidentally – announced headline set from Neil Young and his band the Chrome Hearts. On 1 January, Young declared, out of the blue, that he was withdrawing from this year’s festival owing to his perception that it was under broadcast partner the BBC’s “corporate control”. Two days later, he said he had received “an error in information” and that the festival was “back on our itinerary”. He previously headlined in 2009.

The soul-pop star Raye will play on the Pyramid stage before Young. The 27-year-old Londoner is already something of a national treasure after walking away from her major label to find critical and commercial success with her debut album, My 21st Century Blues.

The festival previously revealed that Rod Stewart would take this year’s “legends” slot. Stewart, who turned 80 in January, said he was “more than able to pleasure and titillate” at his age.

The Other stage headliners have also been revealed. After turning the world lime green with her culture-dominating album Brat last summer – and rivalling Dua Lipa’s headline extravaganza with merely a DJ set at Glastonbury 2024 – Charli xcx will headline the festival’s second stage on Saturday. The London rapper Loyle Carner headlines it on Friday, and the Prodigy will close the stage on Sunday – the dance group’s first Glastonbury performance since the death of their frontman, Keith Flint, in 2019, just before that year’s festival.

A raft of talents old and new are among this year’s first-time performers. At the breakout end of the scale, there is the Stick Season troubadour Noah Kahan, the That’s So True songwriter Gracie Abrams, the Messy singer Lola Young, the euphoric Brits-minted star Myles Smith, the cheeky American-Ghanaian rapper Amaarae and the A Bar Song (Tipsy) star and Beyoncé collaborator Shaboozey.

There are more surprising debuts from Alanis Morissette, Busta Rhymes, Brandi Carlile – who will be fresh off the back of a duets album with Elton John – the US girl group En Vogue, Anohni and the Johnsons, the cult British funk act Cymande, the hard-touring Osees and everyone’s friend electric, Gary Numan.

Worthy farm stalwarts scheduled to perform include Ezra Collective – riding high off winning best group at this year’s Brit awards – the Australian punk tykes Amyl and the Sniffers, Jorja Smith, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty and the roots reggae stars Burning Spear and Black Uhuru.

Friday also sees the return of the Isle of Wight indie duo Wet Leg, presumed to be back this year with their second album. The Irish pop star CMAT is another returning talent, along with the Bath dance iconoclast PinkPantheress and Sheffield’s Self Esteem, who returns with her new album, A Complicated Woman, in April.

After winning best rap album for her mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal at this year’s Grammy awards – which also featured a performance hinting at the magic she will bring to Worthy Farm – the Florida rapper Doechii will headline the West Holts stage on Saturday”.

The biggest ‘negatives’ perhaps – or things that seem odd – revolve around the headline slots. One can appreciate the fact a legend like Neil Young has been booked. He and his band will be a popular choice. I was expecting Olivia Rodrigo to have been booked a couple of years ago. Although it is a really good booking, I wonder why she was not a headliner closer to the release of her 2023 album, GUTS. However, as an established artist, it is appropriate she is given a bigger stage. However, it just seems like the timing is a bit off. I wonder whether someone like Sabrina Carpenter was considered for a headline slot. With such much momentum behind her right now, she would have been a huge booking. Carpenter plays at London’s Hyde Park on 5th July, but maybe there was a budget issue. Perhaps Carpenter was approached but did not feel up for it. There could be a lot of reasons for it. However, I do think it is great that the headliners are a mix of ages. You have the iconic Neil Young and he will bring this golden set. It will be a hugely emotional experience for older and younger fans alike. No line-up is ever going to unite people. D.J., broadcaster and journalist Georgie Rogers said in an interview when asked for her reaction that it is impossible to please everyone. You always get people saying it is the worst line-up ever or the best. In truth, the past few years have definitely been more towards the ‘best’ end of the scale. The fact that there is gender balance being struck is vital. Upcoming artists given exposure and opportunity. More varied in terms of the musical palette. Icons like Paul McCartney and Elton John headlining. We have also seen Dua Lipa and SZA headline. One of the festival’s biggest issues was a lack of female headliners on the Pyramid Stage. Before they booked two female headliners (SZA and Dua Lipa) last year, there had only been four female headliners since the year 2000. That is a shocking and frankly depressing statistic! I was expecting either two or three female headliners this year. Will we ever see a year when female dominance is reflected in an all-female line-up on the Pyramid Stage headline slots?! The fact that such a big step forward was taken last year pointed at a new tide and improvement. If we have incredible women headlining other stages, the Pyramid Stage has only one female headliner.

Some might say the fact it is not all-male is a positive. That is true. It was be a massive step back to have no women. However, like last year, there is one odd inclusion. I can appreciate Coldplay were a crowd-pleasing booking last year. However, it didn’t seem fresh or a reaction to this new album that was wowing critics. It seemed a little lazy. This year, The 1975 have been booked. Aside from the fact that their lead Matty Healy – who I have made no secret of disliking enormously – is controversial, the band have not released an album since 2022. Being Funny in a Foreign Language got positive reaction but the band have not put much out in the three years since. It does seem another case of bad timing. It is baffling why they were selected when there are so many other bands that are more worthy. Fontaines D.C. would have been awesome headliners. Solo artists like Sam Fender. I was also thinking about Kylie Minogue. She was due to headline in 2005 but was replaced by Basement Jaxx. Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer and one would have hoped that twenty years on, she would have been given that headline slot. She has played since 2005 but with the remarkable TENSION (2023) ranking alongside her best albums, she would have been a phenomenal booking. Also, her 2000 album, Light Years, turns twenty-five in September. Its iconic lead single, Spinning Around, turns twenty-five shortly before Glastonbury starts this year. As Glastonbury does not started until 25th June, Minogue will be done with The Tension Tour. It would be a perfect finale or encore if she was a Glastonbury headliner! The biggest omission is Charli xcx. Headlining on the Other Stage on the Saturday night, why not a Saturday headline slot on the Pyramid Stage?!

Dua Lipa was booked last year. Olivia Rodrigo this year. Charli xcx is arguably more popular and worthy. I reckon her Saturday headline slot will get more attention and buzz than The 1975’s headline slot. It does seem a weird oversight. Her time is now. With the momentum created from last year’s BRAT – which many highlighted as their album of the year -, she would be one of the best headliners from recent years! I think that her set will be a five-star spectacle, but you have to ask why she was not asked to headline the Pyramid Stage. It would mean two women headlining the festival’s biggest stage. Keeping that advantage from last year. Even though this year is not a step back, it does seem to be a missed opportunity. However, it is good that artists like Charli xcx and Doechii get a big platform. That might not have happened in years past. The festival organisers (Emily and Michael Eavis) aware of more female visibility in headline slots. Greater parity across the bill. Still a festival leading the way when it comes to gender inequality, though there is clearly room for improvement. The Pyramid Stage headline bookings have raised some questions. Though we have to celebrate the positives. Neil Young and The Chrome Hearts will be amazing. Olivia Rodrigo is definitely going to smash it! The biggest takeaway from the announced names is how broad it is. Something to please everyone. Alanis Morisette a first-time booking. Timely, as her third studio album, Jagged Little Pill, turns thirty on 13th June – two weeks before she plays Glastonbury. Busta Rhymes is an unusual call but a great one! En Vogue, Lola Young and Supergrass playing on the same day (Friday) as Self Esteem. It is a great Friday that promises so many treats. We will get more names but the ones announced so far are amazing.

Saturday is a brilliant one. Doechii and Charli xcx. Nova Twins and Gary Numan. Aside from some questionable calls like The Script and Kaiser Chiefs, they do work when you think about their demographic and fanbase. Appealing to a different crowd than Doechii or Beth Gibbons. Sunday ending the festival with a bang. Possibly the most diverse day, the Legends slot sees Rod Stewart take to the stage. He plays on the same day as The Prodigy, Olivia Rodrigo, Kae Tempest, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and the newly-reformed The Maccabees. When more names are announced, I think we will see a lot of rising artists given incredible recognition. Although I have some concerns and issues with the line-up – especially the main headliners -, it is subjective. Again, you cannot please everyone! Eclectic genres and time periods. Gender parity and important headline slots for women. Some older and classic bands sitting alongside modern icons. Perhaps one of the most enjoyable diverse line-up in many years! Last year’s festival was a wonderful thing. I think that this year’s could be even bigger and better. When more names are announced, we will get a clear picture of what Glastonbury 2025 will look like. However, the first wave of names offers plenty of positives! That is the main thing: the positive majority. My niggles aside, it is great that the U.K.’s biggest music festival is still going strong. Down at Worthy Farm, from 25th to 29th June, there is going to be…

A huge celebration!