FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Kate Nash

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Alice Baxley for The Line of Best Fit

 

Kate Nash

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IN thinking about…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alice Baxley

Kate Nash, there are a number of reasons why I want to include her in this Modern-Day Queens. Even though she has not released a new single for a little while, she is one of our best artists. Her huge debut album, Made of Bricks, was released in 2007. Reaching number one in the U.K., it featured perhaps Nash’s most played and popular single: the phenomenal Foundations. Her most recent album, 2024’s 9 Sad Symphonies, is one I would recommend everyone check out. Not only do I want to celebrate this amazing human. The Harrow-born role model is one of our most recognisable artist. There are some interviews that I want to bring down. Starting out with a couple from last year. A working-class artist who has lost money on tours and has spoken out about how other artists are losing so much touring and it is a blight on the industry – she spoke to Adam Buxton recently and discussed the issue -, Nash chatted with the BBC about how she is making more money from being on OnlyFans than she is touring:

“Singer Kate Nash says she thinks she will make more money from selling photos of her bottom on OnlyFans than she will from her concerts, after joining the platform because it's "a really difficult time for artists to tour".

Under the slogan "Butts for tour buses", the musician announced on Thursday that her OnlyFans income will subsidise her shows because "touring makes losses not profits".

"I also think it's bit of a punk protest as a woman to take control of my body and sell it to be able to fund my passion project, which is actually my 18-year career," she explained.

"I want to highlight that, and I want people to talk about it, and I want people to know the truth about what what's happening in the music business."

Nash, who has just finished a three-week US tour, started her UK dates in Glasgow on Thursday, and will then move on to Europe. Her date at London's Koko is sold out.

"I'm losing money from those tours," she told BBC News.

"The only way I could find to make a profit on the tour - you're either going, hopefully I sell enough T-shirts to cover the debt, or you cut people's wages, or you fire band and crew, or you travel dangerously."

She wasn't willing to cut corners or the quality of her shows, she said. "So that leaves me in a position where I'm not profiting from tours. So is this a job, or is it a passion project?"

She also said it was "an important time for women to take control and to feel empowered", and that she often posted photos of her posterior anyway.

The pictures she's posted on OnlyFans so far are revealing but not explicit.

"I think the arse is the perfect combination of comedy and sexuality," she said.

"I actually like bums. I think they're just quite great. I think it's funny. I enjoy taking pictures of my bum. Always been a bit of a flasher. So I'm going to enjoy doing it, and I'm already putting it online anyway.

"I'm going to probably make more money doing that than the music over the next three months”.

Kate Nash is so inspiring and important because she is raising issues in the industry. Around touring and how artists are losing money. The struggle that working-class artists face. How important grassroots venues are. At a time when venues are closing, Nash is speaking out and took a campaign to the road. In this interview with NME from last year, Nash talked about an important campaign and how the Government needs to realise, now, a career in music for many is a dream rather than a reality:

“Kate Nash has spoken to NME about her ‘Butts For Tour Buses’ campaign, the online row with The Lottery Winners – and why things need to change for artists now to avoid “collapse”.

Nash recently made headlines when she launched her ‘Butts for Tour Buses’ campaign, which saw her join OnlyFans to protest the music industry and help raise money for her UK and European tour.

The singer-songwriter and GLOW actor then took her “bum on the back of a fire truck” protest to the London offices of Live Nation and Spotify as well as the Houses of Parliament to highlight the challenges facing artists arguing: “The industry is in crisis, the music industry has failed artists, and is completely unsustainable, and my arse is shining a light on that.”

This comes as the UK government recently backed the call for a ticket levy on arena gigs and above to feed the grassroots, with small venues in a perilous situation and artists struggling more than ever to make ends meet with the odds stacked against them. A deadline has since been set for March for the music industry to react in a meaningful way to the levy, before the government will be forced to step in and act. With the dialogue increasing in recent years, it appears to be coming to a point of real reckoning now.

“It’s exploding now because of my bum! No, I’m joking,” Nash told NME. “A lot of work has been done over the last five years by people in government, Tom Gray, Broken Record, Sam Duckworth, Music Venue Trust – they’ve been working on this with proper activism at a political level. The reason it’s tipping over is because we’re almost at collapse. It can only go on to be something we all complain about behind the scenes for so long until you start to see it crumble.”

She continued: “The reality is that touring is making losses, not profit. The grassroots is in absolute crisis. Venues are closing, festivals are being cancelled. People are thinking, ‘What’s the point in starting a band?’ and ‘How can I as an artist carry on?’

“Because of the massive inflation that everyone is experiencing outside of music, so many artists are asking themselves, ‘Is this just a hobby or a passion project?’ ‘Am I going to cross the threshold or is it time for something to get done on a governmental level?’”

The conversation around her campaign took an unexpected turn when The Lottery Winners’ Thom Rylance tweeted that Nash shouldn’t try to represent working class musicians, as well as criticising her background as a former pupil of the BRIT School, mistakenly labelling it a fee-paying establishment.

“I didn’t really understand that,” Nash told NME. “What’s the argument about the BRIT School? It’s a free performing arts school. An important message to get out there is that the BRIT School is for everyone. You don’t have to pay to go there. If you heard and got confused, don’t be discouraged from applying. Free performing arts access to young people is so important”.

Before coming to some interviews from this year, I want to bring in an interview from The Line of Best Fit from last summer. They spoke with Kate Nash around the release of 9 Sad Symphonies. Following terrible times and exploitation from labels in the past, she reflected on being on a new label – the iconic Kill Rock Stars. Nash also looked back fondly on her earliest work:

“ Sad Symphonies is Nash’s first album since 2018’s Yesterday Was Forever, which she funded through Kickstarter. She never intended to have such a large gap between albums – after shooting a season of Netflix’s GLOW, she was ready to write another album, and then COVID-19 shut everything down.

Did the pandemic end up influencing the album? “Maybe it did,” Nash ponders. “There’s a lot of depression in the album; a loss of spark. It was a moment in life to relearn how to value yourself without the thing you do, because our jobs define a lot of our lives, especially with what I do. Not being able to do it was a weird feeling. How do you keep yourself feeling positive? It did make you have to go back to [thinking] what is the purpose of life? When it gets taken away it was like, well, who am I without this?”

This existential reflection comes through in the record; it’s a bit slower than Nash’s previous work, perhaps more melancholic in places. During the time between albums, Nash also released a number of singles herself. Three of them – ’Misery’, ‘Horsie’, and ‘Wasteman’ – are on 9 Sad Symphonies’s tracklist.

“I wasn’t signed [at the time],” Nash explains, “I was just distributing songs that I wanted to push forward. I put it out there that I didn’t have a label and realised I was ready for one again, but I wasn't sure who the right partner was.”

So she went out to find the right fit, which turned out to be Kill Rock Stars, an independent label based in the Pacific Northwest that’s heavily associated with Riot grrrl and has boasted the likes of Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney and Gossip over the years.

It was through TikTok (which Nash began to take seriously after it partnered with the BRIT Awards to allow people to vote through the platform) that she found the label. Though she's not a fan of labels telling their artists to try and make music with TikTok virality in mind, she finds it beneficial in terms of making herself and her music more familiar to a younger demographic.

It’s been almost 17 years since she released her debut album, Made of Bricks, which she describes as being “like my child.” Many of the people on TikTok coming across Nash, now 36, weren’t even born then, but through the app they’ve become fans. There are certainly parallels between this and the way in which Nash and many of her contemporaries - Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen among them - gained popularity through sites such as Myspace in the mid-2000s.

“I feel like I need to explain who I am and to talk about my story, and it's funny because every time I do that, people are like, ‘You don't need to explain who you are,’ and I'm like ‘I do, because every time I do, it gets more views and it reaches people,’” she laughs.

Nash actually toured Made of Bricks for its tenth anniversary in 2017, something she describes as “very healing” due to the negative associations she’d attached to the album.

 “When I was coming out in 2007, older men in journalism would be like, ‘Oh, silly little teenage girl writing in her fucking diary, how boring. We want men who talk about real things like being drunk and girls,” she remarks dryly. “But I’m talking about being drunk and boys. Like, what?”

Though her past critics might not have been ideal, Nash does describe her fans as "the best in the world", and it’s clear that she loves seeing such a wide variety of people at her shows. If you were a teenager when Nash first stormed onto the charts, you’d be in your early thirties by now. Many fans from this generation (and beyond) still remain, but there are teenagers too.

Some of the biggest stars on the planet right now are young women who blew up at a similar age to Nash – take Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, now 22 and 21 respectively. But Nash isn’t sure whether or not she sees herself as a role model for younger artists coming through, as much as she’s a huge fan of artists in their twenties, such as Connie Constance and Joy Crookes.

She waxes lyrical about the former – “I fucking love Connie, she’s one of my favourites” – who recently opened for her. “When I found out she was a fan of me, I was like, ‘I can’t believe this,’” she says, “The kids that grew up listening to me are that cool, because she’s so fucking cool to me.”

Meanwhile, Crookes even emulated Nash’s haircut as a child. “She sent me this photo, trying to get my haircut. She used to draw me! These are the coolest artists around. So I feel very honoured to be of any sort of inspiration. They’re amazing”.

I am going to finish I think with just one interview from this year (rather than two). Recently, Kate Nash spoke with Viva! about veganism, capitalism and the commodification of mortality. It is a fascinating interview that reveals new sides and layers to an incredible artist. Someone who should be talked about more:

“Beyond music, she gained recognition for her role as Rhonda ‘Britannica ’Richardson in the Netflix series GLOW. An advocate for women’s empowerment, Nash champions breaking stereotypes in the entertainment industry – and she’s also a committed vegan and animal rights supporter!

It’s hard not to admire Kate Nash as beneath her catchy tunes and bold lyrics lies a woman constantly challenging the insidious forces of modern life. Her stance on veganism, for example – rooted in something deep and complex: anxiety. We live in a world fraught with uncertainty, the dread of environmental destruction and mass exploitation which can push us into making radical lifestyle changes – like choosing to remove all animal products from our diet. For Nash, veganism isn’t just a diet, it’s an act of defiance against a system that thrives on cruelty and commodification.

“I was vegetarian for about eight years,” Nash tells me, leaning in with the kind of unfiltered honesty that makes her music resonate so deeply. “That was because I had a bunny rabbit called Fluffy and she was connected to my OCD and anxiety issues… I made a deal with the universe: if I do this, then this won’t happen.” Fluffy the bunny unwittingly became a totem of Nash’s fraught relationship with control. The decision to become vegetarian wasn’t just an ethical choice, it was a form of personal exorcism: “I started thinking, ‘if I don’t eat animals, then she’ll be okay.’”

But it didn’t stop there. A pivotal turning point arrived in the shape of the film Okja. For those unfamiliar, Okja is a satirical dystopia about factory farming and a genetically modified super-pig called Okja, destined for slaughter, whose bond with the young girl who raised her sets off a cross-continental rescue mission. It’s a masterpiece of moral ambiguity and capitalism’s grim handshake with consumerism. “I’d avoided all the documentaries about cruelty and mass farming,” Nash says, “then I watched Okja and I guess I was in a vulnerable place. That final scene really struck me… After that, I just thought, ‘I don’t want to be part of this destruction.’” The film ends with Mija and Okja metaphorically disappearing into the sunset back to their tiny Korean farm.

It was easy to trace the thought processes in Nash’s journey from vegetarian to vegan as she continued to peel back layers of her own ethical engagement. “My mum grew up on a farm so I understand farming roots. There’s this idea that once, humans killed animals out of necessity and the animals were sacred. Now it’s just insane cruelty on a massive scale. I didn’t want to participate in that anymore.”

It’s the ethical quandary many of us avoid, even as we devour documentaries and climate reports from the comfort of our sofas. Nash sees veganism as a clean break – not just from eating animals but from a system that commodifies life in every form. “What I like about being vegan is that it’s a very easy way to do something good. It’s like a political statement,” she explains.

“I don’t think where we’ve got to is okay. I think it’s so unethical and cruel and it’s not even food at this point.”

If the way Nash describes meat-eating sounds a bit like the dystopian nightmare of Okja, that’s because, to her, it is. “I can’t always guarantee I’m not participating in cruelty unless I remove myself from it altogether. I don’t live near a farm; I don’t have friends who can hand me eggs from chickens they’ve looked after properly. So I just stepped out.”

And here’s the uncomfortable bit for omnivores, who like to tell themselves that ethics are too complicated to untangle – an argument Nash knows too well. “We’ve mass-produced everything. Carrots originally weren’t even orange, they were purple! Something to do with the Protestants… but basically, it’s all been manipulated, and we’re so far from nature that it’s not just about eating animals anymore, it’s about the entire system of how we’re living.”

She pauses, clearly aware of how deep the rabbit hole of ethical living goes. “I think we’ve pushed capitalism to the max. There are food banks in supermarkets but they throw food away at the end of the day. What are we doing?” It’s not just the absurdity of the system that bothers Nash but the sheer helplessness one feels when trying to rebel against it.

This piece was originally published in Viva!life, our exclusive quarterly magazine for Viva! members. Viva!life features editorials on our latest campaigns and investigations, exclusive celebrity interviews, ethical businesses, health news, plant-based cookery, and vegan trends.

By joining Viva! for as little as £1.50 a month, you will get Viva!life magazine delivered straight to your door four times a year, so you can be the first to read our new features — as well as lots of other great benefits!

Which brings us to the vegan industrial complex, because yes, that’s a thing now too. “There’s so much positivity around vegan products,” she acknowledges, “but the vegan community needs to be a little more critical. Mass-produced food – whether it’s meat or vegan – isn’t good for us. If you don’t learn to cook from scratch, you’re just buying into another processed-food industry. It feels like capitalism is taking advantage of people being vegan and are just pumping out crap”.

For those who maybe heard Kate Nash back in 2007 or only really check out the big songs, there is so much more to her. An advocate for working-class artists, the plight of grassroots venues and making the industry better. Her OnlyFans account gives her some power and control. Inspiring other artists and women. Someone who is a definite force for good. An incredible spokesperson, actor, musician and voice in the industry, Kate Nash was straight at the front of my mind when I was looking around for the next incredible female artist in Modern-Day Queens. I am not sure what is next for Nash. There will be more music and touring, though I think she will continue to speak out against the perils in music and how artists are struggling. Venues disappearing and tours not earning artists money – many losing a lot of money. If Kate Nash is not there already, make sure that she is…

ON your radar.

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Follow Kate Nash

FEATURE: Spotlight: bdrmm

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Stewart Baxter

 

bdrmm

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THERE are going to be…

lots of positives in this feature, so I have to start by putting in a negative. As much as I love their music, I really do not like the name bdrmm. Although it is distinct, it is one of those names that you have to spell or pronounce – and I am not sure how that would come out. In spite of the name, the music made by this incredible band is worth spotlighting! I am going to get to some interviews with bdrmm. The band - Ryan Smith (vocals, guitar, synthesizer), Jordan Smith (vocals, bass, synthesizer), Joe Vickers (guitar, bass) and Conor Murray (drums) – released their third studio album, Microtonic, in February. This feature is about spotlighting brand-new artists and also ones that have been around for a while but are not known to all. Five years after bdrmm’s debut album was released, there are still people that are not aware of their brilliance. I am going to end with a review for Microtonic. First, a few interviews. Starting out with one from 2024. The band have some great dates coming up. I guess there will be festival bookings announced fairly soon. Let’s start out with an interview from The Quietus. They note how many fans were surprised by the Dance move and direction on their new record. How Mictrotonic is more upbeat or positive than their previous albums:

“If you listen to Microtonic, much of its music doesn’t sound nearly as tormented as a nightmarish pandemic record should. In fact, there’s a lot of instrumental beauty to lose yourself in, set against the intensity of its lyrics; the contemplative arpeggios in the title track, the acidic, dancefloor-ready melodies in ‘Clarkycat’ and Ryan’s soaring vocals on lead single ‘John On The Ceiling’, for instance. It was David Lynch’s Eraserhead, the singer says, which inspired this odd tonal juxtaposition: “That film is full of unease, but there is such beauty in it. The story is beautiful, but the way it goes about itself makes you feel uneasy, it really did something to me.” Microtonic, then, was written with plenty of “off-kilter moments: like you don’t really know what’s coming next, it can go from beauty to fucking dread.”

That approach is best demonstrated on ‘Infinity Peaking’, which was written at Ryan’s girlfriends’ house in Malaga whilst listening to Four Tet’s ‘Unspoken’. It was an unusually idyllic setting.“The first place I’d ever written a track that wasn’t in a dingy bedroom,” he laughs. “I was sat looking at the mountains in Malaga where the sun was shining. Like… what the fuck? I was in a really good place, but what came out obviously was quite the juxtaposition of being in such a beautiful environment but feeling these uncomfortable feelings.”

Perhaps it’s the openness and emotional safety that dance music afforded Ryan which allowed him to expose more of his vulnerabilities on Microtonic. Ryan’s written about his mental health struggles before on the last two records – in ways that were sometimes misinterpreted by listeners: “People thought ‘Be Careful’ was a political record, I was literally just talking about me nearly sniffing too much”. But there’s an unmistakable assuredness on Microtonic, one which sees Ryan not only adopt a more commanding tone throughout, but also a straightforward honesty about his mental health struggles: “Forgiving myself one more time, again,” he sings on ‘Infinity Peaking’. “Staring out at the world I have created. So lost, so lost…”

“The first two records were very much me talking about my mental health, but that’s completely masked [on those albums] by the amount of horror that seems to be going on in the world,” he says. “It’s inescapable because it just kind of goes into your head, so that’s the confidence to be able to talk about those more important, deeper values and the confidence within the songwriting.”

Lockdown split the band apart, as it did many. After spending days on end with each other, they found themselves living in different places, and the change in lifestyle was difficult to adjust to: “I think I can say for all of us that it impacted us in many different ways,” Jordan asserts.

When I ask Ryan what lockdown was like for him, he grimaces. “Fucking hell,” he begins. “Well, I was living in a basement in Leeds. I feel like a lot of people took that time to get sober, and I definitely went the opposite way. Being able to stay at home and do whatever you wanted to do – which was unfortunately for me, a lot of drugs and a lot of drink – I feel like I’ve come out of that a different person just because of the impact that’s had on me.

“I do feel like I come back to that lockdown quite a bit, but it’s just because it’s tattooed on my memory,” he continues. “I don’t think the world is the same – anxiety is fucking air now. It seems like it’s on edge. I don’t know if that’s just me because I’ve come out of this lockdown with a mental disorder or the world has shifted because everyone was in their own heads for two years.”

That paranoia has inspired the urgency palpable in Microtonic, whether in its lyrics or the stark sprechgesang Ryan adopts on tracks like ‘Snares’: “When you want to address something which is more or less the fucking nightmare world that we live in, you want to tell people that it’s alright. It’s fucking bleak, but within these little pockets of your own people, you can find that happiness within this bleakness.”

Really, that’s the most intriguing aspect about Microtonic. It might be slightly corny to say, but the record is imbued with an affirmation of friendship; of mates reconnecting through music after being separated by the pandemic. I bring up how much I enjoy the lyrical directness on ‘Snares’, and Jordan chimes in: “It’s interesting, because it’s one of the tunes where we’ve all listened to it and thought it was great, and then when we’ve talked to each other about what we liked about it, it’s completely different,” he says”.

I am going to move on to an interesting interview from The Line of Best Fit from February. Even though there is gloom and something heavier in Microtonic, there is still a lot of fun and light. The band seem more settled, even though it is a turbulent and horrible time. I know they are played on a few radio stations, though I feel they warrant wider appreciation and investigation:

“On Microtonic, bdrmm have used the endless possibilities of electronica to rework the quintessential yearning that has always underpinned their sound. “Lake Disappointment” is a more rave-friendly track with distorting, whirling bass that would sit snugly on a Joy Division album, and album opener “goit” starts out in the dance realm too before it spirals into acidy undertones accompanied by a searing sense of dread, with these more expansive textures of ambient and IDM pervading most of the album. Syd Minskey-Sargeant of Working Men’s Club offers grim lyrics of “mortality / spasms / terror / death / there’s nothing left” to bring the topic of dystopia into sharp focus immediately – something that never relents.

Standout tracks “John on the Ceiling” and “Snares” both use harsher, industrial sounds to emphasise the dreariness of Smith’s conscience. On the former, synth gushes filter through his fixations on “thinking of the / ways to escape / what’s said and done,” and on the latter, he uses spoken word to understand “the jarred clarity of our identities” post-pandemic.

But Smith and Vickers both feel “The Noose” best captures the album’s message: that the world we live in isn’t real anymore. “That was written from insomnia,” Smith explains, sharing how he used a loop pedal to produce the song’s intense mechanical whirring sound. “That’s how we are nowadays: anything that sounds fucking rubbish, we’re like, ‘let’s get that on the album!’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Stewart Baxter

To get into the songwriting zone, Smith dedicated himself to an unusual routine of waking at 5am to watch a different David Lynch film every morning, something he said did the album a world of good. The late director’s film Eraserhead inspired “Clarkycat”, for example, and Smith quips, “obviously that did well for my mental health!” He adds: “It was kind of like Aphex Twin doing his acid dreams, waking up and just writing straight away – I just thought it would be a good way to get into the mindset of all the themes.”

Despite all the pessimism, dystopia, and rooster-call alarm clocks, Microtonic found the band happier than they had ever been while making an album. “Surrounding the doom of the lyricism, the recording process was the best we’ve ever had,” Smith says. “It was so much fun and everything went quite easy. There was no negative energy, no pressure, and it was such a happy time – but just ironic that it came out as quite dark.”

Sticking with long-time producer Alex Greaves contributed to this comfort, too, with Smith calling him a fifth member, while Vickers appreciates his honesty throughout the process: “He was never afraid to tell us when something was shit and sucked, which was quite difficult to hear sometimes, but it’s really healthy and pushes you to be better.” Smith looks back to their origin story with Greaves, when “he’d come over to mine and Jordan’s, just listen to music, write demos, get twatted, and our tastes have developed as his have too.”

That last point is apparent as you move through their music over time, too, with obvious touchpoints such as Ride and Radiohead giving way to Floating Points, Portishead, and Massive Attack. It was gigging with electronic producer Daniel Avery that helped bdrmm understand how to expand their shoegaze sound; working with him and having him remix a track was on their pie-in-the-sky wishlist as big fans of the British DJ’s album Drone Logic.

“And then when it happened [on “Port”], it was like, fucking hell, we must be onto something!” Smith says. “He’s got a big interest in shoegaze, and looking through his playlists you’d have some obscure IDM track followed by Cocteau Twins. That was where the electronic shoegaze melded over. If you can listen to both, you can write both.”

Despite steadily establishing themselves over the past five years, bdrmm are still deeply grounded to their northern roots in Hull, with Smith sharing how he feels it’s the “biggest respect” to be associated with their beloved New Adelphi Club, a storied 200-cap venue where they still play, joining alumni such as Green Day, Oasis, and Radiohead. Similarly, Vickers says that starting out on the Sonic Cathedral before moving to independent label Rock Action “suits our character, being from Hull.”

“Being on a major label would be lovely and I don’t think anyone needs more money than we do,” Smith jokes, “but I wouldn’t change it for the world because you get to do what you want and work with like-minded people.” He notes, by way of example, how this has helped his brother and fellow bandmate Jordan Smith use his creative vision for the band’s overall aesthetic. “He is fucking unbelievable. To see his artistic talent grow and match the vibe – that first album cover is a packet of quavers on a scanner, so he’s a genius.” It’s this freedom and space to grow that has helped bdrmm build their confidence to evolve their music quite early on into their existence. “The biggest thing is just the confidence within us to feel like we can try new things,” says Smith.

“Just as a collective, we’re all much more comfortable in each other. We’ve all grown up and can tell each other how we feel, rather than getting absolutely fucked and fighting each other. We all appreciate the fact we get to do it as none of us are in it for the money, so we all purely do it for the love of actually making music and getting to play it live.”

We can take comfort from the fact that bdrmm still know how to find their niche and spread joy through their music to both themselves and to everyone else – even while its doom-and-gloom overtones echo the terrifyingly satirical world we’re all living in”.

Before getting to a review of Microtonic – an album that could be in the frame for a Mercury Prize this year -, I want to come to another interview. Another from February, CLASH spoke with bdrmm about their sonic evolution and what their latest album delivers. Maybe I should have led with this interview, but I did want to quote from the start of CLASH’s spotlight. It caught my eye:

“Less than five years ago, bdrmm stood at the forefront of a shoegaze renaissance. Drenching their strums in distortion, the Yorkshire-born band took influence from 1980s goths and 1990s alt-rockers to create their own sound, equal parts dark and dreamy. They put out their debut record with Sonic Cathedral and entranced audiences in bedrooms and festival fields alike with hypnotic melodies and pedalboards packed tight. But there was always something else brewing beneath the shoegaze-tinted surface.

bdrmm were never quite content with being a straight-forward guitar band. It’s a classification that they began to kick away from on their sophomore record, 2023’s ‘I Don’t Know’. Those moody guitars and distinctive vocals that characterised their debut still remained, as did those continual nods to Thom Yorke – both as Radiohead frontman and solo producer – but the group looked to broaden the scope of shoegaze with atmospheric electronica and pulsing beats. ‘I Don’t Know’ acted as a bridging point between the band’s fuzzy, bedroom-borne roots and something more synth-driven.

In the words of their trusted producer Alex Greaves, bdrmm are now on the verge of releasing the album that they’ve always been threatening to make. ‘Microtonic’, the group’s third full-length offering, is the purest execution of their sonic vision so far. Through spoken word segments, skittish drum beats, and dreary dystopian lyrics, Bdrmm foray into more cinematic territory, expanding their ‘90s influences to include the likes of Massive Attack, Portishead and Trent Reznor. And although ‘Microtonic’ sits in a completely new realm, perhaps more suited to drip down walls of an underground club than The New Adelphi, it’s no less dense or mesmerising than the band’s early work.

“This record feels like what you guys have been building to,” Greaves comments as we settle into Studio 2 at The Nave, cuppas in hand but soon to be forgotten in favour of conversation, “but I don’t think it’s as much of a departure from what you’ve done before as some people might think. To me, it still has all the hallmarks of a bdrmm record. It’s headphone music. It’s immersive.” 

He’s addressing brothers-turned-bandmates Ryan and Jordan Smith, who have been familiar faces around The Nave for years now. Bdrmm have recorded all of their records so far in this converted church situated on the outskirts of Leeds, and Greaves has been present for each one. As a result, their relationship is far closer than you might usually expect for a band and producer, and, fortunately, their tastes have grown in alignment too.

“We were into the same music when we made album one, and we’re still into the same music now,” Greaves explains, “the idea of making a much more electronic record with these guys was something that I thought they would do and should do.” Although Greaves and the band were on the same page about the idea of pushing into more electronic territory, the vision for ‘Microtonic’ wasn’t always quite so concrete.

bdrmm came to The Nave with just a trio of ideas, but enough confidence that they were a solid base to spawn a full album. “The last record,” Jordan explains, “everyone’s influences and ideas were so scattered. It came together well in the end, but it felt unfocused. When we started this record, it felt like everyone was on the same page with what we were listening to and what we wanted the record to sound like. It felt that there was less hesitance.”

This newfound confidence to experiment seems to have stemmed from a few places: the coherence of the band’s increasingly electronic influences, the quality of their at- home recording, and the liberating return to writing in bedrooms. “The way that we’ve started working more recently has become so divorced from the way that we’re used to working,” Jordan continues. “We used to just get into a practice room and write with guitars. Now, we all live in different cities, it’s going more electronic and we have the opportunity to work at home with decent gear.”

“Nobody had played it in a room together before it came here,” Greaves adds, “no songs on the record were made that way.”

As bdrmm shrugged off their concerns about how tracks might translate to a live setting, ‘Microtonic’ would become their most experimental endeavour yet. “There was so much restriction from album one to album two,” Ryan comments, “Now, we can just do whatever we want and then we can learn how to do it live.” “Worry about that later,” Greaves reassures him, “And also it’s not my problem”.

I am finishing off with a review of Microtonic. It did get a load of reviews. There were one or two mixed ones. Though there were a load of really positive ones. However, it is clearly one of the best albums of the year. One that takes bdrmm’s music to new places and connects with a different audience. It is also one that their loyal fans love. God Is in the TV Zine provided their say in a glowing review of Microtonic:

“bdrmm are a fine example of what can happen to a band over a few albums. With their early singles and (almost) self-titled debut Bedroom, they were a fine example of shoegaze, dreampop…call it what you will. By the time of their second album, I Don’t Know, they were signed to Mogwai’s own Rock Action label, and they’d brought in both ambient and electronica elements to their sound. The album reached no.51 in the UK album charts; I believe, in time to come, this will actually be a rather lowly placing for this fine band.

Meanwhile, here we are, two years later and the trajectory is still very much on the up. Within the first thirty seconds of opening track ‘goit’ (yes, all lower case!) with its beautifully gloomy European dance sounds, it’s clear that bdrmm have definitely shifted up a gear or two in making records. This is a track for both the feet and the head, and ‘John On The Ceiling’ takes over almost before ‘goit‘ finished. In fact, it’s only on the third track ‘Infinity Peaking’ that there’s a sense of the shoegaze bdrmm of old, and this crops up again on the explosive title track and ‘Sat In The Heat.’

Yet cleverly, this all feels like a rather smooth flow, rather than being too much of a jump to take in just in the place of one listen. By the time the album reaches the excellent closer, the magnificent melancholia of ‘The Noose,’ it’s clear that this is an album to be played again. There’s always been a risk (possibly beginning in the CD era, and exacerbated as downloading and streaming came in) of people cherry-picking from albums; this is Exhibit A in way this practice should be avoided if at all possible.

Microtonic is not only the best album the band have made but is also likely to be the band’s commercial breakthrough. It certainly deserves to be. (The band and public should expect greater press coverage, bigger venues and higher spots in festival bills from now on.) While in some ways it takes the very different early 1990s rave and shoegazing scenes as starting points, (think both of the first two Orbital and Slowdive albums) this end result feels fresh and exciting. The opportunity for remixers to take these tracks to new places is also there for the taking. It will be interesting to see where bdrmm go next”.

Many will already be avid fans of bdrmm. Some might not know who they are or have heard a song or two. In any case, go and connect with the great Northern band. Antony Szmierek recently waxed lyrical about this band and their new album when he was on BBC Radio 6 Music last weekend. I love how bdrmm have sort of led a bit of a Shoegaze revival. A sound that I love and think is being revived and adapted by artists at the moment. Few do it as well as bdrmm. They are well worth investing in. It is clear that they have a really…

LONG future ahead.

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Follow bdrmm

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Songs from Concept Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1967 ahead of their Our World performance/PHOTO CREDIT: David Magnus

 

Songs from Concept Albums

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A couple of amazing things…

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo By: Kaboompics.com/Pexels

happened on 4th June, 1967. Paul McCartney and George Harrison of The Beatles saw Jimi Hendrix headline a concert at the Saville Theatre in London. It was a day of celebration for The Beatles as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band began its twenty-three-week run at number one on the U.K. album chart. It is hardly surprising. An album that completely captured the mood and tone of the summer of ’67 – Summer of Love and this psychedelic age -, it is a monumental work that is often cited as the best album by The Beatles. Even though it would not be in my top three of theirs, it is perhaps one of the most influential albums ever released. Because 4th June marks fifty-eight years since Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band started its near-six-month run at the summit of the album chart in the U.K., I wanted to use that as a jumping off point in a mixtape featuring cuts from concept albums. In spite of the fact Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is an album many argue is not a concept is – it is because The Beatles said it is! -, you cannot deny how historic and important the album is. Below is a collection of brilliant songs from some eclectic and notable concept albums. We still have them released today, though they are not as common (or at least talked about). Quite hard to pull off and impress critics. However, when the album is done right, the results…

CAN be spellbinding.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made for Walkin’

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

  

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BECAUSE the iconic…

Nancy Sinatra turns eighty-five on 8th June. I want to feature her best-loved song for this Groovelines. These Boots Were Made for Walkin’ was released in December 1965 and was a huge chart success. It reached number one in the U.S. and U.K. Written and produced by Lee Hazelwood (who collaborated with Sinatra through the 1960s and 1970s), it has been much covered. I am going to get to some features about this song. Ones that examine its meaning, background and impact. I am starting out with a feature from Medium. They explore Nancy Sinatra’s signature song:

“In the mid-1960s, Nancy Sinatra was trying to follow in her very famous father’s musical footsteps and make a name for herself as a recording artist. It didn’t go especially well at first…but then “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” hit number one in both the US and the UK. Overnight, if briefly, her fame eclipsed even that of Frank himself.

“These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” was written by Lee Hazlewood, who also recorded a series of duets with Nancy Sinatra, including the somewhat risque (for the day) “Did You Ever” which hinted at all sorts of things but didn’t spell any of them out clearly enough to trouble the radio censors.

Lee Hazlewood also produced Nancy Sinatra’s other big hit, “Something Stupid”, a duet with her dad Frank. This also hit the top of the charts in the UK and US and to this day is the only father-daughter collaboration to hit the top of the charts. (Probably just as well…although I like the song, given the lyrics, the father-daughter combo on “Something Stupid” is vaguely un-nerving…)

“These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” tells the tale of someone who’s had enough. She’s clearly been putting up with the bad behaviour of a partner or lover for some time…doing her best to forgive and forget.

But then yet another incident comes along. Maybe some big blow-up, more likely something minor, but the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Then it all comes out…

You keep saying you’ve got something for me
Something you call love but confess
You’ve been a-messin’ where you shouldn’t ‘ve been a-messin’
And now someone else is getting all your best

I’m not sure there’s an easy way back from that, but Nancy Sinatra piles the pressure on in a verse I really love…it might not be the best use of formal English, but as a way for person at the end of their tether to get a point across, this is genius…

You keep lyin’ when you oughta be truthin’
You keep losing when you oughta not bet
You keep samin’ when you oughta be changin’
Now what’s right is right but you ain’t been right yet

I think we all know people like that. Almost whatever decision they make, somehow they get themselves into even deeper trouble than they were already. The harder they try, the further they fall.

Some of them have supportive and long-suffering friends, partners and families…often much more supportive and longer-suffering than anyone has a right to expect”.

I am eager to highlight a feature from American Songwriter. Repeating a little of what came before, they discussed the meaning of an iconic track. One of the greatest and most important songs of the 1960s. The second single from her debut 1966 album, Boots – an album largely of covers -, there are few songs as recognisable and cool as These Boots Are Made for Walkin’. It is one that is still widely played today:

“The Meaning

Right as the foreboding acoustic and chromatic bass begin, you know you’re in trouble. The mood of the song, even as it just begins, puts you on your heels.

Written by country star Lee Hazelwood, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” was first made into a hit by Nancy Sinatra (daughter of singer, Frank Sinatra). It hit the charts on January 22, 1966 after a release in December of 1965, and peaked at No. 1 in the U.S. and U.K. Since the song’s release it has been covered by others, from Billy Ray Cyrus and Megadeth to Jessica Simpson.

While the song was made famous by Nancy, Hazlewood said the writing of the tune was inspired by a line Frank said in the comedy western, 4 for Texas, in 1963. The line was, “They tell me them boots ain’t built for walkin’.”

In the song, the boots are made for walking. They’re made for walking out on no good, cheating men and they’re good, furthermore, for walking on their hearts before the head out the door. The track appeared on Nancy’s 1966 album, Boots. It was a follow-up to her popular tune, “So Long, Babe.”

Writing the song, Hazlewood wanted to record it himself. He even said that “it’s not really a girl’s song.” But Nancy talked him out of it, saying, “Coming from a guy, it was harsh and abusive, but was perfect for a little girl to sing.” Hazlewood, perhaps receiving an offer he couldn’t refuse, eventually agreed.

Sings Nancy to her no-good cheating boyfriend:

You keep sayin’ you’ve got somethin’ for me
Somethin’ you call love but confess
You’ve been a’messin’ where you shouldn’t ‘ve been a’messin’
And now someone else is getting all your best

These boots are made for walkin’
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you

The Recording

The music for the song is just as impactful as the substance and performance from Nancy.

It was good largely because it was performed by the Los Angeles corps known as the Wrecking Crew. Chuck Berghofer played double bass and that now famous chromatic descent.

In a bit of controversy, Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine says he played drums on the song but the contract shows he was not present in the session. Donald “Richie” Frost is credited with playing the drum kit.

The recording session took place on November 19, 1965 at United Western Recorders in Hollywood, California. It also produced the songs, “Foursome” and “The City Never Sleeps at Night”.

I am going to end with a feature from Stereogum. The delivery and performance is not what you would expect when you read the lyrics for These Boots Are Made for Walkin’. Nearly sixty years after its release, you can hear how many female artists have been inspired by the song. Stereogum argue how Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra never really reached the genius heights again. A song that is almost perfect:

“These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” is a total pop-music miracle, an endlessly replayable evisceration of some asshole guy who’s been messin’ where he shouldn’t have been messin’. There’s no firepower in Sinatra’s vocal; she’s talking as much as she’s singing. But she’s got her father’s gift for timing and his ability to broadcast huge levels of personality through quick little asides. Nancy’s sneery “ha!” might be the best moment on a song that’s full of great moments. She sounds tough and playful and bored, all at once. She’s too cool to be properly pissed off at the guy who’s cheated. Instead, she’s having fun with him the way a cat has fun with a mouse. He’s barely worth her energy. The song works as a laconic seizure of power, a purred threat.

The arrangement, meanwhile, is so simple and intuitive that it’s almost hard to hear how weird it is. Sinatra and Strange recorded the song with the Wrecking Crew, of course, and all the musicians play with the sort of confidence that can only come from playing on a huge percentage of the era’s hits. That descending bassline, right after Sinatra sings the chorus, is joining in the mockery, while the twangy acoustic guitar adds to the strut. But my favorite part is the horn arrangement, which keeps shifting throughout the song — quiet during the first verse, minimal Southern-soul fanfares during the second, big riffs during the third, a joyously stabby explosion on the fade-out. The end of the song is where Sinatra stops sing to the guy and instead talks to the boots, like they were people: “Are ya ready, boots? Start walkin’!” And the horns become the boots, going into hard-strut mode. I fucking love it. I love everything about it.

Over the next few years, Sinatra and Hazlewood kept recording together, finding this glorious form of hybridized drug-pop. “Some Velvet Morning” and “Sand” and “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” are all dizzy, head-blown masterpieces. Eventually, Hazlewood moved to Sweden and recorded a bunch of unheard solo albums that later became cult favorites, while Sinatra kept recording and acting and showing up in unexpected places: posing for Playboy in 1995, when she was 54, or collaborating with Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker and Sonic Youth in 2004. Both of them had amazing careers, but neither of them ever recaptured the slick, breezy glory of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” again. To their enormous credit, neither of them even seemed that interested in trying.

GRADE: 10/10”.

I am going to end things there. One of the defining songs of the 1960s, These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ is impossibly cool and brilliant. Because Nancy Sinatra turns eighty-five on 8th June, I want do a double celebration. Highlight this amazing song. Also mark a big birthday for Sinatra. Someone whose voice and musical persona is like no one else’s! For those who maybe have not heard the track in a while, make sure that you…

PUT it on now.

FEATURE: Spotlight: f5ve

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

f5ve

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NOT to confuse people…

PHOTO CREDIT: Crystalline Structures Studio

when it comes to that name, this f5ve put the number five in the name. The boyband Five do not. Their worlds are very different. The one I am focusing on are a group (a girl group) shaking up the world of J-Pop. F5ve formed in 2022. The group consists of Sayaka, Kaede, Ruri, Miyuu, and Rui, with BloodPop serving as their executive producer. They released their astonishing debut album, SEQUENCE 01, on 5th May. Although I am not a fan of their name – it leaves them vulnerable if one of the members leave or they are depleted at any point -, though I am a fan of their music. We do not hear a lot of J-Pop in the U.K. Perhaps we hear more K-Pop. I think that a group like f5ve are here to stay and will fully infiltrate British music and radio. Certain stations will play them, though I feel like there will be new attention very soon. I am going to get to some 2025 features and interview soon. I will end with a review for SEQUENCE 01. I am going to start off with a 2024 introduction from Gay Times:

“If you’re looking for a new pop girl group to sink your teeth into, look no further – f5ve is the band for you. Made up of J-pop veterans Sayaka, Kaede, Miyuu, Ruri and Rui, the fierce fivesome first debuted in 2023 with their single ‘Firetruck.’ Earlier this year, the “inter-dimensional dream agents from Tokyo” underwent a transformation, switching their stage name from the Sailor Moon-inspired SG5 (Sailor Guardians 5) to f5ve (pronounced fi-vee). Since kicking off their new era, the talented group has honed their craft and released singles that rebuke self-doubt, explore the complexities of love, and embrace the power of womanhood. (They’ve since been co-signed by major artists such as Bloodpop, Rosalía, A.G. Cook and more.)

On 10 September, f5ve showcased another side of their artistry with the release of their Underground REMIXS EP. On the five-track genre-bending project, the ladies teamed up with TeddyLoid, DJ CHARI, STARKIDS, Doss, and art collective YAGI EXHIBITION, who brought to life dynamic reimaginings of the titular single. Amid their steady rise within the pop music sphere, GAY TIMES spoke to f5ve about their musical beginnings, their dedicated LGBTQIA+ fans within the hi-5 fandom, their goals as a new girl group on the scene, and more. Read the full interview below!

All of your songs so far have been a huge hit with fans. ‘Lettuce’ has over three million views on YouTube, which is major!  What is like for you all to see this massive response right out of the gate?

KAEDE: I still can’t believe this happened and very happy to see the response in so many different languages. Every time I look into socials I was like, ‘Wow! There’s hi-5 in this country!?’

SAYAKA: I was a little worried because we had been silent for more than a year since our last work,  but I was happy to see that so many people were waiting for us.

MIYUU: I didn’t expect this at all. The team is working very hard, but seeing so many people listening to f5ve’s music and reacting for us every time [we] release something is something we’ve never experienced before, even though we’ve been around for a long time, so we’re simply happy! Thank you always, my besties.

RURI: It’s still unbelievable! I really can’t believe that most of the comments are from overseas. It still feels like a dream.

RUI: I’m very happy and I believe that the music that BloodPop creates for f5ve is music that should reach many fans!

For those who are unfamiliar with you, can you tell us a little bit about how f5ve came to fruition?

SAYAKA: KAEDE, MIYUU, RURI and I are former E-girls members, and RUI, who is now in iScream, are joining forces with the Grammy-winning producer, BloodPop.

KAEDE: I think we are creating a new genre that is unique in the way f5ve can only express.

MIYUU: We are a group of five women based in Tokyo. Many call us “five”, but the correct pronunciation is “fi-vee”! Each of us is a multi-dimensional dream agent utilizing our arsenal of optimism, confidence, brilliance, and female empowerment. And I represent fantasy.

RURI: We debuted with ‘Firetruck’ under the name of SG5, and we were reborn as f5ve, followed by releases of ‘Lettuce’ and ‘Underground’. We will not be talking about the rebrand because… no.

RUI: f5ve is the woman of every girl’s dreams. f5ve brings you confidence.

The music industry is currently lacking in mainstream girl groups that are topping the charts on a similar level to Destiny’s Child, TLC, Spice Girls, Pussycat Dolls, and Little  Mix. Do you hope to change that?

KAEDE: I don’t think there has ever been a Japanese girl group at the top of the international music industry, so I hope we can be the first group to do so. It’s a long road to get there, and it has been very challenging so far, but we work every day to be our best and represent Japan.

SAYAKA: I want to be a Japanese person on the world stage.

MIYUU: We are influenced by many popular and smaller artists from all over the world. I think many people are tired of the same thing being presented over and over with girl groups. Hopefully, we can bring something new, authentic and real.

RURI: The world is finally ready for us.

RUI: We don’t want to be limited by charts, categories or streaming. We want to create amazing art that stands the test of time. That is more important than anything else.

Historically, girl groups have always attracted a lot of fans within the LGBTQIA+  community. Have you noticed that support?

KAEDE: Of course, yes. There were a lot of comments [and phrases] that I didn’t understand at first, so I asked the team about it and they told me, ‘It’s used a lot by the LGBTQIA+ community.’ They’ve always supported us with a high level of enthusiasm, and I really appreciate that.

SAYAKA: I’m happy that so many people have commented, spread the word, and are constantly cheering us. I think gay people like us because we love being ourselves.

MIYUU: Every time we release, the LGBTQIA+ community acts and spreads the word. Not just about our music, but the existence of f5ve to more people. So, I think more and more people are getting to know f5ve. It’s all about you, besties. Thank you for your support.

RURI: Of course, I always feel the support and love of our fans! I’m encouraged by a lot of comments on socials. I learned words like “mother,” “diva,” and “ate.”

RUI: [The LGBTQIA+ community’s] support and love are truly encouraging. I’m also checking all the reactions on social media! Thank you so much.

And what do your LGBTQIA+ fans mean to you?

KAEDE: They are incredibly supportive, and it seems like they are most of our fans. Everyone is so welcoming and beautiful and unique. We will protect you.

SAYAKA: They are an important and encouraging presence for us. The community has so much energy, so we are very happy to receive their support and want to show our support in return.

RURI: We will not be here today [without the support of the LGBTQIA+ community], and I can’t imagine not having their support. You are an existence that must be with us; our dreams won’t come true without you. We will always be together.

RUI:  Thank you for finding f5ve. Thank you for lots of love and rainbows! Love you all so much. “Mother!”.

There are some great recent interviews that were published around the release of SEQUENCE 01. When speaking with DAZED, f5ve talked about busting stereotypes and reaching a new global audience. For anyone reticent about exploring J-Pop or not used to it, I would say you can embrace them. You will not be disappointed at all! I have recently discovered them and it is clear that we need to celebrate this new wave of international girl groups. There is not the same strong wave that we had in the 1990s and early-2000s:

“Do you have any favorite tracks on the album?

Miyuu: My favorite song is ‘Jump’. The melody is very dreamy, I feel like I’m in a fantasy world listening to it, and [it reminds me that], when things get hard, your friends are always there for you. It makes me feel encouraged.

Rui: Mine is ‘Magic Clock’. When I listen to it, it makes me happy and reminds me of the members, bringing back fond memories. I feel my heart beating fast.

Sayaka: My favorite is ‘Sugar Free Venom’. It reminds me of Habushu, a traditional sake from Okinawa that has a [real] snake inside the bottle. When I listen to it, I feel empowered and strong.

Kaede: I love this song, too. Also, ‘Sugar Free Venom’ will have a big feature later this year...

Rui: I have a little hint. It reminds me of the 2020s music scene.

Kaede: [singing] ‘Don’t stop, make it pop, DJ, blow my speakers up…’ [laughs].

Alright, your PR told me not to mention who the featured artist is yet, but since you gave such a big hint, I’ll keep it that way. What are some new things you learned while making this album? Or new things that you discovered about yourselves?

Rui: We had a chance to decide on our own [singing] parts. It was the first time this happened to us, and we grew a lot from this experience. I also appreciate that the whole team and BloodPop helped us decide on these things.

Miyuu: During recording, keeping up with the speed of creating new songs every minute, every hour, every day was very challenging. But at the same time, the biggest takeaway for me was understanding both the strengths and weaknesses of my voice.

Kaede: It was my first time singing, and Sayaka and Miyuu as well. In our previous group [Happiness], we were performers, so we just had to focus on dancing. This time, all the experiences were fresh and challenging for us. I didn’t know about my strengths, for example, but during the recording, staff members and the girls complimented my airy voice. It made me realise a new side of myself.

Since you have been in the field for over a decade, what changes have you noticed in J-pop and its global perception?

Miyuu: So far, J-pop and K-pop have both been seen as ‘just Asian music’. So, J-pop didn't get much global recognition, especially since Japan has focused on the domestic market. With social media, it’s way easier to access music worldwide, and more people started noticing the difference between J-pop and K-pop. This culture has really changed how we discover and appreciate music.

Ruri: I didn’t know that international fans knew Japanese music, but now with f5ve, I know that many of them love Japanese culture and J-pop.

Kaede: We got so many comments in different languages, like English, Korean, Spanish, Chinese. Since social media has gotten way bigger, a lot of people from foreign countries have a chance to listen to our music now. Seeing international comments is refreshing to us.

You are already challenging a lot in J-pop by approaching themes like LGBTQ+ support and breaking beauty stereotypes. Do you think it’s important nowadays to focus on that?

Kaede: Of course! We have friends that come from the LGBTQ+ community, and we love them. We want to support them.

Rui: Yes, we want to take away any negative feelings related to them around the world.

How do you balance bringing humour to your songs while wanting to be taken seriously as a group?

Rui: I think everyone has their own image of f5ve, and we’re happy with that. Being ourselves and embracing each member’s unique personality is what makes f5ve special. Our social media is full of humor, so when we perform, it may look cool and confident, but offstage, we are very natural and always laughing. We play around with each other a lot.

When you look into the future, like ten years from now, what personal achievements or milestones would make you proud of yourselves?

Kaede: My ideal is to become a unique and one-of-a-kind artist. I want to keep going and stay [beside] my fans. I want to give positive energy to them.

Miyuu: I want to be someone who stays true to my expression, and to become my own biggest fan. Then, I want to show my fans that loving yourself is something wonderful.

Kaede: We want to go on tour and meet hi-5 [f5ve fans] all over the world, too. We want to be big pop stars. Hopefully”.

The group have some incredible dates ahead. They play New York on 27th June. There are two more interviews I want to bring in before ending with a review for SEQUENCE 01. I am going to bring in an interview with Billboard. F5ve reflected on the universal appeal of their genre-blending music and cheeky online presence. They have really great personalities and they have this incredible chemistry. I think that f5ve are going to be releasing many more albums and will tour in the U.K. soon enough:

“Are there other ways you feel like your on-stage personas differ from who you are in real life?

Kaede: I’m a totally different person. On stage, I have confidence and I can be more…slayish?

Miyuu: It’s kind of the same for me. Off stage, I’m not outgoing, and I can be pretty shy. But when I perform, it’s like “Look at me, look at me.” [Laughs]

One of f5ve’s goals is to “eradicate self-doubt,” but we all have moments of insecurity. How do you overcome that yourselves?

Rui: We have a lot of practice being on stage and shooting. f5ve is the best team, so I always trust the members, trust the staff and trust myself. And I can be natural, be positive.

Kaede: We compliment each other before we go on stage, always.

Miyuu: “You look so cute. You look so pretty. You look so gorgeous.”

Rui: “Beauty! Sexy!”

What compliment would you give to the person sitting next to you right now?

Kaede: Miyuu is our number one face expression queen.

Miyuu: Sayaka is one of the smallest members, but the way she performs and her aura make you feel otherwise.

Sayaka: Rui is a true idol. She has perfect expressions and is always on point on stage.

Rui: Ruri has… face card. Always beautiful. I’m also addicted to Ruri’s powerful voice. And she is so kind.

Ruri: Kaede is the sunshine of the group. She’s always talking to people, always communicating.

In the music video for “Magic Clock,” there were child dancers who played younger versions of you. Some of you have been in the entertainment industry since you were around their age, so did you have any advice for them?

Rui: They were so nervous during the music video shoot, so we were always by their side. [We told them,] “You are so cute, your dancing is so amazing. Please have confidence.” We gained power from them. I think that situation was my dream come true. I was so happy.

Why was it a dream come true?

Rui: I was a student at [Japanese entertainment training school] EXPG starting at a young age, and during that time, I looked up to E-girls and all the LDH groups.

Besides Kesha, who features on “Sugar-Free Venom,” which artists do you hope to collaborate with in the future?

Rui: I want to collaborate with Addison Rae someday. I love her music videos and her vibes. I’m a huge fan.

Sayaka: I want to collaborate with Tyla.

Miyuu: I love Doja Cat. [Her music embodies] woman empowerment, which is why it matches us.

Kaede: I want to collaborate with Justin Bieber. I’ve been a huge fan of his since I was a junior high school student. He was my first celebrity crush. [Laughs.] I love his voice, I love his music.

Ruri: Taylor Swift. I recently listened to The Tortured Poets Department, and that got me into her.

You also worked with producers like A. G. Cook and Count Baldor on SEQUENCE 01. Who would you love to have write or produce a song for f5ve in the future?

Rui: Of course, I want to create more music with BloodPop, but I want to collaborate with Zedd.

Kaede: I want to collaborate with ASOBISYSTEM in Japan. We saw ATARASHII GAKKO!’s show in LA, so I hope ASOBISYSTEM or Nakata Yasutaka creates our music with ATARASHII GAKKO!

The video for “Underground” had Dekotora trucks and Para Para. What other elements of Japanese culture do you want to share with the world?

Kaede: Natsumatsuri is a summer festival in Japan, and when I was a kid, I practiced and played traditional drums in the festival. So, one day, I want to show you my drum skills in our songs. I can surprise people abroad with that.

Rui: I want to wear a kimono or yukata in a music video or a live show.

The J-pop industry used to be pretty much exclusively interested in the Japanese market, but now we’re starting to see that open up. Why do you think that is?

Miyuu: Lately, I’ve been feeling that the international reception of J-pop is starting to shift. In the past, there weren’t many chances for people to get exposed to J-pop, so the Japanese music industry mainly focused on the domestic market, as you said. But I believe digital culture has played a huge role in introducing J-pop to a global audience.

How does f5ve plan to reach that audience?

Rui: Being natural and being ourselves. Just having fun with our music, loving our music. And each other.

Miyuu: Social media is a very important tool for us. It’s a space where we can really connect with our fans and make them feel close to us. We react to a lot of comments, responding to what fans are curious about. Some people say our account seems unofficial, in the best way. And there’s no other group that has done it like this before. I think that’s what makes people so interested in us.

Since you brought up social media, who is the most online in f5ve?

Miyuu: Rui’s always on her phone, taking selfies.

Kaede: During lunch, during dinner…

Rui: I love searching for TikTok trends.

What would everyone’s weapon be?

Rui: Noodle slasher! I eat noodles every day.

Kaede: My big voice.

Miyuu: Lipstick sword, because I love makeup.

Sayaka: Bomb. [Members laugh.] I always say something awkward in conversations and it’s like a bomb.

Ruri: My long hair, like a whip.

Is there a world tour in the works?

Kaede: There isn’t a date decided yet, but we’re planning.

Rui: Soon!

Kaede: Yes, coming soon”.

I am moving to a interview from NME. A group whose humour and creative chaos mixes with authenticity and inclusiveness, their creative and music vision is bold and original. I would encourage everyone to check out the amazing f5ve. The fact they are getting buzz in the U.K. means they will be with us pretty soon I am sure:

“In an era where pop success often hinges on being a perfectly timed meme, that unseriousness is its own kind of savvy. f5ve lean into it with flair, poking fun at themselves, hijacking viral trends, and singing lyrics with a bizarre bite. Take this one from debut single ‘Lettuce’: “You eat a lot of lettuce, but you’re toxic.” Or in ‘UFO’, where Japanese gacha games meet girl power: “She plays so good she’s an alien.” It’s offbeat, a little absurd and proof that humour hones rather than undercuts their edge.

“I just want people to enjoy it, especially in Japan,” Kaede says. “When you don’t fit into the usual standards, people see it as strange. It takes time to be accepted. But if we keep doing what we truly believe is good, people will relate. And that leads to recognition.”

There’s more than just punchlines beneath f5ve’s chaos. Their music blends irony with intensity: ‘Underground’, a breakneck, synth-heavy track about burnout, pulses like a Para Para club hit, a type of Japanese dance music popularised in the ’80s and ’90s – fast, flashy, and slightly frayed. It made NME’s list of the best songs of 2024; the group landed on the NME 100, our list of emerging artists to watch, just months later.

If f5ve’s music feels like it’s from another planet – glitchy textures, dream-pop swells, sharp electronic detours – that’s by design. Their debut album ‘Sequence 01’, which was released on Monday (May 5), was recorded between Tokyo and Los Angeles with their genre-bending executive producer BloodPop [Lady Gaga, Madonna]. Despite its futuristic sheen, the three-year process started with simple conversation.

 

“When we started recording, we talked a lot,” Kaede recalls. “We’d share the music we liked.” They cited artists like Taylor Swift, Tate McRae, YOASOBI, Perfume, Justin Bieber, and Hikaru Utada, the defining voice of contemporary J-pop. “From those conversations, BloodPop made our songs,” she adds. “He always included our ideas.” That openness shaped the project’s sound. “It wasn’t like he gave us a finished track,” Miyuu says. “We built it together.”

That collaborative spirit helped them create something immersive: an emotional isekai, or alternate dimension, where each track feels like a new episode of a TV show – or a door to a new world. “We talked about anime with BloodPop,” says Kaede, “and how it blends genres and tells different stories from one moment to the next.”

And so the album came together as a vivid, genre-blurring experience. There’s ‘Jump’, an effervescent, high-BPM track bursting with hope. “It’s really personal,” Kaede says. “The lyrics are about us, about our dream to become big artists.” Then there’s ‘UFO’, which fizzes with confidence. “That one gives me power,” says Rui. “The sound lifts me to another level.” And ‘Sugar Free Venom’, a jagged anthem featuring Kesha, sharpens their sound into something louder, glossier, and more unfiltered – pop with teeth.

The group describe the album as “dream time travel”, a phrase that gestures at both sonic nostalgia and emotional reinvention. For Miyuu, it’s empowering escapism: “The real world can feel negative. I struggle with confidence, and sometimes I don’t know what’s right. But through this dream world we created, I’m fulfilling my wish to be more confident in my choices.” She calls f5ve “interdimensional dream agents” helping listeners find their own missions. “Our visuals and music videos aren’t just for show,” she adds. “They’re portals – places where you can feel your own dream coming alive”.

I am going to end with a review for SEQUENCE 01. CLASH shared their thoughts on a debut that is camp, chaotic, irresistible and inter-dimensional. This might fly under the radar but it deserves a lot more focus. If you do not know about this incredible group then check them out now. Follow them on social media and listen to their album. They are going to be a huge act very soon. Their music is infectious and among the best out there. We do need to shine more of a spotlight on J-Pop:

“At first glance, f5ve feels like a high-concept J-pop fantasy: five women from Tokyo calling themselves “inter-dimensional dream agents” on a mission to destroy self-doubt and bad vibes.

But behind the glitter and otherworldly branding is serious finesse. Sayaka, Kaede, Miyuu and Ruri cut their teeth in E-girls and Happiness, two of Japan’s most iconic girl groups under LDH. Youngest member Rui brings fresh energy from her time in iScream and DELUXE COLORS!, rounding out a lineup with over a decade of combined experience.

Originally debuting as SG5 in 2022 with a Sailor Moon-inspired concept, the group rebranded as f5ve in 2024, embracing a more self-defined vision, and ‘SEQUENCE 01’ is their next bold statement.

Executive produced by BloodPop (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber) with key contributions from A.G. Cook and Hudson Mohawke, the album blends J-pop and hyperpop – and the results are a chaotic, confident debut that’s genreless on purpose, glittering with subcultural references and full of emotional depth.

The album opens in-world. ‘initiate sequence 01’ is a brief ambient piece filled with footsteps – an invitation to step into f5ve’s realm. Then, we’re dropped into ‘Underground’ – a pounding hyperpop anthem and high-BPM chaos with emotional undercurrents: lyrics about collapsing from overwork, hiding tears, and longing to escape the pressures of daily life clash beautifully with the euphoric beat.

Co-produced by BloodPop and A.G. Cook, ‘Magic Clock’ mixes glitchy synths with a soft, retro core. The lyrics reflect on nights out, fleeting memories, and the quiet desire to rewind time – but it never gets overly sentimental. Instead, it uses repetition and crisp vocal delivery to mimic the ticking, looping feel of a clock itself. A strong contender for the position of best track in the album.

By contrast, ‘UFO’ is sharper and flashier. Built around a claw machine metaphor and arcade imagery, it’s about confidence, control, and knowing exactly what you’re doing. The chorus is made for looping (“She plays so good, she’s an alien”), and while the structure is the mainstream pop formula we are used to, the execution is tight.

‘Firetruck’ is the album’s most sonically aggressive moment, pulling influence from internet rap and noise-pop. The production is intentionally abrasive, filled with distorted textures, unpredictable drops, and chaotic vocal layering. Lyrically, it plays with heat and danger as metaphors for attraction, all while staying playful in tone. It’s bold and doesn’t aim for subtlety, which may divide listeners.

 

Luckily, the bounce returns immediately. ‘Lettuce’ is cheeky, light-hearted, and built around the iconic line: “You eat a lotta lettuce, but you’re toxic.” It’s deceptively smart, a goofy metaphor about a guy who looks clean but acts messy. The production is playful, full of cartoon bloops and whistles, and the vocal delivery is sharp.

‘Sugar Free Venom’ featuring Kesha is an instant standout. It’s trap-pop with claws: club-ready, chaotic, and proudly defiant. Kesha sounds right at home over the punchy beat, and the lyrics – about financial independence, fake friends, and kitchen renovations – are absurd in the best way.

Then there’s ‘Television’, a mid-tempo runway track with a cold, monotone delivery. “Look at me, not your television,” they sing, calling out distraction and emotional detachment. With metallic beats and a steady pulse, it’s one of the sleekest moments on the record.

‘Bow Chicka Wow Wow’ sounds like the theme song to a chaotic ’90s comedy series party scene. It’s glossy and theatrical, complete with thunder sound effects and whipped cream metaphors. But as over-the-top as it is, the song and its layered vocals never lose control.

‘Jump’ is cleaner and more earnest than the rest of the album. It’s J-pop at its dreamiest — all light harmonies, uplifting lyrics, and sparkly production. The verses paint whimsical images (a tower ten times taller than Tokyo Tower, partying with angels), and build an emotional grounding point after the glitchy, high-speed peaks.

Closing track ‘リア女 (Real Girl)’ wraps the album on a smart, layered note. It’s built around the idea of identity – being lost in a crowd, performing sameness, and trying to be seen for who you really are. The production is light and bouncy, but the lyrics are sharp, even when playful: “Find the real girl among a hundred dolls”.

8/10”.

I am going to leave things there. For those who are reading this and have never heard f5ve, go and check out interviews with them. Watch their music videos and listen to SEQUENCE 01. They are most definitely going to go a very long way! When it comes to the sensational f5ve, it is very clear that…

NOBODY can stop them.

____________

Follow f5ve

FEATURE: The Painter’s Link: Imagining an Immersive Kate Bush Art Experience

FEATURE:

 

 

The Painter’s Link

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush circa 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Imagining an Immersive Kate Bush Art Experience

__________

I got this idea…

IN THIS PHOTO: Inside Frameless – Immersive Art Experience

when recently visiting Frameless in London. It is the ultimate immersive art experience. Located near Marble Arch Tube, you are in this building where there are several galleries. Instead of merely looking at paintings, they are projected onto the walls, ceiling and the floor. Some galleries feature paintings that come alive and interact. Others pieced together gradually. You feel like have stepped inside the frames. It is a fascinating idea and I would recommend anyone – regardless of whether you are an art lover or not – to visit. The galleries in Frameless are Beyond Reality, Colour in Motion, The World Around Us and The Art of Abstraction. My favourite was The World Around us, which featured paintings by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn and Rachel Ruysch. It is captivating experience that makes these sublime works of art more cinematic and tangible. Like you are stepping into the imagination of the artist. It struck me that this has not really been done beyond art. Well, not in music at least. With A.I. being a bit conversation point in terms of artists’ rights and intellectual property – with A.I. threatening their music and rights -, this would be something different. Using technology to relevant artists and their music rather than steal or threaten. Being in that space and watching artwork come to life all around me and other people was a wonderful moment. In features past about Kate Bush, I have talked about possibly bringing Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave to life. Bringing it to the screen and adapting it. Maybe a photography exhibition. Something multimedia. However, coming away from Frameless seemed to combine a Kate Bush film, live performance and immersive experience.

In terms of bringing her work to life, there could be this gallery dedicated to Hounds of Love. Singles such as Hounds of Love and Cloudbusting being translated into a Frameless-style experience. Maybe they would replicate the look of the music video but it would mean you get these stunning visuals and this immersive experience all around. The Ninth Wave is where it comes to life. For those who never saw Bush perform it during her 2014 Before the Dawn residency, this would be a new adaptation. A way of bringing us in and around the ocean. Get to see Bush’s heroine fight for survival. Maybe a gallery of section that would visualise 1979’s The Tour of Life. Taking audio from a set and including sounds from the audience as we get a representation of Kate Bush performing these magical numbers. Or perhaps Before the Dawn. It would not be possible to have all of her albums in their own gallery, but we have Aerial and A Sky of Honey that would be breathtaking. Another suite she performed during Before the Dawn. Maybe early singles from Wuthering Heights (1978’s The Kick Inside) to later ones such as The Sensual World (from 1989’s album of the same name). Maybe thematic. Love and passion in one gallery. The darker and more cinematic in another. Situated in London, and maybe able to take over a space similar to Frameless – only a bigger building I feel -, I think it would be a great way that keeps Kate Bush’s music evolving. Bringing it alive to a whole new generation. The weather and water. The macabre and scary. The panoramic and scenic. Keeping the original music, this would not be an A.I. version of Kate Bush. Instead, something similar to a painting. Something in that style.

There might never be another Kate Bush live show. Maybe no more music videos featuring her. perhaps no new video or one that reimagines an older song. It would not necessarily have to be tied to an anniversary. However, in 2028, that is when Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, turns fifty. I know that is nearly three years away from that anniversary. However, in terms of visualising something and getting it ready, it may take that long. It would be an expensive project to complete. However, in terms of popularity and how it could get people flocking in, it would definitely be a big success. I am aware that it is a big commitment to a single artist. Even The Beatles or David Bowie has not got anything like that. An exhibition that immerses listeners in their music. You feel it is overdue for The Beatles. Even Madonna. However, when it comes to Kate Bush, I feel she very much thinks like an artist. Hearing colours and seeing sounds. The relationship between words and music like few other artists. How her songs, in some ways, feel like works of art. Of films. And yet, only a portion have been brought to film. Never really realised in this immersive and panoramic way. I did not go to Before the Dawn. However brilliant the visuals and production, it was not quite what you would get from something like Frameless. In terms of downsides. I guess Kate Bush would be wary of technology adapting her music and visuals. However, this is not A.I. stealing music. Maybe some feel it is quite niche or a gamble doing something this big for one artist. Perhaps not as worthy of others. That is fair enough. That said, I feel that Kate Bush’s brilliance and vision would be perfectly suited to the same sort of experience that Frameless offers to works of art. Maybe it would open up discussion about visualising music and using technology in a positive way. Going beyond music videos and concerts. Imagining Kate Bush’s music reimagined and transformed in an immersive art experience would be…

SOMETHING spectacular.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Blondshell

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

 

Blondshell

__________

THIS incredible artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Topete

born Sabrina Teitelbaum is one of the finest of her generation. This feature is all about Blondshell. I am going to end with a review of her new album, If You Asked for a Picture. Her second studio album, following on from 2023’s acclaimed Blondshell, is from someone that everyone should know. Even though she is a hugely popular artist, there are some that do not know about her. There are some great new interviews with her that I want to bring in. I would advise people check this feature that is about Blondshell’s favourite songs. I am going to start out with some interviews before getting to a review of her new album. NME were among those who have spoken with the phenomenal Blondshell. Her new album is among this year’s best:

“Her second album, ‘If You Asked For A Picture’, which also takes its name from ‘Dogfish’, doesn’t give all of Teitelbaum, but it doesn’t hold back either. Rather, it seeks to delve into the often-unexplored “grey areas” that exist between the drama – the constant hum of pain that persists behind even the most mundane moments of life.

When NME meet Teitelbaum a month prior to its release, she’s relaxed, energised from the lottery win of landing in London from Los Angeles during its rare few faux-spring days – a brief splintering of sunshine before the freezing rain resumes for a little while longer. She’ll head to Paris in two days and, almost in preparation, she’s been thumbing through a copy of Simone De Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed while lounging around the capital’s parks. “I like to read books that are in the setting I’m in,” she says. “And I’m always reading books by women and listening to classic storytellers who are women, because I think that there’s a complexity there.”

That same complexity, though, is frequently subject to misunderstanding – an experience Teitelbaum is all too familiar with. When her first album came out, swathes of the press heralded it as a masterclass in “female rage”. This, in part, came from the thread of anger that ran through it – ‘Salad’, for example, saw her daydream about murdering a man who assaulted her best friend. Yet Teitelbaum admits feeling “mixed” about those suggesting the entire LP was drenched in wrath. “It was a really angry record, and I am a woman, so it isn’t wrong. But sometimes it’s like, ‘OK, you’re flattening my existence into just being about this one piece’.

“I think I feel pretty masculine as a person, and my relationship with gender has been somewhat complicated. On the first album, I wanted to show people who I was for the first time, and so it was important for me to really hit you over the head with it so that you understood who I am and how I feel inside,” she explains. “With this album, I realised that the idea I had that softness would cancel out my masculinity isn’t true. Not every moment of my life is spent being angry.”

This time, the masculine energy crops up in the sonic influences instead, something she deems as “heavier, dirtier guitar tones” from the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Strokes – the latter of whom she admires for their consistency. “I like the fact they didn’t ever really change it up,” she explains. It’s a contrast to the pressure to constantly reinvent or ‘rebrand’, imposed upon female artists today. “I think that men have been allowed to have certain aesthetic things that haven’t really been available to solo female artists. I leaned on those aesthetics for confidence in a way, in a studio space.”

It manifests in the album’s sludgier moments: the jagged, alt-rock guitar riffs and forceful, grungy basslines that introduce elements of more traditional rock than the indie undertones of her debut. Yet, it’s underpinned by a striking vulnerability – “little moments of fresh air”, as she puts it.

‘What’s Fair’, for example, is a harrowingly accurate portrait of the push-and-pull of a mother-daughter relationship, while ‘Two Times’ offers slightly insecure musings on a real-life love, one devoid of the drama of the rom-coms Teitelbaum was raised on. “How bad does it have to hurt to count? Does it have to hurt at all?” she drawls over a pensive acoustic guitar, alternating between the compulsion of a pure, safe love and the trepidation of surrendering to somebody else entirely.

It recalls a canon of love songs that herald simple domesticity as their muse – the sweet sheen of Graham Nash’s Joni Mitchell-dedicated ‘Our House’, and Paul McCartney’s swooning ‘My Love’, which fixates on still being able to find sustenance from bare kitchen cupboards over grander gestures of romance. Teitelbaum’s take, though, instils a little more horror, with contentment occasionally splintered by an anxious inner monologue of: “Is this all there is?”, before once again succumbing to sweetness.

Another recurring theme comes in her exploration of body image. On closer ‘Model Rockets’, she laments, “I got big and pigeonholed”, a reflection on being treated differently depending on her weight. ‘Event of a Fire’, meanwhile, sees her admit: “Part of me still sits at home in a panic over 15 pounds.”

“[On the album] there’s a lot of unspoken stuff that I lived with when I was younger, that I couldn’t say,” the 27-year-old explains, reflecting on growing up in the ’00s, where gossip magazines slapped grainy photos of celebrity cellulite on front pages and shamed anyone who couldn’t fit into a size zero. “That had a huge impact on me, the women in my family, my friends… everybody. I don’t know anybody who escaped that. But at the same time, even though everybody is thinking about it, you suffer it silently.”

When the pink-hued tsunami of fourth-wave feminism crashed into pop culture in the 2010s, a body positivity movement emerged in tow, just in time for Teitelbaum’s teenage years. Suddenly, there was an emphasis on self-love, and it was quickly adopted by fashion and beauty brands that had spent the prior decade shilling self-hatred alongside the same products they now marketed with inclusivity.

“I hope people feel relieved when they listen to this”

For Teitelbaum, the sudden whiplash-inducing shift had a profound impact. “There was suddenly this pressure to accept yourself, but nobody was telling you how to do that,” she says. “All that stuff comes out in the music because it’s a safe place to talk about it”.

I am going to move to an interesting interview from The Forty-Five. If someone people doubt her Rock artist credentials, she is undoubtably one. One of the best of modern times. Someone who is going to be releasing spellbinding albums for years to come. I hope that she gets festival headline slots soon as it is the sort of platform that she deserves (and has earned):

“If You Asked For A Picture’ takes this snapshot of Teitelbaum, now aged 27, and widens the lens. ‘What’s Fair’ is a frequently devastating look at the parental relationship she readily describes as “a blatant, in-your-face, fucked-up situation”. “What’s a fair assessment of the job that you did / Do you ever even regret it?” goes its chorus. ‘Toy’, meanwhile, lands like a self-lacerating conveyor belt of troubles, with nods to antidepressants, low libido and body image struggles.

There is – very evidently – a lot of trauma and unpacking going on throughout Blondshell’s second record. But Teitelbaum is also vehemently opposed to the idea of having to seek out drama, or live in perpetual angst, for the sake of her art. “People have told me my entire life – and I don’t think people say this to men – that you have to basically be miserable to write,” she says. “Even when you learn that something’s not true, in your core you still feel it. So that was harder for me [to overcome] than the actual finding of subject matter.”

Sober now for five years and in the second half of her twenties, her priorities are “solid”. “It’s so laughable the idea that being 27 is ‘older’, but I feel more grown up,” she says. “When I turned 27 I was like, ‘Oh shit, this feels different. I don’t feel like a kid.’” But, as with many things she’s had to learn to deal with as a woman playing guitar in an increasing spotlight, you can be the most strong, confident, objectively successful version of yourself, and the outside world will still want to offer its two pence.

For Teitelbaum, it’s meant taking a vastly different approach to the way she goes about her songwriting and the way she goes about its public-facing accoutrements. Lyrically, she says, nothing is off the table. “There are things I want to save for myself, that I just don’t feel are other people’s business, but I don’t have that filter with the music,” she notes. “I wouldn’t be able to write at all if I thought about people listening to it.” When it comes to engaging with the online world, however, her face drops almost instantly.

“I get a feeling when I’ve been on social media too long that’s like a spiritual nausea where I’m just like, feeling sick inside…” she laughs. “My soul feels bad. It feels stale inside. Everybody has something to say, and the form of misogyny I’ve felt my whole life is a different form now that I am a musician in a professional sense. It’s a different brand of misogyny and I am not really willing to subject myself to that.

“For me, it’s like: ‘Why are you wearing a suit? You’re trying to be a man’,” she narrates. “Women and queer people in different genres face different flavours of homophobia and misogyny. Pop is more of a classic form, like body criticisms and criticisms of your life and relationships, and in rock and alternative music there’s a lot of, ‘Why are you trying to be a man? This is our space and our air that you’re trying to breathe’. You’re trying to sit in our seat at our table and you’re not allowed to. So not being in the comment sections will be very important for my health and my soul”.

Before getting to a review, I am going to move to an interview from Billboard. Among other things. Blondshell reveals how If You Asked for a Picture is an autobiographical work. It is one where we get to learn a lot from. A revealing portrait of an extraordinary songwriter. For anyone who has not listened to Blondshell, I would advise you to investigate. There are a few sections of the Billboard interview that I want to bring in:

“You’ve said this album is about asking questions of yourself. What state of mind were you in when you wrote these songs?

The first songs on the album are the first songs that I wrote for the album, so I wanted it to feel like picking up where I left off. I wasn’t intentionally feeling like, oh, I want to ask questions in the songs. It was after the fact that I thought, I guess I was asking more questions than making declarative statements. On the first album. I felt, if I’m going to record and put out music, I must be a thousand percent sure about what I’m saying. By nature of being a little bit more confident [this time], I was able to be like no, I don’t have to know one hundred percent. I can ask, is this relationship working? Is this how I want to live my life? All these different things that were coming up.

You’ve established a recognizable sound, and yet, on this album, that sound is more expansive.

Yeah, I did not want to have some huge departure. I needed to think of it as another 12 songs. But there were things [on the last album] where I thought, I would have done that differently. For example, I’m a huge background vocals person. That’s my favorite part of Fleetwood Mac and all these records that I really love. I love how it’s a whole landscape. Before we even started, I knew I wanted that to be a massive part of the record. I also wanted there to be more textures. Last time, we had a couple of textures on the record that helped define that album. I wanted those, but I also wanted new ones.

Were you inspired by any artists you were listening to in the lead-up to writing and recording?

It’s always what I happen to be listening to around that time. I was listening to a lot of R.E.M. Obviously, they’re this celebrated rock band, but it’s really about the songwriting. They’re comfortable having these big, fun, rock songs — but also “Everybody Hurts.” So, I felt I had more permission to do the big rock band thing and ballads, too.

The lyrics on both of your albums paint very personal scenarios. How autobiographical are your songs?

Like 99.9% is autobiographical, and it’s often about people that I love.

So, “23’s a Baby,” is about someone you know having a baby at a very young age?

Kind of. There’s also conceptual stuff that comes up.

You’re being metaphorical as well.

Yeah, that happens, but the only way that I can write is to write about stuff that I feel the biggest feelings about. I wouldn’t personally feel that way if I were able to just pull it out of the air. It all has to come from somewhere.

One of the things that I love about your music is that you use unusual words in your lyrics, like “docket” and “assessment,” “sepsis” and “Sertraline.” Are you aiming for that literary quality?

No. I never think, “Oh, is this how I want to say this?” The way that I write is so stream-of-consciousness — it’s just stuff that comes to mind. It’s as if I were talking to you, but I’m saying things that I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying to you or my friends or my family. They’re unspoken things — concerns that I have never voiced, or the things I’m embarrassed by, or the feelings I’ve never felt comfortable saying to somebody. It’s just done in a really conversational way.

So, it’s easier for you to say things in a song that you wouldn’t say person-to-person?

For sure.

Man, that is brave.

Yeah — and then it sucks, because everyone ends up hearing it. It’s the stuff I wouldn’t have said to my family or somebody I’m dating or somebody I used to date, or my friend who I’m not friends with anymore. It’s stuff that I wouldn’t have said, because it’s harsh or it’s embarrassing or whatever, and then they end up hearing it. That’s the hardest part of the whole thing. In a way, I have to pretend that’s not happening.

So, you’re not thinking about what the reaction might be?

Yeah. Also, I’m friends with a lot of musicians., and everybody knows that’s how it goes.

Speaking of literary influences, I was wondering if your line about “steely danification” in “Toy” is a reference to William Burroughs or the band.

It’s a reference to the band. I love Steely Dan.

There’s a recurring theme in your songs, such as “Docket” and on this album, “Two Times,” about being ambivalent about a relationship. In “Two Times,” you sing, “Once you get me, I get bored.” Do you struggle with that?

If you haven’t historically had the healthiest relationships, being in a healthy relationship can feel like, “What’s going on? What’s missing?” I also think that every form of media tells people that the valuable quality of a relationship is the conflict. Every movie I saw growing up, every TV show I watched growing up, songs — everything — relationships [revolve around] a problem. So, if your relationship is pretty absent of problems, you’re like, “What’s wrong here? We’re supposed to be fighting and then making up. What if we’re not fighting that much? Do we just not care? Is this a tepid kind of situation?” I have struggled with that”.

I am going to end with a review from When the Whistle Blows. A magnificent and compelling album from start to finish, If You Asked for a Picture is something everyone needs to listen to. This feature is about celebrating the finest women in music. Those who are leading the way and releasing the best work. Blondshell is definitely up there with the very best of them:

“Sabrina Teitelbaum aka Blondshell, has released her sophomore album and it’s every bit as thrilling and wonderful as her self-titled debut, which came out in 2023 and impressed me so much that I knew I would continue to follow her career, and what a smart decision that was from me, because her follow-up album is sensational.

The album’s title comes from a poem titled Dogfish, by iconic poet Mary Oliver, and it resonated with Teitelbaum. This album is also very much about giving us snippets into her life and mind.

While the two records are similar in sound and style, If You Asked For A Picture is more introspective and interior. It opens with the track Thumbtack, which is a wonderful acoustic led song with vivid imagery and memorable lines, much like all Blondshell songs. “You’re a thumbtack in my side/A dog bite/You distract/From what’s worse so I will let you/Keep a ball chain on my leg” She sings during the chorus, which is definitely one that stays with you.

My personal highlight from the album is a track titled T&A. it was released as a single earlier in the year, and a definite contender for one of the best singles released this year. The guitar work throughout the track is spectacular, and loud as hell, which is exactly why it works so well. Her voice is clear and concise; the production is clean and crispy. “Letting him in, why don’t the good ones love me? Watching him fall/Watching him go right in front of me”Teitelbaum sings in the chorus. It’s one that I imagine will be incredible live, perfect for concerts and festivals. It’s very tongue-in-cheek and almost funny at times, too, as is the rest of the record. One of my favourite things about Blondshell as an artist is the fact that when you’re listening to her songs, you occasionally do a double take with your ears, but in the best way. Artists that have courage to say what they truly want are so deeply important to the industry, now and forever.

Another wonderful song is Arms, which follows T&A. it’s moody, atmospheric and sassy, with hints of grunge. “I don’t wanna be your mom/But you’re not strong enough” she opens the song boldly. It seems to be a song for girls everywhere, and a warning not to try to save and fix people. “Oh well, you’re not gonna save him, save him, save him.” She sings together with stunning backing vocals.

Certainly, one of the most candid songs on the album is What’s Fair, also a single, about a mother-daughter relationship that appears to be a little estranged. Sonically, it’s pacy and up-tempo, but lyrically it’s actually quite sad at times, and talks about a mother that is over-critical. “What’s fair? What’s a fair assessment of the job you did? Do you ever even regret it?” It feels like new territory, musically.

Following that is another single, Two Times, which is a fantastic modern love song. It’s almost like a stream of consciousness, but again, it’s very honest and candid. “I’ll come back if you put me down two times/You try hard to make me yours/But once you get me, I get bored/I’ll come back if you put me down two times” Teitelbaum sings somewhat leisurely. Her vocals truly shine on this track, and it really shows how vocally talented she is.

A running theme on the album is growing up, or looking back at your younger days and ruminating, especially on tracks such as Event of a Fire and 23’s a Baby.  On the latter, Teitelbaum said: ‘The song is partially about being in your twenties and feeling like you’re supposed to know everything (your parents even had kids around that age!) yet you’re truly in the weeds trying to figure out who you are. I wanted it to have a bit of a nursery rhyme feel. It’s a heavy subject so it was important to have fun when we made it.’

And it’s a lot of fun to listen to. If You Asked For A Picture is a deeply candid and confident record, but it doesn’t shy away from asking important questions”.

I am going to leave things there. A sensational artist who I have admired since her 2023 eponymous debut, If You Asked for a Picture is another masterful work from Blondshell. I think that she is going to be an artist putting out world-class albums for many years. A name that we will be hearing about…

FOR decades more.

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FEATURE: Spotlight: Amelia Moore

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Amelia Moore

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I am going to start out…

with an interview from CLASH from late last year. It was with the sensational Amelia Moore. Before I get to that, I want to introduce people to this artist and give them a sense of her background and how she progressed. Bring us up to 2021. Even though she has been on the scene a little while, I think the past year or so has seen her ascend to new heights. Let’s get to some biography first:

“Singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Amelia Moore creates the kind of visionary alt-pop that both defies all expecation and feels immediately essential. In a whirlwind journey she describes as “homeschool to Hollywood,” the 21-year-old Georgia native got her start singing in the church choir as a little kid, followed her dreams to Los Angeles at age 18, and soon attracted a massive following on the strength of her bold but vulnerable songwriting (a feat that includes gaining over 50,000 followers on Spotify before she’d even officially released a song). True to her TikTok and Instagram handle (@icryatwork), the 21-year-old artist approaches all her music with a fierce commitment to total emotional transparency—an irresistible counterpart to her kaleidoscopic and endlessly unpredictable sound.

Originally from Lawrenceville (a town outside Atlanta), Moore grew up in a conservative Christian household and first discovered her natural musicality by singing in the choir and taking up violin at age five. But despite her immense talent on the violin, she felt compelled to expand her horizons. “From a really young age I felt creatively trapped and knew I wanted to write my own music, so I quit violin and taught myself piano on a cheap little Casio keyboard,” she says. Also a worship leader at her church, Moore began writing her own songs at age 13 and within two years joined an Atlanta-based artist development training program to sharpen her vocal and performance skills. When her parents refused to pay for the program (“I remember them telling me, ‘Maybe music can be a hobby, and you can be pharmaceutical sales rep instead,’” she recalls), Moore got a job at a fast-food chain and raised the money on her own. “It completely changed my life—from then on I believed in myself 1,000 percent,” she says.

After graduating from high school at 16, Moore kept on writing songs and ventured into producing for other artists, then enrolled at Belmont University in Nashville. “It was the craziest culture shock I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she says. “I went from being so sheltered to being surrounded by kids who are all drinking, partying, hooking up, and pretty quickly I started questioning everything I was raised to believe.” As she broke out of her shell and adjusted to life on campus, Moore continued collaborating remotely with her longtime friend Austin Sanders (aka ASTN, a Florida-bred singer/songwriter), and soon began heading to L.A. for co-writing sessions. During her first trip, she crossed paths with up-and-coming producer Pink Slip and instantly felt a potent creative chemistry, striking up a collaboration that endures to this day. Halfway through her sophomore year, Moore dropped out of Belmont and moved to L.A. on her own—then found herself frightfully adrift when the pandemic hit just two months later. “Any opportunity I’d had to play shows or put a project together fell apart so fast,” she says. “Like so many other people, everything I’d been working toward was swept out from under my feet.” Determined to move forward, Moore immersed herself in writing and refining her vision for her debut project, and eventually began sharing her songs on TikTok. Within the very first week of posting her original material, she’d amassed over 100,000 followers drawn to her unaffected yet magnetic presence and fearlessly honest perspective—a turn of events that ultimately led to her signing with Capitol Records in fall 2021”.

Before moving to some more recent interviews, I am going to get to the CLASH interview. Her amazing E.P., he’s just not that into you!, was released last July and is a remarkable listen. For anyone who has not heard of Amelia Moore then I would advise you to start there:

“A force on fire setting the industry ablaze, Amelia Moore has made it her business to claim her rightful reign.

Marrying indie pop and R&B, Moore’s glass-shattering vocals combined with soul-centered songwriting have lent to an infectious catalog that tells every girl who has been brave enough to pursue love’s story. Her instrumentals are as colourful as her hair neon orange hair, a blaring outside concealing a decadent inside. “see through,” the breakthrough single off her 2024 ‘he’s just not that into you!’ EP, has earned her nearly four million streams on Spotify alone, recruiting new and pleasantly surprised fans from every corner of every genre.

CLASH caught up with the songwriter following her electrifying Camp Flog Gnaw set to explore her journey from a homeschooled, conservative upbringing in Georgia to becoming R&B’s most promising.

Who were you listening to growing up that really informed the way that you relate to R&B right now?

It’s actually so funny because I grew up so sheltered, literally homeschooled and conservative. I wasn’t listening to any dope R&B or pop artists at all growing up. I remember Justin Timberlake’s ’20/20 Experience’ album being the first secular album my mom played. I’ve had to do a lot of learning and teaching myself since I moved away from home. But early on, Justin Bieber was a really big one for me. ‘Journals’, oh my god. I love the ‘Changes’ album too. I’ve always been an Ari girl, a Mariah girl, an Usher girl.

Being that you had to discover so much music on your own time, do you feel like you’re playing catching up now?

For sure. I’m trying to think of somebody new. I mean, I definitely wasn’t early to the Chappell Roan shit at all. But once I found the album, I was like, “Oh, duh. Duh. For sure. Where have I been?” I love her so much. She’s so cool.

Speaking to reinventing yourself outside of a confined upbringing, how was the emotional process moving from Georgia to Los Angeles?

I feel like I’m just now finding my footing. Like I have a foundation here. It was really crazy, though. And thank god I had a little stepping stone in between Atlanta and here. I went to Belmont for, like, a year and a half in Nashville. That was also a culture shock. I was in class with people who were hitting their vape and drinking, and I genuinely did not think that people did that stuff. So that made it easier than coming to LA right way. I just have really good people around me who have really good heads on their shoulders, and thank God I didn’t get caught up in any nonsense.

Within that, does faith still play a role in your life or did you have to redefine your relationship to it?

Kind of, but definitely not as much as it used to, because of the crazy people that I grew up around. They really ruined the God shit for me, which is so unfortunate. I do still think about it often, and I think eventually I’ll come back around to it, because it was such a big part of growing up and it shaped me a lot. But as of right now, I’m just on a vibe. I’m thankful for being here, and when people ask me why I have an R&B sound and I didn’t listen to R&B growing up, I literally say “It’s God.”

Your spirit was supposed to be doing what you’re doing. You’re an authentic expression of true self, musically and physically. When you went orange, what happened emotionally? What happened physiologically?

I was obsessed immediately. It just felt so right. I remember FaceTiming my mom and her seeing it and starting to cry. She hated it at first but she’s obsessed now. I don’t know why I chose orange. Before I dyed my hair, it was, like, the only colour that I was wearing. I was wearing all orange all the time, it was so tacky and gaudy. Looking back, it was, like, not very cute at all. Then I was like, “Oh, my hair is orange now. I don’t have to revolve my wardrobe around this one colour.”  I was walking around looking like Vector from Despicable Me.

The crossover makes so much sense. He’s produced some of the most iconic R&B records of all time and you’re giving the genre such a breath of fresh air while maintaining its roots, which is truly just storytelling love and heartbreak. As someone so blatantly honest in their work, is it more difficult write songs about things that haven’t happened versus telling your own stories?

Every song that I’ve ever put out is autobiographical. I definitely find it harder to make up a story. I love feeling connected to my songs, every single word, every single lyric. If I’m crying in the studio on my birthday, that’s a lyric in “love me or leave me alone,” like, that literally is happening. I love writing for other artists and helping them tell their stories too, but for my music, it’s me. It’s my life. It’s my truth. Everything is real.

What’s next for Amelia Moore? Are you working on anything or are you just basking?

It’s been very exciting to see ‘see through’ get some love, because I love that song so much. I think it’s the coolest one on there, so for people to be hearing it and fucking with it, it’s really exciting. I’m working on a little Part 2 for ‘he’s just not that into you’! I’m trying to get a remix out before the year’s over. I’m assembling some really dope girls that I’m all fans of. Hopefully, getting on another tour soon. I have all the ideas for my first album and I’m ready to start writing that also.

I feel like there’s so much weight on a debut. Are you going into it excited, or are you carrying that burden?

I think a little bit of both. Because I want it to be as intentional as some of my favourite albums are, from the cover art to the live show to the rollout. I really wanna take my time with it because I want it to be great, but I have all the ideas. I’m just excited to execute them.

I think it’s gonna it’s gonna come together so naturally, you’ve already built such a solid foundation for yourself and people are rocking with you. Last but not least, being that this is the 10 year anniversary for Camp Flog Gnaw, what’s your favorite Tyler era?

Oh my god. Well, I think the one we’re in now is definitely his most iconic. I’m so happy that an album from a rapper this vulnerable is as big as it is. That’s so important to me. So either this one or ‘Igor’”.

I am going to end with another interview but I will get to one now from Women in Pop from last month. They spoke to Amelia Moore about her latest single, fuck, marry, kill. Ahead of the release of her new mixtape, he’s still just not that into you! That was released on 9th May, and I would advise anyone new to Amelia Moore to check it out. I am publishing this feature the day before its release, so I will be listening to it from tomorrow. I am new to her music but can fully understand why there has been so much interest around her. A truly original artist:

“She has since signed with major label Republic and last month released the new single ‘fuck, marry, kill’. A gentle, swaying song that has an almost dreamy, soul sound with an at times jaw droppingly impressive vocal performance from Moore. Like much of her music, it explores the torments and joys of relationships and love as her partner drives her to distraction but she can’t stop loving them: ‘You ruin my life / But still give me butterflies…I wanna fuck, marry, kill you / All at the same damn time.’

“I knew I had to make my own unique story,” Moore says. “Singing funny, specific, modern lyrics over a song that feels classic and beautiful is something I had never done before.”

The song is the first taste from her upcoming new mixtape, he’s still just not that into you! which will be released on 9 May and features a song written with one of Moore’s heroes, Julia Michaels. Moore will play a number of headline shows across the US and Europe to launch the mixtape, tickets on sale now

“It’s bouncy, fun, lighthearted, vulnerable, and funny,” she says of her new music. “Songwriting has always been a safe space for me to say anything and everything I need to get off of my chest. The more specific and vulnerable I am, the more my fans relate to my songs. I’m excited for this new era.”

With her songs attracting streams in the millions, Moore is quickly becoming one of music’s hottest rising stars. Her music is connective, warm, vulnerable, sometimes confronting but always an immersive experience. Now is the right time to introduce yourself to her discography, and we recently sat down with her to chat all about her career.

Hi, Amelia, thank you for your time. I want to jump straight in and talk about your beginnings in music. You were raised in theatre, tell me about that.

Yeah, I love theatre so much still, I thought I was going to be a Broadway girl when I was a lot younger. I fell in love with performing when I was around 11, I was Annie in my church's production of Annie, and in that moment, I was like, ‘This is it. I'm gonna grow up and move to New York and be a Broadway star’. I was in a couple of different theatre production companies, but I didn't really understand what it meant to be an artist, and over time f started asking myself questions: I could continue to do plays and be on stage and be somebody else and sing someone else's songs, or I could be on stage and be myself and write my own stuff. That's how I steered away from theatre and into figuring out what an artist was. But theatre will always be my first love for performing.

I think that's lovely. As a songwriter, how do you feel playing those roles and singing other people's songs and really completely embodying them has complimented or informed the way you write?

I think a lot of the songwriting that I do, and that I enjoy the most from my favourite artists, are the super conversational storytelling type of songs that you would see in a musical. One of the things I love, I think my favourite thing actually, about musicals still today is that when a character is singing a song, it's either pushing the story forward or you're learning something about the character and that's something that I like to keep in mind in my songwriting. I feel like that is one of the main things that has informed what I do now. But now with the music that I'm making for a future project I am playing a lot with the background vocals kind of being in the third person, talking about me in the third person, which I think is really fun. I'm trying to watch more musicals and go see more plays now to get more inspiration.

You’ve got this very beautiful old R&B vibe, but with your signature, high drama vocals. There's something equally theatrical in the way that you're writing these lyrics and in your voice. Who were your vocal sheroes growing up?

It's crazy, because I grew up really home schooled and sheltered and wasn't really allowed to listen to that much secular music as a kid. I really don't know where it came from. At a young age, maybe it was the theatre. I was listening to a lot of big and dramatic vocals in the plays that I was a part of, but I really started to find my own taste and inspiration when I was a teenager. Ariana Grande has been a really big vocal inspiration for me for forever, and now I look up to artists like her and Raye, Victoria Monét, Jazmine Sullivan. My favourite singers are R&B singers. So it's always important to show off my vocal any chance that I can get! When we're writing a song, I'm always thinking about how I can show off and give a little wink to all of my favourite singers.

Your music sits in this beautiful sphere of something that's very familiar and then something that's very unfamiliar. Possibly the bit that's unfamiliar is the delivery and the edge and the sharpness when it's paired with this kind of cushion of sound. If you could sum up, what your writing style and the kind of music you want to create, is that what it is? The softness in the edge?

One of my favourite songwriters ever, my musical icon since I was 15, is Julia Michaels, and I've been lucky enough to work with her recently, and we have a song that we've written together that's coming out very soon. She really shaped me into a style of songwriter that is really conversational and honest. One of the questions I find myself asking when I'm stuck on a line is, how would I just say this in a conversation with somebody? How would I just say this in a sentence? And nine times out of ten, that is how the line needs to be delivered. So I think my songwriting is a combination of what I feel is most conversational and what you would say in a sentence, with a challenging melody or riff that I can show off a little bit like I was saying before. ‘fuck, marry, kill’ is a great example of that, and also a song like ‘see through’ that I had on my last project last year. A little conversational with a little drama. I like the drama word we've been saying today!

Is there one favourite lyric that is the most conversational thing you’ve written and just hammers every time you hear it?

There's a bunch of lyrics in this song ‘easy’ that came out last year on my last project. I can't even believe that I am saying this type of stuff on my songs, knowing that my parents listen to them. I think it's so iconic. It’s ‘First time was a doozy, bleeding on the duvet / I was freaking out, thought you'd be freaking out / But we just pulled the sheets off, put a towel down / You know how to woo me / You know how to woo, okay / You know how to, okay’

It's just a thought process, I'm thinking through what happened. Oh, my goodness, it actually happened. Wow. There’s a sense of humour in my lyrics, too, which is something that I really enjoy. My first project, teaching a robot to love, was so heavy and emotional, and I was going through a lot of big emotions and heartbreak at the time, but recently, I've been so excited about the music that has came out this past year, and what I'm about to get ready to roll out, because it's so much more light hearted and not taken as seriously. I think that is so much more of a reflection of what my personality is actually like. I'm excited for my fans to continue to get to know me through lyrics like that”.

I am going to end with this interview that was published earlier this month. By the time you read this, Amelia Moore’s mixtape will be out and gathering acclaim and praise. If you do not know this artist or are quite new then I would encourage you to listen to her. Such a promising talent that is going to be moving her way through the industry. Her music sounds like nobody else’s. It has captivated so many fans already:

“If there’s a mission statement to this new Amelia Moore era, it’s “fuck, marry, kill,” the EP’s lead single and viral lightning bolt of a track that dropped in March. Set to lush vintage R&B instrumentals, the song builds to a deranged-yet-relatable chorus: *“I wanna fuck, marry, kill you / All at the same damn time.”* It’s the kind of hook that begs to be screamed at a festival. Which is convenient, since Moore’s festival bookings are stacking up fast.

Another major highlight of her upcoming project? A feature from none other than Teezo Touchdown on the woozy, genre-bending track “spelling bee.” The song is quirky, hypnotic, and full of that bedroom pop realness, and Teezo’s verse fits perfectly in the chaos. “Teezo was on my dream list,” Moore says. “He gets it. The humor, the drama, the sexiness — he makes things feel larger than life, and that’s exactly what this song needed.”

“spelling bee” plays like a twisted love letter and a playground taunt at the same time. packed with clever wordplay, swoony melodies, and just enough weirdness to make it unmistakably Moore. It’s also a sign that she’s no longer just a rising voice in alt-pop; she’s becoming a magnet for some of the most creative collaborators in the scene.

Raised in Georgia and now based in LA, Moore’s musical background blends classical training, church choir discipline, and full-throttle musical theater energy. That dramatic sensibility shows up in her music, not just in the production, but in the perspective shifts and inner-monologue background vocals that have become a signature of hers. She doesn’t just sing her songs; she stages them.

Her lyrics are diary-level specific – unafraid to reference towels on the bed, breakdowns in grocery store parking lots, or, famously, the mortifying details of her first time in the track “easy.” It’s no wonder she caught the attention of Julia Michaels, the pop songwriting powerhouse behind hits for Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber. The two collaborated on tracks for the new EP – a full-circle moment for Moore, who credits Michaels with shaping her own confessional, conversational lyricism. “Julia was the blueprint for me,” she says. “Working with her didn’t just elevate my writing. It gave me the confidence to be even weirder, even more me.”

She made her Camp Flog Gnaw debut in 2024, delivering a set that was as explosive as it was theatrical. “It was my ‘holy shit, this is real’ moment,” she says. “I had girls in the front row sobbing, laughing, shouting the lyrics ,it was everything I ever wanted.” Now, she’s slated for Outside Lands 2025, where she’s expecting a bigger stage, louder crowd, and, in her words – “even more girlies ready to cry, flirt, and yell.”

Despite her “he’s still just not that into you mixtape release shows” late this month at Los Angeles’ The Echo on May 27 and New York’s Baby’s All Right on May 29, Moore still describes herself as in the “pre-ascension phase” — a moment where the fanbase is cult-like, the growth is organic, and every show feels like a celebration of survival. But with this new project, she’s stepping into the spotlight like she was born for it.

She’s not trying to be TikTok’s next sad girl, she’s carving out something entirely her own: a self-aware, high-drama, hook-laced universe where heartbreak is both the wound and the weapon. “I’ve always had a lot of feelings,” she says. “This time, I’m just having more fun showing them”.

Go and check out Amelia Moore. She is someone I am going to follow for years as I know she will be a massive success story. What she has put out so far is phenomenal. Even if many consider her a rising artist at the moment, it will not be too long before she is…

A major name.

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Follow Amelia Moore

FEATURE: Two Wheels Good: Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

Two Wheels Good

 

Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen at Forty

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IT is a bit…

IN THIS PHOTO: Prefab Sprout in 1985 (left-right: Neil Conti, Martin McAloon, Wendy Smith and Paddy McAloon)

of an awkward start, as there are various sites that give different dates regarding the release of Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen. It was definitely released in June 1985 but a bit of debate in terms of the exact release date. Whether it is 21st or another day in June. However, as it is definitely forty next month, I will do an anniversary feature that is unique. One where I am not entirely sure of the date but feel the album is too important not to spotlight. The second studio album contains classics such as When Love Breaks Down, Faron Young and Appetite. Ahead of its fortieth anniversary, I want to get to some reviews for Steve McQueen. I am going to start out with a feature from last month from Classic Pop. I last wrote about this album five years ago. I wanted to revisit it ahead of its fortieth anniversary. I am going to get to some reviews. It is good to learn some of the background to this true classic. Perhaps Prefab Sprout’s finest hour, I would recommend everyone listens to it if they have not heard it already. A masterclass in songwriting from Paddy McAloon. Alongside Wendy Smith, Neil Conti and Martin McAloon, the band created a masterpiece in Steve McQueen:

“When Swoon’s first single Don’t Sing was given the Jukebox Jury treatment on Radio 1’s Roundtable, DJs Tony Blackburn and Mari Wilson used the song’s title as a lazily adopted barb with which to dismiss the track, but guest reviewer – synth-pop soloist Thomas Dolby – thought otherwise.

Having sat through Toy Dolls’ Nellie The Elephant and Alvin Stardust’s So Near To Christmas, Don’t Sing was clearly a revelation. “Out of the speakers came something miraculous!” he recalled in his memoir. “The song had weird time signatures and key changes and no discernible hook… In short, it was utterly fantastic.”

In that moment, a glorious chain of events was set in serendipitous motion. Dolby would not only end up producing Prefab Sprout’s second album – his first major production duty – but would be entrusted to handpick the songs from McAloon’s dog-eared bedroom vault.

I thought it was a brilliant partnership. My songs and his way of producing. It was the perfect balance.

Back in the North East, Paddy and Martin were tuned in. “I’d heard him sticking up for us on the radio,” Paddy told Melody Maker. “I thought, ‘Now that would be an unusual combination”. I’m not one for repeating formulas. I want to work with people who can teach me something.”

It was the band’s new label boss at CBS, Muff Winwood, who was first to float the idea. “Paddy and I didn’t get it at all, initially,” admitted Kitchenware’s Keith Armstrong. “We thought Muff had gone mad.”

Nonetheless, a meeting was arranged to probe the possibilities. Amidst the unpredictable nature of Paddy’s songwriting – all tempo changes, odd time signatures, off-kilter hooks and ambitious arrangements – perhaps a tech-savvy, pop-minded mentor – a steadying hand – wasn’t such a bad idea.

“I’d read in a magazine somewhere that he was working with Michael Jackson, and I thought, ‘That’s good enough for me,’ Paddy said. With no demo available, Dolby paid a visit to Witton Gilbert to hear Paddy play.

“I took the train up,” Dolby remembered to Puremusic. “Paddy took me to his room and pulled out this stack of songs. He’d squint at them and strum his way through them. He would write notes for chords and melodies over the top of the lyrics, but primarily, it was about the poems.”

Seated on Paddy’s bed, Dolby listened enthusiastically to complex “asymmetrical phrases” with “odd numbers of beats” and “tricky chord changes”. “The songs came thick and fast,” Dolby enthused, “with soaring melodies, finely nuanced chord sequences, and poetry that alternatively cut like a knife and tugged at my heartstrings.”

The producer returned to the station clutching a cassette recorded on his Walkman and, by the time his train pulled into London, he’d narrowed the 40-something songs down to a shortlist of 12; some of which originated as far back as 1976.

Steve McQueen was to be a record, the majority of which would tell the stories of a boy barely out of his teens, retrospectively sung by the man he had grown into. Dolby’s job was to translate Paddy’s skewed genius for the outside world – or, as he put it: to be a “caretaker for someone else’s music”.

Swoon had been a challenging listen; Steve McQueen was to be just as pioneering, but palatable to boot. And not only that – with CBS onside – this new album was to be made under more luxurious circumstances. Swoon took 18 days: Steve McQueen needed three months.

In Autumn 1984, the band were installed at London’s Nomis Studios to begin sessions under the working title ‘June Parade’.

“My first job as producer would be to encourage the band to simplify the arrangements, create space for all the parts, and restructure the songs, without losing the focus of the vocal and lyrics,” wrote Dolby.

“[Paddy’s] voice was extremely intimate and sensual, while Wendy’s was sterile and detached; the contrast was unlike anything I’d heard, and with the wide harmonies he wrote for her, it all added up to something beautiful and precious.”

Out from under the bed came diverse tracks such as Faron Young, Bonny, Goodbye Lucille #1 and Hallelujah. Dolby added Fairlight, piano and synth and worked on intros and solos “to propel it along while making space for Paddy and Wendy’s vocals to slip into”.

New drummer Neil Conti streamlined the sound, as did Dolby collaborator Kevin Armstrong, who added “some grittier chunks on his Les Paul”.

With arrangements in the bag, the ensemble moved to Marcus Studios in Queensway, where engineer Tim Hunt set up baffles and mics in the large wood-panelled live room. “The result,” wrote Dolby, “was an open, natural sound with the punchy and organic rhythm section and piano driving the grooves.”

Overdubs were added, including doubling Wendy’s vocals with synth to add some gloss.

The first the world heard of the record was pacemaker single When Love Breaks Down, albeit a version produced by The Cure’s then-bassist Phil Thornalley quickly lost amidst cornier festive fare. Dolby made sure to recut the vocals and remixed the song to fit the Steve McQueen mould.

The album appeared in June 1985 like the sorest of thumbs amidst a habitat dominated by synth-pop and MOR, and clawed its way to No.21.

After several failed attempts, When Love Breaks Down managed No.25, but the singles that followed underperformed: Faron Young made No.74, Appetite stalled at No.92, and Johnny Johnny (Goodbye Lucille #1) teetered at No. 64.

While sales took time to build – it eventually won Platinum status – the critics lapped it up. Hip vindication arrived when NME placed it at No.4 in its Albums Of 1985 poll, alongside a cast of cool including The Jesus And Mary Chain, New Order and The Fall.

Renamed Two Wheels Good in the US (for legal reasons), it only managed No.180, yet Rolling Stone declared that it was “complex but irresistible”.

Where Swoon was charged by some as being too self-aware – or “a tour de force of self-indulgence”, as Melody Maker impugned – with Thomas Dolby as its rudder, Steve McQueen sat just right.

In many ways, Steve McQueen was born of two people’s visions. Paddy has even gone as far as to call it “Thomas’ album”. “I thought it was a brilliant partnership,” he explained. “My songs and his way of producing. It was the perfect balance.”

Alongside Steve McQueen’s innocent themes of love, Paddy’s namedrops and odd references evoke a world that’s far too tempting not to dip a toe into.

As a result, Prefab’s second album has gained exalted status among lovers of intelligently written, sophisticated – and emotive – pop music and regularly makes the ‘Greatest Albums Ever’ listings. And deservedly so.

As far removed from their peers musically as they were geographically, with Steve McQueen, Prefab Sprout put Witton Gilbert on the map”.

Just before getting to a couple of reviews, I am heading back to 2020 and a feature from The Guardian. Paddy McAloon and producer Thomas Dolby discussed making the album. I would encourage people to read the whole feature. However, I won’t include the whole thing and will get McAloon’s perspective and recollections. It sounds like a really exciting time for the band. They released a work of brilliance in June 1985:

“Paddy McAloon, singer, songwriter

I grew up in Witton Gilbert in County Durham and started Prefab Sprout with my brother [Martin, bass] and Michael Salmon, who lived down the street. Michael borrowed a drum kit and Martin and I shared an amplifier. We rehearsed in my dad’s run-down wooden-framed petrol station. We were as rough as can be, but we sounded like a band, at least to ourselves.

I didn’t have music lessons but I was drawn to music that I read about and devoured everything from T Rex to Stravinsky. It’s almost embarrassing now, but I dreamed about influencing the course of pop. I’d been writing songs since I was 13, but after David Bowie’s Station to Station came out, when I was 19, I started to study his methods, likes and dislikes. He didn’t like country and western, so I wrote Faron Young from the worldview of someone who disliked country music.

Bonny was written around the same time. People think it’s about my father’s death, but he wasn’t dead then – I imagined grief. Goodbye Lucille #1 started out as a 50s doo-wop parody – “Ooh, Johnny Johnny Johnny” – in waltz time, but turned into something serious. Most breakup songs were sad or accusatory, but I straddled the viewpoints of both the intense guy and the girl breaking up with him (“She’s a person too”).

I’d always written on an acoustic guitar, but just as we started making records I had a crisis and thought I’d exhausted the guitar and started writing instead on a Roland synthesiser. I was too eccentric or nervous a songwriter to incorporate a big chorus, but when When Love Breaks Down came along I didn’t fight it. I wrote that, and Appetite – over a hip-hop-type groove on a drum machine – and then Desire As in the same week in June 1984. “I’ve got six things on my mind. You’re no longer one of them” is so cold. I wouldn’t want to say that to anybody. “Desire as a sylph-figured creature who changes her mind.” I’ve no idea where these things come from.

I’d used my most off-kilter ideas on our first album, Swoon, and I’d deliberately held back my more commercial songs. The album title – Steve McQueen – came to me in a dream. It doesn’t mean anything, but I decided to use it and we shot the cover using a motorbike like the one McQueen had in The Great Escape.

The album went gold and has sold steadily ever since. I’m humbled that it’s become a classic and people still discover it, but I still remember driving away from the studio in the snow thinking we’d get a lot of praise for something I felt I didn’t have much to do with. It was us playing the songs in the studio – Thomas Dolby and the team did a marvellous job of making us sound grand and opulent. When we were doing Johnny Johnny there was this embarrassing clunk, which was the sound of me hitting the microphone stand while singing. Thomas loved the take and wanted to keep it, so he went to the Fairlight sampler, looked at the wave form of the sound and just took out the clunk. I remember thinking, “Wow, so that’s what pop is going to be like in future”.

The first review I am bringing in is from Pitchfork. In 2007, they reviewed a remastered and reissued Legacy Edition of Steve McQueen. The edition features new acoustic renditions from Paddy McAloon. Pitchfork explored “The defining record of 1985 sophisto-pop”:

“In another time, in another place, Paddy McAloon might have been happily productive somewhere between the Algonquin and Broadway in 1930s New York ("I want to be," he once crooned, hopefully, "the Fred Astaire of words.") Or beavering away in an office in the Brill Building in the 50s. Or maybe some place on that off-kilter middle of the road between Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb in the 60s. Almost anywhere, you might have thought, other than Britain in the mid-80s.

Some hard-hearted professors of pop would have it that 1985 was the absolute nadir of British music: all the fizz of new pop gone flat, the independent scene a twee shambles. Yet in records such as the Blue Nile's A Walk Across The Rooftops, the Pet Shop Boys' Please, Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, Scritti's Cupid and Psyche 85, and especially in Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen, you have some of the most beautiful, enduring British pop music ever made. For a year or two, just before Live Aid and Q magazine, the challenge of making new pop for grown-ups without being dowdy, smug, or jaded was met, quite superbly. It's this guile and grace that bands like Stars and Junior Boys still yearn for.

The Sprout-- it's ironic that a writer so fleet-footed lumbered himself with such a clunking band name-- had debuted in 1984 with Swoon, a record that suggested they were post-graduates of the Glasgow School, taking the Postcard label template to new levels of cryptic wit and elliptical jangle. But as McAloon made plain, his ambitions were far grander. He aspired to the standards of Stephen Foster, Gershwin, Sondheim, Quincy Jones, McCartney; saw himself as a contemporary of Prince rather than Lloyd Cole. He had a grand sense of pop music, and in 1985, that kind of grandeur seemed to be available via producers like Thomas Dolby.

McAloon has said that Steve McQueen is Dolby's record-- he presented the producer with a vast archive of songs and asked him to choose his favorites. Yet this is true most obviously in the profoundly 80s sonic palette. Rather wonderfully and typically, it seems that Dolby even chose to play the banjo on the opening track, the country pastiche "Faron Young", via a Fairlight sampler. And the presence on this new reissue of an additional disc of acoustic versions of the songs-- which took longer to record than the original-- suggests that McAloon now feels embarrassed, as though the production has dated or even damaged his songs.

I think he needn't be so bashful; one of the defining qualities of the record is its pop ambition, its willingness to engage with its times, precisely by not being a sullen singer-songwriter would-be timeless classic. Imagine if Sinatra had decided that Nelson Riddle's arrangements tied his albums to closely to the early 50s. According to this additional disc, Steve McQueen might have been some perfectly prim and pleasant Go-Betweeny acoustic curio, rather than how it ended up: the kind of record you imagine Elvis Costello might have made had he been signed to ZTT and been ensconced in a studio with Trevor Horn.

One thing the new versions do highlight is the astonishing maturity of the songs. Coincidentally, almost all of Dolby choices dated from 1979, when Paddy was 22. Yet they sound all the more appropriate sung by a man of 50. "Life's not complete, 'til your heart's missed a beat," he sighed on "Goodbye Lucille #1", but now when he sings "and you'll never get it back," his voice breaks with the wisdom of another two decades.

Ironically, considering the producer's name, it's a record in so many ways about infidelity. Or let's say about the consequences of romanticism. Take that cover: Paddy, looking like a dreamy young D.H. Lawrence, astride the kind of Triumph that would have carried the record's namesake to freedom. But the whole album rails against easy escapism: "Appetite", sung from the perspective of a girl left to bring up the baby of some young firebrand; "Desire As" seeing no escape from a lifetime of new flames; the rueful regrets of "Bonny".

And maybe I'm too much a child of those times myself, but it still sounds great to me: the glittering guitar that opens "Goodbye Lucille", the 10cc/ZTT moments of "When Love Breaks Down". Even Wendy Smith's gaseous backing vocals, haunting the record like the ghost of Hayley Mills.

In fact it seems to me that instead of stripping back the songs from their 80s incarnations, the additional disc could have more profitably commissioned some original covers. McAloon was, after all, the original Stephin Merritt, so there's no reason why he shouldn't have his own Sixths. You can imagine these songs performed by, oh, Marianne Faithfull, Bryan Ferry, Will Young, Kylie Minogue, Rufus Wainwright, or Antony Hegarty. A handful of these songs have the quality of standards: there's no reason why their real after-life shouldn't begin now”.

There is a track-by-track guide that is worth reading. You get more of a sense of the brilliance of each song rather than the album as a whole. I am going to end with a 2007 review by the BBC when they experienced the Legacy Edition of Steve McQueen. There may be people who have not heard of Prefab Sprout and are not sure what the fuss is about. This is songwriting at its very best. You need to hear this album in full! It still sounds so incredible forty years later:

“This is one of the greats. Some may complain that the 80s was a poor decade for music, but this record destroys those ignorant moans. Re-mastered by original producer Thomas Dolby, Steve McQueen sounds terrific. There is no escaping the 80s-ness of the synth sound and the breathy super-cool voice of Paddy McAloon, but why escape? What was happening here in 1985 was happening for the first (and perhaps the only) time.

This was the second album from Prefab Sprout, a band consisting of two brothers (Paddy and Martin), Wendy Smith on keyboards and backing vocals and Neil Conti on drums. The name is one Paddy made up when he was 14, they released many albums over two decades and their biggest hit was ''King of Rock and Roll'', you know: 'Hot dog, jumping frog, Alberquerque…'.

But this is trivia.

What really matters is the music. Really. If you have never listened to this album then I urge, no, demand that you do. And I am not caught up in the reverie of yesteryear; I was told to listen to this a few years ago when slagging off the '..jumping frog..' lyric. What I heard was a record full to the brim of wonderful ideas with an unapologetic singer flitting from heartbreak to sugared-out bitternes to all-out love with such deft lyrical brilliance that I was reminded of Cole Porter or Lorenz Hart. He sings surprising melodies flung about almost off-hand around killer hooks, never letting a song get predictable. Dolby’s bloops and grinds learned while forging his own proto-electro pop career are crucial.

Paddy's lyrical skill lies in his honesty and humour which is sometimes oblique but never hard to understand. 'I'm turkey hungry, I'm chicken free and I can't breakdance on your knee' from ''Movin' The River'', or 'Sweet talk like candy rots teeth’ from "Hallelujah".

Everything else on this album is born of rigour and attention to detail. The stuff that lead Paddy to proclaim himself as ‘probably the best songwriter on the planet’. Taking effervescent invention, playfulness and intelligence and corralling it into songs of an unusually high caliber is what both made their name and limited their success.

The acoustic versions of Paddy’s favourites on disk 2 (which took twice as long to record as the original record) are quite different. Paddy’s guitar playing is still sharp and maturity has not dulled his irony or his expressive, knowing tone. He is older, so is his voice, and lyrics that meant one thing 22 years ago now have a new slant. When he sings ‘they were the best times, the harvest years’ on '‘Desire As’' it all becomes much more personal. It even rivals the original. Essential stuff...”.

I will end it there. Even though I cannot find any site that gives a definitive date the album was released, it was released in June 1985 and was a modest commercial success. In years since it has been ranked alongside the best albums of all time. This sublime work from the brilliant Prefab Sprout sounds sensational…

FORTY years later.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: JADE

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

 

JADE

__________

AS we await her…

PHOTO CREDIT: Harry Carr for Rolling Stone UK

debut solo album, there is a lot to listen to from JADE. Formerly of Little Mix, her solo career brings out new sides to her talent. Having collected the Pop Act trophy at this year’s BRIT Awards, there is no doubt that she is one of the finest and most popular artists around. Each single she releases get this wave of love, respect and support. I am looking forward to an album and seeing what she delivers. I am going to start out with an interview from Rolling Stone UK from November. JADE is this singular artist who is always going to be associated with Little Mix but she is this amazing solo act who deserves recognition for that. Forging her own path:

“Her mother was a Motown fan who looked like Diana Ross, while her dad listened to 80s power ballads and VH1 classics. Her big brother — who she aspired to be like as every younger sibling does — was deeply into the happy hardcore-clubland classics era of the 90s and 00s. It was a happy childhood, in part due to the fact that there’s a strong Yemeni community in South Shields (Thirlwall is half Arab: one-quarter Yemeni, one-quarter Egyptian). “I have a lot of memories of my grandad cooking curries or waiting for him outside the mosque,” she remembers. “I listened to his prayer and Arabic music, too.” It wasn’t until she went to a Catholic secondary school, where she felt alienated, that she began to struggle with racist remarks and her feelings of anxiety. She was bullied by other girls, hence her initial reservations about being in a girl band.

While she was in Little Mix, she didn’t understand that she could have spoken out more about her race. “I’d only ever seen negative stereotypes of Arab people in the press, so I was scared to promote my heritage,” she says. “I feel sad for my younger self that I could’ve been the representation I needed back then. I try to make up for that now.” Thirlwall has been outspoken about issues close to her heart. Whether it was attending Black Lives Matter protests and pro-Palestine rallies or becoming an LGBTQ+ rights ambassador for the UK charity Stonewall, she stands out among many of her peers for her political verve.

Each of the girls knew a year ahead that Little Mix were disbanding, so they individually spent that period preparing in the studio. “It took me a long time to figure out how to not write a Little Mix song because that’s all I’d done for a decade,” admits Thirlwall. Panicked about the idea of having so much stillness after the group, she made an abundance of music in a bid to find her sound as soon as possible. This became an advantage: so sure of what she wanted to do, Thirlwall was able to approach potential labels with a fully formed vision. After signing with RCA of Sony, they assured her she could take her time to release her solo music, which came as a surprise: in the pop world, two and a half years is a long time to disappear. “In hindsight, I was freaking out about existing without the group and thought I had to jump on the hype of us just disbanding. If I’d released then, I would’ve been anxious and have put so much pressure on myself to be as big as [Little Mix] was.”

Nerves were amplified because it was her first time striking out alone. “I always associated Little Mix with my womanhood as I spent my whole adult life with the girls,” she says. “I didn’t know how to be a woman in my own right. When we first stopped, I was lost because I was like, ‘Fuck, every decision I’ve made over the past decade hasn’t been my own.’ It took me a minute to get my independence back.”

Does that feel codependent now looking back? “100 per cent, we were codependent,” she says resolutely. “Any relationship can become a bit toxic, or the boundaries aren’t necessarily there, but we were family and joined at the hip. After the group, I was terrified to even go to an event on my own because I had to talk to people. We’d go to an event and just talk to each other in the corner. You feel safe when you’re in a group because if something doesn’t go well, you can say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t all me.’”

While each member was planning their solo material, they were supportive of each other but kept their future careers highly confidential. This wasn’t a collective decision but an unspoken rule to not talk about music or ideas. “We knew we needed the space to figure out who we were without feeling influenced by one another. I didn’t want to compare or hear their music and think ‘God, am I doing the right thing?’ I just didn’t want to know. Fans and critics will compare our work, so I don’t think we should be doing it, too.” While that is true, it’s impossible not to make comparisons when the other members of Little Mix have pursued a more straight-forward pop route.

If Thirlwall was in charge of the music industry, it’d look different. Sure, it’s improving for artists because social media means “you can’t get away with as much bad shit”, but there’s some way to go. When I ask her how she’d change it, she sits up in a businesslike manner and adopts an Elle Woods from Legally Blonde tone. Before she’ll answer that, she’ll take me back to the nagging feeling she had that something wasn’t right with Little Mix. The four girls were presented with different contracts and told who their team was, and she didn’t feel she had a choice.

To all intents and purposes, Thirlwall and her fellow Little Mix band members were child stars. She agrees with this assessment. “I almost think you shouldn’t be allowed to be a star until you’re 18. I’m so glad I was turned away and didn’t get put in Little Mix until I was 18 — and even then, I feel like that was too young,” she says.

Previous X Factor winner and South Shields born-and-bred Joe McElderry had warned Thirlwall of his negative experiences in the industry. “I remember him saying make sure your mum’s there when you’re doing all these important signings. But I was too young to understand what he meant, and I made the same mistakes as him.”

It wasn’t until halfway into their career that the young women looked around and wondered who that person in the room being paid to be there was or why their peers and friends were making more money than them. Thirlwall and bandmate Leigh-Anne Pinnock helped to write the Little Mix music but weren’t signed into a publishing deal until 2019. Unfortunately, it was a “really shit deal” that they were stuck in but at least she was finally recognised as a songwriter, financially speaking. (For her solo career, she has not signed a publishing deal because she now finds it hard to trust the entire framework.)

If she were queen of the industry, her first decree would be to introduce a comprehensive course that artists take as soon as they’re signed by a label (if not sooner), that teaches them what a label deal is, how royalties work and how they make their money. That would prevent the type of situation that Little Mix got into when they were first signed. “When you come from a working-class background, you get your advance and think you’ve made it, but you have to recoup everything back. You’re getting all these lavish cars and making them wait for ages, but you’re footing that bill eventually,” she laughs drily. She would also introduce the sort of mental health care she’s managed to negotiate as a solo artist with her new label: a substantial pot of money that she can use if she needs therapy”.

I am going to move to a couple of other interviews before wrapping things up. I will get to a 2025 feature soon. Before that, there is another interview from late-2024 that I am keen to explore. CLASH spotlighted JADE. Someone who said how they want to push boundaries, CLASH wrote how the “South Shields siren is encoding her history in artful songs that explore the paradox of fame. Buckle up, we’re heading to the pop destination of the year”:

“Jade had been working on solo material for over a year, much of her time spent between London and LA. Bouts of homesickness coupled with a trusted label exec announcing their departure from her label, led to a frustrating but fateful recording session with powerhouse collaborators Mike Sabath, Pablo Gorman and Steph Jones of ‘Espresso’ fame. Together they looped a sample from Sandie Shaw’s ‘Puppet On A String’, with a generous smattering of modulated vocal and allusions to Clubland classics. Once Jade laid down the vocals, she set about trying to convince her team ‘Angel…’ would be her definitive primer. They didn’t take much convincing. “Everyone loved it!” she says nonplussed. “I really didn’t think they’d be on board. We weren’t going for a radio-friendly hit because I was adamant that it had to be different. It didn’t go number one but it didn’t have to.”

“‘Angel’ really helped get the ball rolling,” Jade continues, “so many doors have opened.” One of those doors is a portal to the high fashion world, with the singer fast becoming a go-to muse for designers. Two days prior to our chat, she was in New York, sat front row at Off-White’s Spring presentation. “It was so fun but chaotic. I feel for the people organising these shows because you’re dealing with so many egos. It must be a logistical nightmare,” Jade says endearingly, as if she’s a tier lower than the A-listers she’s rubbing shoulders with. For the first time in her career, Jade is able to play the protagonist in her own self-styled story. “It’s a harder space to navigate when you’re in a girl group. Designers don’t always want to work with everyone. Now, I can push the boat even further. It’s liberating doing your own thing. Now I’m in it, it feels quite nice.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Florence Mann

Jade has the aura of someone who has spent a long time processing the psychological toll that comes with navigating the reality competition/big label industrial complex. ‘Angel…’ melds her childhood aspirations with lyrical lashings of industry reckoning; no homegrown pop song released this year manages to shatter the illusion whilst arriving at a new epiphany. Honouring her past has meant exposing the lurid reality of coming-of-age on screen, of being morphed by a corporation that demands regular appearances and a regular flow of content. “I liken it to a relationship because it gave me so much but also took too much,” she says with a hint of trepidation. “It’s a show that says as a 25-year-old you’re too old to be a pop star. That seems like the perfect age to go into this. You don’t have the tools to express yourself when you’re 17. I wouldn’t do it that way again.”

CLASH gets a preview of a future single, titled ‘That’s Showbiz, Baby!’. It captures the hardwired, industrial-pop energy of a vintage Richard X production, only grimier and more febrile. I ask who the acidic line at the end – ‘It’s a no from me’ – is aimed at. “I’ll let you read between the lines,” she retorts with a grin. The song is a decadent homage to RnB-pop provocateurs – a “melodramatic” anthem whereby Jade purges her own experience being exploited as a pliable, young female artist. “It’s ‘Angel’s’ cunty little sister,” Jade describes. “She goes bigger, harder and deeper. ‘Showbiz’ was an easier one to write because I knew what I wanted to say. It’s what pop should be: playful, confrontational but still a bop.”

Jade is editorially-precise. She has an ear for recontextualising samples, and knows at what opportune point to throw a sonic curveball in the listener’s face. In the hands of a lesser musician, the intricate mesh of references would implode, but with Jade, subversion is the point. That’s where her reframing of “the machine” and “the show” comes in. She toys with personas, shifting vantage points between the star, the voyeur, and the master puppeteer. The era’s iconography further illustrates how emboldened Jade feels creatively; her visual moodboard a Frankenstein patchwork of prime Britney, Madonna, Hun culture, comic books, musical theatre and an overarching tribute to the anarchic spirit of Brit progenitors.

Jade is in a creatively fertile, high-yield chapter of her life. There’s an abundance of music she’s drip-feeding to the public, the anticipation mounting in a prolonged but carefully-staged build-up to a debut solo album landing next year. “I’m fine-tuning everything and thinking of possible collaborations as we speak,” she shares. “But I’m eager to get back into the studio again. I’m feeling energised.” It took some adjusting, but she’s embracing being a mutable pop star in a functional, fan-centric era. “Back then, it was all about the singles, and they had to do well. Now, there’s a certain freedom about releasing because you can drop when you want. If something doesn’t land, that’s fine, just drop something else.”

In her ever-evolving, shifting reality, Jade is staking her claim as our next solo pop star. And she won’t settle for anything less than doing the absolute most. “The entire process of making this album has been about honouring who I truly am,” she concludes. “I want the listener to feel empowered the way I’ve been empowered. I want them to feel you can be multiple things at once. I’m an outspoken pop girlie, I want to prod the bear and push boundaries. I want people to feel it’s safe here, to truly be themselves”.

I am going to end with an interview from Wonderland. Very much at the forefront of modern Pop, JADE has won high-profile support from Stormzy, Addison Rae, and Fontaines D.C. I think that the next year or two is going to see her climb to the top of the Pop mountain. I love her Instagram feed, as you get a real insight into her world. The videos and photos bring you closer to her music. There is no denying the fact that her recent trajectory signals that she is very much here for the long-run. Anyone who has been reluctant to embrace JADE or was perhaps not a massive Little Mix fan, you really need to check out her music. It is its own thing. Songs that, once heard, stay in the head and will be there fir a very long time:

“The 32-year-old, born Jade Thirlwall but known mononymously as JADE since emerging solo from Little Mix last year—the world’s most successful girl group of the 2010s—has a penchant for excess when it comes to home interiors too. She dials in from the zany library-meets-study of her newish house, in London’s leafy South-Eastern fringes, which she shares with her boyfriend, the musician, writer, and podcaster Jordan Stephens, as well as dogs Spike and Mimi. “Let me give you a mini tour,” she says, pointing her camera firstly upward to the azure sky mural wallpaper that covers the roof. “We’ve got a sky ceiling,” she confirms. “Why not? Do you know what I mean?” A busy photo collage decks the forest green walls behind her. “This is the one room where I wanted it to be a little bit chaotic, but in a calming way. You know how Ariel in The Little Mermaid [surrounds herself with] all her little treasures…?” This is JADE’s secret grotto.

The South-Shields native moved here 18 months ago from her apartment in Canary Wharf that served as the base for much of Little Mix’s nine-year tenure atop the charts. Her former address’ proximity to London City Airport saw her ideally placed for the country-hopping the group required, “but as we know, [Canary Wharf ] is super grey,” she says. “I didn’t realise until I moved how healing it is to be around green [space]. I’ve never been one to believe in all of that, but I shit you not, the first day I arrived, I felt like I could breathe better.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Thom Kerr

Respiratory ease is matched by the simplicity with which she can navigate her new neighbourhood, largely flying under the radar as “it’s a bit of a yummy-mummy area,” she explains. Cutting out the noise around her was vital in accommodating the noise she wanted to make when she reintroduced herself to the world as a solo artist last summer. Her opening statement would be “Angel Of My Dreams”, a three-minute 17-second Pop assault course, charting her bittersweet relationship with fame and the music industry originating with Little Mix’s 2011 The X Factor victory when JADE was just 18. It opens with a sample of British singer Sandie Shaw’s 1967 winning UK Eurovision entry “Puppet on a String”, before a summons to her producer Mike Sabath (also behind the buttons on RAYE’s breakout “Escapism”) to “Let’s Do Something Crazy.” What follows is indeed nuts, but artfully so. A power ballad chorus, which could have made for tearjerker-X-Factor-audition repertoire if it was birthed in the noughties, segues into a sketchy electro verse driven by a petroleum bassline, before the refrain returns, but this time pitched up into melodic candy-floss, coming together in something not far from a Happy Hardcore banger…but cooler. The track’s been noted for sounding like multiple songs in one, with lineage in the quirky Pop engineering of Xenomania, the British writing and production powerhouse made famous for splicing nuggets of different songs into hits, chiefly for Little Mix’s noughties British girl group predecessors—Girls Aloud. “I do really love Frankenstein-ing influences together to fuse the JADE sound,” she tells me, “because I think now, more than ever, there’s so much music out there in the world and it’s becoming harder and harder to be original.”

Ingenuity has been achieved in the eyes of critics, at least. “Angel of My Dreams” finished 4th in The Guardian’s 20 Best Songs of 2024—an embrace you might expect for a member of, say, The xx gone solo, but less so for a former member of a manufactured band, the kind that once had a kids’ plastic doll line made in their likeness”.

I will wrap up now. For this Modern-Day Queens, I wanted to show support and respect for one of modern Pop’s greatest artists. Keep an eye on her social media channels and official website for news about a debut album. Something expected to be released later in the year. Until then, go and explore the wonderful music of…

THE stunning JADE.

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FEATURE: Spotlight: Nxdia

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Nxdia

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A mighty…

Egyptian-Sudanese artist based out of the U.K., Nxdia is someone who is fresh to my ears but is locked in my bones and heart. I love their sound and vibe. I had not heard of them until maybe a month or so ago and they have been heralded by the likes of NME. If you have not heard of them then please check out their social media. Before getting to some interviews, I wanted to grab from a bio that Nxdia provided for Sound City when she played there earlier this month. A phenomenal and engaging live performer, expect their name to be on festival bills for a long time to come:

“Hey, hello, I'm Nxdia - which although spelt that way is pronounced Nadia, I get a bunch of 'nucks-dia's' but it's dying down now (thankfully). I figured I'd give you some trivia about myself seeing as we're both here. 

When I think about music and all the stuff I want to do, I feel like a little kid again shoving sparkly 'concert tickets' under my parents door, just happy to be there. 

I really want to see a moose, I think they're ridiculously big and I can't fathom seeing them in person, so now it's become a goal.

I was born in Cairo, Egypt and spent most of my childhood there, there's nothing like my khatlo fatma's cooking - it's my favourite thing - especially the mashi kromb. 

I've kept diaries all my life, it's my way of documenting stuff and writing down my feelings to turn them into songs down the line. 

I don't sleep with a pillow, but I have them there anyway.

I can't wait to see how everything goes - if you're here & you're along for the journey, I really really appreciate it - can't wait to see what we can do together”.

Listen to some of Nxdia’s singles from last year. Instantly memorable songs like Jennifer’s Body, Feel Anything and She Likes a Boy. Their new cut, More!, is phenomenal. Boys Clothes and Feel Anything. Alternately grumbling, bass-heavy, buzzing and electric, they are capped off with Nxdia’s distinct lyrics and incredible voice. Maybe one or two songs having the same sort of vocal tone as Wet Leg but different in a musical sense. You get this familiarity and originality. Embers of past decades and scenes fusing with something fresh, modern and personal.

I am going to start with a 2024 interview from NME before moving to some 2025 pieces. Spotlighting Nxdia around the time of She Like a Boy’s release, their music was a viral sensation on platforms like TikTok. I often feel it is too common or underrating artists if they are labelled a TikTok sensation. It doesn’t seem to be as respectful as you’d like. Maybe I am overthinking it. Nxdia is much more than a viral sensation. Depth to their music that is much more worthy of exploration:

“We’re speaking to Nxdia (born Nadia Ahmed) in the weeks after their first viral song ‘She Likes A Boy’, which has netted nearly 5 million views on TikTok. It’s a classic tale of an unrequited lesbian love, but with an added twist – Nxdia sings in both English and Arabic. And they’re stoking fans’ curiosity about the language by translating their songs on TikTok, bringing everyone into their world of zesty pop-punk melodies.

Unlike English, Arabic doesn’t have a standard dialect; the language has significant regional variations, which means it’s not always mutually intelligible between Arabic speakers from different countries. But if it did have a standard dialect, perhaps it might be Egyptian Arabic, transforming Nxdia’s lyricism into a gateway for learning Arabic.

“Egypt has a dialect that’s very easy to understand”, Nxdia explains. “Egyptian TV series and films are extremely popular. In some places like Morocco or Algeria, the Arabic is spliced with other languages like Spanish or French, so it feels slightly more difficult to understand. But with Egyptian Arabic, if you speak Arabic, you usually understand it.”

Life has made it very difficult for Nxdia to embrace their identity at times. Growing up in Cairo, the Sudanese-Egyptian artist was bullied for their darker skin, and experienced further discrimination upon moving to Manchester as an eight-year-old.

But speaking to NME as just one of many young, queer Arab people that live their lives freely today, Nxdia is thoroughly energised to be making music – and they’re determined to do it their way: “When I was 15, I woke up, and I was like, ‘No one’s opinion matters but your own,'” they tell us. “You’re born as yourself, you live as yourself, you die as yourself. You’re always stuck with yourself, so you might as well like yourself.’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Joshua R Drakes

You wrote ‘She Likes A Boy’ about an unrequited crush – does your crush know about the song?

“I don’t think so! I don’t think she even knows it would be about her.

“She was at the school next to mine. I would get the bus to school because I lived about 30 minutes away. There was like this girl at the back. I thought she was so pretty, but you know how some people just have a warmth to them? I just love it.

“So she was talking about this stupid gangly boy. He was really horrible and he went to the all boys school. I would sit there and we’d talk about it. We’d be talking about guys that she liked, but I never saw them, so I didn’t mind. But when she started liking this guy, I don’t know what happened to me man… I was like, ‘Why do you need him? I’m right here!’ He was about my height, what’s different? Obviously a lot [laughs].

“But I lost contact with her, and I think she has a kid now. I’m pretty sure that’s why I stopped seeing her around.”

How did you journey towards your current alt-pop style?

“I was obsessed with Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Simple Plan. Marina [FKA and the Diamonds] was a huge thing for me because she was weirdly operatic. And Stromae was my introduction into bilingual music. I remember seeing ‘Tous Les Mêmes’ and seeing that video of him and he was like half woman, half man. And I was like, ‘Whatever that is, I’m that!’”

Why is making bilingual music important to you?

“It was important to me to start writing English and Arabic because I came from a different country: I speak Arabic to my mom only, I don’t have other people that I’m speaking Arabic with. I need people because I’m such an extrovert and I love people. I want to form a community here, and make people feel less like how I did when I was 13 – quietly calling my mum, talking in Arabic quietly so the other school kids wouldn’t hear – as I needed that.”

How has the queer Arab community reacted to your music?

“I can’t tell you how many queer Arabs have reached out and they’re telling me their problems or things that they’re going through, because they have absolutely no one else to talk to. I’m finding that the conversation around Palestine has been heartbreaking over the last year, just seeing the amount of dismissal. It’s crazy because I grew up in a place where I inherently knew about this – my mum would take me to Free Palestine protests from the age of 11.

“It’s bizarre because even with everything that’s happening in Sudan right now – huge political issues, people dying, there’s so many people who don’t have access to basic things you need to survive – I always feel like nothing’s been talked about enough. Part of that is because I feel connected to it, these are people that are like me.”

What kind of music do you want to make in the future?

“I just want to make stuff that really goes off live. I’m thinking about people singing it back and trying to imagine what it would sound like in a room. So I’m just trying to make loads of stuff that feels exciting, fun, different and cool. Pop, but with the Arabic influence. I sampled Donia Massoud, who is an amazing artist, and she covered this traditional Arabic song ‘Batnadini Tani Leh’, which is ‘Why are you calling me again?’ There was stuff like that where I was like, this is fascinating.

“I went to Luxor and Aswan in December. There was this guy on my tour showing us around, and he was talking about a Queen Hatshepsut like, ‘She wanted to be a man, she wanted to be a king.’ I recorded it and I’d love to include stuff like that because fuck yeah! She was so successful, she introduced trading from Sudan and Somalia and all these spices. It was just nuts. There’s some cool ass people in Egypt”.

I would also advise people to look at this interview from last year where Nxdia discusses, among other things, childhood crushes and the queer community. I am going to move to this piece from huck. Nxdia discusses how poetry has become an escape for them. If you have not heard their music yet then make sure that you do:

“Nxdia: Music was always in my mind. I was a bit of a loner as a kid growing up in Cairo – I got on with everyone, but I also spent a lot of time alone, writing, playing pretend and humming. I didn’t always know how to articulate how I was feeling or processing the world around me, but I always found that writing, pen to paper, the words flowed out so much more and helped me to make sense of stuff. My journals and poems became an escape for me. I’d listen intently to the music mum would play me – she was an activist, still is – songs like ‘Behind the Wall’ by Tracy Chapman, ‘Mercedes Benz’ by Janis Joplin and Donia Massoud’s version of ‘Betnadini’. These were songs I really remember, loved and connected with because of her. While we were still in Cairo, I discovered big pop artists like Britney Spears and Katy Perry, and I became so obsessed. I’d put on shows for my mum, completely immersed in the feeling of pop.

Then we moved to Manchester and I remember feeling even more like a loner. There were things I didn't understand culturally, people were friendly enough, but everything around me had changed. I’d literally never seen so much rain in my life. I’d gone from having my entire family nearby and food I’d grown up with in our flat in Cairo, to a completely new place, it was a huge change.

The humming and the whirring words in my head intensified. I still kept my journals and wrote poems to try and figure out my feelings. I’d write all these little songs on my ukulele and eventually a bit on a classical guitar, then I started to do YouTube covers and originals. I wanted to share music, but I didn't know how. It was just my way of understanding my inner dialogue and the new world I was in. I’d watch so much slam poetry, struck by how people would play with words, it was like a new world was opening up. Then one day when I was singing a song I’d written under my breath, a girl called Safiya shoved her ear in my face. “What are you singing? What song is that?” I told her it was just one I'd made up, and she smiled wide and went “Oh, you should be a singer!” and there the seed was planted. It had never occurred to me that you could just want to be singer.

As I started to dream, I imagined a community where I fitted in. And actually, starting my journey into music immediately brought me a sense of connection I hadn’t had before, it made me feel less like a freak, less like I was doing life wrong. I felt like there were people out there who knew what I was going through so intimately, because they were singing things that felt like they'd been cherry-picked from my brain. Marina and the Diamonds was huge for me, her Family Jewels album and Electra Heart meant so much to me, the self-reflection, the darkness in big pop and clever writing.

It wasn’t until I was 20 that I’d shared music in English and Arabic. I’d written in Arabic and English before and I was kind of shot down by some people around me at the time, saying they didn’t get it or it didn’t make sense, which knocked my confidence a lot, seeing as I’d been teased a lot about my heritage and background. I even used to talk to my mum so quietly on the phone in Arabic that no one would hear me. One day I was talking with my friend and mentioned I wanted to sing in both languages, so my music felt like me completely. She literally just said: “Who cares, do what you want to do,” and I felt like my brain just opened up and refused to be limited anymore. I remember the first time I included Arabic in my songs, I was bouncing off the walls, so excited that I could finally be me. I felt free.

Recently, I’ve felt free in a different way. It’s genuinely a privilege and an honour that I get to make music and perform now, that there are people listening, who feel seen and connected with me, that we see each other for who we really are and that makes me happier than I can explain. A big thing for me was always a certain disconnection I felt with my body, a dysphoria I guess - it felt like another bridge between me over there and the “real” me. After years of feeling like a part of me wasn’t meant to be there, wearing binders and imaging clothes fitting a certain way, I finally had top surgery a few months ago. Suddenly, I’m experiencing another feeling of freedom, the lifting of a huge weight (literally), I've never felt more like I'm forming into myself, like I’m doing what I want without asking for permission. ‘Boy Clothes’ is a celebration of that, the confidence to not to give a fuck, wear what I want, sit how I want, be whoever the fuck I want. I spent too long being scared to voice what I wanted and to be who I am, but I’m over that now, I want to be free. I want to put myself out into the world and speak out loud all the thoughts and feelings that have been playing on loop in my head since I was a kid”

Having recently played Brighton’s Great Escape, there will be this wave of new interest and bookings. New festival slots and more incredible singles. I am not sure what Nxdia has planned regarding an E.P. or album. If there are going to be more scheduled for the summer. I am ending with an interview from Exeposé:

“24 year old alt-pop artist Nxdia (pronounced Nadia), otherwise known as Nadia Ahmed, has taken the queer music scene by storm. Blending English and Arabic within her music, Nxdia’s music focuses on themes from queer love to androgyny and gender identity.

Her popularity increased rapidly after the release of her hit single, She Likes A Boy, in 2024. The song went viral, hitting over five million views on TikTok within weeks of release. The song describes the artists’ own unrequited crush on a girl, and the relatable feeling of disappointment that comes with watching someone you like pursue another. The chorus is upbeat and catchy, and it’s easy to see how it became so popular. Their EP titled “in the flesh” came out in 2023, featuring more Egyptian vocal runs combined with their usual angsty style. Their latest single, “Boy Clothes” is upbeat, energetic, and focuses on their ongoing journey with gender dysphoria.

Nxdia features political and introspective themes in much of their music, stating that “navigating adult life for me has been deconstructing a lot”. They have frequently advocated for Palestine and Sudan, and describe their upbringing and identity as having a large influence on their music and politics. They were born in Cairo and moved to Manchester aged eight, describing themselves as a “bit of a loner”, struggling with being a third culture kid. Singing in both languages has now become a form of liberation for them: “the first time I included Arabic in my songs, I was bouncing off the walls”. Nxdia says their aim is to create community through their music, focusing on continuing their trend of music that is “pop, but with the Arabic influence” whilst pursuing fresh, interesting collaborations.

They have recently been added to the bill for the Great Escape Festival in Brighton from the 14th-17th May. In 2023, they played at the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival and were included in Spotify’s Our Generation playlist. With their experimental style and heartfelt lyrics, they are certainly one to watch”.

Go and follow this amazing artist. I did not catch Nxdia when they released their first couple of singles, but I am now caught up and on board. It is going to be thrilling seeing where Nxdia heads. Such an important artist. This incredible queer Arab artist will no doubt inspire and give strength to others like her. Having achieved so much already, there are going to be more successes and highlights…

THROUGHOUT 2025.

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Follow Nxdia

FEATURE: Stranger Things, Particular Scenes: Kate Bush and the Licensing of Her Music

FEATURE:

 

 

Stranger Things, Particular Scenes

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: United Archives/Alamy 

 

Kate Bush and the Licensing of Her Music

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MANY might feel that…

Kate Bush refuses people access to her music. Or she is very selective. I do feel that Bush gets sent a lot of offers, yet there are rules and boundaries. Through the years, we have seen various Kate Bush songs feature on the screen. Stranger Things in 2022 is perhaps the biggest example. However, there have been other occasions when her songs have scored various scenes. For Stranger Things, the request to use Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) went through Wende Crowley, Sony Music Publishing’s SVP of creative marketing, film and television. There was a feeling from the producers that Bush might say ‘no’ and that they could not use their music. However, as Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, Nora Felder, music coordinator on Stranger Things, knew that this iconic Kate Bush song would be perfect. Used to convey the existential struggle of one of the show’s key female characters, Max Mayfield, there was this detail and sales pitch needed. Rather than merely asking for the song and giving a vague description, these elaborate scene descriptions were written. Kate Bush is someone who does not give her music away easily. She was shown script pages and footage. It was this process that meant she knew exactly when and how her music was being used. It is the most high-profile example of Bush’s music being used on the screen over the past five years. It took a while for Kate Bush to agree to the use, owing to the fact Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was used during that season. It was not only a case of it being used for a short time. Aired in May 2022, it has been three years since that huge moment when one of Kate Bush’s biggest songs was used on Stranger Things. Bush spoke to Woman’s Hour about the reaction to the song being used. It was a mad moment!

It did create this huge wave of new affection for her music. New fans finding her work. The process too of getting the song used was not done cheaply. The Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things’ creators, were determined to get that song used. It would have been a case of multiple contacts with Kate Bush. Going back and forth to ensure that she was fully informed and was happy. I am not sure how much they paid to have Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) used. However, this is not the only occasion when her music has been used. I have said multiple times how it would be wonderful if we saw more of Kate Bush’s music on the screen. However, I have previously noted how various films and shows have used her music. Not to the extend of Stranger Things in terms of the prominence and the reaction. It is the reaction part that interests me more. You feel that there are Kate Bush songs that could get this new traction. Thinking about how difficult it must have been for the Stranger Things camp to secure Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), does that mean that other filmmakers are going to be hesitant? It brings in to focus the way filmmakers come to major artists and can get permission to use their songs. It makes me wonder how many people have approached Kate Bush and been denied. I suppose they would go via Kate Bush’s management, but then what happens after that? Is there this initial stage when they would be on the phone with the filmmakers to hear them out and get some brief synopsis?

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush received the Editors Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards at the London Palladium on 30th November, 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Alan Davidson/Rex/Shutterstock

It can’t be the case that people instantly get to write or speak with Kate Bush. I have attempted to contact Kate Bush with a view of making a film version of The Ninth Wave – the second side to 1985’s Hounds of Love. I wrote to her and never got a response. I presume filmmakers use the same address and have to go through the same situation. It is clear that many do not get as far as a communication with Kate Bush. Some films and people have. People have to be very careful about which song they want to use and how it is deployed. If the song is used multiple times, that means it can be very expensive. Also, for a song like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) that has so many streams and is well known, the cost will be more than a lesser-known song. It is this tussle for filmmakers. Maybe they want to use a Kate Bush song, though if it is one that a lot of people do not know then that could cause issues. How many filmmakers are going with smaller Kate Bush songs in the hope that it gets recognition or takes on a new life?! I have criticised those who use obvious tracks. However, it is this tricky balance. Do filmmakers have to go into real detail? Have these detailed descriptions of where they music is going to be used and then show Kate Bush footage. Maybe not every film has had to do this. However, the licensing of her music is quite complex and expensive.

That is fair enough. I do hope that we get more occasions of Kate Bush’s music being used on a huge T.V. show or film. I get the feeling Bush would be keener for a big T.V. show to use her music rather than a film. Perhaps something she has watched and is a fan of. Even though they have not got the same focus and press as Stranger Things, films like The Mother and T.V. show, The Bear, have used Kate Bush’s music. The reason I wanted to write this feature is to ask whether we will get another Kate Bush viral moment or cultural phenomenon like in 2022. It would have to be a genuine request and pairing, rather than a filmmaker trying to cash in or go for this quick fame. Asking Google and A.I. what the process would be to use Kate Bush’s music, and the following information is returned:

“To license Kate Bush's music, you'll need to contact her management or publishing representatives. Since Bush owns the rights to her recordings, you'll likely be working with Noble & Brite Ltd., her company. Specifically, you'll need to secure both mechanical and synchronization licenses if you plan to use her music in a new recording or for visual media.

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

1. Identifying the Right Contact:

  • Noble & Brite Ltd.:

This company owns the recording rights to Kate Bush's music, including her masters. You'll likely need to contact them directly for licensing information.

  • Copyright Ownership:

Kate Bush owns 100% of the recording rights, meaning she controls the use of her masters, according to Music Business Worldwide.

  • Publishing Rights:

While you may need to contact a separate entity for the publishing rights (the rights to the song itself), it's likely that Noble & Brite Ltd. also manages this aspect, especially given Bush's independent ownership.

2. Understanding the Different Licenses:

  • Mechanical License: Required for any new recording or reproduction of a song (e.g., using "Running Up That Hill" in your own cover version).

  • Synchronization License: Required when a song is used in a visual medium, like a film, TV show, or commercial (e.g., "Running Up That Hill" in Stranger Things).

  • Public Performance License: Required for playing the music publicly (e.g., in a club, on the radio).

3. The Licensing Process:

  1. 1. Contact Noble & Brite Ltd.

Find their contact information (likely through the Kate Bush website or other music industry resources).

  1. 2. Clearly State Your Intent:

Explain what you want to use the music for and what type of license you need (mechanical, synchronization, etc.).

  1. 3. Negotiate the Terms:

They will likely provide a licensing fee schedule or negotiate a price based on your use of the music.

  1. 4. Sign the Agreement:

Once you reach an agreement, sign the license agreement to authorize the use of Kate Bush's music”.

I wanted to mark five years of Stranger Things using Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and the song getting to number one in the U.K. It was a huge moment. It is pleasing that shows and films since have used her music. I was not quite aware of the reasons why Bush said ‘yes’ to Stranger Things. Nora Feldman spoke with Rolling Stone in 2022 about how she won approval from Kate Bush:

“Knowing that Bush rarely licenses her music for use in film and TV, Felder wanted the ‘Hounds of Love’ artist to have as much information as possible: “I sat with my clearance coordinator, and laid out all the scripted scenes for song uses that we knew of at that point. Knowing the challenges, we proceeded to create elaborate scene descriptions that provided as much context as possible so that Kate and her camp would have a full understanding of the uses. … When we finished, we were on edge, but excited and hopeful.”

She added: “Kate Bush is selective when it comes to licensing her music and because of that, we made sure to get script pages and footage for her to review so she could see exactly how the song would be used.”

As it turned out Bush is a big fan of the show which stars David Harbour and Winona Ryder and after understanding how her song would be used, granted permission”.

It must be quite a challenge for filmmakers. It is not as easy as picking a Kate Bush song and asking her for permission and it being green-lit. There does need to be this right set of circumstances. Quite a bit of detail being provided. It is mainly her big songs that are used. Stuff from Hounds or Love. This Woman’s Work. The Bear’s use of The Morning Fog is a deep cut, though it is from Hounds of Love. I wonder if many have asked to use a deeper cut and from an album that is not brought to the screen. Whether Kate Bush is keen or reluctant to have one of her less popular songs used. Is it about the end result and potential profit or more the creativity and how a song is used? Maybe a bit of both. It is obvious she gets a lot of offers and turns a lot of them down. You would have to get lucky to both use Kate Bush’s music and for its to be a success – and create this potential viral moment. It also shines a spotlight on an older song. Let’s hope that all Kate Bush fans can unite when one of her songs is used in film and T.V. and explodes. Maybe Stranger Things was a one-off. However, I hope that we get to see a pleasing repeat…

IN the future.

FEATURE: A Book That Everyone Needs to Read… Inside Jess Davies’s No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World

FEATURE:

 

 

A Book That Everyone Needs to Read…

PHOTO CREDIT: Zoe McConell

 

Inside Jess Davies’s No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World

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OVER the past few weeks…

I have been buying and reading some really interesting books from brilliant women. Women’s rights activists, campaigners and feminists, I have read The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye, Ctrl, Hate, Delete: The New Anti-Feminist Backlash and How We Fight It by Cécile Simmons, Misognynation and Fix the System, Not the Women by Laura Bates (I have ordered her new book, The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny), What About Men? and More Than a Woman by Caitlin Moran, My Body by Emily Ratajkowski, The Guilty Feminist by Deborah Frances-White, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists Forgot by Mikki Kendall, and On Women by Susan Sontag. Every book I have read (or am currently reading) has moved and affected me in different ways. Often, what these women have written makes for shocking and eye-opening reading! Even if the book is a few years old (or older), a lot of what they are writing about regarding inequality, abuse against women and the domination of misogyny is relevant right now. When they write about their personal experiences and how they have been affected by sexism and misogyny, it is honestly so incredibly jaw-dropping and angering! What they (and so many women) have endured. Not to try and convert men out there who would not consider themselves to be feminists. I would urge you to go to your local bookstore and find the Feminist/Gender Studies section and invest in a book. And then two. And then another! The more informed and educated we are, the more allies that will create. The bigger, deeper and more united the conversation. Hopefully, and sooner rather than later, some of these issues will either disappear or lessen. I don’t think we will (sadly) ever seen an end to misogyny and abuse against women. However, we are in an incredibly dangerous and scary time where incel influencers are revered and seen as gods by young men. Where misogyny and violence against women is rising, and the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth (President Donald Trump in the U.S.) is a sex offender and misogynist – and gleefully has stripped women of their rights and body autonomy.

My most recent purchase is a book by Jess Davies I think everyone – and I literally mean every human being who has the means to buy it – should read. I could say that about so many other books but, not having even got to the end and been completely stunned, this is a book that should be on every shelf. I am going to end with some words on how No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World has inspired me and impacted me more heavily and instantly than any other I have read in the past few weeks – or years for that matter. Before that, go and follow Jess Davies on Twitter and Instagram (her TikTok account has been removed without explanation, but we all hope that it is rightly restored very soon!). I am going to move to a recent interview from Jess Davies that was conducted by The Guardian, where she talks about her new book and experiences regarding the online world (and the manosphere). How misogyny, unsolicited d*ck pics and exploitation has affected her. I will go more into that and how Davies’s word and recollections moved me. In 2021, she spoke with the BBC about how she is sent hundreds of cyberflashing images from men:

“A social media influencer said she had been the victim of cyber-flashing for the past 10 years.

Podcaster Jess Davies, from Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, said she had received hundreds of unsolicited obscene images.

Calls are growing for cyber-flashing to become a crime as part of measures to toughen laws on online safety.

The UK government said its plans would "force social media companies to stamp out online abuse".

Jess, who has 151,000 followers on Instagram, said she has become almost "numb" to the images she is sent, adding: "What's illegal offline should be illegal online."

"I am probably cyber-flashed every month, maybe more, depends really on what I share.

"This has been going on for 10 years. I've probably received literally hundreds of these images. The kind of stuff I get is close-up shots, or of them performing a sex act.

"When I receive the images it makes you feel a bit dirty and you start thinking, 'why me? Why have they sent them to me, is it something I've done'?"

Jess Davies has joined the calls for cyber-flashing to be added to the UK government's draft Online Safety Bill

She fears it has become "normalised" online, compared to what is tolerated in public.

"If you had thousands of men flashing you in the street, that's illegal, and that would be a huge problem and a huge conversation, so why are we accepting it online?”.

Jess Davies’s 2022 documentary, Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?, was used to lobby the U.K. Government to criminalise sexually explicit deepfakes in the Online Safety Act. She uses her social media presence to call out misogynistic attitudes, raise awareness of inequalities and campaign against image-based sexual abuse. Also go and watch the 2021 documentary, When Nudes Are Stolen. In addition to being this amazing talent, Davies is someone who has reached and helped so many girls and young women who have been victims of cyberflashing, deep fake videos, misogyny and abuse. A truly amazing person, I would urge everyone reading to order No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World (you can also get the audiobook version via Audible):

“Are women asking for it because of their outfits, routes home, profile pictures or social media posts? Or can we finally admit that there might be something wrong with masculinity in the digital world?
The rising popularity of misogynistic content and toxic masculinity influencers combined with a lack of regulation within social media has created a perfect storm. Our increasingly online world has opened women and young girls up to a whole new level of violence that follows them into their homes, schools and workplaces.
In No One Wants to See Your D*ck, women's rights campaigner Jess Davies reveals the shocking realities of this epidemic and what we can do to stop it. Covering everything from cyberflashing and deepfakes to the manosphere and catfishing, Jess offers practical advice and accessible language to help you understand what is happening online, what to do if you become a victim of it and why drastic change is needed now. Urgent and eye-opening, this is a vital toolkit for understanding and putting an end to violence against women”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Davies

That title is very apt! These images that women like Davies sent are unsolicited. The kind of these men that sent them. Thinking she would be appreciated or aroused by them! It truly is the case that no woman wants to see them. These are distributing, disgusting, abusive and relentless. With social media companies not clamping down or doing enough to ensure that these photos (and videos) are banned and those who send them have their accounts removed, it means there is this epidemic. One that is not only affecting women: it is reaching girls who are so young and are subjected to these graphic and obscene images. It should be something our Government is tackling as a priority. However, there is hardly any real progress. However, until fairly recently, it wasn’t illegal to create deepfake videos. In 2024, it was announced that it would be. Legislation introduced that meant cyberflashing and revenge porn – that Davies rightly says is a problematic term that should be called ‘image-based sexual abuse -, would be illegal. However, in 2025, there is this tidal wave of deepfakes and cyberflashing. How many of the men creating and posting this content are charged and imprisoned?! I am going to move to a recent interview from The Guardian, where Anna Moore spoke with Jess Davies. There are segments I want to include. Despite everything Davies has faced - and continues to face -, she has cause for optimism and hope that things will change:

“Jess Davies was a 15-year-old schoolgirl, sitting in an art lesson, absorbed in her fairytale project about a princess and a postman, when her Nokia phone began to vibrate with messages. “Nice pictures,” read one. “I didn’t think you were that type of girl,” said another.

To this day, she remembers the racing thoughts, the instant nausea, the hairs prickling up on her legs, the sweaty palms. She had shared a photograph of herself in her underwear with a boy she trusted and, very soon, it had been sent around the school and across her small home town, Aberystwyth, Wales. She became a local celebrity for all the wrong reasons. Younger kids would approach her laughing and ask for a hug. Members of the men’s football team saw it – and one showed someone who knew Davies’s nan, so that’s how her family found out.

Only now can Davies, the 32-year-old presenter, influencer and women’s rights campaigner, see all this for what it was. It happened in the 00s, when she was a girl – she still loved High School Musical and Hannah Montana – with a woman’s body, navigating new feelings and the male gaze. “I had boobs when I was 10 so from then on, there were comments. You quickly learn that this is the lens you’re seen through. This is who you are now.” The boy who betrayed her trust, the men in the football team, everyone who shared that picture faced no scrutiny. “I was the one shamed,” she says, “I was the first person I knew of that this had happened to, so there was no blueprint to follow. I was mortified. My response was: ‘OK, this is it. I have to try to own this as it’s not going away.’” She chose to laugh it off and front it out. By 18, while at university, she was working as a glamour model for lads’ mags. “It’s wild how one thing can change your life trajectory,” she says. “Without that image going round my school, would I have ever felt confident to go on a modelling shoot? There was already so much stigma attached to me, I thought: ‘Why not try to embrace it and be confident in my body?’” She’s quiet for a moment. “I think that’s been a plus and a negative.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Francesca Jones/The Guardian

Her book, No One Wants to See Your D*ck, takes a deep dive into the negatives. It covers Davies’s experiences in the digital world – that includes cyberflashing such as all those unsolicited dick pics – as well as the widespread use of her images on pornography sites, escort services, dating apps, sex chats (“Ready for Rape? Role play now!” with her picture alongside it). However, the book also shines a light on the dark online men’s spaces, what they’re saying, the “games” they’re playing. “I wanted to show the reality of what men are doing,” says Davies. “People will say: ‘It’s not all men’ and no, it isn’t, but it also isn’t a small number of weirdos on the dark web in their mum’s basements. These are forums with millions of members on mainstream sites such as Reddit, Discord and 4chan. These are men writing about their wives, their mums, their mate’s daughter, exchanging images, sharing women’s names, socials and contact details, and no one – not one man – is calling them out. They’re patting each other on the back.”

It has taken years for Davies to shift the blame away from herself and on to them. For most of her adult life, she says, she carried shame and stigma around like a “weighted cross” on her back. “Every time I was taken advantage of, I kind of accepted it,” she says. “I thought: ‘Oh well, you’ve opened yourself up to this. What did you expect?’ Part of me believed that this is just how the world is, and this was all I was worth.” That message was delivered in so many ways. As a model, she tried setting boundaries, never shooting topless content. When she was once asked to pose in a mesh bodysuit, she agreed on the understanding that her nipples would be edited out. She was assured they would be. A month later, the pictures appeared in a Nuts magazine summer special, nipples very clearly on display, an image that was quickly scanned and shared on the internet. (Davies remembers crying in her mum’s arms as her standards collapsed in a “pathetic heap of lost hopes”.)

In some ways, she is hopeful now. There has been progress. She cites examples – the removal by Pornhub of 80% of its content after Mastercard and Visa severed links and blocked the use of its cards on the site following a New York Times investigation that accused it of being “infested” with child abuse and rape-related videos (Pornhub has denied the allegations); the Online Safety Act 2023, which is beginning to hold tech companies accountable for content. “Of course, there is so much more that needs doing, but we’re so close to change,” she says. “We’re at the beginning of creating laws and saying this isn’t OK. I think it’s partly why there is so much backlash in the manosphere. It’s like the jeopardy just before the happy ending in a Disney movie!”

Still, on a personal level, Davies is wary – and single. She has seen too much. “I don’t go on dating apps,” she says. “I don’t date at all. It’s a bit of a joke to my friends, but it’s ruined it for me. I’d like to find someone one day but how do you build that trust back? It’s hard to say: ‘Yes, I’m going to give someone else a chance’”.

No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World should be bought by everyone for a number of reasons. Cyberflashing, deepfakes and misogyny will or has impacted someone you know. Nearly every woman you know would have experienced some form of harassment or misogyny in their lifetime. Davies writes personally and beautifully. She is open, honest, moving, funny, sharp, compelling and brave. It is a book that I have been engrossed in and constantly have to stop reading because it creates such an emotional gut-punch! Reading her words and the statistics she brings in. Can this really be true?! It makes for often harrowing reading. However, I think the more people that read the book the better. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Davies writes how sexual harassment has become normalised. 97 per cent of young women, she makes clear, have experienced some form of sexual harassment. She writes how the Revenge Porn Helpline does “God’s work” and that every woman should memorise their number – which is 0345 6000 459. There are countless paragraphs and lines that jump out and lodge in the brain and heart. Davies  provides tips to anyone whose intimate videos or pics have been leaked. “A 2024 study by Dublin City University’s anti-bullying centre tracked the content recommendations to accounts that were registered to teenage boys aged 16-18”. TikTok and YouTube Shorts. They found how all of these accounts were  “found to have been fed masculinist, anti-feminist content within the first 23 minutes of the experiment”.

Rather than wait until I have read the whole book, I wanted to write about it now. An urgent recommendation for everyone. Massive credit to Jess Davies for recounting experiences that must be traumatic. Her words will doubtless resonate with many women. So many useful numbers, links and information for any women who have been affected by cyberflashing, deepfakes and misogyny (and various evils and vile elements of the manosphere). Although I have probably not done the book full justice, I was mesmerised and stunned by No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World. It is a remarkable read that is so timely and important. I am seeing Davies speak for The Trouble Club on 20th May. If you are a member or not, I would advise you buy a ticket and get to this event! Although I am not a member of The Conduit, Covent Garden, if you are, go and book a ticket to see Jess Davies speak with Dr Jackson Katz on the role men can play in tackling misogyny in everyday life (that takes place on 29th May). That is an event I would love to be at! On 14th May, she will be at Ethical Matters: Surviving the Manosphere. I am very tempted to get a ticket for this event as it is sure to be hugely engaging, informative and challenging:

“Presenter, campaigner and activist Jess Davies has questions. Are we still asking for it because of our outfits? Our routes home? Our profile picture? Our social media posts? Or can we finally admit that there might be something wrong with… men and masculinity? James Bloodworth delved into the array of bizarre and harmful underground subcultures, collectively known as the manosphere. With it he asks why are so many men susceptible to the sinister beliefs it promotes and what can we do about it?

As the epidemic of male violence towards women and young girls reaches terrifying new heights through new and expanding technologies, women’s rights campaigner Jess Davies will help question society’s understanding – or lack of – when it comes to consent. With a toolkit to understand and tackle online misogyny, her book No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World will arm a new wave of internet sleuths to take down the manosphere, one unsolicited pic at a time.

Already there, James Bloodworth explores the uncertainties that life and masculinity has spawned in an array of bizarre and harmful underground subcultures, collectively known as the manosphere, as men search for new forms of belonging. In the course of his journey he meets incels, enlists on a bootcamp for so-called ‘alpha males’, and speaks to modern day Hugh Hefners using social media to broadcast their jet set lifestyles to millions of followers. Combining compulsive memoir with powerful reporting, fascinating international case studies, data, cultural analysis and history, his book Lost Boys: Undercover Adventures in Toxic Masculinity is a guide to the crisis in contemporary masculinity.

Join Jess and James at Conway Hall to discuss a world that is confusing for men and dangerous for women. How has this come about, how can women start to survive this, and how can we work together to make change?”

I am going to wrap up soon. Not only has No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World stopped me in my tracks and made me race to put this feature out. It has inspired me. Before talking about this, I do wonder if we will get an official Jess Davies website where we get links to her documentaries, articles and everything in one place. She is such an influential and multi-faceted broadcaster, writer and campaigner. I digress! For a long time now, I have been talking about either trying to start a charity or organisation concerning women’s rights and equality. As a music journalist, I often call myself a feminist writer, as I write about women more than anyone and often tackle subjects like gender equality and women’s rights. Reading Jess Davies’s book has stirred something inside of me. That desire to do something important; join people together – campaigners, activists and feminists – and make a difference. I know how hard it is to raise funds and get something sustainable together. I know of many women who are part of charities or are activists and have spent so much of their own money trying to get laws changed and created - but they have lost. I reached out to gender equality activist Gina Martin saying how much I loved the work she was doing and how inspired by her I was.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rhiannon Holland

These amazing women like Martin and Davis will help bring about permanent and positive change. However, I do think that there needs to be this unity. More male allyship. People talking about books like No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World. I am surprised how few reviews there are for the book so far. I hope that newspapers, websites and magazines read the book and explore this incredible book. It is such a powerful and important one that should be in everyone’s collection. It has affected me and I know it will cause reaction and, I hope, activation, in every person who reads it. I can see Jess Davies being invited on - I hope this will manifest something - Woman’s Hour and Off Air With Jane & Fi (I could also imagine she would be amazing on The Adam Buxton Podcast). I know Jess Davies is still most likely being sent cyberflashing images and receiving so much abuse and unwanted images. It is heartbreaking. It makes me respect her so much. That she is inundated with this (do you ever truly get numb to that?) and still is able to talk about it. I hope that this book makes men who are engaging in this rethink and change their ways. That the digital landscape does shift. That women (and girls) are treated with far greater respect. It is the very least they deserve and has been…

A long time coming.

FEATURE: Spotlight: PUNCHBAG

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

PUNCHBAG

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IN terms of dynamics…

when it comes to duos, trios or groups, one of the most fascinating is the sibling combination. There are examples of brothers and sisters working together (including HAIM), but it does seem to be rarer than it used to be. Maybe I am not looking in the right places! However, I have discovered the brilliant PUNCHBAG. Their incredible debut E.P., I’m Not Your Punchbag, came out on 2nd May. I love the cover and lettering. It is very eye-catching and memorable. The four tracks on the E.P. are the work of a duo that everyone should know. In order to recruit more to the wonderful PUNCHBAG, I am dropping in a few recent interviews. I will end with a review for I’m Not Your Punchbag. Before getting to some interviews, here.is some biography a duo that so many people are buzzing about:

“Colliding the raw unfiltered energy of punk, with the overflowing ecstasy of pop, emerges PUNCHBAG. A new electrifying brother-sister duo, from South London. With fierce tempos and ferocious energy, their music is an explosively cathartic release of raw intensity and unapologetic fun.

This is the sound of today’s tough realities, transmuting personal and collective life material into an earthquake of alternative-pop. PUNCHBAG propels listeners into a collision of chaos and catharsis, with music that wrestles with change, realisation and recovery.
In 2025, it was announced that Punchbag has signed with Mute Records”.

I am going to start out with an introductory feature from February that When the Whistle Blows published. Undoubtedly one of our freshest and most promising acts, I think that PUNCHBAG will put out tremendous music for many years. Their debut E.P. is fully-formed. No doubt they are a very special talent. One that everybody should put their weight behind:

“Swinging between dizzying extremes, where unapologetically sugar-sweet pop hooks clash with radical leftfield production; where emotional overwhelm can be purged in the space of a single throwaway lyric; where lines are blurred and redrawn between aggression and joy, softness and toughness, PUNCHBAG (consisting of Clara and Anders Bach) are a compelling proposition.

Debut single 'Fuck It' introduces the duo with a grand wash of entrancing synths and piercing beats. Vocalist Clara sings of a life buffeted by anxiety and the fear of wasting time, as instrumental momentum builds and builds. Then, just short of escape velocity, everything flips on its head. Guitarist and producer Anders' overdriven punk guitars attack in plunging dives as the vocal suddenly flips in tone; sharp, snippy and unabashed. “We might as well just say go fuck it!” Clara exclaims. “’Cos we’re all gonna die, die, die!”

They took a moment to talk to us about their music.

Hey there PUNCHBAG- how are you? So your track ‘Fuck It’ is out now - can you tell us what it is about?
We’re fab thanks! This song is about right now, it's about 2025 and the feelings we have about the world. It's about the anxiety of wasting time but using that as a catalyst to DO things. “We might as well just say go fuck it” “Cos we’re all gonna die die die” we make a point of these lyrics not being nihilistic, its more like we only have so much time so say the thing you wanna say, kiss the person you wanna kiss. Aggressive but joyful.

Where are you from and what are your favourite things to do there?
We’re from south-east London. We make all our music at home, so that’s usually what we’re doing. Getting really into tracking planes when walking around the park. Riveting stuff south the river!

What are the key influences when it comes to your music?
It's a big mixing soup of eavesdropping people on the tube, being overly self observational, The Pixies and Katy Perry.

How would you describe your sound to someone who has never listened to your music before?
Aggressive Hopecore. It's sweaty, noisy pop that you can purge your feelings too. It's brutal reality with a cathartic release which in turn is fun and joyful.

Now the track is out there - what next for you? 
There is a new kebab place around the corner we’re about to go out and try. And also loads more music and shows. Woop”.

Before getting to an interview from NME, I want to come to a great one from DORK. Published at the end of March, DORK declared PUNCHBAG are “The sibling duo of Clara and Anders Bach slice through the thick fog of modern irony while maintaining the playful spirit of those who know precisely when to take things seriously – and, more importantly, when not to”. I am really excited by their progress and I realise just how far they can go:

“In PUNCHBAG’s world, the roles are clear but fluid, a creative process that is thoroughly collaborative. “We both write and produce everything together,” they explain. This partnership has yielded more than just music; it’s become a lens through which to examine the peculiarities of the world around them.

Their evolution into PUNCHBAG is almost a reaction to making art in an age of endless scrolling and context collapse. “We like to describe it as ‘Aggressive Hopecore’, which feels relevant to right now. It’s about 2025,” Clara reflects. “We live in an irony epidemic, and everything is meme-able, but alongside that, things in the world are pretty serious, and peoples’ heads are in complex places. We worry about that.”

This tension between digital absurdity and genuine human emotion runs through everything PUNCHBAG create. “We think those two things can be connected, that contrast, and it sonically sounds like that too, the softness and also the toughness,” Clara continues. “This music isn’t about chasing the news, we are chasing what people’s thoughts and emotions are because of what is going on and being able to do that also with joy and catharsis.”

The resulting EP emerged from sessions split between Berlin, Whitstable and their London home base, working alongside collaborators Michelle Leonard and Dee Adam. “We recorded everything at home together, just sitting in front of a laptop for weeks, going a tad mad until it was finished,” they reveal. “The main challenges are just trying to get the mic stands to fit in Clara’s wardrobe where we record all the vocals.”

That DIY spirit pervades the four-track collection, which they describe as “a nice big soup of subjects spanning from the tumultuous relationship you have with your phone to someone making a snide comment to you at the dinner table.” Each song captures a specific moment in PUNCHBAG’s evolution: “‘I’m Not Your Punchbag’ was the song that helped us work out our name. ‘You Used To Be So Sexy’ was the first ever session we did. ‘Pretty Youth’ was one of the first songs we made that felt like this is PUNCHBAG.”

The tracklisting was assembled with characteristic directness. “We wanted to be straight to the point, like BANG, here ya go, here is a lil crash course into PUNCHBAG,” they explain. “We want each song to feel like they could stand alone strongly and they are all intense in different ways. It was very important that each song you could move or jump to, obviously.”

This emphasis on physical release through movement feels particularly vital in our increasingly screen-mediated world. As Clara notes, “Joy is important and jumping up and down in a sweaty room is important but I think you can do that in a non-escapist way too, without the floweriness, the petals. Although we do wear a lot of pink on stage.”

Their approach to personal development mirrors their musical evolution – equal parts determination and playful absurdity. Currently, they’re “working on our mind, body and soul,” with Clara quite specifically “working on being able to do the splits again.” This physical preparation accompanies their ongoing musical development, having “just came back from Berlin and wrote a bunch of new songs, keeping it exciting, keeping pushing our music and most importantly getting our live set to be spectacular, pyros pending.”

Looking ahead, PUNCHBAG’s ambitions range from the practical to the playfully absurd. When asked where they’d like the EP to take them, they respond with deadpan humour: “To the darts championship.” More immediately, their 2025 calendar is filling up with promise: “Ooooof, a lot of fun things including some festivals, our first ever headline, and just more music for people to jump to or laugh to or cry to?”

Perhaps that’s the greatest promise in PUNCHBAG’s wardrobe-recorded missives: turning the everyday tumult of the present moment into something raw, urgent, and oddly uplifting. And if they can keep doing it with no rules, so much the better”.

One of the most recent interviews with the duo, NME spoke with PUNCHBAG at the end of last month. With so much momentum behind them already, you wouldn’t bet against them touring around the world soon enough. If you can catch them at Bermondsey Social Club on 29th May – and there are still tickets available – then you I would advise that. A stunning duo who are also a brilliant live force:

“They channel such physicality both in the studio and on stage. “Often when we’re writing, we’ll be standing up and it’s like ‘go, go, go!’” Clara explains. They’ll spend months perfecting a verse, and hours on finding the right kick drum. “It’s so guttural and honest and raw and fun to make.” Their frenetic, infectious performances have gone down a treat on the London live circuit – and beyond, thanks to YouTube videos – and started building word-of-mouth hype even before they released any music.

“For us, the live element is the most important thing, and it always will be,” Clara declares. Anders agrees: “you can’t argue with a live show – it’s raw and there’s literally nothing that can compare.” They value the “honest feedback” that comes from playing in front of people too; some formative sets (one of which saw Norwegian pop artist Sigrid in the crowd) inspired the duo to tweak some demos afterwards. “We learned so much,” Clara adds. “Even if you can’t see a single person’s face, you feel uncomfortable if something doesn’t work,” Anders says.

“With everything we write, we’re always trying to push it and be uncomfortable” – Anders Bach

While they always hoped their songs would connect with people, something felt distinctly different when they started performing as Punchbag. “We’re always making sure that we’re having as much fun as possible on stage,” Anders says. “It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but anywhere we play, it’s about finding the people in the audience that get it.”

For anyone yet to experience a Punchbag gig, prepare to get sweaty. “I scream at people until they’re jumping at the end,” Clara says, describing their energetic performance as “really heavy and, hopefully, joyful. We want people to feel able to laugh and cry at the same time. There can be anger in catharsis, but being truthful and brutally honest about things is important.” Anders continues: “It’s like we’re saying to the audience ‘this room is your emotional punching bag’ – it’s a place where people can get things out of their systems”.

All this comes to a boil in their razor-sharp debut EP ‘I’m Not Your Punchbag’, whose lyrics satirise social media obsession (‘Pretty Youth’) and fight back against toxic relationships (‘You Used To Be So Sexy’). “It’s a very quick crash course into Punchbag, no pun intended,” Clara laughs, adding that the four-tracker is just a taste of what’s to come. “We’ve got tons of music, we’re overcooking,” Anders teases. Adds Clara: “We want to keep people on their toes”.

I am finishing with a review of I’m Not Your Punchbag from God Is in the TV Zine. Such a phenomenal E.P. from the sibling duo, for anyone who has not discovered them, do make sure that you check them out. Even if these are the early days for PUNCHBAG, you know that they are going to be huge very soon. Their music so original and instantly engaging. Nobody with their mix of sounds and sensations:

“Siblings Clara and Anders Bach, who make music as PUNCHBAG, describe their music as Aggressive Hopecore. Citing influences such as LCD Soundsystem and Björk provide further clues as to the origins of their creativity, the fruits of which can be heard on their debut EP I’m Not Your Punchbag, released on 2 May via Mute Records. Anders explains further:
“We want to be the most pop thing we can in a left-field context, and be the most left-field in a pop context. We’re constantly playing with the idea of how far we can take each direction”.

Opening track ‘Fuck it’ unequivocally throws down a statement of intent. The electronic opening gives way to Clara’s vocal which is strong and on point. Thematically she sings of a life buffeted by anxiety and the fear of wasting time“as I try to figure who I am”. The intro gives way to an explosion of energy, a burst of dynamic positivity as she exclaims:“We might as well just say go fuck it!”. This sentiment is followed by a shot of perspective, don’t sweat the small stuff: “’Cos we’re all gonna die, die, die!” . Clara expands on the lyrical content: “it’s not nihilistic. It’s more like, we only have so much time, so do the thing you want to do. Kiss the person you want to kiss, say that thing you want to say.” This is patently obvious in the utter bouncing joy of the track, and there’s no doubt there is a catharsis in yelling “We might as well just say go fuck it” at the top of your voice.

Title track ‘I’m Not Your Punchbag’ grew from a remark made to Clara at a dinner table. Indeed it also goes some way to explain the band name and ethos. The quality of Clara’s vocal cannot be over stated, and this message of defiance is emphatic due to her delivery. Words can be hurtful and cut deep. There is a need to hold firm when confronted with such behaviour. The pulsating beat replicates the theme and as Clara shares: “From this small seed, if you like, the song grew into a kind of anthem for fighting back – a refusal to let people dump their shit on you.” It was after writing this song they realised that PUNCHBAG was obvious as the band name.

‘Pretty Youth’ then lifts the pace, a wild combination of manic synths and guitars, and punctuated with Clara’s chants: “Scammer! Con-er! thief thief thief!” . This rapid fire assault on the senses is an anti-coming-of-age anthem. Clara explains: “We’re sold that this is the most romantic time of your life, but really a lot of it is spent in the dark suffering.” . The twitchy exuberance of youth, especially as young adulthood is looming, gives way to this realisation that the idyllic notion of youth is not realistic, but that’s ok. The all-consuming liberation in ‘Pretty Youth’ is its fire and self-belief. “I won’t stop living if nothing is happening.”

Final track ‘You Used To Be So Sexy’ reframes phone addiction through the lens of a toxic relationship. Whip smart lyrics combine with bouncing club beats end the EP on a high. It is sprinkled with beeps, bleeps, distorted vocals and a thumping undercurrent but the outro is a euphoric finish, which is entirely fitting. Overall PUNCHBAG recognise and acknowledge the challenges of reality and in their words: “we’re making music that is about people’s reactions to what’s going on. Their feelings, emotions and thoughts,” It’s an effervescent response, so beware as it will have the listener bouncing, wherever they may be!

PUNCHBAG’s first ever show was at the Brixton Windmill less than a year ago. From the off they had an infectious energy which saw the iconic venue invite the band to Rotterdam’s Left of the Dial festival, before any music releases.“We take it seriously,” says Clara. “We’ve thought about it a lot, and it was important that from the first time we performed it was fully formed. We’re Virgos. We’re perfectionists.” 

There will be plenty of opportunity to see the band live over the coming months with a support slot for Zimmer90 taking them to London, Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds and Birmingham. There are also festival dates including Brighton’s The Great Escape and Paris’s Supersonic Block Party, and a headline show at the end of May at London’s Bermondsey Social Club”.

PUNCHBAG are definitely here for the long-run. Their debut E.P. is astonishing. Even if I am quite new to their work, I can appreciate why they are so hyped and popular. We are going to be talking about them for a very long time. For anyone fresh to Clara and Anders Bach, go and follow the mighty PUNCHBAG. A duo that…

ARE on fire right now.

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Follow PUNCHBAG

FEATURE: A Lifeline for So Many Women and Children… Why I Am Raising Money for Refuge

FEATURE:

 

 

A Lifeline for So Many Women and Children…

PHOTO CREDIT: MART PRODUCTION/Pexels

 

Why I Am Raising Money for Refuge

__________

THIS is not the first time…

that I have engaged in fundraising for Refuge. They are a charity that are very dear to my heart. I am going to take information from their website before coming to my fundraising event and important reasons for supporting Refuge. I would urge people to also follow Refuge on Instagram. Not only do they post useful information and links. They also highlight people who are fundraising for them. The work they do is invaluable! They are saving lives. If you look at their page that looks at how your (people who donate to Refuge) support helps, the statistics are moving. Among the figures is how 96% of those who leave Refuge’s services feel safer. It is very clear that this is a charity that is making a difference! I will move on in a minute. However, I have combined information from various sections of their website to give you an overview:

“We opened the world’s first safe house for women and children in 1971.

It was in Chiswick, West London. Women and children escaping domestic abuse flocked to our doors because, for the first time, someone was saying it was wrong to beat your partner. Back then, domestic abuse was seen as a “private matter”, to be dealt with behind closed doors. Society turned a blind eye.

Since 1971, Refuge has led the campaign against domestic abuse. We’ve grown to become the country’s largest single provider of specialist domestic and gender-based violence services.

We believe a world without violence and fear is possible.

We provide the highest quality services for survivors.

Refuge provides a range of life saving and life changing services. We put the experiences of survivors at the heart of our work and help amplify their voices. Our specialist staff understands the diverse and complex needs of women and their children – and we are experts in the dynamics of domestic abuse and gender-based violence.

  • We helped design the first National Occupational Standards for domestic violence, which set out the specialised knowledge and skills needed to deliver the highest-quality support. We then developed these standards into Ofqual-accredited qualifications, demonstrating what best practice looks like on the ground.

  • Everything we do is evidence-led. We use survivor feedback, knowledge and experience to continuously learn, improve and innovate our services based on what we know works.

  • We provide comprehensive specialist training to our own staff and volunteers on a wide range of issues, and also train professionals in their local communities — including police officers, teachers, and GPs — on how to respond appropriately to domestic abuse.

We protect survivors by helping to drive policy change.

Refuge advocates for changes to policy, practice and legislation that will better protect survivors of domestic abuse and prevent future abuse. That includes driving policies to ensure the sustainability of life-saving domestic abuse services.

We also build partnerships with other organisations doing vital work in this area, sharing and growing our expertise to expand our impact. This includes organisations with deep knowledge of specific marginalised groups of women, to understand how we as a society can meet the specialised needs — and overcome the unique challenges to access — faced by certain groups.

We prevent future abuse by shifting perceptions.

Refuge believes that domestic abuse is a gendered crime that will not end until we have radical culture change which addresses gender inequality. We know that we need to challenge and change public attitudes, and raise awareness of the different forms domestic abuse can take. That’s why we:

  • Run national, award-winning awareness-raising campaigns, which educate the public on domestic violence and show women experiencing abuse that they are not alone

  • Train professionals who come into contact with abused women, including police officers, doctors, social workers and midwives

  • Work to end gender inequality, which is the root cause of domestic abuse”

As I am fundraising for a forthcoming event (in June), I am being supported by the charity. In terms of suggestions to get my total hit and make an impact. Those who work for Refuge are so dedicated to making a difference. Helping so many women and children affected and displaced by domestic violence. Among Refuge’s Ambassadors are Billie Piper, Dame Helen Mirren and Chanita Stephenson. Their Champions include Aisling Bea, Richard Herring and Flo Finch. Why should anyone, including myself, support Refuge? 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. That is startling. 25% of all women will be the victim of domestic violence. We will all probably know a woman who has experienced it (I certainly do).Every 30 seconds, the police receive a call relating to domestic abuse. Refuge work to empower women to live a safer life. To be free from the fear and control of domestic abuse. However, there is still work to be done. Recent news reports that Londoners are less likely to report domestic abuse compared to other areas of the country. Refuge’s CEO Gemma Sherrington responded to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s report on babies, children and young people, Victims in their own right? Some very sobering and powerful words:

“All survivors of domestic abuse have the right to tailored support, and children are no exception. Refuge has been working closely with the UK Trauma Council to develop a holistic, trauma-informed support model, but this must be matched by increased, long-term funding for lifesaving children’s services.

“Supporting children effectively requires a multi-agency approach, so we echo the report’s call for a shared language framework that places the onus on the perpetrator and fully considers the child’s needs.

“Every child has the right to live free from fear. Refuge calls for the report’s recommendations to be implemented by all relevant Government bodies without delay. And with the Spending Review on the horizon, now is the time to commit to sustainable funding for specialist organisations. Children’s wellbeing – and lives – depend on it”.


If you are experiencing domestic abuse and need help, the number to call is 0808 2000 247. That number is free and open 24 hours a day. This link also provides advice to anyone who is experiencing abuse. Signs to watch out for when it comes to domestic abuse. Refuge are delivering such vital help at a moment of crisis. A recent survey revealed three-quarters of U.K. adults are unaware of the scale of domestic abuse. Not only are women murdered by their partners. Many are taking their own lives. In fact, suicides as a result of domestic abuse have overtaken homicides. That applies to England and Wales. That is sickening to realise. The true extent of domestic abuse. How many women are so in fear and trapped that they take their own lives. We are living at a time when toxic masculinity and the influence of popular incels and misogynists are contributing to the rise in domestic abuse cases. So many women and children subjected to unbearable and heartbreaking abuse and violence. Many made homeless and forced from their homes. This is something that is very much present and needs to end! It is horrifying that domestic violence is such an issue in 2025. It is even more important that we all do all we can to fundraise and support Refuge. As they do such tireless and amazing work. There are a couple of reasons why I am fundraising for them. On 21st June, I am embarking on a walk from East Wickham Farm in Welling to Oxford Circus in London. June 2025 marks fifty years since Kate Bush stepped into AIR Studios in Oxford Circus to record her first professional recordings (in a professional studio rather than with professionals necessarily) under the mentorship of David Gilmour. She was sixteen, and it was a monumental and important moment. I have recently published my 1,000th Kate Bush feature, so I wanted to tie that together and mark an anniversary and a milestone.

On social media, I follow people like David Challen. He is a domestic abuse campaigner and often publish news stories, statistic and quotes around domestic abuse (and he has a book coming out soon). Its affect and scope. Something that is affecting so many women and children in the U.K. I am going to end with a quote from Ikram Dahman, Refuge’s Interim Director of Fundraising, Communications & Policy: “We’re really grateful to Sam for choosing to support Refuge as he marks this milestone in his music journalism career. Commemorating his 1,000th article with a Kate Bush-themed walking challenge is a creative and heartfelt tribute - and a powerful act of allyship. Violence against women and girls is at epidemic levels, and every two minutes someone turns to Refuge for help. We’re honoured that Sam is walking in solidarity with survivors and using his platform to help raise both awareness and vital funds. It’s thanks to supporters like him that we can continue providing life-saving services and campaigning for a world free from domestic abuse”. It is touching that Ikram provided that quote! I am not alone. So many others are doing incredible fundraising events to help raise awareness of and funds for Refuge. This is a charity that are as essential now as ever before. I will continue to work alongside them for years. I am already planning another fundraising event for next year. Maybe a yearly thing I will do. However, as I look ahead to a very special walk next month, I was eager to discuss Refuge and why people need to urgentlysupport them. I have not quite hit my fundraising target yet, so any additional support would be gratefully received! It will be an emotional day, but I am very much looking ahead…

TO 21st June.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Something Like a Song: All the Love (The Dreaming)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Something Like a Song

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pierre Terrasson

 

All the Love (The Dreaming)

__________

TO break up…

my Kate Bush features, I am going to start a new series. I am not certain how many I will publish. It is me looking inside particular songs. I am starting out with a song of hers that is not discussed much. From 1982’s The Dreaming, All the Love is one of my favourite tracks of hers. One that has an interesting story to it. In terms of the inclusion of answerphone messages that we hear. Perhaps the most affecting and haunting part of the song, it is interesting how they wound up included in the mix. I am going to come to an article from Dreams of Orgonon. I will finish by look at some of the lyrics. However, first – and something I have included before –, is Kate Bush talking about the song. One that I don’t think she ever performed live. It is one of those great what-ifs. Especially when it comes to songs from The Dreaming, not everything was performed live by Bush. You wonder how she would have mounted a song like All the Love:

“Although we are often surrounded by people and friends, we are all ultimately alone, and I feel sure everyone feels lonely at some time in their life. I wanted to write about feeling alone, and how having to hide emotions away or being too scared to show love can lead to being lonely as well. There are just some times when you can’t cope and you just don’t feel you can talk to anyone. I go and find a bathroom, a toilet or an empty room just to sit and let it out and try to put it all together in my mind. Then I go back and face it all again.
I think it’s sad how we forget to tell people we love that we do love them. Often we think about these things when it’s too late or when an extreme situation forces us to show those little things we’re normally too shy or too lazy to reveal. One of the ideas for the song sparked when I came home from the studio late one night. I was using an answering machine to take the day’s messages and it had been going wrong a lot, gradually growing worse with time. It would speed people’s voices up beyond recognition, and I just used to hope they would ring back again one day at normal speed.
This particular night, I started to play back the tape, and the machine had neatly edited half a dozen messages together to leave “Goodbye”, “See you!”, “Cheers”, “See you soon” .. It was a strange thing to sit and listen to your friends ringing up apparently just to say goodbye. I had several cassettes of peoples’ messages all ending with authentic farewells, and by copying them onto 1/4” tape and re-arranging the order, we managed to synchronize the ‘callers’ with the last verse of the song.
There are still quite a few of my friends who have not heard the album or who have not recognised themselves and are still wondering how they managed to appear in the album credits when they didn’t even set foot into the studio. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982”.

I would take issue with what Dreams of Orgonon say. Calling this a song that a dirge that is unloved. A holdover and maybe a filler track. I am going to include some of their observations. However, I wanted to highlight the article as I would refute the claim it is a weak track on The Dreaming. It is an incredible song that has not got the love it deserves. In terms of what Kate Bush said about All the Love: “I wanted to write about feeling alone, and how having to hide emotions away or being too scared to show love can lead to being lonely as well”. This is something we can all identify with. She articulates these feelings and emotions perfectly:

“Sonically, “All the Love” sounds like a callback to Never for Ever, to the point one wonders if the song is a holdover. The song’s centering of melody over rhythm is an aberration on the rhythm-preoccupied Dreaming, with Stuart Elliott’s drums quietly accentuating things rather than taking a “lead instrument” role. The relatively high position of Del Palmer’s bass playing in the mix also feels superannuated and reminiscent of “Blow Away (For Bill)” or “Egypt,” some of the oldest songs in Bush’s studio career. “All the Love” has some flourishes characteristic of the mid-80s — the sampling of phone conversations is the sort of thing Pink Floyd or The Smiths did around the same time (see The Wall, “Rubber Ring”). Nonetheless, “All the Love” sounds old, an adscititious swan song for Bush’s early style.

There’s certainly a callback to the subject matter of Never for Ever, nominally catastrophes that damage and alienate families. While Never for Ever’s songs are largely narrative, The Dreaming deals with Modernist techniques of abstraction, dissociation, and stream-of-consciousness, shifting the dramatic arena to the human mind. “All the Love” is social, even amusingly caustic in its distance from human living. Its lyrical triumph, “the first time I died…”, setting up an account of a person whose deathbed experience includes “good friends of mine” who “hadn’t been near me for years.” Where the hell have you been? Why are you doing this performative fraternal visitation now? The answer comes as “we needed you/to love us too/we waited for your move.” We’re given a set of people (or perhaps just one faction) who struggles to love people and relate to them properly.

There seems to be some concession of wrongdoing, admitting she wasn’t the most forthcoming to her friends (“but I know I have shown/that I stand at the gates alone”). But she tempers this with an admission that the emotional distance was mutual: “I needed you to love me too.” There’s even a sort of “if I could start again” concession, as the character asserts the inevitability of reincarnation (or afterlife?) with “the next time I dedicate/my life’s work to the friends I make/I give them what they want to hear.” Its grief for a lost, atemporal past binds itself to the effluvium of old and new styles “All the Love” embodies. In the words of Bauhaus, “all we ever wanted was everything. All we ever got was cold”.

I am going to come to some more positive words regarding the gem that is All the Love. Pitchfork said the following when they reviewed The Dreaming in 2019: “All the Love” is the stunning aria of The Dreaming—a long snake moan on regret. Here she duets with a choirboy, a technique she’d echo with her son on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. The lament trails off with a skipping cascade of goodbyes lifted from Bush’s broken answering machine, a pure playback memento mori”. Graeme Thomson, in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, notes how All the Love opens with the “casually brilliant, almost quintessential Bush line, “The first time that I died…”. He observes how the songs ends with a “heartbreaking litany of warm, familiar voices saying ‘goodbye’ on the telephone”. The singles and successful songs gets plenty of attention. However, when we think about the lesser numbers from Kate Bush, they are not talked about and played that much. I am going to end with a feature from Far Out Magazine from back in March. They wanted to shine a light on a very underrated Kate Bush track. In fact, they named All the Love as her most underrated:

“Beginning with an audible sigh from Bush and a tumbling piano hook, the track’s secret melodic weapon sets out its stall early. Del Palmers’ snake-charming fretless bass almost works as the track’s lead instrument, decorating the song with enchanting melodic phrases as Bush mourns the fact that we often don’t express our love for others until they’re gone. It’s an all-timer vocal performance from Kate as well, demonstrating her astonishing control without ascending to the histrionics she can sometimes be guilty of.

Then, from time to time, everything drops out, and the first of two avant-garde masterstrokes make themselves known. A choirboy with a soprano purer than driven snow vocalises those who’ve been lost, singing “We needed you to love us too” in a manner just as haunting as Cathy’s ghostly pleading on the Yorkshire moors. The second takes up the last third of the song in a slightly more conventional way but leaves you just as shaken.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signing copies of The Dreaming in September 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pete Still/Redferns

Bush herself put it better than I ever could in a 1982 essay she wrote for her fan club’s newsletter. She said, “I was using an answering machine to take the day’s messages and it had been going wrong a lot, gradually growing worse with time. This particular night, I started to play back the tape, and the machine had neatly edited half a dozen messages together to leave ‘Goodbye’, ‘See you!’, ‘Cheers’, ‘See you soon’.”

She had the bones of ‘All the Love’ written, but suddenly, she had the perfect ending to a song about missing loved ones. She went on to say, “It was a strange thing to sit and listen to your friends ringing up apparently just to say goodbye. I had several cassettes of peoples’ messages all ending with authentic farewells, and by copying them onto 1/4” tape and re-arranging the order, we managed to synchronize the ‘callers’ with the last verse of the song.”

What a song it leaves. One that has since been overshadowed by the majesty of The Dreaming as a whole, but in my opinion, deserves a place right at the top of the charts”.

If you have not heard All the Love then I would encourage you to do so. The whole of The Dreaming too! It is a magnificent album featuring ten eclectic and engrossing numbers. Not as odd and out-there as some tracks, All the Love is one of the more accessible moments. However, this being Kate Bush, there is always something distinct and genius that elevates it above the ordinary! The chorus, or refrain, that is sung by choirboy Richard Thompson is striking "We needed you/To love us too/We wait for your move”. My favourite verse from All the Love is the following: “The next time I dedicate/My life’s work to the friends I make/I give them what they want to hear/They think I’m up to something weird/And up rears the head of fear in me/So now when they ring/I get my machine to let them in”. I love the different goodbyes that we hear at the end. The versions of that word (goodbye/by); the intonations and inflections. Those different voices are ghosts in the machine. It is a really emotional thing to listen to. One of those pearls of a Kate Bush song that does not quite get enough credit. I wanted to start this new series by looking at this undervalued masterpiece. From the sublime The Dreaming, this song is…

AMONG her absolute best.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: KT Tunstall at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

 

KT Tunstall at Fifty

__________

AN artists I have admired…

PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Faulks 

since her 2004 debut album, Eye to the Telescope, was released, I wanted to mark the fiftieth birthday of KT Tunstall on 23rd June. I will include a playlist featuring a collection of wonderful Tunstall tunes to end things. However, as I often do for features like this, I am including some biography from AllMusic:

“With a guitar and an effects pedal, Scottish singer/songwriter KT Tunstall showcased her musical creativity and endearing energy with a breakthrough television performance that helped propel her sparkling 2004 debut album, the Mercury Prize-nominated Eye to the Telescope, onto the global charts. As she evolved, Tunstall would incorporate more rock edge (2007's Drastic Fantastic) and synth production (2010's Tiger Suit) to the mix, while her hook-heavy songwriting remained at the heart of each effort. Following 2013's melancholy, folk-based Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon, she kicked off an ambitious, multi-year album trilogy focused on the soul, body, and mind, which included 2016's KIN, 2018's WAX, and 2022's NUT.

Born to a Chinese-Scottish mother, she was adopted at birth by a university professor and his primary school wife in the town of St. Andrews. As a child, her imagination and creative side flourished, especially since her physicist father would take her and her brothers into the St. Andrews observatory to look at the sky, thus fueling her youthful love for space and sci-fi. It wasn't until discovering hair metal through her brother that music really started to become important to her, and when it did, her affection for spacy things was reflected in her favorite album, David Bowie's Hunky Dory. She soon picked up playing piano and flute, learned to sing by listening to Ella Fitzgerald, and began writing her own songs in her mid-teens. At 16, she taught herself the guitar and continued to hone her writing skills with sentimental love songs. A scholarship to the Kent School, a private prep academy in Connecticut, brought her experiences outside of St. Andrews and Scotland. There, she formed her first band, the Happy Campers, and enjoyed going to shows by 10,000 Maniacs and the Grateful Dead. Later, she enrolled in a music course at London's Royal Holloway College before heading back home and immersing herself in the local grassroots scene that birthed outfits like the Fence Collective and the Beta Band. Around this time, she was also listening to Billie Holiday, Lou Reed, and James Brown, among others, and soon formed a group with the Fence Collective's Pip Dylan.

Years later, Tunstall returned to London and began writing more songs, many of which would appear on her first album. She entered a backwoods Wiltshire studio with minimal instruments in tow and Steve Osborne (U2, New Order) at the controls. The end result was her wide-eyed debut, Eye to the Telescope, released in the U.K. in late 2004 on Relentless. Highlighting her soulful voice, sassy attitude, and earthy songwriting approach, comparisons to Dido, Fiona Apple, and Katie Melua soon sparked. Following the record's release, Tunstall toured throughout Europe, including shows supporting Joss Stone and singing with Oi Va Voi. Feeling an acoustic guitar was sometimes too limiting, her live show incorporated the use of an Akai Headrush foot pedal that allowed her to spot-record multiple times (loop each section continuously), thus turning her into her own one-woman backup band. This calling card would prove fortuitous when a performance of her single "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on Later... with Jools Holland became a hit that launched her international career.

The buzz surrounding her performance pushed a reissue of Telescope in the U.K., though it wasn't until 2006 that it was released in the U.S. In addition to winning Best British Female Solo Artist at the Brit Awards, she was nominated for a Mercury Prize and a Grammy. Meanwhile, singles "Black Horse & the Cherry Tree" and "Suddenly I See" continued to fare well on American adult alternative radio. The album was later certified multiplatinum and sold millions of copies worldwide. That fall, KT Tunstall's Acoustic Extravaganza was issued; it included acoustic tracks (both new and old) recorded the previous Christmas along with a bonus making-of DVD.

In 2007, Tunstall kicked off another album cycle with her sophomore effort Drastic Fantastic, home to "Hold On" and "If Only." In addition to peaking at number three on the U.K. chart, it also marked Tunstall's highest showing to date on the Billboard 200 at number nine. Three years later, she returned with her pop-friendly third album, Tiger Suit, recorded at Berlin's famed Hansa studio, the same place where Bowie recorded Heroes. Notably funkier and upbeat, Tiger Suit added layers of synth and production effects to Tunstall's sound, heard on tracks such as "Lost" and "Glamour Puss." She followed the set with Live in London, March 2011, and later in the year with an EP titled The Scarlet Tulip, which was recorded in her home studio with co-producer Luke Bullen.

After a break from touring, Tunstall reentered the studio in late 2012 and recorded her country/folk-influenced fifth album, Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon, which arrived in June of 2013. The introspective effort, inspired both by the death of her father and the dissolution of her four-year marriage, marked an inward turn for Tunstall, comprising mainly acoustic and lo-fi numbers such as "Made of Glass" with Andrew Bird and lead single "Feel It All." Her second live album, Live Islington Assembly Hall, was recorded on the June 20, 2013 stop of the supporting tour and included a cover of Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" and a rare deep cut, "Alchemy," from the Scarlet Tulip EP. At the conclusion of touring, Tunstall pressed pause on her solo career and began composing soundtrack cuts for films such as Winter's Tale, Million Dollar Arm, 3 Generations, and Bad Moms.

In June 2016, Tunstall released the four-song Golden State EP, an upbeat affair that included the single "Evil Eye." It was the precursor to that September's KIN, a bright, colorful album produced by Tony Hoffer. The first of a proposed trilogy that centered on the themes of soul, body, and mind, KIN peaked at number seven on the U.K. charts and included "Two Way" with James Bay. The second installment, WAX, arrived in 2018. Focused on the body, the album's physicality and dance-friendly synths came courtesy of producer Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand. While touring for the album, Tunstall lost all hearing in her left ear, which would impact all that followed. Once promotion for that album concluded, she continued in that upbeat vein on 2020's electronic dance anthem "Starlight & Gold," a collaboration with producer Molella. Later that year, as the COVID-19 pandemic became international headline news, she teamed with Grace Savage and the Freelance Hellraiser for the cheeky single "Wash Ya Hands." That November, she joined an illustrious list of female voices for the inspirational Goodnight Songs for Rebel Girls, contributing "Hymn to Her."

2021 was a very busy year for Tunstall. She unveiled the massive Drastic Fantastic Ultimate Edition, which bundled the original album with B-sides such as "Bad Day" and a cover of "La Vie en Rose," as well as a full disc of live and acoustic performances, including fan favorite covers of the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian" and Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody." The Tiger Suit (Untamed Edition) was also released that year, with the original album repackaged with demos and session versions recorded at Hansa studios. While completing the third piece of her ongoing album trilogy, she remained busy with multiple collaborations with artists such as Alan Cumming ("Caledonia"), Tep No ("Heartbeat Bangs"), and Ilan Eshkeri (the Chasing Wonders soundtrack). She continued into 2022 with Gilbert O'Sullivan ("Take Love") and Frank Turner ("Little Life").

That year, the Soul, Body, and Mind trilogy was finally completed with the last installment, NUT. Named after Scottish slang for the mind/brain (as well as being synonymous with "seed"), the lively set featured the singles "Canyons" and "I Am the Pilot”.

One of our very best artists, it is a pleasure to dive into the catalogue of KT Tunstall ahead of her fiftieth birthday on 23rd June. Below is a selection of her distinct and phenomenal music. Even if you are not a major KT Tunstall fan, there will be tracks in there that you recognise and can bond with. This is a very happy birthday to…

A tremendous artist.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Bernie Taupin at Seventy-Five

FEATURE:

 


The Digital Mixtape

 

Bernie Taupin at Seventy-Five

__________

ONE of the greatest…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bernie Taupin with Elton John

and most prolific songwriters in history turns seventy-five on 22nd May. I am going to end this feature with a mixtape including many of the wonderful songs that he wrote. Most know him best for his work with Elton John. Bernie Taupin’s partnership with Elton John is one of the most successful in music history. Before getting to a playlist with those amazing Taupin-penned songs, here is some biography about this genius talent:

“The lyricist behind many of Elton John's most memorable pop hits, Bernie Taupin was born May 22, 1950, in rural Lincolnshire, England. The product of a farming family, his primary musical influence was the gunfighter ballads of Marty Robbins, marking the beginning of a lifelong fascination with the American west that surfaced as a recurring theme throughout his work as a songwriter. Taupin quit school at 16 to accept a job with a local newspaper, followed by a stint at a chicken ranch; at 17, he responded to a Liberty Records advertisement seeking new talent and although the label turned Taupin down, A&R exec Ray Williams suggested he team with aspiring singer/composer Reg Dwight, who months later adopted the name Elton John. Although the duo soon began writing for Dick James Music, they originally collaborated solely by mail and did not meet face-to-face until nearly half a year into their partnership; early efforts were recorded by pop singers, including Lulu, Roger Cook, and Brian Keith, and although John recorded several of their songs as a solo act as well, his 1969 debut LP Empty Sky failed to generate much interest.

John's self-titled 1970 album was the turning point; highlighted by the classic "Your Song," it made the singer an emerging superstar and although Taupin received comparatively little notice for his efforts, that same year he cut an eponymous solo LP of his own. Although John's 1971 record Tumbleweed Connection reflected the outlaw themes that so fascinated Taupin as a boy, 1972's Honky Chateau was the team's true commercial breakthrough, topping the American charts on the strength of the smash hits "Honky Cat" and "Rocket Man." Throughout the mid-'70s, John reeled off a remarkable series of Top Ten hits, including "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," "Bennie and the Jets," "The Bitch Is Back," and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"; the first album ever to enter the American charts at number one, 1975's Captain Fantastic & the Brown Dirt Cowboy featured Taupin's most autobiographical lyrics to date and launched the chart-topping "Philadelphia Freedom." However, relations between he and John were becoming increasingly strained and in the wake of 1976's Blue Moves, the singer began working with other lyricists.

Apart from John, Taupin relocated to Los Angeles and in 1980 issued his third solo album, He Who Rides the Tiger; that same year, he and the singer reunited for 21 at 33, although John continued collaborating with other writers as well. 1983's Too Low for Zero restored their partnership in full, yielding the hits "I'm Still Standing" and "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues." Still, despite subsequent chart entries like "Sad Songs (Say So Much)," "Nikita," and "Sacrifice," the duo's later work largely failed to recapture the spark of their creative peak. Independent of John, Taupin returned to the top of the charts in 1985 as the co-author of the Starship smash "We Built This City," and two years later issued the solo Tribe; in 1988, he also published his memoir, A Cradle of Haloes: Sketches of a Childhood. Taupin subsequently formed the Farm Dogs, a roots music-inspired group that issued a self-titled debut album in 1986. In the wake of Princess Diana's death the following year, he also rewrote the lyrics of the perennial "Candle in the Wind" in her honor; performed by John at the royal's funeral, the resulting single became one of the biggest chart hits of all time”.

To celebrate the upcoming seventy-fifth birthday of Bernie Taupin, I have selected a number of the songs he has written. On 22nd May, this master turns seventy-five. One of the greatest songwriters ever, nearly everyone would have heard one of his songs. In case you need a reminder, below is an example…

OF his brilliance.

FEATURE: Stronger: Britney Spears’ Oops!…I Did It Again at Twenty-Five: Spotlighting a Record-Setting Album

FEATURE:

 

 

Stronger

 

Britney Spears’ Oops!…I Did It Again at Twenty-Five: Spotlighting a Record-Setting Album

__________

ON 16th May, 2000…

IN THIS PHOTO: Britney Spears in 2000/PHOTO CREDIT: Imago images/ZUMA Wire

Britney Spears’ second studio album, Oops!... I Did It Again, was released. Its twenty-fifth anniversary will be celebrated by fans. This is an anniversary vinyl reissue that is well worth investing in. Her second studio album was broadly similar to her 1999 debut, ..Baby One More Time. However, there is this sense of bringing in new genres like R&B and Funk. Tougher and cooler perhaps. A huge chart success and one of the most popular and biggest albums of the early-2000s, it has undoubtable inspired so many artists since. You can look at modern Pop artists like Charli xcx and Dua Lipa and there are definite shades of Britney Spears in their work. I remember when Oops!... I Did It Again came out. Its titular single was released before the album - and it created a storm. That said, the title track of ..Baby One More Time created even more attention! That video makes me feel a bit uneasy, as you get the feeling Spears was being exploited and there was this slightly uneasy aspect. It has not dated that well. However, there was definite growth on Oops!... I Did It Again. Its ballads are largely impressive and its biggest numbers, such as the title track and Stronger, are among the defining Pop songs of their day. Even though Britney Spears has not released new material for a long time – and might never release another album -, I know that she is very proud of what she created in 2000. An amazing artist who I was a big fan of, there is more than one reason why I wanted to spotlight the album. Even though, amazingly, it is twenty-five, it does sound contemporary! So many artists embodying elements of Britney Spears’ second studio album.

Also, Oops!…I Did It Again debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 and quickly became the fastest-selling L.P. by a female solo artist in chart history. Maybe not a surprise but, as Spears was only nineteen when the album came out, it was perhaps a lot of pressure. This expectation on her shoulders. Oops!…I Did It Again soon passed the ten million mark. That made Britney Spears the youngest artist to earn multiple Diamond certification. Think about many of the trailblazing and record-setting female artists today and they owe a debt to Britney Spears. In terms of how she opened doors. An icon and inspiration for them. Even if many are mixed towards Oops!…I Did It Again, you cannot deny the legacy and importance of the album. It is amazing to think of those achievements! I was seventeen when Oops!…I Did It Again came out. I could see how the Pop scene was changing and evolving. There was this exciting wave of talent. Britney Spears was very much at the forefront. I think her second studio album is really strong and deserved all of its commercial success. Critics were perhaps not as consistent and kind. However, there are some positive reviews I want to highlight. I will start out with AllMusic and their four-star take on Oops!…I Did It Again:

“Given the phenomenal success of Britney Spears' debut, ...Baby One More Time, it should come as no surprise that its sequel offers more of the same. After all, she gives away the plot with the ingenious title of her second album, Oops!...I Did It Again, essentially admitting that the record is more of the same. It has the same combination of sweetly sentimental ballads and endearingly gaudy dance-pop that made One More Time. Fortunately, she and her production team not only have a stronger overall set of songs this time, but they also occasionally get carried away with the same bewildering magpie aesthetic that made the first album's "Sodapop" -- a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga -- a gonzo teen pop classic. It doesn't happen all that often -- the clenched-funk revision of the Stones' deathless "Satisfaction" is the most obvious example -- but it helps give the album character apart from the well-crafted dance-pop and ballads that serve as its heart. In the end, it's what makes this an entertaining, satisfying listen”.

I am going to wrap up soon. However, I wanted to bring in an NME review. Perhaps you might feel they would be predisposed to take against an artist like Britney Spears, they do concede how she is a massive star that many people, whether they like to admit it or not, are fans of. I think that her early albums, though a little patchy, are still brilliant. It is good there has been a twenty-fifth anniversary reissue. It will give old and new fans a chance to experience an album that conquered the world and broke records:

“Against cynical opinion, the reason why [a]Britney Spears[/a] has sold 28 million albums across the globe is because she’s modern-day pop perfection realised in a, nearly, human form. Like it or not, the songs penned for Britney by Swedish producer Max Martin, the man behind the even more successful Backstreet Boys, get into your brain like ketamine. An all-encompassing, horrendously realised high – once it’s inside you, there’s little you can do to stop it, you must give in. In its own sick way, Britney is drug music.

Case in point is album opener and comeback single ‘Oops! I Did It Again’. Essentially a harder, carbon copy of ‘Baby One More Time’, it’s easily as good as her breakthrough single. You get your fix in a second of the song opening – the taut ’80s Michael Jackson riffs, the squeals, the killer chorus, the uplifting middle bit, it’s all in there. Did you really think she’d let you down?

There’s the deranged helium synth pop of ‘Stronger’ with the huge ABBA chord change in the chorus that sounds scarier and more robotic than the Backstreet Boys. The 21st-century R&B of Timbaland is bastardised, beaten and strangled to within an inch of its life with ‘Don’t Go Knockin’ On My Door’ while the Mutt Lange-penned ‘Don’t Let Me Be The Last To Know’ takes the riff from Iggy/Bowie‘s ‘China Girl’ and puts it over schmaltzy cocktail-hour bass and love film strings. It’s absolutely frightening.

So, the long-awaited – and ill-advised – cover of the Stones‘ ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ is a letdown, but soon-to-be-single ‘Lucky’ is perhaps Britney‘s finest moment. The ultimate mallrat, bittersweet teenage symphony. It’s Britney‘s ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong?’. A heart-rending tale of life at the top of the teen pop tree, transformed into an anthem for dramatic, moody 12-year-old girls everywhere by Max Martin‘s scary talent for teenybop lyrics. “If there’s nothing missing in my life/Then why do these tears come at night?” sounds pretty fucking heavy when you’ve just been dumped and Britney‘s [I]Mickey Mouse Club[/I]-trained falsetto is reaching its peak.

Sorry, but she’s done it again – the difficult second album proved to be a piece of piss. Whether the fickle world of the Top Ten will let it happen again remains to be seen, but in the absence of anything else (hello, Christina Aguilera) Britney‘s going to walk it.

On the sly, you know you love it”.

Although a lot has been written about Oops!… I Did It Again’s title track, there has not been too much written album the album. How it changed the Pop landscape and how instrumental it was in 2000. At the start of this new century, an artist who broke through at the end of the previous one put out this incredible work. Classic Pop reported on the release of the anniversary reissue of an album that Britney Spears recalls fondly. Even if it was a crazy time where her image was everywhere and she had all this press attention – still being marketed as a sex symbol and there were some questionable motives from her label and management -, it is a massive success that announced her as a modern Pop titan:

“In 1999,  Britney reached international superstar status with the massive chart-topping commercial success of her debut album, …Baby One More Time. With all eyes and ears on the evolving young artist, Oops!… I Did It Again proved a musical bridge into the new century, with Britney Spears building on the foundation of her debut.

Oops!… I Did It Again was a massive commercial success worldwide, debuting at No.1 in over 20 countries, except the UK where it was kept from the top spot by Whitney Houston’s Greatest Hits. However, the title track topped the UK singles chart on release in May 2000 and follow-up singles Lucky and Stronger also broke the Top 10.

Exciting Times

On the release of Oops!… I Did It Again (25th Anniversary), Britney said: “Thank you to my fans. This album was recorded at such an exciting time in my life, and I’m so grateful to my incredible fans for keeping the legacy of this album alive!”

Available in digital and 2LP 12″ vinyl formats, the newly-expanded 25th anniversary edition of Britney’s sophomore LP contains the original album in its entirety and offers 10 collectible bonus tracks including rarities and two new remixes Stronger  (Adamusic Remix) and  Oops!…I Did It Again (Pessto Remix) – created especially for this release”.

A salute to the mighty and phenomenal Oops!… I Did It Again. It is, in my view, one of the most important Pop albums ever. The fact that it became the fastest-selling album by a female solo artist in chart history was not just because of her popularity and hype. Millions of people connecting with the music. All of these years later and you can see and feel how it changed Pop. Following her hugely popular debut album, ...Baby One More Time, with its mega-selling follow-up, Britney Spears proved that brilliance and success…

WAS no fluke.

FEATURE: Changing the Narrative: Why Are Some Subjects Largely Being Left Out of New Music?

FEATURE:

 

 

Changing the Narrative

PHOTO CREDIT: SHVETS production/Pexels

 

Why Are Some Subjects Largely Being Left Out of New Music?

__________

MAYBE it is a particularly…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kneecap

heated time in music that means addressing certain subjects is quite risky. With Irish group Kneecap recently in the spotlight for their views and things they have said at gigs relating to killing M.P.s. They have had gigs cancelled and come under fire. Their political views relating to Palestine and the genocide there has also drawn division and criticism. Even though some artists have spoken out against Israel and what they are inflicting, very few are bringing this into their music. I have written about this before, but is it too risky for artists to write about something like warfare and genocide? It is not the case that nobody is addressing it. However, at a time when you would expect so many to have a say and talk about the atrocities happening, there is a lot of silence. The same goes for other subjects too. At a moment when women’s rights are threatened and there is this rise in misogyny and influential incels, I do wonder why this too has not been documented more in music. I have been considering all the ways in which music can make a difference. From the rights of trans people through to misogyny and women’s reproductive rights right through to an increase in division and toxicity in the world, there does seem to be a fringe of artists who write about this. They are in a definite minority. I have said before how it used to be the role of Hip-Hop and Rap artists to bring this in. Punk artists also had a political edge. However, right now, there does seem to be an absence and void. Is there this risk of backlash and fans not accepting it? I know it can be risky for artists to take a position that might stand against what others feel. However, this is a point in history where music can make a difference. It is definitely down to artists to have their say. Though to an extent I guess. We can talk about freedom of expression and how artists like Kneecap are arguing this. Is what they said freedom of expression or was it reckless?

Also, if you alienate some fans with various views then that can have a big impact. I am caught between this idea that artists really do need to do more but also this danger that can occur. Social media backlash and the negativity they might face. It is a pity. When artists do make statements in interview and speak about important issues it is really important. It can lead to conversation and change. People might say that fans won’t want to listen to songs that talk about political divides, violence around the world and misogyny. That is can be hard-going and like being lectured to. It does not have to be the case. For the artists who already do bring this into their music, they can do so in an accessible manner. It provokes a deeper and wider conversation. Not only why many artists stay away from very important and timely subjects of discussion. What are the results going to be if they do go ahead and use their music as a platform to tackle these areas? I look around music now and there are so many phenomenal artists out there. Most of the music I hear tends to be personal or it revolves around that artist’s personal life and love. It rarely goes outside of that border and addresses big themes. It is a very scary and troubling time. You get the feeling that things might get a lot worse before they get better. I do wonder if there is too much at stake. Is there another reason why music largely does not go into a more political direction? People reading this might say that there is plenty of music out there that does go into these important areas. I am going to wrap things up in a minute. I was thinking about the Kneecap furore and weighing up all sides. If they had talked about Palestine and members of parliament in their music and done so in a different way then would they have been getting respect instead of attack? Is it a balancing act and hard thing to judge? Artists like Self Esteem and Kae Tempest are examples of artists who can balance the more political and personal. The former’s new album, A Complicated Woman, addresses sexism, misogyny and the patriarchy alongside heartfelt and revealing tracks. Kae Tempest’s latest music is among his best. Challenging and thought-provoking.

One cannot deny that it is really important that music makes its voice heard. Artists need to call out genocide, political fracture and the rise in misogyny and how women’s rights are being removed. In terms of mainstream artists and the biggest radio stations, most of that music is personal and does not really tackle politics in a meaningful way. I hope that this changes. I can see women releasing great albums that talk about the patriarchy and sexism. Not many men do that. Artists in certain genres singing about genocide and violence but then that being isolated. Others might spotlight sexual assault and women’s rights (there are more subjects that I could mention but I am using these as examples) but then there is not great unity and consistency. It does seem to be concerning. You can go about things and not enflame a situation. Especially when it comes to trans rights, how many artists are talking about this through music? Not many right now. It is easy for me to say but you do need to consider the bigger picture. There might be some blowback from fans and people having their say on social media. Think about the people these songs would help and support. I think that matters a lot more. Such a minority of artists looking around and people who are being marginalised, killed, abused and having rights taken away. There should be an army of artists joining together right now. I can see those musicians out there who are using their music in a way that others are not. Going beyond their own lives. Don’t get me wrong. Artists talking about their romances, struggles with mental health issues and personal issues is really powerful. However, there is more to be done. A very tense time that requires more musicians to step up. I do hope that this happens…

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

BEFORE too long.