FEATURE: Ringo Starr at Eighty-Five: His Best Beatles and Solo Tracks

FEATURE:

 

 

Ringo Starr at Eighty-Five

IN THIS PHOTO: Ringo Starr in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History/Photograph by Richard Avedon/@amhistorymuseum

His Best Beatles and Solo Tracks

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STILL a very busy man…

PHOTO CREDIT: Dina Litovsky

Ringo Starr is currently on tour. In fact, he is between dates at the moment but has had a busy June. His new album, Look Up, was released earlier in the year and is one of his best solo efforts. I am celebrating Starr as he turns eighty-five on 7th July. There are a few big Beatles anniversaries this year. Rubber Soul turns sixty-five later in the year. That is probably the biggest one. I am thinking about Beatles projects and why the next thing will be. Whether we will get a reissue and expanded edition of one of their albums – maybe Rubber Soul or A Hard Day’s Night. In terms of Ringo Starr’s career, he is very active and has a lot on. However, he is always keen to talk about The Beatles and his glorious time with the band. I am going to come to a mixtape featuring Ringo Starr’s Beatles songs – ones he write and also sang lead vocals on – and a selection of his solo tracks. Before I get to that, I want to include some bio from his official website:

“Ultimately what’s most impressive about Ringo Starr isn’t what he’s been, but rather who he is,” wrote Rolling Stone rock critic David Wild. “The man’s great heart and soul, his wit and wisdom.” Indeed, his music has always emanated from his warmth, humor, and exceptional skill, manifesting in songs we know and love: With A Little Help From My Friends, Don’t Pass Me By, Octopus’ Garden, Photograph, It Don’t Come Easy, Back Off Boogaloo, You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine), Don’t Go Where the Road Don’t Go, The No No Song, and Never Without You, to name a few. Since beginning his career with The Beatles in the 1960s, Ringo has been one of the world’s brightest musical luminaries. He has enjoyed a successful, dynamic solo career as a singer, songwriter, drummer, collaborator, and producer – releasing 18 solo studio albums to date. He is also an acclaimed actor appearing in over 15 films. Drawing inspiration from classic blues, soul, country, honky-tonk and rock ‘n’ roll, he continues to play an important recording, touring, and unofficial mentoring role in modern music.

Born Richard Starkey on July 7, 1940 “at a very young age” he knew from very early on what he wanted to do. “When I was 13, I only wanted to be a drummer,” remembers Ringo. Four years later, he joined the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Band, and in 1959 hooked up with the Raving Texans, who later became Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Just three years after that, Ringo was asked to join The Beatles. Worried that he might cost the Hurricanes a summer-long residency if he left, he delayed his departure until they could find a replacement. On August 18, 1962, Ringo Starr officially joined Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison in what would become one of the most important popular music acts of all time, or as Ringo says, “the biggest band in the land.”

In 1970, EMI released Ringo’s first solo album, Sentimental Journey. It was exactly that: a record of the music he’d grown up with and which remained close to his heart. (He later said, “I did it for my Mum.”) Ringo followed up a year later with Beaucoups Of Blues, a country and western album recorded in Nashville with Pete Drake in just two days. That same year, The Beatles disbanded.

But Ringo’s passion for creating music continued to propel him and those around him forward. In 1971, he began his unprecedented run as the first solo Beatle to score seven consecutive Top 10 singles, starting with “It Don’t Come Easy.” His second hit single, “Back Off Boogaloo” followed in 1972, and was written with and inspired by T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan. Ringo released his eponymous smash hit album in 1973. It yielded three Top 10 singles, including the #1 hits “Photograph” and “You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful And You’re Mine). The album Ringo also marked the first time since The Beatles’ break-up that all 4 band members participated in the same project (though not at the same time).

The 1970’s also saw Ringo expand on his film career, which began in the 1960’s with The Beatles films, Hard Days Night in 1964, Help! In1965 followed by Magical Mystery Tour in 1967. In 1968 he starred in Candy and in 1969 he co-starred opposite friend Peter Sellers in the critically acclaimed Magic Christian. In 1970 the documentary Let It Be was released, and in 1971 Ringo starred in Blindman. In 1974 he joined his best friend Harry Nilsson in The Son of Dracula, narrated Harry’s animated film The Point and appeared in Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels. In 1973 he co-starred as a Teddy Boy in That’ll Be The Day, in 1975 in Ken Russell’s Lisztomania and in 1976 joined The Band for their legendary final concert filmed by Martin Scorcese, The Last Waltz.

Between 1974 and 1978, Ringo released such hits as the Top 10 singles “Only You (And You Alone)” and “The No No Song,” and the albums Goodnight Vienna (1974), Blast From Your Past (1975), Rotogravure (1976), Ringo The 4th (1977), and Bad Boy (1978), which was complemented by a television special, Ognir Rats, with Art Carney, Angie Dickinson, Carrie Fisher and Vincent Price. In 1979 he appeared in the documentary on The Who, The Kids Are All Right and in 1981 Ringo starred in Caveman, where he met and soon married his beautiful co-star Barbara Bach. “I fell in love with her the moment I saw her getting on the plane, and I’ve been blessed that she has loved me since.” That same year he recorded Stop and Smell the Roses, his most critically acclaimed record since Ringo, followed two years later by Old Wave, for which he teamed up with producer Joe Walsh of The Eagles. In 1984 he appeared in Paul McCartney’s film Give My Regards To Broadstreet. A hits collection, Starr Struck: The Best Of Ringo Starr, Vol. 2, was released in 1989.

In 1989 Ringo assembled his first All Starr Band and he found consistent success as a live act with his revolving All Starrs. “I got asked if I’d be interested in putting a band together,” Ringo would later recount. “I had been thinking the same thing, and so I went through my phone book, rang up a few friends and asked them if they’d like to have fun in the summer.” Those friends included Joe Walsh, E-Streeters Clarence Clemmons and Nils Lofgren, former Band members Rick Danko and Levon Helm, Dr. John, Billy Preston, and Jim Keltner. The tour met with great success, yielding his first live album, Ringo and His All Starr Band, in 1990. “I’ve said this over and over again,” Ringo remarked, “but I love being in a band.”

The 1990s saw some of the best records of Ringo’s career. In 1992, he released Time Takes Time, which The New York Times hailed as “Starr’s best: more consistently pleasing than Ringo, it shows him as an assured performer and songwriter.” Later that year, Ringo put together his second All Starr Band, featuring Zak Starkey (his son), Burton Cummings, Dave Edmunds, Nils Lofgren, Todd Rundgren, Timothy B Schmidt, and Joe Walsh. It marked the first time Ringo had toured Europe since his Beatles days. The band’s second incarnation also yielded a new concert album, Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band – Live From Montreaux. The third All Starr Band toured the U.S. and Japan in 1995, again featuring Zak Starkey, as well as John Entwistle, Felix Cavaliere, Mark Farner, Billy Preston, Mark Rivera and Randy Bachman; Ringo Starr and His Third All Starr Band, Vol. 1 was release in 1997. The fourth band — with Gary Brooker, Jack Bruce, Peter Frampton, Simon Kirke and Mark Rivera — toured the U.S. and Europe, and with them Ringo became the first former Beatle to play in Russia.

1998 brought the release of Vertical Man, recorded with Mark Hudson, and the first collaboration between Ringo and “the Roundheads.” It was one of his strongest records, due largely to his deep involvement as drummer, singer, co-writer, and co-producer. He followed with an appearance at NYC’s Bottom Line and on VH1’s “Storytellers.” 1999 began with the creation of the 5th All Starr Band, consisting of Gary Brooker, Jack Bruce, Timmy Cappello, Simon Kirke and Todd Rundgren. In October that year, Starr released the irrepressibly festive holiday album I Wanna Be Santa Claus, mixing classics like “The Little Drummer Boy” with originals like the title track. The 6th All Starr Band was launched in 2000 and featured Jack Bruce, Eric Carmen, Dave Edmunds, Simon Kirke and Mark Rivera touring the U.S. together. The following spring, Ringo put together the 7th band, including the first female All Starr, Sheila E, as well as Greg Lake, Roger Hodgson, Ian Hunter, Howard Jones and Mark Rivera. He celebrated more than a decade of All Starr tours with the release of Ringo and His All Starr Band: The Anthology, So Far.

In 2003, The Roundheads launched the release of Ringo Rama with another impromptu Bottom Line performance. 2003’s 8th group of All Starrs — Paul Carrack, Sheila E., Colin Hay, Mark Rivera and John Waite — hit the road, their tour resulting in another live album, Ringo Starr and His All Star Band: Tour 2003 and DVD. “If you look at all the bands I’ve put together, it’s an incredible array of musicians, all these different people,” Ringo said of the All Starr experience. “Everyone has hit records, hit songs. The show consists of me up front and then I go back behind the kit and support the others. It’s just good music and I’m having a lot of fun and that’s what it’s all about – great music and fun.”

Genesis Publications printed a limited edition 2004 run of Ringo’s book, Postcards From The Boys, the proceeds of which went to the Lotus Foundation charity. He described it as “a presentation of postcards John, Paul and George have sent me over the years. What’s incredible about them is that some are actual art pieces.” His Choose Love album, full of inspired songs of innocence and experience, was released in 2005. Two years later, Capitol/EMI Music Catalog Marketing released the first-ever career and label-spanning collection of Ringo’s best solo recordings, PHOTOGRAPH: The Very Best Of Ringo Starr, featuring 20 standout tracks released between 1970 and 2005.

Ringo released Liverpool 8, his first new album with Capitol/EMI since 1974’s Goodnight Vienna, in 2008. He co-wrote its 12 original tracks, recording them in the UK and California, and the title track became the first in a series of autobiographical songs. That summer, he toured with his 10th All Starr Band — Gregg Bissonette, Colin Hay, Billy Squier, Hamish Stuart, Edgar Winter, and Gary Wright, across the U.S. and Canada, winding up at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles with a show recorded and later released as a live DVD by UMe. That summer also launched a tradition of celebrating his birthday, July 7, in and with the public and a global call to action for to say, think or do “Peace & Love” at Noon your local time, the birthday wish being a moment of “Peace & Love” would spread around the world. The first event occurred outside the Hard Rock Café in Chicago.

Y NOT, the first album Ringo himself produced, came out in 2010, showcasing collaborations with old and new friends, Paul McCartney among them. Their duet and the album’s stunning first single, “Walk With You,” served as a moving tribute to the power of friendship. Ben Harper also sang on the album, his band supporting Ringo on a promotional tour for the release. Ringo received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame and launched a tour with his 11th All Starr Band: Gregg Bissonette, Rick Derringer, Wally Palmer, Richard Page, Edgar Winter, and Gary Wright. Over the following year, the band would tour the US, Canada, Europe and Latin America. On July 7, 2010 Ringo celebrated another “Peace & Love” birthday with family, friends and thousands gathered outside the Hard Rock Café in Times Square, New York City. The following year, while on tour with All Starrs, Ringo held a “Peace & Love” birthday event outside the Hard Rock Café in Hamburg Germany.

Ringo 2012, again produced by its namesake, featured 9 tracks, including new versions of “Wings,” and “Step Lightly.” In June that year, Ringo assembled His 12th All Starr Band — Gregg Bissonette, Richard Page, Steve Lukather, Mark Rivera, Gregg Rolie and Todd Rundgren — who would, by 2013, tour through the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Mexico, and South America. The live DVD Ringo at the Ryman was recorded with this band as well, on Ringo’s birthday, July 7, 2012. Earlier they all convened for a moment of “Peace & Love” in front of the Hard Rock Café Nashville.

In June 2013, The GRAMMY Museum opened “Ringo: Peace & Love,” a record-breaking undertaking that drew more than 120,000 visitors and was the first major exhibit to focus on a drummer. In September 2013 Ringo was awarded the prestigious French Medal of Honor, being appointed Commander of Arts & Letters in recognition of his musical and artistic contributions.

December 2013 saw the publication of Photograph, a limited edition collection of never-before-seen material, including Ringo’s photos and exclusive images from his own personal archives, was published that December. It featured over 300 photos and 15,000 words of text.

On January 20, 2014 Ringo Starr’s musical legacy was celebrated when The David Lynch Foundation honored him with the ‘Lifetime of Peace & Love Award’. The event included star-studded tributes to Ringo’s extensive catalog that was broadcast on AXS July 13, 2014.  Participating artists included Joe Walsh, Ben Harper, Ben Folds, Brendan Benson, Bettye LaVette, The Head & The Heart and Jesse Elliot and Lindsey McWilliams of Ark Life, with an equally stellar backing band featuring Don Was, Benmont Tench, Peter Frampton, Steve Lukather and Kenny Arnoff.

January 26, 2014 saw Ringo perform his song “Photograph” on the GRAMMYS, followed by him jumping on the kit during his old band mate, Paul McCartney’s performance. Ringo and Paul then performed together again the following evening, this time playing several songs for the Emmy Award-nominated taping of CBS’ “The Beatles, A Grammy Salute; The Night That Changed America,” celebrating the 50th Anniversary of their first U.S. visit and appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.  It was broadcast on the exact anniversary, February 9, and aired again February 12. It has also been broadcast internationally.

In February 2014, Simon & Shuster published “Octopus’s Garden”, a children’s book based on Ringo’s lyrics. That summer Ringo took the 12th All Starr Band back out on the road, adding another leg in October 2014. “I just love this band and I’m doing anything to keep it together – we keep looking for places we haven’t played yet and we’ll end up playing clubs,” Ringo joked with reporters when the band launched the summer dates in June 2014.

In July 7, 2014 Ringo celebrated his birthday with his traditional Peace & Love event at Capitol Records in LA, this time joined by John Varvatos who revealed Ringo would be the model for his 2014 Fall Fashion Advertising campaign, coupled with a social media initiative, #PeaceRocks that raised funds and awareness for the David Lynch Foundation via The Ringo Starr Peace & Love Fund. “I’ve waited a long time to become a male model,” Ringo said with a laugh, “and what a great way to do it – all for a good cause.

In March 2015 Ringo released “Postcards From Paradise” (UMe) featuring 11 original tracks and his very first single written and recorded with his All Starr Band, “Island In the Sun”. “I have tried for 25 years from the first All-Starr band to get us to write songs and record. It’s just something that I’ve wanted to do,” Ringo explained. “the song started as a jam at a soundcheck. We all wrote it and we all played on it, and it’s the first time ever!”

In April 2015 he was inducted by Paul McCartney into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist for Musical Excellence, performing his songs with Paul, Joe Walsh and Green Day. In July Ringo returned to Capitol Records for his 75th birthday joined by family, friends and gathered fans for a special “Peace & Love” celebration. In September 2015 Ringo’s book Photograph was released worldwide in a mass hardcover edition, and in October 2015 Ringo and the All Starrs went back out on the road performing 21 shows in 31 days throughout North America.

Throughout his career he has received 9 Grammys, has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame first as a Beatle and then as solo artist. Between 1970 and 2015 Ringo has released 18 solo studio records. He has acted in over 15 films, received an Academy Award, and was nominated as an actor for an Emmy. Ringo has published three books; had a stint as a male fashion model and that same year went behind the lens for the Foo Fighters PR shots.

For all his many creative successes, Ringo is and always will be first and foremost a musician, a drummer. Ringo’s candor, wit and soul are the lifeblood of his music. As he sang on the autobiographical Liverpool 8, “I always followed my heart and I never missed a beat.” Peace and love are his life’s rhythm and melody, and he propels this universal message in everything he does: his evocative artwork, his enthused live performances, his legendary songs, all imbued with the joy, reflection, and wisdom of the music icon the world knows and loves simply as ‘Ringo’”.

I am going to end there. A very happy eighty-fifth birthday to Ringo Starr for 7th July! One of the greatest and most important musicians ever, below is a selection of his wonderful work with The Beatles, together with some solo gems. In the same way he signs off his social media posts with these words, I want to offer the great Ringo Starr…

PEACE and love.

FEATURE: I’m a Feminist, But… Trying to Reverse My Male-Heavy Music Listening Habits

FEATURE:

 

 

I’m a Feminist, But…

PHOTO CREDIT: Moose Photos/Pexels

Trying to Reverse My Male-Heavy Music Listening Habits

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ON the podcast…

PHOTO CREDIT: John Tekeridis/Pexels

The Guilty Feminist, there is this question asked of guests that starts “I’m a feminist, but…”, where the women interviewed reveal something that means there is this guilt or negative habit that maybe puts a dent in their feminism. For me, that very much applies to music. I am someone who promotes so many women on my blog. Most of my Spotlight features are about female artists. So many other features around women. Even if most of my content relates to women, my listening habits do not necessarily reflect that. Of course, I listen to the female artists that I promise. However, away from that, I tend to listen to mostly older music. A lot of that is from male artists. I was raised mostly on music by men. In the 1990s, a lot of what was promoted and put into music magazine was by male artists. Of course, there were some amazing women from that time that I loved and still listen to today. However, so much of my parents’ music is from men. Also, you get into this habit of falling back on what is comfortable and familiar. I explore new music as much as I can, though I find I have this awful habit of going to artists that I have heard so many times before. Maybe it is an issue with algorithms on streaming sites. The way you are regurgitated what you already listen to and there is not this more expansive and smarter way of discovering music. Spotify and others going beyond  the recycled and predictable and feeding suggestions and interesting musical avenues. I do think I get into this cycle of relying on mixes and playlists suggested to me. This features a lot of male artists. As a feminist who finds it really important to promote and spotlight women, I feel this guilt of listening to more men than women. This is something I am compelled to change in years to come.

I do wish it were easier to have all these incredible new artists in one place. Streaming sites rely heavily on a small number of mainstream artists of today and classic acts. I often find that many of the artists from yesteryear that I love that were female-fronted or women tend to get buried. I would love to be able to have a daily listening schedule that meant there was this balance. However, I do find it harder and harder to. Many might say it is easy to change. Do we often gravitate towards music we grew up on? I am discovering a load of new music, though I tend to find I listen to that less than artist I have known for years. Not that it makes me a bad feminist, thought I do feel this regret. I need to do better and listen to more women. Go discovering incredible women that I have not yet written about. However, as I have said, streaming sites do not help with that. I need to expand my horizons and get out of some bad habits. It is Pride Month, so embracing more L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ women and trans women. Promoting their work and discovering their incredible music. I can’t blame entirely streaming services or habits we all have. I do feel this pang of guilt when I keep listening to male artists. Maybe others have this same regret. It is not necessarily bad that most of the songs I listen to are by men. However, as I am someone talking about gender equality and giving women more airtime and headline slots, it does seem a littler hypocritical that I listen to so many male artists. As much as anything, I am getting slightly bored of the way of I listen to music.

It is nice to have that access to a world of music. The nostalgia I get when listening to artists I grew up on. Whoever, I feel like I am depriving myself of so many incredible artists. These women from decades past and around today whose music I do not listen to enough – or at all. I am not sure what the best way is to engage that way and reverse the trend. However, I have come to a point where I am aware of the male bias when it comes to the music I listen to and the artists I promote and discuss – who are mostly female. As I write this, I am listening to the radio and HAIM are on. They are incredible group that I am well aware of and do not listen to enough. I have been talking about Kate Nash recently and do not listen to her enough. Artists I featured years ago such as GRACEY. Classic artists who I grew up with such as Madonna, I tend to play less than many of the groups I admired when I was a teenager. I do need to make a change but, once you get into this routine of leaning on the same songs, it can be very hard to break out of that. I do need to act. I am depriving myself of so much great music and, as much as anything, it is important to me that I give more time to female artists. Suggestions for classic and new artists would be much welcomed. I will dip into my archives of the artists I have spotlighted and try and listen to as many mixes and playlists where women dominate. Getting out of that headspace of going straight for the same songs and artists. I do genuinely have a lot of guilt. Me being this hypocrite! It does bug me. It asks a bigger question regarding music tastes. Do we tend to listen to less new music when we reach a certain age and tend to listen to the music of our childhood and teenage years? Maybe so. It is not really giving me much satisfaction listening to the same songs over and over. Because of that, I do need to listen more to music made by women. I feel that my listening experience will be…

RICHER for it.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Incredible Motown Tracks

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels

Incredible Motown Tracks

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I did explore this subject…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Temptations in 1965

for a playlist back in 2020. However, I wanted to revisit Motown songs for this Digital Mixtape. I am going to include a selection of classics from the legendary label. I have been listening to groups like The Temptations. Get Ready, one of their classics, has been in my ear and head for a while. I can see it opening a film. A title sequence song that could lead to something incredible. Even though is problematic celebrating the song’s writer and producer Smokey Robinson at the moment, I wanted to put the focus on the group rather than the song’s creator. Put The Temptations alongside other greats like Mary Wells, The Four Tops, and Martha and the Vandellas. There is a lot to celebrate about Motown and its legacy. However, as this article from earlier in the year, Motown also empowered many female artists. Giving the spotlight to women:

“From the very beginning, Motown, as we know it now, would never have been built successfully without women. Berry Gordy Jr’s mother, Bertha, was a successful business owner alongside her husband, Berry Gordy, Sr. It may not be so vast a leap, then, to assume that she instilled an entrepreneurial spirit in her children – particularly Berry and his four sisters. Through them, a spirit of Motown and female empowerment was fostered, with the company giving chances to women in almost every aspect of its running, from overseeing the finances to shaping the label’s iconic fashion sense, launching the careers of its biggest stars, and penning the songs those stars recorded.

Esther Gordy, the eldest sister, worked as the Senior Vice President of Motown and joined the family business in 1961, remaining there until 1972, when Berry Gordy relocated the label to Los Angeles and Esther chose to remain in Detroit. She would go on to found the Motown Museum – which remains a popular tourist attraction to this day. Loucye Gordy, Berry’s third sister, died suddenly in 1965, but in her short time at the label she proved vital to the Motown structure, overseeing both Motown’s finances and its publishing arm.

But perhaps it is sisters Anna and Gwen Gordy whose impact on Motown can be most readily felt. Anna Records, founded by Gwen and Billy Davis in 1958 and named after Gwen’s sister, issued Barrett Strong’s stone-cold classic, “Money (That’s What I Want)”. Anna was also a songwriter who, along with her husband, Marvin Gaye, co-wrote “Flyin’ High (In The Friendly Sky)” for Marvin’s 1971 album, What’s Going On, and also earned a credit on “Just To Keep You Satisfied,” which closes 1973’s Let’s Get It On. Together, Anna and Marvin also wrote songs for The Originals, including their biggest hit, “The Bells,” which would later be covered by the singer-songwriter Laura Nyro.

Gwen Gordy Fuqua, the youngest Gordy sister, was also an entrepreneur and songwriter, who, along with Berry, wrote hits for Jackie Wilson during the 50s. Gwen was integral to the evolution of Motown’s style, as she hired Maxine Powell to oversee a finishing school to ensure that the label’s roster looked and behaved the part. By teaching its artists to walk, talk, and dance like stars, Motown launched its performers into the mainstream, demanding that audiences take notice of these polished and talented artists – pushing against racial and gender barriers to show that these were incredible talents worthy of radio play and TV appearances and that their skin color or socio-economic backgrounds shouldn’t define them, or hold them back. Arguably it was the Motown girl groups who really got the most out of this experience.

Signed, sealed, delivered: female songwriters

It wasn’t just the female singers who gained successful opportunities during their time at Motown; some of its finest female songwriters were also given a shot. Much like Martha Reeves, Syreeta first worked for Motown as a receptionist. After a brief spell recording for the label in 1968 (under the name Rita Wright) she began dating Stevie Wonder and the pair started writing songs together, including The Spinners’ glorious “It’s A Shame.”

Other female songwriters to collaborate with Stevie Wonder include Yvonne Wright (“Evil,” “You’ve Got It Bad Girl,” “Little Girl Blue”) and Sylvia Moy (“Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” “My Cherie Amour”), the latter of whom who also established herself as a producer. Even Stevie Wonder’s mother, Lula Mae Hardaway, received writing credits on Motown releases – including on one of Wonder’s biggest hits, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.”

Gloria Jones, whose “Tainted Love” has become a Northern soul classic, also spent time at Motown and provided material for The Supremes and Gladys Knight & The Pips, writing “If I Were Your Woman” alongside Pam Sawyer – whose own writing career is phenomenally varied and extensive.

Enduring successes: feminist subjects

When it came to recording material, there were plenty of interesting topics for Motown’s female artists to sing about. Alongside the standard fare of romantic numbers or songs about heartbreak, there were occasional songs laced with socio-political concern, such as Martha & The Vandellas’ “Dancing In The Street” or even, to an extent, “Nowhere To Run,” with its tale of a stifling and damaging relationship. But on their 1968 album Love Child, Diana Ross & The Supremes addressed more delicate topics, such as pregnancy, illegitimacy, and motherhood”.

I am going to end with a mixtape of some wonderful Motown cuts. Many of them by amazing women who no doubt inspired many artists who followed them. A distinct and extraordinary sound, I do wonder how many artists working today know about the rich history of Motown. There are various documentaries that are worth seeking out. Motown: The Sound of Young America is worth getting and reading. Some might notice the omission of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles but, given the accusations of sexual assault and rape against him, I could not include him for this playlist – even though he helped define Motown. For those familiar with Motown or completely new to it, below are some of the incredible artists that…

HELPED define the legendry label.

FEATURE: Hello, Philadelphia! Live Aid at Forty

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Hello, Philadelphia!

Live Aid at Forty

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EVEN if some feel that…

PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo

Live Aid has a complicated or corrosive legacy, one cannot deny that it was hugely important in raising money and awareness. In terms of it as this global concert, it is one of the most notable and incredible events in music history. As 13th July marks forty years since Live Aid was held, I wanted to look inside the concerts. The shows were held at Wembley Stadium in London and the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. Organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for famine relief in Africa, specifically Ethiopia. It is amazing that over one and a half billion people watched the sixteen-hour concert broadcast worldwide. The concert raised over £110 million. A Live Aid musical, Just for One Day, hit the London stage but gained some mixed reviews. I know that the BBC is celebrating and spotlighting Live Aid at forty:

“This July, BBC Two and Radio 2 will mark the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, which took place on Saturday 13th July 1985.

BBC Two and BBC iPlayer broadcasts Live Aid at 40, which reveals the behind-the-scenes story of the 1985 concert that brought the idea of charity to a new generation. Exclusive interviews include iconic figures such as Bob Geldof, Bono and Sting - along with US President George Bush, President Obasanjo of Nigeria and Birhan Woldu, the woman who as a dying child, became the abiding image of the Wembley concert and the famine.

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, the landmark 1985 concert that reshaped global aid, Brook Lapping, a Zinc Media label, announces its latest documentary series in association with Ronachan Films. A coproduction between the BBC and CNN Originals, Live Aid at 40 delves deep into the complex, sometimes controversial, stories behind this historic event and its legacy, in Britain, in the US, in Ethiopia and Africa as a whole.

The series weaves the back room stories of two gangs of musicians, from the UK and the US with the political stories that both inspired them and brought them to a worldwide audience. Featuring exclusive interviews with iconic figures such as Bob Geldof, Bono, Sting and Midge Ure, the series chronicles how musical legends from both countries mobilised billions worldwide: first to answer a famine in Ethiopia, and later inspiring global leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair to begin to address the true causes of global poverty. Live Aid forever altered the perception of charity and humanitarian efforts. Starting from small donations, to the donations of thousands of pounds, the story ends in billions of government aid.

Archive of the performances and back stage of the record and the concert feature Paula Yates, Boy George, Status Quo and George Michael whilst interviews with Nile Rodgers, Lenny Henry, Phil Collins, Lionel Richie, Patti LaBelle, Roger Taylor and Brian May are set against the memories of the Ethiopian politicians at the heart of the relief effort, Dawit Giorgis and Berhane Deressa. These combine with the stories from political heavyweights including President Obasanjo of Nigeria, Condoleezza Rice, George W Bush and Tony Blair. The series offers a gripping account of Live Aid’s impact on music, politics and global awareness over the twenty years between Live Aid in 1985 and Live 8 in 2005.

Emma Hindley, BBC Commissioning Editor, says: "The series takes the audience on an irresistible and entertaining ride through the 40 years since the biggest live concert ever was shown on TV. Featuring exclusive behind the scenes interviews with an array of stars of rock & pop, Live Aid at 40 revels in the music, unravels the politics and explores the legacy of Live Aid."

Also coming to BBC Two in July is Live Aid the Concert (w/t). On a dazzling summer’s day in 1985, the UK came to a standstill to watch a concert on the BBC - 16 hours of music, performed by some of the world’s greatest artists, including David Bowie, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Patti LaBelle, Phil Collins, Queen, Spandau Ballet, Sade, Sting, Status Quo, Tina Turner and U2. This concert was Live Aid, which was brought together by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, following the success of the Band Aid single Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Approximately two billion people watched the broadcast in more than 100 countries. Now, for the first time since 1985, BBC Two gives viewers a chance to relive over 6.5 hours of extended highlights of the London and Philadelphia concerts, in addition to backstage footage, including interviews with Bono, Brian May, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Howard Jones, Roger Daltrey, Spandau Ballet, Sting, The Style Council and a transatlantic interview with Phil Collins on Concorde.

Jonathan Rothery, Head of BBC Popular Music TV says: “This summer we’re delighted to be giving viewers a chance to relive one of the biggest concerts in history for the first time on TV since it was originally broadcast on the BBC. By providing over 6.5 hours of footage that was captured on the day Live Aid took place, we want viewers to feel transported back to 1985, and to enjoy all those classic songs that we all still know and love to this day, as they were performed on that stage.”

The Making of Do They Know It’s Christmas, which was broadcast on BBC Four in November 2024, is available for viewers to enjoy on BBC iPlayer.

BBC Radio 2 will be marking the anniversary on Sunday 13 July, exactly 40 years since the concert, as the station broadcasts Live Aid – The Fans Story (12am-1am and then available on BBC Sounds).

This special is introduced by Radio 2’s Paul Gambaccini who sets the scene and recalls his involvement on that seminal day back in 1985, broadcasting backstage for the BBC. Midge Ure and Bob Geldof reflect on the event, and we then hear from some of the big-name performers of the day: Francis Rossi of Status Quo, Dee C. Lee of The Style Council, Howard Jones, Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, Billy Ocean, Nik Kershaw as well as Iain Parkhouse of the Coldstream Guards.

Plus, Radio 2’s host of Sounds of the 80s Gary Davies, as well as Michelle Visage (who watched from her home in New Jersey) and Michael Ball also share their memories of where they were and how they watched the event. We hear the stories of pop fans Jayne, Laura, Simon and Lucy who travelled from different parts of the UK to be at Wembley on that day, recalling a pre-internet world of holding physical tickets and enjoying the moment, without documenting it for social media.

Packed with fascinating insights from backstage, onstage, in the audience and viewing from home, soundtracked by some of the most iconic performances ever recorded, we are bringing Live Aid back to life 40 years on”.

There articles like this that discuss the problematic side of Live Aid and the messages that it sent. Maybe this idea of white saviours trying to solve famine and poverty, did many of those artists who performed at Live Aid genuinely want to change things? Was it lip service? How genuine was Live Aid in terms of its goals? It raised a lot of money but it is clear that it also changed the nature of fundraising. I want to focus on the more positive side of Live Aid. In 2020, Mark Beaumont wrote for The Independent about Live Aid thirty-five years later. I would advise people to read the whole article as I have sort of mangled it a bit! I know there will be new features around Live Aid closer to its fortieth anniversary on 13th July:  

“With a nebula of stars queueing up to perform at two simultaneous stadium shows in London and Philadelphia, Live Aid wasn’t just the greatest gig on Earth, it was the birth of music as a formidable humanitarian and philanthropic force, a defining peak of the Eighties musical pomp and splendour and the culmination of rock’s decades-long expansion to critical mass. It was also a gigantic leap of faith built from Bob Geldof’s determination to hustle, bully and cajole the greatest show he could imagine into reality.

Following the 3 million-selling success of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” the previous year, which became the fastest selling UK single ever and raised £8m for Ethiopian famine aid, the perception might well have been that Geldof now possessed a golden Filofax and had the biggest names in rock at his beck and call. In fact, when Boy George suggested organising a star-studded concert after Geldof and assorted Band Aid alumni joined Culture Club for an encore of the single at Wembley Arena in December 1984, it took every ounce of Geldof’s single-minded guile and resolve to pull it off.

“He was a charismatic leader,” says Live Aid’s UK production manager Andrew Zweck today. “He was inspiring, he motivated us. The greatest legacy of Live Aid for me personally, is the example of how Bob Geldof’s leadership demonstrated the power of the individual. How the voice and action of just one person could start a movement that could make a difference.”

Then a lesser-known act, U2’s set proved a breakthrough, even though their closing song “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” had to be cut as Bono, sporting one of the Eighties’ lushest mullets, noticed 15-year-old Kal Khalique being suffocated as the crowd surged towards him (at Bono’s beckoning) and the band elongated “Bad” to 14 minutes while he leapt off the stage to help rescue and dance with her; Khalique later claimed Bono saved her life that day.

Bowie also cut the song “Five Years” from his set in order to screen a video of footage from the famine accompanied by The Cars’ “Drive”, a film so moving that phone donations – which had reached £300 per second when a tired and emotional Geldof had visited the BBC booth to demand viewers empty their pockets – rocketed further. Speaking to The Tube backstage after his performance, Bowie was asked about his plans for the rest of the evening. “I’m going to go home,” he said straight down the camera, “and I’m going to have a really good f***.”

It was Queen’s magical 22-minute set, however, which has come to epitomise Live Aid. Introduced by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones dressed as policemen investigating a noise complaint from Belgium, Mercury jogged onstage for a career-defining performance: the piano intro of “Bohemian Rhapsody” gave way to stadium-wide cult clapping for “Radio Gaga”, “We Are The Champions” turned Wembley into a sea of swaying arms and Mercury bestrode the event like a moustachio’d Colossus with a baton-mike sceptre. “I remember a huge rush of adrenaline as I went on stage and a massive roar from the crowd,” Brian May told The Observer, “and then all of us just pitching in. Looking back, I think we were all a bit over-excited, and I remember coming off and thinking it was very scrappy. But there was a lot of very good energy too. Freddie was our secret weapon. He was able to reach out to everybody in that stadium effortlessly, and I think it was really his night.”

As for Geldof, it was a stressful and highly strung experience. His mood ricocheted throughout the day, aggravated by pain from a sprained back that kept him slightly hunched. By the time he was gathering a stage full of stars for the finale of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” he was thoroughly exhausted, carried shoulder-high by Townshend at the show’s end towards a much-needed rest.

In Philadelphia, the party raged on. At 1am in a second-floor suite at the Palace Hotel, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Bob Dylan chatted with Jimmy Page and Stephen Stills about their various onstage mishaps. “Fun?” said Dylan of his three-song set with Richards and Wood. “No, we couldn’t hear anything.”

“Would have been better if we’d gotten paid,” Richards joked to Rolling Stone. Indirectly, though, most of them did. As the CD era was dawning, sales of the acts involved with Live Aid soared. Collins, Madonna, U2 and Queen saw their records catapulted back into the charts, and one of the most immediate legacies of the show was its cementing of a top tier of heritage musicians who would hob-nob with Charles and Diana at similar events over the coming years – a rock’n’roll royalty of their own.

IN THIS PHOTO: Crowds at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid/PHOTO CREDIT: Rex Features

Financially, the success of the event would come into question. Huey Lewis was right to be concerned about how effectively the money raised was being used to help the victims of famine. In the wake of the Band Aid single, relief food was left to rot in Ethiopian docks as the country’s dictatorial leader Mengistu Haile Mariam – who had helped to bring on the famine by napalming farmland – prioritised the unloading of weapons for his four internal conflicts. The $127m raised by Live Aid helped to break the trucking cartel that was stopping relief getting into the country but, according to investigations by Spin in 1986, much of it was funnelled through Mengistu’s government, who used the money to purchase hi-tech weaponry from the Soviet Union and the food to lure his people into a brutal resettlement programme that killed hundreds of thousands. “I’ll shake hands with the devil on my left and on my right to get to the people we are meant to help,” Geldof said in response to warnings from aid group Medicins Sans Frontiers. But both devils were channelling his charity away from the starving.

The beneficial legacy of Live Aid, however, cannot be underestimated. In its wake governments woke up to the swell of public support for humanitarian global relief and began to place it at the heart of foreign policy decisions. “We took an issue that was nowhere on the political agenda,” Geldof told The Guardian, “and, through the lingua franca of the planet – which is not English but rock’n’roll – we were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surplus.” The ripple effect of Live Aid, in terms of lives indirectly saved, is incalculable.

“What I’ve seen over the 35 years,” says Zweck today, “is the awakening of the social conscience of the music industry, with artists realising they had a power and they could do good with that power. We saw after that Bono and Sting, Roger Waters, using their voice, their position and their platform to push for causes they believe in. It would change people’s perspective of charity and mobilise public opinion to such an extent that government policies in the developing world and other areas would be altered thereafter. You can look back at Live Aid and see that’s where it started. Governments now listen, and that all started with a pop concert”.

I am going to write another feature about Live Aid at forty. I will end this one with an article that discusses perhaps the standout and most celebrated moment of Live Aid. That is when Queen rocked Wembley! Freddie Mercury getting the crowd united and singing. One of the greatest and most important live moments in music history. Something people still talk about to this day:

“Queen’s Live Aid performance

Queen were immediately preceded at Wembley by the comedians Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith – who were dressed as policemen and joked about receiving a complaint about the noise “from a woman in Belgium.” They introduced “the next combo” as “Her Majesty… Queen.”

A truly charismatic Mercury, who looked full of confidence, jogged out on to a vast stage whose top was adorned with a banner saying “Feed The World.” Mercury, sporting his trademark mustache and wearing white jeans, a white tank top, and with a studded band around his right bicep, began by sitting at the piano and playing a short, inspired version of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“The note heard around the world”

During “Radio Ga Ga” he got up and strutted around the stage, using the microphone and stand as a prop, and getting the fired-up crowd to join in with the chorus. The next few moments were remarkable, as Mercury led the 72,000 spectators in some spine-tingling vocal improvisation, as they sang along to “ay-oh.” His final, wonderful vocal was dubbed “the note heard around the world.”

The singalong fun was followed by a version of “Hammer To Fall,” a song written by May. Mercury, who had strapped on an electric guitar, then addressed the crowd. “This next song is only dedicated to beautiful people here tonight – which means all of you. Thank you for coming along, you are making this a great occasion,” he said, before launching into an energetic, exuberant performance of his own composition, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

After a short version of “We Will Rock You,” the swaying, delirious crowd were treated to a finale of “We Are The Champions.” Mercury was simply mesmerizing. “I’d never seen anything like that in my life and it wasn’t calculated, either… it was the greatest day of our lives,” said May.

“You bastards, you stole the show”

It wasn’t only Queen who realized they had been sensational. Paul Gambaccini, who was part of the BBC broadcasting team at Live Aid, recalled the awe among other superstar musicians watching backstage. “Everybody realized that Queen was stealing the show,” said Gambaccini. These were the very words Elton John uttered when he rushed into Mercury’s trailer after the set. “You bastards, you stole the show,” joked the charismatic star.

“Queen smoked ’em. They just took everybody. They walked away being the greatest band you’d ever seen in your life, and it was unbelievable,” said Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters. “And that’s what made the band so great; that’s why they should be recognized as one of the greatest rock bands of all time, because they could connect with an audience.”

“It was the perfect stage for Freddie: the whole world”

Two months later Queen began work on the album A Kind Of Magic, which sold six million copies and was promoted with a record-breaking world tour.

The choice of album title was apt. Queen provided magic on that summer day in 1985. Their impact was summed up by Geldof. “Queen were absolutely the best band of the day,” the Live Aid organizer said. “They played the best, had the best sound, used their time to the full. They understood the idea exactly, that it was a global jukebox. They just went and smashed one hit after another. It was the perfect stage for Freddie: the whole world”.

On 13th July, Live Aid turns forty. I was only two when it took place, so I can’t remember whether I saw it. It must have been really exciting tuning in and watching the biggest live event ever! A roster of huge artists united for a vital cause. In years since, there have been documentaries about Live Aid, though the BBC’s new one will be fascinating. For those who were there in person on 13th July, 1985 in Philadelphia or London to witness Live Aid were in the presence of…

SOMETHING spectacular!

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Babooshka at Forty-Five: A Hugely Important and Pivotal Moment in Her Career

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Babooshka at Forty-Five

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during a performance of Babooshka in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Adrian Boot

A Hugely Important and Pivotal Moment in Her Career

__________

IN my second…

feature around Babooshka and its forty-fifth anniversary, I wanted to concentrate on how important this song was and is. Released on 27th June, 1980, it reached number five in the U.K. The second single from Kate Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever (1980), it was a bigger commercial suycecss than the lead single, Breathing – which went to number sixteen in the U.K. I am going to bring in some words around the song and also some from Kate Bush regarding its inspiration. Kate Bush fans will know the origins and story. In terms of its subject matter and angle, it was very unusual for an artist. Bush was never one to write conventionally or like her peers. However, this idea of fidelity being tested and a wife disguised herself to test her husband. Where does that come from?! Bush drew a lot from literature and film, though Babooshka seems like it came to her in a different way. Bush did not even know that Babooshka is similar to the word, ‘babushka’ – which is Russian for an old woman or grandmother. Thought I feel uncomfortable highlighting Russia and its influence, for the sake of this song, we have to mention how the country was relevant. I believe that Bush had heard the Russian word somewhere and locked it away subconsciously. However, as I wrote in the previous Babooshka feature, Bush inadvertently helped foster a greater understanding of Russia and its history. People who heard the word and connected it to the Russian word, Babushka. There is a Kate Bush tribute act, Baby Bushka, that obviously are inspired by the Kate Bush song and its relation to the Russian word. I am going to come to my theories and points soon. Before that, I want to revisit some text that I have definitely highlighted before.

A track that has been covered quite a few times and Kate Bush pleasingly got to perform live more than once, it is among her most beloved and respected singles. Before going any further, this article from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia brings in some interview archive where Bush spoke about the inspiration behind the mighty Babooshka. One of her most extraordinary moments:

“‘Babooshka’ is about futile situations. The way in which we often ruin things for ourselves. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)

Apparently it is grandmother, it’s also a headdress that people wear. But when I wrote the song it was just a name that literally came into my mind, I’ve presumed I’ve got it from a fairy story I’d read when I was a child. And after having written the song a series of incredible coincidences happened where I’d turned on the television and there was Donald Swan singing about Babooshka.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

So I thought, “Well, there’s got to be someone who’s actually called Babooshka.” So I was looking throughRadio Timesand there, another coincidence, there was an opera called Babooshka. Apparently she was the lady that the three kings went to see because the star stopped over her house and they thought “Jesus is in there”.’ So they went in and he wasn’t. And they wouldn’t let her come with them to find the baby and she spent the rest of her life looking for him and she never found him. And also a friend of mine had a cat called Babooshka. So these really extraordinary things that kept coming up when in fact it was just a name that came into my head at the time purely because it fitted. (Peter Powell interview, Radio 1 (UK), 11 October 1980)”.

I have said in previous anniversary features how you can hear the influence of the Fairlight CMI in the song. It was a new acquisition by Kate Bush so it is not all over Never for Ever the same way as it is the follow-up, 1982’s The Dreaming. However, one cannot deny its impact and how even the addition of the sound of breaking glass you can hear was a sonic step up from the songs you hear on 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart. Technology starting to come more into play and exert bigger influence. The wonderful backing vocals from Paddy Bush and Gary Hurst; brilliant electric bass from John Giblin.

I have said how there was breaking glass heard on Babooshka. It may actually be plates, as I think Bush used some crockery and plates from Abbey Road Studios and broke them to get the effect and then apologised afterwards (I think she sent an apology note or box of chocolates for the staff!). Recorded at Abbey Road Studio 2, this wonderful song was a definite turning point for Bush. I shall discuss that. First, I want to bring in this feature. They talk about the influence of Peter Gabriel and the Fairlight CMI on the song. How it adds something distinct to Babooshka:

“The song ends with the sound of breaking plates, perfectly in key, one of the earliest examples of a sample created with the Fairlight CMI synthesiser, which had only become available in UK during the latter half of 1979. The pioneering synth, used in many 80s hits, came with a piano keyboard, monitor, and computer keyboard. An 8" floppy disc provided sampled orchestral instruments but musicians found it was best to create synthetic sounds and strange effects, such as bottles breaking or running water, which could be incorporated into songs.

Its first adopter in the UK was Peter Gabriel, who soon introduced it to Kate Bush. Her album Never For Ever (released September 1980), which includes Babooshka and Army Dreamers, was the first to use Fairlight samples; they were programmed by Richard Burgess and John Walters of Landscape, famous for the 1981 hit Einstein A Go Go. Although tech-savvy musicians loved it, the Fairlight was not universally appreciated. After the BBC science series Tomorrow's World highlighted the possibility that orchestras might be redundant in the future, the Musicians' Union railed labelled it a "lethal threat" towards its members. The year before the union has also tried to ban Gary Numan and synthesizers from Top Of The Pops for the same reason.

So did the wife ruin the marriage? That's up to the listener to decide. One interpretation is that when the husband fell for Babooska, the wife's fears were realised, and she walks away from the broken marriage. Alternatively, the husband falls in love all over again with his wife, saving their marriage; it just needed a bit of excitement. Your conclusion will depend largely on whether you are a cynic or a romantic. For the record, we believe the breaking plates are a strong hint, but who doesn't like a happy ending?

This track has it all: a wonderful narrative, melodic verses, a dramatic chorus and a memorable title. Not surprisingly, Babooshka became one of Kate Bush's biggest hits, although it never reached No.1 in any country”.

Its B-side is the underrated and extraordinarily odd Ran Tan Waltz. I love the quirky live performances of Babooshka. I think this song is one of the most important moments of Kate Bush’s career. It started with Breathing, though it was a real shift in terms of who Bush was and what her sound was. If the singles from The Kick Inside and Lionheart are more piano-led and people labelled her as this squeaky-voiced and rather demure and weird artist, Babooshka changed things – though only a little. Breathing is this epic and political song that was a smart choice of a leading single. Never for Ever is that bridge between the teenage creations of her first two albums and the more experimental two albums that followed. Babooshka is the first track on Never for Ever. A listener would put the needle down and hear this incredible song. The video too was a definite revelation. Sexy and unusual, those who thought Bush was immature or witch-like would have been taken aback by the video! Bush was only twenty-one when Babooshka was released. Even so, it seemed like the song and video announced her as a woman and grown-up artist, rather than someone much younger. Not that this was deliberate. Critics pigeonholed her on her 1978 albums. Bush did want to be taken more seriously and, as a producer on Never for Ever, she could evolve and push her sound.

The music video sees Bush alongside a double bass (contrabass), used to symbolise her husband as she wore a black bodysuit and a veil. That quick and notable switch where Bush changes into this sparse ‘Russian’ costume as her alter-ego, Babooshka. An illustration by Chris Achilleos was the basis for the costume. So bold and unique, I would argue Babooshka is the most important single release to that point. It did help to change the narrative or at least push some more positivity her way. Even so, there were these critics who still attack Kate Bush and dismissed her. NME, when they reviewed Babooshka, still mentioned this “high-pitched” and “weirdness”. In my view, Babooshka was Bush entering this new phase of her career. A revelation where new technology and lyrical inspiration came into the mix. The production sound and the striking visuals. Babooshka was a bigger commercial success than Breathing, though once cannot call Babooshka commercial or conventional. That is why its success is so wonderful. People connected with the song in 1980. As it turns forty-five on 27th June, I wanted to write about Babooshka. I hope that others share words about this track. If some critics were still beholden to cliches and wrong impressions of Kate Bush, the impact and brilliance of Babooshka…

SILENCED many other critics.

FEATURE: Footnotes: Believing Women, A Rare Pro-Trans Musical Moment and a Disappointing Thom Yorke Statement

FEATURE:

 

 

Footnotes

IN THIS PHOTO: Thom Yorke issued a lengthy statement on 30th May following criticism around a perceived silence on genocide in Gaza, and for previously performing in Israel

Believing Women, A Rare Pro-Trans Musical Moment and a Disappointing Thom Yorke Statement

__________

THIS feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Nash

allows me opportunity to do a round-up of music news and talking points from recent weeks. Rather than try and make individual features out of bits of news and happenings, instead, I get the chance to do a sort of news round-up. To start with, and what happens when men in music are accused of sexual assault and abuse, there are people who instantly think that the women who accuse men are lying. That they are standing to profit or exploiting them. There are the same arguments brought up. For one, the women are just in it for the money. The vast majority of women who accuse men of sexual assault are not doing it for the money! They are doing it because they need to find justice and because they have been the victim of something horrible. I am sure there are women who have fabricated stories and are in it for the money but, for the vast majority, they are neither lying or trying to get a pay-out. That is another point. That women are lying. What is the motive for women lying about a sexual assault? People’s assumption to side with men or disbelieve women. People should always believe women. The vast majority of these accusations are based or fact. Why do so many women come together so long after the events and do so together? The insinuation being that they have conspired and made something up. Ganging up on an artist to get money from them! Women often come forward to police so long after they have been assaulted or abused because, at the time, they fear not being believed or being fired. If they work with a musician then there is the worry they will lose their income. Women not being believed is something that means they often do not come forward at all. They will be attacked or doubted if they do speak out. Also, the trauma at the time is not something they want to relive straight away. We need to get over this mindset that women are lying and that they are trying to ruin the reputation of an artist! The idea that they took so long to say anything. Look at the case of Russell Brand and Diddy. Women have come forward a long time after they were abused/raped and they are not lying. They bravely do come forward after so long because they feared repercussions before. That police would not do anything. They want to make sure other women do not experience the same thing. It is not about getting a massive pay-out and doing it for money. It is about justice and not letting men get away with it! The reason I bring this up is because I have seen some backlash against the women who accused Smokey Robinson of sexual assault and rape.

IN THIS PHOTO: Smokey Robinson

In an ironic twist, Smokey Robinson is suing the women who he claims have tried to extort him. Why sue them for a huge amount and extort them if you think they are trying to extort you?! It smacks of someone being found out and revealed and trying to punish women for accusing them. So many people doubting the women and their motives. Smokey Robinson is very old and not the first person you would think of extorting and having millions of dollars spare. What would their motives be? If they wanted to financial ruin him, then why wait so long to do that? Why go to such lengths?! For them, it is not about seeing how much they can get. They want what every woman wants: to be believed and to make sure that the men who abused them are brought to justice. It happens a lot in music where women are often scrutinised more than the men who committed the crimes. Rather than cast aspersions of women and, in a misogynistic way, doubt them and call them liars, we need to believe them. Yes, as I have said, a small minority will be lying and want to get money from someone. Considering how hard it is for them to get police to believe them, for cases to get to court and for abusers to be punished, they would not go through such hardships if it were not true. Also, considering how many recent cases of women accusing men in music of sexual assault and abuse, why do people assume that women are lying?! This is an epidemic that has been going on for many years. Rather than channelling energy questioning the women and doubting their version of events, we need to shine a spotlight on the men who do this and why it happens so often. Whether the industry does enough. Many men (such as Marilyn Manson) still able to work and earn money. If it were a woman who was accused of a sexual assault, then she would be dropped by the label, banned from touring and attacked ands abused constantly. There are these double standards!

Before coming back to another somewhat heavy story and topic, there is a moment of positivity. I have said in previous features how I want to write an album, American Grammar, that tackles big themes and important issues in a Steely Dan style. Because, when it comes to women’s body autonomy, abortion rights, trans rights, the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, sexual abuse and assault, gender equality and the genocide we are seeing in Palestine, how many artists are writing about this? (On another point, it annoys me how many people write about L.G.B.TG.Q.I.A.+ issues and miss out the ‘I’ and ‘A’. Why do people finds it so hard to get that right?!). It is quite deafening and disappointing to see how few are using their music to talk about this. As I will discuss in the final part of this feature, many artists either not having a say or issuing statements that are obfuscating, vanilla and ‘balanced’. Rather than get angry and call out abuse, genocide and evil, they water down their words and often come out on the wrong side. In a rare case of an artist using their platform to speak up – unsurprisingly it is a female artist! -, Kate Nash’s GERM. It is a feminist and pro-trans song that also takes shots at high-profile TERFs like JK Rowling. Someone (Rowling) who uses their platform to fuel their transphobia and misogyny, as someone considered a strong feminist, she is a disgrace to that word. Kate Nash knows this and calls it out. How many other artists are doing this?! What holds back what should be a massive movement of conscientious songwriting? Marginalised and attacked people given support and voice?

IN THIS PHOTO: Bruce Springsteen

I know artists like Bruce Springsteen speaking out against President Trump can divide fans, but that is the risk they have to take. The artist is in the right, so it doesn’t matter if some do not agree! The same with women’s reproductive rights. It needs to be addressed heavily and powerfully through music. There are artists like Nadine Shah posting about genocide in Palestine. Others who use their social media platforms to speak out. However, when it comes to recent musical output, this is something relatively unexplored. Even women’s rights and equality is not being talked about that much. By women, maybe, but few men add their voice. At a time when there are so many enormously important and divisive subjects being discussed, so much modern musical output is still around the personal and predictable. GERM is a very rare case of an artist somewhat going against the grain and empowering a community often attacked, abused and mocked. I do hope that the music industry does more. I know being ‘right’ is subjective. However, when it comes to things like trans rights and women’s body autonomy, it is not that difficult or complex. There is a definite correct stance and anyone who disagrees is wrong! Why are artists so worried about repercussions or financial loss?! It does seem that they are being held back by something. Whilst in private they voice their disgust, their music does not really reflect that. It is such a shame that we do not have that many people using the stage and studio to bring about change. Irish group Kneecap created anger and condemnation when they called for people to kill their local M.P.s. Whilst it is wrong to say that, they seem to have been the victim of scapegoating. The attacks they have received is not about the danger and insensitivity of asking people to kill M.P.s. They have spoken out against the genocide in Palestine and Gaza and that seems to be the biggest issue. Those who say artists have no right getting involved in politics and that they are not qualified to speak about it (both wrong). I was listening to the podcast, The Rest Is Entertainment, and a recent episode argued this: how Kneecap were wrong and should not get involved in politics. If we discourage artists from being political and exorcising freedom of expression then that is censorship. There should be some censorship in music, though the argument around genocide and their disgust is not a political matter. It is a moral one. People who try and shut down Kneecap are those, sadly, who do not want to offend Israel and feel that what the country’s leaders are doing is acceptable.

This takes me to my final point. Musicians are coming out and having their say on the genocide in Gaza. Many across various cultures genres and mediums. In a lot of cases, either that person seems to come almost to the defence of Israel or they words their statement in such a way that it does not take a position. Something like genocide does not need a carefully-worded statement, poetry or something watered down and ‘balanced’. Artists need to call it what it is and call out Israel. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has issued a statement that has rightly gained backlash because it is so disappointing. It also seems to show more sympathy and understanding to Israel. Fellow Radiohead bandmate Johnny Greenwood being accused of sympathy and support towards Israel means the band are going to lose a lot of fans. The Guardian reported on what Thom Yorke wrote:

“In October 2024, he was heckled during a solo concert in Melbourne by a man who asked Yorke: “How could you be silent?” regarding the death toll in the war. A flustered Yorke rebutted him and briefly left the stage.

More broadly, Radiohead have been criticised for performing in Tel Aviv in 2017, with Yorke saying at the time: “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its government.” Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has recently been criticised for performing with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, with UK venues cancelling his concerts after protests.

Yorke has now made a statement about the Australian incident and the situation in Gaza, saying the October concert “didn’t really seem like the best moment to discuss the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Afterwards, I remained in shock that my supposed silence was somehow being taken as complicity, and I struggled to find an adequate way to respond to this and to carry on with the rest of the shows on the tour.

“That silence, my attempt to show respect for all those who are suffering and those who have died, and to not trivialise it in a few words, has allowed other opportunistic groups to use intimidation and defamation to fill in the blanks, and I regret giving them this chance. This has had a heavy toll on my mental health.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Palestinians evacuate following an Israeli airstrike on the Sousi Mosque in Gaza on 9th October, 2023/PHOTO CREDIT: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images 

Yorke said he thought it would be “self-evident” from his music “that I could not possibly support any form of extremism or dehumanisation of others.” He added:

I think Netanyahu and his crew of extremists are totally out of control and need to be stopped, and that the international community should put all the pressure it can on them to cease. Their excuse of self-defence has long since worn thin and has been replaced by a transparent desire to take control of Gaza and the West Bank permanently.

I believe this ultra-nationalist administration has hidden itself behind a terrified & grieving people and used them to deflect any criticism, using that fear and grief to further their ultra-nationalist agenda with terrible consequences, as we see now with the horrific blockade of aid to Gaza …

At the same time the unquestioning Free Palestine refrain that surrounds us all does not answer the simple question of why the hostages have still not all been returned? For what possible reason?

Why did Hamas choose the truly horrific acts of October 7th? The answer seems obvious, and I believe Hamas chooses too to hide behind the suffering of its people, in an equally cynical fashion for their own purposes.

He then turned his focus to “social media witch-hunts” saying that pressure on “artists and whoever they feel like that week to make statements etc do very little except heighten tension, fear and oversimplification of what are complex problems”.

He concluded his lengthy statement by saying: “I have written this in the simple hope that i can join with the many millions of others praying for this suffering, isolation and death to stop, praying that we can collectively regain our humanity and dignity and our ability to reach understanding ... that one day soon this darkness will have passed”.

There is no denying the fact Hamas should be condemned and release the hostages. That they committed horrendous atrocities in 2023 where they killed hundreds at the Supernova Festival. If it is true that Hamas have been siphoning aid supplies meant for those affected by genocide then that is something that needs to be highlighted and condemned. However, when you think about the daily reality and numbers. Israel constantly pulverising and obliterating Palestine! Turning Gaza into a wasteland. The countless number of fatalities. It must be tens of thousands who have been killed. There is no doubt who the aggressors are and the fact that this is not a war or conflict: it is genocide. Because of that, if you are issuing a statement about Israel and Palestine, then the realities needs to be reflected. Thom York’s wording caused a lot of anger. He seems to be blaming Hamas as much as Israel. Weak platitudes when it comes to those affected by genocide. The same crap that politicians trot out when it comes to tragedies and warfare – thoughts and prayers (the ‘prayers’ part of especially idiotic because, if you believe in God and want to offer prayers that he will stop this, then you might ask why he f*cking started this and let thousands die!). I am going to leave it there. A few news items and events that I wanted to discuss but could not break up and make three individual features about. I might do this in a couple or few weeks. There has been a lot of exciting new music and announcements, so there is plenty to focus on. From women in sexual abuse and rape cases not being believed to artists being passive or silent when it comes to speaking out, through to those who do react but reveal some ugly and horrible things about themselves, it is troubling! Even though there have been cases of artists being in the right and using their platform right and for good, so many do nothing or show their true (and bleak) colours. In spite of some steps forward, there is still…

SUCH a long way to go.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Very Best of Jehnny Beth

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Johnny Hostile

The Very Best of Jehnny Beth

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RATHER than put together a mixtape…

IN THIS PHOTO: Savages

around an artist’s birthday or on a particular theme, I wanted to focus on the incredible Jehnny Beth. Former lead of Savages, her debut solo album, TO LOVE IS TO LIVE, was released in 2020. A new album is out on 29th August. You Heartbreaker, You will be released through Fiction Records. I would urge people to pre-order the album. New single, Broken Rib, is among Jehnny Beth’s very best. A fascinating insight into her upcoming album. Prior to getting to a mixtape of Jehnny’s Beth’s finest songs, I want to bring in part of a new interview from NME:

“NME: Hello Jehnny Beth. It’s been a while since we last spoke before ‘To Love Is To Live’. How have the last five years been for you?

Jehnny Beth: “They’ve been interesting. I’ve been doing lots of different things. Surprising things happened. ‘To Love Is To Live’ came out around the pandemic so all the plans around it were cancelled. That wasn’t an easy time. I know that for some people, confinement was a great experience for them creatively. But for me it was the time I was supposed to be out there. It dragged everything, even financially, into a difficult spot.

“I was very lucky that I got some offers in films that year. I was asked to star in Jacques Audiard movie [Paris, 13th District] and the next year we went to Cannes. These non-music based things were new, so they were new and I was curious about it. A few other acting jobs came. I knew I wanted to make a new record, but it just had to hit the point where I couldn’t sleep at night over it.”

A record that needed to be made?

“That’s it. I was still making music, but I don’t think it felt as urgent as it felt when I decided to write ‘You Heartbreaker, You’.”

Paris, 13th District got so much attention and then Anatomy Of A Fall had pretty phenomenal critical success. How did it feel to be seen by so many in a different light? Did that confidence and new sense of identity bleed into the new album?

“When I go into the studio to write music with [creative partner and longtime collaborator] Johnny Hostile, the world outside disappears. Although it is within me and the sum of all these experiences add up to be part of who you are. However, I was not thinking about my experiences as an actor when I was writing – but there are links between artforms. Acting is an interpretation. What they have in common is that you have to think of what you want to say in the world, where your places is and what your point of view is.

“Singing or acting – they spring from that place of ‘What do I want to say?’ You’re not thinking about the superficiality of it of ‘Where do I place my hands?’ The need comes from within. What I wanted to do with this record was to reconnect with the urge of my time in Savages – maybe adding something more dangerous to it, perhaps a sense of humour as well.

“I think it was the first time I was not overthinking what I was doing. I was just enjoying the process with an unconditional trust and belief. Maybe that’s me watching too much Ted Lasso…”

Is the album basically saying, ‘Everything’s fucked, but we must move’?

“I like that! They’re your words not mine, but yes. The world is better with a good song in it, and music is a way to bring things back together. Nothing really makes sense in the end, but it’s a way to cope. It’s the same for live music: it’s a great thing that we do as a species that we should be proud of. The times are traumatic, there’s a lot of drama and pain in the world. We still consider love with a very prehistoric approach.”

And that’s what inspired the album title, right?

“The artwork of the record is a reference to all the car tags you see when lovers break up and attack their ex’s car by spraying a massive ‘TWAT’ or something like that. Me and Johnny Hostile came across a few in London. One was, ‘You cheating bastard – I’m pregnant with your child’. It’s very violent and aggressive. My friend tagged my car to make the record sleeve. That’s the echo of the world that I receive.

“Yasiin Bey said in a recent TV interview that if your heart’s not broken then your heart’s not working. If you find yourself displaced in a society that’s sick then it probably means you’re sane. One of the lyrics on the record is: ‘Anyone who does anything with their heart knows one day they’ll have it broken’. That was the starting point of the record”.

I am really looking forward to You Heartbreaker, You. One of the most distinct and remarkable artists of this time, Broken Rib shows what a compelling and brilliant talent Jehnny Beth is. If you have not dug into her music or know her from Savages, then I hope the mixtape below gives you a good impression of who this artist is. I am including some hits from Savages and Jehnny Beth and some deeper cuts. An extraordinary artist, when you look at her body of work and listen to what she is producing now, there are few others…

BETTER than her.

FEATURE: Debbie Harry at Eighty: Bringing Her Life to the Screen

FEATURE:

 

 

Debbie Harry at Eighty

PHOTO CREDIT: Louie Banks for The Times

Bringing Her Life to the Screen

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I have written about this…

IN THIS PHOTO: Debbie Harry in 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Stein

before when it comes to Debbie Harry. The Blondie lead turns eighty on 1st July. Because of that, I have been thinking about the way that she has inspired so many people through the generations. One of the most talented and coolest band leads who has ever lived, she is hugely important. I don’t think there has ever been a biopic of Blondie. It seems like an oversight. I think that Debbie Harry would not object to having someone portray her on the screen – whether film or T.V. Blondie have been portrayed in projects before but not them at the centre. Harry is someone who has also inspired so many other musicians. I am not sure who could bring her to life, though I do think that there needs to be some form of representation very soon. As Harry is eighty very soon, I am thinking about Blondie and their rise. If not a biopic about the band, then something that is all about Debbie Harry and her life. I want to bring in a new interview from The Times. In the interview, Debbie Harry talks about the thought of turning eighty. She also discusses her 2019 book, Face It: A Memoir:

“That she looks so fabulous certainly belies much of what has happened since her bombshell heyday. With classics such as Hanging on the Telephone, Call Me and Rapture, Blondie sold millions of records before they split up in 1982. Harry partied at Studio 54 with Andy Warhol, Truman Capote and Paloma Picasso. But by the mid-1980s things were bleak. She and her bandmate, long-term boyfriend and co-songwriter, Chris Stein, had been dealing with heroin addiction and his serious illness caused by an autoimmune condition that Harry nursed him through. After being hit with a huge tax bill (their accountant hadn’t paid their taxes for two years), the couple had their possessions seized by the Internal Revenue Service, including their Manhattan townhouse. In 1987 they split. Stein subsequently married and had children, Harry didn’t, but they’re still best friends. “Those were tough times,” she says, characteristically deadpan. “But they were also very creative. Creativity and chaos often go hand in hand.”

During the 1990s, Harry, by now long since cleaned up, found herself virtually back where she started, fronting an obscure jazz outfit. But posterity has rewarded her. In 1997 Blondie re-formed and had another No 1 with Maria. Charli XCX and Sia wrote songs for their 2017 album Pollinator. One Direction and Miley Cyrus introduced the band to a new generation with their respective One Way or Another and Heart of Glass covers. There was a storming 2023 UK tour, which included playing Glastonbury.

What does Harry think her teenage self — growing up in suburban New Jersey — would have thought of a septuagenarian rocking a festival? She hoots. “She woulda thought, ‘Send the old bitch back!’ I was a snotty little ageist thing.”

In fact, her star just continues rising. Her latest role is as a face of Gucci’s Cruise 2025 collection, shot for its We Will Always Have London campaign in the back of a black cab by the renowned photographer Nan Goldin. “I just love Nan, she’s a sweetheart and a talent …” she says before being interrupted by her phone, which she squints at and then chuckles. “That was a butt dial.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Louie Banks for The Times

This career twist happened after Gucci’s creative director, Sabato De Sarno, relaunched the Blondie handbag — a 1970s archive piece — at the Cruise 2025 show, held at the Tate Modern, London, last May, with Harry in attendance. “There was a long, rampy staircase. They said, ‘Sabato is up there,’ so I was huffing and puffing up them and almost ran into him. We had an explosive moment and then … ” She was handed the campaign? “Yes, I don’t know what their thinking was but I was surprised and excited to be looked at.”

Having such an archetypal New Yorker front a London-based campaign may sound counterintuitive but, as Harry points out: “Blondie was part of the culture over there for such a long time.” It’s true the band broke the UK before the US, with their first tour here starting in Bournemouth in 1977. “Bournemouth may not seem punk now but it was then. I went back recently and thought, ‘Oh! It’s gentrified.’” Hasn’t everywhere? “Yes, everywhere’s changed.”

Yet Harry is resolutely unsentimental about the past, refusing to be drawn into any old-fogeyish praising of the good old days. “I don’t think anything can go backwards,” she says. Of today’s female pop stars, she likes Doja Cat and SZA. She loves making new young friends. “Doing this Gucci thing I’ve met a whole bunch of different people. [Her fellow Gucci campaign star, the musician] Kelsey Lu is one of them, she’s absolutely adorable.”

She’s equally unemotional about the many obstacles she has overcome. Her 2019 memoir, Face It, briskly — often humorously — lists events most people would categorise as traumatising, from having a stalker (the inspiration for One Way or Another), to being raped at knifepoint, to escaping from a car that she’s convinced was being driven by the serial killer Ted Bundy.

“Well, I had to make the book exciting,” she says. “But I’ve never been prone to hysterics. I have bad moments when I’m tired but most of the time I take things philosophically. So much the better for me — why would I want to rock my boat? I was on stage once when a bunch of Hell’s Angels took it over. I kept singing away but all of a sudden Chris yanked me off. Everyone was worried but I wasn’t. The bikers were absolutely charming, they were just so into the music”.

Some might say that it is a bit niche to have Debbie Harry biopic. Maybe it would attract fands of Blondie, though it could gain a wider audience. I know that music biopics are a risky thing. In terms of the story and who is cast in the lead. However, when it comes to Debbie Harry, she could consult and could have a direct say in who plays her. Supervise the script and direction. I am going to end with a Blondie playlist. Demonstrate and illustrate just how amazing their music is. I am not certain whether a Debbie Harry biopic or Blondie one would be best. There are other great interviews with Debbie Harry that I would advise people to check out. She is this fascinating artist who I hope records more music with Blondie. Even though their drummer Clem Burke recently died, that is not to say the band will discontinue or disband. I think that we are going to see them continue for a while. Look back at their incredible catalogue of work that it is among the most important in all of music. Debbie Harry is this icon and source of inspiration who has weathered so much. If you read Face It: A Memoir, “Harry, who is now 74, outlines the influences and events that led to her rise to fame. Written with the music writer Sylvie Simmons, the memoir is based on a series of lengthy interviews, which makes for a conversational style, though anyone looking for an excavation of the soul might be disappointed. Harry has rock ’n’ roll stories to burn but the memoir as a confessional isn’t her style. For the most part, the Blondie character remains”. On 1st July, Debbie Harry turns eighty. In addition to the celebration around that, I think there will be this sense that she needs to be brought to the screen. If done with care, passion and conviction, it could be among the best music biopics of recent years. I am sure that Debbie Harry would not object. Shining a light on the life and work of one of the greatest artists…

OF all time.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Paul Simon

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

Paul Simon

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THIS is a run of features…

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul Simon with Art Garfunkel

where I compile a twenty-song playlist from some legendary American artists. In future parts will be Taylor Swift and The Beach Boys. I am starting out with one of the greatest songwriters ever: Paul Simon. From his earliest years as part of Simon & Garfunkel through to his amazing solo albums, his contribution to music has been immense. Not to disrespect the actual Great American Songbook, but this feature is my own spin. Looking at artists from the 1960s through to the modern day whose catalogue is among the most impressive and influential in all of music. It will be fun to explore some truly titanic artists. Starting out with Paul Simon seemed like an obvious choice as, alongside the likes of Bob Dylan, he ranks as the greatest songwriter the country has ever produced. Some people might know all of his music and be superfans, whilst some might only know the bigger hits. This twenty-song mix goes right back to the earliest days of Simon & Garfunkel and drops in a song from his latest album, 2023’s Seven Psalms. For those who love the work of the mighty Paul Simon, then I hope that this playlist is up to scratch. It goes to show that his songwriting is…

LIKE nobody else.

FEATURE: A Wake-Up Call for the Music Industry: Inside Linda Coogan Byrne’s Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Cultural Change

FEATURE:

 

 

A Wake-Up Call for the Music Industry

Inside Linda Coogan Byrne’s Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Cultural Change

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WITH her book…

written “For the Girls”, Linda Coogan Byrne’s Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Cultural Change is an essential and urgent read. One of a few books this year that I have come across that I feel everyone needs to own. Released on 11th April, you can buy the book here. I am going to come to some thoughts regarding the book and is aims. It is a project that its author put her heart and soul into. Someone who tirelessly campaigns for gender equality and recognition of women in music. Her statistics and words regarding Irish female musicians and how they are overlooked on playlists is especially shocking. How there are always excuses that they are in the minority. You can follow Why Not Her? here. Taken from Linda Coogan Byrne’s book, when it comes to Irish women they “are releasing music independently — without the label support, playlist backing, or radio airplay their male counterparts get. The odds are stacked. And still, they rise”. I am going to explore that thought and sad realisation. Before that, here is more information about a book every music fan needs to own:

“Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Culture Change—A Bold Call to Action from Linda Coogan Byrne

Author, Activist, and Award-Winning Music Industry Consultant Demands Systemic Change in Music and Beyond

London/Dublin – April 11, 2025 – The wait is over. Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Culture Change is here to challenge the status quo and shake the foundations of the music industry—and beyond.

Written by Linda Coogan Byrne, a leading voice in gender equity and diversity, this manifesto is a fearless exposé of the systemic barriers that have long kept women and marginalised voices locked out of opportunities. With over two decades of experience in music, activism, and data-driven advocacy, Coogan Byrne lays bare the stark inequalities in the industry, weaving together powerful research, personal testimony, and an urgent call to action.

"This isn’t just about playlists or festival lineups. It’s about power—who gets heard and who is silenced," says Coogan Byrne. "This manifesto is my refusal to comply with a broken system. It’s about rewriting the rules and demanding better."

IN THIS PHOTO: Linda Coogan Byrne (photos via Irish Examiner)

Through her Why Not Her? movement, Coogan Byrne’s reports on gender and racial disparity have reached millions of people, forcing industry leaders to confront their biases. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, BBC, RTÉ, and Music Week and has driven tangible policy shifts across the media sector of the government.

A core message of the book is clear: silence is complicity. Resistance is not just necessary—it is imperative. With sharp analysis and firsthand industry insight, Coogan Byrne not only exposes injustice but also lays out a blueprint for real change.

As she writes in the book’s final chapter:

"Equality is not a gift to be granted—it is a right to be reclaimed. When one voice speaks up, it sparks change. When many voices rise together, it becomes a revolution no system can silence."

This is more than a book—it’s a movement. For industry professionals, policymakers, artists, and anyone committed to dismantling exclusionary structures, Why Not Her? is an essential read”.

Radio stations genuine gave these excuses when asked why they do not feature more women: “We don’t make the rules” (they do); “Women just moan” (they don’t); “We actually had some women on a special Friday night show back in February” (how generous of you!). The situation is bad for U.K. female artists but it is positively bleak for Irish women. This time last year, Why Not Her? published a report that outlined how Irish female artists made up just 2% of most-played songs on Irish radio in past year. The situation has not got much better. Think about incredible Irish women who are played on U.K. radio such as CMAT, and I wonder how her career would fare if she had to rely on Irish radio for support. The reality is Ireland has so many incredible women shaping and pushing the music landscape in exciting new directions. The fact that radio stations and festivals there marginalise them means many move out of the country or feel like they are trapped and cannot stay where they are. Gender imbalance is slightly improving in some areas. I have said how a massive festival like Glastonbury, whilst attempting to create greater balance across its bill, is taking steps back when it comes to female headliners.

Two last year (SZA and Dua Lipa) was the first time more than one women headlined the Pyramid Stage. Count the number of female artists who have headlined Glastonbury is the past fifty years and it makes for astronomically depressing reading. This year could have been a chance to keep moving in the right direction, though a festival with two male headline acts on the Pyramid Stage – Neil Young and The 1975 – seems like the festival settling into old (and bad) ways, in spite of a broader and fairer shake for women across over stages. I am going to bring in some passages from Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Cultural Change. I am starting out with this:

“The gender disparities evident in festival lineups (and on radio and streaming playlists - which we will look at in the next few chapters)  are  more  than  isolated  industry  phenomena—they  are symptomatic of deeper, systemic inequities that ripple across all facets  of  society.  Festivals,  as  public  spaces  of  cultural  expression,  provide a striking lens through which we can explore these issues. While the music industry serves as the primary focus of this mani-festo, it also acts as a microcosm of much broader societal structures that  dictate  who  gets  opportunities,  whose  stories  are  heard,  and  who is left behind. By  stepping  back  from  the  music  industry,  we  can  see  how  these patriarchal frameworks not only shape creative spaces but also 11

influence how we define success, handle adversity, and allocate value in our lives.The music industry is but one thread in a much larger tapestry. The  inequities  we  observe  there—from  who  gets  booked  at  festi-vals to whose voices dominate airwaves—mirror the structures that dictate opportunities in every other sphere of life. These patriarchal frameworks seep into education systems, workplaces, and even our homes, shaping not just who succeeds but how we perceive success itself. To truly understand systemic inequality, we must broaden our perspective beyond the stage and playlists.These  structures  don’t  just  dictate  opportunities  or  gatekeep  success—they  shape  everything  from  career  progression  to  men-tal health, impacting men, women, and gender-diverse individuals alike. The pressure for men to adhere to outdated notions of mas-culinity is as damaging as the systemic silencing of women’s voices. This conditioning runs deep, with consequences that are undeniably severe,  particularly  regarding  mental  health,  as  evidenced  by  the  harrowing realities of suicide”.

I am going to come to my own thoughts and opinions to end. However, there are a couple of other extracts from Linda Coogan Byrne’s new (and essential) book that caught my eye and caused shock. Aside from fascinating statistics and urgent calls for change, there are passages like this that makes it clear how sexism and misogyny runs right through music. It seems especially severe and prevalent for Irish women:

“For generations, Irish women’s voices, much like the banshee’s, have  been  dismissed,  feared,  or  outright  silenced.  The  warnings  they sounded—about inequality, about exclusion, about the cultural erasure they were experiencing—were waved away as exaggeration, just as the banshee’s cries were once shrugged off as superstition. But the truth always reveals itself. The banshee’s lament wasn’t a myth; it was a reckoning. And so too were these reports. In  some  myths,  the  banshee  isn’t  just  a  signal  of  doom  but  a  figure of mourning, keening for the loss that has already happened. In  that  way,  she  mirrors  the  women  in  this  industry—forced  to  carry the weight of exclusion, their warnings dismissed, their voices trailing into the wind until, finally, someone listens. I remember poring over the data late at night, seeing the reality of what was happening to women in Irish music laid bare in cold, hard numbers. The eerie thing was, we already knew this. Women in the industry had been crying out about it for years—just like the banshee, their voices trailing through the air, only to be met with denial, discomfort, or outright refusal to listen. There’s a long tradition in Ireland of women being seen as too emotional,  too  dramatic,  too  much.  The  banshee  herself  is  feared  not because she causes harm, but because she forces people to con-front something they don’t want to face. And isn’t that exactly what happens when women speak uncomfortable truths? They are called difficult, disruptive, hysterical—anything but right .But here’s the thing about a banshee’s cry: you can’t un-hear it. Once she keens, the message is out in the world, and nothing can take it back. These reports were our own banshee’s wail—undeniable, Linda Coogan Byrne26

impossible to ignore, and signalling that a long-overdue reckoning was at hand”.

You can see the facts and statistics and get a numerical and graphical representation of the inequalities that affect women through radio playlists, festivals and beyond. However, it is what the industry does with that data that is important! There does need to be action and activation from those in power. Especially in nations like Ireland where women are such a minority across playlists and when it comes to the most played artists, it cannot be for women to fight for themselves. At a time when women are producing the best music and ruling the industry, they are not being rewarded with opportunity or parity. It has to change:

“Understanding the facts is the first step toward consciousness, which leads to change. Facts alone are insufficient; they need to be combined with compassion, tenacity, and a will to confront embed-ded inequalities. This art is not about pointing fingers; it is about constructing bridges. The reports were more than simply critiques; they were blueprints, outlining specific strategies, offering actionable steps even, to break down the walls that had held so many people back. From redesigning radio playlists to broadening festival lineups, the idea was not to demolish what existed, but to reconstruct it in a way that acknowledged the contributions of all voices. Change is not easy, but it is always worthwhile. Using statistics to open doors and start conversations made me realise that when we face the truth and commit to improving, progress is not just possible but inevitable. With this important work, each step forward brings us closer to an industry that values talent and artistry over bias and tradition. The journey to equity is more than creating space; it’s about reimag-ining  and  reconstructing  the  foundations  of  our  systems  to  serve  everyone equally. This transcends the music industry. It’s a blueprint for collective liberation—a vision where the power of unity, diversity, WHY NOT HER? A MANIFESTO FOR CULTURE CHANGE33

and shared purpose propels us toward a more inclusive world. And at the heart of this transformation lies the undeniable strength and indeed vast potential of women, whose leadership will, one day, light the path forward. This path has always been about more than just discovering the truth  or  inspiring  action;  it’s  about  reimagining  what  is  possible.  The  data  may  have  opened  the  doors,  but  by  Jesus  the  countless  conversations kept them open, and it was during those chats that I realised something fundamental. The fight for equity is more than just a professional endeavour; it is a deeply emotional reckoning”.

I admire the work that Linda Coogan Byrne and Why Not Her? do. Publishing annual reports that look at the date around women being represented across the industry, including radio stations. I know that some of those highlighted in the report take note and improve but, too often, there are these excuses and ignorance. If men supposedly are requesting only men – which is not the case, and if you only play men then, funnily enough, that is all they will know! -, then it is down to those who play the songs and book acts to make change! If it means disappointing those listeners (sexists) then that is what need to happen. It is not about upsetting people or grand gestures. It is about levelling things up. That is the absolute minimum! The music industry should be gender-balanced when it comes to festival line-ups, playlists and including women (and non-binary artists). Women are dominating so should actually be in the majority in that respect – though we have to be realistic and realise the music industry might never go that far! I dread to think how Irish music will evolve if women feel they are not being heard and have to move to other countries so they can have a career. Festivals are still imbalanced and it is easy to make big leaps. Organisers hiding behind their own excuses. The data is out there, and Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Cultural Change is a book that argues consistently why this data cannot be ignored. Women practically backlisted in an industry that they are making golden and extraordinary. It is not about quality, demand or tradition. It is sexism and misogyny. It is also a music industry that is stuck in its patriarchal ways. Why make any change if people are not screaming en masse? There needs to be greater male allyship and calls for change. Incredible organisations like Why Not Her? do amazing work, though this needs to be met with similar commitment and outrage across the industry. What will the story be in a matter of weeks when Why Not Her? publish another report around gender and racial disparity across U.K. radio. The statistics on Irish radio. Despite some steps forward in some areas last year, I suspect we will have more questions than solutions this year. This needs to stop! Women need to be given more respect. The industry needs to realise their invaluable contributions and how the industry has, for decades, overlooked and side-lined them. If major changes do not happen, then it will be a massive disservice. Go and buy Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Cultural Change, as it is one of the most important books…

OF the past few years.

FEATURE: Spotlight: The Pill

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

The Pill

__________

MAYBE not an area…

of the U.K. that is getting as much attention as it should, the Isle of Wight has given us some huge modern artists recently. Lauran Hibberd among them. The brilliant Wet Leg. One more to add to this growing list of Isle of Wight treasures to follow are The Pill. Lily Hutchings and Lottie Massey might get compared to Wet Leg’s Rhian (Teasdale) and Hester (Chambers), but their music and vibe is different. Having just released their new long-E.P., THE EP, they have this incredible release that is connecting with fans and critics. The duo have tour dates coming up. If you have not heard of them or only one or two songs then please do some more exploration. Spend some time with them. Before coming to a few recent interviews with The Pill, God Is in the TV Zine highlighted this amazing new E.P. from an act who are going to playing some big festival stages before too long - I predict that will happen. I know I say this about a lot of new artists, yet it is true in the case of The Pill:

“The Pill have released their hotly anticipated debut, The EP, featuring the fierce, witty new jank-punk track ‘POSH’, first heard on BBC 6 Music earlier this week.

The EP brings together their recent red-hot run of singles that have put them firmly on the map.The EP is their first body of work, and comes just over a year since their joyous and urgent debut single ‘Bale Of Hay’, a track that instantly grabbed the attention of key tastemakers like Steve Lemacq. They quickly established themselves as one of the most exciting new duos in town, with ‘Scaffolding Man’ and ‘Woman Driver’ tracks setting them apart with their chaotic brand of DIY punk. Live, they are a sensation. Serving satire, their fresh, frenetic sets light up the venue. GIITTV were delighted to chat with them after their Rockaway Beach set earlier in the year. Read here.

Behind their bubble gum lyrics and fierce hook-laden riffs hides whip-smart, witty, searing social commentaries on gender stereotypes. Their stagecraft, banter and synchronicity are phenomenal. With basslines that would make The Breeders proud, they gloriously juxtapose a lightness of lyrics with a buzzsaw of riffs and breakneck guitars. Their songs are freewheeling, frenetic and hook-laden, giving them the potential to be huge.

Speaking of their new track, the band say,

“Written on a night out, about a night out. ‘POSH’ is drawn from the point of view of the messy, bratty, party girl personas we put on for a laugh after a few too many drinks. It’s a wild, stupid parody of ourselves and our music.”

The band just played to a packed crowd at The Great Escape in Brighton which follows spectacular dates with Big Special and HotWax. They’re currently on tour with Panic Shack before heading back to London on 18th June for their first headline show there at The Grace. Alongside ‘The EP’ they have announced a string of dates across the UK in September”.

I am going to move to an interview from DIY. It is a great introduction from a duo who are growing their fanbase and are getting respect and love from radio stations and many corners of the music press. As they have an E.P. – or is it a long-E.P., technically?! – out there, I know they will be bringing these songs to the stage very soon. I would love to see them live, as I can imagine they really connect with every crowd. Such an incredible electrifying act:

“Hello and welcome back to DIY’s introducing feature, Get To Know… which aims to get you a little bit closer to the buzziest acts that have been catching our eye as of late, and working out what makes them tick.

This week, we’re sitting down with The Pill - the no-holds-barred, no-fucks-given duo who marry serious shredding with a hefty dose of fun (think synchronised dance routines, winking lyrical quips, and a brilliant line in slogan-sporting merch). Though they only have four singles to their name so far, the pair - comprised of guitarist/vocalist Lily and bassist/vocalist Lottie - have already stirred up trouble in all the right places: last year’s ‘Woman Driver’ playfully skewers automobile-related gender stereotypes, while latest cut ‘Money Mullet’ decries the comeback of the world’s most Marmite hairstyle. Ahead of what’s set to be a busy old year of gigs and grooves, we find out more about The Pill’s story so far…

You hail from the Isle of Wight - musically, what was it like growing up there? What were the first gigs you ever went to?

Growing up on the Isle of Wight is definitely a unique experience, but definitely not a negative one. I mean, we still live here with no plans of leaving! We wouldn’t say there’s an enormous amount of things you can do on the island, but we see that as a good thing as it encourages you to make your own fun, be creative, get drunk in a field etc etc.

Due to the island being this way, there’s definitely a very strong community - we’re so grateful to be a part of the music scene here. Growing up and being surrounded by other creative people has been so influential to us. We have one venue here, Strings, which we and all our friends regularly frequented when we were younger. They weren’t our first ever gigs, but we would say they were the most poignant - we owe so much to going there and watching our friends play multiple times a week!

Your latest single, ‘Money Mullet’, is a bit of an anti-mullet anthem. But what are the worst haircuts / ill-advised fashion moments you’ve ever had? And if you could ban one item of clothing/hairstyle/accessory etc from ever coming back into fashion, what would it be (and why)?

Lottie has definitely had a lot of questionable phases, which means a lot of questionable haircuts. She actually even had a mullet at some point - what a hypocrite. But the worst was definitely the emo fringe, we even nicknamed it ‘the wall’ because it was so ladened with hairspray.

And not to be basic, but we’re still big haters of skinny jeans - I know everyone says that, but maybe everyone is right. Oh, and those really tight suits men wear, with the slight sheen and the pointy shoes. Get rid.

What were the first songs/albums/artists you developed an obsession for?

Lily: It definitely wasn’t the first album I got obsessed with (as I didn’t wait till 2017 to listen to music for the first time), but I was definitely obsessed with the Baby Driver soundtrack - it helped me walk really really fast to college every day.

Lottie: Talking of soundtracks, my most listened to album of all time is probably the soundtrack from ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’. Every single song is a masterpiece and I refuse to only listen to it at Christmas or Halloween - all year round, 365 days, I’m spinning that bad boy.

You recently played one of DIY’s Hello 2025 shows at the Old Blue Last, and things got a bit crazy… How do you go about gearing up for a live show - any rituals, weird rider requests, or hype songs? And what would you say people who have never seen The Pill should expect from a gig?

We had so much fun at that show! Thank you so much for having us and embracing our chaos, it definitely got a bit crazy. Before we play live, we would say the main thing is just trying to get as riled up as possible, a bit like Jack Nicholson before he shot the infamous Shining scene - you know that clip of him jumping up and down with the axe? That’s like us.

Lily: I always have to have at least four Redbulls, and if there’s a bottle of gin hanging around I’ll be very happy.

Lottie: I’m a simple woman, some beers are all I need. Oh, and we always listen to ABBA - without fail.

For anyone wanting to come to a Pill show who hasn’t already (why? Where have you been?), just expect a lot of noise, a lot of shouting, a lot of chaos and lots of giggles”.

I do like how The Pill started out as a joke/fake band. They sort of manifested something online. I like hearing how artists start and how groups come together. A lot of the stories can be run of the mill and boring. No such issue with The Pill! Lily and Lottie have this amazing background and story. They seem almost sisterly in their bond. There is this chemistry and connection that comes through in their music. I am moving to an interview from February from DORK. I do think that the Isle of Wight is this treasure trove of artists that we should all be focused on:

“We actually originally started the band as a joke. Shocking, I know, as we’re so serious now,” explains Lottie, one-half of the band’s core duo. “Back in 2019, we made our Instagram page and hid our identities and tried to build up some fake form of hype over our fake band – obviously bored and procrastinating school work to engage in some sort of weird social experiment.”

The experiment took an unexpected turn when their mysterious online presence began generating genuine interest. “People actually started getting interested, so we thought ‘maybe we should actually do this?'” Lottie continues. “Then promptly booking our first rehearsal and arranging our first ever show, which actually sold out – crazy.”

The band’s formation story becomes even more remarkable considering that guitarist Lily hadn’t even played before The Pill. “We had never done anything like this before, Lily actually learnt guitar for the band,” Lottie reveals. “I don’t think in a million years we would’ve expected what is happening with The Pill today when we were sitting in my bedroom making that Instagram account.”

Their musical foundations, however, run deeper than their playful beginnings might suggest. Both members grew up immersed in rich musical environments. For Lily, The Cure provided an early soundtrack: “The Cure was a huge part of my growing up; I remember listening to their ‘Greatest Hits’ album in the car with my dad on holiday when I was 10, and it stuck with me ever since.”

Lottie’s musical awakening came through both parental influence and popular culture. “I grew up very influenced by my dad’s favourite music; I was a die-hard Queen fan from about the age of 6 months. ‘Radio Gaga’ was the first song I ever danced to,” she shares. A pivotal moment came while watching a certain Jack Black vehicle: “I have a core memory where I was watching School of Rock when I was around 10 or 11 and thinking the bass guitar was the coolest thing ever – I swiftly started learning, and the rest was history.”

The Pill’s trajectory has been marked by a series of increasingly confident singles, each maintaining their signature blend of sharp wit and frenetic energy. Their latest offering, ‘Money Mullet’, takes aim at a particular subspecies of the controversial haircut. “We have had a handful of run-ins with some mullets, a particular kind of mullet,” they explain. “They inspired us to write the song, so we will thank them for that, but nothing else, particularly not the hours wasted cutting them. New drinking game: take a shot every time you see a mullet in London’s financial district.”

Their rise has been particularly meaningful given their roots in the Isle of Wight’s close-knit music community. “The Isle Of Wight is a scene we are very grateful for; you can be creative with all your friends,” they reflect. “Most of our teenage years were spent going to our friends’ shows in our local venue every week, so you’re constantly surrounded by music and creative people.”

This foundation has served them well as they’ve expanded beyond their island beginnings. Recent highlights include commanding the River Stage at the Isle Of Wight Festival and making their European debut at Eurockéenes. The connection with their growing audience remains central to their mission. “Anyone who listens to our music or comes to our show and has fun – that is probably the biggest compliment to us,” they share. “Seeing people laugh at our jokes or our lyrics is very surreal, but an amazing feeling.”

Looking to the year ahead, The Pill’s momentum shows no signs of slowing. “We have a very crazy 2025 coming up. It is going to be the year of The Pill, so will 2026,” they declare. “New music is in the works, too, so keep your ears ready. It’s going to be a big bimbo summer.”

When not crafting sardonic punk anthems, the duo pursue distinctly different interests. “Most days, you can find me outside as I’ve started trying to tame crows, so I’m feeding them to tempt them into a beautiful friendship,” Lottie shares. Meanwhile, Lily has developed a creative side hustle: “I try to spend as much time as I can in my workshop twiddling away at jewellery making. I would like to put my hand to rally driving this year, though?”

I am going to finish off with a review of THE EP by DORK. Before that, I am coming to a great interview from CLASH. Even the duo have a lot of humour and there is this sense of fun about them, they do have a love of drama. The Pill are on the precipice of hitting the big time, so I am not sure whether they will leave behind the Isle of Wight and will reside permanently in London or elsewhere. I forgot to mention that another great Isle of Wight export is Coach Party – a band I spotlighted years ago. I love how CLASH write in their interview: “There’s an “island mentality” insofar that these artists tend not to take themselves too seriously. This homegrown authenticity by putting fun foremost is getting them noticed”. A great chat with the incredible Lily and Lottie:

“The Pill get a real sense of satisfaction when it comes to irritating punk rock music’s self-appointed gatekeepers. Which, by and large, tend to be middle-aged men flooding their Instagram uploads with angry comments.

“Ohhh yeahhh,” Lily Hutchings and Lottie Massey mischievously reply in unison when asked if that’s the case, an impulsive yet perfectly in-tune response which says as much about their mission statement as a band as much as their tight bond as best buds.

“That’s one of my favourite parts of being in a band,” guitarist and singer Lily continues, before bassist Lottie adds, “every day there’s so many men that are so angry. ‘This isn’t punk’ etc. Ok, well I wasn’t fucking asking you. The problem is with social media, I’ll get a bottle of wine, absolutely pissed, and will just be like ‘I wasn’t actually asking you stupid man’ [in a parodying nasal voice], or just lean into it and be like ‘omg you know so much about punk music that I don’t know’. We do rejoice in it, but sometimes it’s a little intense. As a woman, if you’re pissing off men you’re doing something right.”

“It’s funny, now we’ve started to see a few people in our merch,” Lily chimes back in, keeping a chuckle at bay. “It’s hilarious seeing middle-aged men in a t-shirt that says ‘I’m just a girl with big tits’. It’s incredible. It’s probably those guys going home and saying we’re fucking shit online.”

Later that same night, the Isle Of Wight duo played a hometown show for Independent Venue Week at Strings in Newport, the island’s capital. Seeing the crowds double-taking the band’s t-shirt slogans emblazoned with ‘Bimbo, Butthole, Tits’ as they trickled through the venue’s doors was indeed a sight to behold. An amusing one at that.

Throughout their five singles to date – the latest being ‘Problem’, a pogo-ing sub-two minute track that bristles with a kind of cheerleading satirism – The Pill’s approach to making music has been to lampoon provincial attitudes towards women and the stereotypes that come with it, prodding fun at modern life’s many absurdities as well as their own romantic misadventures. Deploying a knowingly cutesy, piss-taking vocal style and with their tongues firmly in their cheeks, you can’t help but snigger along with them. In naming themselves after the contraceptive, they were “just thinking about a girl-centric thing that when we explain to a dude might get slightly uncomfortable.”

Stuffed into one of the venue’s frosty corridors for the interview, Lily and Lottie exude the energy of a chaotic comedy duo with droll senses of humour, bouncing off each other and off the proverbial walls for the most part. Starting out in school as initial rivals – “I was such a jealous little ratbag,” Lottie confesses – the two soon befriended one another and have been virtually inseparable since. After Lottie cites her musical influences which included Amyl and the Sniffers, The Slits, and PC Music, Lily provides hers: “Bit niche. Rain sounds, some atmospheric things going on. No words, just vibes.”

“We can’t be serious,” Lily shrugs. Writing songs with a humorous, satirical slant came naturally to the pair, shuddering at the thought of ever being po-faced in their songwriting. But it also comes from growing up on an island where you’re twice-removed from knowing everyone in your age bracket, so the fear of being judged and mocked is perhaps more acute. “I think because there’s so little of us, you feel weeded out if you do something serious,” she continues. “There has to be an edge to everything you do, to save face.” “If I wrote a serious song, I’d be so cringed out,” Lottie agrees, before admitting “even though I mostly listen to serious music”.

I will end with that review of THE EP from the brilliant DORK. I do love how artists such as The Pill (and Panic Shack) can take everyday subjects and comical angles and mix it with social commentary and deeper subjects. They can address some big themes and inequalities but wrap it around this humour and wit. It makes the music more powerful and nuanced in my view:

“Life’s most cringe-worthy moments deserve their own soundtrack, and The Pill have appointed themselves as chief composers of the uncomfortable. Their debut EP – fittingly titled ‘The EP’ – bundles together their string of infectious singles with new track ‘POSH’ to create a perfectly formed snapshot of why they’ve become one of the UK’s most exciting new bands.

Opening with ‘POSH’, the Isle of Wight duo immediately showcase their talent for wrapping sharp social commentary in irresistible hooks. The track’s tongue-in-cheek take on class tourism and party personas – “No babe, don’t cum on that, it’s Gucci” – deftly demonstrates their knack for finding humour in social dynamics while keeping the energy cranked to eleven.

Across the six tracks, Lily and Lottie’s dual vocals ping-pong between sweet (often sarcastic) melodic moments and urgent calls to arms, while their instrumental interplay creates controlled chaos that’s incredibly danceable. ‘Scaffolding Man’ exemplifies this balance perfectly – its jumpy guitar riffs and playful narrative about unexpected encounters manage to be both pointed and really very funny.

‘Money Mullet’ continues their winning streak of commentaries; what starts as a straightforward critique of dodgy ‘dos evolves into a meditation on identity and social conformity. ‘Problem’ and ‘Bale of Hay’ carry the same urgent energy that made them standout singles, their scuzzy guitar work and hook-laden melodies proving just as effective in the context of a larger release.

The EP ends with a bang, ‘Woman Driver’ taking tired stereotypes and flipping them into weapons of empowerment through clever wordplay and an absolutely massive chorus.

While many of these tracks might already live on your playlist, hearing them together highlights the sharpness of The Pill’s songwriting and their ability to balance serious musical chops with humour. They’ve created a sound that’s smart, funny and ferociously energetic all at once: an absolute riot”.

Anyone who does not know about The Pill needs to follow them now. Go and listen to THE EP and add them to your playlists. They have some great dates coming up. They play London’s The Garage tomorrow (28th May) in support of Panic Shack. Their headline tour begins on 18th June starts at The Grace, London. Maybe labelled as a ‘rising act’ at the moment, the simply incredible The Pill will…

BLOW up very soon.

___________

Follow The Pill

PHOTO CREDIT: foarks

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FEATURE: Ringo Starr at Eighty-Five: With a Little Help from My Friends: An Artist I Admire and Envy

FEATURE:

 

 

Ringo Starr at Eighty-Five

PHOTO CREDIT: Dina Litovsky for The Atlantic

With a Little Help from My Friends: An Artist I Admire and Envy

__________

I am going to come to…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1963/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

a couple of recent interviews with Ringo Starr. He released his new album, Look Up, on 10th January. It won a lot of critical praise. One of the best albums of this year. His twenty-first album, it arrived almost fifty-five years to day after his debut album, Sentimental Journey, came out (27th January, 1970). Even though Starr now resides in the U.S., he was born in Liverpool and holds the city dear in his heart. He turns eighty-five on 7th July, and I know there will be a lot of articles about him. Such celebration from music journalists and fans. I wanted to write a couple about him, so I am starting out with one where I write why I both admire and envy him. I used to live in the same village as Ringo Starr back in 1999. He moved to Cranleigh, Surrey then and moved out not that long after. He sort of did the Rock artist thing in reverse. They normally start out in the U.S. then retire to a quiet village in England! I love how Ringo Starr is in the U.S. As I have theorised in a previous Ringo Starr feature, I think that is a way of being closer to John Lennon. Lennon was living in New York when he was killed in 1980. Lennon would have turned eighty-five this October. On 8th December, we will remember him, forty-five years since he died. It is strange he is not around. I think Ringo Starr wants to be close to Lennon in that way. Perhaps he has different reasons for being in the U.S., but I would like to think it is because of John Lennon! Starr occasionally performs with Paul McCartney. The former Beatles have been on stage a few times recently. I do hope they record together again and there is some collaboration. As Sam Mendes is making four Beatles films – biopics of the four members that will be released in 2027 -, that might bring Starr and McCartney together. I want to include a couple of recent interviews with Ringo Starr. Promoting Look Up, it must be a fascinating experiencing getting to speak with such a music legend. The Times interviewed Starr. He explained why he always wants to be in a band. He also reveals why Liverpool has always been the capital of Country music:

“At 84, and following that pre-Christmas live reunion at the O2 in London playing Helter Skelter and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with his mate Paul McCartney, 82, Starr has just unveiled his collection of 11 new country-leaning tunes. From start to finish Look Up is a delightful surprise — although perhaps it shouldn’t be, given Starr’s lifetime love of the music; he sang lead vocals on the Beatles’ version of Buck Owens’s Act Naturally on the Help! album nearly 60 years ago. That at a time when most British listeners’ idea of country music was more Jim Reeves than Johnny Cash.

But the affair began earlier, in Richard Starkey’s teenage years in working-class Merseyside, even before he became Ringo. Like his former bandmates, he has always accredited his love of rock’n’roll and soul to living in a port town where young men in the merchant navy returned home with exotic 45s from their travels. But they were also his introduction to the down-home music of the southern states.

“Country’s been good to me,” he tells me. “My idea of country is, ‘The dog’s dead and I don’t have enough money for the jukebox.’ Hundreds of records about the jukebox. I keep saying Liverpool was the capital of country music. In the streets I lived in every other house had some 18 to 25-year-old who was in the ‘merch’. And you could always tell those kids — there’d be a camel saddle in the living room because they’d been to Egypt,” he says with a laugh. “But they also went to America and came back with all the records, so we were getting them before everyone else.”

Look Up is produced and largely written by that most assured studio superintendent, T Bone Burnett, the man who oversaw Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s award-hoovering 2007 collaboration Raising Sand. Burnett has won 13 Grammys, including for his work on soundtracks for such classic Americana-fuelled movies as O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cold Mountain and Walk the Line.

“There was no plan to make a country record,” says Starr, who first met Burnett socially in the 1970s. When they reconvened more recently at an event hosted by Olivia Harrison, Starr asked T Bone for a song. “He sent me this beautiful country track, and that blows me away even today. I thought he’d be sending me a rock-pop sort of song, because you’re just in that world.” The song was Come Back, a splendidly old-fashioned lullaby in the style of “Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry, complete with Starr whistling.

Burnett then proceeded to present Starr with no fewer than nine tracks, inspiring the drummer to sidestep his recent policy of making EPs and go the whole hog with an album for the first time since 2019.

These songs are the best Starr has been involved with for decades, Burnett’s sage production sympathetic to his unmistakable if limited voice, and making sparing use of vocal partners from the modern Americana scene, including Larkin Poe, Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings. Krauss accompanies him on the closing Thankful.

That track features an unusually personal lyric by Starr. “I had it all, then I started to fall,” he sings, acknowledging his place in the most famous pop group of all time and then his descent into a drink-induced haze, before he and his wife got sober in the late 1980s.

“There is a nod to the past, because I’m thankful for Barbara being in my life,” he says sweetly.

“I’m thankful that my life has changed. [I was] at the top of the mountain, and gradually it worked its way down. And then I looked up and life came back. I truly believe in looking up. You’re always in a better mood if you’re looking up. It’s one of those things you notice, walking around London, or it doesn’t matter where. They’re all looking down. There’s nothing down there.”

The album was also a full-circle moment for an artist whose second solo album, Beaucoups of Blues in 1970, was an arch-traditional country record, cut in two days with the American producer and pedal steel player Pete Drake. “Pete realised I liked country music and said, ‘You should come to Nashville and make a record.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go anywhere for two months.’ And he said, ‘What are you talking about? Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline was made in two days.’ I thought, ‘I can handle that.’”

We talk about how much country music has changed since then, and its latter-day adoption by stars of R&B and hip-hop. “It’s just popped up. I mean, in a pop music sort of way,” he says. “I know Beyoncé made a record and it was No 1 for, like, ten years,” he says, laughing. “But no, I haven’t heard it”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney and Ringo Star together at the O2 in London in 2024/PHOTO CREDIT: Raphael Pour-Hashemi/Mega

I am going to move things on in a minute. However, The Atlantic’s interview with Starr from March is incredible. It goes into such depth and detail. Someone who seems incredibly funny and charming in interviews, Ringo Starr is near the top of my wish-list of artists I would love to interview – though I realise it won’t happen. I am so glad that he is putting out music:

“What does “normal” life look like for an 84-year-old former Beatle? I was able to ascertain some details about Starr’s day-to-day. Does he drive? (Yes.) Does he have a trainer? (Yes: three days a week, weights, yoga, pilates, treadmill.) Streaming? (“Yeah, I love TV,” he told me.) What shows?

“Well, I’m not going to plug anybody,” he said, and I withdrew the question.

Naturally, Starr is a fan of Liverpool FC of the Premier League, but also the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL. He saw me wince when he mentioned the Cowboys and asked why. “Just like everyone loves the Beatles, everyone hates the Cowboys,” I explained. Starr objected—mostly to my choice of words.

“Why would you hate them?” he wondered. “That’s a strong word, to hate. Dislike is a better word.”

Confronted with more inner-directed questions about what it’s like to be Ringo Starr, the man can be stubbornly understated. “My name is Ringo, and I play drums,” he said when he entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2015. On the topic of how he came to join the Beatles, Starr is similarly laconic. “They wanted me to join the Beatles,” he told me. “I got this phone call, and that’s how it all happened.”

In 2022, Starr was given an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music, in Boston. “I don’t have a lot to say, just ‘Thank you,’ ” he said.

“You know, I just hit them. That’s all I do. I just hit the buggers,” he added, “the buggers” being the drums. “In a way, it’s like some strange fairy tale.”

Perhaps the strangest quality of this fairy tale is that it’s still unfolding. Starr’s country collaboration with T Bone Burnett, Look Up, is one of Starr’s most successful albums in years, hitting No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official Country Artists Albums Chart and selling briskly in the U.S. as well.

Coverage of Look Up has noted that Starr is one of several pop acts who have recently made country albums, as if Starr has latched on to some new crossover fashion, chasing the likes of Beyoncé and Post Malone. But Starr sounds genuinely oblivious to the bandwagon he’s supposedly hopping on. “I know Beyoncé made a record and it was No 1,” Starr said in an interview with The Times of London. “But no, I haven’t heard it.”

In fact, Starr’s life and career have always been steeped in country music. As a boy, he loved Westerns and worshipped Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy. His early music idols were Hank Williams and Hank Snow; later, he admired Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. He dreamed of escaping the Dingle for Texas. He even wrote to the Houston Chamber of Commerce after resolving to live close to the country-blues icon Lightnin’ Hopkins. As a general rule, this was not something poor Liverpool boys aspired to do.

Burnett says he always considered Starr to be the Beatles’ resident country ambassador. He thought of him as “rockabilly.” Burnett pointed to “What Goes On,” from Rubber Soul, and “Don’t Pass Me By,” from The White Album. “Even ‘Octopus’s Garden’ is country,” Burnett told me. “It sounds like Chet Atkins playing guitar.”

Country also played an essential part in helping Starr adapt to his post-Beatles life. The withdrawal was difficult at times: eight years of manic, identity-warping hysteria and creative intensity. Then, suddenly, nothing. Starr wallowed. He drank, a lot. The plaintive strains of country music made for a fitting companion. “The wife’s left, the dog’s dead, or I need some money for the jukebox” is how Starr sums up the standard trajectory of country tunes.

“I sat in my garden, wondering what to do with myself,” Starr told me. “And get over, really, missing and playing with the other three boys. And I thought one day, I’ve got to get up.”

He talked with Pete Drake, an American producer who worked with Harrison on his album All Things Must Pass, about making a country album. Beaucoups of Blues would be Starr’s second solo release. Hearing it now, it’s striking how well suited Starr’s voice is to country singing. He sounds playfully mournful—or mournfully playful—like someone perfectly at home in the genre.

“Are you worried at all?” Jimmy Kimmel asked him. “Why would I be worried?” Starr replied.

Starr has long been a casual acquaintance of Burnett’s, who has won about a million Grammys (13). In November 2022, the pair encountered each other at a reception for Olivia Harrison’s book of poems about her late husband. Starr mentioned that he was making an EP and asked Burnett if he wanted to contribute a track. Sure, Burnett said. He came back with a song, and then Starr asked for more. He sent nine, all of them country songs, figuring Starr could pick one or two. Starr said he liked them all.

Look Up is a vibrant and gentle compilation with recurring themes of despair, resilience, and, especially, gratitude. “Thankful” (with Alison Krauss), the record’s second release, is an homage to hard-won lessons and, in some ways, a countrified rendering of Starr’s post-Beatles trajectory.

His descent into alcoholism and long path to sobriety is a clear subtext. “ ‘Thankful’ is the most personal song he’s ever written,” Burnett told me. “It starts off, ‘I had it all and I started to fall,’ ” Burnett said. “It’s about being in the Beatles, and being on top of the world, being the most famous person in the world. And then being an addict.” A central figure of Starr’s recovery—and the main object of his gratitude—is his wife of more than 40 years, Barbara Bach. Together, they embraced sobriety in the late 1980s, which was around the time Starr convened the All Starr Band and resumed his touring career.

“Thankful” resonates with familiar Ringo refrains (“hoping for more peace and love”) and contains echoes of some of his signature songs (“I needed a friend to help me along”). After I listened a few times, I came to hear the song as an updated version of “It Don’t Come Easy,” conveyed by a blessed old soul, who had lived, thankfully, to sing the tale”.

I couldn’t let Ringo Starr’s upcoming eighty-fifth birthday slip by. I wanted to write about him. He is the musician above all others I envy. In terms of how he has lived his life. Looking so young and vibrant at the age of eighty-five, he has lived his life right! Even though he has made mistakes and no doubt indulged in more than his fair share of excess and drug-taking with The Beatles, he is now in a place in his life where he seems happier and healthier than ever. Living a relaxing life in the U.S., he is still performing a lot and recording music. We hope to get more Ringo Starr albums. Many who are in older bands put distance between themselves and the group. Starr loves The Beatles and recalls his time with them fondly. He is close with Paul McCartney but also does not forget John Lennon and George Harrison. Starr always proffers peace and love. He is someone who has had the same values since he was young. One of the most conscientious and nicest people in all of music, Starr is someone to look up to. A really positive role model still! His new music is among his very best. I also love how he has had this amazing career.

In my mind the best drummer who has ever lived, he was the heartbeat of The Beatles. Responsible for some of their best moments. Perhaps the most respected member of the group, as the eldest member, there was this sense of authority and wisdom. Songs that Starr sung on – like With a Little Help with My Friends, Boys and Yellow Submarine – are among the most joyous. His bandmates always delighted to be backing him! The things he has seen and his experiences with The Beatles. Though we hear a lot from Paul McCartney and there have been a lot of books about him and his legacy, there has not been the same focus on Ringo Starr. His role in transforming popular music and culture really cannot be underestimated. I admire him because he has remained so modest and ego-free. You can check out Ringo Starr’s books here. Like Paul McCartney, Starr is someone whose photography is another strand worth spotlighting. I hope that Ringo Starr writes a memoir or autobiography sometime soon. I almost think his times with The Beatles is more interesting than the other three members. The biopic of Ringo Starr – Barry Keogh will play Starr – is the one I am most looking forward to. This music icon turns eighty-five on 7th July. There will be so much love for him on the day. I hope that we get to celebrate his ninetieth and ninety-fifth birthday. Someone who is in rude health and is looking ahead, I do feel this jealousy. Starr has had this life that I could only aspire to. Those two interviews I included are really engrossing and worth reading. He has this passion and energy for music that seems undismissed. Such humour and wit. I do hope that he has something big planned for his eighty-fifth birthday. Salute, peace and love to a musician I admire…

ABOVE almost everyone else.

FEATURE: In His Own Write… The Dream of the In-Depth Interview with a Major Artist

FEATURE:

 

 

In His Own Write…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lorde/PHOTO CREDIT: Theo Wenner for Rolling Stone UK

The Dream of the In-Depth Interview with a Major Artist

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IT is bittersweet…

PHOTO CREDIT: Suzy Hazelwood/Pexels

being an independent music journalist. There is the autonomy to write what I want when I want. I do not have to stick to a particular writing or formatting style – which is a relief, but it also something I might change in the future -, and there is the freedom to work the hours I want. I can react to music news stories and do my own features. There are strict rules with music magazines and magazines where you have to pitch ideas or it can be difficult to get your work seen. It is hard to sustain a blog when you are independent. Making money can difficult unless you have advertising or subscribers. Most do not. Because of that, sustainability and growth is very hard. Many blogs call time. Also, if you have quite a small following (like me) then getting post engagements and traction is tough. You can dream big but the reality is that it is hard to lure big artists. However, as I have been doing this for nearly fourteen years, there is the possibility of making a blog a reality that is a long-term thing. There are not enough working-class music journalists around. More than there were, yet many who work for bigger sites and magazines are privately educated. There are flaws of being an independent. You can miss out on so much. Those huge interviews with mainstream artists. The sort of access to locations and artists that are out of reach. Having a big following that means your work can get seen by thousands of people. However, there are plenty of advantages in terms of flexibility. My blog has been going for a while and has never made any money. The costs are not that high. Away from domain and the annual registration and upkeep of my blog on Squarespace, I am not really incurring big costs. I don’t go to gigs much and I can keep expenses quite low. I realise that things are difficult for sites that I go to all of the time. Whether you are NME, Rolling Stone, The Line of Best Fit, CLASH, The Forty-Five, DIY or anyone like that, there are going to be challenges staying afloat.

IN THIS PHOTO: Nadine Shah

I can do pretty much anything that bigger websites can do in terms of reviewing albums and songs and highlighting artists. The thing that I aspire to is doing a long interview with a major artists. There are many that I have in my sights. Nadine Shah and Billie Marten are artists I have always wanted to interview. Big dream interviews like with Paul McCartney. There are many more that are in my mind. I am glad that this side of music journalism is still flourishing. One of my favourite recent interviews is from Rolling Stone UK  and their talk with Lorde. The interview is brilliant and it is such an immersive and engaging read. The photography is wonderful too. It is an extensive piece, but I want to highlight the final parts of Brittany Spanos’s interview. It is such a vivid and fulsome interview. That sort of long read that is music journalism at its very best:

“Lorde had been reading her own Wikipedia page recently while in a meeting. There’s a quote she had given as a teenager that stuck out to her: “I have nothing against anyone getting naked… I just don’t think it really would complement my music in any way or help me tell a story any better.”

“That’s the evolution right there,” she says. An hour earlier, at the shoot with Brown, she had draped herself over a sofa in her underwear.

As a teenager, Lorde felt protective of her body and her sexuality. Her clothes acted as a kind of armour: long sleeves, high necks, opaque colours. It was a double-edged sword, though: Lorde debuted around the same time that a generation of teen superstars were starting to grow up. Artists like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez were shedding the purity rings and forced modesty of their Disney careers in order to embrace their bodies and sexual agency. Lorde, by contrast, became a symbol of some type of moral purity, and her modesty was, in essence, used to slut-shame her peers.

“I remember vividly in that first year of being famous, so many people saying — I’m paraphrasing — ‘It’s so good you don’t take your clothes off like these other sluts,’” she says. “I was up on a pedestal because I wasn’t employing the same tools. And I remember being like, ‘No, no, I will take my clothes off one day. Be ready.’ I’ve always known that having those qualities ascribed to me so young [meant that] me being more open with my body, with my sexuality, [would] carry real weight and agitate and alienate.”

There were expectations placed on Lorde about how a girl becoming a young woman should act. It was another way she made herself small, trying to please the world and be good. But as she oozed, she redefined herself, and she saw that her gender identity could get bigger, too. On Virgin’s opening track, she lays the tale of her rebirth bare: “Some days I’m a woman / Some days I’m a man.”

I ask her how she identifies now, what it means and what’s changed. “[Chappell Roan] asked me this,” Lorde recalls. The pair have become close friends over the past year. “She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ And I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.’ I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.”

Though Lorde still calls herself a cis woman and her pronouns remain unchanged, she describes herself as “in the middle gender-­wise,” a person more comfortable with the fluidity of her expression. In some ways, she feels like her teenage self again, back when her friends were mostly boys and there was a looseness in how she dressed and acted.

PHOTO CREDIT: Theo Wenner for Rolling Stone UK

In 2023, she went shopping at clothing store C’H’C’M’ and tried on a pair of men’s jeans. She sent a picture to Stack to get his opinion. “He was like, ‘I want to see the you that’s in this picture represented in the music.’ This was before I had any sense of my gender broadening at all.”

Towards the end of that year, she went off birth control for the first time since she was 15. “I’ve now come to see [my decision] as maybe some quasi right-wing programming,” she admits, presumably referring to years of far-right influencers pushing anti-contraception disinformation. “But I hadn’t ovulated in 10 years. And when I ovulated for the first time, I cannot describe to you how crazy it was. One of the best drugs I’ve ever done.”

She wrote the album’s opening track soon after, as well as ‘Man of the Year’. She felt like she had superpowers, like being off birth control had peeled a film off her life. But the “best drug” came with bigger crashes than she had ever experienced. She would be diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric ­disorder, a severe form of PMS that causes debilitating mood swings, among other ­symptoms; she has since inserted the IUD visible on her album cover. The experience opened up an avenue of discovery she hadn’t anticipated. “I felt like stopping taking my birth control, I had cut some sort of cord between myself and this regulated femininity,” she explains. “It sounds crazy, but I felt that all of a sudden, I was off the map of femininity. And I totally believed that that allowed things to open up.”

When Lorde wrote ‘Man of the Year’, she was sitting on the floor of her living room, trying to visualise a version of herself “that was fully representative of how [her] gender felt in that moment”. What she saw once again was an image of herself in men’s jeans, this time wearing nothing else but her gold chain and duct tape on her chest. The tape had this feeling of rawness to her, of it “not being a permanent solution”.

“I went to the cupboard, and I got the tape out, and I did it to myself,” she tells me. “I have this picture staring at myself. I was blond [at the time]. It scared me what I saw. I didn’t understand it. But I felt something bursting out of me. It was crazy. It was something jagged. There was this violence to it.”

We talk about the Trump administration’s war against the trans community. While opening up about her own identity terrifies her, she knows she has less on the line than people whose gender identity does not match what they were assigned at birth.

“I don’t think that [my identity] is radical, to be honest,” she says. “I see these incredibly brave young people, and it’s complicated. Making the expression privately is one thing, but I want to make very clear that I’m not trying to take any space from anyone who has more on the line than me. Because I’m, comparatively, in a very safe place as a wealthy, cis, white woman.”

As the candle burns down, Lorde recalls a moment after her second psychedelic therapy session. She found herself searching for the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape. She’s not sure why, but she watched the whole thing.

PHOTO CREDIT: Theo Wenner for Rolling Stone UK

“I found it to be so beautiful. And maybe it’s fucked up that I watched it, but I saw two people that were so in love with each other, and there was this purity. They were jumping off this big boat… They were like children. They were so free. And I just was like, ‘Whoa. Being this free comes with danger.’”

The consequences of freedom have been on Lorde’s mind a lot lately. She’s realised the consequences of not taking these risks would be worse. “It feels worse to keep it all bolted down,” she says. “But God, of course, I’ve had many moments in the last couple years where I’m like, ‘If I could just have a nice normal life where you don’t elicit any strong reactions from anyone.’ But that’s not my path.”

In late April, Lorde shoots the final scene for the ‘What Was That’ video. The idea is to dance and lip-synch to the single in the centre of Washington Square Park’s fountain at dusk, surrounded by fans, whom she tipped off via a texting service she’s been using to communicate with them. Lorde was genuinely not sure how many people would show up. She had also started to get cold feet about the video being shot on iPhone, “pre-party jitters” getting the best of her.

She decided to cast a wider net for a crowd to join her, posting a shot of the park’s fountain on her Instagram story. Within a couple of hours, thousands had showed up — so many that the NYPD shut it down.  Lorde was getting ready in her apartment when she got word.

Her team and video crew were in panic mode. It seemed like weeks of planning had just come crashing down. On Instagram, she removed her story announcement, then told everyone to disperse, due to orders from the NYPD. But just a few blocks away, Lorde wasn’t worried. “I get very calm in a crisis,” she says. If Virgin, in its clearness, is about keeping the scars visible, then this hiccup fitted perfectly in the world she was about to build. “I was like, ‘This is amazing. This is such a good thing.’”

In the chaos, she called up Dev Hynes, with whom she regularly walks through the park. He was there already, en route to play football with friends, and stopped to play Lorde’s new single for the fans while she looked on via FaceTime. Meanwhile, Lorde watched the sunset from her building’s rooftop.

Sometime after 8:30, dusk had passed and the park had emptied out just enough for Lorde to finally emerge; by then, riot police were on location at the park (“and Counterterrorism, or something,” she says). She and her small crew were able to shoot one, three-minute take in the fountain — and they nailed it. The video was edited that night and posted online just two days later. Virgin came to life. By the weekend, ‘What Was That’ would become her first number one song on US Spotify since ‘Royals’.

When Lorde first moved to New York City, she used to avoid walking through Washington Square Park. With its throngs of young people congregating in all corners, it was a space that forced her to confront the fact that where she lives is no longer separate from where she exists as an artist.

Once she let go, she began to embrace the intimate one-to-one conversations with her fans that are part of her everyday life. It was again in the park that she recognised what this was all about: the very pure, clear channel between her and her uncasual listeners. “I’m kind of an intense bitch,” she says. “I’ve connected with the mission to do what only I can do. It’s enough”.

There are so many more examples. Rolling Stone/Rolling Stone UK are particularly fine examples of publications/websites where you get these detailed and long interviews. The New Yorker and The New York Times. NME do some deep dives too. I think a lot of what we get in terms of music news and information is quick and short. Hannah Ewens is someone who has conducted so many engrossing interviews for Rolling Stone and Rolling Stone UK. It is always a thrill reading these interviews because you picture yourself in the scene. A real sense of time and space. Background and biography. Modern context and some incredible exchanges. I wanted to highlight the Lorde interview as it is one of my favourites of this year. However, there are so many other examples. This great interview from Lucy Dacus from The New Yorker is another gem. I do love these long-rolling magazines and publications like The New Yorker. That has been going for a century now! Even though it focuses on more than music, I love their music journalism and style. Rolling Stone too. The fact that there are a lot of British music websites still going strong is cause for hope. At a time when music journalism is not as healthy and prolific as it once was, we are still seeing these phenomenal interviews and features. Many websites do have paywalls, though it is a gift that you can access many without payment.

IN THIS PHOTO: Lucy Dacus/PHOTO CREDIT: Lenne Chai for The New Yorker

Advertising revenue is the reason behind that, though it is also nice to give people a taste of what you produce and then seeing if they would like to subscribe. It is not a luxury many independent blogs and websites can do. It is something I want to do one day. Beautiful and interesting photos and an in-depth interview. There is a chance of it happening, though I think you have to have a bit more experience than me to get that sort of chance. Bigger interviews. I would love to head to the U.S. and interview Ringo Starr. Nadine Shah in a London interview. I want to approach legends and modern-day greats. I look at these new interviews coming out and it sparks something in me. However, it does seem far-fetched at the moment. A lot of my work gets overlook and people are mainly interested in Kate Bush stuff. That is a mixed blessing. I would like for more of my other features to get noticed and shared. However, I do have this platform where I can write what I want. I have been going for years, so I do not have much cause for complaint. It is only natural to dream bigger and have that sort of ambition. I hope one day I can get a commission for a big music website and feature a wonderful artist. I guess I need to keep putting the work in and do some more interviews soon. I am not sure whether I will branch out and do podcasts and audio interview. Maybe not at the moment. Perhaps expand what I post to Instagram and get noticed that way. I will come up with a solid plan going forward. I guess I should be proud I have a blog that is still being read (though not as much as I would like) over thirteen years later. Not many independent journalists can say that! Putting the effort and dedication in, it is something that I have…

IN THIS PHOTO: Ringo Starr/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

WORKED so hard to achieve.

FEATURE: Alright: D'Angelo’s Brown Sugar at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Alright

D'Angelo’s Brown Sugar at Thirty

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1995 is a year…

when some all-time classic debut albums were released. One of the absolute best was Brown Sugar from D’Angelo. Among the very best albums of that the 1990s, it turns thirty on 3rd July. I want to celebrate that upcoming anniversary by exploring  the album. Fusing contemporary R&B and traditional Soul music, Brown Sugar sprinkles in other genres and sounds to create this heady and intoxicating brew! I love how D’Angelo played so many of the instruments and was very much at the centre. A prodigious talent and incredible voice, Brown Sugar still holds up thirty years later. It is one of those classics that is not played and talked about as much as it should. Perhaps not as celebrated as its follow-up, 2000’s Voodoo, I know there will be people writing about Brown Sugar at thirty. I am going to end with a couple of (the many) positive reviews for this 1995 jewel. An album that sounded unlike anything around it at the time. I will start out by bringing in some retrospective examination of Brown Sugar. I am starting out with a twenty-fifth anniversary feature from Albumism. An album that arrived on 3rd July, 1995 in the U.K. and the following day in the U.S. It remains this flawless masterpiece:

“D’Angelo’s DIY approach to recording was a rare phenomenon, particularly so among new R&B artists who typically surrounded themselves with marquee producers and peppered their albums with cameos from other artists. His record label was more than a little skeptical of their superstar-in-the-making’s independent streak. “I wrote [Brown Sugar]—the majority of that record—in my bedroom in Richmond,” D’Angelo explained during a 2014 Red Bull Music Academy interview. “All of the demos for it were done on a 4-track, in my bedroom. And I think EMI was a little leery of me being in the studio producing it on my own, which was what I was fighting for. So it was important for them that I go in with someone, an engineer. I picked [revered studio engineer] Bob Power, because of my love for [A Tribe Called Quest] and what they were doing [together].”

The consummate virtuoso with multi-dimensional expertise, D’Angelo supplied the majority of the vocals and played the lion’s share of the instruments heard on the album, taking after his musical hero Prince. “Everything [Prince] did was the bomb,” he reflected to Wax Poetics. “And, he could do it all himself. I was one of those kids reading the album credits. I knew back then that I wanted to do that type of shit.”

As further testament to his unparalleled ambition and self-sufficient work ethic, D’Angelo also produced all ten tracks, with help from Power on a handful of tracks, as well as Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Raphael Saadiq, who co-produced the title track and “Lady,” respectively.

By the middle of the decade, soul music had stagnated and was starved for revitalization. Whatever creative energy had flowed during the early ‘90s apex of the New Jack Swing movement had effectively been sapped by 1995. Only a small handful of adventurous artists—Tony! Toni! Toné! and Meshell Ndegeocello most notable among them—were pushing the sonic envelope for soul music at the time, so to speak. While there were a few stellar soul albums released that year, most offered little to nothing beyond the predictable fare squarely calculated for mainstream airplay and sales.

The then 21-year-old D’Angelo arguably reignited the artistic flame of contemporary soul with Brown Sugar, and his motivations for doing so were fueled by purer forces of unbridled passion and perfectionism. Shortly after the album’s release, he clarified to the Los Angeles Times that, “I just want to make some dope black music, some good soul music. I could [not] care less about a hit song. This is only my first album. I feel like I’m growing musically, that now I know what I want to do, and how better to do it. I just want to keep elevating my music to a new level.”

D’Angelo always envisioned the album’s sound as more organic, less artificially polished.  Although he has since alluded to harboring at least some dissatisfaction with the final output—which he has referred to as too “buttery”—D’Angelo’s original vision was largely fulfilled. From vintage analog instruments (Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes, Hammond organ) to more modern digital technology (drum machines, computers), the mélange of sonic ingredients used during recording coalesced to form a savory gumbo of an album founded upon a warmer, more natural sound.

Brown Sugar expanded beyond its obvious classic soul evocations to integrate hip-hop flavors, jazz stylings, traditional blues and gospel inspirations throughout. In other words, this was quintessentially neo-soul, the marketing-driven term that the early D’Angelo champion Massenburg would coin a few years later as a way to differentiate the emerging sound and aesthetic from those that came before.

Propelled by D’Angelo’s southern drawl-drenched falsetto vocals layered atop lushly languid grooves, Brown Sugar’s filler-free ten tracks exude a palpable swagger, an effortless cool. Nowhere is this more richly manifested than on the album-opening title track. As the first of four singles released from the LP, the hypnotic “Brown Sugar” was our formal introduction to D’Angelo’s many charms, though the song’s innuendos may have been lost on some. Not, in fact, a tune about one of D’Angelo’s lady friends, “Brown Sugar” was a slyly clever ode to Mary Jane, in the same spirit of Rick James’ 1978 hit song. Check the lines midway through the song’s first verse (“See, we be making love constantly / That’s why my eyes are a shade blood burgundy”) and you’ll wonder how you could have missed the true meaning all along.

The rest of the album is largely comprised of laid-back love songs awash in thick bass lines and heavy organ and piano riffs, the highlights of which are “Alright,” “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine, “Lady,” and “When We Get By.” Two additional standouts are the gospel-tinged “Higher,” an impassioned hymn to the power of love, and the funky “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker,” a slowly smoldering lament for a cheating wife that ultimately takes a twisted, fatal turn.

Twenty-five years ago, Brown Sugar redefined the soul long player as we knew it then and ushered in a crucial pivot point in the history of the genre. Merging critical aplomb with commercial viability, it became the new prototype for contemporary soul—subsequently branded as neo-soul—and one that countless artists would work hard to emulate during the latter half of the 1990s and beyond.

And while D’Angelo’s recorded output to date may be sparse relative to others who have been in the game for nearly three decades, from a consistency and quality perspective, his body of work is unparalleled and it all began with Brown Sugar”.

I love reading about the background of Brown Sugar. This incredible and young talent who burst through with this amazing album. Though it did not get the same hype and spark as other albums from 1995, it is one of the most accomplished and enduring albums of its time. I want to come on to a great feature from CRACK. In 2020, they spent some time investigating a listening experience like nothing else. I think I first heard Brown Sugar many years after its release. I regret I did not hear it in 1995, as it would have opened me open to artists like D’Angelo:

“Just out of his teens when he recorded his debut record, D’Angelo – real name Michael Archer, the son of a preacher man – surrounded himself with equally funky creatives like Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Raphael Saadiq and music producer Bob Power. The result is an LP that sounds like it was cut in the dead of night by bugged-out geniuses; you can almost hear the sound of weed smoke blowing from the speakers and the creative spirits of Al Green, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye and Prince circling overhead. Like The Purple One, there was an aura surrounding D’Angelo. In real life, he was shy, difficult to read, more mystic than man. Unlike Prince, his powerlessness to create the body of work his genius demanded became the stuff of legend as he spent years struggling with his demons.

The D’Angelo mythos starts on the jazzy opening chords of the title track. D’s impossibly high falsetto rings with a carnal sensuality as he croons about sex or weed or maybe both. He sounds equally stoned and surly on Jonz in My Bonz, allowing his funky fingers to run over his organ as the beat summons the dusty sounds of New York hip-hop. Like most numbers on Brown Sugar, the song has a free-spirited feel, as though the whole record was laid down on analogue tape during the most perfect late night jam session that the gods and goddesses ever bore witness to.

D’Angelo’s Christian roots stir on the gospel opening of Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine and sanctified closer Higher, while there’s an underground jazz club feel to the plucked double bass and tinkling piano of tap-along classic When We Get By. It’s not all saintly: D gets nasty on Shit, Damn, Motherfucker, calling out the dude his wife’s been creeping with. “I’m ‘bout to go get my nine/ And kill both of y’all behind,” he threatens, a whole six years before Ronald Isley gained significant pop culture traction by playing a similar role in The Isley Brothers’ Contagious. Brown Sugar’s own songs for the radio come in the form of a lustrous cover of Smokey Robinson’s Crusin’ and Lady, a pretty pop track D’Angelo supposedly hated. That was, until fans started telling him their kids had been conceived to it.

This aversion to Lady probably stemmed from the simplicity of its structure, and D’Angelo’s hunger to experiment with arrangements would manifest on the darkly hypnotic psych-funk album Voodoo five years later. In the process, he dumped the oversized leather jacket and pudgy-cheeked look for a more overtly sexualised styling. His unhappiness with the image almost buried the singer as he collapsed into substances and depression. A 14-year album drought was finally broken in 2014 when D’Angelo dropped Black Messiah with band The Vanguard, another instant classic. All the while neo soul lived on through Bilal, Musiq Soulchild, India.Arie, Eric Roberson and Alicia Keys, offering a raw, lustful alternative to the sensibilities of most contemporary R&B. And so Brown Sugar helped start a musical moment. Twenty-five years later, it still feels out of step, out of time, eternally innovative, and just as gorgeous as it did on first rotation”.

There are two reviews I want to highlight a 2017 review from Pitchfork. An expanded edition of Brown Sugar was released. It showcased this incredible genius who arrived fully formed in 1995. There is not a weak or insincere moment on D’Angelo’s debut album. I wonder whether the man himself will post anything to social media on 3rd July. He should be incredibly proud of what he released in 1995. One of the finest albums ever in my view:

“Brown Sugar arrived during the peak of hip-hop’s golden era, when rappers like Nas and The Notorious B.I.G., and groups like Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest were at the height of their powers. D’Angelo instantly fit the mold. With his straight-back cornrow braids and baggy clothes, he looked like a rapper of that period, yet his music countered that which dominated the airwaves. Until Brown Sugar arrived, Top 40 R&B skewed very much toward hip-hop, from the upbeat tick of its beats to the guest rap verses that felt obligatory for almost every single. Songs like Monica’s “Don’t Take It Personal,” Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It” and Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” seemed influenced by Teddy Riley’s New Jack Swing-style production, which dominated urban music in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

D’Angelo was different, the perfect amalgamation of modern rap and old soul, and Brown Sugar was a masterclass in this alchemy. It was as if, from the very beginning, he wasn’t trying to go against the grain, he just wanted to keep things low-key. For instance, in the video for “Brown Sugar,” the scene unfolds in a smoky jazz club on what looks to be open mic night. It harkened back to the essence of soul and jazz music, live records cut at the Village Vanguard or Five Spot. The title track and the album felt honest and organic; you could feel the lush instrumentation, the sincerity in the lyrics, the warmth of the keys. This wasn’t R&B purposely intended for younger ears; Brown Sugar was grown folks music, it just so happened that a 21-year-old created it.

All these years later, Brown Sugar is still just as resonant, emitting a strong vintage quality that works in any era. It had everything: “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker,” a dark tale about death and infidelity, became a gritty street anthem that soundtracked a pivotal scene in 1999 film The Best Man. With its upbeat gospel sway, “When We Get By” was an uplifting tune in the vein of Ray Charles, as a track that meshed the genre’s traditional and contemporary aspects. On “Cruisin’,” the Smokey Robinson classic of the same name, D’Angelo kept the integrity of the original—the fluid guitar riff and wafting strings—yet he quickened the pace just slightly, and added weight to the drum kick. The finished product paid rightful homage to Smokey and might be a little better than the 1979 cut. The two-disc deluxe edition of Brown Sugar includes four remixes of D’Angelo’s “Cruisin’,” one apiece from producers King Tech and Dallas Austin, and two others labeled “Wet Remix” and “God Made Me Funky Remix.” Of the “Cruisin’” renditions, Austin’s is closest to D’Angelo’s portrayal; canned drums give it a distinct ’90s knock, but the strings and vocal arrangements are unchanged. The title track, “Lady” and “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine” also get a few different a capellas, instrumentals, and remixes here.

Listening to Brown Sugar’s deluxe edition is like walking through the mid-90s. The record feels like an artifact in that way, capturing D’Angelo at a nascent stage in his creative development while dusting off rhymes from Kool G. Rap (who originally appeared on King Tech’s remix of “Brown Sugar”), Redman (featured on the Def Squad remix of “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine”) and AZ (himself a featured rapper on DJ Premier’s “Lady” remix). Where Voodoo and Black Messiah felt especially grainy and dark, Brown Sugar feels especially lush and radiant, an outcome of Bob Power’s and Russell Elevado’s masterful engineering work. (Conversely, for Voodoo, Elevado and D’Angelo recorded everything on tape, which gave the record its lo-fi sound). Brown Sugar shifted modern soul, not only putting pressure on himself to exceed expectations moving forward, but it opened a door for a new movement in black music”.

I am going to finish off with another review around the reissue of Brown Sugar. Marking twenty years of a classic, The Line of Best Fit shared their thoughts on an album that has this incredible legacy. There are articles like this and this, that give you more insight into the seismic Brown Sugar. An album, as I said, that still sounds fresh and new. You can tell which artists recording today are influenced by D’Angelo’s masterful debut album. It will continue to inspire artists for generations:

“What’s remarkable about Brown Sugar is that it doesn’t fall prey to either of the likely fates for a solo record that draws on so many influences and was born of such a range of instrumental ability; it feels neither disparate nor like a kitchen sink job. In fact, on the contrary; Brown Sugar is masterfully restrained, an exercise in tasteful minimalism. The rhythm section drives the record, yet rarely seems to amount to much more than the crackle of the snare and a wandering bassline. The piano lines are unobtrusive, yet crucial; on the jazzier tracks - “Smooth” and “When We Get By”, for instance - they almost seem independent of the song, running parallel to it rather than feeling part of it. The guitar is used almost entirely for punctuation, but when it is - on “Alright” and “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine”, especially - it’s indispensable.

There’s early evidence, too, of D’Angelo’s flirtations with classical arrangements; the string section on that now-classic cover of Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’” is a masterstroke. In the larger scheme of the record, it was just another factor setting D’Angelo apart from the rest of the mainstream R&B world in the mid-nineties. At that point, the transition in the very meaning of that tag - from the rhythm and blues classicism that it actually stood for to where it stands today, effectively as a byword for urban-inflected pop music - was already underway, and in 1995, when the likes of Jodeci and Brandy had one eye on the charts, D’Angelo was continuing to fly the flag for purism - that he still managed to deliver something startlingly original in doing so is testament to his ability as a songwriter.

Also distinguishing him from his peers was his lyricism, which, on Brown Sugar, largely felt like a throwback to classic soul; this is an album replete with love songs, making it far and away his least complex album in conceptual terms. There’s nothing wrong with that, by any means; if you’re going to delve into straightforward balladry, then at least take your cues from the old maestros. Stevie Wonder’s presence is palpable on “Dreamin’ Eyes”, “Smooth” and “Alright”, whilst the spiritual leanings of “Higher” are a direct thematic nod to D’Angelo’s gospel roots. That he still found room for a chillingly sedate murder ballad - “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker” - and the nudge-wink of the title track, an ode to good weed rather than women, is impressive in itself.

And then, there’s that voice - and something else that has you realising what a one-off the man is. So much of a soul singer’s force of personality is wrapped up in their vocal delivery, so for D’Angelo - who by no means is a slouch in that department, with a readily recognisable falsetto - to pare back the importance of the vocals in the overall mix - to treat them as just another instrument, and to apply to them the same principles of minimalism as he does to every other area of Brown Sugar’s compositions - was a maverick move. He pitches his vocal approach somewhere between the soul that pervades the album’s instrumentation and the languidness that his hip hop heroes could lay claim to. His voice might sound smooth throughout the album, but his actual delivery was often not - there’s an offbeat confidence to his refusal to be bound by conventional standards of where the vocals should sit in relation to the rest of the track, something he probably owes as much to his jazz influences as to his admiration of Rakim or A Tribe Called Quest.

This new vinyl reissue is no remaster, and with just reason; there’s nothing wrong with the original. It’s all too easy to romanticise analog recording and the vinyl format itself in this day and age, but Brown Sugar provides compelling reason to feel nostalgic about both; it’s difficult to imagine how an album this sparse could still feel so warm if it had been digitally recorded, rather than cut to tape. Long since out of print on wax, this repress will allow a new generation to hear such a crisply captured R&B album the way it was intended. More than that, though - two decades on from its release - it provides an excuse, if anybody needed one, to revisit a game-changing classic of the genre, and in doing so, allow it to step out of the shadow cast by Voodoo and, more recently, Black Messiah”.

It is important that we mark thirty years of Brown Sugar. A stunning debut album from D’Angelo, I do wonder if he will follow up 2014’s Black Messiah (as D’Angelo and The Vanguard). He is one of the most consistent and talented artists of his generation. If you have not heard Brown Sugar then play it now. A sublime, soulful and scintillating work of genius, go and spend some time with…

THE perfect Brown Sugar.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Coco Jones

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

Coco Jones

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THIS is the third time…

I am featuring this artist. I included her in my Spotlight feature back in 2023. The wonderful Coco Jones released her debut studio album, Why Not More?, in April. I am going to end with a review for the album. However, before I get there, I am including a few interviews with Jones. If you are nearby and can see her on tour then go and book a ticket. Having starred in Bel-Air as Hilary Banks (the series ended last year), there is going to be other acting opportunities for Coco Jones. A GRAMMY-winning artist (she won for Best R&B Performance for her song, ICU). I am going to start out with some biography for this dazzling and multi-talented artist:

“Coco Jones has captivated the world with her timeless artistry, sensual voice and emotive songs to become R&B’s breakout artist. She signed with High Standardz/Def Jam in 2022 and released the EP What I Didn’t Tell You with the lead single “ICU,” which has been certified platinum. In 2024, she was nominated for an impressive five Grammy Awards—including the coveted Best New Artistaccolade— and won for Best R&B Performance “ICU.” The song was lauded by fans and critics alike and peaked at #1 on the Billboard R&B Airplay chart, leading to Best New Artist wins at the BET Awards, The Soul Train Awards and NAACP Image Awards.

With the release of 2x GRAMMY nominated song “Here We Go (Uh Oh),” as well as “Sweep It Up,” and “Most Beautiful Design” Ft. London On Da Track and Future, this next chapter finds the 26-year-old multihyphenate singer/songwriter and actress embarking on her debut album and stepping into an era of empowerment and connection.

Coco Jones was raised in Nashville, TN by a mother who was also a singer, and a father who played in the NFL. Early on, she learned the importance of following her dreams. She began recording at the age of 9 and was called to acting—first as a recurring guest on Disney’s musical sketch comedy, So Random!, and in 2012, as the golden-voiced love interest in the network’s TV movie, Let It Shine. Since then, she’s showcased her formidable acting skills playing Hilary Banks in Peacock’s Fresh Prince reboot, Bel-Air and Netflix’s Vampires vs. the Bronx. Her visibility has made her a role model for beautiful and talented dark-skinned Black women”.

I am going to move along to a 2024 interview from NME. They write how the Tennessee-raised artist has not had the smoothest ride, though she is getting her second chance. A successful actor and acclaimed artist, it was definitely a new chapter for Coco Jones. She aims to redefine R&B. I think she is doing that. We have a wave of great British R&B artists coming through. I have not followed modern U.S. as closely as I should. I have been a fan of Coco Jones for a few years now:

“She attributes her love for R&B and soul to her family and upbringing. She says: “I think what draws me to R&B is familiarity and relatability. I feel like whatever music you’re raised on, you naturally gravitate more towards – R&B feels like home to me. R&B has so much cultural impact in Black American culture, and [other genres like] soul is Black history – so a lot of why I like it is because I’m a Black woman and it’s my history.”

Her time at the Disney Channel sharpened her superstar qualities from a young age. In 2012 she starred as one of the lead roles in TV film Let It Shine, alongside Abbott Elementary’s Tyler James Williams. She also had recurring roles in the shows Good Luck Charlie and So Random!, acting alongside Disney alumni Bridgit Mendler and Demi Lovato.

Being a Disney girl was the dream for Jones as a child; “I was obsessed with Cheetah Girls! I always wanted to be on Disney, so I just went to loads of auditions,” she explains. The experience taught her about how to hustle and compartmentalise, she says, which are lessons she carries to this day.

Jones credits her father (a former NFL player) and mother (a backing singer) for being a crucial support system in her teenage years while she learned these qualities: “My mom is always so wise… she taught me how powerful it is to be confident.”

Her mother is equally as appreciative of her children, and wears their achievements with pride. Jones’ Grammy trophy is at her mother’s place; “I always send my awards to my mom… she has her own section in the house for all of her kids and all of the accolades that we’ve ever won.”

Her journey from Disney Channel star to Grammy-winning singer was not straight-forward. Disney’s music operation, Hollywood Records, signed Jones at 15 – before dropping her almost a year later following creative differences. “That knocked me all the way back,” she explains. “It was uncomfortable for me, I did a lot of partying to cope with not being where I wanted to be in life. But it also helped me forge a relationship with my faith and with God… I really wasted years with negativity and distractions. Now I’ve learnt my lessons from that.”

It took her a lot of hard work to reach the point of being able to sign to a major label again, but she credits her work ethic for the achievement; “I would just put things out. I did independent releases and funded my own videos and I auditioned a lot and would put myself out there. I would post covers even if they got low views, I did something everyday.”

In the period she was unsigned, Jones released an EP titled ‘HDWY’ [He Don’t Want You]. Written during the span of her first breakup, Jones flexes her vapory, husky voice and flaunts her newly curated R&B and neo-soul sound. “I learned what I lacked sonically through discovery of new music coming out at the time,” she explains. “I was heavily inspired by people like SZA and PARTYNEXTDOOR, and I liked people that told the truth. I can’t act like there’s nothing going on with my life, I had to figure out my truth too.”

It’s this radical honesty in her musical which made a successful comeback possible – redefining her brand from a former Disney pop star to an unashamedly authentic vocalist. She describes herself as an “emotional person”, but says that this helps her in both her singing and acting skills. “[Singing and acting] have to deal with emotion, in different ways. One is like your own story, and the other is like a story that was written,” she says.

Jones currently has a main role in Peacock’s Bel-Air, reprising Karyn Parsons’ Hilary Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. She’s enjoying it and draws similarities between Hilary and herself: “We’re both girls’ girls,” she laughs, and compares Hilary’s likeliness to the girls she is friends with in real life. She commends the skills of her castmates and is happy to be both singing and acting again. “It’s hard to balance, though, I’m not gonna hold you!”

Moving forward, she wants to hone her redefined sound and mix it with new influences in a full length project. “I just want to outdo everything I’ve already done, and experiment with new sounds,” she says. Yet, despite having already been nominated for prestigious genre-specific awards, she is determined to make herself a staple name in the industry. “R&B is more of a patience game, whereas something like pop could be a trend overnight. With R&B, it’s like a seed that needs to sprout and then grow. I want to modernise R&B”.

Last year was a huge year for Coco Jones. It was one where her music was taking off. There were some great interviews from last year. ELLE spotlighted an artist who was doing things her own way. I know Why Not More? is among this year’s best albums. We are going to hear a lot more albums from Jones. Such a remarkable and original talent:

“What has been your most unbelievable moment in music?

Being nominated for five Grammys was not a sentence I ever thought I was going to hear at this stage in my career. That’s been the most unbelievable. And winning a Grammy feels kind of surreal as well. But the way my mind reacted to the five nominations, I was like, “No way.”

What’s your overall career goal?

I want the option to be able to be involved in whatever I’m into. If I don’t want to put out an album for five years and I want to open up an art gallery for Black women, that would be what I do. And it would be respected and it would be valued and taken seriously because of my name and because of how hard I work. I could score a movie, start a product line, or develop an artist. I want to have options to do whatever I desire.

Has your definition of success changed as you’ve gotten older and more famous?

My definition of success used to just be: Beyoncé. But I can’t focus so much on what this woman that I am a huge fan of did. I can take the core principles, the hard work of it all, the authenticity of it all, the re-creating yourself of it all. But it has to be the Coco way. I used to do that with so many people: “I want to do what she did,” and just leave it there. But I’m me, so I can’t be what someone else is. I have to find a new way.

Have any female R&B artists served as mentors to you or given you advice?

I love Ella Mai. She’s my homegirl. She’s had the type of success that I’m working toward, so she gives me a lot of advice. It’s also just the peer-to-peer support. Chloe x Halle and I are constantly uplifting each other whenever we see each other, because we grew up together in the Disney world. That’s the really beautiful part, the “Girl, we see what you’re doing. Keep going.”

You’ve mentioned that you don’t like being famous.

I don’t feel like anyone would like it if they got a taste of it. It’s very strange. I feel like an animal in a zoo sometimes. But I know that it’s not something to complain about. I think about my younger self and how I would feel when I saw people on TV in real life. I didn’t know how to act, and it’s just not normal. I’m not normal. And the human reaction to seeing me in my job, because it’s an un-normal job, is going to be an un-normal reaction. So I just have to look at it like a human response to seeing somebody that you only see on your phone. It’s strange. So I don’t take it any way but the logical way. I feel like there’s a lot of good that comes with people wanting to know more about you. You can tell them your journey, you can inspire, you can uplift. So there’s good and bad with that, too. But of course, if it was my preference, I would [just] release my songs under an alias and collect my funds.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sharif Hamza

Do you have a dream collaboration?

Mine would be Beyoncé, but I have so many other artists that I love as well: Jazmine Sullivan, Brandy, Rihanna, Alex Isley. I would do a song with Ella [Mai]. And I love Tate McRae. I think she’s fire.

Is there a question that you’ve never been asked that you’ve always wanted to share?

No one has ever asked me if the work that it takes once you do get to these things was anything that I could have understood before I got here. People see that I’m signed, I have a show, and I put things out. They don’t think, “I wonder if she knew what she was really signing up for.” The answer is no. There are so many other little things that you have to do. You have to be the final say in so many things. I didn’t know there would be so many questions that need answers, [many of which are] time-sensitive. You’re also balancing so many different sides of you: “Do you want to do this interview and this commercial? This product wants you to be aligned. Do you like this product? Can you go on tour? This artist wants you to sing on this song.” You have to constantly make sure that you can really stand on business with what you’re saying yes to. And if you don’t want to do that thing, then it’s like, “How much of this is a necessary thing for where I’m trying to get? Or is this really a choice?” On your schedule, there are things you really want to do, things you definitely don’t want to do, and things you just have to do to keep it going and not lose yourself in the midst of all those things.

I want people to think about that, too. On social media, everybody’s like, “Drop this [music].” You’re trying to still be an artist and you’re trying to live your life so you can write songs that you relate to. It’s not all glitz and glamour. The payoff is amazing, but I feel like sometimes I read comments talking about an artist. I’m like, “Girl, you have no idea what the smoke is like over here.” You have to make sure that you do what’s necessary, but also the things that are you. They don’t mesh all the time”.

The final interview I am sourcing from is Harper’s Bazaar. Reacting to Coco Jones attending the Academy Awards “in what she calls “Coco and Coach’s version”, it was an interesting conversation. In spite of a typo on their part – ‘Brittany Spears’ should be ‘Britney Spears’ -, we get to learn new things about one of the most spectacular and promising artists in R&B:

“What’s your biggest inspiration, both style wise and in your career, and how has that influenced your work and approach to success?

I will not lie. I do get a lot of my influence from the ‘90s and the early 2000s. I think I would probably say that Destiny's Child has influenced my style the most. I love super feminine skin-tight crop tops, body showing.

You recently released your single “Taste,” which includes a sample of Brittany Spears’ 2003 track “Toxic” with an R&B spin. What about that song and/or Britney Spears inspired this single?

I have been doing a lot of experimenting with this album. I feel like one of my goals is to continue to push the boundaries of what R&B can be. People, I think, are also still learning about me. I'm still learning about me. But when you put out your first album, it's kind of like, hey, this is who I am. Some people will be hearing me for the first time and so I wanted to continue to show different sides of me. One of the sides of me that I feel like hasn't been fully represented yet is I did a lot of music in the pop world. I mean, I was signed when I was 14. I was doing Disney Channel. And I was obsessed with Britney and Hannah Montana and all of the girls that were in that pop world. I've done a lot of, like, super R&B, very traditional, but I kind of wanted to cross that pop and R&B world in a couple of my songs on this album. And with that intention in mind, we had this pitch[ed] down “Toxic” sample of Britney, and it just kind of morphed into “Taste”, which became the single.

You just announced your debut album and tour that are coming this Spring. What are you most excited for fans to take away from this new era?

I want to be the type of artist where there's a song for every mood. There's a song for the girls who just are chill. There's a song for the girls who are ragey and have mad energy, aggressive, the toxic girls, the girls who are flirty, cutesy, and the girls who are still figuring themselves out. We all have so many sides to us that I kind of want them to be like Ben & Jerry—pick your favorite flavor.

What are some films (past or present) that have informed who you are today?

My first thought was Dream Girls. I'm also gonna say Princess Tiana, not for nothing. I do love cute animation, and I also love beignets, but not frogs, though. I would also say Clueless is one of the ones that I love. I just love that girly girl stuff and Mean Girls.

What are some of the films that are nominated that you’ve enjoyed this year?

Substance I think is super dope, and I love a lot of that cast. Honestly, it's hard to choose, because when you go to the Oscars it’s such high quality stuff. So I feel like it's hard to choose, but Substance or Wicked.

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What are you most looking forward to tonight (The Oscar’s)?

Hopefully getting to meet Ariana. Love her. I did get to meet Cynthia Erivo yesterday and she was so sweet. She actually followed me on Instagram, and then I followed her back, and she had tagged me two years ago, so super crazy. You never know who's watching and listening to your music.

We know you have a lot in store in terms of your music, but can you tell us what’s next for you in terms of your acting career?

I have a film that I executive-produced last year and I was also in. It's kind of like a black rom com that gives you those throwback vibes, and hopefully it's one of those classic staples that, you know, people fall in love with. I'm actually going to South Africa in a couple weeks to film this scary movie, but I'm not doing the scary parts. I hope to continue to build my film and TV side as much as I put that same energy into music”.

Let’s end up with a review of Why Not More? from NME. If you have not experienced Coco Jones and her amazing music then you need to rectify that. I know that she will rise to be included alongside the most influential R&B artists ever. She has the sheer talent to go as far as she wants. This is an exciting artist that everyone needs to follow:

“Coco Jones’ debut album ‘Why Not More?’ has been a hard-fought battle over a decade in the making. Following several false starts in the 2010s as she tried to transition from Disney teen actor to singer, the former NME Cover star slowly laid the groundwork for her music career. She finally took the R&B world by storm in 2022, with her sublime single ‘ICU’, a soulful ballad with shades of Brandy and Toni Braxton.

What followed were a whirlwind couple years for Jones that included several milestone firsts: the release of ‘What I Didn’t Tell You’ in November 2022, her first major label EP since 2013; her first solo headlining tour across the US and Europe in 2023; and her first Grammy win for Best R&B Performance for ‘ICU’ at the 2024 ceremony. It has all readied her for this moment.

The record is a resounding portrait of a woman unafraid, one who has navigated tough times and come out the other side swinging. On ‘Why Not More?’, Jones isn’t scared to push boundaries, whether it’s her own or R&B as a genre – or both at the same time. That’s the case on the daring ‘Taste’, where she interpolates Britney Spears’ pop classic ‘Toxic’, but flips it around with silky synths and trap beats that bring out the best of her soulful R&B voice.

That creativity is on display elsewhere on the record, too. There’s the gut-wrenching ‘Hit You Where It Hurts’, a guitar-driven moment that that wouldn’t feel out of place on an indie record, or just simple-but-smart wordplay on the Kelly Rowland-esque ‘AEOMG’ (“Fresh up out the shower, boy, it’s getting filthy / Using all my vowels, legs up on the ceiling / Talking about, A-A-E-E-O my god”). At times, there are also echoes of Aaliyah, such as on ‘Thang 4 U’.

But, of course, Jones is at her finest when her voice is the star of the show. The highlight is ‘Here We Go (Uh Oh)’, which recalls the best of Jazmine Sullivan, where Jones laments about a lover she just can’t move on from (“I wanna love another person, can I please love another person”) over a sample of ‘’Cause I Love You’ by Lenny Williams. The authentic vulnerability in her vocals doesn’t just cut through on the record’s ballads (‘By Myself’, ‘Other Side of Love’), but also on groovier cuts like the reggae-infused ‘Why Not More?’ with YG Marley.

As an album, ‘Why Not More?’ is deeper, richer and more wide-ranging than anything we’ve ever seen from Jones. But the singer also uses the record to signal that there are depths that she has yet to explore – and with this newfound sense of confidence, this album is just the beginning for this star in the making”.

I will wrap there. A magnificent artist whose music will definitely stay in the head and heart, I am interested to see where she goes next. What her next acting project is and what a second studio album might sound like and involve. I spotlighted her a couple of years ago and wanted to return to her career as she has released her debut album. It is clear that her future is going to be very bright. Coco Jones is...

A monumental talent.

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Follow Coco Jones

PHOTO CREDIT: Paige Margulies for NME

Official:

https://www.therealcocojones.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/cocojones/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://x.com/TheRealCocoJ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/cocojonessings/featured

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/CocoJones/

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Debbie Harry at Eighty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: S. Savenok/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival

Debbie Harry at Eighty

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I may do another feature…

around Debbie Harry, as she turns eighty on 1st July. It is a big birthday for one of music’s true icons (a word I use with all confidence). A lot has changed in the Blondie camp the last few months or so. I believe the band we rerecording an album or in the process of starting it. We learned the sad news that the drummer Clem Burke died on 6th April at the age of seventy. I am not sure how that affects Blondie’s future plans and recording. However, we remember his phenomenal work. The band’s lead is one of music’s all-time greats. Debbie Harry has inspired so many people and remains one of the greatest band leads in music history. In this first feature ahead of her eightieth birthday, I have assembled a Blondie playlist. I know I have done this before, however, I am taking a different approach this time. I am not going to do all their hits and deep cuts. Instead, I am limiting it to an essential collection: the twenty Blondie songs that you cannot do without. In a new feature, I am running a series where I look at great American artists and compile their twenty essential tracks into a playlist – to introduce them to people who may not be overly-familiar. I will get to the Blondie mix in a bit. However, first, this website gives us some background to and biography of the peerless and super-cool Debbie Harry:

“Who Is Debbie Harry?

Debbie Harry met guitarist Chris Stein in the 1970s, and the two started a band that would later become the world-famous Blondie. Categorized as new wave (a genre of music shaped by styles that include punk, electronica, reggae and funk), Blondie eventually met commercial and critical success. The band's third album, Parallel Lines, catapulted Harry to stardom and the song "Heart of Glass" reached No. 1, later followed by other chart-toppers like "Call Me," "The Tide Is High" and "Rapture." With her musical know-how and mesmerizing aesthetics, Harry became a pop icon, influencing many female singers to come.

Background and Early Life

Debbie Harry was born Angela Tremble on July 1, 1945, in Miami, Florida, and was adopted by Richard and Catherine Harry when she was 3 months old. Growing up in Hawthorne, New Jersey, Harry sang in the church choir. She tried college for two years before dropping out and moving to New York City in the late 1960s. Having sang with the band Wind in the Willows and worked as a Playboy Bunny, Harry ended up waiting tables at Max's Kansas City, a popular club that was part of the downtown art and music scene.

Forming Blondie

Harry later joined the Stilettos, a female trio, and met guitarist Chris Stein, who became a member of the group. Over time, Stein and Harry became romantically involved. In 1974, the two started the band which would eventually be known as Blondie. The burgeoning new wave act played many of the legendary clubs in New York, including CBGB.

Blondie's self-titled debut was released in 1976. The following year, the band toured in support of their second album, Plastic Letters, which scored a No. 2 spot on the British charts with single "Denis." Over the years, Blondie would continue to be a formidable force in the U.K.

Commercial Breakthrough: 'Parallel Lines'

Blondie's third album, the critically exalted Parallel Lines, helped catapult the band to pop music stardom. The disco/glam single "Heart of Glass" reached the top of the U.S. charts in 1978, while the campy, more traditionally rock-ish "One Way or Another" became a Top 25 hit. Harry served not only as lead vocalist for the group but wrote many of its songs with Stein. With her white-blond hair, high cheekbones and commanding, cool style partially inspired by comic books and movies, Harry became a pop music icon. Harry was one of the few female recording artists to rise to the top and paved the way for later acts like Madonna.

More Hits: "The Tide Is High," "Rapture," "Call Me"

Blondie continued to be successful with the group's next albums Eat to the Beat (1979), which included "Dreaming" and "Atomic," and Autoamerican (1980), which featured two more No. 1 hits — the reggae/mariachi-influenced "The Tide Is High" and dance-rap number "Rapture." The band had also landed another No. 1 with the rock song "Call Me," a collaboration with producer/songwriter Giorgio Moroder that was featured on the soundtrack for American Gigolo (1980).

Breakup of Blondie

Blondie broke up in 1982, as around this time Stein became ill with a rare skin disease. Harry took time out from her career to look after him. He recovered and although their relationship didn't survive, the two remained friends. Harry later revealed that she has also been romantically involved with women, though her longer-term relationships were with men. The singer has pointedly spoken about desire and intimacy throughout her life via interviews and her work.

Solo Career: 'KooKoo' and 'Def, Dumb & Blonde'

Harry released her debut album KooKoo, produced by Nile Rodgers, in 1981. Another solo album, Rockbird, came forth in 1986, while her single "French Kissin'" reached the Top 10 in the U.K. Her third album, Def, Dumb & Blonde, dropped in 1989, featuring the Top 20 U.K. hit "I Want That Man." Another effort, Debravation, followed in 1993.

Switching musical styles, Harry joined the Jazz Passengers as lead vocalist for their 1997 album Individually Twisted. She then returned to the studio for her first solo album in more than a decade with 2007's Necessary Evil.

Blondie Reunited

In 1997, Harry reunited with her Blondie bandmates to tour in Europe. Their first album together in more than 15 years, No Exit, was released in 1999. The album's song "Maria" hit the top of the charts in England but wasn't received as well in the U.S.

In 2004, the group released their eighth studio album, The Curse of Blondie, featuring the Top 20 U.K. single "Good Boys." After being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, Blondie went on tour in 2008 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Parallel Lines. Three years later, they released a new album, Panic of Girls.

In 2014, the band released its tenth studio album, Ghosts of Download, bundled with re-recorded versions of greatest hits. Blondie followed with Pollinator in 2017, with its lead single, "Fun," reaching the top spot on the Billboard Dance chart.

Films and TV Shows

While still riding high on the early success of Blondie, Harry found time to act in film projects like Union City (1980) and Videodrome (1983). She went on to land roles in films that included John Waters' Hairspray (1988), Heavy (1995) and Six Ways to Sunday (1997), as well as in TV series like Wiseguy and The Adventures of Pete & Pete.

In 2006, Harry appeared in the theatrical dance production The Show (Achilles Heels) and the independent film Full Grown Men. Additionally, she and her Blondie bandmates began having their music featured on popular TV series like Ghost Whisperer, Smash and Glee.

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In 2015, Harry appeared on the Hulu original series Difficult People. She also began campaigning for fair pay to artists in an age of streaming, citing what she deemed a lack of appropriate compensation given to musicians/singers by YouTube.

Memoir

In August 2019, Harry made waves ahead of the publication of her memoir, Face It, with the release of a passage that recalled how she had been raped at knifepoint in her New York City apartment in the mid-1970s”.

I will try and put out another Debbie Harry feature ahead of her eightieth birthday on 1st July. There will be a lot of love from her peers and those through the music world. One of the all-time greats. It will be amazing to think there is another Blondie album on the way. If not, we can celebrate their enormous legacy! To honour Debbie Harry, I have selected the twenty Blondie tracks that define the band. People may quibble with a few – and there may be the odd omission -, though I feel it is a solid mixtape. Songs that showcase the brilliance of…

THE one and only Debbie Harry.

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Saint Etienne – Foxbase Alpha

FEATURE:

Beneath the Sleeve

Saint Etienne – Foxbase Alpha

__________

ONE of the finest…

IN THIS PHOTO: Saint Etienne in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: VICE

and most distinct debut albums of the 1990s, I wanted to look inside Saint Etienne’s Foxbase Alpha for this Beneath the Sleeve. Pulling from club music and House sounds of the time, this, blended with 1960s Pop, created this amazing sound. A dreaminess that mixed with a tougher edge. Sarah Cracknell was not an official full-time member of the band at this point. She does not appear on Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Moira Lambert is on vocals). However, there is another reason why I want to explore this album. Saint Etienne announced that they are going to release only one more album. Ending a thirty-five year recording career, the British band announced that International is going to be their last album together. It is out on 5th September. I want to go back to the beginning. I would recommend people to pick up Foxbase Alpha on vinyl if they do not have it already. I am going to come to a couple of retrospective features about the album. End with a couple of reviews for a Deluxe Edition version that was released in 2009. Apologies if I repeat anything in terms of details and bank history. I am starting out with a feature from Albumism. They celebrated thirty years of Foxbase Alpha:

“Beginning with their debut LP Foxbase Alpha, a seminal recording of the era released in October 1991, Saint Etienne convincingly blurred the lines between pop, indie and dance music, while embracing both retro and contemporary inspirations, all of which made for a kaleidoscopic, endlessly addictive sound. And ultimately, while their initial foray is stylish and catchy as all hell, it’s music of sophistication and substance to boot.

Foxbase Alpha—and the rest of Saint Etienne’s dynamic and varied discography, for that matter—is evocative of time, for sure, but also emblematic of place. Namely, London. Indeed, the group’s insatiable affection for their native city permeates their music and cross-media endeavors, as manifested on the silver screen via their multiple collaborations with filmmaker Paul Kelly: Finisterre (2002), What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day? (2005), This Is Tomorrow (2007), and How We Used to Live (2014). Along with their most recent Alasdair McLellan orchestrated short film (and corresponding album) I’ve Been Trying To Tell You (2021) which celebrates the expanse of the United Kingdom beyond London, they’re all must-watch material for anyone who has ever been seduced by the seemingly infinite charms of the UK capital. London is, in essence, the fourth member and guiding spirit of the band. And to reference one of Foxbase Alpha’s many standout songs, London most certainly belongs to them.

Though Stanley and Wiggs are the sonic masterminds behind Saint Etienne, both gentlemen have always been content to defer the lion’s share of the immediate spotlight to the more visible third member of the trio, the heavenly-voiced singer-songwriter Sarah Cracknell. While Cracknell has been the group’s lead vocalist for as long as most can remember, ‘twas not always the case.

Originally, Stanley and Wiggs envisioned Saint Etienne as a platform designed for multiple vocalists, a la London dance circuit compatriots Soul II Soul and Bristol sound system stalwarts Massive Attack. On Foxbase Alpha, three different vocalists can be heard: Moira Lambert (formerly of the London-based group Faith Over Reason), Donna Savage (of Auckland-based band Dead Famous People), and Cracknell. While the latter is the most prominent of the three across the entirety of the album and deservedly earned the permanent gig as a result, the three-headed voice heard on Foxbase Alpha certainly makes for an intriguing listen. Particularly so when coupled with its mellifluous, multi-textured mélange of house, disco, dub, folk, and pop influenced flourishes, which Stanley describes as “a scrapbook” and “stylistically all over the place.” Instead of a messy hodgepodge of incongruous elements, however, Foxbase Alpha is a gorgeous, gratifying pastiche of symbiotic sounds and expertly incorporated samples.

Attempting to cover Neil Young is considered an outright act of hubris in many circles. But Saint Etienne’s stirring, Lambert-fronted debut single and album opener “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” which was recorded in all of two hours’ time, manages to stay faithful to the original’s melancholy weight while transforming Young’s minimalist composition into a fresh and thrilling dancefloor-friendly affair.

Propelled by multi-layered dub basslines, house rhythms, piano loops, and pounding drum breaks, the group’s interpolation sounds little like Young’s 1970 single, save for the equally plaintive power of Lambert’s ruminations. While the album version stuns, the various remixes orchestrated by the likes of the late Andrew Weatherall and Masters at Work are worth seeking out as well.

Fueled by a sample of Dusty Springfield’s 1967 track “I Can’t Wait Until I See My Baby’s Face,” the buoyant throwback soul of third single “Nothing Can Stop Us” is an indisputable highlight, though plenty of other standouts abound. Atop a rolling groove bolstered by Cracknell’s emotive admissions, “Spring” is an endearing ballad framed from the perspective of a friend expressing her support and love for a heartbroken man. With lines such as “I've been watching all your love affairs / Three years now, don't you think I care / How many times have you looked into my eyes / Don't you realise we're two of a kind,” the song evokes and encourages a romantic rebirth of sorts with the coming of the new season. The dense dub basslines resurface on the yearning “Carnt Sleep,” a subdued and relatable ode to infatuation-driven insomnia.

Elsewhere, memorable moments include the soaring house soundscape and hypnotic, repeated refrain of “Carrie’s got a boyfriend” on “Girl VII,” the lush and dreamlike “People Get Real” (the second of the two US-only bonus tracks), and the propulsive instrumental track “Stoned to Say the Least.” The kinetic “She’s the One” examines the deplorable jealousy of “the girl who thinks nothing of breaking up two people in love,” with sampled vocals from The Four Tops’ “In a Different World” (1968) and a nod to The Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” (1963) and “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)” (1962). Finally, with lines like “Close our eyes, breathe out slowly / Today London loves us only,” the aforementioned, downtempo “London Belongs to Me” explores finding bliss in the city one calls home and doubles as the group’s first of many love letters addressed to their beloved London.

“[Foxbase Alpha] had that first album syndrome, which is a good thing in that it was a melting pot,” Cracknell has suggested. “We thought `my god! We’re making an album and we might not get to make another one ever!’ so we really went for it.” And their ambition and musical adventurism paid off, both in the short- and long-term. Foxbase Alpha was shortlisted for the first-ever Mercury Prize back in 1992, but ultimately conceded the honor to another masterpiece of the period, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica. No matter though, as in the years since, Saint Etienne have crafted nine wondrously nuanced studio albums and a slew of compilations and mixtape-like collections, not to mention Cracknell’s underrated solo recordings (most recently the sublime Red Kite).

As Foxbase Alpha first made abundantly clear three decades ago, and as each of their subsequent recordings has reminded us time and time again, Saint Etienne are an indisputable class act and will forever remain an (inter)national treasure”.

The next feature I want to source is Louder Than War’s thirtieth anniversary salute of Foxbase Alpha. One of the most extraordinary albums of its time, it is amazing that the band are still recording music thirty-four years after their debut arrived. If you have not heard the album then go and check it out, as it still sounds so phenomenal. Like nothing else in music:

“Saint Etienne is born

Thus Saint Etienne was finally conceived in 1990, the name taken from the French football team, just because, in Bob’s words, they liked the sound of it, nothing more, nothing less. They made their mark quickly with an audacious and magnificently inspired dub-meets-Balearic debut single, a cover of Neil Young’s plaintive 1970 acoustic ballad Only Love Can Break Your Heart, recorded in just hours for the princely sum of a few hundred quid.

The song was an otherworldly delight: a tripped out, hazy, lazy shuffle with some gorgeous filmic atmospherics and a spaghetti western, tumbleweed aura conjured up by the heavily-reverbed production. An eerily distressed honky-tonk piano playing out the catchy motif along with a cavernous dub bass underpinned everything, whilst on top of this floated an almost spectral vocal from guest singer Moira Lambert. It was almost as if King Tubby had hitched a ride on a train bound for Brixton and Clerkenwell rather than his native Jamaica.

A second cover version followed a few months later – this time a faithful rendition of a dance track Let’s Kiss And Make Up by indie pop legends The Field Mice, which further boosted the profiles of both bands (Saint Etienne shared personnel and producer/engineer: Harvey Williams and Ian Catt respectively). A different female singer fronted this song: Donna Savage from venerable Australian indie popsters Dead Famous People.

Sarah Cracknell enters the fray.

After two different singers, the band were divided as to whether or not they would pursue their original intention of having *just* guest vocalists on all future tracks, as they regarded with great admiration the likes of many other acts who featured guests, such as Massive Attack to cite but one example.

Sarah Cracknell was previously in a short lived indie band Prime Time with guitarist Mick Bund, who also later played in Felt (sadly Mick passed in 2017), but she was asked by Bob and Pete to contribute vocals on Nothing Can Stop Us, the first self-penned composition to be released as Saint Etienne’s third single in 1991. It was at this point that their new partnership gelled when they realised that Sarah could sing more than just one track, and they duly recruited her to lend vocals to other tracks on what would become their first album. Thus started a friendship and close collaborative relationship which would last for the next thirty years, and endure to this day. The duo now became a trio. They were ostensibly The Champions – or Randall & Hopkirk/Hopkirk (Deceased) – of pop.

Foxbase Alpha reappraised

Released in mid October 1991, Foxbase Alpha was an audacious debut to say the least. It distils pretty much all of the sounds and influences that Bob and Pete loved over the decades, from their beginnings as infants and teenagers to the present day, with the club scene making such a giant impact on the musical landscape of the UK. Put simply, the 13 tracks serve as a musical travelogue of everything from public information films, to long lost but very much enduring memories of 1960’s Swinging London, Northern Soul, through selected reprisals of 1970s cultural ephemera (the artwork on the inner sleeve for example of ’60s and ’70s stars and sports personalities brings to mind the old schoolyard craze for Panini Stickers and Top Trumps), and then sleek modern dance/pop numbers, which then rub shoulders with dreamy semi-acoustic ballads and ambient/dub.

Eclectic is the word to describe Foxbase Alpha. And deliberately so. The abrupt shifts of style and tone from one track to the next, in some cases interspersed with dialogue, would be a Saint Etienne characteristic for much of the output for the next year or so (culminating in the equally diverse tour de force that was their second album So Tough, released in 1993, which took this approach and refined it further). Samples are taken from all manner of sources and weaved into the structures of – and around – the tracks, creating a kaleidoscopic journey into all weird and wonderful sonic territories.

Side One

The self-namechecking opener This Is Radio Etienne is a brief intro featuring a French Football radio broadcast lifted wholesale from an unknown, undated source, and this serves as a perfect prelude which pre-empts the first song proper – the aforementioned inspired cover of Only Love Can Break Your Heart. When placed in this context it really is stunning: without question one of the greatest – and indeed most uniquely original – cover versions I have heard.

Track three Wilson is another short instrumental diversion, this time featuring some sampled dialogue from an old 1971 decimal currency public information film but then juxtaposing it with sampled exclamations of ‘Come on auntie we’ll miss the bus!’ providing a complete non sequitur (another Saint Etienne trade mark which will be seen time and time again in many subsequent recordings) with which to baffle and amuse the listener. The title Wilson, incidentally, arises from the fact that the repeated sampled organ loop is lifted from a Wilson Picket cover of Hey Jude and not a reference to Brian Wilson (that would come later in their next two albums).

Sarah Cracknell makes her first appearance on the album on track four: Carnt Sleep, a dreamy somnambulant number replete with spidery rim-shots and a dub bassline topped with Sarah’s exquisite sighing vocals which perfectly suit the resigned and almost submissive mood of the track. It’s a beautiful moment of calm reflection which offers some space before the following track returns us to clubland with its big thumping house beats.

Girl VII could be Saint Etienne’s wry nod to Madonna’s Vogue, because it practically sounds like they had consciously cribbed from Ms Ciccone’s evergreen dance classic. Sarah coos her way through the verses in her now distinctive style, only to then come up with a refrain which has caused no end of amusing misinterpretation as to exactly what the words are that are being sung: Is it ‘Plays in her wigwam’? Is it ‘Helen’s had a breakdown’? No, it’s actually ‘Carrie’s got a boyfriend’. Lyrically, Girl VII is intriguing because the spoken bits name-check locations in London offset by random place names all over the world – which is where the nod to Vogue comes from : ‘Primrose Hill, Staten Island, Chalk Farm, Massif Central, Gospel Oak, Sao Paolo, Boston Manor, Costa Rica, Arnos Grove….’

Side Two

She’s The One closes the first half with more sampled refrains (taken from I’m In A Different World by The Four Tops) before we hit the pause button and adjourn for a short break – courtesy of Richard Whiteley and Countdown – only for the second half to commence with more ’90s dance beats heralding the epic tripped out 7.5 minute instrumental odyssey into lysergic atmospherics Stoned To Say The Least.

This is promptly followed by THE hit single Nothing Can Stop Us, another sure fire exemplary pop moment that simply oozes pure 1960s nostalgic heaven, with Sarah in fine sultry form and the refrain cleverly sampling Dusty Springfield’s evergreen classic I Can’t Wait Until I See My Baby’s Face. Saint Etienne somehow manage to make this sort of thing sound so natural and effortless which is some achievement given their own – then – self-effacing confessions of being aimless amateurs trying to make the greatest pop record they can, despite their own inherent shortcomings as musicians.

A quick diversion with another experimental interlude, Etienne Gonna Die, which samples dialogue from the 1987 film House Of Games, before we return to blissed-out lovers pop territory with the sublime urban romance of London Belongs To Me, side two’s perfect companion piece to the first side’s Spring. Like the latter, this track utterly enraptures in its use of echo and reverb to evoke the most euphoric and ecstatic feelings of optimism and invincibility whilst in an almost dream like reverie: ‘Close my eyes/Breathe out slowly/Today the sunshine loves me only/To the sound of the World Of Twist/You leant over and gave me a kiss’. A beautiful sun-drenched vibe with flutes and harpsichords conjures up the perfect idyll of a blissful summer sojourn experienced through a soft-focus haze.

Enduring legacy

Foxbase Alpha was only the first instalment of Saint Etienne’s enduring legacy of great albums. Bob Stanley strangely now looks back on the record with surprisingly less fondness than he did when it was released, saying that it doesn’t even figure in his top 6 of favourite SE albums as he found it too ‘uneven’ and ‘unfocussed’. Perhaps the shifting sands of time can have that sort of effect on one’s reassessment of their early work, who knows?

What is undoubted though is when this album was first unveiled, it marked a brave new dawn in how so many disparate influences from subcultures and genres past could be fused into one satisfying and truly spellbinding whole. It was in every way as influential and epochal a modern contemporary album released in that new decade as was Nirvana’s Nevermind, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica and the magnum ambient/dance opus that was The Orb’s Adventures From The Ultraworld. Truly conceived of – and perfectly encapsulating – its time, its appeal endures to this day.

In fact, it was still so relevant to some people that in 2009, noted remixer and producer Richard X re-configured the entire album in sequential order and released it officially as a new stand-alone album project for Saint Etienne under the revised title of Foxbase Beta”.

There are a couple of reviews for the reissued Deluxe Edition. The Guardian awarded it five stars when they sat down with it. I was very young when Foxbase Alpha came out, but I did hear songs from it in years since. I still go back to it now. Significant to revisit it as Saint Etienne are about to release their final album together:

“Eighteen years old this September, Foxbase Alpha remains one of the most dewy-fresh debut albums ever made. Newly relocated from suburban Croydon to Tufnell Park, north London, schoolfriends Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs set about making what Stanley has called "a time capsule of our lives in that year". Foxbase Alpha (named after a childhood in-joke about a place filled with gorgeous people) is both retro and modern, a love letter and a scrapbook, a compendium of private passions from Dusty Springfield to King Tubby, David Mamet to football, C86 to ambient house, and London, always London. The packaging, with its Jon Savage sleevenotes and Smiths-inspired gallery of 60s icons, is gorgeous, and an eclectic bonus CD of singles, B-sides and offcuts enhances the sense of joyous adventure.

The effect is to invite the listener into a world slightly warmer, brighter and more exciting than the real one. And despite its many American influences, its Swinging London romanticism anticipated Britpop. The balearic reinvention of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart may be its most celebrated moment but London Belongs to Me's NW1 fantasia is the album's awestruck heart: Sarah Cracknell coos the opening line, "took a tube to Camden Town", like she's Alice passing through the looking glass”.

The last thing I am dropping in is a Pitchfork review of Foxbase Alpha’s 2009 reissue. There is a generation that has not heard of this album. I do think that it is important that as many people as possible listen to Foxbase Alpha. It is such a beguiling and head-spinning listen! One that I keep coming back to. Nothing Can Stop Us is one of my favourite songs ever:

“What about when Saint Etienne was new, maybe even a potential commercial prospect? Listen to this new reissue of the band's debut album, 1991's Foxbase Alpha and you'll hear that, then as now, Saint Etienne made lovely, accessible music. But Foxbase is also far closer to capital-P pop than the band's recent refined blend of exuberance and melancholy. So why didn't I hear Saint Etienne songs like Foxbase's "Nothing Can Stop Us" and "Only Love Can Break Your Heart"-- both Billboard #1s on the dance charts-- burbling from communal boomboxes in eighth grade?

One theory for why Saint Et stiffed in the States is also a big part of the band's draw to many fans: The potentially limiting pleasures of Anglophilia. So yes, Foxbase is littered with odd, musty little samples from odd, musty Olde England, and beats from the highly polished dancefloors of contemporary London. In fact, Pitchfork contributor Tom Ewing once wrote a wonderful essay that suggested Foxbase was best understood as a musical embodiment of the whole vibe of late 20th-century UK living, including, but not limited to, the mix of chic, glossy multi-cultural collisions and grubby, hospitably lived-in neighborhoods that made up London itself. (A brief break to get some conflict of interest stuff out of the way: A) The aforementioned Mr. Ewing contributes an essay to the liner notes of the Foxbase reissue, and B) Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley has contributed to Pitchfork. If either of those things stick in your craw while reading the more-or-less gush that follows, well, sorry.)

Another reason Saint Etienne never hit with a U.S. mass audience? While the likes of Snap! and Crystal Waters made big-budget dance records with an urbane sheen, records that would work in any capital city club around the world, Foxbase Alpha's sonics had a DIY edge, an underground-gone-mainstream bulletin from a very specific milieu. Albeit one that can still be enjoyed by anyone not predisposed to hate the soft, the sunny, the lilting, the laid-back, and the mildly twee. Foxbase is on one level a UK indie pop record with a particularly unique sound and vision-- the joys and pangs of cusp-of-adulthood love and loss, delivered with a clued-in-ingenue mix of wide-eyed enthusiasm and knowing languor by Sarah Cracknell, set to a backing stitched from the gentler side of pop history by studio whizzes Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. It's just a unique indie pop record that happened to bump to a bright pop pulse.

What's funny about bringing up the always divisive p-word is that I remember some big-name 90s dance producers actually dissing Saint Etienne by calling the band "bubblegum." We can assume those producers meant Saint Etienne erred too much on the indie side, sacrificing dancefloor kick. But much like the Anglophilic fantasy world the band conjures, that split allegiance is another part of Saint Etienne's specific appeal. Foxbase tracks like "Spring" and the cover of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" do indeed sound like heart-on-sleeve pop kids (in the C86 sense) trying their quite adroit hands at lounge-y hip-house and piano-driven disco.

But several of Foxbase's best tunes move past adding idiosyncratic touches to off-the-rack uptempo 4/4 rhythms, and into something more unique and beguiling. The drowsy, heartsick ballad "Carnt Sleep" sounds like a humid summer spent spinning Sarah Records 7"s back to back with Sade, slick soul secretly slid into an indie-friendly sleeve. Or there's the Cocteau Twins-ian shivers of "London Belongs to Me", with its smitten, multi-tracked Cracknell crooning to herself across a diamond sea of piano chords. Assured but approachable, these club-informed but not quite club-ready songs offered a wholly other kind of "indie dance" from the previous punk-funk generation or the cheap-and-easy preset-punching remixes of the blog-house era, something like careful cursive on pastel paper compared to blurry cut-and-paste photocopies or generic computer typeface."

Foxbase squeezes so many "lighter side of" sounds-- be they from the worlds of rock, dance, soul, whatever-- into one LP that it's a marvel it sounds so unified, mostly owing to Wiggs and Stanley fixing on the platonic house rhythm as the glue to hold their disparate passions together. But the second disc of bonus tracks often feels like two producers still figuring out how to make the raw materials of post-acid house their own. A grab-bag of late 80s/early 90s rave sonics-- only sometimes processed through what we know as the Saint Etienne idiom-- dates much of the material. "Chase HQ" and "Speedwell" are competent but sketchy early UK house singles, full of jittery samples and keyboard stabs. Fun, but ultimately too generic without Cracknell's voice or the sample-choice oddness and studio chops Wiggs and Stanley would bring to the band's later music. Better is the dub playground chant of "Sally Space", Cracknell humming "Iko Iko" through a quiet storm front of classic ambient house textures, the Orb with a dose of girl-pop glee.

Speaking of the p-word (again): Continental, a previously Japan-only odds-and-ends collection reissued in the same batch of Saint Et records as this new Foxbase, works as a sort of mirror image of Too Young to Die, the band's almost absurdly listenable 1995 singles compilation. If the all-hits uniformity of TYTD represents Saint Etienne's final, most obvious stab at Now That's What I Call Pop immortality, then Continental is the beginning of the more wide-ranging (and hit-or-miss) restlessness that's characterized the band's records from 1998's Good Humor onward. Each track is recognizably Saint Etienne-- Cracknell's inimitable winsome-but-grown-and-sexy coo announces that, if nothing else-- but the tracks (frequently darker, often instrumental) go very different places than the uniform, bubbly house-lite of Foxbase's uptempo moments”.

I am not sure which album I am going to cover for the next Beneath the Sleeve. I was motivated to feature Saint Etienne’s debut album as the band are calling time. They might reform in years to come but their next album is their last. The wonderful Foxbase Alpha is…

DIZZYING and divine.

FEATURE: I Should Say So: The Revival and New Resurgence of Artists Who Were Huge in the 1990s

FEATURE:

 

 

I Should Say So

IN THIS PHOTO: Louise (Louise Redknapp) 

The Revival and New Resurgence of Artists Who Were Huge in the 1990s

__________

IT is not a new…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Supergrass

thing at all, but we are seeing a case of artists who were at their peak or started out in the 1990s coming back today. I guess Supergrass have not officially broken up. They definitely had a hiatus but are very much back together. Perhaps not making another album, they are touring their debut album, 1995’s I Should Coco. They are not the only band from the time that are very much back in business. Suede are back with new music and are creating some of their best work ever. Oasis are the biggest example of a 1990s band who have reformed and got this new lease of life. Not sure if they will make it into the studio – I hope not, as another album will not be great -, they are going to be touring soon. There is this wave of bands and artists who were huge in the 1990s back now. What could be behind that? I shall come to Skunk Anansie in a minute. Even if they formed long before the '90s, Pulp very much had their regency during that decade. Their new album, More, is out on 6th June. It is going to be among this year’s very best. It seems like they are going to make more albums together. In a new interview with the Observer, “Jarvis Cocker and fellow members Candida Doyle, Nick Banks and Mark Webber talk about their accidental new album, growing up while refusing to grow old … and the sex pond at the back of Banks’s garden”:

“But now they’ve had to put other projects aside, even the sex pond, because Pulp are back, back, BACK – and people are excited. Is it fun?

“I’m enjoying it a lot,” says Doyle. “This is my favourite time ever to be in the band – but I don’t like to think about being in Pulp. If I think about it too much, it does my head in.”

“I don’t really understand it,” says Webber. “I can’t explain it.”

“There’s no manual,” says Banks. “I think that kids these days think there is.”

Cocker ponders.

“In recent years, there’s been a lot of mentoring of pop stars, like in X Factor. Which gives an idea that you can be taught how to do something, and there’s a right way to do it, a wrong way to do it. But a band is just people who have started off together. You learn your own way of doing it. Like we tried to do a song that sounded like Barry White – what a crazy thing to do, you know, for some people in South Yorkshire to try to sound like Barry White – but you end up inventing your own ways, and that’s good. It’s a self-sufficient thing, rather than this template that you have to adhere to.”

“We all have our own ways of playing our instrument,” says Banks. “Like Candida has got a wonderful, unique way of playing the keyboard which no one else has got, and that just brings, I think, a massive spin of differentness and how all of us interact.”

Pulp is the whole band, that unique combination of ideas and talent; and also a world that you enter into, that takes certain things seriously, and others not. A few years ago, Cocker wrote a book, Good Pop, Bad Pop, that used objects – personal ephemera such as matchboxes, notebooks and toys that he’d kept in an attic – as a way of telling his autobiography. Webber, too, brought out a book last year – I’m With Pulp, Are You? – that’s similarly filled with physical objects, real life detritus of being in Pulp. The band is a celebration of the ordinary, the amateur, the physical; a rejection of dull professional virtual slickness.

“I probably should just chuck all my stuff away,” says Cocker, who recently moved to Derbyshire and will be selling his London home in the next few months. “People don’t have so many physical objects any more, do they? Their life and memories are on their phone. But I worry about that. And the objects really bring back very, very vivid memories, so I don’t know whether I can get rid of them. I’ll have to be buried with all my objects. Like Tutankhamun. It’ll be an enormous coffin.”

It can be hard to get older when you’re weighed down by the past.

“It’s not weighing down though, is it? It’s not physical, because physical work doesn’t really exist any more,” says Cocker. “And that used to really wear people out, so then they really would be old, because they were physically worn out. Whereas, although we can say, ‘Oh, it was hard work playing yesterday,’ it wasn’t really that hard. I was in a taxi a few months ago and went past lots of young kids queuing up to go into somewhere like a roller disco. And they were, like, mid-teens, and you could sense all that unsureness, because they were wondering how you act when you’re on the threshold of being an adult. I would not want to go back to that. That’s one of the things about getting older that’s good, at least you don’t have to do that any more.

He pauses. “I used to think that one day I was going to wake up and think, ‘Oh, yes, I’m an adult now, I know how it all works. Let’s go have some sushi.’ That day never happened. But you do get to know yourself. For better or for worse”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis

With Oasis and Supergrass storming stages this year, I think other bands from the 1990s will reform. I want to get to a few more interviews before finishing off. Before coming to a new album from Robbie Williams, I am moving to Skunk Anansie. Led by the fabulous Skin, this band released their debut album, Paranoid & Sunburnt, in 1995. One thing that links a lot of these artists is 1995. Supergrass’ I Should Coco was released then. Oasis’ (What's the Story) Morning Glory? was released then. Robbie Williams left Take That in 1995. Pulp’s Different Class came out in 1995. Not all tied to a thirtieth anniversary, it does seem like these artists are consciously entering a new stage and reacting to that thirtieth. Williams wanting to create an album he wanted to in 1995. Bands like Supergrass and Oasis inspired by past glories. I will expand on this more. What is pleasing is that they are back together. Rather than it being a nostalgia hit, it shows that artists one might associate with a specific decade have endurance and are back. In the case of Skunk Anansie, their most recent album was 2016’s Anarchytecture. Their new album, The Painful Truth, is out and has won some huge reviews. I am going to move on to a brilliant interview from Metal Hammer that was published last month. Skin spoke about Skunk Anansie’s new album and her experiences during the 1990s. I have selected some parts of the interview that caught my eye:

“People look back on that time and think of it as such a blokey thing, but there were loads of women in bands. Your friendship with Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson is one of the loveliest things on Instagram.

“I interviewed her for my show on Absolute Radio. She started off saying, ‘In the 90s, I had a bit of a beef with you, because I was always getting compared to you.’ I had no idea. They were always trying to tear her down by saying I was better than her. And she’s like, ‘Now, I realise it was so much harder for you.’

I mean, Garbage are massive in America. They did a fucking Bond theme [1999’s The World Is Not Enough], we were nowhere near the size that they were, and the way that people would try and knock her down is by comparing her to me. But yeah, me and Shirley love each other.”

What kind of person were you back then?

“I was very ambitious. The aim was to be in a rock band forever, like The Rolling Stones. It was all about climbing mountains. It was very stressful having that mentality, because you have your goals, but you’re not enjoying the process. It’s only when we stopped and then we reformed that I just enjoyed the climbing more than the goals, and that comes with maturity and age.”

You were good friends with Lemmy. What was he like?

“He was very gentle. He was the most authentic person I’ve met. He was who he was, and he wasn’t going to hide it. Also, he had absolutely the most perfect skin you’d ever imagine on a man, good baby skin. He was such a gentleman.

We were writing music together whenever I was in LA, and I had the sweetest messages from him. I remember one time I was supposed to write with him, and I couldn’t, because I’d had a break-up, and he just left me the loveliest, kindest thing: ‘I’m here for you. Come over to LA and we’ll hang out.’ He was a sweetheart.”

You coined the genre ‘clitrock’. What was that about?

“Clitrock was an accident. In the very beginning of our career, people were like, ‘What do you think about being a Britpop band?’ And I said, ‘Britpop? We’re Clitpop?’ It was a joke, but it became a whole thing. There’s a Clit Rock festival, which, of course, I give my blessing to. But it was just a sideways comment, I was just being cheeky.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Rob O'Connor 

Who were your allies in the rock and metal scene?

“We played a lot with David Bowie. He was the ultimate inspiration. I loved him. I was nervous meeting him, because there are certain people who’re elevated beyond everybody else. But he was just a down-to-earth dude. And his wife Iman is as hugely iconic as he is, and she was a delight as well. The only people that I didn’t like were boybands. Five were fucking horrible. I think it’s because they didn’t have control, they didn’t write their songs, they were just puppets.”

What was the Rammstein tour like?

“Those guys are unbelievable live. They’d have the pyrotechnics and the fire was just beyond anything, and then they’d have these backstage parties where they played this really fast, Russian, cheesy pop. It was so funny that they love that kind of music.”

You released the song Yes It’s Fucking Political in 1996. Was it the big statement that it seemed?

“That song came out of people slagging us off because we’re political. My point was, everything’s political. It’s in everything we do, whether it’s clothes or the food that we eat. If you want to live in a world where you don’t talk about politics, that in itself is a political statement.”

Why did the split happen in 2001, and how did that affect you?

“We were just worn out. We had really overworked ourselves and hadn’t really taken care of ourselves. We didn’t even have an argument – we just stopped and went off and did a bit of solo musicianship.”

You’re based in the UK and in Brooklyn now. How’s life in the US post-election?

“That was the saddest day I’ve had in a very long time. Us lefties have got to stick together and not tear each other apart, because these people literally don’t want us to exist. Especially trans people. They’re trying to wipe trans people off the face of the Earth. And when they come for them, they come for all of us, they’re just first on the list. Next it’s diversity, it’s queer people, Black rights. But I’m in New York, and it’s like its own country. That counts for a lot, because otherwise I think it’d be very difficult to be there.”

You were awarded the OBE in 2021. What did that mean to you?

“It’s a weird thing, because I think that for Black people, there’s so much negativity around us accepting any award. But of course I wanted to accept it, it’s a great honour. It was a lovely thing to happen. It was a record of everything I’d done up to that point. And it made my mum really happy and proud. It’s not like Prince Charles even knew who I was. It’s a body of people that decide, and that body is extremely diverse”.

There are two artists I will finish up with. Both members of enormous bands of the 1990s who they left to follow solo careers. I will finish with Louise. She is a former member of Eternal. I sort of hope the group reforms one day. Robbie Williams rejoined Take That but he left in 1995. It was one of the biggest music news stories of the decade. Maybe Skunk Anansie are recapturing some of the essence of 1990s’ Britrock and updating that sound. Supergrass and Oasis is perhaps more to do with an anniversary or nostalgia to an extent. Pulp are doing something new, though the fact Different Class has a big anniversary later in the year no doubt compelled them to an extent to release a new album. Robbie Williams is righting a wrong. Trying to reclaim some of that chaos and hedonism from 1995. His forthcoming album, BRITPOP, is out in the autumn. It boasts one of the best album covers of the years. I like the fact that Williams didn’t phone it in with an album cover! The fact its title is called BRITPOP might be a reason many 1990s acts are entering this new stage of their career. Thirty years since they started or were at their peak, they are back together and touring. Speaking from the Ivor Novello Awards recently, Robbie Williams spoke with NME about his new album:

“And new album ‘BRITPOP’ – will that recapture all the noise, energy, colour and hedonism of the halcyon days of the ’90s?

“If hedonism is Jaffa Cake-based or Cadbury’s Fruit And Nut, then I’m in,” Williams replied. “Everything else I’ve got to park until I die. If I don’t park it, it’ll kill me.”

Elaborating on his guitar-heavy new sound, he continued: “I was playing it safe and I’ve not been driving my own car. I’ve not had my hands on the wheel through second-thinking myself and guessing what people like. I just wanted to do something that I like.”

With a tour of his own fast approaching (“You can expect the world’s Number One light entertainer – entertaining you in a light way that ranges from light to heavy depending on how many drinks you’ve had,” he joked), he downplayed the chances of him embodying the Britpop spirit and attending the reunion tour of his former rivals Oasis.

“Not only will you not be seeing me at any Oasis shows, you will not be seeing me at any shows full stop,” he admitted. “I’m a wonderful agoraphobe, and a very happy agoraphobe.”

After playing together at Hyde Park last summer, Williams was introduced to the Ivors with a speech from superfans Soft Play – who also joined us for our interview backstage.

“These lads appeal to the 14-year-old version of me that wanted to rage hard, be cool, shout, be aggressive in a kind way – which is what you are. You’re aggressive in the kindest way possible,” said Williams, turning to the punk duo. “There is a bit of a love-fest. I don’t get to hang out with them as much as I would like to. Hopefully they’ll come and join me on tour for a little bit.

“This is a shout-out to the 14-year-old me going, ‘Look at the people I like liking me’.”

“He soundtracked a big portion of our lives with bangers, and now he’s our mate and we love him,” said singer and drummer Isaac Holman, before guitarist Laurie Vincent added: “Just in the Volvo V70 as a kid, I didn’t listen to anything more than Robbie – and he’s our dad.”

Could a supergroup performance at Glastonbury be on the cards? “Maybe…” replied Williams, coyly.

Williams is set to release ‘BRITPOP’ this autumn following his upcoming UK tour kicking off this month. The tour will then continue across Europe with dates in countries including Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Sweden. Find a list of new dates below, and visit here to buy tickets”.

There is this feeling of taking back control or rewriting the narrative. Robbie Williams left Take That thirty years ago. Louise (Redknapp) left Eternal in 1995 too. Speaking with The Independent recently, Louise explored how her new album, not being a nostalgia act, and a non-negotiable that squashed a potential reunion with Eternal:

“She quit Eternal in 1995. “It felt weak to leave but actually, looking back, it was strong – I knew I was really sad,” she says. “I was in my early twenties, and you shouldn’t be sad at that stage in your life.” She still owed four albums to Eternal’s label as part of her deal, and was asked to make it up via solo records, which she reluctantly agreed to. “It wasn’t part of the plan, as I actually really enjoyed being part of the band,” she says. “We were just quite different characters.”

There was talk in 2023 of an Eternal reunion – the group’s original line-up had more or less disbanded by 2000 – but it reportedly fell apart after the Bennetts told Louise and Bryan that they didn’t want to perform at Pride events. “There are some non-negotiables in my world,” Louise says, firmly. “The queer community has stuck by me from day one. I wouldn’t have a music career without them, and they have held me up at my darkest moments. I respect that you have your beliefs and that’s where you stand in your life – but that doesn’t mean it has to be my life. I have my path, they have their path. For me, it wasn’t a hard decision to make.”

The right-wing press had a field day with it (“Louise trying to get Christian members of Eternal cancelled” read one headline), but she’s used to criticism by this point, she says. When she and Redknapp announced their separation in 2017, shortly after Louise placed second on a series of Strictly Come Dancing and she began plotting a musical comeback, she found herself targeted by the tabloids and accused of walking out on her family. “I was the villain,” she says. She admits to concealing a lot of the sadness she felt at the time. “I’d been lucky in my career because for many years I didn’t really have a lot of scrutiny. Then bang, everybody’s got an opinion.” She wrote a book, which touched on her divorce and the creative restlessness she felt as a stay-at-home mum, but says that she “nitpicked over every word”.

“Anything someone could perceive as negative, I cut out,” she says. “If I ever wore my heart on my sleeve I’d get loads of comments, like, ‘woe is me – you left him’. Nothing I said was right. To defend myself was wrong. To not defend myself was wrong. I felt like I was walking up a one-way street with just nowhere to go on it.”

The centrepiece of Confessions is a track that tackles that time in her life. “Don’t Kill My Vibe” feels vaguely Brat-ty in its execution, with run-on sentences and diaristic lyrics against a chugging synth beat. It carries an emotional honesty that until now has never been Louise’s forte. “It wasn’t easy,” she sings in it, “but I got back on stage and felt like people liked me/ And they liked me for me/ One thing I can say with chest, I built a castle from that mess.”

She’s incredibly proud of the song. “Inside I was breaking, but I just kept going because it was the only way I knew how to handle it all,” she says. “And that song is me basically telling society: don’t kill my vibe. Don’t take away what I love to do. Don’t take away my freedom. Don’t kill off the one thing that I’ve got.”

Louise released an album in January 2020, called Heavy Love, but its promotion and tour were curtailed by Covid, leaving Confessions to feel like her proper return to music. She wants it to do well but adds that she’s a realist about it. “It’s a good time to be making music because you’ve got your Kylies and…” She pauses, as if suddenly aware that it’s tricky to think of another woman in her fifties making hit pop songs. “See, I’m of two minds about this. I think you’ve got to be the lucky one – there’s no general rule of thumb. There are certain radio stations, regardless of the song, that will not play you because you’re of a certain age. I’ve made a record produced by someone who’s just won a Grammy – there is something current there.” She shrugs. “But all I can do is try and break down those walls, and definitely 10 years ago that would have been unthinkable.”

She says she’s in a good place. “I’ve realised that all my biggest fears have kind of happened. I’ve been on my own. I’ve gone through a s*** time. And I survived. I’m all right”.

It is interesting that so many acts who were big commercial successes in the 1990s, particularly 1995, are back with new material. In the case of Pulp, there has been this gap of over twenty years. Less of a gap from Skunk Anansie. Supergrass touring I Should Coco thirty years after their debut’s release. Oasis maybe cashing in on thirty years of their second studio album and Britpop legacy. Louise is not doing that. She is very much making different music to what she produced with Eternal and her solo career afterwards. Not wanting to lean on her reputation and hits. Robbie Williams a bit in both worlds. Some looking back to the heyday of the 1990s, but also keen to put out a very personal statement. I do wonder whether other bands and acts from the 1990s will reform to tour or release another album. People have their wish list, though I don’t think it is a fad or all about recapturing the past. I find it interesting that it is thirty years since most of the artists I mention in this feature are back with new dates and material thirty years after such an important part of their career. It is wonderful, mind! Cynics might think it is about rekindling a spark or it being about nostalgia. However, for most of these artists, there are other reasons for new music. They very much do not want to define themselves as…

LEGACY artists.

FEATURE: Feminist Icons: Gina Martin

FEATURE:

 

Feminist Icons

PHOTO CREDIT: Holly McGlynn/Stylist

Gina Martin

__________

I do know…

that the words ‘icon’ or ‘iconic’ get overused. In music journalism, it tends to be applied to so much! From outfits to songs to artists and albums through to venues, there is no way you can escape it. It is a bad habit of journalists like me to label everything iconic. Elevate artists to almost religious heights! However, in terms of definition, an icon is “a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration (great respect; reverence)”. I don’t think it is hyperbole or superlative to call artists and albums iconic. I mention it, as this feature is about feminism and those who fight for equality. I call these women iconic. I have highlighted Michelle Obama and Gloria Steinem. Even if Gina Martin might not consider herself to be as important as these amazing women, I would disagree. I have no hesitation in saying she is a modern-day feminist icon! At least a role model and vital voice. I first came across her work a couple of years ago. She released her book, “No Offence, But...”.: How to have difficult conversations for meaningful change. She was speaking with The Trouble Club alongside Charlie Craggs. She (Craggs) was speaking about her experiences as a trans woman. It was a wonderful discussion. Martin spoke so passionately about her book. One that people should get (“A practical, inspiring roadmap for changing the conversation on social justice issues. 'Not all men. I don't see colour. To play devil's advocate. Climate change is coming.' From the persistent to the insidious, too often, antagonistic responses threaten to distract and derail the most urgent conversations. Tackling twenty of the most enduring conversation-stoppers, No Offence, But... equips readers with the knowledge, tools and context to respond with confidence. Alongside other trailblazing writers, educators and advocates, acclaimed campaigner Gina Martin helps us to unpick these phrases, understand why they are harmful and feel empowered enough to change the conversation”).

PHOTO CREDIT: What Olivia Did

People may recognise her name but try and work out there they know it from. Before getting to a few interviews with Gina Martin, it is worth introducing in some background. This is someone who helped bring in a law that was long overdue. Making upskirting a criminal offence. Something that has affected so many women, it was a huge moment. This article explains more:

“In 2017, Gina and her sister attended British Summertime, a family-friendly daytime festival in London. At 5pm, in a crowd of over 60,000 people, they were standing next to a group of men who were overstepping the mark when interacting with Gina and her sister, including making jokes that then turned into more vulgar and sexual comments. To Gina’s horror, she then caught a glimpse of one of the group's phones and on it was a picture of her crotch.

Gina, after being physically grabbed by the man, bravely snatched the phone from the man and ran towards her nearest security point – whilst being chased by him. Gina then requested assistance from the Police; upon their arrival and to Gina’s surprise, they informed her that because she was wearing underwear, it wasn’t actually something that they could help with. She was then told that if she had chosen not to wear underwear, something could have been done about it because the photo would have been classed as a ‘Graphic Image’.

It is a categorical fact that Gina’s choice of clothing was not to blame for what happened to her; it was the perpetrator and the perpetrator alone. After hearing what the Police had to say and fed up with a victim-blaming narrative (that women should wear more clothes), Gina set about changing the way that voyeurism is seen and dealt with by the law.

Gina, charged by what happened at British Summertime, aimed to change the law around voyeurism, starting and spearheading a social media movement that grew rapidly. Gina’s campaign eventually resulted in a petition that amassed over 110,000 signatures, and after an 18-month battle to illegalise upskirting, she finally won The Voyeurism (Offences) Act, commonly known as the Upskirting Bill. The Voyeurism (Offences) Act was introduced on 21 June 2018 and came into force on 12 April 2019.

You can read more about it on the UK Government website and find exactly what is covered by the law  We would also encourage you to check out our Know Violence campaign for Cambridgeshire constabulary about acts that might not be illegal but are still unacceptable”.

I would urge people to subscribe to Gina Martin’s Substack. I have really been inspired by her! To do more and to become a more active feminist. I still think that I am a little too performative and not active enough. In a radical or physical sense. I write a lot of about feminist women and address topics like sexual assault, gender inequality and discrimination through music, though I have not gone beyond that. In terms of going beyond social media and articles and making a difference. I think that Gina Martin is one of our most important feminist writers and thinkers. The first interview I want to include is from Glamour from 2022, where activists and friends Gina Martin and Ben Hurst talk about the importance of male allyship:

“Both almost immediately take aim at the current state of activism. It’s no secret that many view a lot of the noise online as performative, while these two deal in action, not pithy Instagram slogans.

Ben’s work at Beyond Equality means going to schools and universities, running workshops with young boys and men to actively deconstruct toxic masculinity, talk about mental health (suicide remains the leading cause of death for men under 45) and, in the process, discuss how to become better allies to women. Alongside Gina’s actual changing of the law, it’s no wonder they are a little dissatisfied with the ‘shouty’ tactics of a lot of shallow activism.

“I see it even with people who claim to be male allies,” Ben says. “Often men are just repeating what women say, but not turning around and thinking: ‘Yeah, but what can I do?’”

“I agree,” Gina says, grinning at her friend. “Plus, a lot of the time, all I see and hear is, ‘f**k the patriarchy’ and that’s great but… what do you do afterwards? When it comes to the next part, we need men.”

So how can men be good allies? Gina believes the answer lies in what Ben was suggesting the first time she heard him speak. “Sort your own stuff out,” she says. “Personally, I am exhausted having to constantly explain to men – even good men like my fiancé – why I am angry, why this is all so affecting. I feel like if men just went away and dealt with their own issues with the patriarchy, we may actually arrive at a similar place.”

“It’s definitely that,” Ben agrees. “Because the problem has been that, for years, women have shouldered the burden of ‘fixing’ sexism all alone and that’s just a lot of extra labour. If we are still asking them to do that now, it fails to tap into the power dynamic that’s at play. In the work I do, we’ve created space for men, by men, to try and help. There’s also important stuff that we need for women to be present for, but I think women should be able to opt into that, because why should we constantly be asking them to fix what isn’t a problem they caused?”

Ben has been involved in youth work ever since his dream of becoming a church leader was scuppered when he was kicked out for having sex. “That was super, super intense, but I came out having done a degree in youth work and theology, knowing I wanted to work with young people. That option of working in church, in ministry, being off the table, and thinking: ‘What am I going to do?’” He worked as a teacher and then for a sex education charity, which led him to pop into a Beyond Equality session. It blew his mind so much, he never left.

“You know what, I don’t think at the start this work for me was about creating a better, more equitable world for women,” he says, laughing as he adds how growing up with older sisters meant he was raised to think women were: “Way better than me in every way."

“I think that session looking at the constraints of our idea of manhood really made me think: this is the answer to the questions that I have about myself and my mental health and how I treat women in relation to that. Then at the end, they were like… ‘And that’s intersectional feminism.’” He mimes a mic drop.

Ben’s feminism is unquestionable, as is his willingness to learn – asking Gina what more men can be doing. She in turn wells up, remembering how keenly she sought male assistance at the time of her up-skirting. “I remember being like ‘Oh, I’ll make eye contact with everyone, because then they’ll help me,’” she says. “And I made eye contact with these two guys and I remember instantly thinking that they won’t do anything.”

“When they should be doing something!” Ben jumps in. “Men need to be more solutions-focused. I feel like if you’re an ally, your job is not just to recognise your privilege, but to use the power you have to dismantle it.”

Gina nods along and you can see that, even five years later, she still likes what Ben has to say”.

I want to head back to 2018 and a beautiful interview from What Olivia Did. They were compelled and awe-struck by Gina Martin’s #stopskirtingtheissue upskirting campaign and her devotion to her cause. One that not only affected and impacted her but countless other women. Anyone who has not discovered Gina Martin or read her work needs to do do. I do feel like there will be another great book from her. I am going to drop in some podcast episodes that she has been involved with. She had a podcast with comedian Stevie Martin, Might Delete Later. There is this incredible catalogue of work – from podcasts to the written word – that gives us a picture of this incredible activist, campaigner and feminist:

“Gina! So, thanks to the internets I was introduced to you, your eye for sweet style (THE GRID) and most importantly your amazing campaign #stopskirtingtheissue. For those that don’t already follow you, can you introduce yourself?

Of course! I’m Gina Martin and I’m a freelance writer and campaigner – I’m probably best known for banging it on about why upskirting should be a sexual offence and turning into a Goverment bill! I also am a big advocate of positivity and creativity.

And tell us a little more about your campaign- which has MADE IT THROUGH!! Such an enormous achievement which you must be so, so proud of…

YAAAAYYYY. It’s been a really tough journey and we’re not quite there yet but we’re incredibly close. Last year, at British Summertime Festival two guys who’s advances I’d rejected stuck their phone between my legs and took photos of my crotch. I saw the photo on one of their phones, grabbed it and ran to the police with the guy in tow. The police told me there wasn’t much they could do and I found out that upskirting isn’t a sexual offence in England & Wales. I began writing, lobbying and posting about my experience and launched the campaign in the media. Since then, my lawyer and I have been working with the Government, tabled a bill, had it blocked by Christopher Chope (DAMN IT!) and then tabled a new Government Bill which we are now seeing through the process (plus it can’t be objected too – woo!). It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done personally and professionally but we’re almost there…!

How did you get started with putting the campaign together? It must have seemed like such a daunting task that must have felt impossible to know where to begin with!

It really did feel like so daunting at the start. I was basically doing media saying upskirting should be made a sexual offence and I suddenly thought ‘the law isn’t going to change from me complaining about it on the media, I have to do this the right way’. So I found an incredible lawyer by reaching out online and we put together a strategic plan, gained backing from law authorities, police commissioners etc and did all the work before even approaching Parliament. I deffo googled ‘how to change the law’ at the beginning though… turns out you have to work that out on your own!

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Obviously, as with so many things online- you have made it look admirably easy (which it obviously hasn’t been). What has been the toughest challenge?

It’s so important that I keep supporters (not to mention women and girls who it’s happened to) positive that change will happen so social media is key, but it’s been overwhelming. The toughest moments have been the politics which is exhausting, and doing media when everything I say can be taken out of context. Being thrust into a world you don’t belong in, like politics, and trying to get your voice heard is incredibly tough – Ryan has been a godsend there. The online comments and trolling have been really hard too. I’m a magnet for slut-shaming and misogynists. But that’s okay. I have thicker skin now.

‘The best advice would to be to reach out to others and ask for help. Don’t do it all alone’

Hearing about your campaign and relentless energy and determination for it felt like something so selfless and admirable- what was it that made you want to power on and even put together something like this? What has been the greatest achievement through everything?

It was genuinely just the straw that broke the camels back. I was so over dealing with this stuff, brushing it off and thinking ‘we’ll that’s just part of life being a woman’, so I thought ‘this SHOULDN’T be part of life and instead of me saying “someone should change this!” I thought, well… why not me?’ So I started. Then the amount of messages from other victims just propelled me into this incredibly determined mindset.

My greatest achievement so far, I think, is just picking myself up and carrying on when I’ve wanted to pack it all in. I think I’ve realised I’m stronger than I thought I was.

I know so many women will be in awe of you, and putting a law to something that affects so many of us. What would you say to another girl wanting to go ahead and make change? How did you go about it- and what steps would you give to another girl wanting to take heed from your amazing work?

The best advice would to be to reach out to others and ask for help. Don’t do it all alone. You can find everyone on the internet – ALL the information you need is there. I found the current law, Scotland’s bill to make upskirting a sex offence from 2009, a lawyer and every media contact I needed from googling. And also, send emails. Thousands of them. Plus, an old fashioned letter to people of importance is taken notice way more than an email. Remember that!”.

I am going to wrap things up soon. There are a couple of other interviews I am coming to before that. The Guardian interviewed Gina Martin in 2023. Around the time of the release of "No Offence, But...". Following her on social media and reading her Substack, this is someone who I am always learning from. Rather than her purely being about upskirting and pigeonholing her as this one thing, Martin is much more than that. Someone who everyone should know and follow. I am probably not doing her full justice here - though I was keen to write about her and point people in her direction:

“Since I was 26 I have been known as “the upskirting girl”. I still receive emails from those who’ve used the law and get stopped on the street by people thanking me. Sometimes they pass me a note with their story hastily jotted down, because repeating it will make what’s happened to them feel too real. I cherish these interactions and I’m proud that my political activism has had a lasting positive impact, but I also have a complex relationship with it.

The upskirting campaign was my first campaign. I see it as part of my work, not the extent of it, and it’s also intimately tied to pain. For the public, being upskirted was an exciting origin story, but for me it was trauma. I was assaulted in public, and everyone knows the details. They want to hear the story from my mouth so they can enjoy the triumph at the end. The plot twist.

At some point, the narrative became no longer mine. Recently, I recounted it to my therapist, and couldn’t get through it for crying. She gently told me it may be because this was the first time someone was here to help me, not just for the story. Changing the law was the most difficult work I have done, or will ever do. I worked full-time in an office while campaigning, lobbying parliament and running a national media campaign with very little money in my pocket, zero political or legal experience and a never-ending inbox of rape threats and abuse. I came up against sexism and misogyny in parliament, was underestimated constantly, and was under the spotlight of the British media. I don’t look back at that period fondly – but my feelings about it are not only due to my trauma or how hard the process was.

In 2017, I believed the best way to prevent upskirting was by criminalising it; it was the biggest I could think and would lead to the most impactful change. The institutional script teaches us that prosecuting people for the harm they cause will solve the problem. I was also driven by the experience of being a victim of stalking who had spent years feeling terrified by a man that the state didn’t deal with, so to me, changing the law was about making victims and survivors feel safer by giving them something to use. I didn’t ask if the men who commit this act – because it is overwhelmingly men – would be changed by the process. I didn’t think of them much at all.

My politics is no longer the politics I had eight years ago. I know now that the UK has the most privatised criminal “justice” system in Europe. I know that companies who operate prisons have a vested interest in maintaining incarceration. And that prison is the opposite of growth and rehabilitation. And so here comes the tension: my immediate safety has been improved by the incarceration of men who want to hurt me, but the system that did it will not make them less likely to harm me, others or themselves when they come out.

You see, what I need in a society where the threat of danger is ongoing is not the same as the society I want. I can’t opt out of this reality, but I can see where we could be and I want to be part of helping us get there. I don’t want more prisons and punishment. I want more prevention. A small number of men convicted of upskirting have been sentenced to prison under my law (and a significant number of them were also convicted of other sexual offences; one was found to have 250,000 indecent images of children). While I am thankful that children will be safer because of his conviction, my work now also asks, “How do we prevent this before we need to criminalise it?”

Though I’m not rejecting my past work, I see my purpose now as trying to make my own law moot; if I can contribute to a reality where sexual assault is significantly reduced and the voyeurism act is used less, I’ll be happy. If I can do work that breaks the circuit of lost boys becoming insecure men who use sexual assault as a way to feel powerful, I’ll be proud.

That’s why I host sessions on misogyny and the impact of it; why I’m training in facilitation so I can run workshops with young people on masculinities and gender; and why I speak in schools across the UK as well as raise funds for grassroots organisations. There may not be a big, sparkly win, but there will be consistent impact in the form of smaller wins. There may not be headlines about the boys who attended masculinity workshops and grew up respecting people of all genders more, or about the girls who felt seen and used their voices because of activists who created spaces for them, but I’d much rather move forward as that woman than “the upskirting girl”. Even though it’s much less catchy”.

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You can follow Gina Martin on Instagram. An Ambassador for Beyond Equality and someone who has delivered talks and seminars at schools, Martin is this amazing activist and feminist. I want to finish off with a feature she wrote for Elle following the horrifying multiple rapes that Gisèle Pelicot suffered. Ending things with reaction to an event in history that is so fresh still. The shockwaves still being felt. The barbaric and distributing abuses against a woman who waived her write to anonymity and was so brave! Standing up to her attackers and speaking out. It is a really fascinating article from Gina Martin:

“Last week, I watched every single news outlet report on the horrifying rape case of a French woman named Gisèle (although she has waived her right to anonymity, I won’t be using her surname as it is that of her abuser) whose husband abused her and enlisted local men to do so too for over a decade. A law I helped create was what caught him. He was found upskirting women and when the police searched his devices they found tens of thousands of videos of his wife allegedly being raped by other men. According to prosecutors, more than 70 men chose to abuse Gisèle when she was unconscious (many of them deny this, saying her then-husband had manipulated them or that they believed she was consenting). That amount of men is terrifying women all over the world: if her husband was able to find that many local men that felt comfortable abusing an unconscious woman when offered, what does it mean?

All week people have been contacting me thanking me for my work creating the Voyeurism Act in 2019 – or making upskirting a specific sexual offence – but I feel no pride. Not only because my opinions on criminalisation as a solution to violence have changed, but also because I don’t gain any pleasure from finding out a woman has been victimised, even if their perpetrator was caught using a law I helped create. I just feel really sad. Deeply, deeply sad.

There are layers to this sadness and rage, because as a gender equality activist who has worked across law and policy change – with UNWomen UK and for our country's leading gender equality charities – there is hopelessness in seeing how much our media discourages society not to connect the dots between stories about gendered violence, and to look away from what causes it.

Of late, the news has been overrun with painful outcomes of male violence including the heartbreaking death of Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei who was reportedly set on fire by her ex-partner. But what enraged people in the sector I work in was how passive the headlines about these stories were, and how so many of them reinforced misogyny: Gisèle was called 'vengeful' for holding her husband accountable in one headline. Why shape our perceptions of rape survivors as malicious and distract from the violence inflicted on them in doing so? Media style-guides have so much to answer for. Weeks ago, headlines about the alleged murder of Suffolk local, Anita Rose, were written so passively that social media users thought she’d been attacked by a dog. No perpetrator was mentioned even though a murder investigation has been launched and Suffolk police are appealing for information about two men. The headline 'woman dies after attack while walking dog' encourages us to think of male violence as some random abstract force.

Activists and athletes carry a banner as they march through Eldoret, western Kenya, in September 2024, to demonstrate against the murder of women in Kenya after Rebecca Cheptegei's death.

And yet, the reality is that 98% of all adult arrests for sexual offences in England and Wales are men. When trying to figure out why, we can point at obvious symptoms of misogyny: porn culture, misogynistic streamers, social media, gender – and the socialisation of it. Misogyny is a defining indicator that runs through all of these atrocities and yet as a society we are absolutely unprepared to admit or examine that.

Misogyny is a defining indicator that runs through all of these atrocities and yet as a society we are absolutely unprepared to admit or examine that.

Those of us who work in gender equality are well-versed in the decades of work by feminists and radical thinkers who exposed that the socialisation of the gender binary was a colonial invention that was harming us all; yes even men with power. Traditional gender roles, introduced by colonial powers, socialise people into ideas about who they must be and how they must act. Masculinity is about being strong and independent; men are told that the only acceptable emotions to show are happiness or anger, and they must procure women in order to be seen as masculine. They are socialised to be an island, unwilling to be vulnerable or ask for help, not expected to be emotionally intelligent. They must be competent and hold down the role of the dominant one in their relationships, families and wider society, with violence being an acceptable way to handle problems or fears. When you spell it out like this it’s pretty clear how this gender stereotype leads to violence. Comparatively, when you look at how femininity is socialised (Submissive! Quiet! Existing in proximity to men!) you can see a problem in how men are conditioned to view women.

Culture is changing and conversations about gender have permeated the zeitgeist, but actual literacy around the socialisation of masculinity and misogyny remains low. We need to change this urgently, so that more people can start to understand how gender shapes our sense of self and behaviours and how misogyny is a system not just individual behaviours or comments; they are a symptom. Without understanding how this system shapes us and how we are all part of upholding it, we can’t start to move the dial on this”.

I am going to leave things there. There are other articles like this that I want to point people in the direction of. However, I would also compel people to explore beyond that. A phenomenal campaigner and activist, it was a no-brainer including Gina Martin in this feature! Consider the hugely important work she has done and continues to do. I am always in awe of what she does and how she is constantly fighting for equality rights for women. A person committed to the fight for women’s rights, she has made a big impact on me. Ever since I heard her speak two years ago for The Trouble Club, I have followed her and her work. An amazing human who has transformed so many people and helped bring about enormous changes, I feel like her influence, passion and brilliance will continue to bring about change…

IN the years to come.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Something Like a Song: Moments of Pleasure (The Red Shoes)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Something Like a Song

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: John Stoddart

Moments of Pleasure (The Red Shoes)

__________

I talked about this track…

not that long ago. However, I have not really given a proper spotlight to one of Kate Bush’s best and most underrated tracks. Featuring on The Red Shoes – though it sounds like it should have been on The Sensual World -, maybe people forget about it because it is on one of her less-loved albums. Moments of Pleasure was released as a single on 15th November, 1993. It reached twenty-six in the U.K. Bush reapproached this song for 2011’s Director’s Cut. Instead, this version features the chorus without lyrics. Some prefer the later version. However, there is something evocative about the original. I am going to get to some words from Bush regarding this song. Before that, I am pinching wholesale from Wikipedia, where they collate critical reviews for Moments of Pleasure:

“In his review of the song, Ben Thompson from The Independent remarked, "A smile and a tear from the Welling siren." Chris Roberts of Melody Maker said, "'Moments of Pleasure' is The Big Literary Effort, Kate at her very tremble-inducing, vocal-range-like-the-Pyrenees best." Alan Jones from Music Week gave the song four out of five and named it Pick of the Week, writing, "Beautiful and traditional Bush fare with expansive orchestrations, poignant vocals and off-her-trolley lyrics. As subtle as 'Rubberband Girl' was direct, and probably as big a hit." Pan-European magazine Music & Media noted, "For most singers a ballad is just a slow song, but for Bush it seems like it has to be an emotional confrontation which classic composers would like to be credited for." Terry Staunton from NME commented, "Her personal exorcisms reach new heights on 'Moments of Pleasure', a deceptively simple ballad with a swooping chorus and a coda where she namechecks the people who've been important to her over years. It's a song that may baffle the world at large, but it wasn't written for us; Kate's just decided to share it”.

This is a classic Kate Bush song that doesn’t get talked about enough. I am going to pull in some information that I have sourced before. Important that we get some background to this song. One of her most beautiful music videos, I think Moments of Pleasure warranted a higher chart position. Before moving on, I am going to come to an interview Bush gave in 2011, where she discussed some misconceptions around the meaning of Moments of Pleasure:

“I think the problem is that during [the recording of] that album there were a lot of unhappy things going on in my life, but when the songs were written none of that had really happened yet. I think a lot of people presume that particularly that song was written after my mother had died for instance, which wasn’t so at all. There’s a line in there that mentions a phrase that she used to say, ‘every old sock meets an old shoe’, and when I recorded it and played it to her she just thought it was hilarious! She couldn’t stop laughing, she just thought it was so funny that I’d put it into this song. So I don’t see it as a sad song. I think there’s a sort of reflective quality, but I guess I think of it more as a celebration of life.

Interview with Ken Bruce, BBC Radio 2, 9 May 2011”.

It is clear there were some unhappy times during recording of the song. However, Bush was not reacting to tragedy. Instead, she was at a stage in her life where she was thinking about family, her own situation and age. Growing up and getting more wistful and philosophical. It is one of most remarkably deep and revealing songs. Why do people not discuss songs like this more?! You do hear it played on the radio, though most go for other tracks. There is not the same joy or catchy vibe as some Kate Bush songs. One of the standouts from The Red Shoes, I approached the song last October. About eight months later, I thought it worthy coming back to it. Rather than cover the exact same ground, this is about shining a light on a beautiful piece of work.

I want to bring in this article from 2014. Arriving in the world at a time when Britpop was starting and there was not really any other artist like Kate Bush around, one wonders what impact Moments of Pleasure would had if it were released years before. I do think that this song could have easily slotted on an album like Hounds of Love (1985) or The Sensual World (1989):

“In 1993 I was listening to a lot of new music. From the first stirrings of Britpop still fizzing with youthful energy (that would change), to indie disco sounds, lo-fi rock, British neo-soul and Weegie dance beats.

The albums I kept going back to that year - Suede's eponymous debut, the sophomore effort by Saint Etienne, One Dove's Morning Dove White (my enraptured exposure to Dot Allison's voice) and, best of all, the post-Sugarcubes solo debut of Bjork (spoiler alert: we may be hearing more of Ms Guðmundsdóttir in this space anon). All of them shiny new sounds.

And yet.

And yet the singles I loved that year were from familiar voices, doing things they'd done before; but maybe doing them better or more affectingly than before.

Two in particular. If I hadn't gotten into terrible trouble from the Not Fade Away Standards and Ethics Committee for my 1982 Not Fade Away choice I'd be tempted to cheat and say I couldn't decide between my two favourites again.

But a man can only bear so many Chinese Burns, and so I have to decide. Between New Order's Regret and Kate Bush's Moments of Pleasure. On one hand I have my favourite song from one of my favourite bands. On the other, the most personal and most potent track of Kate Bush's career (IMHO and all that).You already know which way I've gone by the picture on top of the page but genuinely as I write this I haven't come down definitively on one side or the other.

Just being alive, it can really hurt ...

I'm not sure when I stopped listening closely to Kate Bush. Some time around The Sensual World, I guess. Loved the single but for the first time didn't feel the need to buy the accompanying album. Maybe the thought of contributions from Eric Clapton and Lenny Henry didn't stir me much (nor even a contribution from Prince). Maybe I felt that she was something of a teenage obsession for me and I'd now grown up a bit (a pretty poorly thought-through reason if it was true). I don't know.

All I know is that I wasn't playing her records much at the start of the nineties. And yet when one of her singles came on the radio I'd always turn it up.

So it was with Moments of Pleasure. From the minor key melancholy of those opening piano chords and the accompanying shiver of strings to the breathy shimmer of that familiar voice, it catches me every time I hear it (and not just because I get to hear Kate Bush say my first name near the end). I loved it at the time and as the years pass it has grown to be my favourite song from her catalogue.

It's a mournful thing, a catalogue of loss replete, as her biographer Graeme Thomson says of its parent album The Red Shoes, with "all the ache of letting go". A song full of ghosts. Her Auntie Maureen, guitarist Alan Murphy, lighting engineer Bill Duffield. It was only years later that I learnt that the man in the lift in the second verse was in fact an account of her meeting with the film director Michael Powell in a snowy New York not long before he died, a tribute to a peculiarly English artist by another.

The music is lovely, a beautiful swell of sound on which her voice - which travels back and forth between breathy intimacy and high drama - settles into. But it's the words that get me every time”.

A wonderful song from Kate Bush, it is one of my favourites. This series is about focusing on individual tracks that you need to listen to. In the next part, I may come to one from an album like Never for Ever (1980). However, as The Red Shoes gets overlooked, I wanted to discuss one of its gems. The sublime and gorgeous Moments of Pleasure is a Kate Bush work of brilliance that…

WE need to herald.