FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: One: Inside John Carder Bush’s Amazing and Timeless Cover

FEATURE:

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

One: Inside John Carder Bush’s Amazing and Timeless Cover

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EVEN if I have…

ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush

published some recent features that look at Kate Bush in 1985 or are based around Hounds of Love, this is the first of a twenty-feature run specifically marking forty years of the genius album. It turns forty on 16th September. I am spending time focusing on each of the tracks. I will also publish a feature about its legacy. One around Kate Bush as a producer. In fact, I am spotlighting eleven of the tracks with a feature each. As Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) turns forty in August, I will run two features about the single. This feature is the first one of the run. That leaves four other features that I will reveal as we go through the series. I wanted to start out with the front cover. Maybe shorter than other features, it is important. It is the first thing you see when you pick up the album. Preferably on vinyl. You can get a copy here. I did write about the cover back in 2021. A shot taken by her brother, John Carder Bush, he photographed all of her album covers from 1982’s The Dreaming up to and including 1993’s The Red Shoes. I think most people would agree that Hounds of Love is his best album cover. In terms of the composition and colours. The look on Kate Bush’s face. The fact that she is lying with her Weimaraner dogs, Bonnie and Clyde. I am going to come to Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book about Hounds of Love that was published this year and what she writes about the cover. Before coming to Leah Kardos’s words and rounding off with my thoughts about the cover, I will come to words from John Carder Bush about his experience of shooting the cover. Writing in the newsletter for the Kate Bush Club in a section named ‘3. Some of the Photographs’, you can sense and feel how much of a game of patience it was getting that stunning cover shot:

“The shot of Kate Bush reclining on the Hounds of Love album cover was taken by her brother, John Carder Bush, who included plenty of funny outtakes from the photo session. The ‘hounds of love’ on the album cover were her own two dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, and it took all day to get them to settle down. When the final picture was taken, one of the pooches actually fell asleep on her. On the album sleeve notes Kate gives “A big woof to Bonnie & Clyde.”

Here’s the amazing story behind the Hounds of Love album cover shoot, as told by John Carder Bush:

“There had been quite a few ideas for this cover that we tried out in rough, and then abandoned. The feel of the photo was in the air around the music that was being finalized: color and emotional pace became clear first.

“Elaborate environments, such as forests, mountains, palaces, etc.––places for the Hounds to run that would suit their style––were rejected as too busy. The cover had to have a strong, full image of Kate, as it was the first for three years, and landscapes, however beautiful, tend to dwarf people. It’s fine to use the big outdoors for bands because you can spread them all over it, but for a beautiful solo lady it doesn’t work. So we decided on a close-up of Kate and the dogs, and a made-up background.

“There was a feeling for daylight rather than studio, so we went round and discussed it with the dogs. While Kate was chatting to them in their back garden, I snapped away. But when we looked at the processed results, daylight was too cold, there wasn’t enough diffusion of the shades of color and the environment. It just didn’t feel right. I had been working on a series of “body poems” in which I was writing my poems on people and then photographing them, and it seemed like a good idea, but when we tried it, apart from Kate looking like the tattooed lady from a circus, there was much too much activity in the small frame, and the eye just wandered around too much. But the dogs were wonderful, and did everything they were asked too.

“It was becoming clearer. We had to do it in the studio, without the writing, and with the lights set in a delicate, pastel way. So I constructed a rough, made sure all the cables were well pinned down and anything likely to be knocked over out of the way, and then phoned up the dogs and asked them over for another tryout.

“We let them explore for an hour or so, and then Kate settled down on the floor for an overhead shot.

“An hour later we had managed to persuade them to lie down next to Kate. Not surprising that they took so long, as they are not trained dogs, and couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I had a minute to hoover up as much as I could before they were off again, tending to use Kate as a launching ramp for their leaps and cavorting.

“After they had left, we seriously considered trying feline friends, but Cats of Love wasn’t quite the same at all. But on looking at the shots we had, there was potential, and we decided we would persevere. And the best thing seemed to be to take the studio to the dogs, have another rehearsal and, if that was a shambles, think again. Also another rehearsal would mean I could try out more variations in the lighting and the set. So a week later I took my studio to the dogs and constructed a scaffolding for the overhead shot; a bed of lilac net and silks for Kate; and around her, a tent of lilac material to reflect and diffuse. And when I looked through the lens at the little room, it looked like an illustration from Dulac’s Arabian Nights.

“The Hounds had been taken out for a long run and then fed, because we thought that if they felt dozy long enough they would want somewhere to lie down and sleep it off. Kate did her hair in an approximation of how it would look in the final shot, and then settled down in the tent. Up came the lights, and in came the dogs––noses first––and after a few minutes of looking around, yawned and went to sleep next to her. I had all the time I wanted to explore the possibilities.

“When the film was processed, it was very exciting to see how the various elements were coming together, and how close we were getting to the album cover that existed inside our heads. There were a lot of small points to iron out, but they presented no problem, and I looked forward to the big day.

“When it came round, Kate asked Clayton Howard, the make-up artist, and Anthony Yacomine, the hair artist, to do their magic, so for three hours of painstaking work they added the colors and shapes that were necessary for the right atmosphere. I reconstructed the scaffolding and rebuilt the set, and after lunch we were ready to go. Kate lay down in the tent, and Howard and Anthony arranged the final touches of nuance. The materials were placed in just the right places, and I climbed up into the scaffolding. When I looked through the lens, it was fairyland underneath me.

“The dogs, meanwhile, had been waiting in the wings, supposedly exhausted and dying for somewhere to put their heads down. Anthony and Clayton withdrew in a cloud of hairspray and eye-glitter, so that the dogs wouldn’t be distracted by strangers, and the word was given to let them in.

“Within seconds, Kate’s delicate arrangements were in tatters and a paw in the mouth didn’t help make-up. One dog would settle down and start snoring while the other one turned her back on us all by the door and wouldn't budge. As soon as she had been persuaded to stop being a prima donna and come alongside Kate, the other one smelled Anthony and Clayton, and was off to meet them. We tried for half an hour before we realized we were wasting our time, so while Kate was being repaired, I went outside with the Hounds and had a serious talk with them.

“I could see their point of view, but it didn’t help in getting this expensive, time-consuming session off the ground. While they hurtled off to chase non-existent cats that I suggested were lurking at the end of the garden in the hope of tiring them out even more, I received the signal that Kate was ready to go again. Apparently seeing reason, the dogs returned, and we signed the deal with some chocolate digestives: if they behaved themselves and gave me the photo I wanted, there was a McDonald’s with milk shake and apple pie in it for each of them.

“We went back in, but it was the same thing. Looning and sulking. Then suddenly they lay down next to Kate, and we were away. Half an hour later I had enough photos, and could have gone on to take more, but everyone was becoming too sleepy in the heat from the lights and the softness of the set, so it seemed pointless.

“Choosing the final photo, deciding how best to present it on the cover and what sort of typeface to use for titles is yet another story”.

Starting on page fifty-one of her Hounds of Love 33 1/3 book, Leah Karos dissects and discusses the cover. Considering the alternative shots, the challenge of getting two energetic and restless dogs to settle and pulling it all together, it must have been the most challenging cover shoot of Kate Bush’s career! However, it was worth the effort! Bush is, on the cover “bathed in amethyst organza”. Also, “Her hair is fanned out as though she is floating on water while the light ripples on the fabric underneath her in swirling, dreamy waves”. Kardos notes how Bush’s expression is “sensual, slightly sleepy, elegantly guarded. The dogs on either side recall the image of Hecate – the Greek goddess of the threshold realms, the places where crossroads meet – with her hounds”. The choice of purple is interesting. In terms of the mix of red and blue. Blood and water maybe? In terms of what purple represents tonally and sonically, it is more lush and mysterious than previous albums. Kardos writes how, “According to the Maitreya School of Healing, co-founded by Bush’s friend, the late healer Lily Cornford (the addressee of the song named after her on Bush’s 1993 album The Red Shoes), this colour (‘wisteria amethyst’) promotes strength, dignity, spiritual growth and courage”. It is clear that the cover indicates what is to come: “the ideas and colours of the album inside are forecast: water, sky, storms, stars, the dream, world, the liminal place between life and something else, chill and warmth; power and restraint. Never has Bush appeared so soft and so strong”.

In terms of the all-time best album covers, there are few as striking as Hounds of Love. They say a picture paints a thousand words. There are almost as many as that you can apply to John Carder Bush’s photo! I wonder how people felt in 1985, in September, when they picked up their copy of Hounds of Love. Seeing that gorgeous and slightly mysterious photo. Bonnie and Clyde in the starring roles as the Hounds of Love themselves! The colour scheme and the streak of purple in Kate Bush’s hair. The look on her face: part alluring and sensual and also a little fearful and sad in a way. When it turns forty on 16th September, I wonder if people will talk about the album cover. As important as anything on the album, this John Carder Bush-shot image will go down as one of the great album front covers! I have always admired it and feel that it tells you so much about the album. A high watermark of music photography, it is very different to his photo for The Dreaming and The Sensual World. In terms of what the images say and how they connect with the albums. In future Hounds of Love at Forty features, I am going to discuss Kate Bush as a producer, the legacy of the album, how it was received at the time and the promotion Kate Bush undertook. I will, as mentioned, explore each song and spend some extra time with Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), The Ninth Wave – the album conceptual suite on the second side –, and I also might mention the artists today who have definitely been influenced by Hounds of Love. You can tell from that stunning and utterly entrancing cover photo that the music within is of…

THE highest order.

FEATURE: Mercury Prize Predictions: Songs from Albums That Could Appear on This Year’s Shortlist

FEATURE:

 

 

Mercury Prize Predictions

IN THIS PHOTO: Loyle Carner released hopefully ! on 20th June

Songs from Albums That Could Appear on This Year’s Shortlist

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IT is not…

IN THIS PHOTO: English Teacher picked up last year’s Mercury Prize for This Could Be Texas/PHOTO CREDIT: John Marshall/JM Enternational

too long now until this year’s shortlist for the Mercury Prize is announced. On 25th July, 2024, the twelve contenders were named. In an especially strong year, it was English Teacher’s This Could Be Texas that won the prize. Beating off contenders such as Charli xcx, CMAT, The Last Dinner Party and Ghetts, it was a popular choice. The award finally being given to a band who did not hail from London. Originally, anyway. With the Mercury Prize doggedly and predictably handing out the award to London artists every year, it was in danger of excluding artists from other parts of the U.K. and Ireland. This year will see some London-based artists in connection. However, there is no telling which twelve albums will make the shortlist. I do like to make predictions. This year’s shortlist is announced on Wednesday, 10th September. The 2025 Award Show will be held on Thursday, 16th October at the Utilita Arena, Newcastle. We have a little while to wait. However, as we are just over a couple of months away from the shortlist announcement, I wanted to make my prediction. The twelve albums released between Saturday, 13th July, 2024 and Friday, 29th August, 2025 will go up against each other In October. I will write a feature about the shortlisted albums when they are announced. Right now, as so many great albums from British and Irish artists have been released since last July, it is a good moment to reflect and combine those that are in with a shout of Mercury Prize shortlisting. You might agree with the selection of have those you would include instead. I have selected a song from each of the twelve albums. Hare are artists I feel will be in the running when the Mercury Prize…

SHORTLIST is announced.

FEATURE: Another Example of Kate Bush’s Generosity: M3GAN 2.0 and This Woman’s Work

FEATURE:

 

 

Another Example of Kate Bush’s Generosity

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins

M3GAN 2.0 and This Woman’s Work

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EVEN though…

I have written about Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work and how it is perhaps overused in film, the latest example does at least come with a nice addition. The song weas originally used in a film. The 1988 comedy, She’s Having a Baby. It was not until the following year that it appeared on Kate Bush’s The Sensual World. It is a track that has been used widely used. A recent inclusion in the Jennifer Lopez-fronted film, The Mother. Now, it appears in M3GAN 2.0. One of the most anticipated sequels in recent years, it is not a surprise that this classic Kate Bush track features once more. Kate Bush News shared the details:

“The sequel to the hit 2023 sci-fi/horror film M3GAN has been released in cinemas worldwide. M3GAN 2.0 continues the story of an artificially intelligent doll who develops self-awareness and becomes hostile toward anyone who comes between her and her human companion. The first film grossed over $181 million worldwide against a budget of $12 million and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its campy blend of horror and humor.

A pivotal moment in M3GAN 2.0 involves Kate’s classic song This Woman’s Work. According to writer-director Gerard Johnstone, a fan of Kate’s, he had designs on using the song for a while. Speaking to Forbes.com, he says “It was in the script, but in an earlier draft, it was another song because the situation was different and called for a different song. I wanted M3gan to sing This Woman’s Work over the titles of the first film, but we didn’t have enough time to seek out the rights. That was a fun idea I had that I didn’t get to do anything with. Once I realized the context of the scene in the sequel had changed and it was about motherhood, it felt like the most natural song choice.”

Johnstone continues, “I’m a massive fan of Kate Bush, and in all honesty, we shot that scene not knowing if we would get the rights; we just had to hope and pray that we did. It took a little bit of convincing, and she had to see the scene to approve it, but she did. Kate didn’t take any money for it either. We gave her all we could afford, and she gave it to charity. That made me an even bigger fan.”

USA Today have talked about the scene in question: “It wouldn’t be a “M3GAN” movie without a killer needle drop. M3GAN singing Titanium by David Guetta and Sia in the first film, for example. But none can compare to the demented brilliance of a pivotal new sequel scene, in which M3GAN launches into “This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush. The jarringly hilarious performance comes after a rare earnest conversation between M3GAN and Cady’s roboticist aunt, Gemma (Allison Williams), who worries about her shortcomings as a parent to her young niece. M3GAN uses the tranquil pop ballad to ostensibly console her, in her own disconcerting way”.

It is always amazing when a Kate Bush song is played and used on the screen. It means more people connect with the track. The downsides are they tend to be the same track. The same ones overused. Deeper cuts never making their way into T.V. or film. It is not an original choice going for This Woman’s Work. It is a little obvious but, if the choice was that or no Kate Bush track, then it is a good option. However, it is not the studio album version used. Rather the song being sung by the eponymous anti-heroine. It is a bit of comedic take I guess. I do hope that filmmakers push beyond the go-to of a song from Hounds of Love or This Woman’s Work. It is a little stale now. However, every bit of Kate Bush exposure if a positive thing! It shows how there is this breadth of love and respect for her work. How it can be used across so many genres. Such adaptable music that is used in pivotal moments. Perhaps unsurprising that her music more and more is used for tense or dramatic scenes. Something a little darker, more stirring. Or at least films and T.V. shows that have a darker tone to them. That said, her music has been used in comedies and, through the years, has really resonated. This will continue for years to come. The most striking thing about the M3GAN 2.0/This Woman’s Work collaboration is that Kate Bush was not interested in the money. So many news articles come out that ask what she is worth and how much she has earned. It always seems insulting and lurid. Yes, Bush has made a lot of money and is not short of a penny or two! However, she is someone who gives a lot to charity and is hugely generous. This is the latest case. Rather than asking for a lot of money to have her song used, instead, the money is going to charity. It is a great gesture from her! Not to say that this will be the case with every request she gets. However, it is clear that she is more interesting in seeing her work being used in an effective and respectful way. That it elevated a scene and makes an impact. That seems to be the case with M3GAN 2.0.

I do hope that filmmakers look deeper into Kate Bush’s catalogue. This Woman’s Work does seem a bit too overdone now. It is a shame. However, as I said, it is valuable use of her music. That is not to be sniffed at! However, there is this array of wonderful songs that would be incredible on the screen. It was a bit of unexpected news with M3GAN 2.0, as I did not know Kate Bush’s 1989 single would be used. Nearly thirty-six years after it was released (not including it featuring in She’s Having a Baby), this emotional song is still very relevant and popular. I wonder how many requests Kate Bush gets to use her music. No doubt other filmmakers have approached in the past year or two. Maybe we will see another one of her songs on a T.V. show or film before the end of this year. We are of course all anticipating a new Kate Bush album. I feel the attention she gets from filmmakers shows how loved her music is. That will definitely spur her to create something new I feel. The rest of this year is going to see anniversaries being marked (including Hounds of Love’s fortieth on 16th September). I do hold hope that we will see a deeper cut or a single that has not been used features in a film or a T.V. show. Maybe a long-overdue inclusion of Wuthering Heights? Maybe something different? However, the most revealing and pleasing aspect from the M3GAN 2.0 inclusion of This Woman’s Work is to see the generosity of Kate Bush. Someone who is always putting others first. Not too many artists are as altruistic and charity-minded as her. That is to be applauded! At a time when she could cash in and make herself more wealthy accepting so many offers to use her music, she has this sense of discretion and quality control. Not being driven by money. That alone is…

WORTHY of huge credit.

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Aretha Franklin – I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

Aretha Franklin – I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You

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AN album…

IN THIS PHOTO: Aretha Franklin in 1967

that I would advise everyone to own, Aretha Franklin’s I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You sounds perfect on vinyl. Released on 10th March, 1967, after nine unsuccessful Jazz standard albums, this album marked a commercial breakthrough for Franklin. Featuring tracks such as I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), Respect and Do Right Woman, Do Right Man, it is one of the greatest albums ever. It was an album of independence and declaration from Aretha Franklin. Rolling Stone placed the album at thirteen in their list of the five-hundred best albums in 2023. I am going to go inside I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You for this feature. An album that needs to be in everyone’s collection. Far Out Magazine took us inside the making of this classic:

“By the mid-1960s, Franklin was beginning to find her footing. Emphasising her gospel roots, Franklin began to spearhead the nascent genre of soul, along with performers like James Brown and Otis Redding. But Columbia wasn’t evolving with her, and after nine albums with the label, Franklin opted to seek out a label that would work better for her more hard-edged sound. She decided to jump to the same label that had previously housed genre forerunners like Ray Charles and LaVern Baker, Atlantic Records.

The first order of business was to shed Franklin of the jazz standards of her past. Instead of the lighter orchestral pop that had been part of her previous sound, Franklin carefully chose her covers that allowed her a greater amount of personality and control. When it came to picking songs from other songwriters, Franklin similarly chose more pointed material. Although it wasn’t explicit, Franklin was crafting one of the first feminism-centred albums in pop music with I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You.

It all starts with the album’s first track, Franklin’s take on the Otis Redding number ‘Respect’. Rather than embodying a figure who is fine with a philandering partner, Franklin flips the song on its head and demands to be treated as the only one in her man’s life. Franklin is in complete control, steadfast in her knowledge that she is the end-all, be-all that can be found in this particular union. Whether it was from transferring to a new label or the growing independence she felt from her husband, songwriter, and manager Ted White, Franklin exploded into an entirely new level of confidence on ‘Respect’.

Backing her up is the F.A.M.E. Studios Rhythm Section, later known as both the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and The Swampers. Although tracking originally began at F.A.M.E. Studios in Alabama, an altercation between White and studio owner Rick Hall resulted in production halting after only the album’s title track was recorded. Franklin decided that she still needed the white boys from Alabama to bring her newly emancipated sound to life, so she flew them out to New York, where sessions resumed at Atlantic’s in-house recording studio.

The secret to I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You lies in two more prominent features that had yet to be explored on Franklin’s previous albums: Franklin’s own signature piano playing and her insistence on using her sister Carolyn and Erma as her backing vocalists. Franklin played piano rhythmically and aggressively, a style that was followed by The Swampers behind her. Meanwhile, her hooks were accentuated by the preternatural blend that the Franklin sisters had.

The lesser songs on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You are the most fascinating to revisit 55 years later. ‘Soul Serenade’ is a nod back to the jazz origins of Franklin’s style while adding a noticeable groove that had been missing up to that point. Drummers Gene Chrisman and Roger Hawkins developed a pocket that had never appeared on Franklin’s previous records, and it allowed her to dig into a song’s arrangement in more primal ways, belting vocals straight from the piano as she emanates heartbreak, love, frustration, and self-assuredness.

‘Don’t Let Me Lose This Train’ would be a jazz-lounge track if not for Franklin and her sisters’ soulful vocals. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You didn’t start as a major departure for Franklin from the jazz styles of her past, but thanks to the new band and new surroundings that she found herself in, soul began to replace jazz in a natural progression as Franklin became more comfortable finding her brassy voice. It would be her greatest asset, and it only took a decade to find it.

For the first time on her recordings, Franklin found herself at the forefront of the recording process. In previous works, Franklin had to contend with lush orchestrations, dense arrangements, and inflexible producers who believed they knew what was best to mould Franklin into a success. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You is one of the first feminist albums not just because of the words Franklin is singing, but because of the autonomy that she now had over her own music.

Tellingly, Franklin never loses the thread when she jumps from topic to topic. She can take on both ends of Sam Cooke’s discography, from his breezy party-rock track ‘Good Times’ to his impassioned call for racial equality ‘A Change is Gonna Come’, without contradicting herself. Instead, she embodies all sides of life, including the good and the bad in equal measure. Love is a difficult proposition on the album, as it was for Franklin in her real life, but it was never straightforward or twee like it was on Franklin’s previous records.

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You was more than just a change of pace for Aretha Franklin. It was an announcement that everything had changed, from her style to her sound to her image to her attitude. It was a seismic declaration of independence and self-actualisation, complete within 11 songs that had a new groove and rhythm that was leaps and bounds beyond anything that Franklin had done before. With Atlantic, she had a course set for the future that would allow her to indulge in soul and gospel, the synthesis of which would become her signature sound. But more importantly, she had found the sound within herself, a sound that was always there but was just waiting to find the right vehicle to come out. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You remains a treat for the ears, the brain, and the soul to this day, completely untouched by more than five decades of musical change. Few records are as timeless and consistently relevant, and that’s the way it will stay for the next five decades to come”.

CLASH illuminated a work of genius for this feature. They note how every note and thought on the album explodes with soulfulness. It is one of the deepest and most affecting albums ever. One that comes from Aretha Franklin’s heart. Almost sixty years after its release, it sound utterly unsurpassed and jaw-dropping:

“Despite only making it to number two in the charts and with total album sales of only 500,000 at the time, it put Aretha up there with the daddies of soul – Otis, Ray Charles, Al Green, Marvin Gaye. It was the album that helped Aretha find her voice and become a voice for thousands of other women. ‘Respect’, recorded on Valentine’s Day and opening the album with its uplifting and exciting piano introduction, became an anthem for women’s and racial rights, while the rest of the album offered strength, passion and guidance to others. Two days after its recording, Aretha Franklin Day was declared in Detroit.

No one can sing the blues like Aretha. Ray Charles’ ‘Drown In My Own Tears’, previously recorded by Dinah Washington, tugged so hard at the heartstrings, you could almost hear them snap. It is followed by some renditions of her contemporaries’ finest song writing, like Sam Cooke’s ‘Good Times’ and the political ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’. Her versions stand side by side with the originals, with some being more recognisable with the Aretha makeover.

Aretha also penned some of the classics herself, with the help of her then husband and manager Ted White or younger sister Carolyn Franklin, such as ‘Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream’, ‘Save Me’ and the tender ‘Baby, Baby, Baby’. She made new songs by some of the world’s greatest musicians and writers, such as ‘Soul Serenade’ by Luther Dixon and Curtis Ousley, the real name of sax god King Curtis, her own. ‘Dr Feelgood (Love Is a Serious Business)’, with its rolling Hammond and powerful bluesy brass, was also written by the Franklin/White collaboration and is seen as one of the best original numbers on the album, but it is one of a collection that most soul singers could only dream of. Among the many single hits there was also the album’s title track, which reached number nine in the billboard chat, and ‘Do Right Man – Do Right Woman’.

During the recordings at the Florence Alabama Music Emporium in Muscle Shoals, a drunken brawl meant sessions at the famous studios had to be put on hold. The album almost wasn’t finished, until Aretha and all the Muscle Shoals musicians reconvened in New York to complete the project. ‘I Never Loved a Man…’ is an album where Aretha – a young, black woman – is in control. Aretha played piano and directed the band, which helped create the strong, rich and sublime with its horn and rhythm sections. With the great King Curtis on tenor sax and her little sister on backing vocals, the whole package is one to be proud of and sets the scene for Aretha’s many successes in the years to come.

Despite releasing such greats as ‘Say A Little Prayer’ the following year, Aretha didn’t score another number one in the US until 1987 with ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’, with George Michael”.

I am going to end with some words from Rolling Stone. When ranking the best five-hundred albums of all time, they placed Aretha Franklin’s I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You at thirteen. For anyone who has not heard the album, then go and check it out. You really do need to own it on vinyl:

“The Queen Of Soul, Aretha Franklin had recorded 9 albums for Columbia Records within the space of 6 years. She struggled to find success on those records and so when her contract expired, Jerry Wexler convinced her to move over to Atlantic Records. Wexler wanted to use Franklin’s Gospel background to capitalise on the rising popularity of Soul Music. Franklin headed to FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama to record with the famous house band there. After recording the title track for this record on day one, her husband had an altercation with the studio manager, forcing her to move sessions to NYC. The song was released as a single ahead of the albumand went straight to #1 on the RnB chart, as well as #9 on the mainstream chart.

But it was the second single that would launch Franklin to stardom. Recorded on Valentine’s Day 1967, Franklin took a song that has been a moderate hit for its composer, Otis Redding, flipped the gender in the lyrics and in turn created arguably the greatest feminist and Civil Rights anthems of all-time. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T/Find out what it means to me.” The song would become her only solo mainstream #1 single and went on to sell over a million copies in The States alone. Her voice is incredible on this recording. She effortlessly works her way through the eleven tracks, hitting impossible notes without breaking a sweat. ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’ incorporates a Country feel on the record, while ‘Dr. Feelgood (Love Is A Serious Business)’ is a through-and-through Gospel track. She ends the record with a perfect rendition of Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come.’ “It's been a long/A long time coming/But I know a change gonna come/Oh, yes it will.” Her conviction on this song is palpable. The US was at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, with seemingly no change in sight. It’s impossible to not feel the sense of urgency in Franklin’s urging of ‘A Change Is Gonna Come.’ It’s an anthem and one that is still relevant today in the Black Lives Matter Movement. The more things change, the more they stay the same, but here’s hoping that a change is gonna come soon. This record cemented Franklin as one of the greatest vocalists in history with na incredible performance from start to finish”.

I shall stop here. Undeniably one of the most significant albums ever released, I wanted to spend a bit of time with it for Beneath the Sleeve. Such a captivating and emotional listen, Aretha Franklin makes every song her own. Inhabits every word and syllable! I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You is…

A Soul masterpiece.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Ela Minus

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

Ela Minus

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PERHAPS an artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alvaro Arisó

that some people do not know, I think that Ella Minus is someone everyone should know. An incredible talent whose new album, DÍA, is among the best of this year, I would urge everyone to follow her. I am going to come to a review of that album very soon. I want to drop in a few interviews with Minus before getting there. I am going to start out with an interview from NME. Ela Minus discussed the private reckoning behind her new album. How the Brooklyn-based Colombian had a long road to completion and realisation of DÍA:

“A lengthy process of “letting all the shit come out” followed. “I just needed to get it out of my system and put it in the trash,” Minus contemplates. “I’ve never done therapy, but I imagine it’s something like that.” This private reckoning made her feel that she’d paid more attention to the production than lyrics on her first album. “It felt like time to give it some intention,” she says. Such self-reflection helped Minus to “learn so much” and she “realised the things I was singing about were inside of me”.

‘DÍA’ is a rarity in the dance world: a record that doesn’t shy away from tough subjects and personal stories. “I think we have enough dance music about dancing,“ Minus says vehemently, “I don’t need to give us more of that.” A shining example is ‘IDOLS’, particularly its “very physical” lyrics of “I took a blow, straight to the face, there was blood everywhere, when I opened my eyes”. The first song written for the album, it was inspired by a spiking incident which left her in a London hospital’s intensive care unit. “It happened at the same time as when I got signed, finished mixing my first record and started playing with bigger acts,” she recalls openly.

True to her character, Minus set about turning a negative into a positive. “A lot of things about that experience were hard, but that made it inspiring. It felt like an invitation to look over the life that I was about to start,” she reflects. “It’s so easy for us to follow the paths we are shown without even knowing if that’s what we actually want to do, just because those are the paths that have been drawn for us.” It led her to conclude that “the music industry is kind of a dark place”, yet it’s something “we choose to close our eyes to” because of her love for music.

It’s through music that Minus comes to terms with these thoughts, in particular on ‘I WANT TO BE BETTER’, which she describes as the core of the record – though it almost didn’t make it onto the album. “I thought it was very bad and embarrassing,” she recalls. However, as she kept returning to the song, she was slowly struck by its raw emotion. “There’s this anxiety and intensity, and I wanted the production to self-destruct, then rebuild into the next song, ‘ONWARDS’,” she says, describing the sequence as “redemption in the form of joy”.

As an artist who has always straddled the worlds of pop, club music and electronic experimentalism, many of the tracks on ‘DÍA’ are hook-heavy (particularly the space-shuddering ‘BROKEN’, which conjures the feeling of running down a dark alleyway) but sonically challenging. Though Minus says this balance has never been intentional. “I still try really hard to not rationalise what I’m making while I’m making it,” Minus says. “Except for when the music asks for something very specific, I try to just go with my gut.”

Her instincts have led her to frame ‘DÍA’ as a “call to action”, as Minus describes, much like how her debut was aimed to incite protest and rebellion. “It makes you want to stand up and do shit!” she declares. Though it’s not an easy listen – “It’s angry, there’s a lot going on, but it’s quick and then you wonder what happened?” – she likes that it makes the listener think. “There’s a deep catharsis to it that leaves you energised,” she says.

Having gone through so much to reach a place far beyond contentment, Minus is understandably thankful that ‘DÍA’ is finally out in the world. “It wasn’t easy,” she concludes, describing the entire process of making it as “painful”. “The first album seemed like a walk in the park, so I’m glad this one is now behind me and I can look forward to keep making records”.

I am going to move on to this interview from Juno. Ela Minus discussed what is her most inward-looking album yet. DÍA is one of the best albums of the year for sure. I am quoting interviews that I hope give some background to the album and how it came together. Anyone who has not heard of Ela Minus needs to follow her and experience her music:

“Minus is staying in East Williamsburg in the New York borough of Brooklyn, and inhabiting a rather curious space. She’s staying in the building she called home for seven years – but in a different flat, staying with a neighbour.

“It’s my old neighbourhood so it’s very surreal, as I used to live here for seven years, in this building – so it’s the same but it’s not my apartment.”

New York is the place that feels the most like home, after her native Bogotá of course. She’s just done her first show in the Colombian capital since 2022, a truly emotional experience. “It was incredible,”  “I’ve never felt so much love as I did in that room that night.

A launch for the album, it was held in the city’s planetarium no less. “It was the first time I’ve done anything like that I Bogotá – I want to bring music into different spaces.”

Landing five years on from her debut Acts of Rebellion, DÍA was made in multiple locations across several continents in fact, from Colombia and Mexico to New York and LA and numerous other locations in Europe. Not at all by design, she hastens to add.

“It was completely out of necessity. I couldn’t afford rent in New York any more, at the beginning of 2021, so I went back to Columbia for a little bit, but I didn’t have the mindspace to decide where I wanted to move to permanently. 2021 and 2022 were weird – shows kept getting confirmed and then cancelled then confirmed again.  It was very difficult to plan. I wanted to move to London but I couldn’t get on a plane because there were no planes, it was a very weird time.

“So then I decided to prioritise making music rather than prioritising where I wanted to live.  So I had to go to studios I could use, either places owned by the label or places where I had friends with studios I could borrow.”

Does the enivornment – or in this case, environments – seep into the record at any point, or was she simply locked into the task wherever she was?

“I was very focused on what I was doing,” she says, “but I think inevitably I think the outside world got into the record.  I think it’s inevitable, you know.  So both.  The first track (‘Abrir Monte’) I made literally in the middle of nowhere in Northern Mexico – it was just this cabin, nothing else, just nature.  It feels like nature to me.  To me it sounds like the birds, the insects, the sound of the night in the countryside”.

The final interview I am coming to is from Rolling Stone. Ela Minus looked inside her most personal album. I am really looking forward t see where she heads next. An astonishing artist that should be on everyone else’s radar. Make sure that you do not miss out on Ela Minus and her extraordinary music:

“Your career path is very interesting. You came to the United States for music school and then you started designing your own synthesizers. What piqued your interest in electronic music?

I grew up playing drums in a punk band so I like that spirit of aggressive, loud music. Maybe it was my first influence, but it’s hard for me to say. I wasn’t really exposed to a lot of live music other than rock growing up in Colombia. There weren’t really any non-Colombian bands or DJs touring. So when I moved to the States for college, that was my first exposure to electronic music. And it was there that I made the connection that a lot of the bands I loved as a teenager, like Radiohead and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, used synthesizers — I thought they were effects on the guitars or something, I didn’t know. As soon as I made that connection, it kind of opened this door that I eagerly dove through.

But it wasn’t as simple as you hearing Bjork’s Vespertine. What motivated you to pursue this style full-time?
I was a drummer from nine years old until I was eighteen. The moment I left Colombia, I was over rock music, to be honest. I moved to college and started studying jazz and synthesizers and music synthesis. I was exposed to all of this new music, a lot of Bjork and James Blake, Four Tet, Caribou. I started listening to things I wanted to make for myself. I tried to explain it to my bandmates from my position as the drummer, but I quickly realized that it was not going to go anywhere  — I needed to do it by myself. And it just felt like I arrived at a point where I had more technical knowledge and had kind of taught myself how to produce. It felt easier to teach myself how to produce and make music on my own than trying to explain to these other boys what I’m hearing in my head, which is why I made my first EP. I had this sound in my head, and I just needed to get it out somehow.

Part of your curriculum involved studying jazz music. Does jazz inform a lot of the music you’re making as Ela Minus?

Definitely a lot. I still listen to the music of my drum teacher, Terri Lynn Carrington. She was my private instructor for four years in drums, so I think a lot about her teachings. Everything she taught me about drums kind of applies to all aspects of music-making. And I keep going back to the classics, a lot of Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey.

How has your production process changed since your early EPs? Those early records [First Words and Kiddo] quickly establish your signature sound. How much do you focus on developing your voice, or is your music really an extension of experience and access to different production techniques?

I think I definitely have found my voice, but I keep looking to develop as a musician. Those early EPs intentionally had a very specific sound. I wanted to make something that sounded unique, which was really the kernel of the idea to start a solo project. I was tired of not really being excited by a lot of artists, realizing that a lot of music was starting to sound the same. I didn’t have any budget, but I also didn’t want one. I was trying to make electronic music from a perspective of the life of a jazz or punk band, where each synthesizer was like its own band member. “Do I have a synthesizer for all the drums? One for all the basses? One for all the chords?” I wanted to take this band of synths, and focused on working for one week, and then whatever I record would go on YouTube. I was trying to be coherent and cohesive with what I was doing — making music which I could perform live as-is. This new album is the first time where I’ve focused on not restricting myself and using whatever instruments that I want. It’s growth by trusting that I can work in different ways.

One thing that’s changed since you began your career 10 years ago is the amount of media attention for Latina electronic artists operating in a range of styles, from Sofia Kourtesis to someone like Elysia Crampton (Chuquimamani-Condori) who makes dense underground DJ music. How do you think about your place in the music scene as it relates to your own identity?

Of course, it’s impossible to get away from it. I’ve learned identity is something we all need as humans, and that we look for in the world, to try to understand and to grasp things. I don’t think it’s a negative thing. I agree that the names you mentioned make music different from mine, but so do, you know, Caribou and Floating Points. I feel like I’m kind of touching a lot of worlds, like I’m Latina and I’m Colombian which are things that I am very proud of and part of my identity as a human being. I’m grouped into many different scenes, but I don’t really think I’m 100 percent a part of any of them. I can never be a synth-pop American singer because I’m not American. I can’t do what Sofia Kourtesis does because I’m not making club music. Sitting in-between all these worlds and forging my identity from this unique combination is a big driver personally.

Your lyrics are mostly written in English. Is that your preference when writing song lyrics or is that related to most of your influences being sung in English?

I think both. I’m very committed to trying to be as honest and intuitive as I can with my music. Usually when I start writing something, I hear a vocal melody, and usually it comes already with a sentence, like lyrics, in either English or Spanish. I try to stick to that language and develop the idea through improvisation. It kind of trickles down from one single idea, including the choice of language, so I don’t try to rationalize it. But I also think it has to do with the fact that most of the music I consume, growing up and still to this day, is in English. I’ve been living in English-speaking places for most of my adulthood. English and Spanish are very different languages but it’s helpful to be able to choose depending on how I want to express my ideas.

I often think of musicians that aren’t Latin American, who sing in English when it’s not their native language, and how it doesn’t come with the same controversy. Like Bjork, for example, I’ve never really seen any conversation about why she sings in English, but it’s evidently not her native tongue. Daft Punk and Phoenix too, many global north musicians that aren’t native English speakers. But for some reason, it’s only a topic when it’s Latino musicians. I think that’s interesting.

Listening to your latest album, DIA, there appears to be a major post-punk influence to a lot of tracks, like early Suicide records, whereas Acts of Rebellion had more of an anthemic quality.

They’re different sounding albums, but you can hear the same artist behind them. The difference is in how they reflect the five years in-between making each album. The sounds on DIA originate from working in a lot of different places instead of at home — lots of change of scenery. I was less focused on self-made rules as far as production or writing. I felt freer to do whatever I wanted. I don’t consider DIA a better record by any means, but as a musician, I feel like I got better at what I do.

Acts of Rebellion gained a bit of a reputation as an agit-pop album, one very heavy in political sentiment. DIA, on the other hand, sounds like an entirely personal work by comparison. 

Everything is political. You can see them as two sides of the same coin. Just one is dealing with certain topics outwardly, and the other one is dealing with the same topics inwardly”.

I am ending with a review from CLASH of DÍA. I think I first heard her music a couple of years ago. I recognised a distinct and unique artist the minute I heard Ela Minus! I do hope that this feature has gone so way to convince anyone who is not that familiar with Minus to check out her music and do some investigation:

“Opening up is never easy – especially for artists. But more often than not, those who have the capacity to scrutinise and share their most personal facets, are those who resonate with listeners on a level of authenticity that matters most. Colombian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, Ela Minus, reckons with this on her second album, ‘DÍA’. Looking inward to look outward, she spent three years creating her new material before deciding that her lyrics didn’t dig deep enough. She delved into fresh territory, both physically and internally, gathering snippets of self-discovery and weighing up new words to illustrate what she’d uncovered. The result is a broad body of work which shines as a forward-looking follow up to her acclaimed 2020 debut, ‘acts of rebellion’.

‘COMBAT’, the album’s closing track, was the first album taster shared in June last year. Its sombre, reflective tone may have come as a surprise to fans initially. But within the context of the album, it offers the perfect introduction. Its lyrics sung in Spanish are a plea to never giving up, and its simple, effective music video shows Minus at her most vulnerable yet, looking directly down the camera lens, a glint of a tear in her eyes, laying bare her emotions. ‘BROKEN’ leans further into this vulnerability. Mentioning in a press release that she felt fine before writing the song, Minus soon realised she wasn’t. Its lyrics tackle an enduring of suffering lingering beneath the surface, hidden in plain sight: “I tried to keep up the pretence / Keep doing it for you / Like pulling bones through my skin / How did we end up here?”

Sonically, ‘DÍA’ picks up from where ‘acts of rebellion’ left off. Occasionally looking back to the intensity of late-night reverie on her debut, her new album’s expansive feel smashes through the club ceiling towards new possibilities. The production is impeccable throughout; ‘QQQQ’ blends syncopated Latin rhythms with quirky layered synths, ‘IDOLS’ puts ominous reverbs to the fore for a dark, edgy feel, while the three-track segue (‘ONWARDS, ‘AND’, ‘UPWARDS’) culminates in the best of Minus’ impeccable abilities as a producer. Catchy vocal melodies, meticulously detailed sonics, bounds of relentless energy – it’s as though the body heat of the dancefloor pours out of the music.

Minus’ new album succeeds with its M.O. In terms of artistry, it’s similar to the work of Kelly Lee Owens, blending accessible pop tendencies with techno infused experimental flair. Yet, and perhaps more importantly, Minus has said exactly what she wanted to say, in the exactly the way she wanted to say it on DÍA. She’s patiently pored over it, unafraid to go back and change things and choosing introspectiveness as her means for moving forward.

Less an act of rebellion, more an act of honesty. It was worth the wait.

8/10”.

I shall leave it there. One of the most talent and innovative artists in Dance, do go and seek her out. Even if there has been a shift inwards from her 2020 debut, Act of Rebellion, to her new album, this has been a natural and needed evolution. One that takes her sound and lyrics in a new direction. It is clear that this artist has…

A very bright future.

___________

Follow Ela Minus

PHOTO CREDIT: Alvaro Arisó

Official:

https://elaminus.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/elaminus

Twitter:

https://x.com/ela_minus

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rdJkXHNrMgowlwUdQAg8T?si=grGXT_r6QeKJp3-FrvtAng

YouTube:

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

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/ElaMinus/

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Iconic Shots: ‘A Smudge of Lipstick’, 1985 (Guido Harari)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Iconic Shots

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 1985 during a Hounds of Love shoot with a smudge of lipstick and Kabuki makeup/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

‘A Smudge of Lipstick’, 1985 (Guido Harari)

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I thought I had…

put this feature to bed! Gone through all the best shots of Kate Bush. However, there is one more that I want to include. It is another from Guido Harari. I am doing a lot of features about Kate Bush in 1985. That was when Hounds of Love was released. On 16th September, the album turns forty. Ahead of that, I am going to dissect the album and talk more broadly about 1985. However, for this feature, I want to put a photo in the spotlight that I think is one of the most striking of Kate Bush. I can’t recall if I have talked about this before. I am going to get to an interview with Guido Harari, who discussed working with Kate Bush. I have used the photo at the top of this feature when posting on social media. I never really knew where it came from or the story behind it. Guido Harari started working with Kate Bush in 1982 and collaborated through to about 1993. It was a decade that saw Harari shoot Kate Bush during the release of Hounds of Love, The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). He was taking photos of her on the set of the 1993 short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. That was directed, written by and starring Kate Bush. Most fans love Hounds of Love above all her albums, so it is fascinating to look at all the promotional images from around that time. I wanted to focus on this photo because it is especially stunning and eye-catching. A composition that casts Kate Bush in a new light. Many might think of her in 1985 and imagine big hair and have this distinct impression. However, for this particular photo, Guido Harari captured Kate Bush at a moment when she was experimenting and playing with styles and guises. All personal and meaningful, there was this colour scheme and emotional range uncovered for the camera. I will get to an interview with The Guardian from 2016. Harari talking about his book, The Kate Inside.

IN THIS PHOTO: Guido Harari

The book is one that I would love to own one day. For any fans who want to see some unreleased photos and get a more intimate look of Kate Bush, then this book is something you should get. That trust and fondness between Kate Bush and Guido Harari. A huge range of exceptional looks and compositions over the decade. The photos taken for Hounds of Love very different to the ones shot in 1993:

“The Kate Inside is a lavish tribute by Guido Harari to one of the world’s greatest music geniuses. Guido’s collaboration with Kate spans from 1982 to 1993 when he shot her official press photos for landmark albums like Hounds Of Love, The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, including a completely never-before-seen reportage on the set of Kate’s film The Line, The Cross & The Curve. The Kate Inside is a limited edition of just 1500 copies worldwide. All are numbered and hand-signed by Guido and the Deluxe Edition is co-signed by Lindsay Kemp who also wrote a very sweet foreword. Accompanied by his own commentary, The Kate Inside is packed with more than 300 hundred photographs, including all of Guido’s classic images of Kate plus a wealth of vastly unseen photographs and other materials (test Polaroids, notes by Kate, various ephemera, etc.) taken from his personal archives that are showcased here for the first time. The Kate Inside is available as a Collector Edition and a Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is limited to the first 350 copies in a slipcase and will include a unique 10 x11in signed fine art pigment print and a set of 8 replica polaroids (3 x 5in). These images have never been printed before and will only be available in this size as part of the Deluxe Edition. They will not be available for sale separately. The book measures 29 x 39 cm (11 x 15in) with 240 pages. Each copy is printed on heavyweight fine art paper under Guido’s personal supervision”.

I am going to wrap up soon. First, I shall come to that interview with The Guardian. Guido Harari discussing his book and his working relationship with Kate Bush. The final part of this extract is Harari talking about the subject of this feature. A brilliant photo from 1985 with such a wonderful pose. A gorgeous smear of lipstick. Bush’s face powdered to give it a whiter look. It is one of the best photos of Kate Bush in my view. One that I constantly think about:

“The photographer first met her in 1982 in Milan, when she was promoting her album The Dreaming. In the book he describes his first impressions: “Beautiful golden eyes, pouty lips, a big mane of hennaed hair.” Bush and her dancers had just come from a TV studio. “She was wearing what looked like decaying astronaut gear,” he recalls. “I had my equipment with me, so I asked them to improvise. What amazed me was how she switched. She seemed to be this shy girl then suddenly this wild beast came out. ”

In Milan, Harari showed her proofs for a new book he was making about Lindsay Kemp. The choreographer had trained the teenage Kate Bush in the mid-1970s, becoming a mentor to her, as he had been for David Bowie. “So my book was like a calling card – showing her that I understood where she was coming from artistically.”

Three years later, Bush called, asking if he would do the official shoot for her album Hounds of Love. “I went to meet her at her parents’ farmhouse in Kent. She had built a 48-track studio. One thing that really struck me was that there was no glass between the control room and where the musicians recorded. It was a place of silence and retreat from the rock’n’roll world. She had no desire to go to parties or be famous. Instead, she had her family around her. Her father was her manager and her brother had taken photos for her previous albums.”

For the Hounds of Love shoot, Bush told Harari that she would bring clothes that would be brown, blue and gold. “Nothing else! No other clues! So I got some backdrops I thought would go with those colours, and at 8am she turned up at the studio with her makeup woman and a few outfits and we went to work.”

Harari goes back to that Hounds of Love shoot, recalling Bush’s rapid transformations. First she appeared in an orange jacket with padded shoulders. “She looked like Joan Collins. And then she went off to the dressing room and came out wearing this fabulous purple scarf, like a woman from 1900. And then she disappeared again and I wondered where she was, so I went to the dressing room. And there she was sitting in a chair in this thick white Kabuki make up. She looked great, even with the powder still on her shoulders, but there was one detail missing – so I took her lipstick and smeared it across her lips”.

I really love how Guido Harari took this wonderful photo almost as a final thought! Kate Bush during this shoot was adopting diverse and compelling looks. This one very different and almost perfect. The addition of lipstick. The way Bush almost has her eyes closed and is sort of looking down. Rather than smiling, there is this seriousness and sense of dignity. Looking both strong and vulnerable, it is a sensational photo that uncovers new sides to Kate Bush. One of these artists who loved to collaborate with photographers and was always very giving and engaging, she brought the best out of everyone she worked with! I love this 1985 photo with the smudge/smear of lipstick. It is a classic that has this allure, sadness, steeliness and sense of a different culture. Bush wore kimonos early in her career and performed in Japan. I think she has always had a fascination with that country and the Asian continent. There is a touch of that in Guido Harari’s 1985 photo. Taken during a Hounds of Love shoot, it was such a busy and important time. Among all of that, this incredible photo was taken that creates mystery and wonder…

FORTY years later.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Songs of Summer 2025

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Vlada Karpovich/Pexels

The Songs of Summer 2025

__________

EVEN though we are still…

in June, I was keen to compile some of the songs of the summer so far. It has been a wonderful start to summer in terms of incredible tracks. Not necessarily bangers and those that summon up sunshine and energy. Instead, theses are the tracks that have made the biggest mark. The weather is pretty hot and sweaty, and there is a long way to go until we are in autumn. Until then, we can enjoy the sun at least (even if the heat is too much!). From Pop legends of today to some newer artists that you might not be aware of, I wanted to assemble a selection of this summer’s defining tracks. Whatever you think of the summer weather, there is no denying the fact the music has been incredible. Other websites have been thinking about their choices regarding the finest cuts of the past month or so. I might update my thoughts just before autumn. Now, here is my choices for the…

PHOTO CREDIT: Kindel Media/Pexels

SONGS of summer 2025.

FEATURE: Messages in a Bottle: Why Coldplay’s Vinyl Innovation Should Be Adopted More Widely

FEATURE:

 

 

Messages in a Bottle

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

Why Coldplay’s Vinyl Innovation Should Be Adopted More Widely

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WITH the climate crisis…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The U.K. office of Warner Music says plastic bottles were the source material for the recycled-content PET (rPET) used to make the Coldplay albums, which were produced using injection-moulding technology/PHOTO CREDIT: Warner Music Group

getting out of control and there is emphasis on doing as much as we can to protect and preserve the planet, there is obviously consideration towards recycling and plastic waste. In terms of the music industry, there are ways in which it comes do more to reduce its carbon footprint and be more environmentally aware. Artists are reducing the distance they travel for tours and finding greener ways to travel and play. When it comes to physical music, one of the biggest problems is the materials used. How much carbon emission is produced making these products and transporting them. C.D.s and their casing have not really developed since their inception. Quite a lot of plastic used. Vinyl perhaps not the most eco-friendly or responsible material. The factories that produce vinyl records and how they are transported definitely needs to be considered. However, with the format being so popular and there being relatively few vinyl pressing plants, it is a difficult situation. If artists and labels can find other ways to produce albums more environmentally consciously, then that would be a big step. It is not the first time that alternatives to the vinyl production process have been introduced by various artists. As this article explains, Coldplay are doing their bit:

“Continuing their sustainability mission, Coldplay are re-releasing all of their albums as clear 140g EcoRecords made from recycled plastic bottles, produced using injection-moulding technology which reduces carbon emissions during manufacture by an impressive 85% compared with traditional vinyl production.

An EcoRecord sounds and looks as great as a traditional vinyl record, but it has been manufactured using 100% recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a lightweight and durable material that is easily recyclable and designed for a circular economy, significantly contributing to reduced shipping emissions and end-of-life environmental impact.

Each 140g injection-moulded LP is made from, on average, nine recycled PET plastic bottles. These bottles are recovered from consumers as part of a process known as post-consumer recycling (PCR), where they are cleaned, processed into small pellets and then molded into new items.  While EcoRecords can be made using either virgin PET or recycled PET (rPET), Coldplay has chosen to use only rPET for all their EcoRecord products.

This pioneering move follows the successful launch of the band’s 10th album, Moon Music, last year, which was already released on 100% recycled PET EcoRecords, the world’s first album released as a 140g EcoRecord rPET LP. Coldplay continues to lead the charge in making music more sustainable, building on efforts such as cutting the carbon footprint of their Music Of The Spheres World Tour by 59% to date.

Jen Ivory, Managing Director, Parlophone, says: “We are incredibly proud to partner with artists such as Coldplay who share our commitment to a more sustainable future for music.  The shift to EcoRecord LP for their releases is a testament to what’s possible when innovation meets intention.  It’s not just about a new product; it’s about pioneering manufacturing that significantly reduces environmental impact, providing fans with the same high-quality audio experience while setting a new standard for physical music production”.

It sound like a really good initiative. How possible and sustainable it would be for most artists to do this. With huge demand comes the need to supply. It is a very timely and expensive process to create vinyl and get it into shops. However, I do wonder whether there needs to be greater action. How many people who buy vinyl know the environmental damage being done?

 IN THIS IMAGE: Billie Eilish (photo illustration by Nicholas Konrad; source photograph by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images via The New Yorker)

Coldplay’s introduction of using recycled plastic bottles for their reissues is another step in the right direction. Artists such as Billie Eilish are passionate proponents of BioVinyl – records made from bio-based PVC. Someone who is an environmental and one of the most important figures of her generation, how many other artists will join Eilish, Coldplay and those committed to doing more? This article highlights how Billie Eilish is one of the few big artists doing more to stray away from traditional vinyl:

“She has long been one of the most vocal figures on climate change in the world of music, having hosted her own climate convention, used renewable energy to power her shows, and worked with environmental nonprofits to slash the impact of touring.

Eilish is the biggest artist to embrace biovinyl, but not the first. And she joins a long tradition of musicians drawing attention to the climate emergency: British group Massive Attack, for instance, have been talking about global warming for decades, and worked with scientists to produce evidence-backed recommendations for reducing emissions from live music. Dave Matthews Band has a longstanding partnership with the environmental nonprofit Reverb. Coldplay has embraced renewable energy and green tech for their tours, cutting emissions by nearly 50% on their current tour, compared to the last one. As for Pearl Jam, they’ve been counting their carbon emissions since 2003, but last year a carbon credit provider that the band used was accused of overstating the impact of its deforestation work – a reminder that offsetting alone won’t ever be enough.

Can vinyl be better?

Environmentally, vinyl is quite nasty stuff. Vinyl records are made from PVC, which is also used to make things like water pipes, car interiors, clothing and shoes. The pellets of PVC used to make records are created by a complex procedure that starts with salt and hydrocarbon, a compound derived from fossil fuels.

“If the processes exist to create recycled or eco-friendly vinyl, why aren’t more A-listers doing it?”

Not only does PVC rely on environmentally damaging processes to create it, it’s also difficult to dispose of, due to the chemical compounds it contains. There’s no use throwing a broken or scratched vinyl record in to your plastic recycling bin at home – local waste services are generally not able to deal with it. Across European Union member states, Norway, Switzerland and the UK, only around 27% of PVC waste is recycled, and a lot of that comes from industry. In the US, trade body The Vinyl Institute says 71,000 tonnes of consumer vinyl products are recycled annually – but the US produces 7.2 million tonnes of PVC per year, so even when industrial PVC recycling is factored in, those figures suggest only around 7% of all the PVC produced in the US is actually being recycled.

But if the processes exist to create recycled or eco-friendly vinyl records, why aren’t more A-list musicians following Eilish’s example? I put this question to Chris Roorda, founder of Deepgrooves – a Netherlands-based pressing plant committed to producing records as sustainably as possible. He thinks for a moment. “I’m really not sure,” he answers. “We are talking with major labels, but it’s not really coming through.”

Deepgrooves has worked with Massive Attack, as well as Martin Garrix and environmental toxicologist-turned-DJ Jayda G. Roorda teases that he’s working with more artists that he can’t yet mention. “The resources are there,” he says. “At the moment, we specialize in biovinyl. Sound-wise, it’s the same product as a regular vinyl. Production only costs about 50 cents more per record. But we’ve seen some majors say that because it’s 50 cents more, it has to be five euros more in the shops, and I don’t think that’s fair.”

Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja has been outspoken on environmental issues. The band have funded research into how music can reduce its environmental impact. Photo: Iwi Onodera via Getty Images

Could major labels be reluctant to use slightly more expensive eco-production methods, for fear they won’t recoup the money? “That is an assumption,” says Roorda. He adds that they might also be tied into contracts with other vinyl producers, but says he’s seeing more and more artists insist on green products. “Production can be easily upscaled,” he says. “We have the resources. And when more people buy biovinyl, the price will go down”.

It is a moment when demand for vinyl keeps rising. There is this incredible passion for the format. How possible is it to use BioVinyl entirely? Coldplay’s use of recycled plastic bottles. Is this more of a novelty that could not possibly be rolled out across the world and used by all artists? Is the sound quality genuinely as good? There are ways for record buyers to become more environmentally conscious. Even know there is going to be a long way to go until vinyl is completely gone and replaced with something more environmentally sound, there are positive steps. Let’s hope that more major artists do more. There does need to be a revolution and overhaul…

IN years to come.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Folk Bitch Trio

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Bridgette Winten

Folk Bitch Trio

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MAKE sure that you…

pre-order Now Would Be a Good Time. It is released on 25th July. It is the upcoming album from Folk Bitch Trio. An act that are getting a lot of love and focus right now. I am going to come to some interviews with them. The Australian trio of Grace Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington, and Heide Peverelle started in 2020 and have delivered a string of brilliant singles. Their debut album is one you will want to own:

“Folk music has a bad habit of being presented as a deathly serious concern. It’s something you cry to, it’s overly sacred, it’s solemnly considered by critic-historians. But Folk Bitch Trio, former high school friends Heide Peverelle (they/them), Jeanie Pilkington (she/her) and Gracie Sinclair (she/her), have a shared sense of humour that is embedded deep in their music, and that sets it alight, safe from the self-serious traps of the genre.

Now Would Be A Good Time, their debut album, tells vivid, visceral stories, and is funny and darkly ironic in the manner of writers like Mary Gaitskill or Otessa Moshfegh. Their music sounds familiar, but the songs are modern, youthful, singing acutely through dissociative daydreams and galling breakups, sexual fantasies and media overload, all the petty resentments and minor humiliations of being in your early twenties in the 2020s.

“Cathode Ray” opens with caution, its first harmonies arriving in big, looping sighs. It’s vulnerable but a little menacing, with a wide open chorus and a spacious, airy beat anchoring everything. “Moth Song”, a song about unrequited love and “being so spun out by everything that you feel like you’re delusional and hallucinating crazy things,” forms the album’s spare centrepiece, Anita Clark’s undulating violin part drifting in and out of focus as if from a dream.

Other songs aren’t as oblique, instead chronicling brutally familiar moments at the end of relationships: The tense, emotionally volatile torch song “The Actor”, says Peverelle, is about “going to your partner’s one-woman show and then getting broken up with”. “Hotel TV”, a hypnotic, late-night reverie, is about “having a sex dream about somebody else while next to your partner, and your partner being a liar,” explains Pilkington.

The strongest link between the trio, aside from friendship, is music. “We all talked about loving music when we were growing up, and knowing we wanted music to be a big part of our lives,” says Pilkington. That feeling—of music as an innate calling, as opposed to hobby or folly—was justified: Folk Bitch Trio have already toured across Australia, Europe and the US, supporting bands as disparate as King Gizzard, Alex G and Julia Jacklin. They’ve signed with Jagjaguwar, a home for singular icons and iconoclasts (Bon Iver, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, UMO and others), and they’ve found their first diehard fans with dazzling harmonies and acerbic lyricism that transcend genre expectations and audience lines.

These are the stakes: Learning how to live a life free of lovesickness and loser exes, when to sink into contemporary nihilism and when to have a laugh with your friends, and why being alive can feel so ephemeral and unreal. In this sense, Now Would Be A Good Time feels like a manual for modern living: a missive from three proud Folk Bitches finding beauty and wisdom where they can, together”.

I am going to come to some recent interviews with the trio. Including a great cover feature from NME. However, going back to last year, there was this sense of anticipation and excitement around the group. I want to move to an interview from 2024 from Atwood Magazine. I am a new convert to Folk Bitch Trio. They are going to go a very long way:

“Atwood Magazine: Great to chat, Gracie, Jeanie, and Heide! For readers who are new your music, how would you describe Folk Bitch Trio to a first timer?

Folk Bitch Trio: It’s a good fun time. Maybe that isn’t what people are expecting but that’s how we like to think of the live show. Our music can be sad and earnest but we actually do have a really good time on stage.

How did the band initially form? I know you debuted your first single in 2022; had you been playing together for a while before then?

Folk Bitch Trio: The band was born pre-COVID in 2019 from us being bored and wanting to make something together. The first single in 2022 was kind of the rebirth post-lockdown.

Where did your band name come from? And how do you feel it serves as an “intro” to folks getting to know who you are and what you’re all about?

Folk Bitch Trio: Folk Bitch Trio just came from calling this band what it is in a pretty unserious way. We think it’s a pretty accurate intro to what you’re going to get.

Speaking of folk, what pulls the three of you to the folk genre and to these rich, wondrous vocal harmonies that fill every song with such beautiful warmth?

Folk Bitch Trio: We were all raised on folk adjacent music, and are all singers, so it was an organic progression to start making that music together.

“God’s a Different Sword” is an especially moving track, with some truly aching lyrics. What’s the story behind this song?

Folk Bitch Trio: The lyrics for this song came from Heide taking themself out on a date to a pizza shop and getting a little wine drunk and then writing almost the entire song. Shout out pizza mein liebe.

PHOTO CREDIT: Bridgette Winten

You’ve said this song is about “relinquishing a pattern, but indulging in the habit ‘just one more time.’” Can we dive deeper into that together? Where in your lives is this pulled from, and how does it resonate with you now?

Folk Bitch Trio: It’s about finding it in you to quit a habit even when it still feels good. The song is about a kind of post breakup euphoria that’s also very existential as you question your life for what it is without this person.

I love how you open with the line, “Am I lucky? Or am I just sane?” - it really helps set the tone from the start, but what really struck me is the refrain, “Could I be good on my own accord? Heaven knows I know need it but god’s a different sword.” What do these lines mean to you, if you don’t mind my asking?

Folk Bitch Trio: Well they are questions, so the answer is that we don’t really know. The song is questioning, so what it all means is pretty ambiguous.

Do you have any personal favorite lines in this track?

Folk Bitch Trio: “If you tell me that you need it, I can get up off the floor.” We’ve all been there.

Folk Bitch Trio © Bridgette WintenWhat do you hope listeners take away from “God’s a Different Sword,” and what have you taken from it as well?

Folk Bitch Trio: Take whatever you want. This song is supposed to be optimistic and curious and life affirming, and we just want people to resonate with it however they like.

What’s on the horizon for Folk Bitch Trio as we look ahead, out at the rest of the year?

Folk Bitch Trio: We are currently on our first EU/US tour, then a national Australia headline when we get home next month. We’ve been on tour a lot this year so looking forward to kicking back over the Australian summer. Big things coming in 2025”.

Before getting to that NME interview, I am coming to an interview from The Music. The Australian website chatted with the remarkable Folk Bitch Trio about their rise and career so far. I would advise everyone to go and seek out this group on social media. Listen to their music. With some exciting dates coming up in the U.S, I am not sure whether they will come to the U.K. soon. I am writing this a few days before Glastonbury starts, so I am not sure if they have been booked or will come here another time:

“The slow burn of the first few years was defined by all the gigs and singles, and since then, the opportunities have been blazing hot. The group’s ascent has been rapid within the last couple of years, yet they admit they’ve been given some legroom to reflect on the realness of it all.

“We started this project just before COVID hit, and that was obviously like a year off, and then, like, a year of pretty stagnant movement,” Sinclair tells. “And I think perhaps if we didn't have that buffer, things would have been maybe a little bit crazier. But when you have, like, private time to soak things up…”

Pilkington adds, “We have very low expectations as well. So, every step of the way, things have felt crazy. Like, things now that feel minuscule compared to the things that are happening to us now felt crazy at the time [sic]."

“And because we're such good friends, I do think that, like, I remember the first time we were interstate as a band, and then the first time we were overseas as a band, like… we've definitely relished in the moments of being like, ‘This is this is insane, and this is really special, and this won't happen again.’ So, I don't think it's lost on us. I think we have time to sort of, even if they are small moments, we're like, ‘Yo, this is crazy guys.’”

Sinclair nods, “It’s definitely all still wild.” Peverelle takes a beat as well, “Yeah. But we do talk a lot, I think, like, we take moments to process together and feel… Which is good, I think.”

Even now, with sold-out rooms across the UK and US added to the pool room and another Europe run around the corner, not much has changed behind the scenes. “We tour-manage ourselves,” Pilkington laughs. “Running around those fucking European train stations with a guitar and a suitcase.”

And still, somehow, they manage to keep their cool through it all. “We maintain our glamour,” Sinclair deadpans. “All the time.”

Even now, as they prepare for the UK showcase festival, The Great Escape, and shows in Amsterdam and Paris, their compass hasn’t shifted.

They still laugh at the absurdity of it all. They still giggle at their own jokes. They still believe in making the most tender, stripped-back music — and pairing it with visuals that are a little bit silly - ergo running around in chainmail for the Analogue clip or shedding a tear for their mums’ stage auditions in The Actor’s clip. Modern-day irony blended with folk-music sincerity.

And maybe that’s the reason they’re still here. Still friends. Still laughing. Still harmonising through the madness of a very fast-moving career.

“Big things,” Sinclair grins when asked what’s next. “Watch this space.”

“Off the hook,” she adds, half joking. “Off the line.”

Whatever it is — it’ll be theirs”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ian Laidlaw for NME

I am ending with a brilliant NME interview. Grace Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington, and Heide Peverelle discussed finding heart and humour in “pathetic little tragedies”. The Melbourne trio are creating so much hype. It is all justified. I would love to see them live one day. By all accounts, they are a group that are as impactful and amazing on the stage as they are in the studio:

“They credit the “other folk bitches – people like Julia Jacklin, Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen” as helping to reinvigorate the genre in recent years. “They were the ones that helped us fall back in love with folk and realise that everything’s cool in its own way,” Peverelle nods. Meanwhile, it was a member of another trio that first helped launch them into public consciousness: in a 2021 radio interview, Phoebe Bridgers described their debut single ‘Edie’ as “Boygenius if it was from the ’40s”.

Folk Bitch Trio would rather the wider world judge them on their own merit than try to cast them as Boygenius from down under. “Obviously, it’s different when it’s Phoebe drawing that opinion, as I’m sure it’s much more nuanced, but it’s hard to not see it as a comparison to another triple-femme band because there’s simply not enough of them for people to not go there,” Pilkington says. “It does feel frustrating, but that has nothing to do with Boygenius and everything to do with a lack of attention on femme-led music.”

However, the surrealness of the moment was clearly not lost on them. “She was definitely my number one Spotify listen at the time,” Pilkington smiles. “I guess that was when I started to become aware that people were formulating opinions on us and consuming the music, and that felt completely bizarre.”

Now all aged 23, Folk Bitch Trio have become an unshakeable unit, their close bond helping them deal with the world’s perceptions, both as budding artists taking early steps into the industry – they signed to Jagjaguwar earlier this year – and as young femme-presenting people in the world. “I look at other artists trying to navigate it on their own and I can’t really imagine not having my two other brain cells with me all the time,” Sinclair says.

Pilkington nods: “When you’re in this funny grey area of having the success that we’re so lucky to have had, but also doing small, weird gigs and having strange people approach you, sometimes we feel like our life is a bit like Flight of the Conchords. It becomes fun when your friends are with you, but if you were by yourself, you might be crying and not laughing…”

The same approach of taking tough situations and finding the funny side rings throughout their music, whether in ‘God’s A Different Sword’’s satirical wink to feminist text The Body Keeps The Score or ‘That’s All She Wrote’’s fears of getting “doxxed in the paper”. Peverelle calls their songs “our pathetic little tragedies”. They laugh about how being in your early twenties is “pathetic”, but, as Peverelle says, it’s also “fun, messy – always – but never that bad. Our tragedies are miniscule in the scheme of what’s going on in the world, but they’re our tragedies.”

“And there’s something so important about being able to transform that into art,” Sinclair nods. “There are many things in my life that I would not have survived if it hadn’t been for people transforming their pathetic little tragedies into a song or a piece of art that I could consume”.

Now Would Be a Good Time is out on 25th July. I am excited about the album and seeing how it is received. Melbourne has always been a rich and vibrant musical hub. It has given us so many incredible artists through the years. When it comes to Folk Bitch Trio, they can stand proud…

ALONGSIDE the very best.

____________

Follow Folk Bitch Trio

Official:

https://www.folkbitchtrio.com/

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FEATURE: Levitating: Saluting a Global Superstar: A Dua Lipa Mixtape

FEATURE:

 

 

Levitating: Saluting a Global Superstar

PHOTO CREDIT: David Sims for British Vogue

A Dua Lipa Mixtape

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A few reasons…

PHOTO CREDIT: Tyrone Lebon

to revisit Dua Lipa’s music. She has just completed a run of gigs in the U.K. She has a brief break before engaging in live shows in the U.S. It is clear that she is going to have a very busy rest of the year. I wanted to feature her again as she turns thirty in August. One of our very best Pop artists, Dua Lipa is also busy planning a wedding. I was also a big fan of her most recent album, 2024’s Radical Optimism. That album did not get the love it deserved. Someone who also has a future in acting and documentaries, this is a supreme talent who is also one of the best live performers in the world. I am going to end with a review of a recent gig from The Standard. Before that, I want to start off with an interview from British Vogue. A window into the life and routine of Dua Lipa. Her Service95 Book Club is wonderful and inspirational. It even has its own podcast. The Queen of British Pop – though one feels Charli xcx might challenge, or she be the queen of a sub-genre -, it is amazing seeing her rise. This incredible artist whose passion for literature is just as interesting and important as her music:

“At 15, Dua made a much marvelled-at decision: to return to London on her own and pursue a career in music.

“When I look back on it, I’m like: ‘Bloody hell, 15 really is so little,’” Dua reflects now. “But at the time I felt like I had such a clear idea of where I was going.”

“I think that’s the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life,” Anesa remembers, of letting Dua go, “but she was so determined and full of dreams. From an early age she knew what she wanted. She was very mature, and we believed in her.”

Dua shared a flat in London with the daughter of a family friend from Albania who was doing a master’s. On her first day at Parliament Hill School, two girls in her year – Sarah and Ella – heard there was a new starter and eventually found someone who looked younger than her years. She was sitting alone on a stage. “That must be the new girl,” they thought. Soon Sarah was spreading the word about Dua’s gifts. “Guys,” she said to their fellow drama students, “you have to listen to her sing, she’s amazing.”

Another girl joined their group: Rosie. When she went home she told her friends that Dua was going to be the next Beyoncé. “They were like: ‘What are you talking about, she’s only got one song on YouTube!’” Rosie recalls. “But it’s the way she makes you feel. The way she puts her energy into everything. She spends every single day making small decisions in the right direction.”

The group of friends went out all the time. Dua was always the one to host pre-drinks. She wore Jeffrey Campbell shoes with studs and extra high heels. “Do you ever wonder how Dua can perform a whole show in high heels?” Sarah asks. “I just remember: we were maybe 15, 16, and she would literally be stomping around Soho in the highest, highest high heels.”

PHOTO CREDIT: David Sims

“There’s a wild side to me, but I’m also very sensible,” Dua suggests. “I think I was quite aware of the fact that my parents had allowed me to be away from them. They put so much trust into me I was like: ‘I’m not going to fuck that up.’” Her background had a handy side-effect: “When I was young, trying to get into clubs was kind of easy because every bouncer was Albanian,” Dua remembers. “All I needed to do was speak Albanian to the bouncer.”

There was a slight hiccup. “Basically I started going out so much that I failed my A levels,” Dua confesses. She asked to redo the year at Parliament Hill and wasn’t allowed back. Threatened with a return to Kosovo, she found a workaround: a course in advertising and marketing that would equal two years of A levels. As her mother tells me poetically: “There are no obstacles. Only stepping stones.”

But it hardly mattered: the apprenticeships that served Dua best were the nights out and the friendships forged. “My whole goal, with my show, is: ‘I want to start people dancing and I want them to leave for home dancing,’” Dua explains. “And I guess that is to do with my love of going out and bringing people together in that time.”

At 18 she was working in clubs and posting covers online when she was cast in an ad for The X Factor. She played a fresh-faced star-to-be who sings along to “Lost in Music” on her headphones while pinning laundry on a line. In the advert, everyone within hearing distance flocks to listen. In life, a similar thing happened. The allure of Dua’s voice became undeniable, and the rest, with a few twists and turns, is pop history.

On the short drive to the stadium in Madrid, the tinted windows are up for privacy, the air conditioning off to protect Dua’s vocal cords. She doesn’t mind – she says she’s prepared to “roast”. When we get there she’ll go into vocal exercises, sound check, hair and make-up, dance warm-ups: everything timed to the minute.

After her last tour in 2022, for Future Nostalgia, when she listened back to the album she preferred the live versions of the songs. This time she’s planned them that way: the songs on Radical Optimism were “written for live”, and she hopes they show more of her range as a musician, not just as a pop star. On this tour, she’s added a new cover version each night for the country she’s in. She likes a little added risk: feet dangling off the edge, as she puts it – and she’ll get that in spades when she plays Wembley this summer.

So what do Dua’s 30s hold for the Radical empire? “I think I’d love to expand Service95 and the book club,” she says. “I’d love to publish authors. I would love to help produce them into film and TV.” She recently executive produced a documentary about the music scene in Camden for Disney+, and would like to do more. She’s keen to see the music festival she set up in Kosovo grow. And at some point she wants to look after other musicians, “maybe have my own record label, maybe represent other artists”. Overall, she’s thinking: “How can I be of service, literally, to other artists, whether that be in film, TV, books, music?” You get the impression she doesn’t so much want to conquer the world as invite it to join her.

“Can you do all that?” I ask. She throws me an “are you kidding – I got this” look. “Yeah,” she says. “Nothing’s impossible. You’ve just got to get up and do it”.

I will celebrate her music closer to her thirtieth birthday on 22nd August. Before that, I wanted to react to her incredible live performances. Shows that rank alongside her most electrifying. This is what The Standard wrote in their review of a huge Wembley show from an artist who must have dreamt about this when she was a child. She did not disappoint her fans:

“Of all the people for Dua Lipa to bring on as a guest for her first night at Wembley, Jamiroquai would not have been top of my list of likely suspects. Or, I suspect, anybody’s.

And yet, the 70,000 strong crowd roared for him when he appeared on Friday night. When the pair duetted on his 1996 hit Virtual Insanity, the energy levels went stratospheric. At least, among the older attendees who knew who he was.

But that’s Lipa’s tour all over: a good time, yes, but ultimately, a victory lap for the megalithic pop star. A celebration of doing things her own way – a way that has gotten the British-Albanian artist (as she told the crowd) from playing 350-person gigs to a sold out three nights in one of the biggest venues in the country.

”This is such a massive, massive milestone for me,” she told her massed fans. “I've had a lump in my throat from the moment this show started.”

It certainly didn’t affect her performance: what we got was two hours of high octane euphoria, a formula that Lipa has polished and perfected over the course of her months on tour.

Lipa’s stock in trade, these days, is hazy club bangers: perfect for the sweltering summer. And we got them: things kicked off with her Radical Optimism hit Training Season, which saw the stage flooded with backing dancers.

There were fireworks; there was confetti. There was the general sense of the kitchen sink being thrown at the entire gig, in the best way possible – the pyrotechnics budget must have been tremendous.

From there, we had the bouncy, breezy End of an Era, followed by Break My Heart, which came with an extravaganza of backing dancers. Adding to the victory lap-ness of it all, at one point she simply stopped singing, letting the crowd roar out their approval into the silence.

From there, we veered into her older material: One Kiss, which dropped into a thundering bass-heavy remix. Hot on its heels came her big hit Levitating, which was delivered on full strut, complete with fireworks – and then a pared back version of If These Walls Could Talk and a Western flavoured rendition of Maria.

Lipa was clearly having fun, too, breaking character to smile and dance around with her dancers. And she was keen to underline how far she’d come, introducing her old hit Hotter Than Hell as “the song that got me signed”, to raucous cheers from the crowd.

To be honest, the big hits came so thick and fast that the excitement of seeing Jamiroquai was soon forgotten (though she was obviously in fangirl mode for that, too). There was the slinky Illusion, an aggressively muscular Physical, and Hallucinate, which turned the bass and reverb way up to rattle the stadium walls.

At one point, Lipa descended into the crowd to chat with her fans – which had the effect of sapping the night’s momentum somewhat – before heading out into a stage in the audience’s centre. From there, dressed in a Union Jack-lined fur coat and lifted high into the air, she conducted the audience’s cheers before leading them in a dreamy, hazy rendition of Be The One, just up the road from where she shot the music video in Hampstead Heath.

And though she rounded off the gig with an encore featuring some more of her biggest hits – a Bicep remix of New Rules stood out, then Houdini – that image was the one that stuck. Lipa, triumphant, in the place where it all started. Home at last”.

I will end there. One of the greatest artists in the world, Dua Lipa does not get the same focus as the likes of Sabrina Carpenter, Beyoncé, or even Charli xcx. She is a very special artist who has this incredible talent. There is also the Service95 Book Club. Always so busy and barely giving herself a moment to rest, I feel like the next year is going to be very important and eventful. To highlight her sensational music, below is a very special mixtape…

FEATURING Dua Lipa’s best music.

FEATURE: Got Me in Those Desert Eyes: Live Translations of Kate Bush’s Music

FEATURE:

 

Got Me in Those Desert Eyes

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during 1979’s The Tour of Life/PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne

Live Translations of Kate Bush’s Music

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THERE are two major…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during 1979’s The Tour of Life/PHOTO CREDIT: Rob Verhorst

bookmarks or points of Kate Bush’s career where the live representations of songs had to be at their best. Many songs never released as music videos, it was down to Bush and her team to envisage something that was true to the song but would work brilliantly on the stage. 1979’s The Tour of Life combined songs from 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart. There were also some unreleased tracks that would be included on 1980’s Never for Ever – including Egypt. This song is one that was brought to the stage but never truly visually arresting. It is a hard song to get right in the sense. I shall come back to that. The other notable live bookmark was 2014’s Before the Dawn. The two main albums featured this time were Hounds of Love (1985) and Aerial (2005). Aside from some pleasing inclusions from The Red Shoes – Lily and Top of the City – and a lone inclusion from 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, Among Angels, it was these two big albums that were focused on. In the case of Hounds of Love, singles like Hounds of Love and Cloudbusting already had videos. However, Bush performed A Sky of Honey from Aerial. The second disc of Aerial, until 2014, people could only imagine these songs. Bush spent a long time realising the concept of Before the Dawn and The Tour of Life. Making sure the songs fitted together and there was this theatrical feel. Rather than it being like any live show where the songs do not form part of a larger narrative arc or concept, she treated these big events more like films or theatrical productions. Some criticised parts of The Tour of Life. In terms of various songs and how they were visualised. Bush as the central performer wouldn’t have wanted too much of a cast or to have too many other people there apart from her and her dancers, so she was a bit limited in those terms. However, for Before the Dawn, it was a more collaborative effort. Bush in 1979 wanted to be the standout and be at the centre. 2014 was in part realised because of her young son Bertie (who appeared on stage); circumstances were different.

I was not lucky enough to see Before the Dawn. I can imagine that everything was executed beautifully, though there may have been one or two moments that were not perfect. However, the most curious case of songs translating to the stage occurred at other times. When Bush was performing live around the world. Of course, her first televised live performance was on Germany’s Bio's Bahnhof in 1978. She performed Wuthering Heights and Kite. In terms of translation, language and interpretation was a factor. Where one might expect a  backdrop or Yorkshire moors or something windswept, maybe the producers did not know about Emily Brontë’s novel. Rather than giving it any English touches, Kate Bush was backed by a volcano! I am not sure what the thinking was. It did show that there were barriers when it came to her music being taken to the stage – especially in other countries. Bush performed in Japan in 1978 and faced similar issues at the Nippon Budokan during the Tokyo Music Festival. I have recently written features about Babooshka. A single from 1980’s Never for Ever, Bush performed this song live a few times. One example of her in Italy is especially odd. In the sense that the staging was not really related to the song. For ZDF in Germany, on the Rock Pop show, Kate Bush lip-synched to Babosohka and Army Dreamers. The latter is particularly interesting how it was visualised. Quite humorous, Bush was this mother figure with a broom and a cigarette. Quite eccentric and camp, I am not sure how much say Kate Bush had when it came to the performance! I imagine more control than a couple of years later when she performed in Germany.

Kate Bush fans will have their own view when it comes to the best or maddest lived performance. Bush in some very odd settings. Her 1978 appearance at a Dutch amusement park, where she performed songs from The Kick Inside. Her 1979 Christmas special had a few moments that were either odd or you felt the visuals did not match the song. Egypt unusual because of how Bush looked and the fact it looked more like parody or a cheesy advert than anything else. Ran Tan Waltz, a great song, was performed live for the one and only time as far as I know. Some of the oddness of these T.V. performances were orchestrated by Kate Bush. Other occasions were examples of the song being misread. That Wuthering Heights performance in Germany. As this article explores, there was a very special performance in Germany once more. On 27th September, 1982, Kate Bush performed the title track from her fourth studio album, The Dreaming, shortly after that album came out. It was a typically original and unusual Kate Bush take:

“This video was the basis of a series of TV performances around Europe. There’s a couple on YouTube from Italy – Discoring and Riva Del' Garda – where Bush and two of her dancers do their routine in what looks like twin versions of Light Entertainment Hell. But the most renowned performance is from the German show Na Sowas!, which takes a decidedly more inventive approach…

Host Thomas Gottschalk – who with his cream jacket, skinny tie and mullet would literally implode if he was any more 80s – excitedly introduces the song, but the first thing we see is a giant lizard beadily surveying a similar landscape to The Dreaming video. Bush and the dancers gradually fade up in the foreground, and writhe in some very real dirt. But the lizard looms large at the back, looking like it’s about to join them for a tasty snack. Then the lizard fades, and the three performers are left to complete their routine against a black sky and glowering red orb – the effect is genuinely eerie.

The song ends, and Gottschalk can’t resist showing us how it was done, with the giant lizard revealed to be just an ordinary iguana in a model desert, filmed and superimposed behind Bush & co in a clever piece of video mixing. All that’s left is for Gottschalk to bound across the studio – “Kate, I’m coming!” – and present a gold disc to Bush for her previous album Never For Ever. She accepts with a combination of bemusement and good grace – her default response in nearly all her TV appearances at the time – then takes a bow”.

There are a lot of videos available of Kate Bush performing live. Or miming in a lot of cases. Of course, there are some wonderful examples. I think most of the more questionable ones happened before 1985. Especially in the earliest years, when it came to some international recordings, maybe it was hard to get the set and staging right. Some of the more humour and stranger examples were where Kate Bush had a say. A few beyond her control. Even some of the U.K. performances were either strange or the song didn’t fit the show maybe. When she performed There Goes a Tenner (from The Dreaming) on Razzamatazz. A kid’s T.V. show. I am not sure how many of those T.V. performances Kate Bush enjoyed. I think the ones she did for the Wogan show were favourites, as she loved Terry Wogan. A lot of those international trips perhaps quite draining. Her only tour gave her the chance to bring her songs to the stage. It was quite tricky making every song a visual delight. Maybe Before the Dawn was more successful. From the odd to the delightful, I am interested in how Kate Bush’s music was brought to the stage. Whether the backdrop or staging of the performance matched the song and its visual possibilities or not, every one of these examples is truly the work of Kate Bush. Never boring or phoned in, the amazing live outings were…

DISTINCTLY her.

FEATURE: The Moment: Tame Impala’s Currents at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

The Moment

Tame Impala’s Currents at Ten

__________

ONE of the best…

IN THIS PHOTO: Tame Impala in 2013/PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

albums of the 2010s turns ten on 17th July. Tame Impala’s third studio album, Currents, was released on 17th July, 2015. I wanted to look ahead to that anniversary and explore Currents. The live band is led by Kevin Parker. Parker produces and writes alone in the studio. Many consider Currents to be the best Tame Impala album to date. I am going to end with a couple of reviews of the album. Before getting there, I want to bring in a couple of interviews with Tame Impala. SPIN spoke with him in July 2015 around the release of Currents. One of the best albums of that year, it is still discussed today. I am not sure if there are any tenth anniversary plans:

“Not too bad,” Parker says, when asked how he’s feeling. “Not too good, either.” That noncommittal answer, broken up by a sigh and a chuckle, is exactly the kind of unassuming sincerity one would expect from a guy who opens his feverishly anticipated new album with an all-will-be-well mantra called “Let It Happen.” The nearly eight-minute “Let It Happen” — with its snapping percussion, fidgety synth transmissions, and symphonic second half — surfaced back in March, kickstarting the hype and promotional cycle for Currents, Tame Impala’s third album and the follow-up to 2012’s lauded Lonerism. Rightly hailed as one of the year’s best songs, the single also reintroduced the project as something far more omnivorous than it had been in the past.

When you were putting Currents together, did you feel extraordinary pressure because Lonerism was so well-received? Or was it the usual kind of anxiety that comes with any new project?

I think the only pressure I felt was the pressure I put on myself — just the pressure to live up to my own expectation of what I wanted the album to be, and because I was treading new territory with this album. It was a suck-it-and-see kind of situation. I was like, “Well, I’m going to go into this and give it my all.” So, I wanted to successfully do something new, and even just have the confidence to go through with it. Because that can happen a lot of the time: You have grand ideas and then you just end up backing out and go with the safe option.

Did you set any specific rules or goals for yourself with the new record?

I think — and this is going to come across as extremely cliché [laughs] — the only rule was to make an attempt to abandon the rules that I’ve set up in the past. [They weren’t] like conscious rules, or anything, but just boundaries that I’d put up for myself.

What kinds of boundaries?

Things like not using drum machines, not using certain effects that in the past I would have considered cheesy or musically taboo — but only from me at my most snobby, musically and intellectually snobby. Because the other part of me — I love all music that makes you feel good. All pop music. Well, not all pop music, I shouldn’t say that.

There are parts of me that would just make instantly gratifying music, and a part of me that is dedicated to making music with depth, something you can sink your teeth into, something that has layers and you can explore the dimensions of. There’s always those two sides battling it out — or getting along, if they want.

Your vocals are much higher up in the mix here than in the past — they’re not buried under as much reverb or effects. What was the impulse behind that? Was it for the sake of doing something different, or did you specifically want people to understand the lyrics on this record?

I put so much time into the lyrics and I feel like I bare my soul a little bit more with each album. With each album, I get more and more proud of my lyrics, of what I’m able to break off of myself and put into a song. And with the last album I was really proud of the lyrics; I wanted people to get the message of each song, but it so happened that I had a million other parts of the mix that I wanted to squeeze in there as well.

I guess I was a little disappointed in myself for how difficult it was to extract meaning from the songs by listening to it — which is why the lyrics were printed in the sleeve. I felt like you could still kind of understand what I was saying. I basically gave them a fighting chance by putting the lyrics in the booklet. And this album, for me, the message of the music is just as strong as the music itself. They’re basically hand-in-hand, whereas in the past, I think I started out making music with vocals just being treated as another instrument.

I am going to come to a fifth anniversary feature from NME. Talking with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker about a hugely important album. One that is influencing artists to this day. I do hope that there are new features and investigations of Currents closer to 17th July:

“Released on July 17, 2015, the 13-track record was a revelation. The trippy fusion of rock, electronica, pop and disco took this once-introverted stoner dude from Perth into a worldwide festival headliner. His previous releases, 2010’s ‘Innerspeaker’ and 2012’s follow-up ‘Lonerism’, are both now considered modern-day psych-rock classics, but ridden with anxiety-ridden, insular listens. ‘Currents’ couldn’t be more different.

Not only is ‘Currents’ Parker’s most-successful and best album to date, but one of the decade’s most influential. It landed Parker his first Number One album in his native Australia, and he turned the heads of Kanye West, Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky and Lady Gaga – all of whom he’s now collaborated with. It’s so good, in fact, that Rihanna closed her 2016 album ‘Anti’ with a cover of cosmic-R&B banger ‘New Person, Same Old Mistakes’ and changed almost nothing except swapping Parker’s vocals out for her own.

Half a decade on, it remains a spectacular listen and sees Parker fully embracing his love of rave culture and classic pop. Take the ‘70s strut on ‘The Less I Know The Better’, or The Chemical Brothers-indebted ravedelica on ‘Let It Happen’ as proof of his emboldened creativity. Those tracks are complemented by bewitching instrumental interludes (‘Gossip’), sultry slow-jams (‘I’m A Man’), psych-surf-pop (‘Disciples).

When NME calls him to celebrate the fifth anniversary, Kevin Parker in a chipper mood. He’s tinkering with a few projects, and when it comes to corona-induced lockdown he’s mainly a “glass half-full” kinda guy. ‘The Slow Rush’, his fourth album and follow-up to ‘Currents’, was released in February 2020, and he managed to play four live shows before the tour was pulled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. As the world takes a breather, Parker is able to do the same and reflect on his past.

“The longer it’s been since ‘Currents’, the more it becomes an enjoyable and nostalgic experience,” he says. “Five years feels this sweet spot where I can really enjoy it. When I look back at that time, I get a snapshot of who I was, what I was feeling and what I was going through. I can see myself so clearly when I listen to it.”

So who was Kevin Parker when he made that album? He’d been on the road since 2010 in support of his two-released albums, gradually working his way up festival bills and bigger crowds. But the latter’s willingness to dabble with slinky R&B (‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’) and tub-thumping rock (‘Elephant’) spawned support slots with Arctic Monkeys and critical acclaim. NME named his second album, ‘Lonerism’, as its Album of The Year in 2012.

Still, it’s an anxious listen. The sound of an introverted genius who loved the craft of making music, but less so with the world at large being interested. So how did we end up with bombastic party album like ‘Currents’?

“When we started touring, the outside world kind of intimidated me,” he says. That shit just terrified me. The anxieties and self-doubt on ‘Lonerism’ – both thematically and musically – was something inside of me that I just had to get out and with that album I felt like I’d fully flushed that side out of me. With ‘Currents’, I had this burst of confidence. I decided that I wanted to make weird pop music, and I wasn’t afraid to make pop music and stand behind it. I just wanted to make silky disco-pop and anyone who says that they don’t like that kind of music is missing out.”

Parker credits that mindset shift on a few reasons. He says that the perception of pop as “profit-driven” by music snobs had largely been eradicated. “I think people have realised that it’s not that clear cut. Just because someone who makes something that is alternative-sounding or just isn’t pop, doesn’t mean that they are any more intelligent than someone who makes pop”.

I will finish off with a couple of reviews for Currents. Pitchfork noted a jump forward for Kevin Parker as a producer, composer, writer and vocalist. They salute someone with almost superhuman powers, who released an album unlike anything else released in 2015. Ten years later and Tame Impala’s third studio album still sounds hugely accomplished and forward-thinking:

“Currents is the result of many structural changes, most of which exchange maximalist, hallucinatory swirl for intricacy, clean lines. As we knew from "Elephant", the song that Parker sheepishly admitted "[paid] for half my house," Parker is good at writing catchy, simple guitar riffs. But he’s also somehow the best and most underrated rock bassist of the 21st century, and it’s not even close on either front. The near total absence of guitars means there is nothing remotely like "Elephant" here. But this allows the bass to serve as every song’s melodic chassis as well as the engine and the wheels: "The Moment" actually shuffles along to the same beat as "Elephant", though it's a schaffel rather than a trunk-swinging plod, its effervescent lope and pearly synths instantly recalling "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" or even Gwen Stefani and Akon's "The Sweet Escape". "The Less I Know the Better" merges Thriller's nocturnal, hard funk with the toxic paranoia of Bad.

And make no mistake, Parker is writing pop songs here, and doing them justice. During the lead-up to Lonerism, he claimed he wrote an entire album of songs for Kylie Minogue and had to stress he wasn't joking. Perhaps appearing on one of 2015's biggest pop records inspired him. Either way, the external or internal pressure to keep his pop impulses at bay are gone.

Nearly every proper song on Currents is a revelatory statement of Parker’s range and increasing expertise as a producer, arranger, songwriter, and vocalist while maintaining the essence of Tame Impala: Parker is just as irreverent working in soul and R&B as he is with psych-rock. "Nangs" and "Gossip" function as production segues, pure displays of "How'd he do that?" synth modulation that prove Parker sees himself as a friendly rival of Jamie xx rather than someone who sees a strict DJ/"musician" binary. While the sitar-like frill on "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" has hints of shimmering Philly soul, there's also engagement with the dubby textures and repetitive melodies of purple R&B. And for good measure, there's a bridge where Parker makes a modern studio take sound like a forgotten, vinyl breakbeat and drops it mid-track like a jarring DJ transition—a trick most effectively used on Yeezus' "On Sight" and "I Am a God".

While Parker will never not sound like John Lennon, this time, he imagines a fascinating alternate history where the most famous Beatle forsakes marriage and the avant-garde for "Soul Train" and Studio 54. On Innerspeaker, Parker's melodies were effectively smudged with reverb and layering—once drawn with charcoal, now they're etched with exacto knives. As a result, the singles on Currents could be covered by anyone, and Parker has advanced to the point where he can write and sing an immaculate choral melody on "'Cause I'm a Man" and have it sound like a soul standard.

"'Cause I'm a Man" also puts Parker's personal life front and center in a new way. The chorus ("I'm a man, woman/ Don't always think before I do") finds him in league with Father John Misty's I Love You, Honeybear and My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall, taking an unsparing and often unflattering look at masculinity and romance, examining what qualifies as biological instinct and what qualifies as mere rationalization for wanting to fuck around and/or be left alone.

The emotional power of Currents comes from its willingness to accept that relationships will expose an introvert's every character defect. Parker's lopsided inventory is revealed on "Eventually", which exposes the false altruism often used to justify "it's not you, it's me." The structure of the chorus ("But I know that I'll be happier/ And I know you will, too/ Eventually") makes it plain that it's always about me first. And even if Parker honestly wishes eventual happiness for "you," he wants it to arrive on his schedule. On "The Less I Know the Better", he calls out an ex's new lover by name and plots his empty revenge (his "Heather" to her "Trevor"). By the next song ("Past Life"), Parker passes her on the street and considers giving her a call not because he cares or wants to get back together, just because he can. He fools himself into thinking a new routine of picking up dry cleaning and walking around the block, which he enumerates in a mumbled, pitched-down monologue, constitutes a new existence, but it's all part of the same continuum”.

I am going to end with a review from The Quietus. Most of the reviews for Currents were (rightly) positive. I don’t think I was too aware of Tame Impala before 2015. Maybe BBC Radio 6 Music introduced me to him/them. Ten years after the third studio album, Tame Impala is still going strong:

“Currents is not, I’d guess, a title simply plucked from the ether. It describes the album just so. It is a series of songs in which you immerse yourself, not to be engulfed and swept headlong this way and that, but to be borne along gently, as if gliding in a giant inner tube on bright sunlit streams fed by a deep and distant well of melancholy. It is sparkling and wistful, and it’s quite lovely.

That, at any rate, is how it feels, which is the first thing, always. The next thing is how it sounds, and why. On Currents, Tame Impala show themselves entirely in command of a recognisable set of sources, and able to fashion them into a something at once familiar yet fresh – in the way that, for instance, LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip have done. (Indeed, it is hard to think of a spirit more kindred to Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, who writes and records as a soloist then tours at the head of a band, than LCD’s James Murphy.)

What may surprise you – it did me – is that this isn’t just an analogy about method. This time, Tame Impala share some of those bands’ sources. Where LCD and Hot Chip stretched back only a little bit further than early 80s synth-pop, Tame Impala have now stretched forward to it – and even taken in new wave on the way, if ‘Disciples’ is anything to go by. On Currents, the percussion in particular owes a great deal to that era, as do the woozy analogue synth sounds. It’s still a record with its roots in the 60s, just one whose creators saw no reason to keep its branches there too. At times, not least at the start of ‘Past Life’ – which then transforms into a monologue about lost love, and the triumph (or perhaps disaster) of hope over experience – I wonder if Parker has been listening to ‘Steve McQueen’ by Prefab Sprout. Perhaps he’s sought to capture that same swirling, dense, emotive prettiness which became inseparable from its wondrous songs.

Everything on Currents evokes something without ever pastiching that thing, or even settling directly upon it. The point of music is never to provide an object lesson in anything – it is to be experienced, heard and felt – but all the same, Currents does provide one, in how to be at once retrospectively inspired and progressively minded. ‘The Less I Know The Better’ is funky disco-rock, but you won’t often hear it so sweetly haunted as here. In ‘The Moment’ you find yourself listening to a Tears For Fears record, and ‘Yes I’m Changing’ might briefly be The Cars. Then the banks of the stream widen, the vista branches outward, and again you’re floating and basking in that uncanny place you simultaneously know and don’t know. The dream that’s not a dream, but certainly isn’t the ordinary world either. There are many ways to effect the psychedelic; this is just one, and a calmer, balmier, more dulcet mode than most of the others. You might say Parker has a talent for shaping bubblegum into beguiling fractals. Sod it, I will say it. He does.

Throughout, Parker treats his high, frail, fluting countertenor as an instrument in itself, which of course it is. He weaves it through the songs as he might do a keyboard or guitar pattern, all phase and effects, an aromatic smoke ring of a voice; with the curious result that it seems to stem directly from the heart, far more than it might were it unadorned and naked”.

On 17th July, the incredible Currents turns ten. One of the finest albums of the 2010s, it charted high in the best of 2015 polls by critics. Some since have included it among the very best albums ever. Ten years after its release, and you can feel its influence on the contemporary music scene. So many new artists influenced heavily by Kevin Parker’s supreme talent. For anyone who has not heard Currents, do go and put it on. It truly is…  

A remarkable release.

FEATURE: Needle Drop: Why Is Music So Underused When It Comes to Creating Memorable Cinematic Moments?

FEATURE:

 

 

Needle Drop

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

Why Is Music So Underused When It Comes to Creating Memorable Cinematic Moments?

__________

MAYBE it is because…

PHOTO CREDIT: Luis Quintero/Pexels

music clearance is so expensive and hard to get, cinema is not as synonymous with its big musical moments as it used to be. There is this great thing in films where you get needle drops. Songs perfectly deployed at great moments. Music very much scoring some incredible scenes. I have discussed this before. I am probably thinking more about title sequences. Over the past decade or so, how many truly memorable title scenes have there been? Ones where music is very much at the core? So many films do not take the time to craft something ambitious and distinct. In terms of music in general, obviously it is used in film and you get great soundtracks. Scenes that are soundtracked by incredible songs. However, there were periods in cinema where music was much more integral. Think of some of the best films ever and how they use music. It is tricky getting music cleared and it can take up a lot of budget. However, I think been thinking about the best opening sequences and credits ever are largely in the past. Very few films from the past decade or so make the list and particular use music powerfully when opening a film. I really don’t think it is the case that every song would cost a lot of money to put on the screen. I have been thinking of some different scenarios. I have pitched before a dazzling opening scene of a film set in the late-Disco era. One where we’d open on a dazzling dance sequence set in New York that has this fusion of Disco tracks and songs from the likes of ABBA and Fleetwood Mac. It would be this colourful, inclusive and dazzling opening that, whilst complicated and maybe expensive to stage, would use music wonderfully and effectively.

I have also been thinking of an opening sequence to a film set to Nightmare on Wax’s Les Nuit. Something set at night that immerses us in a cityscape and the sleepiness and quiet. Something distinct because of the way it is shot and the techniques used, it would rely on the power of that song. Another would be a stark and frank opening credit where we see a cycle of domestic abuse behind closed doors, scored by The Temptations’ Get Ready. That juxtaposition in terms of the mood of the song and the scenes playing out. It would be shocking and hopefully rank alongside the best opening credits in terms of its power. Another that would build an organic city soundtrack. Sounds of the streets, building into a crescendo in those one-track trip of a city. The sound layers would then disappear one by one until it is quiet. Another sequence, which I have discussed before, set to an original song that takes influence from director Michel Gondry. Ideas for films and opening credits based on music. How these particular tracks and sounds would elevate the cinema. How much is hugely powerful when it comes to provoking imagination and ambition. I do not see it much with modern films. The art of the iconic opening credits long gone. Maybe fewer standout cinema moments where music is key. I do wonder what is causing this and whether music is as important. Reviews of films not really picking up on scenes where music and cinema perfectly intertwined.

Maybe T.V. is more effective and prolific when it comes to marrying music and visuals. I can’t recall the last film I saw when there was a perfect needle drop or even a decent opening sequence. Films so keen just to get down to things and, if they do spend time with the opening credits, it is so ordinary and boring. I don’t buy that there is very little budget to push things. Like an album, you need to hook people from the opening track. If you start off with a very boring or unengaging song then the attention span for the rest of the album will probably wane. I feel the same relates to film. Music can be so instrumental (no pun intended) when it comes to crafting and birthing majestic and timeless film scenes. As I mentioned, I have ideas for films and opening credits because of the music. The visuals form around them. The entire film can then grow from there. A single song can project scenes, characters and inspire an entire film. I am thinking of films in recent memory where we associate a scene with a particular song. Maybe the use of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor from Saltburn. Apart from that, I am really reaching to think of examples where music has realty helped define a scene. I don’t know whether music is too difficult to clear or it is hard to pair a song with a scene to create that brilliant cinematic moment. I feel music is undervalued and underused. Perhaps there are too many obstacles and too much cost involved. However, there has been a distinct absence of perfect music-cinema occasions that rank alongside the best ever. Especially the all-time best credit sequences. I hope that this is not going to the case for the future. The power of music in cinema has been established and is clear. I hope that more filmmakers…

DROP the needle.

FEATURE: Man’s Best Friend? A Double Standard and Sexism in Music That Needs to End

FEATURE:

 

 

Man’s Best Friend?

A Double Standard and Sexism in Music That Needs to End

__________

EVEN though she is…

only twenty-six, Sabrina Carpenter is gearing up to release her seventh studio album. Her first album, 2015’s Eyes Wide Open, was released when she was a teenager. Last year’s Short n' Sweet was one of the best-received albums of 2024. Coming so soon after that album is Man’s Best Friend. That is due for release on 29th August. Unfortunately, rather than people celebrate that and focus on the music, there has been more attention on the album cover. With Carpenter on all fours like a dog – hence the album’s title, I guess – and wearing a collar, you see a man out of frame grabbing her hair. It is tongue-in-cheek and provocative but also an image from an artist who is very much in control. A backlash was created. Many saying it pandered to the male gaze and was setting a bad example. I am going to take from Wikipedia, and their collation of reaction to Sabrina Carpenter’’s cover for Man’s Best Friend:

“Glasgow Women's Aid, a charity providing support for victims of domestic abuse, called it "regressive" and "pandering to the male gaze and [promotion of] misogynistic stereotypes" with "an element of violence and control". Kuba Shand-Baptiste of The i Paper wrote: "At best, Carpenter's cover is a bad example of satire. It's titillating to those who do believe women are inferior

Others saw the cover as satire—a way to challenge "misogynistic expectations of women" and initiate a conversation about women's sexual desires. Adrian Horton of The Guardian thought that Carpenter was "clearly working in the Madonna tradition of sexual provocation for provocation's sake, poking fun at tropes and people's prudishness with an alluring frankness." Dominique Sisley of Dazed wrote: "The idea that one image has that much influence, in an internet full of hardcore pornography, where men can now freely make deepfakes or use AI prompts to create a whole world of horrors, seems a bit delusional." Jessica Clark of Mamamia thought that the album's cover and title worked together to imply a statement on the derogatory use of "bitch" in popular culture, adding: "She's not reinforcing objectification, but rather skewering it [...] It's one huge joke and [she] isn't the punchline, but rather the one delivering it." Helen Coffey of The Independent believed that the cover's detractors "know literally nothing about Carpenter, her music or her brand." Emma Specter of Vogue called the controversy the result of a "depressingly puritanical society"

In reality, the cover is perfectly fine and inoffensive. It is satire and funny. People clutching their pearls and being outraged. It is not regressive or anti-feminist. There are articles like this, that argue how the album cover is unhelpful when it comes to women’s rights. How abuse and assaults against women in the media right now – including Cassie Ventura testifying against Diddy – are almost being mocked. How it isn’t subversive or funny. Sabrina Carpenter is not trying to disrespect or make light of women who have been abused by men. This article from The Guardian has a different take:

“On TikTok, the image has folded easily into one-woman explainers on how the cover is actually the opposite of empowering, or how the furore encapsulates the context-less, ahistorical, flattened discourse that is everything wrong with modern society, etc. (For what it’s worth, there’s also a semi-convincing theory that Carpenter will eventually reveal a larger image in which she also plays the man in the suit.) A women’s aid group for victims of domestic abuse in Glasgow went as far as calling it, absurdly, “a throwback to tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control”.

In short, the discomfort is palpable, if predictable. Though female sexuality is de rigueur in pop music, we are still not used to seeing pop stars in control of their own sexuality, let alone framing themselves as the submissive. Carpenter on all fours rubs against the prevailing rhetoric of female sexual empowerment – “be on top”, “have sex like a man”, “call the shots”. Fuck, not be fucked. Dominance as the only acceptable mode, submission for sexual pleasure as inherent weakness. To be submissive and strong at once is to break some brains, the idiosyncrasies and confidence of one woman’s sexual performance inflaming the chronic poster’s allergy to fun, as well as the internet’s incentive for black-and-white thinking.

Carpenter, unapologetically girly and often bedecked in lace lingerie, knows exactly what she’s doing. With only an album cover and one song to go by, it’s still too soon to see the full scope of her tongue-in-cheek satire, but the outline of riffing and reclaiming male fantasies is clear. The Rolling Stone shoot – floral, pastoral, fairy-esque – invokes the imagery of tradwives, the third rail of female empowerment discourse online. Such women sell a fantasy of chicken eggs, meals from scratch, barefoot and pregnant and always in service of the man. They also sell sex, albeit quietly, as baby-making machines for the head of the family. Carpenter in gingham lingerie, posing with a deer in the woods surrounded by flowers, makes the subtext literal: this is a male fantasy for men who do not like women’s independence, and she is owning it.

The thing missing from all this commentary is a sense of fun, which Carpenter appears to be having in spades. Like Addison Rae, a fellow recent breakout who frequently performs in a bra and underwear, Carpenter’s pop performance relishes the messiness, sexual exploration and growth of one’s mid-20s via refreshingly catchy tunes. Rae’s brown-eyed, Louisiana girl-next-door perkiness, athletic dancing and pure pop instincts recall a young Britney Spears – except, crucially, she is 24, and has been pursuing mega-fame on her own terms for years on TikTok. Both she and Carpenter exist at the young adult nexus of self-awareness and youthful abandon, their frank sexuality both cheeky and serious”.

The bottom line is that the furore created by the album cover has overshadowed the music on Man’s Best Friend. The truth is that male artists have released album covers like this and it is sexist and regressive. They have not been taken to task. I think about the mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap, and the album cover for Smell the Glove. That famous scene where the band try to defend using this sexist and offensive image. Unironically, men in music have depicted women in derogatory ways. They have been reduced to objects for decades. Sabrina Carpenter is definitely not adding to that narrative. She is a feminist and someone who supports other women. Someone too who would never create an image that disrespects any women who are victims of abuse. She has come out to say how little she cares about the negative reaction. This article argues how there should be nuance around the debate. How the backlash has been an overreaction but, rather than get outraged, there are things to discuss when it comes to images like Sabrina Carpenter’s album cover. It is clear that there is more discussion to be had. More campaigning about how women are treated in society and how they are still objectified. That there is this widespread misogyny. However, as I have mentioned, men in music have shared videos and created album covers that are genuinely offensive and regressive and not been held to account. What comes out of this is how there is a double standard. Women much more likely to be attacked than men. This misogyny that means women are judged and abused if they do something seen as controversial or provocative. I am thinking about how Chris Brown, currently accused over an alleged nightclub bottle attack, is selling out arenas. Whilst Sabrina Carpenter is being lambasted and judged for a single image, a man who has a history of assault and is a known abuser is allowed to roam free and his music is widely available! Where are the discussions around Brown and whether he should be allowed to tour?!

His fans – deluded and insane as they – pay money to see Brown and fill up stadiums. It is not the only example of a man in music being celebrated and profiting following abuse, violence and all manner of disgusting things. Chris Brown will no doubt get his own way and continue on with his career. Women do not have that luxury. If roles are reversed and a woman was in court accused of assault then they would be attacked and harassed. Their career would be in jeopardy and they would find it hard to make a living. There are very few examples of women being accused because, as we know, violence and sexual assault is largely a male issue. However, there has been more oxygen judging Sabrina Carpenter and an image – that hurts nobody and has been misinterpreted by many – than there has been about Chris Brown touring. This sort of double standard is misogyny. I know that Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend cover has nuance and there is more conversation to be had. However, she has been vilified by many and if a male artist released something like this then it would be seen as edgy or risqué. Have we progressed much since bleak decades past when it comes to sexism and the way women are judged on different standards?! Look around the music industry and those doing the greatest harm are men. High-profile artists in jail for or on trial for sexual assault, trafficking and abuse. Regular reports of another man being accused of God knows what, whilst women are contributing the greatest music and changing the industry for the better! However, if you are a popular male artist then you can get away with a lot before your career is in actually jeopardy. Women are walking on eggshells all the time. If they say anything slightly controversial or create an album cover that might offend some then the heat on them is immense. This needs to end. Call it a double standard or misogyny, there need to be change. As always, women in music need to be treated with…

GREATER respect.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Joy Crookes

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

Joy Crookes

__________

HERE is an artist…

who I spotlighted in 2020. Joy Crookes’s new album, Juniper, is released on 26th September. It is one that I would urge people to pre-order. One of out very best artists, she is someone I have been a fan of for years now. Having recently played Glastonbury, Crookes has a string of tour dates later in the year. It is an exciting time for her. I wanted to revisit her music, as she is someone who has been on my mind since I spotlighted her five years ago. An amazing talent that is going to be releasing music for many years to come, I will bring in some interviews with Joy Crookes. Her debut album, Skin, was released in 2021. It is one that I remember very fondly. I am looking forward to seeing what Crookes gives us with Juniper. I want to start with some extracts from a 2023 interview with Culted. The interview was not in promotion of her music as such: “Joy has recently been named an Original as part of adidas’ latest campaign, celebrating the Samba, Superstar and Gazelle”:

“I know you’re working on the second album, can you talk me through a typical day working on the project?

I wake up, I feel like I’m on top of the world. By three o’clock, I haven’t eaten, and I’m having an existential crisis. By four o’clock, I’m doing the best backing vocals that I’ve ever done. By five o’clock, I want to redo the lead vocal. By six o’clock, I wonder if it is going to be any good overall and by seven o’clock my stomach is rumbling and my mum’s called me three times and I’ve missed every single call, and I want to go home and cry. By eight o’clock I’m like, “this is f*cking fire.”

You’ve said in previous interviews that you’re an overthinker. How does Joy Crookes switch off?

I switch off by going to the pub. I switch off by engaging in very intense situations like watching football or supporting Arsenal, which is a great way to switch off from music. I also disengage by weirdly just listening to music for no other purpose than just enjoying it.

I also switch off by sleeping… sometimes. Sometimes, everything follows me into my dreams.

You’ve previously said that your favourite subject at school was history. What is a bit of history that you think the world should know more about and why?

I think people should know more about colonisation. There was a survey, and I think a really large percentage of people thought that colonisation was a positive thing because they had obviously been ill-educated. I actually don’t think ignorance is necessarily an evil thing if you live in a country where the curriculum doesn’t necessarily tell you all of the details.

British colonial history and imperial history is probably something that [people need to know more about], as someone who grew up in Britain and is from two immigrant backgrounds that have been colonised or have been the product of decolonisation, I would probably say that. And also, it is really important to understand how decolonisation then played a huge part in subculture.

It’s horrible and tragic and deeply gory, and there are always going to be beautiful things that are born from places of pain. You can take British history and relate it to some of the more positive moments in British culture and be the influence that the Windrush generation had on Britain, or be the influence that South Asian people had on Britain, Tower Hamlets – like it just contextualises the melting pot that is London I think.

Does history inspire you musically?

Definitely, history also inspires my style, I think I’ve always been super obsessed with subculture.

I had a vintage dress phase and learnt about Kate Nash when I was 12, and the Northern Soul big dress type of thing.

I really got into the French Liberation phase when I was 16 and moved out. I just wanted to be in trousers and loafers and be a very serious and very 1950s French woman but Brown type beat.

And then the beauty and world around Audrey Hepburn, the pathetic fallacy of Hollywood and then Mod culture and the way that girls would dress during that period of time. And then Caribbean women in the 1970s.

I’ve always associated fashion with culture and history, and I don’t think people remember that history is such a huge part of the reason why people dress the way they do. That’s probably why I like Wales Bonner and adidas because it feels really reminiscent of a time and culture in Britain.

Now, just some quickfire ones. What is your top song to Lime Bike through London to?

I do love “Mercy Mercy Me” by Marvin Gaye, when the sun comes down, that’s such a good song to Lime Bike to. But also “Loving You” by Kiki Gyan.

Go to food when working long hours recording?

My Mum’s house.

Finally – what does the future look like for Joy Crookes?

I’d like to make music less sh*t. That’s it. There’s no explanation. That’s all I can give you right now”.

I will actually end with a live review. There are not a lot of particularly recent interviews with Joy Crookes. There will be more closer to the release of Juniper in September. I want to bring in an interview from May from GLAMOUR. They spoke to Joy Crookes as part of their Sound of Summer issue. An artist fighting for authenticity who unapologetically and unashamedly wants to be herself, it is an interesting interview. The South London artist explains how why there has been a fairly long gap between albums:

“So where has one of Britain’s rising stars been for the last four years? “I wasn’t very well,” she says. “I basically had a mental health crisis between albums.” While we are waiting for staff to deliver us some cigarettes to compliment the cocktails, I ask her about some lyrics that hit me particularly hard: “‘Who am I when I’m out of your sight? I want to see how we look apart” on Somebody to You. “It’s such an important question for women trying to define their full adult selves outside of relationships that no longer serve them,” I say. Though the lyrics sound like they could be spoken by someone after a bad romantic break-up (“that’s intentional”, she says) it actually hints at a familial relationship that had broken down in the interim and caused Joy to rethink what her life looks like without her reliance on that relative. In that vacuum, she did a lot of soul searching. “It’s funny you picked that line out of all of the lines on the album, because it’s kind of what the whole thing is about,” she explains.

From the first track on her sophomore album, Juniper [released on September 26th] it’s evident that her four-year hiatus has been about self-growth. It shows on the record: how she chronicles the uncertainty and chaos of her mid-twenties; the vulnerability and soulful inflections betraying the depth of pain she’s experienced from one album to the other. Brave hits you in the chest, as she stretches her range to a falsetto at its crescendo to announce her step towards a new horizon: “I’m so sick, I’m so tired I can’t keep losing my mind / I want to be brave, I want to be in love / It’s time I stopped running away. I should stay.” Any avoidantly attached listener will resonate with the track’s sentiment. “It’s about being so scared of love and truly being seen and knowing you have to do it anyway,” she says. “I reached flow state and wrote that in one day, and it was recorded in basically one take with a handheld mic on a sofa. It’s a song where I feel like I am transported back in time”.

While Skin was a tour through the cultures and spaces Joy inhabits, her new album is fittingly named to exhibit Joy’s introspection and personal metamorphosis. Even though this album is a chronicle of her lowest points, she’s emerged out of that dark period wise enough to help others navigate the industry. “I want to start an agency for the protection of musical artists. Something that feels like it gives guidance, or is almost a union, because I spend a lot of my time on the phone to people in crisis because of the way this industry really plays with you,” she says. Over the years, she’s found her peers – from Miso Extra to Holly Harby Dweller – to be an invaluable resource for uplift and support. “Me and Jai Paul will just sit in my car talking about how weird the world is right now and eating McFlurries,” she laughs.

And so Joy begins to gear up for a summer preparing for the release of her sophomore album in September, which is the sum of her artistic and personal growth. She will be able to start touring her new material in the summer – notably at Glastonbury, which, in her opinion, is “the best festival in the world” because “it makes you feel like a community of people who are all free, just for a few days”. And therein lies Joy’s mission statement for her next album, and likely for the remainder of her twenties: freedom: “The most important messaging for this era for me musically is that I just want to be me. More comfortable with myself, unapologetic, and unashamed”.

I am going to end with a reviews from The Guardian from earlier in the year. One of the things that annoy me when people talking about artists is the word ‘comeback’ or ‘return’. Like they have been in the wilderness lost for decades! In many cases, the artist has been working on new material or taking time off. It seems somewhat judgemental to say they have returned. Like this is a big comeback. That pressure that artists have to produce material and tour all the time and, if they do not do that, when they do release music then it is this dramatic return from the darkness. Joy Crookes has always been present and out there. The fact is that she needed a bit of time to put together her second album:

“These songs, which largely fit the mould of the tracks on Skin with a little added pop oomph (sturdier and simpler beats, big choruses), are frequently about top-of-mind topics for young people: anxiety, beauty ideals, toxic exes, reliable besties. I sometimes found myself wishing for more bullish defiance or abject sadness, coming from a voice so brassy and rich, but there is no denying that Crookes can write a killer hook. Never more so, perhaps, than on the as-yet-untitled song whose hook goes “You’re a killer”, a bouncy, surely viral-ready track that Crookes introduces as one of her favourites of the new batch. Slick and energetic, it’s a highlight of the evening.

Another new song, Crookes explains, is about “unrealistic beauty standards, and how they’re kicking all our arses”. The track centres on a fictional character called Carmen, who represents an impossible ideal; with its halting piano intro, it brings to mind Frank Ocean’s Super Rich Kids and the opening bars of Bennie and the Jets. Later, she plays a song about anxiety and the queasy feeling of adrenaline, inspired in part by the scene in Pulp Fiction when Uma Thurman’s character is given an injection to the heart. (“This song is a fuck off to mental health issues,” she quips.) Although Crookes warns the crowd early in the night that she has “bubble guts” because she hasn’t performed for so long, her voice sounds pitch-perfect, resonant and full in a room that – likely not built for pop concerts – doesn’t always sound particularly great. She’s backed by a crack four-piece band whose deft, warm style is far more appealing than that of the unsubtle hired hands usually drafted in to perform with rising stars like her.

The most poignant moment comes when, bathed in blue light, she addresses the reasons behind tonight’s show. “I really wish we weren’t raising money for children that are in conflict and wars,” she tells the audience. As she dedicates a new piano ballad, Forever, to just such children, it feels like a perfect combination of pop and politics”.

With Juniper out in September, there will be a lot more eyes and ears on Joy Crookes. A truly magnificent artist that everyone needs to follow, it has been great revisiting her music. I am excited to see where she goes from here. There is no doubt that Joy Crookes is going to…

GO very far.

____________

Follow Joy Crookes

PHOTO CREDIT: Ruth Ossai for GLAMOUR

Official:

https://www.joycrookes.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/joycrookes

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5XMyhVhi5ZN2pi0Qwi1zXS?si=b1VRqNYjQ1GqacVDV41G-Q

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/joyohjoyoh

FEATURE: Groovelines: Rod Stewart – Maggie May

FEATURE:

 

Groovelines

Rod Stewart – Maggie May

__________

MAYBE a musical reaction…

to The Beatles’ Let It Be, Rod Stewart released Maggie May in 1971. The Beatles included a song called Maggie Mae on 1970’s Let It Be. It may be a coincidence, though I feel Stewart was inspired by The Beatles (Maggie May (or Maggie Mae) is a traditional Liverpool Folk song about a prostitute who robbed a "homeward bounder”). As Stewart plays the legends slot at Glastonbury this week, I wanted to go deep with one of his best-known songs. Co-written with Martin Quittenton, it is a track taken from his album, Every Picture Tells a Story, released in 1971. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked it number 130 in The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It is amazing to think that this song was a B-side! Its A-side, Reason to Believe, is a good song but not remembered as fondly as Maggie May! The woman who inspired the song was not called Maggie May. An older woman who took Rod Stewart’s virginity in the 1960s, there are some unpleasant memories associatyed with the song. The sexual encounter not consensual. The woman dragging Rod Stewart into a tent at a musical festival. Despite it being this hugely popular and celebrated song, there is some controversy to it. Far Out Magazine wrote about Maggie May for a feature, where they addressed the origins of the song:

“The situation, which is problematic through today’s lens, tells the story of how the woman had her way with him in a festival tent and “stole” his “soul” in the process, according to the lyrics of the song. If we are to believe those words, when morning came, she kicked him in the head – literally or metaphorically – putting a painful end to proceedings, leaving him bruised emotionally, or worse.

In his more recent retellings of the story, Stewart makes the whole thing sound like an uncomfortable, unwarranted and somewhat sinister experience. He implicitly calls into question whether he consented to the act.

But the song tells a different story. One of a jilted young lover enamoured by his more experienced seductress, who “stole” his “heart” – “and that’s what really hurt”. The line “Maggie, I couldn’t have tried any more” with its melancholic minor passing chord also suggests Stewart was hurt because he feels he failed to live up to the woman’s expectations.

It could be that turning the episode into a song about lost love was simply his way of processing what happened in retrospect. Perhaps the idea of a stolen heart is a euphemistic metaphor for something else Stewart feels was stolen from him. Or maybe, nine years later, he just found the story a nice idea for a song and needed to sanitise the lyrics to appeal to a wider audience.

Whatever the truth about Stewart’s deeper feelings on the matter and the specific identity of the real ‘Maggie May’, the song’s version of events is what will go down in history. And so, an unknown 30-something attendee of the 1961 Beaulieu Jazz Festival is destined to be marked for all time by the name of a legendary Liverpool prostitute. If Stewart really felt violated by the event, perhaps this is the best form of vengeance he could have served as his own recompense”.

A number one single in 1971, the background to the creation of Maggie May is fascinating. I know that there was a period when Rod Stewart did not want to perform the song live. I wonder whether it would be included in the setlist of his Glastonbury set on Sunday (29th). I have a couple of other features I want to include before rounding things off. Stereogum examined the song as part of their The Number Ones feature:

“In the summer of 1961, Rod Stewart climbed into a drainage pipe in the south of England. Stewart, a 16-year-old London dropout and aspiring footballer, was with a few friends, and they were all sneaking into the Beaulieu Jazz Festival, one of the first big festivals in the UK. (Stewart later said that this was when he “just coming out of [his] beatnik phase, wondering whether [he] should become a mod.”) When the friends got into the festival, they went straight for the beer tent, where Stewart met an older woman, who — again, per Stewart — “was something of a sexual predator.” That day, Stewart and the older woman snuck off somewhere, and Stewart lost his virginity: “It was over in a few seconds.” A decade later, Stewart took that experience and made one hell of a song out of it.

In that decade, Rod Stewart had done a lot of things. He’d started protesting for left-wing causes, getting arrested a few times. He’d drifted around Europe, getting himself deported from Spain. He’d moved in with an art student and fathered a daughter, who was put up for adoption. He’d discovered Otis Redding and gone all-in on the mod thing. And he’d started playing music.

Stewart had started out in 1963, playing harmonica in a group called the Dimensions. He’d bounced around the London scene, getting into short-lived collaborations with future members of the Kinks and Fleetwood Mac. Eventually, he’d teamed up with Jeff Beck, the ex-Yardbirds guitar hero, and begun singing in the Jeff Beck Group.

When that band broke up in 1969, Stewart and his Jeff Beck Group bandmate Ronnie Wood (still six years away from becoming a Rolling Stone) joined the Small Faces, a pretty great London band who were huge in the UK and who’d had some success in the US. Frontman Steve Marriott had just left the band to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton. So Wood and Stewart came in to replace him, and the Small Faces became the Faces, leaning into Stonesian blues-choogle and enjoying another pretty-great run. (The Faces’ highest-charting song was 1971’s “Stay With Me,” which peaked at #17.) But Stewart had also started recording his own solo albums in 1969. And thanks to the song that Stewart wrote about that afternoon in 1961, his solo records soon came to overshadow anything the Faces did.

Stewart co-wrote “Maggie May” with Martin Quittenton, guitarist for the blues-rock band Steamhammer. Ray Jackson, of the folk group Lindesfarne, improvised the mandolin intro. (Jackson only got session-musician pay for that, and no songwriting credit, and he was pissed off about that for decades.) For two albums, Stewart had been figuring out his own solo style, which built folk instrumentation and sloppily cluttered rock arrangements around his beautifully whiskeyed white-soul rasp. On paper, that combination looks a little too neatly triangulated, but that’s not how it sounds. It comes out organic, as if Stewart had drunkenly stumbled upon this sound. Every Picture Tells A Story, the album that gave us “Maggie May,” remains an absolute motherfucking front-to-back burner. Nobody sounded anything like Rod Stewart. Probably, nobody could.

“Maggie May” is the sound of a guy processing a formative experience. Something has happened, and he’s not sure how it’ll affect his life, but he knows he’ll never be the same again. He’s mad about it, but he’s not sure why he’s mad. There’s no chorus to the song, no structure. It’s not contrived. It’s more of a freeform unburdening, a wild parade of accusations and equivocations and confessions of love. It’s quite a ride.

I will finish off with part of an article from Culture Sonar. In terms of Rod Stewart’s relationship with the song. Even if Maggie May found its origins from a somewhat uncomfortable or unwanted moment, it has gained so much acclaim through the years. It would be great if he performed the song at Glastonbury! One of the greatest songs of the 1970s, it is played widely to this day. A track that I first heard when I was a child. It is so recognisable and acclaimed:

“Nonetheless, this personal experience led to Stewart’s first substantial hit as a solo performer and truly launched his career. Despite having done fairly well with two previous album releases, Rod Stewart – approaching twenty-seven – had yet to become the true rock star he’d dreamt of being, like his heroes, The Rolling Stones.

When he recorded and released Every Picture Tells a Story, the British rocker didn’t expect “Maggie May,” to become a hit. His collaborators criticized its lack of melody. In fact, the track was the B side of the single, “Reason to Believe.” According to Stewart, it was a DJ in Cleveland who flipped it and first aired the song.

Even today, this look back on a past romantic relationship remains relatable. No wonder the British singer included “Maggie May” in his MTV Unplugged episode where he reunited with his Faces bandmate Ron Wood, leading to one of Stewart’s best-selling albums ever.

In 2015 Stewart reflected on his breakout hit: “At first, I didn’t think much of ‘Maggie May.’ I guess that’s because the record company didn’t believe in the song. I didn’t have much confidence then. I figured it was best to listen to the guys who knew better. What I learned is sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t”.

Perhaps Rod Stewart’s defining track, I wanted to spend some time with Maggie May. One of the most famous B-sides ever, it is amazing that the record executives were cold towards the track. Rod Stewart himself almost convinced that Maggie May was inferior. I am glad that it was not buried and has since been hailed as a classic. A sensational and powerful song in 1971, it still makes its mark…

OVER fifty years later.

FEATURE: Kashka’s Sister: Kate Bush: A Pride/L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Icon

FEATURE:

 

Kashka’s Sister

PHOTO CREDIT: Claude Vanheye

Kate Bush: A Pride/L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Icon

__________

IT would be interesting…

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

putting together as playlist of songs from Kate Bush that are Pride-related. That are empowering to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community or, in the case of Lionheart’s Kashka from Baghdad, feature two male lovers. That was unusual in 1978. Not many mainstream artists recording songs of that nature. That is not the only example of Bush speaking with the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community and resonating. Even if she has not come out explicitly as an ally or spoken about them, there is no doubt she has been taken to heart by many L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people. Last year, I did write how Kate Bush is this idol and source of strength for outsiders. I may repeat a little of what I shared back then. However, as it is Pride Month, I did want to take the opportunity to explore Kate Bush as someone who many see as an icon. A gay or queer icon. Someone who has not been discussed as much in these terms as she should be. Starting out with an article/thesis from 2022, there are interesting examples of queer identity being explored and examined in Kate Bush’s music – especially on early songs (when Bush was still a teenager):

“One of those identities is a queer identity. Bush’s inclusion of queer identity in her music is not surprising considering that she once mentioned in an interview “I like to think I’m a man […] in the areas that they explore. […] I just think I identify more with male musicians than female musicians, because I tend to think of females musicians as…ah… females.”[5] Her statement shows that Bush does not want to be limited in her music by what people would consider to be appropriate for a female. She wants to explore on her own terms. This identity exploration is expressed in the album Lionheart from 1978. The cover of Lionheart is the first sign that the Bushian Feminine Subject has undergone a change. Bush is portrayed in a lion costume which creates gender ambiguity.[6] Her hair is long, but her staring fiercely at the ‘audience’ who sees the cover, with make-up that is suggestive of the individual being male, creates confusion and ambiguity.

The song ‘In Search of Peter Pan’ from the album Lionheart provides an opportunity to analyse the BFS’s exploration of queer identity. In the opening verse, the BFS seems to be a child or at least of younger age because they are told “when I get older / That I’ll understand it all.”[7] Their high pitched and somewhat “squeaky” sounding singing voice supports the child identity.[8] The high pitch creates a feeling of discomfort in the listener which might reflect how the BFS is feeling as a child being told they are “too sensitive.” Withers points out how being too sensitive is a common stereotype applied to females.[9] This stereotype is juxtaposed with the BFS feeling “like an old man.”[10] As Withers notes, this juxtaposition causes confusion in the listener[11] but also clearly contrasts the BFS from the stereotypical societal female they do not want to become.

The chorus highlights a true wish and frustration about societal standards at the same time. The BFS wishes to be a man. At the same time, the BFS makes us aware that in our cliché-based society, they would have to be a man in order to become an astronaut.[12] Them, trying to “find Peter Pan” (an androgynous figure) expresses the wish for freedom and self-actualisation in a world where they feel like this is only granted to men. Their shift to a lower voice for the pre-chorus “They took the game right out of it,” indicates a change of lyrical content which is emphasised with the lowest voice thus far on “out of it” in the second line of the pre-chorus.[13] Following right after is the chorus starting with “When I am a man” for which the pitch increases again. Particularly on the word “astronaut,” the BSF returns to an uncomfortable high pitch which could highlight the metaphor of the astronaut by opposing the male-gendered astronaut with a female voice”.

Even if Kate Bush has not really framed herself as a queer icon or someone who is reparenting the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, her music has been embraced and taken to heart by many fans who feel more heard and seen. A campness in her early videos definitely proves that Kate Bush has always allied herself to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. Kashka from Baghdad was a case of Bush addressing something somewhat taboo. Two gay lovers who fear persecution and hide themselves away, it sounds remarkably relevant to this day. In 2022, Stranger Things used Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). A source of strength and hope for one of the show’s characters, Max, it is another case of Bush’s music speaking to a new generation of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people. Whilst Max Mayfield’s sexuality is not revealed, many feel that she is bisexual. This article explored queer representation on Stranger Things. This 2022 article from The Pink News writes why Kate Bush is this eternal gay icon:

“Though her work has become sporadic, successive generations have fallen in love with Kate Bush thanks to the enduring appeal of her songs. Right now, her 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” is captivating new fans after featuring prominently in the record-breaking fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things. 

The track is expected to return to the UK chart on Friday (3 June). It’s already reached the top of Spotify’s UK daily songs chart, displacing reigning pop prince Harry Styles, and became Spotify’s fourth-most streamed track globally.

Of course, it’s not just the television gods Kate Bush can thank for sustaining her over the years. As with many female pop stars through the ages, a driving force of her enduring popularity has been her deep-rooted connection with the LGBTQ+ community.

“Becoming acquainted with all of Kate’s work was such a unique experience that I’ve never had since. It was like meeting a great friend that you know will be in your life forever,” Olly Waldron, a 23-year-old gay male DJ and Kate Bush superfan, tells PinkNews. To Waldron, Bush’s music offers an escapism from the mundanity of day-to-day life which is very appealing.

“Of course, her earlier performances and videography were exceptionally camp and theatrical. However, the world she built, not only with her storytelling lyricism but also her production, is the most perfect escapism,” he explains. “Kate transcended all norms and genres that were present in the music industry at that time which I think a lot of queer people can relate to”.

It is important to not only look at the themes explored within Kate Bush’s music when identifying her as a queer/L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ icon. A lot of articles focus on the queer icon element, whilst there are few articles that embrace the fuller spectrum. How she speaks to trans people or those who identify as bisexual or asexual even. I will end with a 2018 feature from Attitude. They write why Kate Bush is an icon for the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, forty years after her debut single (Wuthering Heights) was released:

“Her frank openness and recognition of a gamut of gender norms and of the reality of sexual fluidity became a recurrent theme in her work; ‘Wow’, a biting satire of the theatrical business, finds Kate singing “He’ll never make the scene / he’ll never make the Sweeney / be that movie queen / he’s too busy hitting the Vaseline.” If we were in any doubt as to her underlying meaning, her performance in the video removes all doubt as she taps her buttock on the payoff line.

Kate’s deep and thoughtful understanding of men in her songs is an underrated value in her arsenal; there are the men sent to war in ‘Army Dreamers’, or the kindly but increasingly distant father figure in ‘The Fog’, the misunderstood mathematician in “Pi,” and, most of all, the exquisite ‘This Woman’s Work’, where she sings about parenthood and birth from the male perspective. And no one could inhabit Peter Gabriel’s lyric as the voice of reason and comfort in ‘Don’t Give Up’ better than Kate Bush.

Perhaps most poignant of all, the father-son narrative of ‘Cloudbusting’ climaxes with the Shakespearean pun “your son’s coming out.” The rush of hearing Bush equate positivity, happiness, open-mindedness, and the promise of good things with the emergence – sexually or otherwise – into the world at large remains a profound thrill.

Kate made hits of these songs, and they remain enduring in the public consciousness. She brought the joys and sorrows of hidden human life to the forefront through normalising phrases and ideas, and streamlined all elements of her craft into a unique musical and visual style.

She studied movement with the choreographer and mime artist Lindsay Kemp at his dance studios in Covent Garden; Kemp had worked with Bowie and had a small but memorable role in 1973’s The Wicker Man as a sinister pub landlord. Bush had seen Kemp’s production of Flowers and was rapt.

Her theatricality didn’t just extend to her music, be it the cabaret Weimar camp of ‘Coffee Homeground’ or the flamboyant ‘Hammer Horror’: Her wide-eyed facial expressions, interpolation of mime, and her swooping, balletic movements made not just ‘Wuthering Heights’ but all of her early performance films iconic.

The fact that the Kate of ‘Wuthering Heights’ – a figure of incredible talent but, at the time (and to a lesser degree to this day), somewhat roundly mocked – blossomed into the art-pop auteur of 1982’s The Dreaming and 1985’s Hounds of Love, a woman of universally-acknowledged originality, creative excellence, and innovation, indeed an artist who changed the landscape of pop music forever, chimes with the gay audience too.

What at first the public may mistake for novelty, or frivolity, reveals itself over time to be intelligent, compassionate, and wise.

Kate Bush is an LGBT icon for several reasons, not least because she built a successful career, without compromise, on her own terms, with thorough originality, ingenuity, and, crucially, trueness to herself. She did, and continues to do, things her own way, and is undaunted in her distinctiveness and navigation of the peculiarities of life”.

I will end things there. From her fashion choices to her sexual liberation and freedom through her records, to the way she overcome so much criticism and narrow-mindedness from critics, there are multiple reasons why Kate Bush was and is a Pride/L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ role model. As we are in Pride Month, I wanted to revisit a subject I explored fairly recently. There are articles here and there that argue why Kate Bush is an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+/Pride icon. It is something that needs to be…

TALKED about more.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Greentea Peng

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: William Spooner

Greentea Peng

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IT has been…

over four years since I put Greentea Peng in my Spotlight feature. The London artist is someone who may still not be known by some. In March, she released the album, TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY. One of the best of the year in my view, it has received some acclaimed but has passed by some people. It is a remarkable album that has that incredible voice at the centre. Smoky, beautiful and arresting, there are few as captivating as Greentea Peng. I wanted to revisit her because she has really grown over the past four years. Rather than repeat the interviews I included back in 2021, I am going to bring things more up to date. I will come to a couple of 2025 interviews and a review of TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY. Before that, I want to come to this interview from Firebird Magazine that was published in 2023:

“Hailing from South London, Greentea Peng’s journey to stardom has been a tumultuous one. As a child, she always loved singing and creating music, performing at school and even creating her own “funky house tunes.” However, by the time she was 15, Peng grew quite depressed, quitting music and losing confidence in performing. After leaving home at 17, Peng threw herself into a life of partying and, according to her, “a lot of drugs, drug-taking.” After years of working at bars and losing herself to the chaos of the London nightlife scene, Peng felt the need to escape the dark place she had been in, choosing to go to Mexico for some soul-searching. Her time spent traveling and meditating led her to join a local Mexican band, through which she fell in love with music again. Peng’s renewed sense of self-confidence led her to move back to London to record and release her debut EP, Sensi.

Peng’s music is undeniably beautiful; the delicate washes of sound in “Mind” on Sensi and the luxurious, deep vocals on her single “Soulboy (IZCO Remix)” are perfect examples of the earthy soundscape she creates. However, it’s her emotional complexity and her ability to transform life experiences into music that make her discography truly something unique. Combining swing-style reggae beats with elements of ska, funk, and even an occasional fiery electric guitar riff, you can almost hear the swirling emotions of her chaotic teenage life reflected in the erratic blending of genres. Yet at the same time, Peng’s soulful R&B-style vocals and psychedelic synths, present in songs such as “Moonchild,” provide a subdued sense of calm, balancing out the pandemonium and preventing it from being too overwhelming to the listener.

Peng’s voice could be the subject of an article all by itself. Her resonance is rich and deep, cut with a rasp reminiscent of Amy Winehouse. She combines this incredible tone with a Kali Uchis-like delivery, smooth and lush. Yet Peng isn’t merely a copycat of her predecessors; her voice shifts and transforms from song to song, always perfectly in step with the vibe of the music. In “Sane,” the penultimate track on the EP RISING, she utilizes vocal breaks and ornaments to punctuate her voice and keep up with the calm yet chaotic nature of the track. Other songs like “Mr. Sun (miss da sun)” contain that smooth, continuous delivery she’s so loved for. Peng’s voice is simply another element which adds to the perfect kaleidoscope of sound that she creates.

Despite the apparent chaos of her musical construction, Peng’s discography is remarkably accessible to the average listener. The many different genres she uses intertwine to create a truly multifaceted sound, one that draws in fans of many different types of music. This is best encapsulated in her 2021 album Man Made, which takes the listener on a journey of musical exploration. “This Sound,” the second track on the album, provides a funky, bass-filled instrumental, while the next song “Free My People'' displays a hypnotizing ripple of reggae-style rhythm, although the reggae influence is less obvious than in other projects, notably the 2020 single “Revolution”. Moving through the project, a huge variety of styles and influences emerge; the D’n’B beats in “Nah It Ain’t the Same”, grungy bass and electric guitar in “Sinner”, and enthusiastic jazzy style of “Jimtastic Blues” are just some examples. This all resides under her lulling neo-soul vocals, through which enthusiasts can recall the lush sound of Peng’s greatest inspirations, Erkyah Badu and Lauryn Hill. Clearly, there is something within her music for every type of listener.

Another incredible facet of Peng’s music is its psychedelically soothing sound. Although she avoids calling her music “spiritual,” it certainly possesses a mystical quality to it, evoking loungy images of profound late-night conversations, of incense burning in someone’s dimly lit studio apartment. It is spiritual in a general sense, not tied to any one culture or message; it is a perfect reflection of Peng herself, who—despite having the Om symbol tattooed between her eyes, posters of hindu gods plastered around her apartment, and countless shrines and cultural relics from around the world—does not subscribe to any particular form of devotion. She explains, “My spirituality is individual and universal … It’s not a formal practice and I don’t want to be branded.” Whatever the case, her music conveys a searching, transcendental quality that one might feel while stargazing or dreaming, or simply appreciating the grandeur of life. The yearning for something greater than ourselves is best represented in “Liberation,” in which Peng sings, “Yeah, I’m trying to lose my mind. To elevate, yeah, it takes a lifetime. I don’t mind, I’m searching for my liberation.” Celestial song titles such as “Saturn” and “Moonchild,” also display the universal scale on which she operates.

If the sound of her music perfectly encapsulates the essence of Peng, it’s the lyrics that truly show what’s going on in her mind at any given moment. If we zoom in, we can see that Peng touches on subjects that are very tangible. She speaks out about her own struggles in life through songs like “Downers,” with striking lyricism:

I can’t smell the flowers

Felt empty now for hours

Lost my powers

Now, I can’t smell the flowers

I’m sick of all these towers

Think I done too many downers

Many of her songs also focus on issues that affect the greater community surrounding her; a great example of this is her single “Ghost Town,” where the lines “London Bridge is fallin’ down… But you can’t take my city from me'' encapsulate the turbulence that gentrification inflicts on London. Her lyrics allow the listener to catch a glimpse of her anger, her turmoil, her sadness underneath the apparent musical tranquility. She has a sense of maturity and self-awareness that comes across effortlessly, and it is precisely this dichotomy between enigmatic abstractism and realism which provides yet another layer of allure to her music.

Greentea Peng is the perfect mix of new and old, bold and soft, sophisticated yet grungy. She's the perfect artist to recommend to those around you, a unique recommendation that they probably will not have heard of but perfectly approachable enough to be a hit in any circle. If you are a music enjoyer of any kind, take a listen and do a little soul searching of your own”.

I am going to come to this year. With the release of an incredible new solo album, there has been this fresh attention on Greentea Peng. I hope that TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY is in line for a Mercury Prize. In March, DAZED spoke with Greentea Peng. Discussing TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY, she has become a mother and channels something more introspective and personal through her third album:

“‘Tell Dem It’s Sunny,’ urges Greentea Peng’s third studio album, and, for the first time all year, it actually is. She sits in her favourite East London cafe in late February, the rare Winter sun beaming through the window behind her. Peng is hot off a photo shoot for the project and her numerous tattoos and trinkets are on full display, each hinting at a battle untold.

“Initially, Tell Dem It’s Sunny, but then having the black and white artwork, was almost sarcasm. Like, ‘Yeah, tell dem it’s sunny. Everything’s blessed.’ But everything’s not fucking blessed,” Greentea Peng tells me. “But then, after I made ‘Glory’, I realised it’s actually a philosophy. It is sunny, no matter how much shit they spray in the skies to block out the sun. I travel the depths with the sun in my chest.” Looking at the weather that day, the magic of such a philosophy was hard to deny.

It’s a hard-fought positivity that accompanies Greentea Peng’s turn inwards on this latest release. Where previous album Man Made was a colourful, psychedelic response to the madness of the lockdown era, Tell Dem It’s Sunny’s visuals are almost entirely grayscale, enlisting distorted guitars and cavernous dub basslines to soundtrack its tale of repairing a psyche worn down by external turmoil.

“There are no insecure masters, no successful half-hearters,” Peng proclaims on lead track “TARDIS”. The line arrives as a mission statement for Peng’s new direction on the project. “How could you possibly imagine being able to manoeuvre your exterior environment if inside you’re alien to your inner goings?” she says. “They’re intrinsically interconnected, a constant reflection of each other.”

This project does feel like a big turn inwards.

Greentea Peng: Man Made was a political statement in one of the most unprecedented times in my lifetime, especially as quite an outspoken person. So Tell Dem It’s Sunny is very much… What’s the opposite of introspective? Outtrospective? I make up words all the time. But, yeah. I’ve started to recognise a pattern within myself and the projects, going inward, outward, inward and outward again. This one’s definitely inward. A lot of the songs are addressed to myself. I like to think that I’m engaged in sonic journaling.

Most of the visuals are in black and white, too. Where did that come from?

Greentea Peng: I knew I wanted “TARDIS” to be in black and white, and then I knew I wanted “One Foot” to be in black and white. Then, before I knew it, I was like, actually, this whole album is black and white. I think it’s been easier to associate me with flowers and sunshine and hippy shit.

On a personal level, I’m obviously not a mother, but this journey resonates. I think there are lessons in here that are really important for people to hear.

Greentea Peng: It’s within all of us. It is a constant struggle and sufferation. It’s been a constant battle my whole life with my mental health, my personal narratives, my inner voice. It’s been a lot, and it still is, in many ways. But that’s where the beauty comes from, in the articulation and translation of them battles.

But sometimes I think about the ideal situation – would it be no pain whatsoever?

Greentea Peng: Probably not. Roses need shit to grow. Them good, good roses need that horse manure. I firmly believe that it builds character, and I got a lot of fucking character. So, yeah, I’m a big advocate of the journey within, coming back to centre. That only comes through the pursuit of knowledge of yourself. It’s not an easy task”.

PHOTO CREDIT: William Spooner

Before coming to a review of TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY, this interview from HUCK is worth including. It is a change for Greentea Peng in terms of the colour scheme and the themes addressed. Motherhood is a natural catalyst for more introspective and personal work. Not just in terms of how a child affects that artist but the way it in which they shape their vision of the world. Anyone who has not heard of Greentea Peng before needs to check her out:

“It must be a lot of work releas­ing an album – which I love by the way – while being a par­ent. What themes do you explore in it?

It’s an explo­ration of the self-polit­i­cal – every­thing from love to heart­break and just the exis­ten­tial shit that is always pre­oc­cu­py­ing my mind. It’s more of an intro­spec­tive album than MAN MADE, but it still trav­els those kinds of sub­ject, through songs like ​‘Glo­ry’. In the end, the over­all themes would be of tran­si­tion and sur­ren­der through­out the album, and just com­ing to terms with that – real human shit, you know. I felt torn, there was so much going on polit­i­cal­ly around the world that it would be mad to put out some­thing like MAN MADE, which was more overt­ly polit­i­cal, but actu­al­ly my own life has been kind of chaot­ic and that space was what I was sucked into.

Can you talk about the album name, TELL DEM IT’S SUN­NY? Who needs to know that it’s sunny?

Just tell them, innit. Everyone’s try­ing to drown us in dread, spray the skies with shit – like tell them it’s sun­ny inside. You can’t damp­en that inter­nal sun­shine, no mat­ter the dread, no mat­ter the chal­lenges we’re faced with– it’s a kind of ​‘we shall pre­vail’ sen­ti­ment. Ini­tial­ly it was kind of an oxy­moron, because it’s quite a moody album. The artwork’s moody, it’s in black-and-white, and it’s a moody time for me. But with­in that I know there’s light to be tapped into.

Do you think it’s your dark­est album yet?

Yeah, I think it is. I feel like it has been easy for peo­ple to just asso­ciate me with this hip­py-esque, sun, flow­ers, peace and love [vibe]. But this record is very, very hon­est and an explo­ration of me and all my forms. I’m an eclec­tic per­son and a com­plex indi­vid­ual as a lot of us are. And actu­al­ly, I spend a lot of my life in the dark­ness. The first cou­ple of records I put out was me com­ing back to music and it was a beau­ti­ful time, but I felt com­fort­able enough in this record to explore that dark­ness and hon­our it. Because you can’t have dark with­out light. All the videos are quite dark – I’m an hon­est per­son and I just express what I’m feel­ing at the time, so it’s a reflec­tion of how I’m feel­ing right now.

We’ve spo­ken about the dark time it is in the world at the moment – the rise of the far right march­es on, every­one is broke, and AI is prob­a­bly going to take everyone’s jobs at some point – what does heal­ing mean to you in 2025?

You know what? I ques­tion and think about this shit a lot, because in the west this idea that we’ve got of heal­ing – going to yoga class, drink­ing matcha and going on fuck­ing retreats. I feel dis­il­lu­sioned with the whole nar­ra­tive over here to be hon­est. There’s women and chil­dren dying all around the world, our broth­ers and sis­ters every day – every fuck­ing day – to feed this con­sumerist, fake life that we’re liv­ing over here, which is a com­plete bub­ble. It makes me ques­tion everything.

Obvi­ous­ly, there’s a lot of beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful things, but I strug­gle to con­cep­tu­alise heal­ing – I don’t know what it means. It’s a time where peo­ple real­ly need to tap into what is it to be human? What is it to be part of this human fam­i­ly? What is it to love thy neigh­bour? To look after each oth­er rather than just look after your­self. Every­thing seems kind of super­fi­cial to me right now, even myself if I’m honest”.

It is great that those who did review TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY were very positive. I want to round up with DIY and their opinions about Greentea Peng’s new album. I wonder what she has planned for the rest of the year. It has been a busy one for her, though you know that she must be thinking ahead to what is next. Whether that is another album or something else, it is going to be amazing:

“If anyone can attest to the sentiment ‘healing is not linear’, it’s Greentea Peng. The self-described psychedelic R&B artist – real name Aria Wells – has always candidly shared her journey of self-reflection and spiritual connection through music. 2021 debut ‘MAN MADE’ and subsequent mixtape ‘GREENZONE 108’ translated the chaos of the objective world into creation, detailing a return to source characterised by self-discovery, love and growth atop a vast backdrop of neo-soul, jazz, dub and hip hop influences. Meticulously produced with consideration of the most vibrational details (such as recording her debut’s title track one frequency below industry standard to mirror the natural frequency of the universe), Greentea has an established gift for creating optimal collections to expand your consciousness.

‘TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY’ delves further into this awakening with a nuanced examination of the self – the light and the dark – and an acceptance of surrender, best summarised by ‘GREEN’: “Come over and in, and let the healing begin / That’s how we solve business when shedding one’s skin / Feel it all around and let it enter within / There’s no resisting, you may as well give in.” Positioned later in the record, it feels like the heart of the work, with its resonant point of embracing lessons and uncomfortable change serving to contextualise the album’s broader themes. Opener ‘BALI SKIT PART 1’ invokes a trance-like state with rotational synths, a low-flowing bassline, and otherworldly vocals; elsewhere, Greentea feels around for a sense of belonging on the synthpop-powered ‘NOWHERE MAN’, bears baggage on the shadowy ‘MY NECK’ (featuring Wu-Lu), consolidates oneness on the grit-edged ‘CREATE AND DESTROY’, and seeks tranquility through the experience of being malleably human on the patter-pulsed ‘THE END (PEACE)’.

Much like the process of inner work, ‘TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY’ is gently transformative; it channels patience and expansion, ultimately speaking to the heart as a continuation of the unending path that Greentea has shown listeners thus far. Healing may not be linear, but for Greentea Peng, the journey feels like it’s headed in the right direction”.

It has been great returning to the music of Greentea Peng. A sensational artist that everyone should know about, go and follow her on social media and listen to TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY. I knew in 2021 that she would go on to great things. A tremendous songwriter and artist, she has a voice…

THAT always stuns me.

_________

Follow Greentea Peng

PHOTO CREDIT: William Spooner

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/greenteapeng/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/discover/greentea-peng

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5z9wLR0RGBcWMXr4fCZW0K?si=_0JtD8vQSvWxD48ypErvxA

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCRAEpTfF75VPJlChgCRMAA

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/GreenteaPeng/

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Taylor Swift

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Taylor Swift

__________

CONTINUING this feature…

PHOTO CREDIT: Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images

that spotlights incredible American artists and their catalogue, I assemble a twenty-song mix that demonstrates their brilliance. One of the most recognisable and popular artists of today, Taylor Swift is a global superstar. I have featured her in various forms throughout the years. Today, I have charged myself with distilling her incredible work into a short mix. However, the songs selected highlights her brilliance and unique songwriting voice. One of these artists who will go down in history and discussed for generations to come, I am going to wrap things up there. Taylor Swift fans will know these tracks, though there are some people who may not be aware of many of them. This is a twenty-song mix containing the very best of…

ONE of the greatest artists ever.

FEATURE: Stand By Me: An Oasis Megamix

FEATURE:

 

 

Stand By Me

PHOTO CREDIT: Simon Emmett

An Oasis Megamix

__________

THERE will be a lot of attention…

IN THIS PHOTO: Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis/PHOTO CREDIT: Johannes Leonardo/Adidas/PA Wire

around Oasis on 2nd October, as that is when their second studio album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, turns thirty. Before that, on 14th August, Roll with It turns thirty. This was a big single that went up against, and lost to, to Blur’s Country House in a summer Britpop battle. Before that, Oasis are starting a tour. One that was a huge surprise for fans, there will be a lot of eyes on Liam and Noel Gallagher on their first date. To see how they gel on stage and whether they can recapture any of the power and magic of the '90s. I am marking this approaching tour with an Oasis megamix. A career-spanning playlist of their biggest songs and some deeper cuts. Before that, this NME article discussed an advert where Noel and Liam Gallagher featured. It was for Adidas Originals:

“Oasis have reunited in a new ad for Adidas Originals.

The video was launched this evening (June 19) as part of the Noel and Liam Gallagher‘s preparation for their upcoming reunion tour. Fans can get their hands on Adidas Originals gear including Firebird tracksuits, raglan sleeve jerseys, bucket hats and coach jackets – as featured on Liam in the ad itself.

Both Oasis and Adidas had been teasing an announcement throughout the day, sharing a clip on social media this afternoon with the caption, “Original Forever. All will be revealed,” and telling fans to tune into Channel 4 at 9pm.

In the three-minute-long video, the band’s 1994 hit ‘Live Forever’ plays over old and new footage of Noel and Liam wearing Adidas, including some new content that seems to tease the new merchandise as well as throwback clips of iconic moments like Knebworth and Heaton Park, before the two brothers appear together at the end of the video.

“After 30 years of shared history, Adidas Originals and Oasis join forces to celebrate an undisputed connection rooted in music, fashion and British identity,” the description on the video reads. “Original Forever is more than a campaign. It’s a nod to a moment, a movement and a time that defined it all.

“With the return of the band for Live 25’, the collaboration brings a new era of looks into the now, reworking era-defining silhouettes with a modern edge. From Firebird tracksuits to classic jerseys and jackets, the Live 25’ collection honours the past while living in the present.”

“This film captures a journey from the city streets to stadiums, ’90s anthems to the now. It’s a tribute to two brothers, two icons, one band, and a brand that’s been with them every step of the way.”

Liam and Noel were filming for the video in a London pub in the spring, and it was reported that neighbours complained about the noise. They were seen at the working men’s Mildmay club in London’s Newington Green on April 24, and it was rumoured that local residents weren’t impressed with a source telling The Sun, “The din was huge”.

It was rumoured that they were playing a show there, before Liam revealed on X (Twitter) that no live music was played. Noel then confirmed on TalkSport the following day that he’d met with Liam, saying: “He’s great. I was with him yesterday actually. He’s alright, he was on tip-top form. He can’t wait – none of us can wait.”

The new range will be sold in Adidas stores, on adidas.co.uk, on oasisnet.com, and at the live dates this summer.

For fans who don’t want to wait until the tour, which begins on July 4, it was announced earlier this week that pop-up stores are to be launched around the UK beginning tomorrow (June 20) with one in Manchester. Other stores are planned for Cardiff, London, Edinburgh, Dublin and Birmingham, and you can find tickets to get into the stores here”.

I am going to get to the megamix. A celebration of a band who were one of the defining acts of their time. Classic albums like (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and their debut, 1994’s Definitely Maybe. If you are a superfan of the band or more causal, then I think this mix will appeal. Ahead of one of the most anticipated live events in living memory, here is a reminder of…

WHAT Oasis are all about.