FEATURE: Madonna at Sixty-Seven: The New Immaculate Collection

FEATURE:

 

 

Madonna at Sixty-Seven 

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1990/PHOTO CREDIT: Jean-Baptiste Mondino

 

The New Immaculate Collection

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ON 16th August…

PHOTO CREDIT: Madonna

Madonna turns sixty-seven. One of the most famous and influential artists ever, she definitely remains the Queen of Pop. I don’t think anyone will ever take that crown! In other birthday features, I am going to highlight one of her classic albums and a single celebrating an anniversary soon. I write about her quite a bit. With good reason! She was one of the first artists I remember listening to as a child. An introduction into Pop music in many ways. To honour that, in this first birthday feature, I am going to assemble a mixtape of her best songs. A sixty-seven-song salute to the one and only Madonna. I am not sure whether we will get a new album this year or whether anything else is planned. There is always talk around a biopic. Madonna toured last year. It has been a busy past few years. I know that we will see her release music for years to come. You can see artists like today such as Charli xcx and Sabrina Carpenter who are definitely influenced by her. So many artists look up to her. Her back catalogue is one of the strongest and most precious in all of music. You may not be a mega-fan or know everything about her, but I can guarantee there is an album of hers that you hold dear. An artist impossible to ignore or dislike! As Madonna turns sixty-seven on 16th August, this mixtape is my nod to her. A selection of prime cuts from…

THE incomparable Madonna.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: PinkPantheress

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Elliot Hensford for MixMag

 

PinkPantheress

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I will end…

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Engman

with a review of the new mixtape from PinkPantheress. Fancy That is among the best releases of this year. The moniker of Victoria Beverley Walker, she released the album, Heaven Knows, in 2023. Fancy That is her latest mixtape. I want to come to some interviews with a tremendous artist that I have spotlighted before but have not written about for a while now. I want to revisit her here. I will start out with MixMag. They spoke with her in March. On her new project, she is blending new genres such as Trip-Hop and House. This is an artist striking a “balance between being a popstar and experimental, only expressing emotions when it suits her, and dealing with the friction between public perceptions and her authentic self”:

“Pink launched herself into the music world when her breakbeat-infused pop songs went viral on TikTok in 2021, with her tracks such as ‘Break It Off’ and ‘Just for Me’ doing rounds on the app and introducing global audiences to the UK underground sound. She was born in Kent, but moved to London to study film at UAL and found herself bored in lockdown and experimenting with music making. While initially releasing the music in short snippets onto the app completely anonymously, mostly in hopes of getting feedback on what types of sounds people were interested in, she later put the pseudonym ‘PinkPantheress’ to her tracks, got noticed, and eventually released her debut mixtape in October 2021 and dropped out of university. “In a weird way I kind of did [expect my music to blow up],” she admits. “I’m a manifester so for me there was no option of it not working, it was just a matter of when. I expected to blow up but not to the height that it did, I didn’t expect to be here right now at all.”

In 2022 she released the three-track EP ‘Take me home’, and in 2023 she dropped her debut album ‘Heaven Knows’. Since her breakthrough, she has worked and collaborated with the likes of Central Cee, Kaytranada, Overmono, Skrillex and Trippie Redd. Pink also took home the Best Female Act MOBO Award in 2022, the BBC’s Sound of 2022 title, and was Billboard’s Producer of The Year in 2024. But all roads have led her to making her upcoming project, something that she feels proud of and a representation of the lessons she’s learned in the music game over the past few years.

Though details of her new project are firmly under wraps, with only a May 9 date announced, fans can expect the continuation of her genre-bending style, reimagining elements of jungle, breakbeats and 2-step garage with ethereal vocals. This time, however, she was also inspired by trip hop, house, big beat, and older electronic music, as the selections in her Cover Mix playlist indicate. It’s evident in the tracks which contain crackles of the heavy distortions synonymous with bass music, and the elements of the orchestral and cinematic-side of old-school house music. At the time of making the project, Pink was listening to music by the likes of Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada. “I loved the size of the music,” she says. “All the music sounds so big and grand and present, and I really wanted to make music where it sounds like a statement is being made with the songs. I feel like that was what appealed to me, and it’s something that I wanted to take on board.”

The project is also laden with samples, a PinkPantheress music staple. It features some musical references from her previous songs, Easter eggs for the “real fans” as she says, including sampled vocals from ‘Starz In Their Eyes’ by Just Jack, a song that she used the beat from in her 2021 track ‘Attracted to You’.

“Sampling is funny because everyone has their opinions about it. Some people think it's stealing or unoriginal, which is something I dealt with a lot when I was starting. But for me sampling is my way of sharing a love for something and reinterpreting it. I would only sample something I love, I would never sample something for the thought of it having nostalgia-bait or whatever reason. I do it because I want to reinterpret something I love to different audiences”.

When she first released music and became known for her breakbeat-pop, she says she encountered tensions from dance music purists who were questioning the authenticity or genuineness of her intentions to make electronic music. “It was a bit annoying…getting questions as to why I’m making art, some people were questioning if I knew the genre and did my research, I guess because I’m young,” she starts to explain.

“But I spoke to one of these jungle purists - and it was very interesting hearing his side of things and how he felt about drum ‘n’ bass and jungle and his introduction to me. [He spoke about how] drum ‘n’ bass is still not a mainstream genre, globally, and it’s not one that’s understood by the majority of the world. It was something that was honed in the UK, and with us as a nation where maybe some of our music was overlooked in the past, it makes these genres extra special to the people who have loved it. Some people don’t feel the need for these genres to be spread around the world or on a platform like TikTok, because they see it as something we birthed here so we want it to stay here. But they understood that music has always spread, but now because of social media it's making it easier to spread. Those purists have now accepted the situation for what it is.”

Keeping the Black, British history of genres such as jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, and garage credited and acknowledged is imperative for Pink. She wants to make it clear who she is sampling, which acts she takes inspiration from, and, during interviews and online, she shouts out the pioneers who came before her and made these genres exist and usable in different contexts — whether that be Adam F, Shy FX, or Wookie. She even makes a point of acknowledging her contemporaries such as Nia Archives, who she calls a “great inspiration”, due to their influence on the way dance music is moving in the 2020s.

Beyond finding her place within dance music, Pink has had to come to terms with becoming a global popstar. While she started making her dance-laced pop music out of her love for the UK legends she’s been naming throughout our conversation, from Lily Allen to Shy FX, her global audience and their perception of who she is was an unexpected weight on her shoulders. “Being a ‘popstar’ or being in the public eye can definitely make you lose yourself,” she admits. “I am somebody who knows myself down to the bone but I’m telling you, being a singer makes it so easy to think about what people think or want to hear and it makes you lose elements of your beginnings”.

I am moving onto an interview with Billboard. Speaking with the Billboard Women in Music's 2024 Producer of the Year, PinkPantheress was asked about the new mixtape. She spoke about a tour with Olivia Rodrigo and why she is not an arena artist:

“I don’t like saying it in my accent,” PinkPantheress timidly says of her mixtape title, which was later revealed to be Fancy That, during her late March visit to Billboard.

Rocking a plaid top dress, dark navy jeans and black flats that could’ve been on an Aeropostale mannequin circa ’07, the U.K. native gushes about house artists like Basement Jaxx and early Calvin Harris influencing her nine-track mixtape.

“I feel like nobody’s really tapped into these fully since the eclipse of [their] genre. I was like, ‘Let me try to do it and see what I can do here,'” the 24-year-old says. “Just because I’m such a fan of it and I was very inspired by it. I haven’t felt really inspired in a long time.”

Holed up in her London home, PinkPantheress got to work as the project began to take shape over the course of two months. After some back-and-forth file transferring and tinkering with producer aksel arvid, Pink’s skittering production met her plush vocals while still maintaining her signature DIY raw experimentation.

She dug through the crates while pulling on samples from the aforementioned Basement Jaxx to Panic! at the Disco and even Nardo Wick’s “Who Want Smoke??” for her most sonically potent work to date. “I made something that kind of incorporated my two projects into one super project,” the Billboard Women in Music 2024 Producer of the Year adds.

PinkPantheress is reserved yet charming in conversation as she opens up about learning she wasn’t “an arena artist” after touring with Olivia Rodrigo, being the subject of plenty of memes, her global crossover appeal and acting aspirations.

How did you end up in Jack Harlow’s “Just Us” video?

Jack messaged me and asked me if I could be in the video. I asked if I could hear the song and he was like, “No, you can not.” I don’t really do cameos or anything, especially not for bigger artists because I get worried and scared of public perception. But he was like, “You need to trust me that I’ll make you look cool.” Then I just did it and it was really fun.

How did you get in the zone for this mixtape? What did you set out to do?

I wanted to create a project that reflected my progress as a producer. I made something that kind of incorporated my two projects into one super project. I produced a lot of it in London in my house. I listened to a lot of U.K. music. A specific era, a lot of Basement Jaxx, a lot of Calvin Harris.

I created the beats on my laptop and then I sent them to this producer I was working with from Norway called Axsel [Arvid]. We went back-and-forth and made the beats and I recorded really quickly. It was done in like two months.

Being a perfectionist in the studio, do you have to go back in and tweak stuff or once it’s done, it’s done?

Figuratively and physically and always literal, I am a tweaker. I am always going back and [asking], “What can I do here that I want to change?” I was actually fairly chill on this project because the more you perfect something, for me as an artist, people definitely prefer when I sound more DIY and raw. So I was trying to keep it as raw as possible.

I love how you flipped Nardo Wick’s “Who Want Smoke??” on “Noises.”

I love that song. I really like Nardo Wick and 21 Savage. I wasn’t even trying to use it until I was writing my song. I was like, “Oh, it would be cool to have a break in the beat where it’s the bass going [hits table].” They do the same thing. I was like, I might as well pay homage and put his voice in it. I actually wonder if he’s heard it and I wonder what he thought. He probably thought it was ass. I wanna know what he thinks. I wanna personally find out what he thinks. Obviously, it’s drum and bass now. It’s a whole different genre.

What do you think about your crossover popularity? How do you gauge it as far as your fans in the U.K. and your fans in the U.S.?

Even though my music is more genre-based in the U.K., I’d say I have more fans in America. I think in a weird way, the U.K. is more hip to drum and bass and the music I make, so me coming out after we’ve had a history of women that I’m influenced by — like Lily Allen and Imogen Heap, that’s where they were most respected and adored. I’d say the majority of British people are more used to my sound, so it’s probably not as much, “Whoa, what is this!,” as Americans are. [American] People in general speak of me as more an innovator or pioneer, whereas people in the U.K. will celebrate the fact I’ve been able to cross over and get the features I have. America’s just different”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Engman

Before getting to a review of Fancy That, I am moving to an interview from Vogue. This is someone who was not going to be boxed in. An artist who does not want to be famous or a huge star, she is authentic and focused on producing the best and truest music. I think she will continue to grow and evolve as an artist for many years:

“For her Fancy That era, she wanted to stay true to that spirit, and reflect how she really wears clothes in her daily life. “I actually think I dress very normal—I just don’t dress in a way that people think a pop star should dress,” she says. “One thing about me is I don’t do glam. I don’t know how to do glam. I don’t look good in a long dress or anything skimpy, and I don’t feel comfortable in anything sexier. I just haven’t realized that in myself yet—I think I’ll get there, but I’m still growing. So pretty much everything you see me wear is what I wear all the time.” Including, she explains, the tartan pattern that recurs across the mixtape’s visuals—and which, true to form, she’s wearing on a tank top when we speak. “Aesthetically, I led with that pattern, which ended up leading into some other British motifs—you’ve got some telephone boxes here and tea parties. The real word, I’d say, is kitsch. I tried to make it as kitsch as possible.”

Bottom of Form

Just take the video for “Tonight,” which sees PinkPantheress cavort through a stately home in a Marie Antoinette-worthy ruffled gown and stacks of pearls, the ringleader of a raucous house party—she describes it, accurately, as Bridgerton meets Skins. “I’ve just always really wanted to dress up like that,” she says, laughing. She also notes that the song and the video reflect the more self-assured state of mind she’s in now. “I’ve written so many songs about love, but a lot of them in the past have been from a mindset where the ball is in the other person’s court and I’m the one left in the lurch. Whereas with this one, I wanted to be like, No, I’m the one in control. You need to come to talk to me.”

Part of that newfound self-possession, it seems, is a result of having had the time last year to meditate on what she wanted from her career. One important goal? To show other young women—and especially young women of color—that they, too, can forge a career in electronic music. “The only woman of color I remember really seeing [doing that] was M.I.A.” she recalls. “There wasn’t really anyone at a very high level I could look at and say, oh, this is an alternative electronic woman who’s Black or biracial, and is also being recognized as such, and not boxed into this R&B category or boxed into a powerhouse soul vocal category. I think we’re set to this extremely high standard when it comes to genre and what we should stick to.”

Earlier that day, on the street in New York City, a teenage fan had come up to PinkPantheress and told her she was the reason she started producing. “I know it sounds cliché, but I do want to represent for those girls. Who want to do what I do and don’t feel like they need to feel pressured to be able to be perfect at dancing, look amazing all the time, have a curvaceous build, dress a certain way, have your wigs look amazing all the time…”

She pauses, before breaking into a glowing smile. “That’s why I want this project to reach new heights—because I want to be here for the alt girls who like me.” She may be a reluctant pop star, but that’s exactly what makes her one of the most interesting ones we have”.

I am finishing with a review from The Guardian. Providing their take on Fancy That, if you have not heard the mixtape from PinkPantheress, then you really do need to check it out now. An essential work from one of the U.K.’s most important artists. A big reason why I wanted to include her in this Modern-Day Queens feature. Someone I have been a fan of for years now:

“There’s something telling about the fact that PinkPantheress launched the first single from her second mixtape with a video boasting that it was 2:57 long. “Ion [I don’t] wanna see no more song length jokes,” ran the caption accompanying a brief video of her dancing to Tonight, a track that throws together a mass of musical reference points: a sample from US emo-rockers Panic! at the Disco stitched to a speedy four-to-the-floor house beat, a candy-sweet pop melody, a hefty bassline that suggests the influence of UK garage or drum’n’bass and a lyric that alludes to both Avril Lavigne’s Complicated and Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire.

Since the English singer-songwriter-producer first came to public attention in 2021, by posting snippets of the tracks she had made on a laptop in her halls of residence to TikTok, brevity has been her calling card: most of the songs that caused her commercial breakthrough lasted barely 90 seconds; one, Attracted to You, was over and done in 67. They garnered hundreds of millions of streams. Moreover, they were the first steps on an impressive commercial ascent that’s involved a major label deal, a succession of gold and platinum awards, a place on the Barbie soundtrack and invitations from Olivia Rodrigo and Coldplay to support them on tour. Perhaps inevitably, they also attracted criticism from people who viewed her less as a success story than a symptom: wilfully insubstantial, attention-deficit music befitting an era in which pop has lost its place as the basic substance of youth culture, an age when its primary function is just to burble briefly in the background of videos offering makeup tutorials and wellness tips.

There are definitely points during Fancy That where you wonder if PinkPantheress’s approach isn’t occasionally a little flimsy for its own good, most obviously on Stars, which borrows from Just Jack’s 2007 pop-house hit Starz in Their Eyes – a track she previously sampled on Attracted to You – and features a childlike vocal that smacks of irksome affectation. But far more often, you find yourself wondering whether her detractors’ criticisms might have less to do with her actual music than with sexism and snooty condescension. (If you want to survey PinkPantheress’s main audience, check out her 2022 Boiler Room appearance, which finds her performing surrounded by cameraphone-wielding teenage girls.)

Her bricolage approach to songwriting is fairly obviously that of someone raised with streaming’s decontextualised smorgasbord as their primary source of music. You can hear it in the way she leaps from one source to another, unburdened by considerations of genre or longstanding notions of cool, like someone compiling a personal playlist. Despite her tongue-in-cheek protestations about Tonight, Fancy That has a brief running time, dispatching nine tracks in 20 minutes. But during that short spell, she pilfers from Underworld’s brainy electronica and 00s pop star Jessica Simpson. She puts an obscure William Orbit track featuring vocals by the Sugababes next to rapper Nardo Wick’s US trap hit Who Want Smoke? and Romeo by UK house duo Basement Jaxx, who have acted as mentors to her.

There’s something infectious and gleeful about the way she stitches together her disparate influences into the frantic, neon-hued Noises or Nice to Know You, but her real skill lies in her ability to imprint her own identity on the results: the songs on Fancy That seldom feel like the sum of their parts. For all she’s fond of lifting other people’s immediately recognisable hooks – Stateside steals from Adina Howard’s Freak Like Me – PinkPantheress is fully equipped to craft earworm melodies of her own, as on the fizzy sugar rush of Illegal. Regardless of whether it was born out of a desire to attract an audience whose attention span has been shot by swiping, the succinctness of her songs seems less like evidence of insubstantiality than of a sharp writing talent: there are no longueurs, little room for indulgence, nothing extraneous.

It all hurtles by, so fast that you barely notice the odd song that doesn’t quite click, or that slips over the line that separates sweet from saccharine. The music on Fancy That feels simultaneously boiled down yet packed with ideas, fleeting but not lacking, familiar but fresh, focused less on making grand statements than with immediacy and unforced fun: all perennially good things for pop music to be. Clearly, PinkPantheress is a product of the current moment, with the accompanying concern about what happens when the current moment passes. But there’s something oddly timeless about her innate understanding of pop that suggests she might be fine”.

Go and follow the amazing PinkPantheress. If you are new to her music or are familiar with her, I cannot recommend her highly enough. This is a major talent who has decades ahead of her. Fancy That is the latest example of her distinct brilliance. It is going to be interesting to watch her next move. She will be seen as a future icon for sure. When writing those words, I type them…

WITHOUT a doubt.

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Follow PinkPantheress

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: What Is the Icon’s Best Ever Interview?

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

 

What Is the Icon’s Best Ever Interview?

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THIS is a subject…

that I have covered by referencing Kate Bush interviews. When thinking about all of the interviews that she has conducted through the years, which one is the absolute best? It is a subjective thing, but I always love the ones that she did around 1978. When The Kick Inside was released. There are some great interviews around 1985’s Hounds of Love. In terms of the types of interviews, there are those in print, in addition to those on radio and T.V. I know there are websites that collate Kate Bush websites but, in terms of prosperity and archiving, I do think there should be something more expansive and up to date. All the interviews from throughout the years. This brilliant website is invaluable when it comes to great print interviews. I am going to source one that is a particular favourite. I have been thinking of all the interviews Kate Bush has given. It must have been exhausting for her! Think how many she gave up to and including 1985. Bush was travelling all around the world and being pulled here and there. There are fewer long-form radio interviews in the earliest years. Some of the most expansive and deep ones were from 2005 and 2011. You get something from radio interviews that you can’t from print. Listening to Bush speaking with Mark Radcliffe in 2005 about Aerial. Or when she chatted with John Wilson and Lauren Laverne about 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. One thing that is common through the interviews is Kate Bush’s warmth, hospitality and intelligence. Always such an engaging interview subject. Maybe the very best are later ones where Bush gets to speak from her home.

She did not give a tonne of interviews for Aerial. There were more for Director’s Cut in 2011. Even more for 50 Words for Snow. When deciding which are the best interviews, I guess you have to take a lot of things into consideration. With Kate Bush, there is not going to be controversy or anything highly charged and confrontational. In terms of surprise moments or revealing big secrets. Instead, it is that bond between her and that interview. The types of questions that were asked. I am surprised there has not been a feature listening some of Bush’s best interviews. There were so many in 1978. It was her first professional year and things were pretty hectic. As an interviewee, I think Bush had this period where she was getting used to the media. How they behaved and the interview experience. Maybe she did become more guarded the more attention that came her way. Between 1982 and 1989, I think there was this growth. I have sourced so many interviews from that period. I am going to end with one from 1982 that, whilst not my all-time favourite, is a perfect example. Where Bush is confident and gives great answers. Maybe not all the questions are especially insightful or original. However, it was an important period where many had written her off. The Dreaming was almost a gamble in terms of its sound and the fact it arrived two years after Never for Ever. However, I am compelled to look harder and wider to find perfect interviews. I think, if I was to rank then, her chat with Mark Radcliffe in 2005 would be top three. There are some great ones from 1985, however, I think I would put a couple of print interviews from 1980 and 1989 in the top three too.

I am going to wrap up after dropping in this interview from Melody Maker conducted by Paul Simper. Such a vital year and one of so many interviews she was involved with in 1982, I do love reading some of the chats from that time. Having completed one of the most intense albums in terms of commitment and personal sacrifice, it must have been hard detaching from it:

“To some people Kate Bush has almost ceased to exist. Usurped on the bedroom walls young upstarts like Clare Grogan and Kim Wilde, she is now a much more private lady who rarely goes out and seems quite content to concentrate on her singing and dancing.

It's been two years since her last LP, Never For Ever, and though the single that followed "Sat In Your Lap", reached number 11, the recent commercial failure of "The Dreaming" has seen the undertakers beginning to shuffle and murmur impatiently.

Her new LP, The Dreaming, should keep the vultures at bay however. Drawing on far greater depths of emotion and a much wider range of cultural references from Australian art to forties B-movies - it is an indication of her coming of age, both artistically and professionally.

"I think it's the album I'm most happy with that I've completed. I went through all the problems and depression during the album and then ended up feeling quite pleased with it. In the past it's worked the other way around."

In every way it is a much more sharply focused and arresting LP. The cover, shot in autumnal shades of brown and gold, shows Kate clasping the head of a man bound in chains. In her mouth lies a tiny gold key.

"The idea of that image and the phrase on the back of the album, 'with a kiss I'd pass the key', is very much connected to the song "Houdini." That song is taken from Mrs. Houdini's point of view because she spent a lot of time working with him and helping with his tricks. One of the ways she would help was to give him a parting kiss, just as he was off into his watertank or whatever, and as she kissed him she'd pass a tiny little key which he would then use later to unlock the padlocks.

"I thought it was both a very romantic and a very sad image because, by passing that key, she is keeping him alive - she's actually giving him the key back into life."

The LP differs greatly in presentation to the fairytale ghouls and ghastlies of Never For Ever. What was the starting point this time?

"The last album was very much the starting point for this one. Perhaps the art work and some of the idea of Never For Ever were misconstrued because although they are very fairytale; on the cover they are meant to depict positive and negative emotions that are very much a part of human beings - that's really what a lot of my songs are about."

The Dreaming is an LP that mutates at an alarming rate. One minute you're playing walkabout in the outback, the next it's Vietnam and you're fighting for your life. But through the images are diverse and at times oblique, the sound - principally driven by menacing, pounding drums - is more consistent. It certainly owes much to Peter Gabriel's third LP which housed such resounding nightmares as "Biko" and "No Self Control".

"I'd been trying to get some kind of tribal drum sound together for a couple of albums, especially the last one. But really the problem was that I was trying to work with a pop medium and get something out of it that wasn't part of that set-up."

"Seeing Peter working in the Town House Studio, especially with the engineers he had, it was the nearest thing I'd heard to real guts for a long long time. I mean, I'm not into rhythm boxes - they're very useful to write with but I don't think they're good sounds for a finished record - and that was what was so exciting because the drums had so much power."

Another influence you're quoted before is Pink Floyd's The Wall, did you see the film?

"Yes. I've been very much influenced by The Wall because I like the way that the Floyd get right into that emotional area and work with sounds as pictures. I think the problem with the film though is that, although as a piece of art it is devastating, it isn't real enough. The whole film is negatively based. No once during Pink's life is there a moment of happiness which I know in every human's life there is. Even if you have the shittiest life of all there is always one little moment where you smile for a second or you fall in love with someone and feel happy - maybe only for ten minutes.

"In The Wall there is no compassion and no objectivity at all and I actually think that certain areas of that are destructive."

Although you've often written romantic songs - "Babooshka", "Wuthering Heights", "The Wedding List" [romantic??] - they've never been happy boy-meets-girl-and-lives-happily-ever-after affairs. Is that because of some private perversity?

"For me that's how real situations are? Whenever I've experienced a relationship, or the people around me have, it's always ended up being incredibly complicated because that's the way human beings are. Nothing is simple, it always ends up being something else or dying and that's what I find so interesting - the drive behind human beings and the way they get screwed up."

Like "Get Out Of My House"?

"The idea with that song is that the house is actually a human being who's been hurt and he's just locking all the doors and not letting anyone in. The person is so determined not to let anyone in that one of his personalities is a concierge who sits in the door, and says 'you're not coming in here' - like real mamma."

Listening to The Dreaming and Never For Ever the night before my interview with Kate the two LPs gradually revealed many lyrical similarities - the anti-war theme of "Breathing" and "Army Dreamers", which is continued on "Pull Out The Pin", for instance. One track, though, left me utterly bewildered - "Suspended In Gaffa"...

"Lyrically it's not really that dissimilar from "Sat In Your Lap" in saying that you really want to work for something. It's playing with the idea of hell. At school I was always taught that if you went to hell you would see a glimpse of God and that was it - you never saw him again and you'd spend the rest of eternity pining to see him. In a way it was even worse if you went to purgatory because you got the glimpse of God and you would see him again [??? but you] didn't know when. So it was almost like you had to sit here until he decided to com back.

"I suppose for me in my work, because it's such a sped up life and so much happens to you and you analyse yourself a lot, you see the potential for perhaps getting to somewhere very special on an artistic or a spiritual level and that excites me a lot. And it's the idea of working towards that and perhaps one day, when you're ready for that change, it's like entering a different level of existence, where everything goes slow-mo... it's almost like a religious experience. That's basically what the song's about."

Are you very religious or do you simply have a strong belief in yourself?

"I think I very much believe in the forces and energies that humans and other things which are alive can create. I do feel that what you give out sincerely then karmically you should get it back."

Time seems to have changed your thirst for knowledge. While in "Rolling The Ball" [sic - "Them Heavy People] you were overbrimming with the joys of gathering wisdom, on a track like "Sat In Your Lap" you appear a lot more impatient - "I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a scholar./But I really Can't be bothered, ooh just/Gimme it quick..."

"I think it's also about the way you try to work for something and you end up finding you've been working away from it rather than towards it. It's really about the whole frustration of having to wait for things - the fact that you can't do what you want to do now, you have to work toward it and maybe, only maybe, in five years you'll get what you're after.

"For me there are so many things I do which I don't want to - the mechanics of the industry - but I hope that through them I can get what I really want. You have to realise that, say, you can't just be an artist and not promote. If you're not a salesman for your work the likelihood is that people won't realise that it's there and eventually you'll stop yourself from being able to make something else. There's no doubt about it that every album I make is really dependant on the money I made from the last one."

Do you do a lot of reading?

"No, not really, because I just don't get the time. But whenever I do it really sparks things off in me. The last book I read was The Shining and it just blew me away, it was absolutely brilliant, and that definitely inspired "Get Out Of My House" because the atmosphere of the book is so strong."

Apart from the use of sound to conjure up very simple images you've also used list of names, like Minnie, Moony, Vicious, Buddy Holly, Sandy Denny on "Blow Away" and Bogart, Raft and Cagney on "There Goes A Tenner". Are they people you particularly admire or do you just like the strong images they create?

"They are people I like. For me, Cagney is one of the greatest actors that has ever been. I just couldn't believe his acting in White Heat.

"He's always played the boy who grew up in a hard time and in a way he was only ever bad because of the things that had influenced him. He comes across as a very human person who had the potential to do something great but was always misled."

"In that song the idea is that everyone's amateur robbers..."

Like the old Ealing comedies?

"Yeah, that's right. So it's like maybe they get a bit cocky... I dunno, I've never done a robbery, but I think that in a situation like that you'd almost try to be like the person you admire so perhaps they'd be like Cagney and George Raft. They idea was nothing like deep - it was just handy! The real challenge of that song was to make it a story but also keep it like a Thirties tune."

A couple of the songs on The Dreaming seem to draw heavily from film noir. "Night of the Swallow", the female is straight out of the awesome Barbara Stanwyck mould of Double Indemnity. She's a domineering, passionate woman who not only doesn't want her lover to risk his life trafficking refuges because of the danger to him, but because she wants him. At the end he pleads - "Would you break even my wings/Just like a swallow/Let me, let me go...”.

Everyone will have their own opinion regarding the ultimate Kate Bush interview. Perhaps it is impossible to distil it down to one. This year, we celebrate forty-five years of Never for Ever and forty years of Hounds of Love. Twenty years of Aerial. A chance to spotlight great interviews around those albums. I still have big affection for those 2011 interviews. The longer audio ones. I think that 1978 provided quite a nice range of interviews. However, thinking about the questions asked, perhaps not as standout as ones from years later. 1980 and 1982 especially interesting years. The T.V. interviews from those years must have been really exhausting. I never feel like Bush was comfortable on T.V. doing interviews. There were a few good examples. Her appearing on Multi Coloured Swap Shop in 1979. Her appearing on Terry Wogan’s chat show more than once. A lot of the earlier radio interviews were pretty brief or throwaway. Some rare nuggets like this 1980 interview with Paul Gambaccini is one that is brilliant as it allowed Bush the chance to talk about some of her favourite music rather than answer the same questions about her new music. I even think there is a book in it. One that focuses on the interviews and promotion. It would be amazing going chronologically and immersing ourselves in how Bush was interviews and how much she had to do. It would be good to know if anyone has a particular favourite Kate Bush interview. Looking through the years and how many interviews Kate Bush gave, it is clear that there are…

SO many to choose from.

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: The Prodigy – Music for the Jilted Generation

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

  

The Prodigy – Music for the Jilted Generation

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SOME might argue…

that there were better albums that was released in 1994. It was such a competitive and phenomenal year. However, the second studio album from The Prodigy reached number one in the U.K. and contains some of the best music from the band. I would advise people to buy the album on vinyl. I will end with a review for one of the defining albums of the '90s. I am going to start out with a few features about Music for the Jilted Generation. Thirty-one years after its release and this album is still inspiring artist and being shared. It is such an important work. I am going to start out with a CLASH feature from 2019. Marking twenty-five years of Music for the Jilted Generation, they heralded and ambitious and genre-busting classic:

“When ‘Music For The Jilted Generation’ was released in 1994, UK rave’s heyday was already waning. While hardcore splintered into clubs and subgenres, ‘Jilted’ instead revisited and re-energised the sound’s origins in hip-hop and punk rock. Producer Liam Howlett and dancer-MCs Flint and Maxim Reality promised not a return to the underground but an unholy matrimony of rave’s anarchic spirit and, well, everything and the kitchen sink.

Over 13 wildly different tracks, ‘Jilted’ swerves between the cinematic (on adrenaline-infused chase sequence ‘Speedway’) and the stadium (on rock-rave manifestos ‘Their Law’ and ‘Voodoo People’). Elsewhere, its final, three-part ‘Narcotic Suite’ finds Howlett furthest from his comfort zone, stretching rave tropes to urbane electronica (‘3 Kilos’) and sci-fi mind-benders ‘Skylined’ and ‘Claustrophobic Sting’.

End to end, the record tests the limits both of hardcore experimentalism and its original CD format – Howlett himself later regretting its 78-minute running time. Ambitious, yes. Interesting throughout, absolutely – though judge the flute solos on ‘3 Kilos’ for yourself.

Really, the power of the record shone through not on these high-minded outliers but on its string of hits – arguably the Prodigy’s finest, where Howlett’s craft reached new heights. ‘Jilted’ was packed full of hooks, even though few of them were what you’d call melodic.

Sure, there are tunes: the pitched-up vocals on ‘Break And Enter’ and ‘No Good (Start The Dance)’, the stadium-worthy shredding on ‘Their Law’. But take standout ‘Voodoo People’ for example: borrowing a two-tone riff from Nirvana’s ‘Very Ape’, it barely shifts from one note, and is the better for it. Even its anthemic synth part is more squelch and distortion than melody, as can also be said for the chainsaw-synth on ‘Poison’ – a slow motion sledgehammer blow of a record that squeezes endless musicality from a juggernaut breakbeat chassis.

It’s this weird alchemy of muted melody, texture and production tricks that stick in the brain. The magic of the Prodigy lies in these staccato, concentrated bursts of noise and energy, neatly described by Maxim’s refrain on ‘Poison’: a “pulsating rhythmical remedy”. But a remedy for what? Who jilted this generation? Sharp as edges, this album undoubtedly deepened rave’s affinity to anti-authoritarian punk”.

I am going to move to a feature from VICE. Writing in 2014, they marked twenty years of The Prodigy’s Music for the Jilted Generation. I remember when it came out in 1994. Launched at a time when music was arguably at its peak, it was like nothing I had heard before. Even now, the album takes me aback (in a good way). Maybe it is not as deep an album as many that was released at that time. However, it brought people together and captured imaginations. A unifying and startling brilliant album, we will be dissection and celebrating it for many years more:

“This is the world that Music for the Jilted Generation was precision-tooled to soundtrack. The Prodigy had already come punching and kicking into the dance world, both perfecting and satirising the sound of hardcore, “killing rave” (as an early Mixmag cover story had it), proving that performance and bolshey personality still had their place among the faceless DJs, and delivering an absolutely shit-hot album in The Prodigy Experience. But Music for the Jilted Generation was the perfect divestment of any last fucks given, a willfully uncool thrash-about that didn’t rely on allegiance to any of the micro-scenes now proliferating, but somehow provided some weird sort of negative unity across the whole proverbial generation; perfectly expressing the skunk-paranoia, vodka-swilling, bad-E’s collective “UGGGGHHH” that came after all the “Woo yeah, c’mon, let’s go!” of rave’s peak years.

They weren’t the first act to realise that to expand they’d need to break out of the scenes and habits of the dance world – bands like The Orb, Orbital, Fluke, The Shamen and even Aphex Twin were taking it to the arenas with big son-et-lumiere shows – but The Prodigy were the ones who really went at it like a big, bastard rock band. By bringing Pop Will Eat Itself (one of the few bands who’d really honed rock/dance crossover) on board for ‘Their Law’ they gave themselves a leg-up, but probably Liam Howlett could have set mosh pits churning anyway.

Early tracks like ‘Charley’ and ‘Everybody in the Place’ showed the first glimmers of an instinctive understanding of The Big Riff that was not about the hypnosis of techno, or even the hyper-stimulation of hardcore, but about dragging the music back into the fist-pumping, chant-along experience of rock music. For better or worse, they and their shows preempted everything that is big and brassy in 21st century EDM. Every new superstar DJ with huge LED shows, massive riffs and vertiginous drops, and most of all Skrillex, owes them a very substantial debt. 

Just like a lot of new EDM, Music for the Jilted Generation is basically very ugly. The pop-hardcore of The Prodigy Experience is still there: teeth gritted as tightly as ever, rock riffs expressing hard guitar music as full fat cheese, heading back towards the trash of Mötley Crüe and co. that grunge self-righteously decided to save us from, and the electronic elements all reach for the shiniest, most instant rush effects. If you listen now to ‘Start the Dance (No Good)’ you’ll hear how, for all its hardcore tempo and breakbeats, it sits as close to Faithless and Felix ‘Don’t you Want Me’ as anything you could describe as underground. Everything is on the surface. There’s nothing subtle from beginning to end – and that includes the disaffection that it expresses, which for all the pontificating about injustice of ‘Their Law’ is nothing more than that aforementioned “UGGGGGHHH” than any more sophisticated articulation of what it was to be alive in 1994.

All of which is precisely why it works. Nobody wanted political analysis or fine detail from Liam and his gang of dark clowns. We wanted to mosh. We wanted a racket that drowned out our tinnitus and picked us up in the same way that a bag of cheap speed did. And for all its negativity and steam-hammer unsubtelty, Music for the Jilted Generation created good times. The first time I ever saw The Prodigy live at a festival, I was in a bad mood. Darkly stoned and paranoid, I surrounded by a right old mix of people but notably a large contingent of football hooligans, banging back the lager, coke and GHB”.

Before getting to a review, I am going to get to a feature from Kerrang!. Writing in 2019, it is a brilliant feature that I would advise people to read in full. An album that you will definitely want to grab on vinyl, I wanted to go beneath the sleeve, as it were, an get the background and detail about one of the seminal albums of the 1990s. Music for the Jilted Generation is a work of genius:

“Rock music, you see, was pretty damn healthy in 1994, but it was evolving, as it always has. Around the mid-’80s the barriers between punk and metal came down, and thrash was born. Crossover, whatever the hell you want to call it. Two tribes that had previously been enemies in a very literal sense had come together, and by the ’90s more barriers were falling. The unthinkable was becoming, well, thinkable. This is especially true of the Judgment Night soundtrack of 1993, which saw such improbable collaborations as Slayer and Ice-T, Biohazard and Onyx, Faith No More and Boo-Ya T.R.I.B.E, Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill, metal and hip-hop colliding in the most unlikely ways, to result in something that was undeniably brilliant. Opening doors that were impossible to close again.

And then there was the dance/techno scene waaay off over there in a field of its own, perhaps best summed up by the cartoon in Viz magazine of Ravey Davey dancing around a car alarm. Granted, the field in which they resided was the cause of national headlines and moral outrage due to illegal raves, which ultimately led to the so-called Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, a knee-jerk reaction that prohibited such gatherings, restricting – among other things – the right to freedom of assembly, with bizarre references to 'repetitive beats'. But while this was a concern to any right-minded rock fan, the music was not.

The Prodigy, meanwhile, were massive on the dance scene. Their 1992 debut album Experience is considered a classic of the genre, but songwriter Liam Howlett, having conquered that scene, was growing bored with it and looking for fresh challenges. Due to the eclectic nature of European festivals, they had shared stages with the likes of Rage Against The Machine, Suicidal Tendencies, and Biohazard, and they wanted some of that energy. As MC Maxim Reality put it, “We're used to parties where kids get carried over the barrier now and again, but suddenly there's a sea of people jumping around and stage diving! It was unbelievable!”

So began the change to a heavier sound, Liam sampling rock guitars and recruiting guitarist Jim Davies, a Pantera fanatic who would beef up the live sound on tracks like Voodoo People and Their Law. But still the rock world was clueless. Maybe a handful of rock fans – literally a handful – were aware that something cool was going on, but to the rest The Prodigy were assumed to be little more than a joke, if we're completely honest.

That The Prodigy somehow ended up being championed by Kerrang! was almost entirely accidental. In June ’95, a full year after the release of Jilted Generation, I went to Glastonbury festival pretty much on a whim. It was hot and sunny that year. Skunk Anansie and the Black Crowes were playing... it seemed like a good idea at the time. By Friday night, having imbibed a few substances, my friends and I were in party mode. A couple of them wanted to check out The Prodigy and I didn't want to watch Oasis, so I went along with them. What I witnessed for the next hour was utterly mind-blowing!

“Who came here to rock?” demanded Maxim. Well, 'I did,' I thought, 'But it's not going to happen with you lot.' Oh, how little I knew. And then this punk rock nutter, later known to all of us as the late and very great Keith Flint, came charging across the stage in a hamster ball, the band kicked into Break And Enter, and the place went fucking nuts! By Monday morning I was demanding that we put them in Kerrang!.

In hindsight, The Prodigy were still very much a dance band, yet to make the full transition to rock, and Jilted Generation is a dance album, albeit a very good one, with just a couple of rock tracks. It's no wonder we got death threats for covering them. But, also in hindsight, there are elements here that are not too far from the trance vibe of Hawkwind, and, in some ways, it was inevitable that the energy of dance music would eventually seep into the rock scene. Killing Joke had flirted with dance beats on the Pandemonium album of ’94 and they were not alone. The big difference was that The Prodigy had the audacity to do it the other way around and to do so entirely on their own terms.

“I don't look at the music as techno, anyway,” said Liam at the time. “It's Prodigy music, ’cause we don't limit ourselves.”

Music For the Jilted Generation is still groundbreaking, and The Prodigy remain one of a kind”.

I will end with a review from the BBC. There are some many positive reviews for Music for the Jilted Generation. I don’t know if I have done it justice, but I would once again encourage anyone reading to go and listen to the album. Own it if you can. There are other great features like this that give more detail and insight into the album. In 2003, David Bowie named it (the album) among his favourite music from the 1990s. Music for the Jilted Generation has been voted among the best albums ever by several publications:

“It was their chart-topping 1996 single, “Firestarter”, that first took up lighter and aerosol and burnt the name of The Prodigy – and the piercing-covered gurn of Keith Flint – onto the national consciousness. But if you want to mark the point this gang of Essex ravers first learnt to unite the chemical rush of acid house and the anti-authority attitude that had hitherto been the preserve of black-clad anarcho-punks like Crass and their ilk, not loved-up glowstick twirlers, look back a couple of years to their 1994 album Music For The Jilted Generation.

Recorded against the backdrop of the Criminal Justice Act, the ’94 legislation that effectively criminalised outdoor raving – ‘How can the government stop young people from having a good time?’, reads a note on the inner sleeve –Music… simmers with righteous, adrenalised anger, rave pianos and pounding hardcore breakbeats augmented by gnarly punk guitar, wailing sirens and on “Break And Enter”, the sound of shattering glass. At no point is this merely a band coasting on edgy vibes and bad attitude, though; rather, this is a record that saw Prodigy mainman Liam Howlett maturing as a producer, increasing his palette of sounds and instruments without diluting The Prodigy’s insolent rush, and simultaneously smash ’n’ grabbing from a diverse range of influences that would be neatly integrated into the band’s design.

On “Their Law”, a guesting Pop Will Eat Itself supply a vitriolic vocal aimed at the powers that be. The knuckle-scraping guitar riff from Nirvana’s “Very Ape” forms the scuzzy chassis to the flute-augmented ‘Voodoo People’. And “No Good (Start The Dance)”, with its Kelly Charles vocal hook, proves that despite The Prodigy’s punk snarl, their pop impulse remained intact.

Best track here, though, is the immortal call-and-response track “Poison”, marking MC Maxim Reality’s on the microphone. And in a surprising nod to the emerging phenomenon of the chill-out room, Howlett divides the album’s final three tracks off into “The Narcotic Suite”, a spacey, synthesiser-powered closing stretch that closes the album like a valium comedown. Anyone who called The Prodigy a one-trick pony clearly never heard this”.

I am not sure which album I am going to focus on for the next Beneath the Sleeve. It will be very different to Music for the Jilted Generation! An album that came out when I was eleven and definitely made an impression on me, a whole new generation are discovering it. When it comes to this 1994 sonic explosion and revolution, there are few other albums…

THAT equal it.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Hannah Laing

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Hannah Laing

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THE incredible…

Dundee D.J. and producer Hannah Laing is getting a lot of love right now. And quite rightly! One of the biggest and brightest talents around, I am a little late to her wonder. For this Spotlight, I will end by bringing in a couple of recent interviews. Before that, a little bit of biography before getting to an interview/feature from last year. Let’s get some background for this superstar-in-the-making:

“Having cemented herself as a true maven of the peak time banger via a series of high-energy features on the likes of Solardo’s Sola, Patrick Topping’s TRICK, Jax Jones Presents and Spinnin’ Records, a succession of sell-out club nights under her own outfit, plus upcoming shows at the likes of DC10 and Warehouse Project — it’s hard to look away from Dundee born-and-raised DJ and producer Hannah Laing’s unstoppable trajectory to the top. Rapturous new single ‘Climax’ on WUGD joins a slew of big room, blissed-out anthems spanning house, techno and everything in between — including her knockout 2019 bootleg of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s iconic 2001 hit ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’, a rework that earned Laing global acclaim and the notice of some of the biggest names in the business, including FISHER who dropped the track during most sets in 2019. Having caught the attention of BBC Radio 1’s Pete Tong, Danny Howard, JAGUAR and Sarah Story, she made her BBC Introducing debut at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in May 2022. She has still found time to develop her own podcast and club night: Hannah’s Choice — with guests such as Hannah Wants, Marc Kinchen, Jax Jones and Ben Helmsley. Hannah credits her prowess as a DJ to her time hustling as an Ibiza resident, having landed her first regular spot at a Scottish bar in San Antonio at the tender age of 19 — going on to play at island institutions DC-10, Amnesia and Hï. This daily grind as DJ — bringing in guests and keeping the energy high no matter how many bodies were on the dancefloor — has given her a keen ability to stretch and manoeuvre a room, ensuring every performance is unique and reactive. Having been raised on a diet of Paul Oakenfold, Roger Sanchez and a treasure trove of Hedkandi cassette tapes — all from archives of her rave-loving parents, Laing doesn’t remember a time when she wasn’t surrounded by dance music. Her first encounter with the club was at age 15, an experience that fundamentally affected Laing’s musical outlook; she recalls watching on eagerly as Dave Pearce dropped trance classics such as Delirium’s ‘Silence’. From that day on, Hannah had caught the bug, gaining her first ever DJ gig at 18 at a tiny pub in Arbroath attended by a coach load of her friends and family — from here, she took every opportunity to show off her skills with both hands: weddings, baby showers, birthdays… you name it. Her move from mixing to making music came about through a mixture of opportunity and dedication, first by chance having heard about a fellow Ibiza worker who was giving lessons to budding producers on Ableton — becoming so engrossed in her tuition, she dedicated every day off she had on the island to learn the new skill. Once back in Scotland, she signed up for a course at Escapade Studios and also works with longtime friend Erskine Audio — transitioning from looping basics to full-blown breakdown ecstasy, all with a dancefloor destination in mind”.

Fifteen Questions spent some time with Hannah Laing last year around the release of their E.P., Into the Doof. Despite the fact I am relatively fresh to Laing and her work, it has been important looking back at interviews and her previous work. So many eyes are on her right now. It is clear that she is conquering the world:

“Do you think that some of your earliest musical experiences planted a seed for your interest in DJing?
For sure. Every time I would go to a rave, I would always wonder what it felt like to be on the other side. So it was inevitable that sooner or later I was gonna get my first set of decks!

I have always loved club music, but I was not initially a dancer very much. What was this like for you? How does being – or not being – a passionate dancer influence the way you deejay?

For me being a raver first helped me massively. I still rave on the dancefloor as much as possible.
Knowing how people behave on the dancefloor influences me for when I’m creating tension when DJing. I love being able to create long build ups or play those ‘ moment ‘ tracks at the right time.

How would you describe the experience of DJing, physically and mentally? Do you listen – and deejay - with your eyes open or closed?

DJing is the only time I feel fully switched off from the noise of the outside world. It is truly the best feeling in the world for me. Everyone connecting through music. I love knowing what I’m going to play next and seeing the reaction of each track on the dancefloor!
I always play with my eyes open as I love engaging with the crowd and watching everyone having fun.

Collaboration is a key part of almost every aspect of music making, but it is stil rare in DJing. Do you have an idea why this is? Tell me about your own views on back-to-back DJing, interactions with live musicians or other forms of turning DJing into a more collective process.

I think back to back DJing is great, there’s nothing better than seeing artists you love being their own sound and style of DJing together. This brings a fresh, unique vibe to the dancefloor. I also love seeing the energy of the DJs bouncing off each other”.

In the first of two interviews from The Skinny, we get to know more about Hannah Laing’s past. How she was a dental nurse that became a D.J. However, it was not a case of her being a success right away. There was this transition and progress. She is definitely going to inspire others who want to be a D.J. or producer and perhaps do not have a background in music or are taking the unusual path:

“For anyone needing a much-needed shot of adrenaline this summer, you should seek out Laing’s latest EP, Into the Bounce, which is the first in a trilogy of EPs dedicated to the genres that have helped shape Laing's sound. The focus of the three-tracks on Into the Bounce is techno, with Laing’s Pedicure Princess the record’s synthetic, gurgling centre-piece. Bookending Pedicure Princess are Love Is A Drug, made with in-demand London DJ Charlie Sparks, and OMG, made in collaboration with French producer Shlømo. We're told the next two EPs in the series will explore hard house and trance.

Laing has a busy couple of days coming up. Into the Bounce is released on Friday 4 July and Doof the Park, Laing’s dance festival in Camperdown Park near Dundee, takes place the following day, with Laing in the headline slot. Ahead of all that, she tells us more about her love for techno, her collaboration process and her previous career as a dental nurse.

Your career has been pretty well documented thus far. I’m fascinated by the fact you used to be a dental nurse – how has the career change been suiting you? Is there anything you miss about life before you were working full-time in music? Or is there anything you’ve found particularly hard/amazing since making the transition?

The change has been mad, but amazing – I’ve worked so hard for this, and I’m really grateful to be doing what I love full time now. I have to say I do miss the structure of a "normal" job sometimes, though! When I was a dental nurse, I had a proper routine and a set finish time. Now it’s 24/7 - especially with touring, producing and running Doof stuff. It’s intense, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. The best part is meeting fans all over the world who connect with what I’m doing – that’s the bit that makes it all worth it.

For a lot of people, it seems like you were an overnight success story, but that’s simply not the case – you’ve grafted and grafted. What advice would you give to others trying to make the same transition into a full-time career in music?

Yeah, people might only see the last year or two, but this has been like a decade of graft. My advice would be: don’t wait for someone to give you permission. If you love it, go for it and be relentless. Find your sound, build your own community and stay consistent. Also – be a good person. So much of this industry runs on trust and relationships. Talent’s important, but how you treat people matters just as much.

You’re just about to release Into the Bounce, the first in a trilogy of EPs celebrating techno, hard house and trance. On Into the Bounce you celebrate the relentless world of techno. How did you get into techno? What is it about the genre that you love so much, and who are some of the techno artists that have inspired you over the years?

Techno was honestly one of the first genres I fell in love with. I remember hearing it for the first time and just being like – what is this?! It’s music you feel in your chest. Artists like Amelie Lens, Dax J, Nina Kraviz and I Hate Models were big influences early on. I also love the newer wave like Charlie Sparks and Shlømo, which made working with them on the EP even more exciting”.

I will end with a new interview from The Guardian. However, I will come to another feature from The Skinny. The more we learn about Hannah Laing, the more fascinating she is! Someone who has so many sides to her. If you have not followed her or checked out any of her work, then make sure that you do so now. The future is going to be long and bright for her:

“Who was your hero growing up?

Avril Lavigne. She was such a huge inspiration to me when I was younger. Her music spoke to me in a way that no other artist did at the time. I loved how she stayed true to herself and didn’t try to fit into a mould. Her songs were full of emotion and authenticity, and I still listen to them now with so much nostalgia.

Whose work inspires you now?

Amelie Lens, not just because I love her music, but because she’s such a good mum while still holding down a crazy touring schedule, which blows my mind! She proves that you can be successful in music while also maintaining a personal life, which is something I really admire. Her sets are always top-tier, and she has an incredible energy that makes her stand out. I also love how dedicated she is to her craft, constantly evolving and pushing boundaries.

What’s your all-time favourite album?

Definitely Maybe by Oasis. It never gets old, no matter how many times I listen to it. There’s something timeless about it – the attitude, the raw sound and the lyrics all just hit perfectly.

What’s your all-time favourite album?

Definitely Maybe by Oasis. It never gets old, no matter how many times I listen to it. There’s something timeless about it – the attitude, the raw sound and the lyrics all just hit perfectly”.

What’s your favourite plant?

Cactus.

What’s one item you wish you could take to a music festival?

An Oodie for when it’s freezing at night. Festivals are amazing, but once the sun goes down, it can get so cold, and there’s nothing worse than shivering when you’re trying to enjoy the music. An Oodie would be a game-changer!”.

Even though Hannah Laing has played around the world and it is important to reach out to fans abroad, there is nothing as rewarding as giving back to her community. Recently, the D.J. curated a festival in her hometown called Doof in the Park. It was an amazing occasion by all accounts. The Guardian caught up with a major talent. Her new E.P., Into the Bounce, is tremendous. Among the best of this year:

“While hard dance is often derided or ignored in the media and polite society, Laing’s music – insistent, almost aggressively euphoric – has a large and committed following: 2.7 million people listen to her each month on Spotify and Doof in the Park sold out its 15,000 tickets within a week. Across the festival site there are hundreds of fans in merch from her Doof record label, as well as bootleg efforts including handmade Doof earrings and customised Uniqlo crossbody bags; one man has “Doof” shaved into the side of his head.

Laing wryly describes her rise as “10 years of overnight success”. Even after landing her first Ibiza residency in 2014, she was juggling DJing with her day job as a dental nurse. “I was playing at the weekend then going straight to work on a Monday,” she remembers. “There came a point when I was doing interviews with the BBC in my surgery. I was getting a lot of gigs but still doing lots for free, and I never thought I could make a living from it.” She eventually quit her job in 2022, after a breakthrough set at Creamfields. “I was on first on Sunday at 2pm and didn’t know if anyone would show up, but there were over 10,000 people there and tons of Scottish flags,” she says. “I’d been building up this reputation in Scotland, and when I got that big opportunity, everyone came out to support me.”

“She’s one of us,” says Lisa, who has travelled to the Doof in the Park from Aberdeen with her friend Shona. Like Laing, Lisa is in her early 30s and grew up going to raves. “She’s been brought up like us. She’s a normal girl who’s done well for herself.”

In 2024, Laing launched her label, named after the “doof doof” rhythm of her music. This summer, she’s playing a residency at one of Ibiza’s most sought-after clubs, Hï, and releasing her techno-influenced Into the Bounce EP.

She credits her taste – “hard house, trance, music that really makes me feel something” – to her parents, 90s ravers whose generation make up a significant part of her audience. “It’s a great feeling when people who properly know their stuff come and say: ‘You got me out of retirement!’” she says. “Also when my mum comes to see me, she doesn’t feel old.”

This is very much the case at Doof in the Park. “I’m 53 and I thought I’d be the oldest here, but I’m not,” says Claire from Johnstone, accompanied by her 20-year-old daughter. “I’m 51 and I’ve been doing this for years,” adds Natalie from Aberdeen. “There’s such a mix of ages and everyone’s so friendly.” Natalie’s niece Carla has been following Laing for years, and emphasises the inclusive community she is building, which extends to the access support at the festival. “Sometimes, if you’re sick like me, you can’t go to stuff, but the accessibility team have been fantastic,” she says. “They gave me a direct phone number if I needed anything on the day. It’s all been thought out”.

I am going to finish up now. I have so much respect for Hannah Laing. I love her story and where she came from, but I love more her sheer passion and drive! We are going to see her go from strength to strength for years to come. I was really excited and keen to spend some time bringing in some great interviews with Hannah Laing. Putting this incredible D.J. and producer…

UNDER the spotlight.

____________

Follow Hannah Laing

FEATURE: Toxic: Inside Sophie Gilbert’s Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves

FEATURE:

 

 

Toxic

  

Inside Sophie Gilbert’s Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves

__________

I am going back…

IN THIS PHOTO: Sophie Gilbert

a few months or so (the book was released on 1st May). There is a chance that some music fans might have missed Sophie Gilbert’s Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. Not that this book exclusively looks inside the 1990s and 2000s and what it was like for women in music. It is no secret that, when it comes to how women were portrayed in music and film during that decade, there was massive misogyny and sexism. Women reduced to objects and hyper-sexualised. It was an awful time I look back on with regret. I was coming out of my teens and embracing new music. I was not really aware of just how bad it was for women. That seems a bit vague and non-specific. I think a lot of today’s best Pop music nods back to artists of the '90s and '00s who were blazing a trail. Spending some time discussing that and so much more, Sophie Gilbert’s new book is illuminating and often shocking. I would compel anyone who has not picked it up to order it. I am going to end with a review of the book. I will also include a few interviews with Gilbert. Before that, this is what Waterstones had to say about Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves:

“'Fascinating and powerfully argued' Daily Telegraph

'A captivating must-read for anyone who wants to understand how and why misogyny is as powerful a force as ever' KATE MANNE, author of Down Girl

Cosmetic surgeries are at an all-time high, Ozempic is bringing back 'heroin chic' and TikTok trad-wives are on the rise - after four waves of feminism, what went wrong?

Despite decades of progress, the gains of the feminist movement feel more fragile than ever. But as Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert points out, this is not a unique moment. Feminism felt just as fragmented in the early 2000s, when the momentum of third-wave feminists and riot grrrls was squashed by lad culture and the commodification of Girl Power.

Casting her eye across pop culture of the past thirty years - from Madonna, the Spice Girls and the Kardashians, to MySpace, #GirlBoss and Real Housewives - Sophie Gilbert reveals a toxic pattern of progress and misogynistic backlash. Girl on Girl shows how every form of media, heavily influenced by the rise of porn, has shaped and warped women's relationships with themselves and other women.

We cannot move forward without fully reckoning with the ways pop culture has defined us - this book shows us how.

'Add this book to the list of titles that urgently provide context and answers to the hell storm that is [vaguely waves around] everything going on right now' HARPER'S BAZAAR”.

Sophie Gilbert looks at various different corners of '90s and '00s culture and the arts. I will filter it down to music mainly, because that is my main interest. However, it is important to realise the extent of misogyny and how it blunted feminism’s third wave. DAZED spoke with Gilbert back in April. The more I find out about the book and how Sophie Gilbert shines a light on the exploitation and abuse of women. I will expand in a minute. However, I want to bring in these sections of the interview:

“The things we watch, listen to, read, wear, write, and share dictate in large part how we internalise and project what we’re worth,” writes Sophie Gilbert in Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. Chronicling the transition from the 1990s to 2000s, which was psychologically violent and sexually exploitative for many women who were part of the pop culture machine, Gilbert calls for a “reappraisal”. She wonders what this moment reflexively did to us as spectators: “How did it condition us to see ourselves? And, maybe more crucially, what did it condition us to think about other women…?”

The reappraisal is implemented with assists from works like Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs and Chris Kraus’ introduction to Pornocracy, alongside Gilbert’s own examinations of Abercrombie & Fitch, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Issa Rae, Sheryl Sandberg, Amy Winehouse, Nora Ephron, Taylor Swift, Anna Nicole Smith, the Spice Girls, Lil’ Kim and Hilary Clinton. Every form of media is probed, from reality TV (Celebrity Big Brother) to oversharing bloggers (Gawker) to the beginning of live streaming (Jennicam) to unthinkable trends (paparazzi upskirt photos). We spoke with Gilbert – a longtime staff writer at The Atlantic – about charged words (“empowering”, “gaslighting”, etc), the ingenuity of Lena Dunham, and the utility of scrutinising recent history.

You have packed so many references in this book. Did you create a syllabus for yourself? How did you pull all these things together?

Sophie Gilbert: When I wrote the proposal, I knew I wanted to have each chapter focus on a different form of media. The research took a year and a half. I did end up re-watching a lot of the TV shows, a lot of the movies. People have asked if I watched a lot of porn, and I did not, but only because here in the UK I have very tough restrictions on what I can access with my internet.

Relative to Catherine Breillat’s work, you wonder ‘whether or not someone can replicate abusive imagery in order to explore what it means — without falling into its trap’. That is such a powerful inquiry. Can you unpack that?

Sophie Gilbert: It’s really complicated. In the 90s, because of the internet, suddenly sex was everywhere, in a way that it had not typically been in the 20th century. What happened in the shift from 90s to 2000s media is that you can see provocation go from an intellectual exercise to a commercial one. One of the things that thoughtful artists always try to do is respond to culture, to systems of power, and to the relationship between the two.

In the chapter about Catherine Breillat, I mentioned Lena Dunham as well, because I think she’s doing the same thing with pornography, which is presenting the tropes in a way where they’re almost defanged by provocation, where rather than being ‘turned on’ by this sort of fairly monstrous power dynamic, you’re looking at it with fresh eyes because of how it’s being presented. That’s very hard to do”.

I was fortunate enough to see Sophie Gilbert speak with journalist and broadcaster, Pandora Sykes. They were hosting a Trouble Club event in promotion of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. Some of the exchanges really took me back. How young women in music and film, if they were getting close to the legal age of consent, were put on a radar. Magazines and radio stations counting down the days. It turns the stomach! Although we have made steps forward, I think we forget how things were. We often see the 1990s and 2000s with rose-tinted glasses. Pandora Sykes’s Substack post is an interview with Sophie Gilbert. One of the most harrowing parts of the Trouble Club event was Sophie Gilbert discussing how Britney Spears was treated by the media:

“You cite three key motivating factors for the book, which all took place in 1999: Britney Spears on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, aged 17; the release of American Beauty (which won 5 Oscars); and Gail Porter being projected, nude, onto The Houses of Parliament.

I was thinking that you could actually find a crucial cultural event—one which had significant effects on popular culture and women’s rights and safety—every single year of the 90s: Lorena Bobbit chopping off her abusive husband’s penis, in 1993; Clinton and Lewinsky in 1995; the murder of JonBenét Ramsay in 1996 (covered in horrifying detail by The National Enquirer etc); Pamela Anderson’s sex tape in 1997. These really splashy, lurid, pop-culture moments, which I didn’t really understand as a form of violence until I was well into adulthood.

You’re so right, the 90s were this really provocative decade. One person who spoke to me for the book theorised that this was because, after AIDS, there was a need to be explicit about sex in a way that had been hushed up in culture before. It was a matter of public safety, there was a need to discuss condoms and safe sex. That mandated this quite graphic treatment in culture. I’m not sure it wholly explains what happened over the course of the 90s. One event that you didn’t mention—and this was how I learned what oral sex was; sorry to my step-mother in the audience—is Hugh Grant being arrested, in 1995.

That mugshot—I can recall it in detail. Let’s go back to your three totems, and let’s start with Britney who arrived in 1997, aged 16. She was so emblematic of the paradox of this age: she had to look super sexy, but be a virgin. When Justin Timberlake revealed they had had sex, it basically trashed her career.

The pop stars at this time were a conflation of both New Traditionalism and New Voyeurism. They were expected to dance and perform sexually—their appeal was all in how well they performed sex—but they were absolutely not supposed to have sex, because that would not sell to America. So it was this really impossible bargain.

Chris Moyles offering on live radio to take Charlotte Church’s virginity when she turned 16.

It was really licensed by the culture, then, in a way it is—thankfully—not now.

I made an audio doc about Britney Spears in 2021, and one of things I found most shocking to revisit as an adult, is the archive footage of her smashing the car with her umbrella. She was only in her mid 20s. She had two kids under 1. (Her sons are only 11 months apart.) She was breaking up with her husband. And she had 30 men chasing her, day in day out, screaming profanities at her, for over five years. I cried re-watching the clip.

Two kids, she’s not yet 25, she has postpartum depression, her husband is suing her for custody. Everyone is critiquing her for being a bad mother because in one photo she almost dropped one of her kids. What’s almost worse, is that the condition of her being accepted back again [into pop-culture prime] is that she performs this sexy dance at the VMAs. And that she performs it sexily enough that everyone goes, okay, Britney! You can come back. And then when she comes out in the bikini, and she kind of shuffles through the moves, everyone was incredibly cruel to her, because it was just seen as more confirmation of her failure, her failure at fulfilling this impossible role”.

I am highlight a few of the many interviews around Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. Sections that caught my eye. I would urge people to do more reading. I was eager to spotlight this book as I think we have not made the progress we should. How many women are judged and criticised for being sexual or what others think as ‘controversial’. It is a very relevant and timely book in many ways. Vogue interviewed Sophie Gilbert in April:

“I was struck by the phases of erasure that occurred across types of media, particularly in music. You write, “Women in music in the 1990s were angry and abrasive and thrillingly powerful. And then, just like that, they were gone—replaced by girls.” Are we still there?

There have been so many emerging women artists who just absolutely do not limit themselves or their self-expression, even when they get censured for it. Like Sabrina Carpenter being critiqued for being sexual onstage at her shows because children attend, as though sexuality hasn’t been a fundamental—and fun!–part of her music since she hit adulthood. Or Chappell Roan being totally unfiltered in interviews and presenting this really thrilling, vibrant exploration of sex that’s totally uninterested in what men might want. Or Doechii being maligned for expressing her dating preferences. These women are getting an awful lot of flak for being honest about who they are, but they’re not retreating, and they’re winning awards and selling out more and more shows. And they’re not beholden to what a man in a corner office wants them to do. That looks like progress.

It’s hard to consider the depiction or representation of women without factoring in the real and increasingly omnipresent notion of celebrity. How has it changed over time?

This was one of the most interesting developments in the book for me—the ways in which celebrity changed throughout the 2000s, and what that shift did to the rest of us. In the 20th century, people could achieve tabloid renown without having any particular skill set, but in the 21st, suddenly there was all this space to fill in gossip magazines and infinite space online, and so women who were willing to go to the right places, pose for the cameras, or open up their entire lives to a film crew, became famous just for letting themselves be seen. Being willing to be visible became a viable path to fame. What changed in the 2000s, and what persists now, is the tease that virtually anyone can become famous if they honor all the conditions. The question is, is it worth it?”.

I am going to end with a review of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves from The Guardian. I hope I have done enough to convince those who are not familiar with the book and Sophie Gilbert to seek it out. As a music journalist and someone who grew up in the ‘90s and ‘00s, I was perhaps too young or naïve to realise how things were. How damaging it was. Maybe being so romantic and idealistic about a time in pop culture that was particularly toxic towards and for women:

“Gilbert writes that popular culture is invariably “calibrated to male desire”, which has ushered in “cruelty and disdain” towards 51% of the population, particularly if they are not white. Women are told they’re never good enough, but better can be bought: contouring, surgical enhancement and dieting sell an ideal that “can’t actually be humanly attained” but can be purchased, now with a single click. Getting by as a woman in post-feminist times means not taking apparently misogynistic music, art and TV too seriously, while women are being exploited, mocked and assaulted in plain sight, as #MeToo belatedly attested. When porn is everywhere, most worryingly on the phones of primary school children, no wonder 38% of women in the UK said they experienced “unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during sex”. The blokeish “irony-as-defence motif”, which nudges women to be in on the gag, denies the truth that sexist and racist cultural products profoundly change the way society thinks about women and therefore how women are treated.

Are there any solutions? Gilbert’s writing pays tribute to feminist texts that came before her, from Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth, Susan Faludi’s Backlash and Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs, to Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror and Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex, all of which are quoted at length. While Girl on Girl focuses on where pop culture has gone wrong for women, I enjoyed Gilbert’s praise for Madonna, Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti and Chris Kraus’s resistant voices, and her book would have benefited from more. In her conclusion about potential bulwarks against women’s dehumanisation, Gilbert starts to make an intriguing argument about romantic love as a force of gender equality and respect, but this runs out of steam.

When Gilbert was pitching Girl on Girl, potential editors wanted more of her first-person voice. She felt “conflicted” about female confessional writing, and refused. The result is that Gilbert retreats from voicing her full indignation. She insists she’s “not interested in kink-shaming, and not remotely opposed to porn”, even while diagnosing porn as an unquestionable source of harm to women. Moreover, Gilbert doesn’t describe the conditions under which porn can be a force for good, which seems important to know in order to decide when to be what the scholar Sara Ahmed has called a feminist killjoy: “someone who speaks out about forms of injustice, who complains, who protests, who says no”. I finished Girl on Girl struck by Gilbert’s skilful marshalling of evidence and elegant writing, but looking for a bolder claim about where the real problem lies and what can be done about it”.

One of this year’s most important and essential books, go and grab a copy of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. After hearing Sophie Gilbert speak and discuss writing the book, it did affect me and open my eyes! Though we are not quite in the same dark days as experienced in the '90s and '00s, are women in pop culture and especially music have a better experience? The latest work from the amazing Sophie Gilbert is something…

EVERYONE needs to read.

FEATURE: Music Can Be Such a Revelation: Madonna’s Into the Groove at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

Music Can Be Such a Revelation

  

Madonna’s Into the Groove at Forty

__________

THOUGH it is has a later…

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Francesco Scavullo

U.S. release date, Madonna’s Into the Groove was released in the U.K. on 15th July, 1985. I wanted to mark forty years of a song that is seen as one of her defining cuts. Perhaps her very best track. A year before her True Blue album was released, Madonna had this run of incredible singles that pushed her work forward and cemented her name as the Queen of Pop. In terms of Into the Groove, this was not originally on a studio album. It initially featured in the 1985 film, Desperately Seeking Susan. Written and produced with Stephen Bray, it was inspired by the dance floor and Madonna's attraction to a Puerto Rican man. To mark forty years of a classic that is one of the defining songs of the 1980s, I am going to explore some features. In 2012, The Guardian voted for the best number one singles. Madonna’s Into the Groove came in first. They asked whether there had been a hotter summons to the dancefloor than this song:

“I was three when this single first came out and, by all accounts, grooving my chubby limbs and waddling across the kitchen lino, hypnotised by Madonna. That dishevelled perm, the armful of rubber, her lace leggings and – my God – this song. Had there ever been a hotter summons to the dancefloor than Into The Groove? It was the soundtrack to her first (and last) great cinema moment, and the beginning of my decade-long pop crush. Madonna was never the best singer or dancer, but she transcended the need to be either. Even now, when I'm (almost) 30, in a post-Gaga world, the chorus still gets me. It makes me believe the inane truth that "only when I'm dancing can I feel this free", and reminds me with that irresistible bridge – improvised on the spot by Madonna in the studio – that plenty of songs have celebrated both dancing and sex, but few have done it this well”.

In 2022, Dig! looked at the story behind Into the Groove. The bestselling of her U.K. hits, the single was the moment when Madonna’s name and fame spread to all corners of the globe. She became an unstoppable and peerless Pop artist! Even now, Into the Groove sound so infectious and fresh. You can hear artists of today who draw inspiration from the song:

“Work on the Like A Virgin album, produced by Nile Rodgers, had finished in 1984, but the continuing success of songs from Madonna’s self-titled debut album meant Like A Virgin’s release was delayed in order to allow singles such as Lucky Star to finally burn out. Meanwhile, Madonna was still writing material as her attention turned to her first major movie role, in Desperately Seeking Susan. A scene filmed at the Danceteria nightclub, in New York City, needed a song for the extras to perform to, and so the sequence featuring Madonna and her late co-star, Mark Blum, was recorded using a demo that she had to hand.

That demo was Into The Groove, and the original plan had been to pass the song to Mark Kamins, the producer of her first single, Everybody, to record with Cheyne (aka Cheyne Anderson), an up-and-coming dance act he was working with. (Cheyne would go on to top the US dance charts with Call Me Mr Telephone (Answering Service) and also contribute a cover of Private Joy, a cut from Prince’s Controversy record, to the Weird Science soundtrack.)

Outperforming its early promise

Released on 15 July 1985, Into The Groove entered the UK charts at No.4. A week later, on 3 August, it unseated Eurythmics’ There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Hear) to claim the top spot and become the first of a record-breaking run of Madonna No.1s which would continue into the first decade of the 21st century with Hung Up, Sorry and her Justin Timberlake duet, 4 Minutes. Over time, Into The Groove would become Madonna’s best-selling UK single, shifting close to a million copies across that first year, and accumulating tens of millions of streams (and counting) in the digital era. Back in 1985, the song was added to a reissue of the Like A Virgin album in some markets, including the UK, where, claiming its place among the best Madonna albums, Like A Virgin would finally top the charts in September – almost a year after it had first come out.

Even greater success for Into The Groove came on the dance circuit – the track would top US club listings and become a perennial go-to cut for party DJs. The first official rework of the song came from Shep Pettibone, on the 1987 remix album You Can Dance, and the producer would remodel it again for Madonna’s phenomenally successful hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection, which was issued in 1990. Pettibone’s legendary You Can Dance Remix Edit is now almost as familiar as the original single release, and was picked for the tracklist of Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones, the 6LP remix collection celebrating Madonna’s extraordinary career”.

For a song written on a fire escape about a “gorgeous Puerto Rican boy” Madonna had spied, and first considered as a throwaway tune for another artist, then pegged as background music for a movie, Into The Groove has certainly outperformed its early promise, and it is now rightly regarded as one of the best Madonna songs of all time. Celebrating dancefloor escapism, its lyrics spoke to all manner of liberations and sealed Madonna’s reputation as an act with an almost unparalleled instinct for capturing an emotional rush that could be packaged into a perfect chart-bound single. These glorious four minutes and 44 seconds represent the true coronation of the world’s reigning “Queen Of Pop”.

There are paens to this song and articles from fans and writers who state how Into the Groove changed their lives. I am going to end with this article from Rolling Stone. As part of their 500 Greatest Songs podcast, they looked at how Madonna conquered the dancefloors and planet with this 1985 gem. I hope that the Queen of Pop celebrates the song when it turns forty on Tuesday (15th July):

“In 2004, Rolling Stone launched its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. Tabulated from a massive vote that had artists, industry figures, and critics weighing in, the list has been a source of conversation, inspiration, and controversy for two decades. It’s one of the most popular, influential — and argued-over — features the magazine has ever done.

So we set out to make it even bigger, better, and fresher. In 2021, we completely overhauled our 500 Songs list, with a whole new batch of voters from all over the music map. Our new podcast, Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs, takes a closer look at the entries from our list. Made in partnership with iHeart, Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs finds hosts and Rolling Stone staffers Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanos discussing a new song each week, delving into its history and impact with the help of a special guest — including fellow RS colleagues, producers, and the artists themselves. It’s our celebration of the greatest songs ever made — and a breakdown of what makes them so great.

This week our hosts Brittany Spanos and Rob Sheffield look at an Eighties dance-floor classic from one of the all-time pop legends: Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” It wasn’t Madonna’s first single (that was “Everybody”) or her first hit (that would be “Holiday”), but “Into the Groove” is the one that instantly evokes Madonna in her raw, gritty early days. It’s a fast, in-your-face disco anthem that hits as hard as punk rock, from the hungry young Madonna, aiming to sum up the whole history of dance music in one song. “Into the Groove” is still the song at the heart of her lifelong bond with the club scene and the dance community. It’s the one where she sings right into your ear: “You can dance, for inspiration.”

Madonna is obviously all over the list, with three songs: “Into the Groove” placed at #161, “Vogue” was #139, while her 1989 hit “Like a Prayer” came in at #55. (“Like a Prayer” did even better on our recent massive list of the 200 Best Songs of the 1980s — it was right near the top, at Number Two.) But somehow “Into the Groove” is the crucial song for her disco legacy.

Our hosts go into the weird story behind the song: Madonna wrote it with collaborator Stephen Bray, a low-budget home recording inspired by spying on a hot neighbor dancing in his apartment in the Lower East Side. When Madonna was making the 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan, director Susan Seidelman needed one more song for the soundtrack, for the scene in the downtown dance club. “Into The Groove” not only became a hit, it summed up an era in the history of dance music.

Brittany and Rob delve into the timeless mysteries of “Into the Groove”: Why are we so obsessed with this song? Why does it loom so large over Madonna’s other hits? Why is it the gateway drug that hooks so many generations of Madonna fans? We also discuss some of the most bizarrely forgotten hits in her gigantic songbook, the ones that don’t get played on the radio as much as they deserve. (Nobody will forget “This Used to Be My Playground,” “Take a Bow,” or “What It Feels Like for a Girl” while we have anything to say about it.)”.

With one of music’s greatest music catalogues, Madonna’s Into the Groove stands out. Not only is it an amazing song. It is a moment in her career where she truly captivated the world. She even performed the song during Live Aid forty years ago today. That was an incredible moment! In 2016, when ranking Madonna’s fifty best singles, Rolling Stone placed Into the Groove second:

“Into the Groove" is the streetwise beatbox anthem Madonna kept trying to write when she was down and out in New York, the days when she squatted and ate out of garbage cans. As she explained in 1985, "It was the garbage can in the Music Building on Eighth Avenue, where I lived with Steve Bray, the guy I write songs with. He's Useful Male #2 or #3, depending on which article you read." Madonna and Bray – the ex-drummer in her punk band – knocked off "Into the Groove" as an eight-track demo. (Bray later said he came up with the "rib cage" and "skeleton" of the music, with Madonna writing lyrics and adding her own touches – in this case, the song's bridge.) Her movie Desperately Seeking Susan used it for the scene where Madonna hits Danceteria, but then it unexpectedly blew up on the radio. It still sounds like a low-budget demo – those breakbeats, the desperate edge in her voice when she drones, "Now I know you're mine" – but that raw power is what makes it her definitive you-can-dance track. "Into the Groove" has ruled the radio ever since”.

In 2018, when ranking Madonna’s singles (seventy-eight to that point), The Guardian put Into the Groove in seventeenth. Classic Pop shared their views on the forty best Madonna singles. Into the Groove came in second (only beaten by Like a Prayer):

“Fuelling box office receipts for Madonna’s big-screen debut in Desperately Seeking Susan, MTV staple Into The Groove was a standalone single to promote the movie and is the singer in the heat of her 80s pomp. Conceived on a humble fire escape and with her then-boyfriend Stephen Bray as co-writer and producer, the track was initially intended for producer Mark Kamins’ act Cheyne, but Madonna rightly thought it too good to give up.

Despite not getting an official US single release, its position on the B-side of the Angel 12” meant it rose to become a staple on the dancefloors of New York City and a No.1 hit on the Billboard Dance Chart – eventually honoured as their dance hit of the decade. Inspiration came from the “freedom that I always feel when I’m dancing,” explained Madonna to Time magazine, “that feeling of inhabiting your body, letting yourself go, expressing yourself through music”.

Having performed the track in her Live Aid concert set in Philadelphia, it was bound to fly. Released at the height of summer 1985, it landed straight into the UK Top 5, desaddling Eurythmics’ There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) to take No.1. Around a million sold in its first year, Into The Groove was soon added to the Like A Virgin album reissue, Madonna’s biggest-selling single in the UK to date and her first UK chart-topper. Into The Groove proved that music could indeed be a revelation…”.

Not only one of Madonna’s best songs, Into the Groove is one of the most important singles ever. Forty years later, and you cannot say that the impact and brilliance of this song has diminished and faded. It is a perfect Pop moment that shot Madonna to new heights! Such a seismic moment, this is a song still widely loved and played to this day. Released on 15th July, 1985 in the U.K., it is not a shock that Into the Groove was…

A worldwide chart smash!

FEATURE: Spotlight: Anna Phoebe

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Anna Phoebe

__________

THIS may appear…

me coming in very late to an artist. To be fair, I have known about Anna Phoebe for many years and I know she is not brand-new on the scene. However, as I love her work and she has been on my mind, I wanted to Spotlight her now. Alongside Aisling Brouwer, Anna Phoebe is part of AVAWAVES. They blend violin, piano, and electronics to create cinematic and immersive music, often exploring themes of resilience, storytelling, and emotional journeys. I may well feature them in another capacity soon enough as I love their work together. Such amazing musicians. A big reason why I want to focus on Anna Phoebe now is not only because she is a board member of the Ivors Academy. In a recent interview, she talked about what it takes to be a composer for film and T.V. This is an area that interests me. I am also very interested in composers in general and some of the inequality and sexism that exists within this sphere. And in Classical music. I was writing about this when I spotlighted Hannah Peel a while ago. She is another amazing – and award-winning – composer, and someone who has faced struggle and sexism. However, like Peel, Anna Phoebe is inspiring so many other people. Such a phenomenal and original voice. Apologies if this seems scattershot in terms of the interviews I bring in and what I include. I just want to give you a bigger impression of Anna Phoebe and all the amazing things she does! I am going to end with a couple of interviews from this one. The most recent one is a chat between Anna Phoebe and Mary Anne Hobbs. The BBC Radio 6 Music queen and legend has long been a champion of Anna Phoebe and they are firm friends. Their mutual respect and love will flourish for years!

I am going to start out with some biography from Anna Phoebe’s official website. Updated before the release of her amazing single, Unravel, we have an album to look forwards to in October. A lot of exciting stuff lies ahead:

“With a myriad of different violins, samplers, meandering vocals, beats, drum machines, and elegant long black leather, we are beautifully steered through tales from beaches, to women’s rugby, satellite construction, and the stars beyond.” - Flush the Fashion, November 2024

Anna Phoebe is a genre-defying composer, performer, producer and broadcaster whose work spans solo albums, film scores, immersive live shows and national radio. Known for her visceral violin-led soundscapes, she creates music that connects deeply with the natural world, translating emotion into cinematic sonic experiences.

Her critically acclaimed releases Sea Souls and Sea Souls (Live) offer a rich, textural dialogue between sea and psyche, while her collaborative projects — including the instrumental duo AVAWAVES and performances with Mary Anne Hobbs — push the boundaries between classical, electronic, and ambient worlds.

Anna co-hosts the award-winning BBC Radio 4 show Add to Playlist, reaching millions weekly with her deep musical curiosity and warm insight. She has scored for Apple TV+, Channel 4, and ITV, and her music has been championed by BBC Radio 6 Music, Radio 3, and KEXP.

A powerful live performer, Anna has played international festivals and concert halls — from Glastonbury to the Royal Albert Hall — and collaborated with artists ranging from Jools Holland to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Whether performing solo or scoring for screen, Anna’s work is bold, immersive, and rooted in emotional truth.

Her new single Unravel is out 23rd May, with a new solo album set to be released in October 2025”.

I am going to move on with something from last year. Speaking with Music Week, Anna Phoebe talked about the Young Voices Foundation and the future talent pipeline. Not only is she an exceptional composer and artist. This is someone making a huge difference in music and beyond. Inspiring and guiding young people. Making an impact for charity. I will let the interviews speak for themselves in that regard:

“Anna Phoebe is a violinist, composer and board director at The Ivors Academy and, last month, she was appointed one of the first ever ambassadors of the Young Voices Foundation.

Here, she tells Music Week about the Ivors’ new partnership with the largest children’s choir in the world and why it’s vital for the industry to come together to protect and power up the UK’s future talent pipeline…

My first experience of Young Voices was watching my daughter sing and dance her heart out alongside 9,000 other children in one of the organisation’s unforgettable concerts in 2022. It was an incredibly moving experience, the importance of shared live experiences heightened by the two years of pandemic and isolation. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

Two years on, I’m thrilled that the critical work undertaken by Young Voices over the last 28 years is starting to be recognised by the music industry. As a musician, composer and parent, I can see the overwhelming value that music brings to young people; but as a Young Voices Foundation ambassador and board director of The Ivors Academy, I can’t articulate enough how vital it is that we work together as an industry to support their work.

The newly announced partnership between Young Voices and The Ivors Academy is another important step we are taking as an organisation to inspire, educate and ignite a passion for music in thousands of children and young people.

The Ivors Academy represents the creative source of the music industry; the songwriters and composers who give voice to our emotions and shape our cultural landscape. Through the Ivor Novello Awards and tireless advocacy, The Ivors Academy champions music creators' rights and fights for sustainable careers in music.

This partnership brings together Young Voices' unparalleled reach and The Ivors Academy's expertise and dedication to creators. Together, we will create educational materials for schools to instil in children an appreciation for the work that goes into every song they sing. They'll learn about the songwriters, composers, musicians, producers, and countless others who collaborate to bring the music they learn and perform to life.

This isn't about educating children alone, it's about nurturing the future of the music industry. By fostering a generation that understands and values the creative process, we will inspire the future of our creative industries and cultivate a more supportive ecosystem for music creators to thrive. They are our audiences and fans, and the more they see and experience what goes into creating music, the greater the value they will place on it.

Young Voices is a lifeline for music education in an era of crippling cuts, providing resources for teachers and opportunities for children who might never otherwise have the chance to sing, play an instrument, or experience the joy of creating music. And the organisation provides a platform for inclusivity and unlocks potential like no other. It gives every child, regardless of background or ability, the chance to shine. This kind of high-level inclusivity is crucial for fostering a future music industry that is more diverse and vibrant than ever.

Last year, I witnessed the impact firsthand when I had the privilege of touring with Young Voices as a guest violinist. City after city, children from all walks of life came together, united by music – it was humbling and truly awe-inspiring. No matter their individual circumstances at home or school, I watched 27 arenas full of children find joy and power in the collective experience.

Recently, I've been back in the audience, watching my younger daughter take the stage with her classmates. The anticipation has been building for months, and the concert was an unforgettable experience. But the impact will extend far beyond that hour and a half. The memories, the confidence gained, the love for music - these will last a lifetime.

Young Voices don’t just organise the largest children’s choir concerts in the world. They create experiences for children that stay with them for life.  It truly is a testament to the power of music to bring people together, create unique shared experiences, bring joy and help us heal.

The impact and reach of Young Voices up and down the country is huge. Last year it organised 27 UK arena shows and this year there will be 30. In 2024 alone, over 200,000 children will take part in 4,500 schools, and over 230,000 tickets will be sold. That’s more tickets than Glastonbury and, over the last 28 years, 2.5 million children have taken part worldwide.

The return on investment is astonishing. Last year, the arena tour generated £10 million in economic impact across four cities: Birmingham, London, Manchester and Sheffield. The programme delivered £56.5 million in social value through schools and education. To put that in context, it’s the equivalent of 19,000 people achieving five good GCSE results or 81,000 people going from physically inactive to active.

I'm deeply grateful for what Young Voices does. I'm proud to be an ambassador and thrilled to see The Ivors Academy join forces with this remarkable organisation. Together, they have the power to influence the future of music, one child, one song, one magical performance at a time”.

Actually, before jumping to this year, I want to take us back to 2021. During the pandemic and lockdown, Anna Phoebe spoke with Headliner about her then-forthcoming ICONS E.P. I think 2021 was when I first heard about Anna Phoebe. It was a transformative moment for me. Someone who I have followed ever since:

“After a substantial violin-playing career for the likes of Roxy Music, supporting Bob Dylan and being heard on programmes such as Peaky Blinders, plus collaborations with such organisations as the WWF and the European Space Agency, you’d perhaps think Anna Phoebe would surely be done adding to her CV at this point. Not quite, as this British violinist has been increasingly unveiling her composing ability with a string of new singles that are haunting, stunning, and hugely progressive. Locked down at her home in Kent, Phoebe chats with Headliner about her sparkly playing career, new music and the interjection between her compositions and science.

We do begin on a more sombre note, as Phoebe tells me how grateful she is to have been able to continue doing music during this time, whereas so many self-employed musicians have found this period next to impossible.

“It's been an incredibly tough year for all creators,” she says.

“The general public has depended more than ever on music and TV to get through. And yet the arts are so severely underfunded. A lot of musicians I know just fell through the cracks. They're self-employed, they don't get furlough. So many shows are cancelled, and there's no cancellation fee. Most people I know weren't eligible for any kind of government funding. So I’ve been incredibly lucky to have other projects.”

I mention to Phoebe that I’d wanted to interview her after hearing her string of new singles last year on Mary Anne Hobbs’ show on BBC Radio 6.

“She's the one who actually sort of encouraged me to release the first single, I didn't set out to write a solo album this year!” she says. “I had to do something for BBC Kent. Basically, I was putting together a 10-minute package of what life is like in lockdown, and realised the best way I could communicate this would be through music.

“So I went and sat down by the sea and just had a little think. I was feeling really anxious; it was a scary time when no one knew anything. I went back to my studio and sat down and played some chords and I improvised this violin line. And then I bounced it down, sent it off to BBC Kent with me talking. But then I sent it to Mary Anne Hobbs; she said ‘oh, I want to play this on my show!’

"So I named it By The Sea, and then it got a really good reaction from her listeners who are just so amazing and supportive. Mary Anne is so warm and giving too, so I’ve felt so fortunate.”

“And I've been commissioned to do music for York Minster for the opening night of York Festival of Ideas. So I'd written all this music as a response to the climate crisis and the observation data that the European Space Agency does. I'd flown out to where they do the satellite testing. It was a 10-minute piece of music that was performed with the astronaut Tim Peake, and we won an Arthur Clarke award for education outreach.”

If that sounds like more than enough to keep Phoebe busy, that’s only scratching the surface.

“And also for Cancer Research UK, I wrote a 40-minute ensemble work for choir, strings, piano and violin. And that was responding to research undertaken at the University of Kent, which goes towards helping cancer and Alzheimer's research. The research generates these incredible images. It's like you're flying through your body on the molecular level, and it looks very galactic”.

Let’s bring things up to date. In June, Anna Phoebe spoke with The Boar about the AVAWAVES Heartbeat album and what it takes to be a T.V. and film composer. I also think that AVAWAVES might be an outside bet for inclusion in this year’s Mercury Prize shortlist. They would be a deserved inclusion in my view. Such is the brilliance of the album and how often you will return to it:

“Your music is described as “being rooted in cinematic narratives” and “evoking emotional journeys in the heart and mind”. I have an idea for myself, but I’m interested to hear what this emotional journey is for you in Heartbeat.

Anna: Heartbeat is our third album together as an artist. Waves was our first album, and that was really like us coming together, talking, walking on the beach, jamming together, and seeing what came out of it. We always wanted to write for picture. Because it’s instrumental and we don’t have lyrics, we’d devise this sort of narrative or a mood or an emotion, or a scene in a film in our head and imagine what that intention is – that’s what we would write for the record. Waves was the beginning of that journey. Our second album, Chrysalis, was written pretty much in lockdown. Ash at that time had also moved to Berlin. We started writing together, but the whole album was pretty much done remotelys and locked down. It felt like quite an isolated record. I think with this third album, we’ve got the flow of writing together under our belt now. We can just get into a room and jam out. We went to Berlin, had a few days playing stuff and I think our sound is a lot more raw this time. It’s a lot more vulnerable, like in ‘Raindrop’ or ‘Nightdrive’. Some of those violin and viola parts are just improvised one take. I think we’ve got the confidence now not to try and perfect stuff. There’s a vulnerability to diving into that emotion and that intention that we’ve got behind a feeling that creates this sound world. Whatever comes out, that’s ok, that’s it, it’s done. When writing for picture, you get into the flow of having to trust your instincts working under the pressure of deadlines. This felt like a freedom to explore, explore everything we’ve learned – but just get back to that rawness of exploring emotions together.

This freedom Anna speaks of shines throughout the record. The relationship between piano and strings is one which is dynamic and thrilling, with each component responding continuously to the other. Tracks like ‘Bones’ or ‘Escape’ build and swell to compelling climaxes. Others like ‘Sleep Tight’ and ‘Raindrop’ wind the album down to a state of serenity, ‘Sleep Tight’ becoming a notable standout for its incorporation of vocals. This is all before the album concludes by bursting into life again with the techno delight ‘Crush’. Each track almost becomes its own mini soundtrack, scoring a new journey the listener-explorer is taken on.

Do you have a particular favourite track from the album?

Anna: I think ‘Heartbeat’ feels like an invitation to the album, so I do love that track. It’s interesting in these live gigs, I would say the two polar opposites on the album, ‘Crush’ and ‘Raindrop’ have been my favourite to play. We end the set with ‘Crush’ and then, we strip everything away and we end totally acoustically with ‘Raindrop’. There’s something really powerful going from like a sound thrash dynamic to a rawness. So, I think to answer your question, I would say it probably depends on what mood I’m in. But I quite like the stream of going from ‘Crush’ to ‘Raindrop’. Maybe my enjoyment is the gap in between them.

I love how the album comes to a moment of peace and stasis, only for it to come alive again with ‘Crush’ right at the end when you’re least expecting it. You mentioned making the album in Berlin and with ‘Crush’ I feel as if you’re transported to a Berlin techno club.

Anna: I think because it’s our third album as well, we’ve stopped worrying about trying to fit into a certain genre, or whether people are going to like it. We’ve got to the point where we can write the album that we want to play live. I think we’ve got rid of the exterior voices which make us feel judged – fortunately, we’ve got an amazing label where creative freedom is definitely the name of the game. I think it was our own inner voices of trying to fit into a certain genre which we let go of for this album.

That freedom is definitely evident in the uniqueness of the record. Has anyone in particular inspired you musically?

Anna: We both love quite a wide variety of genres in music. On the more electronic side, you’d have John Hopkins, Marie Davidson or Ella Minus or Avon Emerson. Then, on the acoustic side, I love jazz. One of my favourite albums is the Pharoah Sanders and Floating Points album with LSO, Promises. It’s an amazing album, essentially one track that’s jazz, but classical with a bit of electronics. Any artist who is just following a creative instinct without being too prescribed – that excites me

I read that both Aisling and you are from very musical families. Did growing up in these musical environments shape the type of art you want to produce?

Anna: Yeah, I think so. My parents, they were in a band together, actually when they were pregnant with me. My mum was a social worker for children and families and my dad is a professor on the Holocaust – so the most serious, despairing jobs you could probably have. But there was always music playing in the house. My mum also plays the violin and I think I always grew up seeing how playing music and listening to music is a cathartic way to balance you holistically. It was never expected that I would ever go into music, I actually studied politics. I think it was a really healthy way to see how music helps you not only academically, but also holistically and mentally. I think I had a really healthy relationship with playing music and listening to music. I’m really passionate about music in schools. I come from a privileged background, my parents could afford lessons for me and I was encouraged to play music. We should be living in a country where every single child has access to free music lessons and where music is more valued in schools. Whether you go on to be a professional musician or not, it’s irrelevant. I think it brings so much else to your life and as a lifelong thing. That’s what I learned through seeing my mum. Despite having a very stressful job, she’d always have orchestra or be playing in chamber groups and exploring music in an extracurricular way. That’s how I grew up appreciating music”.

I am finishing off with this article from Juno. This Mary Anne Hobbs and Anna Phoebe interview coincided with a recent live collaboration between the two. I would have loved to have been there! Two of my absolute favourite people. I wanted to end with this interview as it shows how many different sides and threads there are to Anna Phoebe. Someone that I am long-overdue spotlighting:

“What do you want? It’s a simple question, you might think. But the variety of reactions to the title of DJ Mary Anne Hobbs and musician Anna Phoebe‘s collaborative art project for Manchester International Festival next week, would suggest a rather large can of worms has been well and truly opened.

The project itself revolves around a one off live performance at Aviva Studios’ South Warehouse on July 15, which will see Phoebe (above, left) playing violin and Hobbs (right) weaving together electronics and field recordings. But it extends well beyiond that. For starters, a board asking the question has been installed in Central Manchester, with the public invited to write their answers or – for the more discreetly minded – post them into the attached postbox.

The board had just gone up the day we catch the pair – Phoebe talking to us close to the sea in Deale, Hobbs on the north bank of the Thames in Central London – for a chat on Zoom. Three or four days later, we get emailed a progress picture, and the Manchester public has definitely got busy. The pair’s avowed ambition that things should, ideally, “get really messy”, had clearly been fulfilled already.

“I’m obviously a huge fan of Mary-Anne through 6Music,” says Phoebe, who also co-presents the acclaimed Radio 4 music show Add To Playlist. when we ask how the two of them first hooked up.  “We met through Erland Cooper at the Turner Contemporary, when Mary-Anne was hosting from there.  She was a supporter of my music early on, and then started having these crazy ideas that she’d feed me.  So we started collaborating that way, really, when you asked me to write some music based on the beach.  Then during lockdown you asked me to talk about what it was like being by the beach but during lockdown.  Then you were asked to DJ, to do a set for the Tate Britain and we worked together on that set, and we’ve been collaborating ever since and we’ve become good friends.”

“It was wild really,” Hobbs recalls, “I came across this force of nature in Anna, and as she said, our relationship developed over lockdown.  I remember reaching out to her and saying “do you think it might actually be possible to collaborate with the sea?”  And she said ‘why not, I’ll go down to the shore and see what happens and send you the results.’  What came back was one of the most exquisite pieces of music I think I’ve ever played on the radio, called ‘By The Sea’ and made especially for the show.

“Then our professional relationship opened out.  She’d say things like ‘oh it was five in the morning and I went out into the depths of the forest to see if I could collaborate with the nightingales.  I thought this is my girl, you know?! Maybe we can try something”.

If you have not heard the music and work of Anna Phoebe, then go and follow her on social media. As a solo artist or as part of AVAWAVES, she is responsible for creating this stunning and engrossing music. The German-born genius is helping to revolutionise and progress Classical music. How we see it. A new album is arriving in October. She is embarking on a tour to promote it. This is an amazing woman that you need…

IN your life.

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Follow Anna Phoebe

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Debby Friday

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 

Debby Friday

__________

THIS is a fabulous artist…

that I spotlighted back in 2023. I might included parts of an interview that I included in that first feature. However, as Debby Friday has announced a new album, The Starrr of the Queen of Life (a title I am not especially keen on), that arrives on 1st August, it is a good time to feature her again. The Nigerian-Canadian artist is someone I have loved for a while now. I am looking forward to her new album. Even though, as she said in an interview I will end with, the album is a sign from the universe (I do always cringe when people talk about the universe/fate/God when it comes to meaning and inspiration), you cannot argue with the music calibre and excellence! Debby Friday is one of the best artists out there. I do hope that she plays in the U.K. soon enough, as there are a lot of her fans out here. I will start out with an NME interview with Debby Friday. We get to revisit a time when she was promoting her debut album and that was still quite new. This Electronic producer and artist was defying genres and scooping awards:

“Debby Frioday is beaming, still. It has been less than a month since her debut album won the coveted Polaris Music Prize and judging by the elated expression on her face on our video call, she’s still basking in the afterglow. As she should. The annual award is given to the best full-length Canadian album of the year, regardless of genre or sales and fully based on artistic merit, an accomplishment that blows the mind of the Nigerian-born, Montreal-raised artist. Previous winners include Arcade Fire, Caribou and Kaytranada.

“It’s not the only place I get my validation from but I think it’s important that they recognise art that’s different, especially if we’re talking in the context of Canada,” Friday tells NME from her home in Toronto. “Like, I make weird electronic music in Canada,” she says with a laugh. “It’s not common, so this is very encouraging.”

Friday’s award-winning debut LP’s ‘Good Luck’, moves seamlessly from house music to industrial rock, delving into melodic and surreal pop territory that sees the electronic producer defying any expectation of genre. Though the bold debut has been a career inflexion point for Friday, as she tells NME, multiple things had to fall into place for her to be where she is now. “I see everything as this domino effect,” she says. “It’s only in retrospect that you can see all the pieces falling together.”

Friday’s first foray into music was as a self-proclaimed “party girl”, pulling all-nighters at Montreal clubs and cutting her teeth by spinning energetic DJ sets in crowded rooms. Despite enjoying the experience, the late nights, drugs and constant clubbing started to take their toll. “Nightlife involves a lot of sacrifice,” she says. “You’re basically sacrificing your daytime life. Some people are able to figure out a healthy way to engage with it where it doesn’t affect the rest of their life but I was not one of those people.”

In 2017, when she was ready to step away from her DJing, fate landed her in Europe touring for a month, an experience she says “opened up this new part of my brain”. As the child of immigrant parents who worked in nursing and real estate, art never seemed like a viable option for Friday, who was on track to put her bachelor’s degree in political science and women’s studies to good use. However, that month around creatives completely shifted her perspective. “I saw groups of young people who were able to build community and have careers in the arts and I realised that I could do this too,” she says. “I realised that it was possible to make a living being an artist”.

The tour left an indelible mark on Friday, but the road from realisation to actually manifesting her own music wasn’t a smooth one. “I came back to Montreal and played a few shows, but then I had what I refer to as my nervous breakdown,” she says. “Essentially everything in my life started going to shit. It’s like where you can’t hold anything up anymore because the foundation is not solid. I quit nightlife, I quit doing drugs, I quit Montreal,” she says. “I’d had a substance abuse problem for many years at that point in my life and that was the first time I ever got sober.”

Friday decided to rebuild her life on the other side of the country in Vancouver, spending her now seemingly infinite amounts of free time teaching herself how to produce music by watching YouTube tutorials. “I was living in mom’s basement with no job and no money,” she says. “I had nothing else going for me but I had this outlet”.

I am going to move on to a feature from February. CRACK hosted an interview between Debby Friday and Lex Amor. Quite similar artists, Lex Amor, like Debby Friday, “writes creative poetry and prose to bend space and explore personal philosophies”. I am a fan of both. It is an interesting conversation. I have selected a few questions that were asked of Debby Friday:

“How important is space and environment to you, both when you are performing and as a source of inspiration?

Debby Friday: I move around a lot when I perform. I remember once I played in a venue where the audience was 360, all around me. It almost felt more ritualistic or communal because you don’t have the same divide of like, OK, I’m the performer here, and then the audience is there. It was like I was connecting with more people, and I was seeing different aspects of the room from different vantage points. I felt like I got a 360 view and a 360 experience.

L: Yeah, space is super important. Anywhere I can be comfortably and safely myself is where I’ll be my best self, but there are spaces that require you to contour a little bit. Sometimes creating a little bit of tension in your body can be interesting as well.

Do you think that poetry and creative writing offers more freedom than music does? Does music feel more commercial?

D: In a way, music can be more free. There’s more freedom to experiment in very unconventional ways. You can get really, truly experimental with the way that you make music and use your voice. But I think that creative writing and poetry is more freeing in a privacy sense. When it comes to being a public-facing musician, yes, you’re writing things for yourself, but there is always the subconscious consideration that other people are going to perceive this and respond to this, and this is part of your musical output, and now it’s part of your discography, and you’re going to put it online. There are these subconscious considerations. When it comes to creative writing, what I write down doesn’t feel as public in the same way. When you read, you’re reading alone and you’re reading in your head, so there’s privacy for the person perceiving it that you don’t always get with music.

L: I agree. It’s really dependent on the songs and it’s dependent on the writing style. I like what you said about awareness about being perceived. It made me think about how the music I make is so internal sometimes that I forget that an ear outside of me is going to hear it and develop a perception of me. I think the closer I can get to forgetting that, the truer the writing is. As you said, the songs I feel are most reflective of me are the ones where I felt confident enough to be super esoteric and cryptic with my writing in a way that maybe only I understand. Then the music adds in melody and other signifiers that are a little bit broader and more open to interpretation and acceptance. Maybe not everyone’s going to understand 100% of what you’re saying, but they’re feeling something and that’s powerful. That’s the truest way to communicate. Just feel it. Feel it before you hear it.

And what advice would you give to writers and musicians who are just starting out, particularly those who want to work across multiple creative disciplines?

D: Number one piece of advice; keep going, bitch. Just keep going. Never give up. There are always going to be obstacles. There are always going to be challenges. There is always going to be suffering, but you actually cannot give up. I think the only way to be successful at anything is through perseverance and resilience. Sometimes it means you might have to course correct and edit yourself and make little tweaks and changes, but never give up on yourself, your creativity and your expression. Always have your vision in mind and keep going towards it”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lucy Mahoney

I am going to end with a recent interview from Rolling Stone. Earlier this month, Debby Friday talked about following her award-winning and acclaimed debut album, Good Luck, taking back creative freedom, and falling in love. If you are not already following her on social media then do make sure that you check out Debby Friday. A remarkable artist I was compelled to return to:

“The Starrr of the Queen of Life asks and answers the question, What do I want for myself? For starters, Friday wanted ample space and time to focus on her creative process without distraction. She waited until she was free from touring and holed up in a London studio with Australian producer Darcy Baylis. “We went out to dinner maybe twice,” she says. “It was true, like, boot camp, workhorse. That’s the way I like to work.” She barely got a chance to explore London, or hear how the city informs its sounds, the way she did in Detroit with HiTech and in Mexico City with Tayhana. It’s not like she would have been in the club, anyway. “I do not go out, like at all,” Friday says. “But I still feel very connected to that culture.”

At this point in her life, she prefers to stay home and make music for those nightlife spaces than to occupy them herself. She started “experimenting with pop music” — as well as what she calls “shoegaze dancehall” — and “flirting with DJing” more while making this record. “I stepped away from nightlife because it’s so intertwined with drug culture and stuff, and I just couldn’t be around that for the longest time,” she says. “When I was spiraling and having a really hard time before I got sober, it was discipline that changed me as a person, really saved my life, and stopped me from falling back into darkness in so many ways.”

Friday offers a multi-perspective interrogation of substance use on the album, recounting the highs and lows and the gray area in between. “I really wanted to channel this universal thing, because I understand that this is not an isolated experience,” she says. The Starrr of the Queen of Life is also full of love songs. “Here I go getting shy,” says Friday, who got engaged earlier this year. For the first time, she’s writing about true love, rather than pain and heartbreak. “I have my partner and I have this new experience of love that is just so much gentler and softer,” she adds. “There’s sweetness in this relationship, and there’s sweetness in my personal life.”

Friday might have been reluctant to express it before, but The Starrr of the Queen of Life is a declaration of her yearning to be a star — the truest, most creatively aligned version of herself, devoid of external pressures and perceptions. She wants to fill the empty space on her own terms with her own sounds.

Friday describes the record as “the most accessible album that I’ve ever made,” which was an explicit goal she set early on. “I don’t think it’s a crime to have mass appeal, as long as you stay centered in yourself,” she says. After Good Luck, she found herself wondering, “Am I going to reach these heights again? Am I going to surpass myself? Is my next work going to be as good as this?” They were impossible questions to answer on her own. She looked outward, instead.

“I’m a very spiritual person, and I like to think that I do get signs from the universe that I’m moving in the right direction, even if it’s things that are really hard,” Friday says. “It’s like, oh, this was actually for me, and this led me down the path that I needed to take. And I feel like this album was a really big sign for me to just keep going”.

I will finish up there. I was fascinated by her in 2023. Now, with an album out on 1st August, you need to follow the magnificent Debby Friday. So respected and loved as an artist and producer, I am really intrigued to see where she heads and how her career grows…

IN years to come.

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Follow Debby Friday

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: Three: Hounds of Love

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

 

Three: Hounds of Love

__________

A song I have written about…

a fair few times, I want to revisit it for this run of features. Hounds of Love turns forty on 16th September. Because of that, I am embarking on a twenty-feature run that looks inside the songs and other aspects of Kate Bush’s fifth studio album. Rather than duplicate what I wrote before, I am going to go in a slightly different direction. Last time, I wrote about the song and referenced Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 Hounds of Love. That was when discussing the title track. Released as a single on 17th February, 1986, I will briefly dip into Leah Kardos’s book once more. Kate Bush Encyclopedia have a lot of useful information about Hounds of Love. The interview archive is especially illuminating:

“[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985

The ideas for ‘Hounds Of Love’, the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it’s very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive.

Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985”.

Although there has been a lot written about the Hounds of Love album, there has not been as much time dedicated to the title track. It is a single that reached number eight in the U.K. One of Kate Bush’s most successful single releases, it is a track that is widely played to this day. It contains some of her best lyrics. There are so many remarkable and standout passages. These lyrics are especially notable: “Among your hounds of love/And feel your arms surround me./I’ve always been a coward,/And never know what’s good for me/Oh, here I go!/Don’t let me go!/Hold me down!/It’s coming for me through the trees/Help me, darling/Help me, please!”. Hounds of Love is also important because it was the first music video Kate Bush directed solo. As many people know, the introduction of the song features a quote from a line spoken in the 1957 film, Night of The Demon, by Maurice Denham. Whereas for the remaining tracks on Hounds of Love I will dive more deeply into Leah Kardos’s book and also reference Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, I will talk about Hounds of Love differently. One of the music notable elements of the song is how percussion is key in the mix. Primal and intense, it creates this fast heartbeat and rush. Leah Kardos notes how Kate Bush and Del Palmer (the album’s engineer, her former partner and musician on Hounds of Love) saw some gated compression tricks from Hugh Padgham from working out of Townhouse for The Dreaming. They would set up microphones a distance from the drums “so as to pick up an amount of indirect sound from the room”. Like Prince’s When Doves Cry, Hounds of Love has no bassline. Leah Kardos notes how the “lack of low-frequency instruments serves to highlight the elegance and power of its simple, intricately calibrated production”.

It might seem like a song where Kate Bush is being chased by hounds that want to rip her apart. She said in an interview how they may be friendly dogs that want to play and lick you. There is a sense of menace and drama working alongside something more playful. Leah Kardos concludes how Hounds of Love is an “exquisite anthem for the commitment-phobic that encapsulates something very honest about the ambivalence and intensity of romantic desire”. Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush about the title track: “The rhythm track pounds like a heartbeat in the throes of panic-stricken ecstasy, while the scything strings add a manic, compulsive element to the chase. And after three minutes of enthralling will-she-won’t-she comes the magnificent climax: “I need la-la-la-la-la LOVE!”. After all the hide-and-seeking with Del, it’s hard not to hear this is a very personal declaration. It remains one of her most moving, magnificently realised songs”. It is no surprise that Hounds of Love is regularly voted as Kate Bush’s best tracks. I think it is the one that connects with people the most. Maybe the most universal and relatable songs she ever wrote. A fitting and sublime title track, this is a song that will continue to inspire and connect with people through the ages. I am going to wrap up soon. As I go through the remaining tracks on Hounds of Love, I am going to bring in various takes and perspectives.

For the second track on the album, it is fitting to end with some critical impressions. I have discussed single rankings and how Hounds of Love has come top a few times. I am including two examples now. This is what MOJO wrote when they ranked Hounds of Love first when discussing her singles last year: “No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?”.

When Stereogum rated Kate Bush’s ten finest tracks in 2022, they placed Hounds of Love in ninth: “Notably covered by the Futureheads, the vulnerable title track of Bush’s 1985 LP is “about someone terrified, who is searching for a way to escape something,” she said in an interview that year. “My voice, and the entire production, are directed towards the expression of that terror.” Accordingly, Bush gulps in fright and bellows dramatically, as thundering drums and cascading harmonic layers unfurl around her like a shrouded fog. It’s clear that what she’s experiencing is justified: The protagonist fears love and a relationship, she shared in another interview, and it’s a literal matter of life and death. “[The song is] very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive”. As I move through Hounds of Love and its individual tracks, I will learn more about the album and its meaning. How each song is different and brilliant in its own way. I hope that I have done justice to the title track. The third single from the album – after Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and Cloudbusting -, Hounds of Love is a work of genius. A song that has been examined and discussed but is still under-explored. More people need to write about it. I hope that does happen as we get close to the fortieth anniversary of the album it is from. As a track and demonstration of Kate Bush’s talent, Hounds of Love is…

A staggering and towering achievement.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Rocket

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Tanner Deutsch

 

Rocket

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RELEASED on 3rd October…

I would advise people to pre-order Rocket’s amazing album, R Is for Rocket. The L.A. band are a wonderful act that I am new to but am keen to follow for as long as possible. Before getting to some recent interviews with Rocket, I want to bring in some biography about a band that should be in your life. If you are new to them like me, then take some time to listen to their music. They are going to go a very long way. I understand they have a couple of dates in the U.K. in August. It will be great seeing them take to the stage here:

“LA Based Rocket, comprised of childhood friends Alithea Tuttle (Bass, Vocals), Baron Rinzler (Guitar), Cooper Ladomade (Drums) and Desi Scaglione (Guitar), began writing during the lockdown of 2020. Having all grown up in Los Angeles, they were exposed to the city’s musical influences at a very young age, attending shows, frequenting record stores, and slowly becoming embedded in the sprawling DIY scene.

A large handful of demos were written with a huge sound in mind, but only so much noise could be made in a one bedroom apartment. The group scraped together what money they had and rented the cheapest lockout space they could find, rehearsing religiously for months until their first show. That show was an outstanding success, and quickly led to shows opening for Julie, bar italia, TAGABOW, Pretty Sick, RIDE, Sunny Day Real Estate and more.

Then it was time to settle in and start the recording process for what would become their first EP. Having moved out of their shoebox lockout and into Cooper’s parents back house, the group finally had the space they needed to create the sound they wanted. In an incredibly fortunate series of events, they came into possession of a 1970’s Yamaha PM-1000 recording console that was donated to their elementary school. With their “new” gear, the band began the process of self-recording, producing and engineering the songs they’d been writing. “We really try to not overthink things and be something we’re not,” they explain, “this EP is born out of trying to be as true to ourselves as possible.”

Opener “On Your Heels” encapsulates their sound, pitting jagged guitars against intoxicating vocal melodies, the stripped back verses building tension to the euphoric chorus before breaking down into hardcore-indebted riffs. “Portrait Show” takes their loud/quiet dynamics and perfects the approach, a la Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. updated for Gen Z. The song “focuses on different versions of myself,” shares Alithea, “while songs like “Normal to Me” and “On Your Heels” have more of an emphasis on the different versions of people that they show you.” The final track  “Take Your Aim” perfectly encapsulates the band’s laid back California charm with ripping drums, scuzzy guitars, and nostalgic melody.

Versions of You is a time capsule, a document of the turbulent transition from one’s late teens into their early twenties during one of the most uncertain times to be alive. Despite their youth, there’s a confidence and strength of vision across these 8 songs that is rare to find in a debut.

Los Angeles, CA’s Rocket have announced their highly anticipated debut album, R is for Rocket, due out Oct 3rd. Lead single “Wide Awake” is a jagged, fuzzed-out introduction to the band’s leveled up sound, balanced out by vocalist Alithea Tuttle’s sweetly hypnotic vocals”.

I am keen to combine a few interviews. Rocket have performed in the U.K. before. Recently, in fact. Back here later in the summer, it will be good to see them once more wow fans here. The Line of Best Fit spoke with the band earlier this month. They noted how Rocket are creating a sound that is a bit revivalism, but also something entirely new. If you do not know what Rocket are about yet, then make sure that you follow them on social media:

“Rocket is made up of four longtime friends: Alithea Tuttle (bass, vocals), Desi Scaglione (guitar, vocals), Cooper Ladomade (drums), and Baron Rinzler (guitar). Their dynamic is more than democratic—it’s protective. “I absolutely, in a way, was mentored by the three of them,” says Tuttle. “They created a space where there were no stupid questions. Where I could be like, ‘Wait, I’m not getting a sound out of this,’ and they’d be like, ‘You’re not plugged in.’ And it wasn’t embarrassing. It was safe.”

That closeness—geographic and emotional—shaped their foundation. But it didn’t erase the fear of actually starting. “I didn’t even play an instrument,” Tuttle continues. “We had all been friends, and I loved music, but I’d never done anything like this before. Baron had been playing guitar forever and had gone to school for music. And Cooper had been playing drums and a bunch of other instruments. But I never played anything. I mean, Cooper and I were in a jazz band together in middle school and I played trombone. But that was like the extent of my musical experience.”

Even as she learned to plug in her amp, then pick up the bass, then finally sing, the rest of the band never made her feel behind. “If I didn’t know these people I never would’ve started,” she says. “Because I would've been too scared to ask anything.” That rawness, that openness to learning in public, now forms the emotional center of Rocket’s music. Their songs feel uniquely both familiar and left field. Sometimes, following the recipe doesn’t create the best result. Their naivety is a superpower that’s landed them in a sonically unpredictable space.

The band formed in Los Angeles in 2021 but only released their debut EP – Versions of You – two years later, a seven-song burst of untamed energy that quickly gained traction both online and onstage. After supporting a run of their favourite bands such as Ride, Silversun Pickups, and Frank Black, they signed to legendary UK indie label Transgressive Records, alongside its US-based boutique imprint Canvasback Music.

Still, Rocket’s rise hasn’t been entirely out of nowhere. “We definitely did our time,” Scaglione says. “We had plenty of those nights where we’d drive five hours to play a show and be like, ‘Why did I say yes to this?’ Like, you show up and it’s two tickets sold. One more at the door. And you just go for it anyway.” They laugh about it now—the haunted hotel gigs in Tucson, sleeping four to a room across venues in California, the rooms so hot you think you might faint all around the country. But those shows still matter. “We were playing shows we really wanted to play early on and that was lucky,” Tuttle adds. “But we’ve also played a lot of shows where we were like, how did we get here?”

The band’s sound is blown-out and intimate, fuzzed-up but melodic. If you listen to their most popular song which was recently added to their debut EP, “Take Your Aim”, you’ll quickly understand why they often get tagged with labels like grunge, shoegaze, and 90s revival”.

I am going to go back to May. That is when CLASH featured Rocket. Marking the L.A. group out as ones to watch with a colossal year ahead of them, you can see them having a really huge future. They have that connection and chemistry that means they will remain together for many years. A sound that is so hard to ignore. R Is for Rocket is an album I cannot wait to hear:

“With a guitar-heavy sound reminiscent of the ’90s grunge era, combined with emotionally honest lyrics that address the joys and anxieties of youth, the group have gone from strength to strength in a remarkably short space of time. It’s 10:30 a.m. in LA, where the band catch up with CLASH via video call. Describing the group’s formation, Tuttle says, “We started flirting around with the idea of starting a band in lockdown. That was at a time that I personally had never even played an instrument, and had never been in a band, and Cooper had played drums forever and was really good but had never been in a band either. Baron had gone to college for music and Desi was in bands touring and playing all over.” She continues, revealing why the group’s formation had initially been kept a secret: “When we first started playing together, I guess it was mainly my fault that we were like, ‘We can’t tell anybody, this is too crazy!’ Just because it was – I had never done it before, and I’d never expressed to anybody that I wanted to do anything like that, so we were just kind of like, let’s keep it a secret till we know we can play a show and be as good as we can be.’”

Their debut performance eventually came when they supported their close friends Milly at a well-received show in their home city. Fast forward four years, and the band are gearing up for a trip across the pond, where they will play some of their biggest shows to date as they prepare to open for one of their major sonic influences, The Smashing Pumpkins. They’re set to join the legendary Chicago rockers for a handful of UK dates, including a huge show in London’s Gunnersbury Park on August 10th. “When we got the news, we were all crying. We were like, ‘This can’t be real, they must have got the wrong band!’” recalls Tuttle excitedly. Building on this, Rinzler says, “Growing up, they were a big band for all of us, before we even started making music together. Billy Corgan and James Iha are both great guitar players. They’re incredible musicians, and they write amazing songs. It’s such an honour to be able to say that we’re doing those shows with them, and the fact that it’s in England makes it so much cooler.”

These aren’t the only UK shows the band have booked for this summer. In June, they’ll play a string of intimate gigs across the UK and Europe, and they’ll also be stopping off in Manchester for their Outbreak Festival debut. Their most recent-and first ever-voyage to the British Isles took place as recently as November of last year, when they journeyed across the country in an SUV. Reminiscing on this experience, Scaglione laughs as he states, “The range of emotions went from super exciting, and like everything is new, to realising how challenging it is when you’ve not even got a minivan to tour in, but in the end we just made do, and thankfully all of the shows were great.” He continues, “The crowds were super fun and receptive. It seemed like they all like to dance to the music. In the States, we’re a little more reserved in that sense, so that was really cool to see.”

Rocket are often described as having a very DIY ethos. When asked whether or not that was an accurate categorisation, Rinzler says, “I think growing up in LA, there’s a very big DIY music scene, whether it’s people throwing shows at their own houses, or just putting music out themselves.” He expands, “Nowadays, we’re definitely letting other people take the reins a bit, and accepting help instead of pushing it away. But when we started, we didn’t have any help, you know? Up until recently, we self-recorded and self-released all of our own music, and we still make all of our own merch.” Up until now, the band have also been responsible for designing all of their own cover art, including for ‘Versions of You’. The recently re-released eight-track body of work is comprised of heavy, distorted guitar riffs, combined ethereally by Tuttle’s hypnotic vocal lines.

Discussing the sporadic creation of ‘Take Your Aim’, which was released to coincide with the re-launching of the EP, Rinzler says, “It was sat unfinished for a really long time. We had a verse, a pre-chorus and a chorus, and I think we had the vocals recorded on a computer or something. Three days or so before we went into the studio to record it, we added a bridge last minute in practice. Then, like two days before we turned it in for mastering, we added a guitar part.” Tuttle expands on this: “I think that’s why I’m proud of it. I feel like a lot of the decisions we made on it were just what felt right during the short amount of time we had to make them… And then if we wanted to second guess them, we didn’t really have the chance.”

Further reflecting on their creative process, Scaglione states, “We’re incredibly thoughtful people, so we tend to overthink things a lot in general, just because we all have quite strong opinions on things, and stuff like that. And music for us is kind of an outlet where we’re able to do the opposite of that.” Tuttle agrees: “When we’re communicating musically, things tend to become a lot clearer. This is so cliché to say, but sometimes words just don’t suffice-you know what I mean? We’re lucky that way, in that we don’t tend to have many big disagreements that stand in the way of anything”.

I am going to finish off with a terrific interview from Rolling Stone from this month. With their fanbase around the world growing, there is no stopping this amazing band! I do hope that you get involved and follow them. In such a competitive music scene, Rocket definitely stand out.  Where do they head once R Is for Rocket comes out? World domination, surely! This band are primed for greatness:

“This fall, Rocket will bring the soaring songs from R Is for Rocket on the road for their first official headlining tour, making stops in Nashville and New York, among other places. Even after their meteoric past couple of years, which included a buzzy SXSW appearance and an NME cover, they still can’t seem to wrap their heads around how quickly their non-stop touring has yielded success. “We get the ticket count every Tuesday,” Tuttle says. “We call it Ticket Count Tuesday, and that’s always the coolest thing in the world, that people are continuing to buy a ticket to our shows.”

While they formed in 2021 and started playing live shows a year later, in a lot of ways, Rocket have been in the making for at least a decade. The four band members all connected in their freshman year of high school, but Tuttle and Ladomade go all the way back to preschool. “Growing up with Alithea and knowing her my entire life, the last thing I ever thought she would ask me is if I wanted to be a drummer in her band,” says Ladomade, 25. Before suffering a serious spinal injury in 2016, Tuttle was set on becoming a professional dancer.

Back in high school, Rocket frequented live shows at the Smell, an all-ages DIY venue in downtown L.A. for up and coming acts. “For each and every one of us, music is something that I think we’ll all play forever and to a certain extent already did,” says Scaglione, who credits his musician father for instilling his own musical passions —  and for teaching him to play guitar when he was seven years old. Similarly, Rinzler, 27,  got a guitar when he was just 10 years old, but only started learning for a crush. “She played guitar and I thought it was so cool,” he says.

Meanwhile, Ladomade and Tuttle joined jazz band in middle school, but Ladomade soon discovered it wasn’t for her. “I’m 12 years old and they’re mad at me because I can’t read drum music. And it’s like, it’s not that serious,” she says. Though each member felt musically inclined by the time they all met in their teens, they didn’t think of forming a band back then. “None of us ever played music together up until six years of knowing each other,” Scaglione says.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Tuttle and Scaglione, who have been dating since high school, found themselves as unlikely collaborators, with Tuttle writing melodies to some of Scaglione’s working songs. Soon, the couple wanted to start a band, and turning to longtime friends Ladomade and Rinzler was a no-brainer. Rocket came together quickly from there. (Despite their worship of Siamese Dream, the band name is not a nod to the Smashing Pumpkins song “Rocket.” Instead, it came to them when Tuttle began doodling a rocket ship on a whiteboard in the band’s rehearsal space.)

The quartet spent six months practicing together in Ladomade’s parents’ backyard studio before their first show as openers for the indie rock outfit Milly. “We just all probably felt like if we were going to do something, it’s going to have to be the best it could be for any of us to be proud of it,” Rinzler says.

Rocket has continued to incorporate this philosophy into their work and grit. For R Is For Rocket, the band initially recorded about eight of the 10 tracks in early 2024, but after hitting the touring circuit with the demos, they decided they needed to go back into the studio. “It really gave us the opportunity to be like, ‘Let’s figure this out,’” Tuttle says. “Let’s figure out exactly what we want these songs to be and reimagine some of them.”

One of the songs they returned to was the new single “Wide Awake,” a track that’s exemplary of the band’s perfect balance of moody riffs and dreamy vocals. “That’s an interesting one because it’s a super old idea that we had been working on, and I had a completely different chorus and melody for it,” Tuttle says. “Now it’s one of all of our favorite songs.”

While the live audience feedback they’ve gotten shaped some of R Is for Rocket, the band isn’t relying on outside validation for the album to feel like a success. “Someone could listen to the record and be like, ‘I hate this,’ and I would almost still be grateful, because that means someone gave it a chance and was willing to let it make them feel something,” Tuttle says.

While they’ve made a point of carefully considering every facet of their first LP — from Scaglione’s production on the project to the album title (a nod to Nineties post-hardcore band Radio Flyer’s song of the same name) — they say the album cover has been the most difficult to choose in some ways. Tuttle reveals she only finalized the art the day before our interview, after stumbling on a photo of her father skydiving. “I love when there’s someone on a record cover, and you just have no idea who it is, unless maybe you look it up,” she says. But it’s not just a cool shot: The R Is for Rocket  cover art honors Tuttle’s father, who died from brain cancer in May. “When my dad passed, it was very much, ‘OK, this album is so totally dedicated to him in every sense of the word’”.

Rather than leave it on a sombre moment, I think it is important to remember the sheer joy Rocket are bringing people. Though, hearing about that album cover inspiration, there is this personal aspect to the album. Making music and creating art that is particular to the band but this sound that is connecting with so many people. You may not be overly-familiar with the fab Rocket. I would implore you to….

LET them into your world.

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Follow Rocket

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Songs from the Best Albums of 2000

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

 

Songs from the Best Albums of 2000

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THROUGHOUT the year…

PHOTO CREDIT: Emilio González/Pexels

we will stop to remember great albums that were released in the year 2000. A huge year, it was the turn of a new century and millennium. These great albums that are turning twenty-five. I have gone back o the year 2000 before. However, as we are in a year when some truly massive albums celebrate a big anniversary, I wanted to return for this Digital Mixtape. An assortment of songs from the very best albums of 2000. I was still a teenager then and I was discovering these great works from artists I knew about and some I did not. Getting use to the transition from the 1990s to this new decade. Some all-time great albums arrived in 2000. It is amazing that they are twenty-five years old! Maybe you remember some of these or it is a little bit hazy. In any case, below is an example of the wonderful music released in the year 2000. A massively important year, these albums are…

PHOTO CREDIT: Anastasiya Badun/Pexels

THE cream of the crop.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Gelli Haha

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Sophie Prettyman-Beauchamp

 

Gelli Haha

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PERHAPS I am a little bit…

PHOTO CREDIT: Dev Bowman

late to the brilliance of Gelli Haha. It is the stage name of L.A.-based artist, Angel Abaya. This is a musician and performance artist who has created a theatrical world called the ‘Gelliverse’. Her debut album, Switcheroo, was released on 27th June. I will end with a review of Switcheroo. Before that, there are a few interviews that are important to illuminate. For those who do not know about Gelli Haha, this will shine a light on her wonderful music and the infectious and vivacious Gelliverse. I am starting out with a recent NME interview that is well worth a full read:

“Make no mistake, Gelli Haha’s world – the Gelliverse – is joyously kaleidoscopic and bonkers. Her live shows are choreography-heavy spectacles, involving trampolines, pat-a-cake dances, inflatable dolphins and playground boxing matches being interrupted by bubble machines. Similarly, her recently released debut album ‘Switcheroo’ is equally inventive and quirky, hopscotching from the candy-floss electro of ‘Bounce House’ (the one-shot video to which resembles a Tumble Tots run by Devo) to the riotous hedonism of ‘Piss Artist’.

“Gelli Haha is a criminal you’d likely forgive and maybe befriend. Because she’s so cute, she gets a pass”

Speaking to NME from her home city of LA, ideas chaotically spill out of Abaya like candy from a piñata. Asked who Gelli is, the 27-year-old says she’s less an alter ego and more of a liberating philosophy. “This sounds woo-woo, but she’s my inner child,” she explains. “She’s this little girl that gets into mischievous situations. She’s a criminal you’d likely forgive and maybe befriend. Because she’s so cute, she gets a pass.”

As its title suggests, ‘Switcheroo’ is an exercise in reinvention; of experimenting with a persona, then realising, retrospectively, that it was your authentic self all along. In 2023, Abaya had reached an impasse. Having worked for eight years in various indie, folk and jazz bands in the Boise, Idaho music scene, the singer-songwriter had just moved to Los Angeles and released a heartfelt solo album ‘The Bubble’. Yet she was feeling unwelcome in her own life, as if her past was an ill-fitting outfit she’d grown out of. Teaming up with Sean Guerin from LA disco-revivalists De Lux, she wanted to think outside of the box.

Recorded using a variety of vintage synths and analogue effects, ‘Switcheroo’ plays in different sonic ballpits: ‘Funny Music’ ends abruptly with a Looney Tunes-style “BONK!” noise while the Italo disco of ‘Dynamite’ is interrupted by the sound of (what else?) a bear attack. On the breezy house of ‘Tiramisu’, she adopts the shrill vocals of a pouty Veruca Salt-esque child throwing a tantrum.

While tracks were scaffolded from instrumental demos Abaya had written, lyrics were frequently improvised in the studio. The noughties electroclash of ‘Spit’ lists words beginning with the letter S and peaks with the tongue-twister “Selby sells Shelby snails sans shells sick slick”. For ‘Normalize’, based on the 2005 Nigerian funk song ‘Nomalizo’ by Caiphus Semenya and Letta Mbulu, she consulted an online dictionary and sang the first nine words she found that ended in ‘ia’ (including homophobia, haemophilia, and paedophilia) – before declaring that she wants to “fly away”.

“There’s always a meaning to the songs, even if it isn’t clear to me in the beginning,” she elaborates. “I feel like we’re playing in a sandbox, digging up fossils of meaning. With ‘Funny Music’, I didn’t set out to write a song about my personal journey of healing my fear of expression, but I ended up doing it in a fun way. ‘Normalize’ is about wanting to escape from the woes of the world”.

Psychedelic Baby Mag spoke with Gelli Haha back in April. Heralding this weird and catchy music, it is clear that this is a very distinct artist. Adding something unique into the music world. I am new to Gelli Haha but can instantly tell that she is going to be around for a very long time. I do hope that there are U.K. dates in the future:

“What other types of musical projects were you involved in before this?

I got into the Boise music scene when I was 18, which was a decade ago. I was in a ton of bands, and I was also involved in a performing arts dance company. The dance company performed all over Boise, plus Vegas and Seattle and other places. I was in the company’s band, and eventually I became an assistant for them, and then when I was 21 or 22 I became the program director. I would say that experience was the most pivotal for me. Being in the band but also being involved in the production side is a lot of what inspired the Gelli project.

Do you think of Gelli as a solo project, or a band, or more like solo but with other contributors?

It’s all of that, really. I call the band the Gelli Company. I feel like anyone can be a Gelli. It’s a character that anyone can be. It’s fun, playful energy that anyone can embody. It’s collaborative. The music is really just me and Sean Guerin, who’s in the band De Lux. Nine of the 10 songs on the record are based on demos I made. And then Sean and I created a world from the demos. Sean’s very talented in the sonic space. So musically, it’s mostly just a collaboration between Sean and me. But there’s more collaboration in the performance part, between me and the dancers. I find a lot of joy in making this collaborative. I don’t believe I was meant to make art by myself. Part of the joy of my expression is to do it with other people.

When I listen to the record, I hear many different things, different genres and eras. What musical influences would you say inspired the songs?

I would say that for the identity of Gelli, I was inspired by Björk and Kate Bush. But Sean and I have also been listening to lots of late ‘70s/early ‘80s funk and boogie and experimental disco. And then he bought a bunch of old analog gear, like the kind of gear those people used. Animal Collective is another influence. I think originally the idea was this could be Animal Collective meets Kate Bush. But it ended up being something else. I think it’s tricky because you might feel like you’re hearing different influences, but personally I don’t think it sounds just like anything else. We wanted to make catchy music. But we wanted it to be weird. We felt like pop music is too boring and experimental music can be too unpalatable. So we wanted it to meet in the middle”.

Before getting to a review of Switcheroo, there is one more interview that I want to bring in. Baby Step Magazine spent some time with one of new music’s brightest artists. I am really excited to see where her future takes her. Having released one of this year’s best albums, I do wonder what is next for her. Championed by stations such as BBC Radio 6 Music, there is no telling quite how far she can go:

“Your music lives between Studio 54 and Area 51 — glamour and the bizarre. How does that surreal blend of influences come to life in the Gelliverse you’ve created?

I created the philosophy and foundation of the Gelliverse with my best friend, dancer/choreographer Selby Jenkins. In an early conversation I said the line, “somewhere between Studio 54 and Area 51” and Selby made sure to write it down. It’s really stuck with us through the process of creating the Gelliverse, the debut album, and the stage performance. I am inspired by many eras of New York City (though I’m based in LA), from 1920s vaudeville and flappers, to late 70s/early 80s art discos, to 90s/00s Club Kid/DFA era. I also grew very fond of the color red, and subsequently primary colors, and playful props like mini trampolines, inflatable bonkers, and dolphin balloons. We started talking about “the Gelliverse” when it became apparent we had created something that lived in its own strange world, with the goal that our community could also join in and go to this world with us.

The production on Switcheroo leans into intentional imperfection, with vintage gear and strange effects adding a chaotic charm. What’s the appeal of ‘flawed’ sound for you creatively?

I like the intentional imperfection because it feels more real and more FUN, though there are plenty of sounds and things that are “perfect” on the record, we wanted to create an illusion of imperfection, of messiness. I wrote and recorded Switcheroo with Sean Guerin. We love to be experimental and make tracks feel alive, weird, and mystical. Sean bought a ton of vintage analog gear while we were making the record that colored every track and shook things up.

You describe Switcheroo as an “inside joke turned theatrical spectacle.” What’s the story behind the album’s title, and how does it reflect the overall mood of the record?

Sean came up with the title. It just made sense. It’s silly but still indicative of transformation and change, and trying to embrace, accept, and enjoy it. There's a fascinating movement to the record that makes you do a switcheroo. You have to roll with the punches, or rather, the bonks ;) I love the playfulness of the title, it feels slightly deceptive but in an innocent prankster way. A criminal that you’ll likely forgive and maybe even befriend”.

The Quietus are among those who have handed out a celebratory and congratulatory review for Switcheroo. An essential debut album from the L.A. artist. Every song she puts out is hugely memorable and infectious Adding this fresh and personal energy and colour to music. If you are not following her already then endure that you do it now:

“Like an electroclash party inside a kids TV studio, Gelli Haha’s debut album Switcheroo is characterised by playfulness with a hedonistic, sometimes sinister bent. Gelli Haha is the pseudonym of LA-based artist Angel Abaya, who released a decent indie rock album, The Bubble, under her own name in 2023. She’s since eschewed this more conventional aesthetic to establish ‘the Gelliverse’ – a high-concept theatrical world of play from which the character of Gelli Haha emerged, an amalgamation of Pee Wee Herman, Marina Diamandis’ Electra Heart and a 00s electroclash party girl.

Switcheroo begins with a soaring, retro-futurist synth, as though Gelli is descending to earth from her disco ball home planet. The track’s title is ‘Funny Music’, but there’s a melancholy and rigour to the songwriting, even as it’s punctuated by daft sound effects and cut off by a huge ‘BONK’ at the end. Gelli speaks over the chaos as though in existential voiceover (“It’s all a hoax / it’s just a joke”) establishing a tension between pose and play that continues through the album as she tries on different personas. For ‘Johnny’ she’s a torch singer leaning louchely against a Casio keyboard; in ‘Spit’, she’s an aerobics instructor-cum-dominatrix commanding her submissives to “suck, smooch, snap, surrender” alongside a relentless beat; for ‘Bounce House’ she’s led by freewheeling childlike exploration, mixed with tongue-in-cheek suggestion (“Tell me, are you ready to tumble?”). Each song is stuffed full of electronic whizzes and kaleidoscopic synths, fizzy like static electricity.

In addition to these fantastical personas, Gelli also embodies a more down-to-earth narrator for ‘Piss Artist’, an all-out slice of debauchery in the middle of the record. Her girlish giggles transformed into guttural laughter, Gelli lays on the valley girl affectations as she recalls a wild night of partying (“Once she took her shirt off it was like, oh everyone can take their shirt off”), her droll spoken word bolstered by chunky electroclash beats. Celestial voices harmonise around her, suggesting that even the records earthier pleasures have transcendent properties. Party girls are of course currently in vogue or recently passé, depending on who one speaks to – but ‘Piss Artist’ is less Charli, more Princess Superstar and Kesha.

The after-party continues on the chaotic and funny ‘Tiramisu’, where Gelli’s voice turns even lazier, a half-arsed featured vocalist on a piano house track. “Whaaaat the heeeeell issss goooooing ooooon?” she repeats – well exactly! Seemingly tired of our earthly concerns, she ascends back to the skies during the excellently-titled closing song ‘Pluto is not a planet it’s a restaurant’, her long weaving vocal lines positioning her as Caroline Polachek with a better sense of humour. Switcheroo is tonnes of fun in its own right, but is also ripe with potential for further transmissions from the the Gelliverse”.

Truly an artist that you need to know about, this is merely the start for Gelli Haha. With the Gelliverese growing and expanding in the music sky, Angel Abaya has created something inclusive and irresistible! If you are among those who are unaware of her wonder, then go and follow her now. One of the most promising artists in the world and a future legend in my book, you really can’t…

SAY more than that.

____________

Follow Gelli Haha

FEATURE: The Boss Becomes a King: Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Boss Becomes a King

  

Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run at Fifty

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I do love…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bruce Springsteen in L.A. in 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O’Neill

a fiftieth anniversary album celebration! It is a nice round number and is a huge anniversary. This year we have celebrated/will celebrate fifty years of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Queen’s A Night at the Opera and Patti Smith’s Horses. One of the biggest from 1975 was Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run. Released on 25th August, 1975, it followed 1973’s The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Even though Born to Run was a big chart success in the U.S., it only just made the top forty in the U.K. (it reached thirty-six). Alongside the title track are classics such as Thunder Road and Jungleland. I am going to get to some features that discuss Born to Run. One of Bruce Springsteen’s most popular albums – maybe Born in the U.S.A. or The River can compete -, I know there will be celebrations around its fiftieth anniversary. I am starting out with a Rolling Stone feature. When deciding their 500 best albums ever, they placed Born to Run in twenty-first:

“Springsteen’s first two releases were commercial failures. Around this time, Rolling Stone journalist, Jon Landau saw Springsteen perform at Harvard Square Theatre, noting in the The Real Paper, “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.” As a last-ditch effort to make Springsteen a commercially successful artist, Columbia gave him a massive budget to record the third album. These sessions would almost break Springsteen mentally, who struggled to convey the sounds he had in his head to the musicians in the studio. Springsteen, having seen his review, brought in Landau to help him, feeling he understood what he was trying to achieve. This was the start of a 47-year-and-counting relationship between the pair and Landau is Springsteen’s manager to this day. ‘Born To Run,’ would take more than 14 months to record with 6 months alone being dedicated to the title track. That song was released months ahead of the album’s completion creating massive anticipation. The opening drum fill was played by Ernest “Boom” Carter, a temporary drummer within the E Street Band. His successor and drummer on the rest of the album, Max Weinberg has said that Carter’s Jazz fusion playing on the song is one that Weinberg could never replicate live and eventually stopped trying.

The record opens with the poignant ‘Thunder Road,’ a song about a character named Mary and her boyfriend and their "one last chance to make it real," similar to Springsteen and this album. It opens with Roy Bittan’s delicate piano playing and namechecks Roy Orbison, a huge influence on Springsteen. Majority of the record was composed on piano, in fact. ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,’ is about Bad Scooter, aka Bruce Springsteen himself and the formation of the E Street Band. In the third verse, Springsteen sings about when “the Big Man joined the band.” The Big Man was his nickname for his now-deceased saxophonist, Clarence Clemons and this part of the song is now used to pay tribute to him in concert, with Springsteen pausing to look at his image on screen before continuing. The LP takes a “four corners” approach with each side starting with upbeat songs to escape and adventure and ending with songs about loss and betrayal (‘Backstreets’ and ‘Jungleland’). The promotion of the record, buoyed by Landau’s now famous quote, created hype and intrigue and saw ‘Born To Run’ peak at #3 on the charts. It went on to sell in excess of 6 million copies and after two false starts, Springsteen had arrived with one of the greatest collection of works ever recorded. I once saw Springsteen perform this cover to cover live and it remains one of the best concert experiences of my life. I’ve listened to this one countless times in my life and no matter how many times I hear it, it makes me emotional and excited everytime. It’s a rollercoaster of stories by one of the best singer-songwriters of our time. I could stop this countdown right now and be satisfied. But I won’t. Onward to the Top 20!”.

I would suggest people check out features like this fortieth anniversary track by track feature from Billboard. This American Songwriter piece is also well worth reading. I want to move to a terrific feature from GRAMMY. They marked forty-five years of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run in 2020. An album that still sounds so extraordinary and potent to this day. It ranks alongside the very best albums ever released. If you have never heard it then make sure that you do as soon as possible:

“With their first two LPs—Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, both from 1973—Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band cemented themselves as masters of both contemplative singer/songwriter elegance and triumphant orchestral rowdiness. Despite the mostly positive critical praise they garnered, however, neither record reaped the financial success and mainstream devotion the group deserved. Understandably, this led to a lot of internal and external frustrations and doubts, so all parties involved knew that—as the saying goes—the third time had to be the charm.

Luckily, 1975's Born to Run proved to be precisely that, launching Springsteen and company into the hearts and minds of virtually the entire world. All of its songs became beloved radio/concert/pop culture staples—thanks in part to a $250,000 marketing campaign by Columbia Records—and it ended up not only reaching the #3 spot on the Billboard 200, but earning praise from Rolling Stone, the New York Times and The Village Voice. Since then, its ability to bring new levels of poetic phrasing, symphonic instrumentation and heartfelt slice-of-life narratives (regarding blue-collar struggles, youthful romantic idealism and urban rebellion) to heartland rock has led many to deem it one of the greatest albums of all time.

Given the immense pressure everyone felt for Born to Run to be a hit, it's no surprise that it took the band 14 months to complete (with almost half of that time spent just on its iconic title track). It would be the last album co-produced by Mike Appel, as well as the first co-produced by music critic turned manager Jon Landau (who, in 1974, famously stated that Springsteen was the future of rock and roll in the midst of others aptly, if reductively, calling him the "new" or "next" Bob Dylan). Many of the same musicians stayed on, with the most significant additions being drummer Max Weinberg, pianist Roy Bittan, and guitarist/arranger Steven Van Zandt (who'd played with Springsteen in prior bands and got the gig after doing the horn arrangements for "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out").
Together, they created a succinct yet exploratory sequence whose Phil Spector-esque "wall of sound" approach built upon everything its two predecessors did so exceptionally (humble yet piercing odes like "Lost in the Flood" and full-bodied celebrations like "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"). That achievement, coupled with a more established conceptual throughline involving separate but similar characters existing around the same places and striving similar types of freedom, makes it clear why Born to Run is still so revered and idiosyncratic.

Each of its eight songs feels like a cinematic musical adaption of a resonant short story, and Springsteen designed each side to begin hopefully and end sorrowfully. Case in point: "Thunder Road," an exhilarating opener in which the unnamed speaker makes a final plea to his girlfriend, Mary, to run away with him. The instantly comforting blend of Springsteen's harmonica and Bittan's piano makes it seem like the story is set in a Steinbeck novel, and Springsteen’s backhanded compliment—"You ain’t a beauty / But hey, you're alright"—actually conjures Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" in its blunt but realistic testament to authentic attraction. Obviously, its robust and catchy evolution is mesmerizing, foreshadowing the motif of invigorating better life daydreaming that spans the whole album (especially the title track).

Afterward, the origin of the E Street Band is explored in the sleekly nuanced, intricate, and fun—though also subtly mournful—"Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," which evokes the rock 'n’'roll vibe of Springsteen's sophomore effort. In contrast, "Night" recalls the poignant urgency of his debut collection, with its tale of a disheartened blue-collar worker seeking the nighttime joys of drag racing and female companionship resulting in one of Springsteen's most infectiously encouraging choruses. Then, "Backstreets" concludes Side One as a downer, with Bittan's pianowork hinting at the measured misfortune he'd bring to "Jungleland." Springsteen's reflection on the downfall of a plutonic friendship with a woman named Terry is full of coarse, almost inebriated wildness; meanwhile, the band punctuates each emotion with luscious accompaniment (including an imperfect yet earnest guitar solo).

Of course, Side Two explodes with “Born to Run,” which connects to “Thunder Road” not only in its exuberance, but even in its melodies and sentiments. Interestingly, it’s the only track that Weinberg and Bittan didn’t play on since it was recorded before drummer Earnest Carter and pianist David Sancious left the band. Every element is hypnotic, blissful, and legendary; from its sparkly timbres and wholly impassioned serenading, to saxophonist Clarence Clemons' solo and the subsequent deceptively complex breakdown, "Born to Run" is pretty much perfect.  

Luckily, the LP maintains that magic, with the dynamic yet relatively straightforward "She's the One" exposing an irresistible femme fatal before the penultimate "Meeting Across the River" acts as a decorative and lowkey tale of a low-level criminal unsuccessfully going for one last score. Cleverly, it also moves us from New Jersey to New York, where the record's closing masterpiece, "Jungleland," takes place. Combining Dylan-esque ponderings with early Chicago-esque arrangements, its like Springsteen's three-act take on West Side Story. It moves from a gorgeously intense chronicle of gang violence to a devastatingly serene aftermath, wherein bittersweet tapestries and appropriately timed escalations guide Springsteen’s wise but disenfranchised commentary. It’s incredibly tasteful and believable, with the line “And the poets down here / Don't write nothing at all / They just stand back and let it all be” standing out as particularly profound and hard-hitting.

From the huge concerts that surrounded it, to the multitude of album cover parodies/homages and industry honors that followed, Born to Run is rightly considered a benchmark for its creator, decade and genre overall. Expectedly, its winning formula inspired an even more mature and downtrodden follow-up, 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, as well as the aesthetics of countless proteges. It set new standards for how lyrical, multifaceted, and thematic rock music could be, and although it's nearly half a century old, it truly hasn't aged a day”.

Before ending with a review, I want to introduce a Ticketmaster feature. They argued that Born to Run is the best Bruce Springsteen album. Though that is a big claim, you would be hard pressed to argue disprove that! It has inspired so many people and has an enormous legacy. It was Springsteen’s breakthrough and it completely transformed Seventies Rock music. As it turns fifty on 25th August, I wonder whether Bruce Springsteen will perform the album in its entirety. He and the E Street Band have done on several occasions:

“If side A ends in despair, side B comes blasting out of the traps like it’s on fire. Every inch of ‘Born To Run’ sounds like it’s revving its engines to infinity. It’s classic rock n’ roll on nitro fumes, fuel-injected youthful confidence, burning everything down on its way to somewhere better. It’s unlikely anyone ever feels as optimistic or alive as they do when ‘Born To Run’ is playing. If you could bottle any moment and relive it on demand, it’s that moment during a Springsteen show when he counts back in from the breakdown. Elation doesn’t even come close. ‘Born To Run’ is a song that defies the idea that it was created. It feels like it’s always just been.

The beautiful, brooding love song ‘She’s The One’ is a pause for breath, but by ‘Meeting Across The River’ things have turned desperate, and there’s only one last chance to try and make something out of nothing. But instead of youthful confidence, this feels laced with danger and a sense that the talk is just talk as the narrator tries to steel himself for the score that’s gonna turn everything around.

We’ve all seen enough films to know how that pans out. But it’s not hard to see Bruce’s tales of desperate lovers and naïve souls out to defy the world as a proxy for his own do-or-die situation. The gangs are his band, the girl is his music: it’s just them against “the record machine”. The colossal ‘Jungleland’ doesn’t offer any happy endings, but probably because Bruce himself didn’t know if there would be one. There’s a pause as the lights go out and the street poet makes his stand, ending up wounded, but crucially “not even dead”. The story is to be continued.

Born To Run was a huge success. At the time of writing, it’s sold over 8 million copies worldwide. The coming years would be anything but plain sailing, especially with a painful and protracted legal wrangle with his ex-manager Mike Appel, but Bruce had already shown he could face down remarkable odds and win, even wounded and up against the wall. With these eight songs, he proved to himself and the world that he was the superstar he’d always threatened to become.

You might wake up tomorrow and put on The Rising, remembering that this is your favourite Bruce record. Or you might sit up late listening to the Steinbeck inflections of The Ghost Of Tom Joad and wonder how any album could be better. Or you might drive down a motorway, high street or suburban road, blasting out Born In The USA and think that this is surely as good as it gets. None of those would be incorrect. But there’s no album that so singularly defines Bruce Springsteen, no album that matters more to his career, than Born To Run. For that, it can only be the greatest”.

I am going to finish with a review from the BBC. I don’t think you will find a review anything other than overwhelmed or hugely positive. It is among those classic albums that has won universal approval. As there will be new inspection of Born to Run close to 25th August, it will reach a new generation. Its title track is one of my favourite tracks. It is a glorious thing! Go and seek out this album now:

“Born To Run’s eight songs run to less than 40 minutes in length, but comprise a whole as satisfying as a portion of exquisitely rich chocolate cake. It seems Springsteen truly went for broke in 1975 after his first two albums had been critically well-received but less so commercially. Music critic Jon Landau became his producer and joined Bruce with his E-Street band in the studio to make what remains a classic, honest musical expression of hope, dreams and survival.

The colossal wall of sound production would make Phil Spector proud. Clarence Clemons’ triumphant yet bittersweet saxophone wailing and Roy Bittan’s nagging piano riffs augment the tough Telecaster guitar sound, while chiming glockenspiel and Max Weinberg’s drumming cement the heady mix.

Lyrically, it’s a dramatic collection of blue-collar tales of love and making ends meet that could only come from New Jersey’s favourite son. He clearly took a few ideas from storytellers like Van Morrison and Bob Dylan but also forged his own uplifting style. In ''Meeting Across The River'', a street tale Lou Reed would be proud of, listeners can ponder on a great deluded hustler’s line: 'That two grand’s practically sitting here in my pocket.' ''Thunder Road'' meanwhile, is almost effortlessly cinematic. In two lines there’s imagery more striking than most songwriters can manage on a whole album: 'In the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets… Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet.' On the excellent title track familiar BS motifs are returned to, particularly running away and the allure of fast cars, 'Chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected and stepping out over the line…We gotta get out while we’re young.' Few tunesmiths can make a bad situation sound so good.

Like Ry Cooder, over a lengthy career the working-class NJ hero has proved himself to be a remarkably versatile operator. He’s taken on rootsy American folk material, written about 9/11 and, of course, had gargantuan commercial success with Born In The USA. Contemporary bands are never slow in praising him and his influence is still keenly felt. In songwriting terms alone Arcade Fire, REM and Mercury Rev have all clearly borrowed his ideas down the years and it’s unlikely they’ll be the last”.

Turning fifty very soon, I will definitely not be the only one marking Born to Run at fifty. There are so many interesting features about the album. This is another that I would recommend people read. Whether you are a Bruce Springsteen or not, Born to Run is impeccable! A work of sheer brilliance from The Boss, we will be talking Born to Run…

FIFTY years from now.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Janet Jackson

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

Janet Jackson

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YOU may not be aware…

PHOTO CREDIT: Solaiman Fazel

of this series. It is where I focus on a terrific American songwriter/artist and collate a twenty-song mix of cuts from throughout their career. Not to besmirch the actual Great American Songbook, I am just using it as a nice title! I am moving on to the incredible Janet Jackson. Undoubtably one of the greatest artists and songwriters of her generation, her latest album was 2015’s Unbreakable. In terms of all-time great albums, few can compete with a run of four that started with 1986’s Control, then Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 of 1989 before getting to 1993’s janet. and finishing with 1997’s The Velvet Rope. These very different but simply awe-inspiring releases from an artist who was growing in stature and confidence! It is a hard job only picking twenty Janet Jackson songs. However, I feel the mixtape at the end is a nice representation of her best moments. How changeable and adaptable she is as an artist. Always moving forward and doing something different. Let’s hope that we get another album from Janet Jackson. One of most important artists ever in my view, I have loved her music since she was a child. Someone who I will continue to support. This tribute is proof Janet Jackson is…

A pioneer and superstar.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Something Like a Song: Mrs. Bartolozzi (Aerial)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Something Like a Song

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

 

Mrs. Bartolozzi (Aerial)

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THIS is a song that I have covered before…

but wanted to revisit here as it is one of my favourites from Kate Bush. Taken from her 2005 double album, Aerial, Mrs Bartolozzi always strikes me as a track that should have been released as a single. It could have had this amazing music video! I am going to go into more depth about this song. I have said how Aerial is an album that is not discussed and explored as much nearly as it should be. I am going to start out with this information from Kate Bush Encyclopedia. We get some interview archive from Kate Bush, where she talks about the inspiration behind Mrs. Bartolozzi:

“Kate about ‘Mrs. Bartolozzi’

Is it about a washing machine? I think it’s a song about Mrs. Bartolozzi. She’s this lady in the song who…does a lot of washing (laughs). It’s not me, but I wouldn’t have written the song if I didn’t spend a lot of time doing washing. But, um, it’s fictitious. I suppose, as soon as you have a child, the washing suddenly increases. And uh, what I like too is that a lot of people think it’s funny. I think that’s great, because I think that actually, it’s one of the heaviest songs I’ve ever written! (laughs)
Clothes are…very interesting things, aren’t they? Because they say such an enormous amount about the person that wears them. They have a little bit of that person all over them, little bits of skin cells and…what you wear says a lot about who you are, and who you think you are…
So I think clothes, in themselves are very interesting. And then it was the idea of this woman, who’s kind of sitting there looking at all the washing going around, and she’s got this new washing machine, and the idea of these clothes, sort of tumbling around in the water, and then the water becomes the sea and the clothes…and the sea…and the washing machine and the kitchen… I just thought it was an interesting idea to play with.
What I wanted to get was the sense of this journey, where you’re sitting in front of this washing machine, and then almost as if in a daydream, you’re suddenly standing in the sea.

Ken Bruce show, BBC Radio 2, 1 November 2005

Well, I do do a lot of washing [chuckles]. I’m sure I would never have written the song if I didn’t… You know, just this woman, in her house, with her washing. And then the idea of taking the water in the washing machine with all the clothes, and the water then becoming the sea… and I also think there’s something very interesting about clothes. They’re kind of people without the people in them, if you know what I mean? [Kate laughs] They all have our scent, and pieces of us on them, somehow.

Front Row, BBC4, 4 November 2005”.

Virtually nothing is written about the song! To be fair, it has never been performed live and did not get a single release. I am not sure whether I have ever heard it on the radio. That is a shame. Even if there is more written about A Coral Room and King of Mountain, there does need to be this focus on Mrs. Bartolozzi. One of the standout tracks from Aerial, I would rank it as one of her best songs. There are a few reasons for it. I think as Aerial as a domestic album. One where new motherhood (her son Bertie was born in 1998) was influencing Kate Bush. Apart from a track like Bertie, you can feel the joy and contentment of new motherhood play right throughout Aerial. The second disc, A Sky of Honey, and that summer’s day in the garden. Her thinking about family and the past on other songs. When it comes to reviews, I have seen some say that it is unique and unusual in a good way. It is distinctly the work of Kate Bush! However, it is different to anything she recorded before. The fourth track on Aerial, I think it is a perfect placement. Coming after Bertie, we get this fantasy. Something domestic but otherworldly. The mundane and ordinary made extraordinary. I always interpret the first verse as Bush casting herself as Mrs. Bartolozzi and talking about her new son (and perhaps her husband., Dan McIntosh) bringing mud into the house: “I remember it was that Wednesday/Oh when it rained and it rained/They traipsed mud all over the house/It took hours and hours to scrub it out/All over the hall carpet/I took my mop and my bucket/And I cleaned and I cleaned/The kitchen floor/Until it sparkled/Then I took my laundry basket/And put all the linen in it/And everything I could fit in it/All our dirty clothes that hadn’t gone into the wash/And all your shirts and jeans and things/And put them in the new washing machine”.

I shall try not to repeat too much of what I have said before. In 2025, almost twenty years since Mrs. Bartolozzi was included on Aerial, we have not really heard another song like it. Bush is masterful when it comes to making something quite everyday come alive. The way she delivers the lines and really immerses herself in the song. When Kate Bush sings about the washing machine and clothes becoming entwined, it becomes sexual. Bush discussing the erotic and sensual away from physical love or something traditional. Clothes in a washing machine. A woman and a snowman in 2011’s Misty. From the first verse about the chore of slopping the mop and cleaning mud that is all over the floor, there is that progress to the cleaning of clothes. Maybe representing a lover who has left or is gone, Bush sees the clothes on the line and imagines someone in them. Or she thinks there is someone there. I do think this is her immersed in a character. Whether it was random selecting the Bartolozzi surname or it was inspired by something, I do hanker to see a video for this! Maybe an animated one or an actress playing the part. As Aerial is twenty in November, it would be amazing if a few commissions went out so that a few tracks not released as single could get videos. Perhaps this, A Coral Room and maybe Aerial. In terms of casting and look, there are all kinds of possibilities for Mrs. Bartolozzi. It is alive with loss, desire, family, home, fantasy and so much more. A track I remember listening to a lot when I first heard Aerial. So moving and evocative. You cannot help but lose yourself in the scenes!

IN THIS PHOTO: Ella Purnell (a potential future Mrs Bartoloizzi?)/PHOTO CREDIT: Ella Purnell

I love the lines “Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy/Get that dirty shirty clean/Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy/Make those cuffs and collars gleam/Everything clean and shiny”. It is cute and almost child-like. Quirky and fun! One of Kate Bush’s strengths is making something familiar and maybe boring and elevating it to almost operatic levels! She produced Aerial and I love her production on Mrs. Bartolozzi! Although there are other players and layers on various tracks, there is something singular and almost sparse about Mrs. Bartolozzi. Just Bush and her piano. I can imagine her recording this in the studio with the late Del Palmer engineering. Perhaps recalling a past autumn day when it was wet and she was at home cleaning. Even if it is not directly inspired by her own life and experiences, I do think that a young child and the domestic responsibilities affected her. It is shocking so little is written about the track. I think I have written more about it then everyone else in the world put together – and then some! I do hope that this song gets more coverage and airplay. Not long until Aerial turns twenty, I am sure people will write about it more. I disagree with anyone who feels Mrs. Bartolozzi is banal and basic. It is a song that nobody else was writing and it has so much in it. In a video, I can imagine a British actor like the incredible Michelle Ryan, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ella Purnell or Emilia Clarke playing Mrs Bartolozzi. Maybe having these flashbacks or a past lover. A family dog or child running through the house. Even though a video will never come, it is nice to imagine! An underrated gem from a masterpiece album, Mrs. Bartolozzi is a phenomenal and spellbinding Kate Bush track that…

NOBODY else could create.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Freya Beer

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Freya Beer

__________

I have been meaning…

PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Stone

to spotlight Freya Beer for years now. I have taken the opportunity now as I know there is news afoot. Last year, she released the brilliant singles, Tatianna and False Hope. Cry Baby came out earlier this year. Such a distinct and arresting artist, there is someone I can recommend to everyone. I have been following her for a long time now and love everything that she puts out. I am going to get to some interviews with this incredible talent. Go and follow Beer on social media. If you need some convincing as to why she is worth your time and energy, then I hope what I am about to include sells it! Even though the interviews are from 2023/last year, it is important to head back to a year where she was very busy and was gaining a lot of new attention. I am not sure what is around the corner, though it seems that something might be brewing. I want to start out with an interview from 2023. Talking around the release of FANTASY/GALORE, it was a moment in Freya Beer’s career when she was still seen as ‘emerging’. Maybe she still is, though I do feel she has established herself as someone very much here to stay. An artist who has staked her claim. There is plenty ahead. This is what Northern Exposure Magazine asked the phenomenal Freya Beer:

“Your new double A-side single “FANTASY” is described as ‘celebrating the uncensored version of ourselves that we become in our wildest daydreams’. Where did this idea originate?

The idea originated from coming across certain emotions which you may not have felt before, some of us experience this in our adolescent years but for me, being a introverted youngster, it was only coming into my adult life I began to come across different thoughts and feelings which were new to me. Fantasy is about accepting those feelings, no matter how sexual they are!

“GALORE” is about “people who are infatuated with something” Has there been someone or something that inspired you to write this track?

I wouldn’t say it was someone in particular but other people experiences of this. It’s quite a psychological subject so to speak I thought it was an interesting topic to write a song about.

All the critics and music fans lauded your debut album ‘Beast’ for its excellent lyrics, production and sound. How would you say your songwriting process evolved from your debut album ‘Beast’ to “FANTASY” // “GALORE”?

I think my song-writing in Fantasy/Galore touches upon darker subjects which I didn’t come across when writing Beast. I’m always very picky with the words I use in my songs and I think Fantasy in particular will catch the listeners ear as I lyrically it’s quite sexual.

I noticed that you release via your own label Sisterhood Records. What made you start your own label, and what has running a label taught you about the music industry?

The decision of starting a label was suggested by my management team. I honestly never thought I would have my own label but it’s such a great idea as you have free reign to release whatever you want.

On that note… What is the most valuable advice you’ve ever received in the music industry?

The most valuable advice to me is that you won’t be able to please everyone. There’ll always be someone amongst the shadows trying to pick out flaws in your art, so you might as well just carry on what you’re doing. If you come across this type of crowd then you must be doing something interesting otherwise they wouldn’t put all their energy into you.

As an artist, you have a very defined visual style as well in your photographs and videos. How much thought do you put into that side of things?

I’ve always loved visuals, whether that’s paintings or cinema. My visual aesthetic is a huge part of my music as it compliments the listening experience. I’ve found that naturally I’m evolving my image as I release new music.

I see that poetry and art have heavily inspired your music… Who is your favourite poet and artist and what is it about them that influences you so much?

My favourite poet would have to be Charles Bukowski, some may say he was a controversial guy but the raw bitter truth which lies upon his words really resonates to me. The first poem I came across of his was ‘So You Want to Be a Writer’, and as a young creative coming across this poem at the age 16, it really gave me confidence to believe in my art and if I want it that badly it will come”.

Early last year, Fresh on the Net chatted with Freya Beer. She was looking ahead to some dates supporting John Cooper Clarke during his U.K. spoken word tour. It must have been a dream come true when those dates happened. Since then, Beer has been played by stations including BBC Radio 6 Music. She is an artist that I know is going to be around for years more:

“You’re an artist from West London, how did it all begin for you?

I’ve been putting music out for years, I was a young teenager when I started and I only did it for fun. Writing has always been a huge part of my life, whether that’s to write a song or poem or even just to vent! It was really in 2019, when I teamed up with my amazing management and released Dear Sweet Rosie that my journey into the industry began.

What did you listen to growing up?

I listened to various styles of music growing up. What I was really drawn towards was Country music and French music, an interesting combination but I was obsessed. From Johnny Cash to Serge Gainsbourg, I was sold.

You also did some lockdown cover versions — what was your favourite to perform?
My favourite was Happiness Is A Butterfly by Lana Del Rey. I thought the song showed off my voice, and it was nice to sing something slow for a change.

You’ve also been featured on BBC Introducing Live Lounge, what was that like?

Incredible. Truly grateful for all the support the BBC and BBC Introducing has given me over the past few years. It felt very rewarding doing a live lounge for them.

What are you listening to at the moment?

I’m currently listening to the French band Juniore. The lead singer, Anna, her voice reminds me of François Hardy, who I absolutely adore. Also! I had the opportunity to support them a few years ago and they gave me a cassette of their album which was very kind”.

I am going to finish off with an interview with an interview from last September from Babystep Magazine. With new music out, it was a perfect time to shine a light on Freya Beer. I am pumped to see what comes next for her. This is a very special talent. Keep an eye on her social media channels to see what is going on. I feel like we will see this artist play some massive stages soon enough (though she has already played the London Palladium!):

“You've built a reputation for blending gothic and disco elements in your music. How did these influences shape the sound of your upcoming EP Tatianna and how does it differ from your previous work?

My EP ‘Tatianna’ in comparison to my debut album ‘Beast’ is a lot more maturer I believe. The sound of this EP feels solid, and that I’ve secured my place in the world of Goth but I never want to pigeon hole myself to one brand or genre. I wouldn’t say that my music is your typical Disco record but I was really inspired by an artist called Zella Day whose recent catalogue is a mix of Disco and Pop. It’s interesting to look at how artists and bands are using the element of Disco in their work without being too obvious. My album ‘Beast’ was a lot darker than ‘Tatianna’ but like I mentioned before that was a different time and I feel way more confident in my art now.

You’ve had the unique opportunity to open for John Cooper Clarke with both your music and poetry. How does your background as a poet influence your songwriting and performances?

I started writing when I was very young, I don’t know if I would class that as poetry or songs but I wrote because I loved taking my imagination on a journey to a world which I created. I soon discovered poetry and adored the use of words I would come across. I would note down any words or subjects which a poem would be about and used it as inspiration for my songwriting.

With your extensive UK tour coming up, how do you prepare for such an intense schedule, and what can fans expect from your live shows this time around?

In general, I’m a very organised person and I love a good schedule so therefore it’s not too stressful when I have a huge tour coming up. A big part of this organisation is by my incredible managment team, who have been planning it all. When it comes to the live shows, I’ve been really picky this time round about how I want the stage to look. I’ve been doing a lot of research and figuring out how to bring out my aesthetic within the live performances.

Running your own label, Sisterhood Records, has given you creative control over your releases. How has this independence impacted your career, and what advice would you give to other artists looking to go the independent route?

The independence of releasing under your own terms is empowering and inspiring because no one is telling you to go down a certain route or portray yourself in a way you’re not comfortable with. If you know what you want to put out into the ether of the music world then definitely feel confident in releasing under your own label. I’ve found it inspires others and realistically it’s not that hard if you’re prepared and well organised”.

I am going to finish off here. Someone I have a lot of admiration for, Freya Beer needs to be on your radar. Cry Baby is another slice of gold from someone who grows better by the release. Such a remarkable talent who you cannot easily compare to anyone. An original in my view. In a busy and crowded music industry, you cannot say that of every artist! Do yourself a favour and spend some time…

WITH Freya Beer.

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Follow Freya Beer

FEATURE: Groovelines: Mariah Carey - Fantasy

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

 

Mariah Carey - Fantasy

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THE lead single…

from her fifth studio album, Daydream, Fantasy was released on 23rd August, 1995. It is one of Mariah Carey’s greatest tracks. It is my favourite song from her. Some prefer the Bad Boy Remix with O.D.B. However, I am going to focus on the original ahead of its thirtieth anniversary. Forbes, SLANT and Time Out magazine have listed Fantasy among the best songs of the 1990s. Fantasy was Mariah Carey's ninth chart-topping  on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was also the first single by a female artist to debut atop the chart. I want to go deeper with Fantasy for this Groovelines. There are a few features I want to introduce. Although a lot of features discuss the remix and how that was transformative, I want to keep things mainly concentrated on the first release. This article gives some interesting perspective on Fantasy:

“For almost any iconic artist, being able to wield the brush to the canvas of your music artistry is the truest map to a long-lasting career. For songbird supreme Mariah Carey, taking the reins on her trajectory meant changing the course of music history as we knew it.

Convivial and liberating in nature, Carey’s “Fantasy” exudes a spirit of artistic freedom and calls back to a time where innovation, like intense love, came at a whim.

Here, the torrid summer energy presented on Tom Tom Club’s 1981 “Genius Of Love” is leveled-up for a new decade, decorated in Carey’s breezy emphatic metaphors of vigorous passion and a fiery backbeat that got even the most obstinate listener out of their seat.

Bottom of Form

Twenty-five years after Carey unveiled “Fantasy” as the lead single to her Grammy-nominated fifth studio album Daydream, the bouncy ’80s-esque number continues to prove it has the stamina and formulaic sampling power to exert influence over a plethora of musical acts to follow.

While it further broke new ground for rap and R&B — already introduced by a hip-hop soul queen — the infallible pop-R&B formula behind “Fantasy” is all too familiar.

Despite her label, Columbia Records, pushing Carey to continue with the palette of bonafide adult contemporary and pop that catapulted her career, she paired with famed R&B producer Dave “Jam” Hall to essentially reenvision her Music Box lead single “Dreamlover” from two years earlier.

Co-produced by Hall, “Dreamlover” was a slice of heavenly chart-topping perfection, drenched in the bubbly pop that Columbia pressed so hard. But its incorporation of thunderous kick-snare-bass interplay from Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half-Steppin” gave it the energetic facade it needed to transcend urban radio”.

One reason why I cannot talk about the remix of Fantasy is because of the involvement of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, as he was a producer on the track. For that reason, I don’t think it is right to go too much into that version given who he is and the fact he should be exiled form music history. I actually prefer the original which arrived on 23rd August, 1995. Before finishing off with some critical reception to Fantasy, I want to include parts of Stereogum’s investigation of Fantasy. They do note how the Bad Boy Remix is definitive, whereas the album version is perhaps too similar to other songs from Mariah Carey:

“Genius Of Love” happened to come along at the same time as sample-heavy rap music was just starting to become a commercial proposition. The first rap group to sample “Genius Of Love” was Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, the duo that included future Uptown Records founder Andre Harrell. Jeckyll & Hyde used the “Genius Of Love” groove on their single “Genius Of Rap” in 1981, before the Tom Tom Club track even reached its Hot 100 peak. A year later, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, the biggest rap group of their era, used that same “Genius Of Love” groove on their own single “It’s Nasty (Genius Of Love).” Those early singles involved studio bands re-playing “Genius Of Love,” not sampling the beat directly from the record. In the years that followed, “Genius Of Love” remained part of the rap language.

Tom Tom Club kept recording occasional albums after that first one, and none of them really caught on. But “Genius Of Love” lingered. That sample was especially popular in West Coast rap in the early ’90s. Ice Cube, 2nd II None, Above The Law, Mellow Man Ace, and former Number Ones artist Coolio all rocked over the “Genius Of Love” beat or referenced its dreamy, childlike lyrics in the early ’90s. Then, in 1995, the queen of the Hot 100 was starting to push her music more in the direction of rap and R&B, and it took the “Genius Of Love” beat to fully cross her over to the audience that she wanted.

By 1995, nobody could tell Mariah Carey shit. At that point, five years into her career, she’d already landed at #1 eight times, and she’d co-written seven of those chart-toppers. With Mariah’s 1993 album Music Box, her husband and label boss Tommy Mottola actively pushed her in the direction of centrist, adult-contempo pop ballads. Mariah had flirted with house music on 1991’s Emotions, and it hadn’t been quite the blockbuster that Mottola wanted, so he clamped down on her playful side. Music Box did even better than anyone could’ve anticipated, going diamond and sending two more singles to #1.

In 1994, Carey released the holiday album Merry Christmas, which went triple platinum in its first year. (It’s now octuple platinum, and one of its songs will appear in this column a long time from now.) That same year, she also teamed up with Luther Vandross to cover Diana Ross and Lionel Richie’s 1981 chart-topper “Endless Love,” and the Vandross/Carey version of the song peaked at #2. (It’s a 5.) Point is: Mariah Carey was a commercial juggernaut, and she’d earned herself some artistic freedom — or, at least, she thought she had.

Despite all the records she was selling in the mid-’90s, Mariah Carey still had to fight for her ideas. In the time that she spent recording her 1995 album Daydream, for instance, Mariah had the idea to blow off steam by recording a shits-and-giggles grunge-pop album, so that’s what she did. But certain unnamed people at Carey’s label thought that a record like that would damage her image, so she wasn’t allowed to sing lead on the album that came out under the title Someone’s Ugly Daughter. Instead, Carey’s friend Clarissa Dane sang lead, with an uncredited Mariah singing backup and co-writing every song. The album came out under the band name Chick, and it promptly disappeared completely. Nobody even knew that Chick was a Mariah Carey project until she wrote about it in her 2020 memoir..

Mariah faced similar pushback when she tried to push her own music closer to the rap and R&B that she loved. She hated being seen as a square pop diva, and she wanted love from Black listeners. Years later, Carey’s A&R rep Cory Rooney told Billboard, “[Mariah] once told me though she was grateful for her success, she would trade in all of her record sales to get the respect that Mary J. Blige got. She said, ‘Mary doesn’t have to sell 28 million records to be respected. People respect Mary, and I just want to be respected like her.'” (Mary J. Blige will eventually appear in this column.)

That’s what Carey was going for when she worked with Mary J. Blige’s What’s The 411? collaborator Dave “Jam” Hall on her 1993 smash “Dreamlover.” Mariah worked with Hall again two years later when she had another idea for a bubbly, lightweight, clubby R&B track. She’d already had a basic melody idea for the song that would become “Fantasy” when she heard Tom Tom Club’s “Genius Of Love” on the radio. In Fred Bronson’s Billboard Book Of Number 1 Hits, Mariah says that hearing the song “reminded me of growing up and listening to the radio.”

Mariah took “Genius Of Love” to Dave Hall, and he made it into a beat. Working with Mariah in the studio, Hall would play the beat, and Mariah would freestyle melody ideas for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Within a couple of days, they had a complete song. Mariah’s people got in touch with Tom Tom Club to clear the sample. In the Bronson book, Mariah says that Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth “were really into it.” Makes sense to me. If someone told me that they wanted to park a dumptruck full of cash on my front lawn, I wouldn’t object. (I don’t actually have a front lawn, so we would need to have a conversation about logistics, but I’d be down.)

In its final form, “Fantasy” twinkles and glistens. Mariah sings the song in an airy, flutter, once again layering her mind-bending leads over a soft bed of her own multi-tracked backing vocals. It’s a song about a crush, about imagining yourself with someone else while remaining perfectly aware that nothing’s going to happen. I guess that means it’s a song about enjoying your own dream-life, using it as an escape from whatever’s happening in reality. On and on and on, it’s so deep in her daydreams, but it’s just a sweet, sweet fantasy, baby.

I love Mariah’s vocal on “Fantasy,” the way she hammers the hell out of that opening line: “Oh, when you walk by every night, talking sweet and looking fine, I get kinda hectic in-side!” Her melody syncs up beautifully with the sample, and it gives the song a kind of unreal playfulness. When she actually sings a little bit of “Genius Of Love” on the bridge — “I’m in heaven with my boyfriend, my lovely boyfriend” — Mariah sounds like she’s singing along with the radio, or with a scrap of lyric that’s stuck in her head and clicks in with whatever she’s feeling”.

I am going to end with Wikipedia’s article concerning the critical reaction to Fantasy. Depending on whether you prefer the first version of the single or like the remix better, there is no denying the fact Fantasy was  a breakthrough and step forward for Mariah Carey. It remains one of her most enduring songs:

“Upon its release, "Fantasy" garnered acclaim from contemporary music critics, who praised her songwriting and use of sampling. They commended her for exploring genres beyond the pop ballads she had become known for at the time. Bill Lamb from About.com was very positive on the song, calling it "truly inspiring" and a "career high water mark" for Carey. Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic also complimented it, saying "Carey continues to perfect her craft and that she has earned her status as an R&B/pop diva." A reviewer from Music & Media stated that "it's got more swing than anything she has done before.” Stephen Holden from The New York Times gave the song praise, writing "with 'Fantasy', Ms. Carey glides confidently into the territory where gospel-flavored pop-soul meets light hip-hop and recorded some of the most gorgeously spun choral music to be found on a contemporary album." Additionally, he claimed "Fantasy" held some of the album's best moments, writing "she continues to make pop music as deliciously enticing as the best moments of "Fantasy". Slant Magazine ranked the song at number sixty on their "Best Singles of the '90s" list, writing it is "escapism perfected, [a] summer bubblegum gem with a sweet, flawless vocal line driven by a diva in her prime." Mark Frith from Smash Hits said it "was such a brilliant, original, clever record that many people are going to have high hopes for the LP."

On 23rd August, it will be thirty years since the lead single from Daydream was released. Perhaps the standout album from Mariah Carey, I can understand why she wanted Fantasy to be the lead single. With that Tom Tom Club sample and this confident and glorious vocal from Carey, you can see why this song is still widely played on the radio. It is joyous! Thirty years since its release, it is this masterpiece. If you have not heard it for a long time then go and dive into…

THIS blissful song.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Blur – Country House

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

 

Blur – Country House

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PERHAPS not…

Blur’s best or most regarded song, it is one of their most significant. One reason why it is so important is because it is the song that went up against Oasis’ Roll with It in the Britpop battle of 1995. I wanted to mark thirty years of Country House. Released on 14th August, 1995, it reached number one in the U.K. One of the biggest problems with the song is the video. One of the most depressingly retrograde and obnoxious videos of its time, it is small wonder band member Graham Cox hated the shoot. With more than a nod to the puerile and horrible comedy of Benny Hill, it is the nadir of Blur’s videos. Directed by artist Damien Hirst, it is the only big black mark. The song itself is taken from Blur’s fourth studio album, The Great Escape. That album was released on 11th September, 1995. Country House was the lead single from the album. Many might have expected Stereotypes or Charmless Man to lead. However, at a time when Britpop was at a peak, perhaps the sound and feel of Country House was seen as the most promising commercial single. It definitely delivered! The Great Escape followed 1994’s Parklife. Following perhaps their best album, there would have been a lot of pressure on the band to keep their momentum and popularity high. The Great Escape is a fifteen-track album that comes in at just under an hour. I think it is top-heavy in terms of its most commercial/accessible songs. Perhaps not the same blend and balance as you get on Parklife. However, I also think The Great Escape is underrated. Some of Blur’s most fascinating and nuanced songwriting. Damon Albarn’s lyrics particularly standing out. Country House might seem an anomaly to some. However, it did resonate with many critics. Before going deeper with the song, I want to start out with some collected critical reception from Wikipedia:

“David Stubbs from Melody Maker felt the song "sounds at first to be taunting us with that old Britpop standard, um, thingummy, the one that goes Our house is a very, very, very nice house/With two cats in the yard.. but turns out to be a cynical account of the miserable fat-rat city achiever attempting to find solace in the big rural pile of his dreams — a seemingly chirpy but ultimately very unsettling vignette hinting at Blur's darker edges." Pan-European magazine Music & Media named it Single of the Week, adding, "Everything about this song makes you think of Mott the Hoople's laddish version of David Bowie's 'All the Young Dudes'. Whatever, it has won them the UK championship at the expense of Oasis." Also Mark Sutherland from NME named it Single of the Week, writing, "Yup, Blur's first new material since the epoch-shaping Parklife LP is nothing short of a classic pop single. In the space of the time-honoured three-and-a-bit minutes, it manages to recall everyone from Madness to The Beatles to, um, Chas and Dave, craft the most infectious chorus of modern times and still squeeze in the astonishing line He's reading Balzac, knocking back Prozac before tea-time. And you can't really ask for much more than that." Another NME editor, Johnny Cigarettes, described it as "feisty, upbeat singalong pop". Smash Hits gave 'Country House' five out of five, praising it as "a classic pop tune”.

I will bring in some different perspectives on Country House. It is important to remember its context and how this song – together with Oasis’ Roll with It – dominated the news in August 1995. In terms of quality, you could argue Blur reigned on Parklife and they would deliver their fantastic eponymous album in 1997. In some ways, The Great Escape was not as revered. However, it does contains some terrific music. Whether you were around in 1995 and remember Country House or are hearing it new now, it does have its own charm. This is what AllMusic noted about Country House and the attention it received in 1995:

“In the summer of 1995, it had been reduced to this -- Blur versus Oasis. The two bands represented polar opposites of the pop audience -- elite versus the working class, art school versus blue collar, and art school versus gut instinct. It was a brilliant pairing, better even than the Beatles versus the Rolling Stones, because these two bands actually hated each other. Blur leader Damon Albarn would claim that the animosity began when Oasis singer Liam Gallagher taunted him at a party after Oasis' "Some Might Say" reached number one. According to Albarn, Gallagher spotted him, then got in his face, screaming "number one!" This very well may be true -- Liam is not known for his humility -- but it lets Albarn off the hook when he wanted the face-to-face, High Noon showdown that emerged in August of 1995 more than any of the other major players.

As it turned out, both Blur and Oasis were set to deliver the sequels to hit albums in the fall of 1995. Blur was offering their fourth album, while Oasis was set to prove that their debut wasn't a fluke. Originally, they weren't going to release their lead singles -- the songs that touted their upcoming releases -- on the same day, but when Albarn discovered that Blur's "Country House" and Oasis' "Roll With It" were going to be released within a week of each other, he decided to ditch all pretense and have his band's single released the same week as Oasis'. A real risky move, since if his band stiffed, the other band would have vaulted beyond anyone's expectations.

Most observers believed that the rivalry would be contained to Britain's weeklies, but a strange turn of events happened. Brit-pop became a cultural phenomenon, transcending indie culture and dominating the mainstream. That meant that everybody knew about Blur versus Oasis, that they were anxiously awaiting the results of the August release of "Country House" and "Roll With It." National news broadcasts devoted precious time to the rivalry, and everybody awaited the results of the charts with baited breath. In the final few days, it was revealed that Oasis had a major problem when their label, Creation, had a problem with the bar codes on their singles, thereby meaning their single simply wasn't registered as many times as Blur's. And Blur claimed the number one slot -- the first in their history -- with "Country House."

In hindsight, it has become chic to dismiss "Country House" as the product of those crazy times, particularly by Blur's guitarist, Graham Coxon, who seems to be embarrassed to be associated with a song that had either the words "country" or "house" in its title. That's completely unfair. The detached observer could reasonably offer the explanation that Blur won the battle because they offered the most distinctly British single since the Kinks made "Sunny Afternoon" a national singalong. Even if that was true, "Country House" is a brilliant piece of British pop. Yes, you already have to have an inclination for British pop to be enamored with "Country House" -- if only Andy Partridge was half as cute as Damon Albarn, the defiantly British eccentrics XTC would have registered a hit nearly as big as this -- but once you do, it instantly seems like a classic. Apart from the detached, postmodern viewpoint (something any Blur fan will take as second nature by this point, even in 1995), it's hard not to get suckered in by the wonderful hooks and the impeccably detailed production, courtesy of Blur and their producer, Stephen Street. Together, they recorded a layered single where the details -- not just the horns, but the vocal harmonies, rhythms, and guitar parts -- were buried underneath the stomping hooks, melody, and Albarn's caustic wit. This is a single where the rhymes are as natural as the offhand wit and melody -- not only does he offer the wonderous put-down "He's reading Balzac/Knocking back Prozac," he disses his rivals with "He's got Morning Glory/And life's a different story," and it's virtually impossible not to sing along.

"Country House" may have been the perfect record for its time -- it certainly was smarter, funnier, and catchier than "Roll with It" -- but it wouldn't be quite as intoxicating (it wouldn't have elevated beyond its role as a period piece) if Blur didn't know how to write and record a pop record at this point in time. They did. They knew how to maximize a distinctly British and proper record like "Country House" and make it a number one.

They wound up winning the battle, but losing the war. "Roll With It" was dismissed, but after "Wonderwall" was released, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? became a phenomenon not seen since Thriller (at least in the U.K.), and all the bad reviews Oasis received since "Roll With It" and Morning Glory disappeared. Oasis triumphed over Blur. But during that brief moment in late August/September of 1995, Blur was the victor with "Country House," and it remains the best of the two singles released that week”.

In 2012, The Guardian argue how Country House was worth another look. Always having this reputation as being a jokey, knees-up song that was throwaway and got to the top of the charts because of the battle with Oasis rather than anything to do with quality, it has depths and darkness not instantly evident., Maybe it has not aged well, yet I do think it is worth spotlighting this song ahead of its thirtieth anniversary:

“It's worth another look, though. Far from being a knocked-out knees-up, Country House is deceptively complex and completely bonkers. It's the second chorus where things get weird – Albarn's chirpy hook about "a very big house in the country" is backed by a falsetto counter, "blow, blow me out I am so sad, I don't know why", both disconcerting and wonderfully melancholy, leading into Coxon's queasiest guitar solo, a discordant, seasick riff of scarttershot notes and fractured scales seemingly beamed in from Sonic Youth or Pavement. The effect is a splash of genuine art-school creativity oddly absent from Damien Hirst's accompanying video, and totally at odds with what Britpop was supposed to be about by that point. Shed Seven could never have done it. The "Blow, blow me out"s return for the breakdown, underpinned by Coxon's chiming guitar to create a ghostly harmony that's more Pink Floyd than Lily the Pink. Even the late arrival of a Madness brass section can't wreck the magic.

When you read Liam Gallagher's famous dismissal of Blur as "chimney-sweep music", this is the track that comes to mind and you can see what he meant. But Country House has everything that made (and makes) Blur fascinating: the common touch, the terrace chorus, the arched eyebrow, the weirdness, the art-school sound, the desire to annoy and to fit in and to lead the field, to be the outsider and the everyman, all at once. It's never completely satisfying, but it's the confidence and the contradictions that save it.

Country House made an unexpected live return for the band's reunion shows in 2009 and on every occasion, quite rightly, the crowd went bananas. That's Blur – willfully awkward but eager to please. It's certainly what they were at the Brit awards this year. Treasure their stubbornness, their awkwardness and their imperfections, it's what makes them ace, and it's all on show here”.

I remember when Country House came out on 14th August, 1995. I was twelve and was starting to get into Blur. Although I became a bigger fan by the time 13 was released in 1999, it was fascinating to be around witnessing this Britpop battle! It became more about the competition and picking a side more than the songs themselves. However, thirty years later, there will be new attention for and inspection of the lead single from The Great Escape. Whether you love the song or feel it is underwhelming, there is no doubt how important it is. One of Blur’s defining moments. Getting some distance after the Britpop war with Oasis, we can view Country House on its own. Despite the terrible video and the fact there are better songs on The Great Escape, Country House is a song…

TOO big to be ignored.

FEATURE: For the Birthday Queen: Kate Bush’s Julys

FEATURE:

 

 

For the Birthday Queen

 

Kate Bush’s Julys

__________

BECAUSE Kate Bush…

PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

turns sixty-seven on 30th July, for this birthday feature, I want to include information about her career in July. What I mean is what she was doing in July through various years. Many fans are dedicating this whole month to Kate Bush. I have covered years like 1988. That is when Bush spent her birthday that year doing work for charity. I am going to cover two different years in her career but also reference a couple of others near the end. From 1978 where she was promoting her debut album, The Kick Inside, still and was really busy, through to a later year in her career that was very different. Thanks to this incredible website for providing details about what Kate Bush was up to during her birthday month. Let’s start out with 1978 and what Kate Bush’s July consisted of:

“July 1978

Kate is the best selling female albums artist in the U.K. for the first quarter of 1978. Wuthering Heights has been number 1 in the Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand (five weeks), and Australia; and "top-ten" in Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

July 4, 1978

The Man With the Child in His Eyes reaches its chart peak in the U.K. at number 6.

The Kick Inside is re-released in the U.S.A. on a new label--EMI-America [and with a different but equally inappropriate cover, now sometimes referred to as the "country-western" or "Tammy Wynette" cover.] Wuthering Heights is finally released as a single in the U.S. There are some good notices, but Kate is considered by radio programmers to be "too bizarre" for the American market.

It is interesting, as Bush approached her twentieth birthday, there was this half-hearted attention in America. The fact Bush was considered too weird for the U.S. It took them so long to appreciate her! I think July 1978 is Bush’s busiest birthday month of her career. Just about to leave her teens, there was all of this pressure and success. She barely had time to rest and properly celebrate. I hope that she did spend 30th July at least relaxing and with her family. The first part of July 1978 was packed. One of the most notable transitions was the promotion of The Kick Inside and the start of recording for her second album, Lionheart.

July 7, 1978

Kate travels to Superbear Studios in Nice, France to record her second album. She had had good reports of this studio from Dave Gilmour, who recorded his first solo album there. The recording is a much-needed break for Kate. In the sunshine and the mountain air she recovers from almost six months of solid promotion, and pursues her real vocation, making music.

July 1981

Kate goes into Abbey Road studios with Haydn Bendall as engineer to complete the backing tracks.

Kate goes to Dublin to record the track Night of the Swallow with members of Planxty and The Chieftains.

July 14, 1981

Kate appears on the children's programme Razzmatazz to explain how the Sat In Your Lap video was made.

The rest of July 1978 was Bush busy stepping (briefly) off of the promotional treadmill. She was embarking on recording her second album. It must have been exciting traveling to France and getting out of London. This would be the only album where she recorded outside of the U.K. Still nineteen, Bush was in this new location and trying to follow a hugely successful debut album. If July 1978 was all about her promoting The Kick Inside and laying down the early parts of Lionheart, things were a bit different three years later. Following the release of those 1978 albums and her third, 1980’s Never for Ever, Bush was working on The Dreaming. I love to imagine Bush recording in Dublin. This was plant sewed for Hounds of Love when she recorded there again. Twenty-two and involved in the most intense recording period of her career, it was interesting. Bush recording at Abbey Road and going to Dublin. She would travel between various studios through 1981 and 1982. 14th July, 1981 is one of the most interesting appearances she made on T.V. On a children’s show to promote a song that probably went over their heads, I sort of wish there was a better-quality video of her interview. Even so, still so young and with all this ambition, I guess Bush just wanted to promote her music as widely as possible.

I will say a few words to end. However, I will get to 1982. This was just before The Dreaming was released. It was another intense July. Consider what happened three days before Bush turned twenty-four. Bush had performed live a few times after she completed The Tour of Life in 1979. T.V. appearances here and there. Her spot at Royal Rock Gala was fascinating. A rare live performance of The Wedding List. I don’t think enough people discuss that 1982 live performance. An unexpected high in her career. What happened on 27th July was an end to a pretty busy and varied month:

July 21, 1982

At 48 hours' notice Kate is asked to take David Bowie's place in a Royal Rock Gala before HRH The Prince of Wales in aid of The Prince's Trust. She performs Wedding List live, backed by Pete Townsend and Midge Ure on guitars, Mick Karn on bass, Gary Brooker on keyboards and Phil Collins on drums.

"The best moment by far was Kate Bush's number, a storming success..." (Sunie, Record Mirror)

July 27, 1982

The single The Dreaming is finally released, to excellent music press reviews saluting Kate's creative courage. The single is stifled, however, by the radio producers and presenters, particularly on BBC Radio 1, who will not play it. The plans for a twelve-inch version are aborted”.

Maybe not the happiest end to the month, a few days shy of her birthday in 1982, a single that she’d hoped would be well received and a chart success got off to a rocky start. As it was, The Dreaming was Bush’s lowest-placed single to that point.

There are other examples of Julys where Bush encountered transformative moments in her career. July 2014 was the month before Before the Dawn started. Her celebrated residency, the final preparations and touches were added. In June 1985, Hounds of Love was completed. It was released in September. August was when Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was released. The July was the bridge between Hounds of Love being completed and the first single coming out. That excitement and nervousness. On 30th July, 1988, Bush celebrates her thirtieth birthday by participating in an AIDS charity project involving some two-hundred celebrities. She served as a shopkeeper for the day at Blazer's boutique. On 30th July, we celebrate Bush’s birthday. There will be so many social media posts. Fans sharing their love for this icon! What was the biggest and most important July in her career? 1978 when she was starting work on Lionheart? Maybe 1985 when there was this expectation before Hounds of Love came out. Think about what Bush was doing in July 1989. Bush completed recording The Sensual World that month. It seems like a few of her albums were completed in July. I wonder if anyone has their own favourite Kate Bush Julys. I do hope, what with it being July, that maybe Kate Bush has completed her eleventh studio album. Perhaps she will announce its release for later in the year. We can but dream! In the meantime, I wanted to wish Kate Bush a very happy birthday for Wednesday (30th July). With her fanbase growing and expanding every year, a whole new generation are discovering her music. There is no doubt that this experience is…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2014 during her Before the Dawn residency

A complete joy!