FEATURE: Superdeluxe: Are Reissues, Special Editions and Various Vinyl Versions a Good Thing?

FEATURE:

 

 

Superdeluxe

IN THIS PHOTO: Baby, That’s Show Business Edition (Lakeside Beach Blue Sparkle Vinyl) is one of at least six unique vinyl variations of her upcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl

Are Reissues, Special Editions and Various Vinyl Versions a Good Thing?

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MAYBE it used to happen…

IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa

decades ago but, more noticeable now than then, artists releasing new albums will often quickly follow it up with special or expanded editions. The studio album will come out and then there will be another release with a couple of extra tracks. Maybe some remixes. You do wonder whether they could have just included that on the original album. Whether there is a point or putting out the same album with a couple of additional tracks. It is a bit of a difficult balance. In some cases, an artist might release a second version of a studio album with modifications. I will come to Taylor Swift soon. The Taylor’s Version of some of her studio albums. Taking control back from a major label and how they treated her. Getting the rights to her music back. However, she is someone who released multiple versions of the vinyl album and it seems like exploiting fans. However, there are cases when there are positive reissues and new editions. Maybe there was this feeling that Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism had to be quite short or commercial. The psychedelic Radical Optimism (Extended) version adds something to the original. As CLASH explored, it does seem like a different album. Maybe one that improves on the original:

“When Dua Lipa shared her new album ‘Radical Optimism’ earlier this year it sparked celebration from fans, but also confusion in some quarters. The pre-release narrative held that this would be a psychedelic statement, co-piloted by Tame Impala guru Kevin Parker. The final record, however, was a slick, finessed pop record – somewhat different from the expectations we’d been fed.

Released overnight, the extended version of ‘Radical Optimism’ feels like the weighty psychedelic mission we’d been expecting. A solid hour of funky bass lines, ridiculous synths, and lysergic textures, it blends the pop suss Dua has long since made her own with markedly different landscapes.

It dials into the statements the Kosovo-born, UK-raised artists made to the press a few months back. “No one’s really making Britpop at the moment,” she told the Face in February, “but I have a feeling 2024 is gonna be the year.”

The multi award-winning star added that she was “looking through the music history of psychedelia, trip-hop and Britpop…”

These words frame the Extended edition much more effectively than the standard edition, the No. 1 smash that was delivered earlier this year. It’s a reminder that disco was – in effect – a truly psychedelic form of music, and that Dua Lipa has always had a multitude of threads on her studio locker”.

In the case of Kylie Minogue’s Tension II in 2024, which followed 2023’s TENSION, this was a sequel to that album. Maybe a companion piece. If this kind of album feels like a whole new work, then it is okay. I am not a fan of when artists put out an album and then there is the rush to put it back out with tiny additions. Charli xcx’s BRAT was followed by Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not and then later last year, she released Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. A star-studded remix album, whilst this was Charli xcx building a universe and empire, I am a bit split as to whether it is a benefit to fans and their dedication or it is just repackaging an album or cashing in. Last month, we learned about the various variants of Taylor Swift’s upcoming The Life of as Showgirl album. VARIETY explained more:

“The Life of a Showgirl” looks like it’s going to have nine lives and then some, when it comes to variant editions with different album cover images and vinyl color schemes. Only Taylor Swift and her team know how many different versions of the album will go up for pre-sale before all the variants get shipped for the official Oct. 3 release date, but it looks like it will be a lot, given the pace at which the singer has already been issuing limited editions that have mostly been near-immediate sellouts.

The latest variants, as of Sept. 7, are three compact disc editions that Target will be carrying exclusively. (Target made a splash by announcing that 500 of its stores will remain open past midnight on the night of release to sell these CDs, along with the album’s standard edition, starting at 12 a.m. local time.) The newly revealed CDs from Target are the “It’s Frightening” edition, the “It’s Rapturous” edition, and the “It’s Beautiful” edition. These carry the same subtitles and cover artwork that Swift previously used for three CDs that were only available in her webstore, and quickly sold out; it’s unclear whether the Target editions have any exclusive packaging elements (apart from losing the trinkets that were advertised with the D2C versions).

One thing is clear from all these variants: Swift had some very fruitful photo sessions for this album. With each new image of each different edition, there has been a positive response to the alternative LP jackets or CD sleeves that follows along the lines of this tweet: “SHOULD’VE BEEN THE ALBUM COVER, BUT OK.”

Each of her limited editions for her own webstore releases — not including the Target variants — has arrived preceded by a countdown clock, and the promise that the variant would be on sale for 48 hours or “while supplies last.” The latter has definitely applied, as several of these releases to date have sold out within about an hour, although some took the better part of a day to sell through”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels

There are clearly major artists who are cashing in and are just seeing how much they can make from fans. Some artists that release a different take of an album because it is more representative of them. Some might say that legacy artists do the same thing. Anniversary editions that are remastered or expanded so that they have some demos and outtakes. The Beatles among them. Whilst it adds layers and depths that were not present when the studio albums were released in the 1960s, all of the versions can be quite expensive. Vinyl packages that are not instantly affordable for most fans. However, I do think that there is a lot of it happening now. Artists swiftly reissuing their new album with a couple of new tracks. I guess, for legacy artists, reissues and expanded editions can add to their legacy. It can introduce their work to new fans. I am a bit torn about the subject. I can appreciate how artists today are not making money from streaming services. The only way they can earn money is from touring. Physical music not as profitable as it was decades ago. There is also pressure on artists to keep releasing music. If there is a gap of a few years even, then artists are seen as having gone away. Maybe overlooked. Reissuing albums or providing new editions keeps fans engaged. It also means that fans get these outtakes and songs not included on the album before. What do you do with these new songs? You could release them as singles, though I can understand why artists put out expanded editions with a few new songs. However, does it seem a bit too much to expect fans to shell out on this new, perhaps more expensive of an album they already have?!

People can choose not to buy that new edition, though I feel you get more value for money or something bigger with the new version. If I buy the original, I might not have money for this new version. Vinyl especially is expensive, so expanded and special editions can be pretty pricey. I don’t think most artists are trying to take advantage of fans’ dedication. I was a little galled by Taylor Swift and the various version of The Life of a Showgirl. Many fans will buy all of them and, as someone who does not need the money, what is the reason behind it? Swift might say these are collectable items. More interesting than release one version of the album and not giving fans choice. She is not the only one. Many artists put out a range of vinyl versions. Different colours and styles. Is this simply providing choice for fans or an opportunity for them to collect all the versions? I love a vinyl album with a great colour or design, but I struggle to see the purpose of multiple options. Positives of deluxe versions and reissues is that you do get something extra from artists. In the case of Kylie Minogue and Charli xcx, there are interesting reasons for their decisions. Remix albums allow us to see these songs in a different light. I do think that problems arise when there are those rushed reissues with bonus tracks. It seems a little pointless or too much. Not really offering much value. Multiple vinyl versions can cross the line into gauging fans. However, most artists do want to give their fans options and something special. Is the rise in reissues and special editions because artists realise that physical music and touring is their only revenue options? Is it more about creative freedom? I opened by talking about Dua Lipa and the Radical Optimism new version. One that extends the songs. Perhaps less to capitalise on fans’ devotion and more to do with releasing the album that she wanted to from the off. The subject of reissues, deluxe editions and multiple vinyl options is something that definitely…

DIVIDE opinion.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Laufey

FEATURE:

 

Spotlight: Revisited

Laufey

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AN artist who is…

PHOTO CREDIT: Cara Kealy

simply extraordinary and someone I spotlighted back in 2023, I am returning to Laufey now. The Icelandic-Chinese musician, born Laufey Lín Jónsdótti, released her new album, A Matter of Time, in August. I am going to end this feature by including a review of a standout from this year. One of the most acclaimed of the year for sure, if you have not heard of Laufey, then you really do need to check her out. Rather than repeat interviews I included in 2023, I am going to get to some more recent ones. Some from this year. Laufey’s debut album, Everything I Know About Love, came out in 2022, though her debut single arrived in 2020. That was Street by Street. Some might say she is pretty established by now. With a massive social media following and a huge tour currently underway, this is a major artist. However, this feature is about revisiting someone I spotlighted when they were rising. It is amazing to come back to Laufey. Music Week chatted with her in August. As we learn from the start of the interview, last year was a pretty eventful and memorable one for Laufey:

“Laufey ticked off everything she’d ever dreamed of in 2024, the sort of phenomenal year that has required the 25-year-old to draw up a new bucket list. She won a Grammy, something that felt so outlandish for her that it never even figured in her thinking when it came to lifetime goals, and played headline shows at her all-time favourite venues (Royal Albert Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Radio City Music Hall). Tick, tick, tick.

Along the way, the artist born Laufey Jónsdóttir in Reykjavik to a Chinese mother and Icelandic father began to mull over what success actually meant. She discovered that when you’re an ambitious type, as Laufey undoubtedly is, you’re always looking for the next bigger thing.

“That’s how I got to where I am,” she says. “Once I have played the 1,000-cap venue in a city, I’m excited to play the 4,000-cap venue the next year.”

But she followed this thread and wondered, where does it end?

“I’ll hopefully be playing arenas soon,” she states. “And I don’t want to play venues bigger than an arena, so it’s going to have to stop somewhere.”

Laufey’s remarkable rise is showing very few signs of slowing down, though. She is the ultimate modern trailblazer and Gen Z superstar, someone for whom there are no clear forebears to measure herself against. There have been pop artists signed to independent labels before, but not independent pop artists whose music is rooted in ye olde world classical and jazz sounds, her music giving the Great American Songbook a new twist. No one had that down as the next big thing in pop and yet, with almost 14 million monthly listeners on Spotify and nearly 650m plays for 2023 hit From The Start – not to mention 7.8m followers and 293m likes on TikTok – here we are”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Erlendur Sveinsson

I am moving to an interview from The Guardian. At a time when Laufey’s stock is rising and she is vulnerable to haters, Laufey discussed this. She also talked about filling arenas, and how she was slightly scared of success. It is a pivotal time for her. One where she has gained this whole new legion of fans and put some new music out. An artist who has to balance how much of her personal life she puts into the music:

“Now Laufey is keen to rough up her reputation as gen-Z’s favourite jazz savant, at least a little. Her new album A Matter of Time splits the difference between sugar-plum symphonics with imperfect notes and vocals that crack with emotion. One song has jolting strings that she compares to a scream. “I wanted to make more of a statement on this album,” she says. “I’ve become known as a bit of a soft singer. I am that, but I also want to show parts of myself that aren’t that pretty.”

She arrived in the hotel lobby this morning on time and as neat as a pin, with a cardigan-wearing bunny rabbit dangling from her handbag. (The critter, named Mei Mei, is Laufey’s mascot and alias of sorts – she releases alternative versions of her songs under its name, and it is also available to buy, with a portion of the proceeds aiding music education as part of the Laufey Foundation.) “Do you want to go in there?” she asks, leading me into a side room and getting out the best biscuits: “It’s the guests-only lounge.” The place is done up like a hunting lodge, with artfully oxidised mirrors, a wall-mounted antelope head and, most bizarrely, given that it is summer, a burning log fire. When I comment on the strangeness, Laufey says, wryly: “Well, it’s now reached a very cool 24 degrees.”

She says she was driven by a “hunger” to imbue the new experiences of a whirlwind few years into her new album. It radiates a sense of adventure, dovetailing between twangy campfire country to swoony ballads and sherbert-spiked pop. The record is produced by Laufey and longtime collaborator Spencer Stewart: between them, they can play just about any instrument you have heard of, as well as some you may not have. I was unfamiliar with the celesta, an obscure kind of idiophone that Stewart and Laufey play on the record (it sounds like a child’s musical jewellery box). On the Busby Berkeley-worthy confection Lover Girl, she knowingly leans into her Cupid-struck image, while on Carousel, Laufey reckons with inviting a partner into her circus-like life while a seasick accordion plays. The rapturous Forget-Me-Not, recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (for which she was a teenage cello soloist), is her most accomplished work of composition to date; her voice soars among flurries of flutes.

“I wanted the album to reflect all sides of my emotional scale,” she says, huddling in air-con that has apparently been set to “Himalayan”. “Within one day, I will have a happy hour and a crying hour. I have no interest in making an album that’s one vibe throughout.” But there is, she says, an emotional through-line about learning to accept yourself while falling in love with someone else. She won’t talk about her relationship status today though, and I ask if internet scrutiny makes it hard to write candidly about her dating experiences. “There’s always a line of ambiguity,” Laufey says, before smiling mischievously. “But if you get into a situation with me, you kind of know that I might write about it.”

A Matter of Time marks her creative world opening up. Two spry new songs were created with Taylor Swift collaborator and the National founder member Aaron Dessner at his Long Pond Studios, in an experience that Laufey says “opened a third musical eye”. And she is more lighthearted than ever on Mr Eclectic, a bossa nova-inspired track featuring Clairo that pokes fun at men who mansplain classical music to her. “I just think it’s funny to be the type of man who performatively reads a beaten-up paperback outside a coffee shop,” she says, her nose wrinkling. “I’ve dated guys like that, but this is a forever type of man. Why do you think all philosophers are men? They just had the platform and the audacity”.

The last interview I am including is from ELLE. As she reveals in the interview, her audience very much are a reflection of her. She can look out at them and see people that relate to her and who give her strength. This is someone whose music has clearly connected with so many people across the world. I am excited to see what comes next for Laufey. An artist I have been following for a while, she is one of these artists who will not get the same fanfare and attention as the biggest Pop artists in the mainstream. I think Laufey’s music is stronger and goes deeper. Maybe that sort of exposure and spotlight would be too intimidating and exposing:

“Women obviously create great music every year, but the last year felt like a notable moment when they were really dominating the mainstream. How did that feel for you?

I just think it’s such an incredible time to be a woman in music. It’s not only that women are dominating, but that they’re dominating in every single little corner of music as well. Everyone is so different. Doechii is making completely different music from Sabrina Carpenter. And Sabrina, Chappell Roan, and Charli xcx are pop princesses, but in such completely different ways. That is really, really beautiful, and it speaks to how modern audiences are so open to different types of music. I think women are more versatile than we’re given credit for. That’s the main thing that stood out to me this past year....Though I’m so happy with the progress that women have made in music and how much they’ve been in the forefront of driving culture, there’s such a long way to go when it comes to women in the background.

Why is it important to uplift women songwriters and producers?

You can really see when there’s a woman writing with a woman, the magic that it creates, because there’s a level of honesty. Like, a man could never get into my head, never understand what I’m going through. That’s one of the main reasons that female producers and writers should be highlighted, because nobody understands the female experience like a woman.

How do you feel about being called “Gen Z’s jazz icon”?

It’s weird, because I don’t really see myself as one genre or the other. I think when I started, I needed something to tell people. I’m a trained jazz singer, and when I was younger, before I started writing music, I only sang jazz music. I started my career singing jazz standards on TikTok, so I could see why that would be the thing that people gravitated toward saying. But as I’ve grown as a songwriter and a musician, it’s so much more than that.

How would you describe your fan base?

They are genuinely the funniest people I know. They’re so kind. Growing up, I really struggled finding a group of people that I really understood and that understood me—whether that was coming from mixed cultural backgrounds, or having mixed interests that weren’t as simple as soccer or reading. The fact that I’ve kind of summoned an audience of exactly that—it just makes my younger self really, really happy.

For fandoms, there’s this stereotype of crazy fan behavior and cultlike behavior. And though they’re [Laughs] definitely, in a way, a cult, it’s a really, really positive, happy, cute one. Very wholesome. I very, very rarely see or experience toxic behavior. It seems very friendly. I’ve heard so many stories of fans making friends with each other at concerts. It’s the best part of being a musician.

They look like me. I look out into the audience, and I just see direct reflections of me. I didn’t think I could ever gather such a big audience of Wasians. I didn’t know that was possible, but somehow it is.

They dress like me, too. Oh, my God, when it’s little girls, they’re so adorable. I feel such an immense joy, but also a deep understanding of what I am to them and how I should carry myself. It really gets me through anything”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Adrienne Raquel

Prior to wrapping things up, I will get to a positive review for A Matter of Time. One of the best albums of this year, this award-winning artist no doubt will be in the conversation when it comes to next year’s GRAMMYs. The review I want to include is a 9/10 from The Line of Best Fit. They heralded a multitalented artist who is one of the most exceptional in all of music. A big reason why I wanted to revisit her music a couple of years since I spotlighted her:

“It wouldn’t be enough for Laufey to merely establish herself as a singer, lyricist, multi-instrumentalist, and aesthete. She insisted upon being exceptionally prolific at it.

Impacting with Typical of Me (2022), her debut extended play, Laufey captured critics and record buyers alike. Then over the next three years, she continued developing her sound – rich and sonorous – across another triptych of EPs, two live albums, and a pair of acclaimed full-length studio efforts, Everything I Know About Love (2022) and Bewitched (2023). These discs consolidated additional reviewer praise and grew her reach on the charts.

Bewitched earned an inaugural GRAMMY Award (“Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album”) in 2024, bringing her to the notice of the ultimate songstress herself: Barbra Streisand. Currently, Laufey features amongst a decorated roster lining Streisand’s 37th long player The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2 (2025). Despite this vertiginous rise, Laufey conserves her music’s core: a traditional-to-modern pop fusion curated from a complex mix of jazz, classical, acoustic, and bossa nova. It’s the ideal canvas for her voice and songwriting on third album A Matter of Time.

She refines her formula enlisting the talents of Spencer Stewart and Aaron Dessner to produce.

Dessner – one of the founders of the indie-rock clique The National – is fire-new to Laufey’s orbit; his tunesmithing on a few of Taylor Swift’s recent releases has only yielded him further renown. Stewart’s work history with Laufey on Everything I Know About Love and Bewitched makes him a welcome figure on this affair. Laufey joins them as a co-producer, partial arranger and session hand. Her way with piano, cello, electric bass, celeste, wood block, upright bass, and more (see the sleeve notes for details) demonstrate her keen abilities.

The three musicians spare no expense maintaining the filmic grandeur her projects have become known for. It casts A Matter of Time as a spellbinding experience for any audiophile. Opener “Clockwork” is a decadent slice of big band nostalgia, indicative of the quality one can expect.

Even better, there’s a deepening of Laufey’s unique, aforementioned fusion throughout. The drums feel more punctuated with “A Cautionary Tale”, the guitar-strumming feels balmier on “Castle In Hollywood”, and the strings zing just a little bit more via “Forget-Me-Not”. All these particulars are revealed with that introductory listen and will make any subsequent visit to this set as exciting as that initial spin. This method reaches a beautiful crescendo on “Cuckoo Ballet”, an instrumental reprise of A Matter of Time’s first six selections; it recalls “Nocturne”, an antecedent version of “Cuckoo Ballet” on Bewitched, but with its compositional contrast set to a brighter tone here.

Alongside Laufey’s signature styles are some fresh motifs too. The record’s lead-off single “Silver Lining” is all brushed drums, reverb, and assorted torch spice evoking the likes of Dionne Warwick or Nancy Wilson. Laufey wraps this tune around her handsome alto with an uncanny poise. “Tough Luck” begins in downbeat pop-rock fashion before flowing into a slinky, disco-lite groove with chamber pop effects. Echoes of the countrypolitan past (Emmylou Harris) and present (Maren Morris) are gorgeously realized on “Clean Air”. Laufey also dips into the adult alternative of fellow Icelander Björk circa Selmasongs (2000) on “Sabotage”. In this collision of experimental and classical pop, it is notably the economy of her voice that is its most stunning feature.

As the lead writer on every cut for A Matter of Time, Laufey continues to thread a mean needle with thematic elements. Whether it’s romance in full bloom (“Carousel”) or wilted (“Too Little, Too Late”), Laufey demonstrates that love often exists somewhere between the poles of escapism and reality.

This is done brilliantly on sister cuts “Lover Girl” and “Mr. Eclectic”. The former captures the blush of attraction before the latter uncovers evidence of incompatibility. Both are sequestered as the second and twelfth entries on the wax, respectively. The expanse between each gives them a chance to narratively breathe on their own while remaining linked as Brazilian rhythm-backed exotica.

However, the best tendered script on A Matter of Time is “Snow White”, an examination of Laufey's Icelandic-Chinese heritage and its associated societal pressures. She had approached this topic before with “Letter to My Thirteen Year Old Self” on Bewitched. This time, Laufey explores what she’s endured and her growth thereafter.

To my ear, Laufey is an emergent retro-modernist genius on par with Swing Out Sister, Pizzicato Five, Raphael Saadiq, and Emma Bunton. While their genres differ, that commitment to consistency, craft and “something old made spectacularly new” unites them. Similarly, Laufey colours both inside and outside her established lines to create a joyful tension on A Matter of Time. It makes for the boldest chapter in her artistic story yet”.

Laufey will play in the U.K. next year. She has a large fanbase here. And so many nations around the world. Her music is universal, but also there are these personal moments that take you to the heart of Laufey. She puts herself in the music, though she is aware of being judged or putting too much of herself out there. I would recommend everyone follow Laufey. The twenty-six-year-old is…

A supernova of a talent.

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Follow Laufey

PHOTO CREDIT: Gemma Warren

Official:

https://www.laufeymusic.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/laufey

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://x.com/laufey

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChpKl3waLmccNeYH9LGYjUQ

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https://open.spotify.com/artist/7gW0r5CkdEUMm42w9XpyZO?si=N9HhwfaQQ2GeJPIdeTtEAg

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FEATURE: All Hooked Up: All Saints’ Saints & Sinners at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

All Hooked Up

All Saints’ Saints & Sinners at Twenty-Five

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THERE is a 25th Anniversary Edition…

 IN THIS PHOTO: All Saints in 2000/PHOTO CREDIT: Ellen von Unwerth

of this album available from 10th October on Spotify. A vinyl version was released on 19th Septemeber (“Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Saints & Sinners, All Saints' iconic 2000 album is now available for the first time on vinyl. This special limited edition 2LP Black & Red vinyl edition features the band's signature blend of R&B, pop, and soul, including hit singles like 'Pure Shores' and 'Black Coffee'. To further celebrate, this vinyl edition will include various remixes released over the years such as The Neptunes Remix of Black Coffee, alongside the recent Tourist remix of 'Pure Shores’”). I am including the 2000 version in this feature. I am using this feature to dovetail two big events. First, All Saints second studio album, Saints & Sinner, was released on 16th October, 2000. On 14th October, All Saints member (and chief songwriter) Shaznay Lewis turns fifty. I did not know that her twenty-fifth birthday and the release of Saints & Sinners was just two days apart. That must have been quite a celebration in 2000! One of my favourite albums of the 1990s was All Saints’ eponymous debut. I have featured the group a couple of times recently. I spent some time with Black Coffee. The second single on Saints & Sinners turned twenty-five on 2nd October. Three singles were released from Saints & Sinners. The single release gaps were quite large. Pure Shores arrived on 14th February, 2000; All Hooked Up on 27th January, 2001. Rather than bring out five or six singles, the band (Natalie Appleton, Nicole Appleton, Shaznay Lewis and Melanie Blatt) put out three. Perhaps less well-reviewed and acclaimed as their debut, Saints & Sinners is still a gem. It has a great cover like All Saints does. Pure Shores and Black Coffee perhaps the two best songs All Saints ever released. Saints & Sinners also features great deep cuts like Whoopin' Over You and Surrender. Rather than put out a Shaznay Lewis playlist to mark her fiftieth birthday, I will end by wishing her many happy returns…but I want to focus instead on twenty-five years of Saints & Sinners.

I remember buying All Saints when it came out in 1997. It was one I played a lot. I was a fan of other girl groups like Spice Girls and Destiny’s Child. I think All Saints are the best British girl group (even though Natalie and Nicole Appleton are Canadian). Shorter in length than their debut album, Saints & Sinners was recorded out of multiple studios. Although not packed with other producers and songwriters, perhaps there is not the same quality that was on All Saints. I think many critics in 2000 were needlessly dismissive of Saints & Sinners. Some feeling the four-piece erased a lot of the credibility that their excellent debut offered them. Entering a new decade – and century – with a slightly different sound and perspective, this was the group recording an album after they had achieved success. Their 1997 debut was them pre-success. However, I have a lot of love for Saints & Sinners. It is hard to ignore the impact of Pure Shores and Black Coffee. They do not overshadow the album and the other songs. Instead, it shows that here was a group who still had plenty left in the tank. I wonder how they will mark twenty-five years of Saints & Sinners. Additional tracks are included on the 25th Anniversary Edition. When All Saints was released in 1997, there was a lot of great Pop and R&B around. Girl groups like Spice Girls. It fitted into the scene. Maybe critics felt that All Saints in 2000 were fitting into a Pop scene that was changing. Madonna released her album, Music, in 2000, and she was criticised by some for this reinvention. The same with All Saints. I think that the songwriting is as strong on Saints & Sinners as it is on All Saints. I am going to get to a positive review of the album in a minute.

Saints & Sinners did not original have that title. According to Dot Music in November 1999, All Saints had finished their long-awaited second studio album. One that was slated to come out in the spring of 2000. The fact that it gained a new (and better) title and was pushed back showed that it was not an entirely smooth process:

“All Saints have finally completed the much anticipated follow up to their million selling first album 'Never Ever'. Shaznay, Nicole, Natalie and Mel have finished working on 'I Need The Mic' which is due out in March/April 2000."The album is finished and we are now mastering it," said Shaznay Lewis. "It has great tracks on it. We were even working on the mixing desks. We wanted to get involved with every aspect of the album right down to the final version."

The new album will also feature the title track to the new Leonardo di Capro film 'The Beach'. Other artists who have contributed to the soundtrack include Blur, Moby, New Order, Leftfield, Asian Dub Foundation, Goldie and Faithless.

All Saints had their last hit in December with 'War Of Nerves'. The girls schedule this year has been dominated by acting as Nicole, Natalie and Mel all appear in the feature film 'Honest' which is directed by Eurythmics star Dave Stewart.Meanwhile we can reveal that David Blatt (father of All Saint Melanie Blatt) has been busy chatting to fans in our All Saints discussion area.

Using the alias byebyebenson (a reference to the band's former manager John Benson), Blatt criticised Benson and the US arm of their record company, London Records. A spokesman for London Records declined to discuss the matter but added 'he is free to criticise if he wishes'”.

The Guardian offered a four-star review for Saints & Sinners. If some felt the album was too close in sound to Spice Girls or Madonna’s Ray of Light, the reality was that there are shared elements. But All Saints have always been distinct. Saints & Sinners is distinctly their work and voice. An album that offers up some huge hits and some interesting deeper cuts. A group that released an album that endures to this day. I think that it has not aged. You can hear artists today who have aspects of Saints & Sinners in their work. A modern-sounded album from 2000, I hope there are some positive words written about it closer it its twenty-fifth anniversary on 16th October:

“That's the trouble when a band becomes bigger than their music. The watching world notes that Gomez have released about six albums in the three years since All Saints' 10m-selling debut, and begins to question the Saints' commitment. Because they've been enjoying their success too publicly - turning up to the opening of envelopes with lunkish celebrity beaux - no one cut them any slack as the release of their second album was delayed time and again. It's finally materialised, but too late to retain the sympathy of the very people who originally welcomed them as a streetwise alternative to the Spice Girls.

There's a ratio governing the balance of work and play that goes like this: for every night of Met Bar shenanigans with Liam Gallagher, you need to put in a month of solid studio graft to avoid a reputation as pop tarts. All Saints got the balance wrong. Already the bad reviews are appearing as avenging critics hit them where it hurts. Deep down, the foursome are serious about their music, and to have Saints & Sinners written off as "dull" and "unconvincing" (and that's just Q magazine) must be wrenching.

It's also unfair and inaccurate. Saints & Sinners is sophisticated, quiversome and anything but dull. Gomez are dull, the Beautiful South are dull; this is edible. Compared with the Spice Girls' new stuff, it's the veritable gold standard of commercial pop - the sort of frothiness-with-extra-dance-vitamins that has turned Madonna's career around. Now imagine if Madonna could actually sing...

Singing is Saints & Sinners' core value, the one constant amid a mixed bag of R&B flourishes and William Orbit ambient twiddles. The chemistry of the four voices is potent in a way that has no British equivalent. Only Americans like Destiny's Child have a similar gift for finessing complex arrangements and getting into the heart of a melody. Pure Shores, this year's biggest-selling single, illustrates it perhaps best of all, with sinuous, overlapping vocals that would be haunting even without Orbit's sparse production. Almost uniquely in current UK teen-pop, there's no need to make allowances. Blatt, songwriter Shaznay Lewis and the errant Appleton sisters just have it.

Although the record, like their debut, was produced by men, including old cohort K-Gee and Blatt's bass-playing fiancé Stuart Zender, the result is a confederacy of equals, with the band imposing their personalities on every song (they seem to have only two moods, kittenish and kick-ass, but no matter). So although Orbit may receive most of the kudos for getting Pure Shores and Black Coffee to number one, it's mesdames Saints who lend radiance to his twinkling fairy lights. And while K-Gee will probably end up getting the credit for the stylish R&B of All Hooked Up and Distance, the sassy Saintly input is what makes them work.

Distance, in fact, is their most evocative song ever. Written by Shaznay while the others were off fruitlessly making the film Honest, it exactly captures the feeling of separation and boasts their most beautiful harmonies. Natalie Appleton makes an unexpectedly decent writing debut with the luminous Dreams, which gets the full Orbit spectral-bleeps treatment for a winning result. Melanie Blatt also offers a song of her own with the dreamlike I Feel You, which is dedicated to her daughter but not as yuk as such things usually are. Surrender is this album's hormonal Booty Call, though it's spoiled by an Appleton sounding like a Dawson's Creek airhead: "See, like, I believe when two people meet and express themselves it's really sweet..." Like, really?

They have most fun with R&B/hip hop hybrids such as All Hooked Up and Whoopin' Over You, party-like affairs featuring scratching, rapping and the Saints giving it their west-London best. While it's ludicrous that they've even attempted lines like "I know you want a piece of my ass/ Don't you know a guy like you won't last?", these are just blips on an otherwise cloudless horizon. Even Saints aren't perfect, but they come close enough on this album”.

Perhaps not one of the biggest albums of 2000, it is important recognise twenty-five years of an album from one of the most popular groups of their generation. In 2018, when talking with Classic Pop about their then-new album, Testament, All Saints reflected on some of the struggles of Saints & Sinners. How they have more control of their voice and music now:

“The band’s superb new album Testament distils everything we’ve grown to love about the foursome over the past 20 years, but also pushes their sound forwards.

“The main thing that we wanted to do our way was the new record itself,” explains Shaznay, the Ivor Novello Award-winning chief songwriter in the group. “When we made our albums beforehand, tied to a label, it was all based on sales and being in that environment. I don’t think we made the best albums that we could. I think we’ve made better albums under our own umbrella. We compromised a lot back in the day, but we were young. You’re being asked by the biggest A&R people in the country to come up with hits and that’s all they’re concentrating on.

“By the time we got to our second album [2000’s Saints & Sinners], you don’t actually trust your own ears, and you think they should know better. But that’s not actually how it should be either. An artist should be making the music that they want to make, and if it fails, then it fails. At least it’s made authentically. Having said that, I feel actually that there hasn’t been a lot of things we’ve had to say no to. Because of the music we’ve made, the right things have come along with it.”

“With Testament, we funded it ourselves. Literally, we’ve been left to do exactly what we want to do with it,” Natalie adds”.

I do hope that we get more music from All Saints. It is great we get to celebrate Shaznay Lewis’s fiftieth birthday on 14th October. Two days later, she and her bandmates can look back at twenty-five years of Saints & Sinners. 2000 was a heady and really busy time for All Saints. I wanted to provide some kind words to Saints & Sinners. One that has some incredible tracks on it. If not as cohesive and solid as their 1997 debut, it is still a fantastic album that is rightly getting a twenty-fifth anniversary edition that should appeal to those who heard the album in 2000 and those who are newer to All Saints. In spite of some critical spikiness and dismissiveness, Saints & Sinners is…

MUCH more Heaven than Hell.

FEATURE: Can You Dig It? Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley: Life in the '90s

FEATURE:

Can You Dig It?

Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley: Life in the '90s

__________

I do love how…

IN THIS PHOTO: Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball host the Dig It podcast/PHOTO CREDIT: Scarlet Page

two radio queens, Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley, have teamed up for a great podcast. Though it is not brand-new, I am writing about it now because I want to tie it to a recent interview they gave to The Sunday Times. About surviving life in the 1990s. The podcast, Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball, can be accessed here. You can also stream it on Spotify. Check out the podcast’s Instagram. They alternate the episode structure. Every other episode has the sub-header, ‘DIG IN’. This is a fairly new addition to the podcast. There has been relatively little written about if from the press. I suspect, in an age where the young, trendy and fashionable are still drooled over and people, especially women, over a certain age are seen as irrelevant or bygone, that people have skipped it on principle. However, it is a fantastic podcast with two close friends. Two incredible BBC Radio 2 broadcasters who are legendary and hugely loved, it is great to hear them chat about topics such as lawn care (as the podcast explores the home and garden) and why it is harder to make friends later in life. We know about the podcast now but, back in June, Deadline posted news about a then-untitled podcast pairing two icons of the broadcasting and T.V. worlds:

“In their first ever show together, the broadcasters and presenters will lift the curtain on the “messy and beautiful reality of living well.”

No title yet revealed, but the pod will launch mid-July, the duo engage in heartfelt and unfiltered conversations about everyday life such as discuss raising a family, cultivating gardens, home improvements, careers, fostering healthy habits and aging.

The pair have been friends and worked alongside each other for nearly three decades, primarily as DJs at the BBC, and also on classic British 1990s shows The Word and Big Breakfast. As such, Persephonica is billing the podcast as “a warm and welcoming conversation with old mates.”

Dino Sofos’ Persephonica is known for podcasts such as Miss Me?, hosted by Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver; Dua Lipa: At Your Service; and the Westminster essential Political Currency. It also created the UK’s biggest daily podcast, The News Agents, but no longer makes it following a split with UK audio giant Global, as Deadline revealed in April last year.

Two episodes will each week with special bonus content for subscribers, and the show will be fully visualised on YouTube. Special guests and close friends are expected to appear, to chat about their family life, careers, life experiences, homes and gardens.

“I’ve been part of some amazing duos over the years, but I’m not sure any will quite compare to this new adventure,” said Whiley. “Starting a podcast with one of my oldest broadcasting friends – and let’s face it, doppelgänger – Zoe, is so exciting.

“The show will open a world of conversation on topics we don’t normally discuss on air and, importantly, will bring us much closer to the listeners and fans who have made our careers so special over the last 30 years.”

“I’m so super-excited to dive into the world of podcasting with my girl Jo, I’ve got so much love and respect for her – she’s been a true lifeline,” added Ball. “Our friendship goes back 30 years, to our days on The Word and The Big Breakfast. We’ve grown up together, personally and professionally, along with our listeners”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Leckie for The Sunday Times

Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball is very open and honest. In August, Whiley shared a tragic story of their family cat and how her husband accidentally ran it over. It is vulnerable and personal, which differs from a lot of podcasts, which are either angry, edgy, impersonal or cold. Those that go deeper and feel warmer and more heartfelt always leave a bigger impression on me. In any case, go and subscribe to the podcast and follow all the episodes. When the podcast was fresh in July, this is what The Guardian wrote about it: “BBC broadcasting besties Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley follow those who have enjoyed new freedom in the podcast world. In a breezy series, which was nearly called “Jo and Zo’s Big Bushes”, they invite listeners to ask them questions on subjects from kids to gardening, interiors, music and the menopause. What they won’t be talking about, Zoe confirms, is band members they slept with in the 90s. Sorry!”. It is a great podcast that explores hefty and serious topics but also has a lighter tone. It is not restricted to a certain age group or demographic. What struck my eye and ear is how people will ask about Whiley and Ball’s experiences when they were coming through. Back in the '90s. An era when, between them, they were hosting T.V. shows and broadcasting on the BBC, they had this fame and notoriety. Zoe Ball especially linked to the ladette culture of the time. Fellow broadcasters like Sara Cox also included. Maybe gaining a reputation as being quite hedonistic or excessive, I feel a lot of it was them being caught up in what was expected in the decade. Now, both Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball might look back at regret. Not entirely, though some fog her hazier memories, tabloid photos and headlines might still leave them cold. The reality is that life for women in the public eye in the 1990s was especially challenging and toxic. This is something that we often overlook and see through rose-tinted glasses.

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A post shared by Dig It with Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley (@digitpod)

Whilst we mark big album anniversaries of classics from the 1990s and have entire shows dedicated to that decade, we often overlook what it was like for women then. From artists to those behind the scenes and women working for big radio stations, they did not get the same treatment and have the same experience as many of their male contemporaries. I read an interview from The Sunday Times from Saturday (6th September). A new chat with these two great, not only were they talking about their podcast and what the brilliant Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball is about. A big conversation was what it was like for them in the 1990s. There are some portions of the interview that I want to include:

“They met in the early 1990s when both worked at the production company Planet 24 on two of TV’s edgiest shows at the time: Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast (Ball) and the unmissable Friday-night post-pub The Word (Whiley). In 1997 Ball co-hosted Radio 1’s Breakfast Show, Whiley presented the lunchtime show. As two blondes, they joke, they’ve always been mistaken for each other.

I’d been surprised that Ball hadn’t teamed up with fellow Radio 2er Sara Cox, who in the lairy 1990s was her hard-partying “ladette” partner. “Sara already has a podcast!” Ball and Whiley shriek simultaneously, clearly horrified this will be interpreted as a dissing (indeed, Cox hosts The Teen Commandments with Clare Hamilton). When I spoke to Whiley two years ago, she told me how relieved she’d been back then — when she and Ball were regularly fronting Top of the Pops — that Ball and Cox “took one for the team” for her female cohort, by posing for lads’ mags such as Loaded.

“It was very male and we just sucked it up, went with it, we were almost expected to play up to it a little bit,” Ball reflects of the era. “It’s only years later you look back and think, goodness me. It was actually [the 46-year-old singer] Sophie Ellis-Bextor [in her memoir] that undid me, reading some of the stuff she went through and how what she could see of women in the media was Sara and I.

Yet Nineties nostalgia is tinged with Gen X guilt, for having come of age not only to a banging soundtrack, but in a period of peace and prosperity. “I find myself apologising to my kids now when they say, ‘We should have lived in the 1990s.’ I really appreciate how blessed we were to be venturing into the world then, when finding a job wasn’t that competitive really,” Whiley says.

While Ball had connections (her first job was presenting the BBC preschool show Playdays), Whiley was the daughter of a couple who ran a post office in Northamptonshire. “I just wrote letters, real actual letters and someone gave me a job. Today it’s really stressful and heartbreaking. It worries me a lot.” Nor do they buy into the “slacker” Gen Z perception. “They’re really, really hard workers, they have to say yes to anything and everything, to be the best of the best”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley with Jayne Middlemiss in 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: Nicky Johnston/BBC

There are mixed feelings towards the '90s. Both were very much part of an industry that treated women as objects and sexualised them at every opportunity. There was misogyny and sexism and, even though Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley did not court the same sort of controversy as some of the biggest acts of the day, they were often dragged in the papers. Or celebrated as these hard-drinking ladettes. The idea of them being asked in photoshoots to pose in a certain way or things being judged on their looks rather than their talent. That still happens today. It was, by all accounts, quite a sadly traditional and conventional experience that so many women faced. Now, with hindsight and clearer vision, we can rightly call out the attitudes and toxicity of the time. However, as they say in that interview, there were some good times. Happy memories. The revival or '90s music and new lease from bands such as Supergrass and Oasis, sort of connects them back to that decade…albeit with wiser shoulders and experience. I do think that there is still this glamourisation of the era. Zoe Ball had some turbulent and rocky experiences in the Nineties. That was made tabloid fodder. The scandalisation of women and the intrusion into their personal lives. Whilst we herald the music and culture of the time, I feel like some of the darker and dirtier elements, especially the way women were viewed and what they had to endure, is not discussed – or else seen as insignificant. However, rather than purely dwell on the lack of kindness and progressiveness of the 1990s, we can see that decade as hallowed in a way. The music that came out at the time. The fact Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball met then. Sharing their experiences of the days. Also, in the process, that will give guidance and support to many women in the public eye now that are facing scrutiny and toxicity. Intrusion and invasion of their privacy. I would urge everyone to listen to Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. Their remarkable friendship, shared experiences and connection makes it a compelling listen. A brilliant offering…

FROM two queens of broadcasting.

FEATURE: When the Cameras Stop Rolling and the Crowds Go Home… Imagining the Private Kate Bush Behind the Scenes

FEATURE:

 

 

When the Cameras Stop Rolling and the Crowds Go Home…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush, at her home in Eltham, London on 13th September, 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins/Getty Images

Imagining the Private Kate Bush Behind the Scenes

__________

I was going to write…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of Cloudbusting in 1985

another feature about Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting but, as I recently did so for a run of features to mark the fortieth anniversary of its sister album, Hounds of Love (which turned forty on 16th September), I will start off mentioning it and expand. I did mention the song in the context in terms of gender roles in her music. The single turns forty on 14th October, so I needed to highlight it. That song is fascinating because of its video. That is not the only fascinating element, though its video was a huge production. Featuring the late Donald Sutherland, it was a like a short film. Shot around the White Horse at Uffington, in the Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire, England (you can read more about this location in this excellent new book), I can imagine there were these moments of contemplation and quiet. No doubt her and Donald Sutherland chatted in each other’s trailer/dressing rooms. Sutherland had a word with Bush about smoking marijuana before filming the Cloudbusting music video, and Bush responded that she hadn't been straight for nine years. It is these kind of moments that we do not really think about often. What happens when the camera stop rolling or just before they start. I often imagine what happened on the set of music videos or just before a live performance. The Cloudbusting video is an example where Bush and team would have travelled to set and there would have been these conversations about the video and the excitement of what was ahead. I think about Bush waiting on stage to do a performance. Maybe Top of the Pops in 1978 when Wuthering Heights was climbing the charts. Perhaps just about to go and perform a set for The Tour of Life in 1979. Before the Dawn in 2014. The sort of conversations that were happening before and after. Sometimes Bush has spoken about these times in interviews, though most of the truth and all these possible stories will never be told.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the make-up chair whilst filming for The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

It is the video shoots that are especially interesting. You know there would have been a lot of setting up shots and technical equipment chat. If everything was working and what needed to be done. I feel there would have been hours of Bush waiting around to go on set. However, I often dream of these great videos and what was happening between takes. Some of these shots are captured by John Carder Bush (her brother) for his 2015 book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow. Where she was sitting with extras or in make-up. I do love these moments. Guido Harari also documented many of the behind the scenes moments during filming of the 1993 short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Those videos for Hounds of Love would have been bustling with activity and chat. Think about the title track. Kate Bush directed that video. Directing herself, there would not have been much time for contemplation and peace. Instead, she was thinking about the shots and her acting too. I’d love to think that there were these chats with costume designers ands wardrobe. Small talk about what she was wearing, but also her thoughts on the video. As director, Bush would have been getting advice from others, but also would have been keeping the actors and crew up to date with everything happening. Like song outtakes and demos, it is fascinating learning about the components that go into making a video what it is. We don’t have a lot of that kind of footage. Some artists have behind the scenes documentaries or there are interviews with them where they are shooting a music video and we get to see those moments away from the camera. There is not anything like that for Kate Bush. Bits of her in the studio though, for the most part, we have to imagine what that would have looked like.

As Cloudbusting is forty on 14th October, it did get me thinking about that video and the fascinating chats and moments that not only would have shed more light on the Kate Bush that we only really see in interviews. It also gives us window into what the shoots were like. I think about photoshoots too. What was being discussed before and after the shot. We are unlikely to ever get unheard demos and early takes from Kate Bush. Audio from the vault. There are some of these candid and rare photos where we see her on sets or in studios. Catching her playful or unguarded, these are among my favourites. As much as I love the finished product, my mind wanders and I can’t help but speculate what was happening before and after! Into the studio when she was recording an album. Life at Abbey Road Studios for Never for Ever or The Dreaming. Maybe bonding with her team or there being these private moments between her and Del Palmer (her boyfriend until the 1990s, he worked as a musician and engineer on many of her albums). I know Kate Bush, as a producer, had this special relationship with the musicians. There would have been games and times when she was having fun with them. You can see in some photoshoots how there would have been a lot of laughter behind the scenes. I think The Tour of Life is my favourite scenario to imagine. The rehearsals and what happened after the shows. Bush in a new place exploring and what she and her crew were talking about in transit. Maybe the Cloudbusting set is the most vivid and epic, so that would have heralded a lot of interesting times. However, there must be stiff competition from Experiment IV (from 1986’s The Whole Story), Army Dreamers (Never for Ever, 1980) and There Goes a Tenner (from 1982’s The Dreaming).

 THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and an extra during the shoot/rehearsals for the There Goes a Tenner video in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I will wrap up in a minute. A happy forty-fifth anniversary to Cloudbusting for 14th October. It made me step inside the video and what was going on before the camera rolled and after a scene was completed. Also, the sort of dialogue and snapshots that you could have imagined when Kate Bush performed live. I am not sure whether we have seen the last of Kate Bush as a live performer. She has not emphatically ruled it out. Same with interviews. If there is a new album, then there will be moments where journalists get to meet Kate Bush at her home. What goes on then? The chat and tea before the interview starts. The sort of conversations that would take place. Now, as Kate Bush’s son, Bertie, is grown up and is not at home, what is the energy and feel of the Bush household with her partner, Dan McIntosh? Also, what about possible music videos? I don’t think Bush will ever appear in any of her video. I suppose there will have to be photoshoots for promotional reasons. Will Kate Bush work with a new photographer or stick with a trusted pair of hands? If she is directing a music video, what form will that take? The life of Kate Bush has so many facets and layers. We all know about the videos and the visible stuff. However, many of us want to go deeper. Kate Bush has not really allowed much out into the world that is private and behind the scenes. I am guessing there would have been video shot at times that is personal. Photos from various recording sessions she will not allow out. What we have is pretty good, though there is that tantalising possibility that there is stuff in the archive that will never see the light of day. Because of Cloudbusting’s fortieth anniversary, I imagined the conversations where Donald Sutherland tried to dissuade Kate Bush from smoking weed. What they were talking about before shots. The sort of interactions and scenes that unfolded. These are the unseen and private moments that…

LIFT the spirits.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Catherine Marks

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Vintage King

Catherine Marks

__________

I usually reserve…

IN THIS PHOTO: Catherine Marks receives her Music Creative Award at the Women In Music Awards from Wolf Alice's Ellie Rowsell

this series for amazing women in music. Artists usually. However, I have so much love and respect for Catherine Marks. I have written about her before. One of the best and most successful producers in the world, I have spoken about her in the sense of there not being many women in professional studios. Whilst many female artists self-produce, there are still not that many in professional studios. The industry does not address this and redress this. Catherine Marks no doubt has inspired so many aspiring women to go into production (and engineering). To recognise her brilliance, I am going to get to some fairly recent interviews with her. I am going to head to a couple of older interview first. In terms of her discography. Marks’ work includes production on boygenius' the record, The Mysterines' Reeling, Alanis Morissette's Such Pretty Forks in the Road (co-produced), and The Wombats' Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life (co-produced). Other significant works include producing for The Amazons, Frank Turner, and Manchester Orchestra. I want to start out with an interview from 2023 (there are a few on YouTube like this that I do not have space to include, but I would advise people to check out) that was published by The Hollywood Reporter. Nominated for GRAMMYs for her work as producer on boygenius’s the record, it did win, among other things, Best Alternative Music Album. Though it was not a standalone producer nod, it did break boundaries in the fact that not many albums with a woman as a producer win GRAMMY awards. Marks was helping to break down the boys’ club mentality and pave the way for other women:

“Catherine Marks had just graduated with her master’s degree in architecture, but before launching that career she wanted to take a stab at another passion: music. So the Australian took off for six months, moved to London and got a job at a recording studio.

“I started making tea there,” she says with a light laugh. Fast-forward nearly 20 years, and it’s clear Marks made the right decision. She trained and worked alongside Grammy-winning creatives Flood and Alan Moulder, and went on to work with Alanis Morissette, St. Vincent, The Killers, Wolf Alice, The Wombats, Foals and more.

This year she’s been nominated for three Grammys, thanks to her work on the record, the highly regarded debut album by boygenius (the ironically named indie supergroup consisting of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus). Marks, who produced and engineered the record, is up for record of the year for “Not Strong Enough” and best engineered album (non-classical), and could make Grammy history Feb. 4 with her nom for album of the year.

“I didn’t even know that was going to happen,” Marks says of her triple nom. “I was sort of like, ‘I’d love to go, but would I even be invited?’ I would celebrate for ‘the boys,’ ” as she refers to the band, “but little old me getting to go to the Grammys, I don’t know.”

The few female producers who have won album of the year have been artists who self-produced their own projects, including Lauryn Hill, Taylor Swift and Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne and Sarah Neufeld. Singer Autumn Rowe won the award for co-producing two tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are and Imogen Heap won for co-producing a song on Swift’s 1989 — and those were in years when the Grammys awarded all producers on an album. Now, nominees have to produce at least 20 percent of an album to be nominated or win. Marks, in contrast, produced all 12 tracks on the record alongside boygenius.

A recent USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study reported that only 3.4 percent of producers were women in 2022. No woman has ever won the Grammys’ coveted non-classical producer of the year award in the show’s 65-year-history.

When she’s asked about the lack of female producers in music, Marks has some theories. “When I started, I was the only one. So I wonder if it was a case of ‘You can’t be what you can’t see,’ ” she says. Marks notes that, culturally, the studio can be a tough place for women. “I definitely never saw it or experienced or perceived it that way, but I think it can be a pretty brutal situation.”

More than three-quarters of women in music say they have been treated differently because of their gender, according to the Women in the Mix study published by The Recording Academy, Arizona State University and the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship last year. The study also reported that women in the industry are overworked and underpaid.

Marks is excited about changing the tune at the upcoming Grammys, which is dominated by female nominees in the top three categories, among them Swift, SZA, Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus, Olivia Rodrigo, Lana Del Rey, Janelle Monáe, Dua Lipa and Victoria Monét. And though Marks is the only non-artist female producer up for album of the year, several female engineers are also up for the prize, including Sarah Tudzin (boygenius), Jayda Love (Monáe), Yáng Tan (Monáe) and Laura Sisk, who engineered albums by Swift, Del Rey and Batiste, and is a triple nominee in the big category.

“It’s changing a lot,” Marks says of the industry. “I think you will see that shift because the women who are starting, or have started in the last five to 10 years, their names will start coming up.”

More will follow in their wake, Marks predicts. “Other young engineers and producers will go, ‘Oh my God, I could do that, too,’ because there’s more visibility”.

Not that Catherine Marks is short of accolades. And all rightly deserved! Her honours include the Music Producers Guild (MPG) Awards for Breakthrough Producer of the Year in 2016 and Producer of the Year in 2018 and 2024. She also received the Music Business Worldwide (MBW) A&R Award for Producer of the Year in 2023 and the Women In Music Award for Music Creative in 2024. Catherine Marks lives in London, though she was born in Melbourne, Australia. She moved to London in 2005 to work as an assistant engineer. Before featuring some 2024 interviews and one from this year, I want to include this interview (I am not sure when it was published, as there is no date on it):

“So what has kept you at this career? Your family's on the other side of the world, you come to London and you're sitting in sessions for 12 hours a day.

I think part of it is just determination. I think that a lot of people thought that I wouldn't last very long, that I was doing the wrong thing, or that it wasn't what I wanted to do. But it turned out that it was. Even though I found it difficult initially, just being an invisible nobody, I slowly started to realize how crucial that aspect was, and how you were suddenly part of a team. I wanted to be part of making music, and it didn't matter how.

What do you think you bring to a session?

I'm very organized. I think it's all about seeing the big picture. Everyone's got this common goal. It's thinking about what I can do to help everyone realize what they want to achieve. I still feel like it's not about me and my vision. I think, in that way, I'm quite reactive. It's about the energies and the excitement; all the emotion, or whatever that goes on on that particular day, with those particular people. Creatively, that's definitely the way I work. What excites me at that time? Obviously I've got a plan of what we need to achieve; but musically, and emotionally, it's very experimental. It's the happy accidents that color and shape the fundamentals of a song. That's definitely what excites me. I remember asking Flood a stupid question like, "What did you do back then [on tape] if someone played out of time, or sung out of tune?" He'd say, "Turn them up!" I know he was being flippant, or annoyed by my question, but I took that to heart. You either make the most of it, or find a way that you can work around it.

What do you see in the future?

I'm working so much at the moment that time is just getting compressed, more and more, into ridiculous schedules. I feel like I'm now coming back to working around the clock. I have a couple of weeks off coming up, which I'm really excited about. I'm just going to sleep. But I don't know what's next. Hopefully I can maintain the interest there is, with the people who want to work with me. Some of the productions I've been doing over the past few years are coming out now, which is exciting. I don't get offended if I don't get chosen for a job though. I think it's so much about personalities, and the dynamic that you have with the band. You're going to be spending loads of time with them, so they need to respect and trust you”.

 

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Earlier this year, Catherine Marks shared on her Instagram account that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Having lived with pain for years, the news was both a relief and a huge shock. I am not sure whether she has been given the all clear or is still living with cancer. However, it was a very powerful and personal post that led to a wave of love and support. I have see recent posts where she does appear to be back in the studio and working. I hope that she is almost back to full health, or at least is in a position where she can work without that many obstructions or pain. I am going to bring in parts of an interview from November 2024 from Music Week. One of the winners of that year’s Women In Music Awards, Catherine Marks discussed how women as producers have their achievements politicised rather than celebrated. She was asked if there are enough resources to support women and encourage them into production and studios:

“Catherine Marks is a force of nature, one of the music industry’s most highly-regarded producers, and this year’s winner of the Music Week Women In Music Awards Music Creative honour.

With a career that has so far spanned over 20 years, Marks has been renowned for her work in the studio as a producer and mixer, as well as a campaigner, advocating for better recognition of female producers.

"There are a lot more of us than people seem to think!" she stated, in an interview with Music Week earlier this year.

When you spoke to Music Week earlier this year, you said that you were frustrated with how women’s achievements are often politicised rather than celebrated. What can the business be doing more of to shift the focus onto inspiring women instead of tokenising those in more senior roles?

“That’s the issue, I feel like the women who already exist in the industry and have been working hard for a long time, they haven't been celebrated enough, there was always a lack of that. If you don’t educate everyone in the industry that there are incredible women working in it, then young people don’t know about them, and you can’t be what you can’t see. I felt that, while it is so important to carry on the conversation about why there has been a barrier for women who want to enter into this side of the industry, acknowledging those who have had success in their career – of which there are so many globally – is needed. When I first started, there were women who had been there before me, but there weren’t any I knew of. As time went on, there were more entering the industry, but it takes time to build a profile, so of course people were still not aware of them. Now, however, there are women who do have a profile and are making significant gains, so if we celebrate them – whilst talking about the work that can be done to bring in the younger generations –  that will help. It’s so important that the decision makers, the managers and the record labels are aware of those producers, songwriters, creatives who are available. But the culture is definitely shifting, which is great.”

Do you think there are enough resources in place to support young female producers coming up nowadays?

“I hope so, I think we’re living through a shift. But again, it’s about showing the representation and, ultimately, in order to have a career you need to have access to particular projects. Especially for myself, I’m not an artist, record labels, managers and artists come to me to make records, and that’s because they’re aware of me, so it’s all about making people aware of all the others who are around. It’s also about how you access that situation. It’s an ongoing thing, but having award shows like this are really important because it’s a celebration of how far we’ve come and what we’ve achieved, and also just a lovely experience to be in a room of all these incredible women.”

You’ve previously spoken about how, when you were coming up in the industry, you didn’t want to step on people’s toes or seem overconfident. How did you establish a more confident voice in your work?

“I wonder if it was a combination of a lot of things – one being that I was very inexperienced in the industry and, coming from an architecture background to making tea in studios, I thought that I had to be invisible to be able to learn. Then, as my experience grew, as did the industry, there was this natural shift where I started to feel really confident in what I was doing and what I could deliver. I remember someone telling me to always be myself, and for a long time I felt like I could only show a little part of myself, but because I live in the studio, it’s a hard thing to put on an act, and in the end I did just have to be me! I work with people now who I love and are inspiring, which allows me a real sense of personal freedom.”

What is the key piece of advice you would give to younger creatives entering the industry now? Is there anything you wish you’d known when you started out?

“This industry, as I imagine a lot of industries are, is a trust-based one in that even if your role is just making tea, it’s so important that you get that right and put as much passion into it as you would if you were a producer. It’s also such a unique environment, often you’re working long hours in a small room with a core team. Thankfully, there is a lot more mental and physical health support and awareness of peoples’ lifestyles now, but even so, your role is always significant and you often can't 'call in sick'. This business is small and it is about building a reputation. That's something I didn’t know that when I started out, I was just like, ‘Goddamnit, I’m making tea!’ or ‘I’m just hoovering!’ But those things are important, and people pay attention”.

I want to skip back a little further to July 2024. Another interesting interview with Music Week, Catherine Marks talked about conquering her fears, representation, and she also paid tribute to Steve Albini (who sadly died last May). I think the last time that I spotlighted Catherine Marks was in 2023. I am long overdue a return to her brilliant career and work. One of the world’s greatest producers:

“Marks, who tasted her first Grammy success earlier this year with Boygenius' debut album The Record (77,664 sales, OCC), reflected on how the wider industry could improve its treatment of producers.

“I think it’s about respecting the process," she said. "Traditionally, the producer’s role was there to help carry the burden - of the pressure, the finances, the budget, schedule - as well as facilitate for the artist to achieve whatever it is that they wanted to achieve.

"The roles outside the studio and the roles inside the studio are constantly evolving, so it’s about working together with the producers and the artists, and supporting them as they throw their blood, sweat and tears into something, and having a little bit of compassion...This is a very convoluted way of saying, ‘Just tell us we’re amazing.’ Because often, we’ll just need to hear it.”

Marks, who also took home the top accolade of Producer Of The Year from the Music Producers Guild Awards 2024 for her work on The Record, learned her craft as an engineer on records by acts including PJ Harvey, Foals and The Killers.

She has gone on to collaborate with the likes of Alanis Morissette, Wolf Alice, The Big Moon, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes and The Amazons, while her relationship with Boygenius has extended beyond the studio - joining the band on stage at Gunnersbury Park last summer to recreate the scream she recorded on the track $20.

“That was the most terrifying experience of my life," Marks told Music Week. "I knew I had to say ‘yes’ when they asked me to do it because I was like, ‘This is an experience I can’t give up.’ But I’m pretty sure I was hyperventilating at the side of the stage before going on and then as soon as I walked out I think I blacked out.

"But then I just came to and I’m screaming and I see their three faces beaming back at me and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this chorus is still going, I still have to carry on screaming.’ And then, once it was over, I realised no one cared and no one knew who I was. But it was fun for me to do. It’s good to put yourself in terrifying situations because once you’ve done it, it’s like, ‘Oh, I want to do that again.’”

Marks has spent much of her career advocating for better treatment and recognition of female producers.

"I do understand that the conversation is important and always will be, because it appears as if there are not that many women in the industry," she said. "And I understand that there are these percentage figures, but that [relates to] what is in the charts…

"I think there are a lot of people who are producing who might not necessarily be working on the kind of music that would chart. I know that I don’t all the time."

Marks namechecked Steph Marziano, Marta Salogni, Manon Grandjean, Jennifer Decilveo, Alex Hope and Laura Sisk as ones to watch in her field.

"There are a lot more of us than people seem to think," she added. "Also, what’s frustrating is politicising that, rather than celebrating the achievements of the women who are doing really well, to encourage the next generation. I wish there was more of that”.

Speaking with Vintage King earlier in the year, they asked this super-producer twenty questions. We get an insight into her favourite gear, studio routines and what she has coming up. In terms of her work, you can check out her official website and keep abreast on her Instagram page. This is one of the most important women in music. We do not often highlight the relevance and role of producers. Especially when it comes to women. This is a trailblazer and pioneer who is helping to break down walls and ensure that more women are seen in studios:

“You’ve worked on some incredible projects. Can you think of any familiar thread that runs between all of them?

That's a really good question. It's hard for me to say sonically whether there is. I mean, there's always a little part of me that makes its way into the records I’m a part of, but I think the common thread is the artists that I worked with and the chemistry that we have. That is always why I pick a project—because I would love to spend time with the artists, no matter what the genre is. I want to work with artists who inspire me.

That's more a philosophical thread, but I don't know—maybe there's a sonic thread. I like things that are a little bit rough around the edges and very human. So I'm always very conscious to maintain that element, to maintain the personality of the artist that I work with, and make sure that that comes through as a unique sonic identifier to whatever project that I'm working on.

Who's an artist you’d most like to work with next?

There are a few artists I’m really intrigued by: Ethel Cain, Kacey Musgraves, and Amyl and the Sniffers. I would also really love to work with Coldplay. I don't know why, but I’d love to make a live album with them. Kind of Parachutes again, if they wanted to go back and make that kind of record. I’d love that challenge. I mean, honestly, you know, people ask me that all the time and the only reason I'm answering it's because I saw the question before.

It’s rare I ever think, "Oh, I'd love to work with that artist." It's more, I meet the artists that approach me and again, it's whether they inspire me through that initial chemistry. I mean, I would've loved to have worked with Bowie. That would've been awesome, but in the 70s. There are a lot of my favorite records where I think, "God, I would've loved to have worked on that." And albums like Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk. Sometimes I think I wish I’d been a part of that record.

To be honest, I’m more often thinking of other producers I’d love to work with. I love that kind of collaboration.

Do you have a production philosophy, and does it differ from when you are mixing?

Production philosophy: I like to feel, so the way that I produce is very reactive. I never know what kind of journey we're going to go on, but I usually sort of have a plan. I've heard the demos, I’ve/we've done pre-production, and I've watched them play. Imagery will start to form. I guess it's sort of hard to explain. I like to see the mix, see the production, and see the music, if that makes sense. So perhaps I think about things in a three-dimensional way. I guess my approach to production is the same as mixing, in that I'm trying to get a sense of an emotion that also has a visual attached, which is also in three dimensions.

When I close my eyes, where am I? Where is the guitar placed? Can I reach out and touch it? That sort of thing. Where are the drums sitting? Are they sitting behind the speakers or right in front, to the left, or to the right? I'm building a three-dimensional thing. How can I make that read through something that has no dimension, essentially?

So, yeah, it’s a constant science experiment.

PHOTO CREDIT: Vintage King

Was there ever a point when you questioned if music was the right thing for you? And if so, how did you know to keep going?

That is a very good question. I think probably in the first three or four years, when I was assisting, and I was like, "Why have I not progressed?" I remember someone saying, “You've still got a long way to go.” So there was that point, which I think everyone goes through, when they're like, "How long do I have to put up with this shit?" and, "Will I progress?" I'm really grateful that I carried on.

I did have tunnel vision, and I knew where I wanted to get to, but when I got to that point, I was so grateful because I had the experience and understood how to deal with people, managers, and record labels. When I was under a lot of pressure, I was able to handle it. Whereas had I gone out on my own when I thought I was ready, I would never have been able to handle it. Reputation is such a massive thing in a relatively small industry of producers and engineers that, had I failed on the first hurdle, would I have recovered?

It wasn’t until I understood the studio dynamic that there was a point, probably around three years in, where I was just like, "Oh God, this is so hard and brutal;" the long hours, no social life, and the sacrifices. But deep down, I had this end goal in mind. I got some great advice from my peers and my mentors: "Just when you think that you're ready, you're not." The learning process was so important. I think, had I not persevered and accepted that, I wouldn't have been ready when I was in a position of responsibility.

As a producer, how do you approach pre-production? Or do you just dive in?

Pre-production is such an important aspect of making a record for me, because it's not only the part where you get to know the artists' personalities, but also the way that they play. It’s a springboard of ideas for how I'm going to record it. I've talked about it before, but what the album will look like, just being in a rehearsal room, not thinking about microphones or the sonics, but just feeling their energy. It really starts to spark ideas, and also it's a way for them to break down the song aspects, whether it's the groove, or the way that the guitars are being strummed, or the vocal metering and how that relates to the drum groove. I break all those things down and then build it up again with tiny little tweaks that make things a bit tighter and a bit stronger.

But it also means that they're learning the parts, so that when we actually get into the studio, while it's an extension of pre-production, it becomes more about performance rather than learning the parts on the go. I try to make the experience from pre-production to recording as seamless as possible. It's all rehearsal until it's not, basically. We're always trying, we're always experimenting, but if you have the basics and we've really honed in on those in pre-production, it means there's more room for exploration and experimentation while we're in the studio.

Do you have any upcoming projects that you’re excited about and can share with us?

I've just done this great record with an Australian band called Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers. We spent five weeks in Australia making the record in a residential studio, working six-day weeks. I think this album's so exciting, I’m very excited about it”.

I am going to finish on that note. As I started by saying, Catherine Marks is someone for whom I hold a lot of respect, love and affection. Considering the amazing albums she has produced and how she is both championing women in the industry and also calling out the fact that, even now, studios are male dominated. The work of women still undervalued. Despite experiencing health issues and setbacks, I feel things are going to be pretty busy for Catherine Marks. I cannot wait to see what comes from her…

GOING forward.

___________

Follow Catherine Marks

Official:

https://www.catherinejmarks.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/cjmarks/

Twitter:

https://x.com/cjmarks

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7GYVuwoR9xM4iXaX2CZKES

FEATURE: Free As a Bird: The Importance of The Beatles’ Anthology 4

FEATURE:

 

 

Free As a Bird

The Importance of The Beatles’ Anthology 4

__________

I realise that I have…

spent a lot of time with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and The Beatles in general over the past month or two. I will move away until closer to December, when Rubber Soul turns sixty. However, with the upcoming release of Anthology 4, I need to return to them. Actually, these are expanded editions. I am writing a separate feature where I talk about Deluxe Editions of albums and artists like Taylor Swift who will release multiple versions of albums. How much is this costing diehard fans?! In the case of The Beatles, there is quite a lot of activity when it comes to reissues. We have seen several of the studio albums reissued on various formats. I am not sure if there are plans for Giles Martin and his team to reissue Rubber Soul or even A Hard Day’s Night with outtakes and extras. It is exciting that we get these reissues and expanded editions, as we get to hear outtakes ands demos. Getting a bigger and wider impression of an album compared to the finished studio release. The Anthology 4 releases are particularly intriguing, as we get to hear various takes and demos of Beatles songs from throughout their career. On 14th October, an Anthology book will be available:

“The landmark international bestseller—The Beatles’ own story, in their own words—reissued on the 25th anniversary of its first publication.

The Beatles Anthology is, uniquely, the story of The Beatles by The Beatles. Created with the full cooperation of Paul, George, Ringo, and Yoko Ono Lennon, it also includes the words of John, painstakingly compiled from sources worldwide. Interwoven with The Beatles' own memories are the recollections of such associates as road manager Neil Aspinall, producer George Martin, and spokesman Derek Taylor. From their years growing up in Liverpool through their ride to fame to their ultimate breakup, here’s the inside story.

The Beatles Anthology is, in effect, The Beatles autobiography.

The Beatles Anthology also features over 1300 images, most previously unpublished. Paul, George, Ringo, and Yoko Ono Lennon all opened their own archives just for this project, as did Apple, EMI, and others long associated with The Beatles, allowing the unprecedented release of photographs, documents, and other memorabilia from their homes and offices. The result is an extraordinary wealth of visual material brimming on each and every page”.

Depending on your budget, you can invest in a twelve-L.P. version of Anthology 4. Even though it is expensive, it is good value when you consider how that breaks down for that much music. It might be one of the most important releases, as we get to hear these demos and raw recordings. Some live recordings too. There is this staggering array of music for £319.99! Although a lot of fans can’t afford that, just consider what you are getting for that money:

“4 x 3LP albums in triple gatefold sleeves and slipcase + 4 x photo art cards in unique numbered envelope

The Anthology Collection 12LP set includes the three groundbreaking Anthology albums from the mid-1990s, remastered in 2025 by Giles Martin, plus a new compilation, Anthology 4. Containing 191 tracks, the collection’s studio outtakes, live performances, broadcasts and demos reveal the musical development of The Beatles from 1958 to the final single ‘Now And Then’ released in 2023.

Anthology 4 features 13 previously unreleased tracks and 17 songs selected from Super Deluxe versions of five classic albums. In addition to fascinating outtakes dating from 1963 to 1969, the album includes new 2025 mixes by Jeff Lynne of ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’.

Furthermore, Anthology 4 presents 26 tracks that have never previously been released on vinyl.

Pressed on 180g black vinyl, each 3LP album will be housed within a triple gatefold sleeve, featuring the original art, sleevenotes by Mark Lewisohn, and restored photos for Anthology 1-3; Anthology 4 has brand new sleevenotes written by Kevin Howlett alongside photos. The outer slipcase features the original Klaus Voorman triptych art, and a 3/4 O-Card image of the band with detailed track listing.

The Beatles Store exclusive format will contain 4 x 12” band photo art cards in a custom black, numbered envelope (8500 total)”

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Of course, there will be a digital version of Anthology 4 available on 21st November. In the 1990s, three Anthology volumes were released. Anthology 3 took us to their final recordings in terms of the chronology. Between the volumes, we got to hear these early and alternative versions of songs that defined our childhood and young years. I think the fourth volume is going to be the definitive one. Some might say it is cashing in. However, thirty years after the first Anthology, it is a chance to own a slice of Beatles history. You can see all the Anthology options here. It is not only the music we will get and a book. There is an Anthology 4 documentary that will feature on Disney+. This feature explains more:

“The Beatles Anthology arrived in November 1995 as an eight-part TV documentary and three double albums of unreleased outtakes and alternate mixes (released over a 12 month period). Now 30 years on, this landmark examination of The Fab Four returns, offering remastered and remixed audio, restored visuals and new content, in the form of a fresh episode of the documentary and a fourth volume of music available in new 8CD and 12 LP Anthology Collection box sets. The book, issued in 2000, is also being made available again.

New physical music releases

In terms of the music, the new Anthology Collection box sets have been remastered by Giles Martin. The original three double albums are unchanged (remastering apart), but are joined by Anthology 4, newly curated by Giles, including 13 previously unreleased demos and session recordings and other rare tracks. This extra volume also includes new mixes of the 1995 and 1996 singles ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’. They have been freshened up by original producer, Jeff Lynne, using de-mixed John Lennon vocals (the original ‘Free As A Bird’ music video has also been restored). ‘Now and Then’, the last Beatles song, is also on Anthology 4. There is no mention of Dolby Atmos Mixes of any of the 191 tracks that make up The Anthology Collection. That would be a massive undertaking, to be fair.

Both 8CD and 12LP box sets include the original sleeve notes for Anthology 1, 2 and 3; the new Anthology 4 includes track notes written by Kevin Howlett and an introduction compiled from 1996 interviews recorded with The Beatles’ close friend and adviser Derek Taylor. If you are wondering about the packaging, as far as I can tell, that rather dubious photo that has been chosen of The Beatles appears to be a ‘bellyband’ which is removable to reveal the classic Anthology artwork below. Phew!

Documentary coming to Disney+

The original eight episodes of The Beatles Anthology documentary series have been restored and remastered. These were originally screened on TV networks around the world (ITV in the UK) at the time and were released on VHS and Laserdisc in 1996 and then on DVD in 2003. They never made it to blu-ray and there is a question mark over whether that will now ever happen, since as with The Beatles Get Back and Let It Be, restored Beatles Anthology is coming exclusively to Disney+, beginning in late November.

The restoration has been overseen by Apple Corps’ production team, working with Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films & Park Road Post teams along with Giles Martin, who has created new audio mixes for the majority of the featured music.

There is now a completely new Episode Nine, including unseen behind-the-scenes footage of Paul, George and Ringo coming together between 1994 and 1995 to work on “The Anthology” and reflecting on their shared life as The Beatles.

The book

The Beatles Anthology book took so long to come to market (five years after the first episode and the first album was released) it felt like something of an afterthought at the time. That’s not to say it’s not an impressive tome and the 368-page book remains the only official Beatles Autobiography. It’s back in print for what is its 25th anniversary, although it appears to be exactly the same content as before, and as such is the least exciting element of this reissue campaign.

The 8CD and 12LP vinyl Anthology Collection box sets are released on 21 November, The Beatles Anthology documentary will screen on Disney+ from 26 November and the book is available from 14 October 2025”.

Some might say that this is a bit too much. With all these options. Is it better to have something more focused so that you get this true essence of the band?! Is the Anthology 4 release a bit unwieldy and unfocused? I think that having this expansive and definite collection of takes, demos and live recordings is a dream. Surviving members of The Beatles, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, will be around to see how fans take to it. Whilst the studio albums are immense, I think Anthology 4 is more powerful and intimate. We are listening to the process and some earlier versions. More involved with the creative process and development of the band compared to the final versions. Remastered and brand new, it is going to be exciting hearing these songs in a new light. Recently, Free As a Bird was remastered and reissued. Blending all the harmonics and elements beautifully, it have extra weight and gravity to a song that I remembering hearing back in 1995. This review nails why the remastered version is perfect:

“One of the worst-kept secrets of the last week has been the impending announcement of Anthology 4. A fourth instalment to the gold mine of The Beatles’ earliest and remastered recordings. It remains a project of Herculean efforts, one which seemed to be capped off nicely two years ago with Now and Then. But there is more in the archives. More worth sharing. We hold our breath and wait for Carnival of Light to be snatched out of the vault by Paul McCartney, dressed as a cross between Indiana Jones and the man on the cover of Trout Mask Replica. While we wait for this heist to take place, presumably after the North American Got Back dates, we have a remaster of Free as a Bird. It was certainly in need of sprucing up. There was nothing wrong with the original, though the new technology Peter Jackson has used on previous Fab Four projects is notable.

Free as a Bird is amplified with this mix. A clearer sound is presented, and that, effectively, is the major change. But what a change it is. A necessary one, too. We should not take for granted just how different a sound comes from this and the original. Free as a Bird, one of three originals worked on during the Anthology project, is given a touch-up, which brings a cleaner sound not just to John Lennon’s vocals but the acoustic guitar work, too. Those layers of instrumental brilliance are that little bit clearer. We can use this Free as a Bird remaster as an indication of how the rest of the project will sound. Granted, there will be changes here or there, not because of studio personnel but because of tape quality. Free as a Bird sounds magnificent, though. It doesn’t have that slight, uncanny valley feeling Now and Then had, nor the awful music video.

Vocal similarities between this and the work Paul McCartney featured on Flaming Pie is clear. You can tell it’s from the period, but the cleaner production injects new life into it. George Harrison, too, sounds fantastic. The vocal quality is continued, the three Beatles harmonising over some steady, crashing drum work from Ringo Starr. Like Now and Then, it’s as close as many generations will get to a fresh-sounding Beatles track. An added tambourine is the big change here. How a little instrumental flair can make such a major change is truly inspiring, and it works well here. It gives the song a lighter flourish, a detail which feels like more than an easter egg for returning listeners. It’s a change which breathes a little bit of new life into the song but does not overwhelm it, nor turn it into a whole new project.

Walking the line, not falling into hailing the old versions or overriding them either, is tricky. But trust in the Anthology process and hear out those changes. They are for the better, and a slightly louder, more present instrumental range, is clear. Remastering can often feel like a non-event, just take a look at the Pink Floyd discography, but it is the subtleties of these changes which can revitalise a song. Free as a Bird sounded good in ‘95, it sounds better in ‘25. Tech has come a long way in thirty years, and those touching lyrics Lennon penned on a tape still hold incredible meaning. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr all sound magnificent, be it in their vocal work or, in Ringo’s case, the instrumental steadiness. All of it sounds just right. A perfectly balanced remaster which is far stronger than the original”.

There will be more interviews and articles about Anthology 4 closer to its release in November. With the book out before then, it is another great year for fans of The Beatles. If we might not get a reissue and expanded edition of one of their studio albums again, there is always activity. I would like to think, in 2026 and 2027, there will be even more. I think 2027 marks seventy years since Paul McCartney and John Lennon first met. However, before then, we can enjoy the delights of Anthology 4. These are not just throwaway releases and music to listen to and discard. This is something to cherish and keep for years to come. To pass down to other people. The eight-C.D. and twelve-L.P. vinyl Anthology Collection box sets are released on 21st November, The Beatles Anthology documentary will screen on Disney+ from 26th November, and the book is available from 14th October. Early takes of some of the greatest music the world has ever seen, Anthology 4 is going to be an essential purchase…

FOR every Beatles fan.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Little Richard

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Little Richard

__________

WHEN we think about…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ralph Morse/Life/Getty Images

the all-time most influential American artists, Little Richard comes close to the top of the list. The Beatles were fans of his, and they covered his work and performed some of his songs live. He undoubtably inspired Led Zeppelin, Freddie Mercury, Elton John and so many other titans. Born in Georgia in 1932, we lost the legend in 2020. I think the first song of his I heard was 1955’s Tutti Frutti. So exciting to me! I can understand why so many musicians have taken his music to heart. Little Richard was such an exhilarating performer. An architecture for the Rock and Roll movement, few artists in music history are as important as Little Richard. I am going to get to a twenty-song mix that combines some of his best songs. A great starting point if you are not familiar with him. I want to first bring in a feature from The New Yorker that was published the day Little Richard died (9th May, 2020). A postscript that paid tribute to someone who helped transform music and paved the way for giants who, in turn, have inspired generations of artists and fans:

“The core of Little Richard’s career was brief—he recorded an incandescent string of hits in the mid-fifties and then went off to rediscover his faith. In the years that followed, he’d dip in and out of show business, and there were some inspired moments, but he was a comet, not a planet. The trail of light that he left behind was, and is, everywhere. Try to imagine Muhammad Ali without Little Richard’s winking persona, his swing and swagger (“I am the King!”). Try to imagine James Brown, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Elton John, and Prince without his electrical charge. Little Richard was an original, and he did not hesitate to remind his students of their debt. He once looked into a television camera and, with affection, told Prince, “I was wearing purple before you was wearing it!”

Rather than watch the news–––it can wait––go to YouTube and watch Little Richard’s performances of “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Rip It Up,” “She’s Got It,” “Lucille,” “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” “The Girl Can’t Help It,” “Good Golly Miss Molly.” Banging boogie-woogie time with his right hand and singing miles beyond anyone’s idea of a “register,” he is a human thrill ride. There is more voltage in one of those three-minute performances than there is in a municipal power station.

One of the underrated books in the pop music library is “The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock,” an authorized biography/oral biography, by Charles White. Calling on multiple voices, it tells a revolutionary, ecstatic, sometimes heartbreaking story. Richard Penniman was born in 1932 into a large, poor Christian family, in Macon, Georgia. His father was a brick mason and a bootlegger. One of Richard’s legs was shorter than the other, making him a source of mockery among other children. “They thought I was trying to twist and walk feminine,” he once told Rolling Stone. “The kids would call me faggot, sissy, freak.”

As a boy, Richard was raised in the Pentecostal Church and sang gospel on Sundays with a family group called the Penniman Singers and another group called the Tiny Tots Quartet. His earliest musical influences included Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Brother Joe May, the “Thunderbolt of the Middle West.” Even as a child singer, Richard was known for his high range and incredible volume. But, in his father’s eyes, he was unbearably effeminate and not to be tolerated. When Richard was a teen-ager, he was thrown out of the house and went to live with Ann and Johnny Johnson, a white couple who ran a local venue, the Tick Tock Club.

Richard was a poor student but, musically, he was a fast learner. He first learned to play the piano in church, but after hearing Ike Turner’s recording “Rocket 88,” and studying the style of S. Q. Reeder, Jr., better known as Esquerita, he adopted a pounding, mesmeric style. Throughout his teens, he was in and out of outfits like Buster Brown’s Orchestra (where he got the name Little Richard) and the Tidy Jolly Steppers. He sang, sometimes wearing a red evening gown, under the name Princess Lavonne, in Sugarfoot Sam’s Minstrel Show. He was serving his musical apprenticeship in the last days of these minstrel shows; he also inhabited a world of strippers and drag queens and brash comedians. He studied the flashy showmanship of Atlanta-based performers like Roy Brown, who had a hit with “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” and he adopted the pompadour and pancake makeup of the jump-blues singer Billy Wright. He played the Dew Drop Inn, in New Orleans, where the m.c. was a famous female impersonator and performer named Patsy Vidalia.

Little Richard signed with RCA Victor in the early fifties, but his career didn’t quite ignite. He was still washing dishes in a Greyhound bus station to make a living. Things changed in 1955, when Art Rupe of Specialty Records put him together with some stellar New Orleans players, including the drummer Earl Palmer and the saxophonist Lee Allen. On September 14th of that year, they recorded “Tutti Frutti,” a bawdy boogie-woogie that Little Richard had been performing in countless drag bars. It included lewd verses such as “Tutti Frutti, good booty / If it don’t fit, don’t force it / You can grease it, make it easy.” At the instruction of the producer Robert (Bumps) Blackwell, a songwriter named Dorothy LaBostrie worked with Little Richard to tone down the lyrics. But it wasn’t so much the lyrics as the beat and the ecstatic yowl—“A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom!”—that made the song a hit. The record sold widely to blacks and whites. (And it did even bigger business among white listeners when Pat Boone recorded it.) For the next couple of years, Little Richard was a star at the highest level of the new art of rock and roll.

In the late fifties, while touring Australia, Little Richard said that he saw a powerful vision in the sky that caused him to give up rock and roll, come home, and enroll in Oakwood Bible College, in Huntsville, Alabama. In the years to come, he made forays back into music, secular and religious, but he was always torn. When Little Richard played the Star Club, in Hamburg, the Beatles were his opening act. “He used to read from the Bible backstage, and just to hear him talk we’d sit around and listen,” John Lennon told an interviewer.

Despite Little Richard’s own ambivalence about rock and roll, his influence spread quickly, and it ran deep. In the Iron Range town of Hibbing, Minnesota, a high-school kid named Robert Zimmerman listened all night to faraway radio stations playing country music, blues music, and the first rock-and-rollers: Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Bill Haley, and, the one he loved the most, Little Richard. In his high-school yearbook, he wrote that his ambition was “to join ‘Little Richard.’ ” His high-school band, the Golden Chords, played Little Richard covers. At a talent show in Hibbing High’s unaccountably ornate auditorium, the principal yanked the curtain shut on the Golden Chords and their cover of a Little Richard tune. Zimmerman wore his hair in a high, poufy pompadour, just like his idol. “I was trying to look like Little Richard, my version of Little Richard,” he told an interviewer years later. “I wanted wild hair, I wanted to be recognized.” He left town and became a star in Greenwich Village with a new name: Bob Dylan.

It seemed evident that Little Richard both thrived on his sexuality but suffered terribly from the time that he had been cast out of his own home as a boy. Despite the flamboyance of his performances and his carriage, he never quite settled, publicly, on a sexual identity. Sometimes, he would say he was gay, sometimes bisexual, sometimes “omnisexual”; there were moments, feeling the weight of his religious background, when he even denounced homosexuality. As recently as 2017, in an interview with a Christian broadcaster, he talked about “unnatural affection.”

Chuck Berry, in his autobiography, recalls performing on the same bill as Little Richard at a school in Connecticut in the sixties. Little Richard, according to Berry’s account, asked Berry to come to his hotel room to “party.” Berry asked him if that meant just the two of them.

“Chuck, I’ve always wanted to perform with you since the first time I saw you on television and have thought about it ever since.”

To make love? Berry asked.

“You’d love it; it’s like no other performance in the world,” Little Richard replied.

Berry recalled, “I tried to match his smile, and then I suddenly excused myself in a rush to get ready for the show, but he bade me farewell in a contented voice, and that was that.”

In the seventies, Little Richard struggled mightily with a consuming cocaine habit. By the eighties, he was starting to suffer from a variety of health problems. Sometimes he would show up to receive an award, sometimes not. He turned down interview requests, played rarely onstage, and gradually faded from public view. But the recordings, the legacy, is there to pick you up, even in the hardest times. “You can’t keep still when you hear the great Little Richard,” as Buddy Holly put it. “He’s the wildest act in rock and roll.”

Or, as Little Richard himself described his effect on body and spirit, “My music made your liver quiver, your bladder splatter, your knees freeze—and your big toe shoot right up in your boot!”.

This run of features travels through the years and honours modern and legacy American artists whose songbook is among the richest and most notable in music. I am going to feature a modern contemporary artist for the next visit. However, I could not overlook Little Richard. Someone I and so many other people first heard during childhood. Recognising the astronomical impact he has made to music. I don’t think we will ever see another musician and songwriter…

AS influential as him again.

FEATURE: Humble Mumble: Outkast's Stankonia at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Humble Mumble

Outkast's Stankonia at Twenty-Five

__________

IN terms of deciding…

IN THIS PHOTO: Outkast’s Big Boi (Antwan Patton) and André 3000 (André Benjamin) in 2000/PHOTO CREDIT: GRIP Magazine

which album is the first real classic and work of genius of the twenty-first century, you could argue that Outkast’s Stankonia takes that honour. Released on 31st October, 2000, it is the fourth studio album from of Big Boi and André 3000. I think it is their best album. One of the best of all time, in fact. Because it turns twenty-five soon, I am exploring some features about the album. Notable and standout songs from Stankonia include Ms. Jackson, Humble Mumble, B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad), and So Fresh, So Clean. Following 1998’s Aquemini, Outkast incorporated a broad array of styles into their next album, which included Funk, Rave, Gospel, and Rock within a Dirty South-oriented Hip-Hop context. This could have been a risk for a duo whose fans expected perhaps a certain sound. However, Stankonia was a massive success with fans and critics. Reaching number ten in the U.K. and two in their native U.S., many publications have included Stankonia in their best of lists. Also, this was an album that acknowledged Rave culture. Hip-Hop prior to 2000 was largely about slower beats. Outkast added something new and spliced the previously detached worlds of Rave and Hip-Hop. The songwriting throughout is commanding, fascinating and masterful. I want to start out by quoting a bit of FADER’s 2000 interview with Big Boi and André 3000:

“Stankonia is where they got they funk from.

But first, are you experienced? Uh, have you ever been... experienced? You, with your conscious rappers and Black Augusts? You, with your headwrap, and you, with your backpack? You, with your getting-it, and you with your 360 degrees of hip-hop? Have you ever been knock-kneed, mind-blown, zooted and looted, all funked up and no place to go?

The thing about Big Boi's house is that inside it he has a Boom Boom Room, and the thing about the Boom Boom Room is that there's a stage in the corner. The stage isn't big, maybe three feet by three feet, but the surface is mirrored and there's a pole in the middle that reaches to the ceiling.

In fact, the stage is so small that you really don’t notice it's there until one of the women gets off the couch and starts to dance around the pole. Except that it's not really dancing, just a repetitive slow-mo gyration suggesting ennui. No one's really watching her and she’s not dancing for anybody else, a caged bird needing no listener to sing its song.

On the other side of the Boom Boom Room, several more women languish on low-slung couches. They all have names in which Ys replace Is— Chyna and Kym. At the bar, more of OutKast's Earthtone crew— Slimm, C-Bone, DJ and Nathaniel are making headway on a gallon of Hennessy and more than a couple of blunts. Unmastered tracks from OutKast's upcoming album blast from the stereo system.

A lot of shit is talked in the Boom Boom Room, but most of the conversation remains unspoken. lt's like any foreign land in that way, men and women acting out roles that are diffcult to understand when observed from the straight world. The only thing to do is keep up, keep your eyes open, and try not to pass out in that chair in the kitchen.

Downstairs in the garage the photographer is still shooting in a race against sunrise.

"I do this all the time," says Big Boi, leaning up against his mint Cadillac. Shutter clicks. The car is a pale cheddar with purple iridescence, and there is pride in his voice when he calls it his Paddymelt. "Really, this what we doing tonight? I love this type of shit. Little get-togethers at the crib, with the fellas and some hoes. It's just fun, you know?"

PHOTO CREDIT: Jonathan Mannion

At 4:37am a few of the women come down from the Boom Boom Room. In various stages of undress, they pose in and on the Paddymelt. "This is how we made the album," continues Big Boi. "While we were working on this album we would do this three or four nights a week. Every time we finished at the studio, we‘d head to the house. From four in the morning ’til two the next afternoon, just kickin‘ it."

Twelve hours earlier everything was understandable: OutKast, a new album, a photo shoot, an interview. In and out; no one gets hurt. But now the moment has taken on a timelessness, a surrealism that threatens to steal it all away to a land of no return.

Andre has fallen silent, leading only Big Boi holding the lifeline. "Stankonia is whatever's the funkiest shit ever," he explains, lucid. ’It could be that purple, or that funky-ass music."

And the photographer clicks away.

A RAINY NIGHT IN GEORGIA

It’s been storming for hours.

Andre is driving. But even as he watches the road and directs his Land Rover or whatever towards Big Boi's house in the woods, his eyes have turned inward and his mind has moved in another direction, past the other side of the game. This is when he conjures most the man from Electric Ladyland. More than the headband or the mixed metaphors of his clothing, its the occasional sad, faraway look in his eyes that reminds you of Hendrix, a sense of being young and world-weary at the same time.

"The funk is basically freedom," he says, not real heavy on it, just kind of think-ing aloud. "The funk is not a certain sound or a certain way you dress or a certain look. Something can sound funky or look funky, but my opinion of the funk is a certain freedom that started way back in Africa. But we don‘t want to make it no big racial issue or no shit like that."

That's because the Promised Land of Funk is an uncharted expanse of electro-magnetic technicolor modulations, and being Afrocentric alone might not qualify you for the trip. This probably explains why the roadside of such a pilgrimage is littered with DAT cassettes, gold records and backup bands with shallow pockets. Rhyming—or writing—about the funk without ever having gone there is pointless, like feeling the heat without complaining about the humidity.

"I guess we’re talking about an individual freedom," he says”.

I will end, like I have for several recent features, with a review from Pitchfork. I think their depth and analysis is particularly strong and interesting. However, first, this CLASH feature from 2020 marked twenty years of the masterpiece that is Stankonia. It was an album that won over people who were not fans of Hip-Hop. A varied album that still has not aged and throws up surprises, I remember it coming out in 2000. It was a big moment:

“The album was named after the recording studio that the duo bought in 1998. ‘Stankonia’ was a word that Andre created himself, and he explained that ‘Stankonia’ “is this place I imagined where you can open yourself up and be free to express anything”.

The album cover shows Andre standing shirtless facing forward, arms stretched outward and chin held high, along with Big Boi rocking a baggy t-shirt and big necklace. Both are placed in front of a huge drooped black and white American flag. The image is simple yet iconic, but gives little away as to how colourful the 24 track album really is.

The leading single 'B.O.B' exemplifies the album; it never sits still, unapologetically getting in your face with constant surprises. Bombs Over Baghdad remains calm for a maximum of five seconds, before a countdown from Andre 3000 sets off the fireworks. Both loud and lively, the song makes commentary of life in the ghetto, whilst referring to political turmoil in Iraq at around the same time. The duo's influence on the 90s rave culture can be heard through drum 'n' bass beats. The track is constantly switching, adding other layers.

With most OutKast songs, it's easy to tell who has had the most influence creating the track. Big Boi firmly stands at the front for 'We Luv Deez Hoez'. The sarcastic pimping song is both catchy and straight up gangster. Whilst ‘Stankonia (Stanklove)’ is all Andre 3000, he sings the hook, stretches his voice during the verses. The song is all harmony, with no rapping, providing more of an insight into what you would hear more of on their following album ‘Speakerboxx / The Love Below’.

The duo were now grown ups, and the subsequent problems they faced are referenced on the album. Standout track ‘Ms. Jackson’ is a prime example of this. Both radio friendly and catchy, the track pushed them into stardom, winning a Grammy and being the first of three songs to reach No.1 on the Billboard charts. If you hadn’t heard of OutKast before, you certainly would’ve by now.

Influenced by Andre and his relationship with Erykah Badu, ‘Ms. Jackson’ is the story of ruined relationships, and promises that weren’t kept. A storm is centred as the central theme through the music video and track, a metaphor for 'stormy' relationships, as Andre states: "Hope that we feel this, feel this way forever/You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather, Ms. Jackson".

‘Stankonia’ is a journey through sounds of funk and hip-hop, 'So Fresh, So Clean' is a straight up anthem, both catchy in the hook and beat. Then, there’s the turbulent ‘Toilet Tisha’, a vivid story from the hood of a 14-year old girl struggling with the idea of having a baby. 'Spaghetti-Junction' shows the duo's chemistry at its fullest. Each raps a verse before coming together on the last back-to-back, with their flows blending into each other. The opener ‘Gasoline Dreams’ has guitar strings that hit you like a truck and ‘Gangster Sh*t’ is an aggressive head bopper. In-between songs, skits lead onto tracks or are used for comedic effect in heavy Atlantian slang”.

There is another interesting article that I found from 2020. NPR. A fascinating interview and conversation between Dr. Regina Bradley (an award-winning writer and researcher of the Black American South), Gavin Godfrey (a freelance writer and editor from Atlanta, he’s written for CNN, Rolling Stone, Vice, FADER and COMPLEX) and Christina Lee (an award-winning storyteller whose writing, commentary, and production work appears in iHeartMedia, NPR, and more). They chatted about an album that “was a curation of not only OutKast's investment in the future, but a blueprint for what was to come later with Speakerboxxx/The Love Below: a look at the group's evolution as men and as artists, solidly and firmly centered in a stronghold of how the South could sound”:

“When OutKast released its fourth studio album Stankonia, the pioneering duo out of Atlanta, Ga., was not new to this, but they remained true to the hip-hop thing. Released on Halloween 2000, months after the initial Y2K scare that left people terrified of being throttled back into a period of darkness and technological paranoia, Stankonia took full advantage of the new millennium. They stayed true to what they did best and created something powerful on the fringes of mainstream pop culture's expectations of them as southerners and as rappers.

Breaking new ground cleared from the debris of nostalgia, burned with their Chonkyfire, Stankonia challenged listeners to reconsider what it meant to be OutKasted in the wilderness of an unknown new world. Never ones to shy away from the stank of imagined and social-historical realities, Stankonia is a demonstration of André Benjamin and Big Boi evolving their sound, their identities, and their art. Benjamin was blasting centuries ahead with his latest moniker, André 3000, an Afrofuturist prediction that the future was Black and dope as hell, and Big Boi was growing increasingly experimental in not only his lyrical delivery but his fashion sense, paralleling Benjamin's own eccentric flair for fashion.

Stankonia was a curation of not only OutKast's investment in the future, but a blueprint for what was to come later with Speakerboxxx/The Love Below: a look at the group's evolution as men and as artists, solidly and firmly centered in a stronghold of how the South could sound. Earthtone III — consisting of Benjamin, Big Boi, and DJ David "Mr. DJ" Sheats — are on full display for the majority of the album. Stankonia showcases influences from multiple genres, eras, feelings, and experiences, including EDM on the much celebrated and canonized "B.O.B."

Dr. Regina Bradley: I feel like I'm back in high school, junior year — shout out to Westover High School — running to lunch, listening to Stankonia. I'm really in my feelings. Chris, Gavin, what are your immediate reactions to listening to Stankonia 20 years later?

Gavin Godfrey: Man, it still sounds super fresh 20 years later. To me, not much has changed other than time. They still sound as fresh as they did 20 years ago.

Christina Lee: I mean, listening to this album kind of feels crazy. I sometimes forget just how vibrant this album is, how ambitious this album is, but that's what immediately strikes me. It's amazing how OutKast is able to really just branch off at this point, especially when you compare it to their previous discography.

What do you think it is about the Stankonia album that really made folks sit up and pay attention to what they were doing and why they couldn't just be considered Southern hip-hop after all?

Lee: I think what's really interesting about this album is that it is absolutely Southern hip-hop, but there is a part that is very conscious of the world around them. You're seeing these dichotomies play out, the sort of balance between mainstream hip-hop and the conscious hip-hop era. We have to remember that, at this particular time, those two genres are starting to branch off. And the thing is, Stankonia encompasses all that.

Godfrey: I think they built a world with this album. I'm gonna nerd out real hard real quick, but OutKast, for me, is almost like George Lucas when Star Wars was good. He was known for building whole worlds, but he literally was just telling stories about everyday occurrences. But he made you see it through this lens. OutKast is still very much rooted in Atlanta. Through the lyrics, through the sounds, they're not only thinking globally, but universally; these boys are thinking about the cosmos.

When I talk to DJ and Big Boi about this, the name Stankonia comes from Dre just always referring to everything they did as funky. They want everything to be funky, funky, funky and go back to the crazy lack of limitations that came from Parliament Funkadelic before them. I think it all stemmed from them being comfortable in their world, but also trying to step outside of their comfort zone and bring everybody along with them.

We're not just going to gush on Stankonia, you know, I got to ask you: What do you think has aged well about the album and what do you think hasn't aged so well?

Godfrey: In the culture now, I don't know how "Snappin' & Trappin'" would have been received, how much folks would have responded to what Killer Mike was saying in there. Back then, maybe lyrically, you could get away with a lot more because there wasn't the proliferation of social media, a constant influx of information to call out every single lyric, every little thing somebody did.

Listen to Stankonia now and it's wild, you know, because, man, these dudes knew. It's like they knew everything that was going to happen today. But they were talking about it 20 years ago and it's still so, so relevant. So, I mean, a lot has aged well for me in terms of I think it sounds even better now than it did then.

Lee: I mean, I echo absolutely everything that Gavin said. I think the thing with OutKast is that the perspective is always coming from, like, "Here we're going to give you some food for thought." And I think in this particular age, giving food for thought isn't clear cut enough for listeners. I think listeners expect groups to kind of take on a very particular stance. And maybe this is because I'm reading a book called The Butterfly Effect; it's the first biography of Kendrick Lamar by Marcus J. Moore. But in listening to some of Kendrick's discography and comparing it to Stankonia, I think I'm most struck by how, at this particular time, there's a lot of hip-hop acts that are turning to rock past and Black music past and understanding that even though we're operating within the space of hip-hop, we have the entire musical gamut to pull inspiration from”.

will move to Albumism and their twentieth anniversary feature about Outkast’s Stankonia. Each feature provides new details and focus. I really love this album twenty years later. One that is still influencing artists. An undeniable work of genius from a duo who are among the legends of Hip-Hop:

“Still, Stankonia is at its best when OutKast comes at the audience from unexpected angles. The quirky “I’ll Call Before I Come” is often an overlooked entry on the album, and one of my personal favorites. For a song about fucking, both members of the group are pretty gentlemanly, as André declares his preference for “old school, regular draws” and Big Boi states that a woman’s sexual satisfaction is of paramount importance. With Eco and Gangsta Boo appearing to detail their fantasies and desires, the song is also equal opportunity in its freakiness. I also love the instrumentation for the track, which sounds like it could have been lifted from a late era Sly Stone song or some late ’70s funk.

“Humble Mumble,” bizarre in its own right, is anchored by upbeat Caribbean-influenced grooves and unexpected beat shifts. In terms of subject matter, the track is all over the place, but still feels coherent. While Big Boi addresses coping with adversity in the pursuit of one’s goals, André ponders the complexities and contradictory nature of everything from hip-hop music to life itself. The song also features the vocal talents of Badu, who apparently was on good enough terms with André to contribute both the chorus and a melodic final verse to the song.

OutKast reach deep into their bag of way-out funk tracks as Stankonia draws to a close. First is “Toliet Tisha,” the sorrowful ballad of the late 14-year-old Tisha. Damn, we miss her. Musically, the song sounds lifted from a mid-1990s Prince album. Amongst layers of watery synths and guitars, André sings through heavy vocal distortion, voice nearly unrecognizable, and Big Boi delivers a harrowing spoken-word verse. Together, they narrate a tale of an unwanted teenage pregnancy, and the heartrending outcome. The song is legitimately sad but doesn’t wallow in tragedy for its own sake.

“Slum Beautiful” is another personal favorite on the album, a psychedelic dedication to their female companions. The song oozes cool, as André, Big Boi, and Goodie Mob’s Cee-Lo wax philosophic about the effects that the objects of their affection have on their mentalities. Back then, Cee-Lo could still be considered one of the best emcees around, and his vivid and awestruck verse is a highlight. The musical backdrop is a mix of Jimi Hendrix and Graham Central Station, as backward-masked guitars mix with a resonant bassline and complex percussion.

The album ends with the funk-drenched title track a.k.a. “Stank Love.” Clearly inspired by late ’70s/early ’80s P-Funk ballads, André and Sleepy Brown channel George Clinton and Garry Shider, inviting the objections of their affection to release their inhibitions and soar with the kites in the sky through their freaky love. The song is mostly instrumental, rattling with gurgling bass and keyboards, and ghostly voices wail. Big Rube delivers an appropriately way-out spoken word piece, speaking of an act of love so profound that it’s “engulfing, encompassing like a cataclysmic shockwave of an impact so deep, but not one of destruction, but of creation.” The song doesn’t so much as end as it fades out into the ether, remaining with the listeners as it echoes through the speakers.

In some ways, Stankonia is the “final” OutKast album, as the group followed it up with the Speakerboxxx/The Love Below project (2003), a combination of solo albums for each of the duo. They effectively broke up afterwards, only reuniting to release the 2006 Idlewild soundtrack, which was largely phoned in. Suffice to say that OutKast went out as a group on a high note here, having travelled just about everywhere there was to go, and treating their followers to a hell of a journey. People still clamor for another OutKast album, but I personally feel like they went out on top. Always leave them wanting more”.

I will wrap things up with Pitchfork’s 2018 review. They heralded Stankonia and how it is this “transcendental funk fantasia, an unequivocal commercial and artistic triumph”. I am curious how journalists will cover Stankonia on its twenty-five anniversary on 31st October. How it still changes and evolves Hip-Hop. How it broke barriers and was revolutionary:

“There is so much going across Stankonia—the coordinated confetti of noises on “Gangsta Shit,” the uneasy meditation of teen pregnancy that is “Toilet Tisha,” the playful lasciviousness of “I’ll Call Before I Come,” the melodic menace of “Red Velvet,” the skits that spoke in metaphors to the subconscious via hood tongues, the arrangements and progressions that felt capricious, but totally natural. The backing tracks weren’t soundscapes as much as they are aural murals graffitied on the cosmic underpasses where abandoned tricked-out space shuttles rest, stripped of their Brougham rims. It was music that was tangential to crunk, a predecessor to trap, indebted to hip-hop, electro, funk, rock, and anything alternative—the type of music that usually succeeds on intellectual levels and rewards nerds, but not readily equating to an album that would sell more than 4 million copies. Yet OutKast is probably best defined by defying parameters and expectations.

Stankonia is easily the group’s most expansive and abrasive effort. It’s more accomplished than their biggest seller, the double-disc Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which lacks the tension and dichotomy of André and Big Boi locked in a studio, warring with each other and themselves to the extent that created numbers like “Humble Mumble,” Stankonia’s breakbeat-ish, Caribbean-tinged track where Big Boi admonishes a simp with “Sloppy slippin’ in your pimpin’, nigga/You either pistol whip the nigga or you choke the trigger,” before André recalls speaking with a rap critic: “She said she thought hip-hop was only guns and alcohol/I said ‘Oh, hell naw!’/But, yet, it's that too.”

OutKast had always consisted of a politically conscious pimp and a spiritual gangsta, but on Stankonia, those identities came to the fore with a greater distinction that paradoxically allowed them to sound closer together than they had since their inception—even as André sat out songs like “Snappin’ & Trappin’” and “We Luv Deez Hoez.” On Stankonia’s first proper song, “Gasoline Dreams” Big Boi raps about their clout and the limits thereof—“Officer, get off us, sir/Don’t make me call [my label boss] L.A. [Reid], he’ll having you walking, sir/A couple of months ago they gave OutKast the key to city/But I still gotta pay my taxes and they give us no pity”—while André throttles out a brainy hook: “Don’t everybody like the smell of gasoline?/Well burn, motherfucker, burn American dreams.”

Stankonia is an album about many things and full of epigrams; so ahead of the curve that one of its many double entendres—“I got a stick and want your automatic”—is now a bona fide triple entendre. It’s about sounds as smells and music as sex, but mostly it’s about two black kids from Southwest Atlanta, boogieing with chips on their shoulders, making Molotov cocktails of songs that sound like a revolution’s afterparty. It’s peppered with personal narratives and small slips of autobiography, and it tackles big ideas both directly and obliquely. But, ultimately, it sounds like two artists going pop on their own terms while trying to make sense of, and change, the world around them. Closing in on two decades after its release, Stankonia remains loud as bombs over Baghdad and humble as a mumble in the jungle”.

Without doubt one of my favourite albums ever, I think back fondly to 2000 and the release of Stankonia. Big Boi and André 3000 were in perfect harmony on this album! Rather than repeating what they had done before, they pushed their vision and sound out. Bringing in different genres and directions, it all blended perfectly into this masterpiece. One that continues to stun me. It is an album hard to top…

AFTER quarter of a century.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Adele - Hello

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

PHOTO CREDIT: Alasdair McLellan

Adele - Hello

__________

THERE is a lot to be said…

of Adele’s Hello. It was released on 23rd October, 2015 and was the lead single from her album, 25. Written with the song’s producer, Greg Kurstin, Hello was a huge global success, topping the records charts in a record-setting thirty-six countries, including in the United Kingdom. To mark a decade of this globe-conquering song from one of music’s biggest names and most incredible talents, I wanted to bring in some interviews and reviews. A lot though we get a lot of hype today about Pop artists and new albums coming out, there was something more natural in terms of the excitement and anticipation that greeted Adele’s Hello. I am going to start off with an interview from Rolling Stone from November 2015. Adele opened up about her private life, runaway fame and long-awaited new album, 25:

“As Adele steers through a South London high street in her four-door Mini Cooper, with her toddler's vacant car seat in back and the remains of a kale, cucumber and almond-milk concoction in the cup holder, a question occurs to her. "What's been going on in the world of music?" she asks, in all sincerity. "I feel out of the loop!"

The only possible response is way too easy: Well, there's this one album the entire industry is waiting for...

"Oh, fuck off!" Adele says, giving me a gentle shove and letting loose the charmingly untamed laugh — an ascending cascade of forceful, cartoonish "ha's" — that inspired a YouTube supercut called "The Adele Cackle."

"Oh, my God, imagine," she continues, green eyes widening. "I wish! I feel like I might be a year too late." It's as if her last album, 2011's 21, hadn't sold a miraculous 31 million copies worldwide in an era when no one buys music, as if it hadn't sparked the adoration of peers from Beyoncé to Aretha, as if it hadn't won every conceivable award short of a Nobel Peace Prize.

"But genuinely," she says, "I've lost touch with music. Not, like, all music" — she's a fan of FKA Twigs, loves Alabama Shakes, snuck into the crowd at Glastonbury to see Kanye — "but I feel like I don't know what's going on in the charts and in popular culture." She laughs again. "I've not lost touch with, like, reality. Just with what's current." Her Cockney accent is softening lately, but she still pronounces "with" like it ends with a "v."

She's driving under a sky that is gray and dismal even by the standards of early October London afternoons. Rain is coming, threatening Adele's plans to take her three-year-old son, Angelo, to the zoo later. No one in the passing vehicles recognizes her. They never do, not in this car. "Maybe if I went out in full, done-up, hair-and-makeup drag," she says. "Which it is: borderline drag! I'm not brave enough to do it." Instead, she's dressed like a grad student who barely got up in time for class, in a drapey blue-black sweater made of some hemplike fabric — it could almost be from Kanye's dystopian fashion collection — over black leggings and white low-top Converse. Her golden hair is gathered in a loose bun, and she's wearing twin hoop earrings in each ear. Her makeup is minimal, and though she claims to be developing a wrinkle or two, she looks strikingly young, with a clotted-cream complexion worthy of the cosmetics endorsements she's turned down.

Adele is fresh from a rehearsal with her backing band, where she perched on a chair facing the musicians and sang her first-ever live version of "Hello," the melancholy, surging first single from her third album, 25, due November 20th. (She turned 27 in May, but named the album after the age when she began work on it: "I'm going to get so much fucking grief: 'Why is it called 25 when you're not 25?'") "Hello, it's me," she sings at the beginning of the single, as if there could be any doubt. When she finally puts the song out a couple of weeks later, it will rack up a record-setting 50 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours.

With a young child to raise, Adele took an unhurried approach to making the album. A full six months passed between writing the verses of "Hello" and nailing the chorus. "We had half a song written," says producer/co-writer Greg Kurstin, who didn't know if Adele was ever going to come back and finish it. "I just had to be very patient."

The lyrics sound like she's addressing some long-lost ex, but she says it isn't about any one person — and that she's moved on from the heartbreaker who inspired 21. "If I were still writing about him, that'd be terrible," she says. "'Hello' is as much about regrouping with myself, reconnecting with myself." As for the line "hello from the other side": "It sounds a bit morbid, like I'm dead," she says. "But it's actually just from the other side of becoming an adult, making it out alive from your late teens, early twenties."

Adele still hasn't decided whether she'll do a full-scale tour behind 25 — right now, the rehearsals are for TV performances. Her band has a few new members, and she's especially excited to have a percussionist for the first time, an addition inspired by her childhood idols: "The Spice Girls had a mad percussionist," she says”.

I am going to move on to an interview from The New York Times. At such a crucial and exciting time in her career, Adele also reflected on a certain sense of pressure on her shoulders. As someone who released a massive album (21) and was releasing new work, it must have been nerve-wracking and anxiety-inducing trying to create an album that could match it. Arguably, 25 is Adele’s standout album:

“The question that loomed over Adele in her four years between albums was how — or if — she could follow her blockbuster with something equally striking. “There is no beating or redoing ‘21,’” said Ryan Tedder, another producer and songwriting collaborator for both “21” and “25.” “You’re lucky if at one point in your life you stumble across a unicorn in the woods. The odds that you find a second unicorn are extremely remote, and she’s aware of that. I think that ‘25’ will be enormous, regardless of anything. But that wasn’t the goal. She wanted to put out the best thing that was the most honest.”

At this rehearsal, with a journalist in the room, Adele was a musician above all. She moved decisively through new songs and old ones in preparation for TV appearances and a Radio City Music Hall concert (and NBC TV taping) on Tuesday, Nov. 17, three days before the worldwide release of “25” (XL/Columbia). And she sang in full-throated glory, capturing the vengeful bite of past hits like “Rolling in the Deep” and the hushed suspense and pealing chorus of her new one, “Hello.” Her stage arrangements echo her albums; she wants the songs familiar enough for fans to sing along.

Adele had largely maintained public silence while recording “25.” Her reticent re-emergence was a brief, anonymous television advertisement, first shown on Oct. 18 during “The X Factor” in Britain. It was the beginning of “Hello”: just somber piano chords, Adele’s voice and the lyrics — “Hello, it’s me/I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet” — with no other information.

Unlike most other pop hitmakers her age, Adele barely uses social media. It’s one of the many charmingly old-fashioned aspects of her career. But she does have a Twitter account, and she couldn’t resist looking online to see if her voice had been recognized. When she did, she saw only three tweets.

She panicked. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, I’ve missed my window,’” Adele said over a cup of tea a few days after the ad. “‘Oh, no, it’s too late. The comeback’s gone. No one cares.’”

But then, she recalled, her boyfriend, Simon Konecki, joined her at the computer and showed her that thousands of other tweets were pouring in. Once “Hello” was released on Oct. 23, more than 1.1 million people bought the song as a download in its first week in the United States alone, and tens of millions streamed the audio and watched the video clip.

“Hello” doesn’t just introduce “25”; in many ways, it sums up the album. On “25,” the rage and heartache of “21” are replaced by longing: for connection, for youth, for reconciliation and for lifelong bonds. Like other songs on the album, “Hello” is filled with thoughts of distance and the irrevocable passage of time, of apologies and coming to terms with the past. Musically, “Hello” has verses with just voice and piano followed by huge, ringing choruses; similarly, the album as a whole switches between organic, unplugged ballads and booming modern pop”.

As you can imagine, a decade ago, there was a lot of critical excitement and intrigue around Hello. Perhaps you would not quite get the same sort of press intensity for a new song from Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter. Maybe you would, though you did not get as much of that in 2015. Hello was an event rather than a single release. The Guardian shared their view on the lead single from 25:

“Rumours have been circulating about Adele’s third album for months now: at one stage, the erroneous belief that 25 was due to be released in mid-September apparently led a selection of record labels to frantically change the release dates of their own forthcoming big albums lest they ended up trying to compete with it in the charts. But perhaps the most striking thing about the gossip is the sheer eclecticism of the supporting cast reported to be involved in the follow-up to the biggest-selling album of the 21st century. You might expect it to feature her longstanding producer Paul Epworth and blue-chip songwriters-for-hire Max Martin and Ryan Tedder – the latter co-wrote 21’s Turning Tables and Rumour Has It – but further down the list, things got more intriguing: Pharrell Williams, producer Danger Mouse, acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr, Damon Albarn and, most improbably, Phil Collins were all reputed to have been involved. Understandably, this provoked a degree of speculation about what an album that somehow finds room for all of them might sound like, particularly given that the artist at its centre clearly has carte blanche to do what she likes: who’s going to argue with someone whose last album sold 30m copies?

Albarn was recently roundly criticized as churlish for suggesting that, far from a radical departure, 25 was going to be “very middle-of-the-road”. On the evidence of Hello, he had a point. It’s the sound of someone understandably declining to fix something that wasn’t broken: Hello could have been on 21, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about its sound and its quality. It’s precisely the kind of lovelorn epic ballad that made Adele one of the biggest stars in the world. It even comes complete with a video that features that classic signifier of grandiose musical heartbreak, the singer belting it out while being tousled by a wind machine.

Anyone disappointed that Adele hasn’t returned bearing an Albarn collaboration featuring Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, his old mates from the Chinese opera and the Yacouba Sissoko Band can console themselves a little with the thought that Hello is a superior example of type, built to stand out from the vast tranches of similarly-minded stuff on Radios 1 and 2. Adele sounds great: she sells the song without over-singing it, leaving the melismatic vocal fireworks to the inevitable spate of X Factor cover versions. The opening is striking – it’s quite witty to open your first album for five years with the words “Hello, it’s me” – and the chorus sticks after one listen”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Theo Wenner

There is another interview that I am including. This one came from DIY. I can remember the buzz and wave of positivity for Adele in 2015. Sure, not everyone was on board and was that kind, though I think Hello signalled the arrival of another incredible album. One that confirmed her position as a remarkable British talent with few peers:

“After disappearing entirely from the public eye for three years, Adele returned with three words. “Hello, it’s me” - in an X Factor ad break, of all places. It was enough to send everything into a frenzy, and no surprise. It’s a very amusing, and a very ‘Adele,’ way to return. Lets remember that we’re talking about a woman who successfully rhymed “skyfall” with “crumble,” here, not to mention that an estimated 1 in 6 households in the UK apparently have a copy of her last album ’21’ resting by the stereo. Yet, here she is. No fanfares, no pomp, just a brief greeting.

A ‘Hello’ is all that’s needed to cement her return. Picking up four years later, the reluctant well-wishing coursing through ‘Someone Like You’ and the angered regret of ‘Rolling in the Deep,‘ are both replaced by more reflective, retrospective sadness. “After all these years,” Adele’s asking nobody in particular if there’s any way she can say she’s sorry, move on and put the whole thing to bed. All she wants is closure, but the phone line’s gone dead.

Typically, Adele doesn’t faff about with lyrical flouncing or overblown poetic statements. She’s not offering to raise mountains, walk halfway across the world, or summon thousands of shooting stars for anybody. Instead, it’s all very confiding, and straight-forward in a way that makes the emotional clout all the more pronounced. The heart and soul that comes from her voice - painstakingly controlled but flipping out into acrobatics like she’s sitting right on the edgeof composure - is there, still, as we always knew it would be, and blimey o’reily, can she still write a heartwrencher. Hello, Adele. It’s good to have you back”.

I will wrap things up with a feature from Houston Press. They asked why Hello was a hit. What was it about this song that meant it ticked all the boxes and was a number one single in so many countries. It couldn’t just be that this was Adele and there was that loyal fanbase already there. Hello connected with new fans and followers. The album that followed, 25, also was purchased by those who were not previously fans of Adele:

“Because Adele’s Songs Are One-to-One

Adele’s songs adeptly set aside the trappings of modern life to home in on the triumphs and tragedies of two people in a world of billions. Her songs contain an intimacy that many of us have traded in for following friends’ and strangers’ exploits on Facebook and Instagram. How many times have you tuned out your own partner’s words to read a rambling post about politics, sports or why Adele’s new song is a stunning success? She’s got anthemic, empowering stuff like “Rolling In the Deep,” but maybe we crave the interpersonal closeness of songs like “Hello” and “Melt My Heart to Stone” so much that we’re drawn in like lovers’ lips when she returns with new, one-to-one material.

Because Adele Is Not What Passes for Pop Music Today

Go to Spotify’s new-releases page and allow the player to shuffle through the latest and greatest. I did this over the weekend, and at least two-thirds of what scrolled up was someone rapping over or cooing to electronic beats. I’m not averse to this sort of music, just as I’m not averse to a good zombie movie. It’s just that when there are so many out there, it’s hard to differentiate between one walking dead and the next. And, as we all know, the classic that was Night of the Living Dead sadly spawned Zombie Strippers and Zombeavers. It’s the law of diminishing returns, people. Thankfully, we occasionally can still hear and appreciate the far less common instances of Auto-Tuneless singing set to piano.

Because Adele Doesn’t Believe Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

I watched the Vevo with my wife, and she believes the song has gained traction because it’s about asking for forgiveness. This is a common theme in music but not in real life, she reminded me. How many people do you know who love each other and share history (think family relationships for best results) who have some wedge between them presently, some wall that is keeping them apart and further wasting the valuable and finite minutes we’re allotted? Maybe the song is a brilliant reminder that, difficult as it might seem, there’s a single word that can put all these wayward relationships back on track, one as simple as “Hello”.

Actually, I am not quite done. The final thing to include is an article from The Guardian. Perhaps inevitably, Hello became the fastest-selling single of 2015. A decade later, and there are few singles that gathered the same sense of occasion and majesty. This was a huge moment in modern music history. Now, with Adele stepping away from the stage and her latest album being 2021’s 30, there is no telling when and if she will release another album:

“Adele’s Hello is set to become the fastest selling single of 2015.

The British soul singer’s comeback became a viral smash when it was released online on Friday 23 October. The video has already clocked up 107m YouTube plays, 27m of which occurred on its first day of release, breaking all existing records.

At the halfway point in the week, the lead single from Adele’s new album 25 is way ahead of its nearest rival – Justin Bieber’s Sorry – with combined sales and streams of 165,000. This figure includes 156,000 downloads. The current record for first week’s sales this year is held by Ellie Goulding’s Love Me Like You Do, but that figure of 173,000 is likely to be eclipsed by Adele’s sales.

Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company, said: “It is a huge challenge for any artist returning after such a huge last record – as 21 and its singles were. But Adele has smashed it right out of the park with a fantastic single, which has connected with British music fans comprehensively. She already looks set to be the queen of quarter four.”

Adele has also been giving interviews to promote 25. She told i-D that motherhood was far tougher than she expected: “It’s fucking hard. I thought it would be easy. ‘Everyone fucking does it, how hard can it be?’ Ohhhhh ... I had no idea. It is hard but it’s phenomenal. It’s the greatest thing I ever did”.

On 23rd October, 2015, Adele’s Hello came out into the world. I wanted to look back at a decade at this big moment in music. One of Adele’s very best songs, I do hope that we hear more from her in the future. Go and listen to Hello and check out its video. Even if you cannot remember a decade ago and everything that happened around the release of Hello, you will be able to appreciate the strength and quality of the song. Hello is a song that will stay nestled…

IN the mind and heart.

FEATURE: A Sixth Sense: Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Six

FEATURE:

A Sixth Sense

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Six

__________

THE sixth album…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

from Kate Bush, The Sensual World, turns thirty-six on 16th October. Even though it is not a big anniversary, I didn’t want to let the occasion pass by. I am going to bring in a promotional interview from 1989. I might repeat some information used in previous anniversary features. I want to start out by bringing in the Kate Bush Encyclopedia and a bit of background about the 1989 album. One that followed the huge commercial success, Hounds of Love. It was a very different album to that. Many do not rate The Sensual World as highly, though I feel like it deserves more acclaim and scrutiny:

“As with Hounds of Love, the album was recorded mainly in Kate’s home studio, after it was upgraded, adding an SSL console. Kate said she felt “overwhelmed by the amount of equipment aroud me. It was quite stifling, and I made a conscious effort to move away from that, and treat the song as the song.”

Del Palmer was her principal engineer, and they often worked together on the new album, with Haydn Bertall appearing now and again. Three tracks on the album feature backing vocals by the Trio Bulgarka. The title track was inspired by James Joyce’s book Ulysses, specifically the closing passage of the novel by Molly Bloom. When the estate refused the use of that text, Kate wrote her own which echos the original passage, but adds a dimension: ‘Stepping out of the page / into the sensual world‘”.

Other people have said to me that they think this album is very dark, although for me I think it’s my happiest album really. I find some of the tracks quite funny where other people say they find them scary. Although I have a dark sense of humour, maybe it is a subconscious thing that just goes into my music, because I think when I was writing this album that was perhaps something I was feeling a little – a sense of being a bit scared. Maybe it comes out in the music. I do think it’s a very big self- therapy thing now – the more I work on an album the more I think it’s almost a process for me to try and heal myself, have a look at myself. Do you know what I mean? Actually a very selfish thing in a way, but I think art is. I do think what artistic people are trying to do is work through their problems through their art – look at themselves, confront all these things. (…) It’s not that the album is written about me, not that it is autobiographical, but it is the most direct process I’ve used for an album.

It’s in my own studio and I had a lot of time so as not to be under pressure by outside forces. I’ve recorded the whole album with Del so it’s just myself and Del in a very close relationship working together very intensely and it was hard for me to write this album. To actually write the songs was very difficult, and for the first time really, I went through a patch where I just couldn’t write – I didn’t know what I wanted to say. (…) Everything seemed like rubbish – you know? It seemed to have no meaning whatsoever. Somehow I managed to get a sense of some meaningfulness, and that’s why (…) to me now, albums are perhaps a way of helping myself, but maybe helping other people too. To work through my problems maybe will help other people too. To work through my problems maybe will help other people to work through their problems. Maybe the meaningfulness of art is that once you’ve got over your selfish work within it, you can give it to other people and hopefully it might at least make them smile or something.

Roger Scott, Interview. Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989

I think this album for me, unlike the last album, say, Hounds of Love, where I saw that as two sides – one side being conceptual – this album is very much like short stories for me. Ten short stories that are just saying something different in each one and it was a bit like trying to paint the pictures accordingly. Each song has a different personality and so they each a need little bit of something here, a little bit of that there – just like people, you know, some people you can’t walk up to because you know they’re a bit edgy first thing in the morning. So you have to come up sideways to them, you know, and it’s kind of like how the songs are too. They have their own little personalities, and if it doesn’t want you to do it, it won’t let you.

The VH-1 interview, January 1990”.

Before getting to a couple of features, I want to bring in a large portion of this Melody Maker interview that Kate Bush had with Steve Sutherland that was published on 21st October, 1989. Perhaps Bush didn’t give as many interviews as she did for Hounds of Love, though there were quite a few in 1989. It was a busy time for her. Following this album, Bush would leave it four years before releasing her seventh studio album – the brilliant The Red Shoes:

“The Sensual World is completely self-absorbed in its own erogenous pleasure, while This Woman's Work, plaintively, over stark acoustic piano, reviews the man's side of the relationship and, really, pities him.

"John Hughes, the American director, was doing a film called She's Having a Baby --a great film, very nice and comic. And he had this scene which he wanted me to write a song for where it gets very heavy. The film's about this guy who gets married and he likes being a kid, really--very much up in the clouds--and she gets pregnant and they go into hospital, and she's rushed off becuase the baby's in the breach position.

"And suddenly there he is, just left in the waiting room by himself. It's probably the first time in his life he's had to grow up. It's a lovely piece of film, where he's looking back on their times together--there are scenes where they're decorating their flat, going for walks and things--and it was very much just a matter of telling the story in words--how, at times like that, you tend to go into something akin to guilt mode and you think of all the things you should have done and you just didn't."

I think men are bigger babies than women. I don't think we grow up so fast.

"Maybe men can avoid more situations than women in terms of facing things. I guess there are things for women that are different and they tend to deal with life situations rather than perhaps the business world or whatever. God, this sounds so sexist..."

Not at all. Women give birth, they are physically part of the creative process. It's as if their orgasm grows and bears fruit, whereas men fuck and that's it--it's a release, something we get rid of rather than something we gain. Then it all builds up again, and we can't handle it. I think women are far stronger emotionally. Men can't cope with emotions. We get frustrated and aggressive and destructive because we can't express ourselves, whereas women seem to embody their feelings better. Something positive grows from them..

"Yes, I think you're right. It's very hard on all of us but, yet, through the process of giving birth, I'm sure women are much stronger than men, and it's incredibly hard on them that they should not be able to show their emotions when actually it's okay to be weak."

We men are confused. The trouble with the invention of the notion of sexism and the paranoia surrounding it is that the only way we can deal with it is based on a fallacy. We think that, just because women should quite rightly have equal rights and equal opportunities, the sexes are the same. But we're not--women are aliens to us, we don't understand you at all. You speak a different language altogether. We're different creatures entirely.

"Absolutely, I'm with you 100 per cent. I couldn't agree more. I think it's awful what's happening to people's sense of their own sexuality. Women are made to feel awkward about expressing themselves as women in a man's world, so, subconsciously, a lot of the time, they're behaving like men because they don't know how strong they're supposed to be. Then again, women's lib has left men in a lot of areas where they don't know how to behave in case they get called sexist, a pig, or whatever.

"We are different, and we should be helping each other. Unfortunately there was such a lot of shit to get through that it was a battle, but I don't think it need be."

The album seems to be saying, "If you find yourself in a tricky situation, follow your instincts--just behave the way if feels right and at least you're being true to yourself, irrespective of the outcome."

"Yes, absolutely...And what an incredibly difficult thing to apply to life. I think there are some very good things going on to help us through. I must say, for me, the comdy in this country has been really educational. You know, Ben Elton and The Comic Strip--all those people you can't really call alternative comedians anymore because they've become mainstream. I think they've really done a lot to stop it being fashionable to be humorous with sexist overtones.

"It used to be very hip to make fun of women. Old comedy was all about treating women as a threat and, therefore, making fun of them. And I think they've really changed a lot of that. They've done so much for men and women because now, in most circles, among people our age, if you make a sexist joke, it's really considered tasteless. I think that's a fantastic step forward. And to see people like Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders out there doing comedy being women as women is brilliant.

Do you listen to much pop music?

"Not much when I'm making albums. In the evenings I probably watch a film or comedies or something visual to take me away from my ears. But, in between albums, yeah--there's some great stuff. Johnny Lydon's new album is just great, and I heard some tracks off the new Jeff Beck album and they were great, too. I think there's been some good, good music out there. Everyone in the music industry's been wearing black for, what, the last four years? Well, I think everyone's in mourning for good music. It's a show of mourning--'Look, here we are, where's the music?' And there's little snatches now, and that's exciting."

Are you hypersensitive to music? I mean, just because you make music that moves other people, that doesn't necessarily mean that music moves you, does it?

"God, I'd love to think that my music could move people, because it doesn't happen to me often, but, when it has, it's a lovely experience. The Bulgarians did it to me, and Nigel Kennedy (the young classical violinist who also plays on the album) sometimes makes me cry."

There are so many musical cliches, and you're breaking them down. Using Davey Spillane's Uillean pipes and Dave Gilmour's guitar and the Trio, you've succeeded in creating a new, uncategorisable sort of music which isn't anything, it's just music. I think that's important, because it makes people open their ears to stuff. It enriches their lives.

"Well, that's lovely. What a really nice thing to say. Um...I think everything seems too easy to categorise, and...I think that's just such a lovely thing to say..."

It's like what you were saying about relationships--you've done it with music. You've given it time to grow, to see if it's compatible. And it sounds natural, not cosmetic.

"Well, I think that's fantastic...that's just such a nice thing to say, that's really great...wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Because I think this is really what music is--a continual process of people experimenting, taking this and that and putting them together: all these experimental marriages. And when they work, I think that's such an important step, because then they've created a new music of a sort which then goes on to evolve.

"And, if it doesn't work, that's absolutely fine, too, because that shows you what doesn't work. So, if you feel this is a natural union, that's really good. I suppose I'd like to think that, as long as I really care about making music, there will always be people out there who want to hear music that is cared for."

The hour's up and Kate thanks me for saying such lovely things about her album. I thank her for making such a great album, and she thanks me for thanking her, and says I have a lovely energy, and...shucks...We blush a bit and shake hands, and I shuffle out of the room, out of her life, elated and embarrassed”.

I think I will end with a positive review but get to a feature first. I wanted to include a spread of information that is both insightful, personal and you might not have read. I am trying not to repeat what I have published before. Things changed between Hounds of Love and The Sensual World. Kate Bush turned thirty and there was a shift in musical tone and palette. The Quietus when they wrote about The Sensual World for its thirtieth anniversary in 2019, explored how it is an autumnal album. In terms of the sensations, sonics and songs. Maybe a slightly darker or gentler album than Hounds of Love with all its bursts of summer:

“The Sensual World, then, with its poetic allusions to Bonfire Night and the harvest, is her autumnal album. If Hounds Of Love, with its percussive and effect-heavy arrangements, is a budding fruit, The Sensual World is its ripened, fully mature successor. Where the drums were booming they are now accentual, where the synths were pulsating and fulsome with Fairlight wizardry they are now ambient and warmly textured. The rich instrumentation reflects the mood; Kate had flirted with Celtic arrangements on songs like ‘Night Of The Swallow’ from 1982’s The Dreaming and parts of Hounds Of Love (most notably ‘Jig Of Life’), but the Uilleann pipes of Davey Spillane and the various Celtic instruments played by her brother Paddy and by Alan Stivell (arranged by Bill Whelan) are woven into the very fabric of The Sensual World.

Meanwhile, the titanic, full-throated vocals of the Trio Bulgarka (an inspired choice of personnel) add a wise spirit to the music. The palette of bells and pipes, the imagery of setting fire to cornfields, synths that are somehow removed yet oddly comforting – it all adds up to a striking sound world perfectly evocative of this particular time of year.


Everything about The Sensual World exudes autumnal beauty – from the elegant arrangements to its dusky, monochromatic cover portrait of a wide-eyed Kate Bush; from the album title’s rusty-leaf text to the bells that fade in like a tender alarm call on a crisp morning. Her voice, an instrument that bloomed on The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, is exquisite throughout, alternately keening and soft, throaty and forceful.

Gone is the light joy of summer, and the freshness of spring, but in its stead something more mature, more realised – perhaps still bristling with internal conflict, but with a newly-attained level of perspective. It is an album that suggests both the ending of childhood and the beginning of adulthood ("let’s face it, you’ve got to start growing up when you’re 30") and the bizarre hinterland between the two – the tension between cutting cords ("just put your feet down child, cos you’re all grown up now") and yearning for parental security ("reaching out for mama"), not to mention the prospect of parenthood of your own ("now starts the craft of the father").

‘The Sensual World’ itself sets out the album’s autumnal stall immediately – soft, pealing bells give way to an arrangement that incorporates pipes, warm synth washes, and an insistent drum pattern; its accompanying video, following the singer through a forest of crimson leaves, is as seamless a supplement as could be. She told International Musician in 1989 how she had "had this idea for about two years to use the words from Molly Bloom’s speech at the end of [James Joyce’s] Ulysses, which I think is the most superb piece of writing ever, to a piece of music. So Del [Palmer] had done a Fairlight pattern, and I’d done a DX riff over the top of it, and I was listening to it at home, and the words fitted absolutely perfectly. I thought, ‘God this is just ridiculous, just how well it’s come together.’"

The Sensual World is like an orchard, each song a ripened fruit. It has an insular atmosphere in keeping with her home studio set-up, and the music perfectly matches the mood evoked in the lyrics. It is the sound of Kate Bush more comfortable in her own skin, facing the complications of life. It looks forward while somehow looking back. It may be an album that personifies Molly Bloom and references Hitler, but it is also a deeply personal, sensual utopia. "This is definitely my most personal, honest album," she told Q. "And I think it’s my most feminine album, in that I feel maybe I’m not trying to prove something in terms of a woman in a man’s world… On The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, particularly from a production standpoint, I wanted to get a lot more weight and power, which I felt was a very male attitude. In some cases it worked very well, but… perhaps this time I felt braver as a woman, not trying to do the things that men do in music”.

For anyone who does not own The Sensual World, I would urge you to buy a copy. Such a remarkable album, I want to come back to it ahead of its thirty-sixth anniversary on 16th October. I am going to end by sourcing from a Pitchfork review that was published in 2019. I am going to round up in a minute. However, Pitchfork note how Kate Bush is completely in control for her sixth studio album. Rather than the songs being fanciful or like fairytales, they are more like stories or vignettes:

“But she’d never sounded more grounded than she did on these 10 songs, most of which are about regular people in regular messes, not disturbed governesses, paranoid Russian wives or terrified fetuses. It was, she said, her most honest, personal album, and its stories play out like intimate vignettes rather than fantastical fairy tales. Unlike the otherworldly synth-pop-prog she pioneered on 1985’s Hounds of Love, she used her beloved Fairlight CMI to produce lusher, mellow textures, complemented by the warm, earthy thrum of Irish folk instruments and the pretty violins and violas of England’s classical bad boy, Nigel Kennedy. Even the album’s artwork depicted a less playful, more serious Bush than the one who’d fondled Harry Houdini on 1982’s The Dreaming and cuddled dogs on Hounds of Love.

There’s no Hounds-style grand narrative thread on The Sensual World. Bush likened it to a volume of short stories, with its subjects frequently wrestling with who they were, who they are, and who they want to be. She was able to pour some of her own frustrations into these knotty tussles: She found it more difficult than ever to write songs, couldn’t work out what she wanted them to say, and hit roadblock after roadblock. The 12 months she spent pestering Joyce’s grandson were surpassed by the maddening two years she spent on “Love and Anger,” which, fittingly, finds her tormented by an old trauma she can’t bring herself to talk about. But by the end, she banishes the evil spirits by leading her band in something that sounds like a raucous exorcism, chanting, “Don’t ever think you can’t change the past and the future” over squalling guitars.

Even its most surreal songs are rooted in self-examination. “Heads We’re Dancing” seems like a dark joke—a young girl is charmed on to the dancefloor by a man she later learns is Adolf Hitler—but poses a troubling question: What does it say about you, if you couldn’t see through the devil’s disguise? Its discordant, skronky rhythms make it feel like a formal ball taking place in a fever dream, and Bush’s voice grows increasingly panicky as she realizes how badly she’s been duped. As far-fetched as its premise was, its inspiration lay close to home: A family friend had told Bush how shaken they’d been after they’d taken a shine to a dashing stranger at a dinner party, only to find out they’d been chatting to Robert Oppenheimer.

It’s more fanciful than most of The Sensual World’s little secrets. To hear someone recall formative childhood truths (the lush grandeur of “Reaching Out”) and lingering romantic pipedreams (the longing of “Never Be Mine”) is like being given a reel of their memory tapes and discovering what makes them tick. On “The Fog,” she’s paralyzed by fear until she remembers the childhood swimming lessons her father gave her, his voice cutting through the misty harps like an old ghost. Relationships on the album can be sticky and thorny. “Between a Man and a Woman” is half-dangerous and half-sultry, its snaking rhythms mirroring the round-in-circles squabbling of a couple. When a third party tries to interfere, they’re told to back off. This time, unlike on “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” there’s no point wishing for a helping hand from God.

But if there are no miracles, there are at least songs that sound like them. For “Rocket’s Tail,” Bush enlisted the help of Trio Bulgarka, who she fell in love with after hearing them on a tape Paddy gave her. The three Bulgarian women didn’t speak English and had no idea what they were singing about, but it didn’t matter. They sound more like mystics during its a capella first half, and when it eventually blows up into a glammy stomper with Dave Gilmour’s electric guitar caterwauling like a Catherine wheel, their vocals still come out on top: cackling like gleeful witches, whooping like they’re watching sparks explode in the night sky. Its weird, wonderful magic offered a simple message: Life is short, so enjoy moments of pleasure before they fizzle out”.

On 16th October, it will be thirty-six years since Kate Bush released The Sensual World. Many fans and critics would have wanted or expected an album closer in feel to Hounds of Love. However, Kate Bush delivered something much more interesting and original. The late-1980s was defined by a rise in golden Hip-Hop and artists like Janet Jackson, Pixies, Soul II Soul and The Stone Roses. Nothing quite like Kate Bush! Very few female artists making the sounds we hear on The Sensual World. As a result, it took some critics a while to adjust, though there was a lot of love and positivity. In rankings, The Sensual World does well. This 2023 ranking put it in third (out of ten). This 2019 feature also placed it third. This 2022 list put The Sensual World fourth. So it is revered and seen as one of Kate Bush’s best albums! That said, many people do not talk about The Sensual World and go deep with it. I hope that changes. This brilliant album, turning thirty-six on 16th October, is an…

AUTUMNAL masterpiece.

FEATURE: Let Me in Your Window: Will Kate Bush Ever Be Represented in T.V. and Film?

FEATURE:

 

 

Let Me in Your Window

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing in Paris on the French T.V. show, Formule 1, on 16th March, 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Jean-Jacques Bernier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Will Kate Bush Ever Be Represented in T.V. and Film?

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IN the past…

IN THIS PHOTO: Julia Garner photographed in New York in 2020/PHOTO CREDIT: JJ Reddington/BuzzFeed News/Re​dux

I have mused why there has not been a Kate Bush biopic and why need to see more of her on the screen. Kate Bush’s music has been brought to the screen. A few examples over the past five or six years. From The Bear and films such as Palm Springs to, of course, Stranger Things, we have heard her voice on the small and big screens. Bush starred in plenty of music videos and appeared in her own short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. That was back in the 1990s. She has done the odd bit here and there but, when it comes to her being represented in films and T.V., perhaps her name has been mentioned and we have seen and heard her albums. Perhaps there are not that many women who looks like Kate Bush to portray her. Mary Steenburgen could play a modern Kate Bush. I will park that thought and return to it. I am revising this topic because there is always activity when it comes to music biopics. There are some interesting biopics coming up. Apart from The Beatles’ ones from Sam Mendes in 2028, Zendaya will star as Ronnie Spector, the iconic lead singer of '60s girl group, The Ronettes, in the long-awaited biopic, Be My Baby, for A24. I think that there are some fantastic opportunities to fulfil. It was recently announced that Julia Garner will play Madonna in a biopic. Not too long ago, it seemed like that film had been scrapped. However, this work in progress is still on the cards. She has this uncanny resemblance to Madonna, especially her 1986 era when she released True Blue. I cannot wait for this biopic to be made and on the screen!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the photoshoot for Hounds of Love’s second side, The Ninth Wave/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I do think that there are reasons why we may never see a Kate Bush biopic. I have written about this for other features, though it is worth reviving at a time when female icons of music are being brought to the screen. Some may say that Bush’s life and career is not dramatic enough to make into a film. That there has not been enough drama perhaps. Bush is very private too, so she would not greenlight such a thing. However, with a new generation aware of her music, there is this question about whether we will see her likeness on the screen. It does not have to be a biopic or film/show entirely about Kate Bush. What angle would that take anyway? What time period would we look at? I do think that there are opportunities to include her in some form. I have written features asking whether we will ever see The Ninth Wave made into a film. That is the second side of her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love (which turned forty on 16th September). I think that it would an incredible film or T.V. show. Obviously, Kate Bush would not take the lead. I did speculate that n actor like Saoirse Ronan could play the lead. That suite is about a woman being swept overboard a ship and longing for help and hope. All the feelings and emotions that enter her head and the way that she dreams of being with friends and family but is overcome with delusions, fatigue and paranoia. I do hope it gets made one day. Whilst Bush did bring it to the stage in 2014 for Before the Dawn, the vast majority of her fans did not see it, and there are limitations with a staged production in terms of time, scope and scale.

IN THIS PHOTO: Margaret Qualley/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Higbee for Wonderland

It is great that Kate Bush’s music has appeared on the screen. It provokes conversations and means that there is this important and prominent placement. Her songs brought to life in different ways. Scoring scenes in unique ways. A biopic will never get made. Kate Bush would never allow this. I think that there is possibility that there could be something in terms of Bush’s likeness being used in a show or film. There are Kate Bush tribute acts. However, this would be something different. What I love is how there has been this absence. So many artists brought to life on the screen, though Kate Bush has not. As far as I know. I have been thinking about a drama or comedy that is set at a particular time and either we briefly see Kate Bush or it includes her music. In terms of modern actors who look like her, I have been thinking of Margaret Qualley. Maybe playing Bush during her Hounds of Love period or slightly before, if there was a music show or something that showed some of the biggest artists of the day, then it would be great to see Kate Bush portrayed. What I love is how there are so many possibilities when it comes to Kate Bush. Perhaps seeing her as a teenager when recording The Kick Inside or Wuthering Heights. Or a scene of her performing it on Top of the Pops and an actor playing her. I also like the idea of Kate Bush and Del Palmer (he played on many of her albums and was her engineer for several albums. He sadly died in 2024) seen together, either as a couple or in the studio. People would say Kate Bush would veto any idea like this. However, as she has reissued her albums and her music has appeared in T.V. shows and films, would she instantly take against any visual likeness of her if it was done affectionately? I come back to that Madonna biopic and the fact she was portrayed (by Evan Rachel Wood) in 2022’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

If not a chance to see an actor play Kate Bush either in a larger speaking role or just a brief visual flash, I do still think that her music could take a bigger role than it has to this point. There are shows that are soundtracked by a particular artist. They soundtrack things. It would be incredible if there were characters bonded by their love of Kate Bush or her music is at the centre of this powerful and memorable production. I have said how Kate Bush wants to remain private. Perhaps this would be too exposing. However, there are these incredible music biopics coming up, so it made me think of Kate Bush. Such an iconic artist that I have never seen portrayed in a film or T.V. series. The recent fortieth anniversary of Hounds of Love put a new spotlight on her genius. I hope that something happens in terms of either her likeness coming to her screen or her music used more widely than it has been on shows like Stranger Things. An arc built around tracks or characters that reference Kate Bush or share their connection to and love of her. I can’t be the only one who would intrigued by those possibilities. I do sort of miss the excitement that there was around Stranger Things in 2022. Of course, there will be another burst if Kate Bush releases another album. However, there would be something wonderful about having Kate Bush played by an actor or her music being used in a film similar to Blinded by the Light (the film tells the coming-of-age story of Javed, a British-Pakistani Muslim teenager whose life is changed after he discovers the music of Bruce Springsteen). I have pitched this before, and I still think that it could work. Fans might have their own views. Kate Bush would need to sign off and that could kill any potential. She might feel that anything like this would mean she’ll…

LOSE her purity, privacy and a sense of mystery.

FEATURE: I Hope I Die Before I Get Old: The Who’s My Generation at Sixty

FEATURE:

 

 

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old

IN THIS PHOTO: The Who in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty Images 

The Who’s My Generation at Sixty

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THE album of the same name…

turns sixty on 3rd December. On 29th October, its first single was released. Perhaps the most loved and popular track from The Who. A song that seemed to capture a distinct feeling and rebellion in 1965, The Who’s My Generation has endured and is still relevant I think. Written by the band’s guitarist and primary songwriter, Pete Townshend, in 2012, Paste placed My Generation at number six on their list of the twenty best The Who songs. it was placed number eleven by Rolling Stone on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time In 2004 and 2010; re-ranked number 232 in the 2021 edition. I am taking this information from the Wikipedia article about the song. Reaching number two in the U.K. upon its release, My Generation is notable as it features one of the first bass solos in Rock history. Also, Roger Daltrey’s stuttered delivery of some of the lyrics meant that the song was almost banned for a long period by the BBC through fear it would offend people living with a stutter. However, once My Generation became a hit and was successful, the BBC decided to play the song. I am going to come to some features about the sensational My Generation. I cannot imagine how thrilling it was hearing this song in 1965! Especially for teens. In a year when there was little like this around in terms of the song’s energy and punch, it would have been a revelation! The first song from The Who’s debut album, this was a spellbinding and astonishing introduction from the band! A track that stirred something in a generation that heard it back in 1965. It has not aged or lost its edge sixty years later.

American Songwriter featured My Generation in 2023. Writing how this was a rallying cry for those who feel like they did not fit in and were alienated by society, The Who could not have predicted how it would impact and drive the counterculture for decades to come! Even though it was not their debut single - I Can't Explain was released earlier in 1965 -, it was their most powerful one to that point. It is interesting looking at the meaning behind the song and its background:

“The pervasive story of why Townshend wrote “My Generation” involves The Queen Mother removing his Packard hearse from in front of his house – which happened to be near Buckingham Palace.

“It turned out that [the Queen Mother] had it moved because her husband had been buried in a similar vehicle and it reminded her of him,” Townshend once said. “When I went to collect it, they wanted two hundred and fifty quid. I’d only paid thirty for it in the first place.”

While that moment might have been a point of contention for Townshend, the actual motive behind “My Generation” came from a much larger problem for the guitarist: his struggle to find his place in society.

“‘My Generation’ was very much about trying to find a place,” Townshend once told Rolling Stone in 1987 (per Songfacts). “I was very, very lost. The band was young then.”

In 2019, Townshend provided a little more color to the song’s inspiration. “‘My Generation’ was inspired by the fact that I felt as artists we had to draw a line between all those people who had been involved in the second world war and all those people who were born right at the end of the war,” he said.

“Those people had sacrificed so much for us, but they weren’t able to give us anything,” he continued. “No guidance, no inspiration. Nothing really. We weren’t allowed to join the army, we weren’t allowed to speak, we were expected to shut up and enjoy the peace… And we decided not to do that.”

With “My Generation,” The Who took a side in the ever-growing culture clash between an older generation of Brits and a younger one that strived to break free of norms.

People try to put us d-down (talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Just because we get around (talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin’ ’bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin’ ’bout my generation)

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby”.

Candice Littlejon wrote this fascinating feature about a timeless song. Transcending the 1960s, My Generation defined youth culture and rebellion for decades after its release. I wonder whether this song invented Punk or was one of the forbearers. It definitely influenced a lot of Punk acts that would arrive in the 1970s:

“At first glance, analyzing the lyrics to one of the Who’s most popular songs seems like a simple task; after all, the phrase “my generation” is repeated more than 40 times during the song’s duration of a little over three minutes. True to the nature and beauty of rock ‘n’ roll, the song wasn’t written to camouflage its message behind flowery metaphors; it was written simplistically which is where most of its magic lives.

The song was never assumed to become a generational anthem but acted more as a telling diary entry of what it meant to be young and misunderstood. However, since the song’s 1965 debut, youthful misunderstood generations have been blasting “My Generation” on their records, 8-tracks, CDs, iPods, and playlists ever since.

The angst chant touts a possessiveness of its generation; its repeated line of “my generation” could more accurately be heard as, “mine, not yours.”  Distinguishing between two groups, as the song so rigidly does, magnifies differences, conflict, and contrast. It isn’t just knowing one generation is different from the next, but being proud of the difference: most noted in the line “I hope I die before I get old.” The song also dismisses its opposition (referred to only a few times as “people” and “you”) for their inability to understand the Who’s generation, figuratively patting them on their naive heads for even trying.

A great bit of trivia and a wonderful addition to the discussion of this classic track is that the quintessential stutter that Roger Daltrey took on was unintentionally intentional. Having had a minor struggle with a stutter, Daltrey accidentally stuttered while recording the track, but when attempting to re-record was suggested to keep it and add it in on multiple other lines. The artistic choice’s main objective was for Daltrey to sound hopped up on drugs, a judgmental factor many of the older generations commonly accredited to London youth (although it may have often been based on fact).

The creative choice took the song to a whole new level and is now one of the most famous rock songs cited for its stuttering. Of course, many others over the years have utilized this phonetic utilization (“Changes” by David Bowie, “Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys, and “Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John, just to name a few) but choice for a stutter is intentional in these cases, usually chosen by the artist or band as a way to add interest or syllables to a word or phrase. (The only other notable rock song that a stutter was chosen on accident was with American rock band, Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”, in which the lead singer didn’t intend to release the song that way, but only to poke fun at his brother’s stuttering problem).

My Generation” is a simple rock track, made up of some of the most classic, simplistic elements of rock music, particularly in its time of the 1960s: two verses that are repeated interchangeably, a hook that listeners can easily chant along to, and back-up vocals that mimic the popular “call back” method of many blues, soul and Motown songs of the time. It’s in its simplicity that the song My Generation finds a brilliant legacy. Both timeless and timely, the clear message of the song – our generations are different and we like it that way – resonates with Millennials today as much as it did with mods in the ’60s.

The differences between the young and old will always exist; each generation witnesses different disasters, overcomes obstacles unique to their decade, and therefore comes to care about different social and political agendas. Generations X, Y, and Z create a fascinating spectrum to look through, in which priorities, hopes, politics and structures of thought vary and change as we all navigate time. The one thing that may never change is how powerful music can be and how we utilize it to express ourselves.

Many older generations write off Millennials, labeling them as a generation that cares more about likes on their Instagram account than what’s going on in the world around them. Whether or not this is true from individual to individual, unpredictable elements of everyday life – such as social media or cell phones – have come to not only define a generation but consequently pigeonhole it. (Just as the Vespas and exquisitely greased hairstyles of the mods had them labeled as apathetic and pompous.)

My Generation was a favorite of our teenage-aged grandparents and then our teenage-aged parents, today it expresses the same message but to a different set of ears. We may change and mature, but classic songs, such as My Generation are comfortingly always the same”.

There are a couple of other features I want to cover off before wrapping up. Gold Radio looked at the meaning behind the lyrics of My Generation. I think the standout elements are the stuttered words. Something that was very unusual in Rock music. Also, that idea of a young Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon and John Entwistle playing a song that is all about youth. The horror of growing old! The Who have performed live recently but may have performed their final gigs together. Even though half of the original line-up are no longer with us, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are still together and going strong:

“Roger Daltrey's stuttered delivery of 'My Generation' was one of the reasons why it became so iconic, mainly because it hinted at other ill-mannered words he'd wished he'd spurted out but couldn't.

A stutter in a song was certainly unusual, and was requested by the band's manager Kit Lambert after Daltrey had already recorded two vocal takes.

Talking to Uncut magazine in 2001, Daltrey recalled: "I have got a stutter. I control it much better now but not in those days."

"When we were in the studio doing 'My Generation', Kit Lambert came up to me and said 'STUTTER!' I said 'What?' He said 'Stutter the words – it makes it sound like you're pilled', and I said, 'Oh… like I am!'"

"And that's how it happened. It was always in there, it was always suggested with the 'f-f-fade' but the rest of it was improvised."

Producer Shel Talmy offered a different take saying it was "one of those happy accidents" after Daltrey struggled to fit the lyrics to the music during recording, as he hadn't rehearsed beforehand and couldn't hear his voice in the monitors.

IN THIS PHOTO: Roger Daltrey/PHOTO CREDIT: GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty Images

There’s a hint of irony about 'My Generation' these days

"I hope I die before I get old" is the lyric which continue to resonate to this day with new generations discovering 'My Generation'.

But it's also become a bit of an albatross for members of The Who in the years since it was first released, because they got old.

The Who's legendary and hell-raising drummer Keith Moon did commit to the mantra, tragically dying of a drug overdose at the age of just 32.

In 1965, Roger Daltrey insisted he'd stand by the lyric and claimed he would kill himself before the age of 30 as he didn't want to get old.

Understandably, his naive stance changed as he got older, but had to answer the inevitable questions about his pledge.

Daltrey claimed when asked that the line is about an attitude, not a physical age, whilst Townshend responded by saying for him when he wrote the lyrics that'"old" meant "very rich".

Produce Like a Pro ran their feature in 2021. They celebrate a song that defined Rock’s defiant and raw spirit. I don’t think we have heard a song quite as thrilling and generation-defining by Rock bands since. My Generation has been covered by, among other artists, Oasis, Patti Smith, and Green Day:

“My Generation” was released by Brunswick on October 29, 1965 as a single, peaking at number 2 in the UK — their highest charting single of their career in the UK. The single only peaked at 74 in the US, which may be due to the fact that Brunskwick’s US side (Decca) didn’t quite know what to do with the recording. Many of the record label’s executives even thought that they had received a bad tape — because of all of the feedback on the record. Despite their hesitancy, the song has enjoyed over a half-century of fame in the US as one of rock history’s most influential tracks. Rolling Stone named the song number 11 on their “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named it in their list of “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll”. It was even inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for “historical, artistic, and significant” value.

“My Generation” remains a critical piece of rock history because of how it shaped music and even rock’s identity. It defined rock by its attitude. Perhaps one of the most iconic moments in the song occurs in the first verse when Daltrey cries out “I hope I die before I get old”. In a song all about generational conflict, this declaration asserted the youth culture as the true leaders of the future.  And as the post-war generation aged, the song remained an anthem of their identity- one which constantly redefined their conception of aging. As the decades progressed, they declared that rock’s spirit would transcend age. In 2006, Pete Townshend explained what the line meant to him, as he performed the song in his sixties:

” ‘I hope I die before I get old.’ This time I am not being ironic. I am 61. I hope I die before I get old. I hope I die while I still feel this alive, this young, this healthy, this happy, and this fulfilled. But that may not happen. I may get creaky, cranky, and get cancer, and die in some hospice with a massive resentment against everyone I leave behind. That’s being old, for some people, and probably none of us who don’t die accidentally can escape being exposed to it. But I am not old yet. If getting older means I continue to cherish the lessons every passing day brings, more and more, then whatever happens, I think I’ll be happy to die before I get old, or after I get old, or any time in between.”

With “My Generation” The Who created an anthem that would not only define their generation but also transform rock history.  A song of power, identity, attitude and the epitome of rock’s spirit, it has lived on for over a half a century, teaching new generations what it means to rock ‘n roll”.

Turning sixty on 29th October, My Generation is one of the most important songs in Rock history. In terms of the impact it had on people. The young generation. The song was a blueprint for genres such as Garage Rock, Punk, and Heavy Metal, influencing numerous artists and establishing The Who’s legacy. Recognised influential and genius by Rolling Stone, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Grammy Hall of Fame, this is a song that will be cherished and saluted for generations more. Could The Who ever have guessed the impact My Generation would have…

WHEN they released it in 1965?!

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Erykah Badu - Mama's Gun

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

Erykah Badu - Mama's Gun

__________

TURNING twenty-five

on 18th November, I wanted to spend some time beneath the sleeve for Erykah Badu’s second studio album, Mama’s Gun. Predominantly recorded at the Electric Lady Studios in New York City with the collective Soulquarians, Mama’s Gun is an album enforced by and driven forward by live instruments. 2000 was a year when the Neo Soul genre was still very much in bloom and flourishing. Following other classics of the genre such as Ms. Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Macy Gray's On How Life Is (1999) and D'Angelo's Voodoo (2000), there is a lot to discuss when it comes to Mama’s Gun. I shall come to that in time. Although it did not make a dent in the U.K. album chart or in other countries, it did reach eleven in the US Billboard 2000. It is available on vinyl. I wanted to go deep into this album as it is so important and influential. In terms of artists who took elements of Mama’s Gun and wove it into their work. I am starting out with a feature from this website that spotlights and dissects Erykah Badu’s second studio album. They state that, “While ‘Baduizm’ turned her into a household name, ‘Mama’s Gun’ cemented Erykah Badu’s status as the new face of R&B”:

“Erykah Badu first burst into the scene in 1997, with the release of her paradigm-shifting debut album, Baduizm. Showcasing an impressive range of vocals that prompted listeners to liken her to Billie Holiday, the album also saw Badu receive credit for birthing neo-soul. In truth, however, she created an atmosphere all her own. No two of her songs are the same, but a Badu track is undeniable: a sensual, brooding sound with vocals that glide up and down. Markedly hopeful and authentic, her music is the aural equivalent of the feeling of sunshine on the back of your neck, and on her second album, Mama’s Gun, Badu took a deep dive into the pivotal moments of what it meant to be alive, learning how to bolster oneself against a crushing tidal wave of emotion.

While Baduizm turned her into a household name, Mama’s Gun cemented her status as the new face of R&B. After taking several years off to raise her first child, Badu returned to the studio to record her second album, much of which was inspired by love and her relationship with her then-partner, Andre Benjamin. Leaning into a more organic sound with less-elusive lyrics, Badu opted to speak to the state of black womanhood and the world around her.

For those expecting another downtempo collection of sultry meditations, the live-band funk opener, “Penitentiary Philosophy,” puts that notion to rest. While Mama’s Gun is stylistically ambitious, the sound is also comforting and familiar. Engineer Russell Elevado introduced a warm, honey-like sound by exclusively using vintage microphones and recording equipment for the album, which was recorded in the famous Electric Lady Studios. The studio regularly housed a collective of musicians who called themselves The Soulquarians, frequent collaborators who drew inspiration from one another, solidifying the neo-soul sound of the early 00s with era-defining albums like D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Common’s career-shifting Like Water For Chocolate”.

There are a few other features and reviews that are worth bringing in. I am getting to Classic Album Sundays. They explored the story of Mama’s Gun. It is one of the most remarkable albums of the twenty-first century. One that arrived right at the start of the century. It still keeps revealing wonderful layers and colours almost twenty-five years after it arrived:

“The songs Erykah Badu had written for her second album, Mama’s Gun, signified a major thematic development in her music and an increasingly self-assured outlook in her personal life. Around midway through the writing process her romantic relationship with Andre 3000 collapsed, encouraging a great deal of self-reflection and rumination on what it means to be both a single black mother and a successful artist. There is remarkably little vitriol in her lyrics however, which explore the beauty and complexity of love and heartbreak on songs such as ‘Orange Moon’, ‘In Love With You’ and the particularly impressive ‘Green Eyes’ which illuminates the feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and denial which plague her dwindling relationship. The song ends with a clear perspective on the doomed nature of their love, yet acknowledges the “growing pains” which will haunt the years to come.

Elsewhere Badu paints a broader picture beyond the confines of her love life, diagnosing instead the state of society and the complex experience of African-Americans within it. On the opening track, ‘Penitentiary Philosophy’, she expresses an underlying rage that seems to percolate beneath much of her work, lamenting the struggles of those around her who can only scrape together a living amidst the chaotic and competitive nature of a world which discourages unity. Aesthetically the song is a far cry from the low-slung ballads of her debut album, Baduizm, infused with a furious energy that draws from the soulful rock of Hendrix and Prince. On ‘A.D 2000’ she crafts an homage to Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23-year old immigrant shot dead outside his apartment building in 1999 by four NYPD officers after reportedly being mistaken for a rape suspect. Badu delivers the desperately sad lines “You won’t be naming no buildings after me / My name will be misstated, surely” with a tender, melodious tone that soothed a rightfully outraged public. Whilst she had become far more direct in her lyrics, throughout Mama’s Gun her razor-sharp poetic commentary remains a vital undercurrent.

Badu’s musical aesthetic had also shifted, moulding itself to the laid-back, jazz-infused nature of the Electric Lady’s Soulquarian residents. Recorded simultaneously with D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Common’s Like Water For Chocolate, Mama’s Gun was woven from the same stylistic threads that would span many future neo-soul classics. Producer Russell Elevado restricted the recording equipment to purely vintage hardware and microphones, ensuring a warm and organic sound that adhered to the languorous performance styles of musicians such as drummer Questlove and pianist James Poyser. On songs such as ‘…& On’ and ‘Cleva’ her breezy, free-wheeling nature manifests itself in a sound that seems to play with time, the music dripping out of the speakers like honey from a spoon. The percussion, bass, and piano conspire on these tracks to create syncopated grooves with deep pockets to fill, whilst Badu shifts between staccato and glissando rhythms with trademark elasticity”.

There are two more things that I want to cover before finishing up. Stereogum marked twenty years of Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun in November 2020. I think that I first heard the album the year is came out. I might have heard Baduizm beforehand, though I was instantly attracted to the sound of Badu and her music. This feature is slightly different to others. There is a particular section of the piece that I want to include, as it shines new light on some of the standout tracks and the meaning and story behind them:  

“Mama’s Gun was a natural jam session, but Badu was still hyperconscious of the mistreatment of Black men while raising a son. On Feb. 4, 1999, Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo was misidentified as a rape suspect and shot at 41 times — 19 bullets fatally striking him — by four NYPD officers in the Bronx. Triggered by the news, Badu grabbed her acoustic guitar and co-wrote “A.D. 2000” with late soul vocalist Betty Wright. The track swelled with mourning through multi-instrumentalist and producer James Poyser’s Minimoog while Badu and Wright banded together in multi-generational unison. In 2016, a Pitchfork review of Mama’s Gun by Daphne A. Brooks drove Badu’s point home:

In contrast to Baduizm, Mama’s Gun offers a more pointed, sustained, and grounded statement about what it means to get tired of waiting out and wading through the wretchedness of urban blight, the perpetual threat of police brutality and lethal force, the baggage from bad relationships and the sometimes oppressive voices inside one’s own head.

The universal origins of Black womanhood and its baggage was quite literally portrayed in “Bag Lady,” a reclamation of self-worth and the departure from generational trauma. While the album version of “Bag Lady” had a slower paced drum riff over a sample of Soul Mann & the Brothers’ “Bumpy’s Lament” — the source material for Dr. Dre’s 2001 track “Xxplosive” — the music video also featured the sample over a palatable, upbeat hip-hop tempo. Flipping the misogyny of “Xxplosive” into an affirmation of moving onward, each woman in the video — including Badu’s mother and her sister, Nayrok Wright — wore colors that symbolized chakras, Badu representing the root chakra. The women also duly portrayed characters from Ntozake Shange’s 1976 choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow Is Enuf. Like the scorned all-female characters of Shange’s dramatic elegy, Badu embodied the pain that women undergo when met with four words by men who feel suffocated in a relationship: “You crowding my space.”

At the video’s end, Badu experiences a moment of joy by cradling a then-infant Seven amidst subconsciously preparing him for hostility he’d face as a Black man in America. Though 2000 was a time where André and Badu both spoke similar languages to their son on separate albums, it was Mama’s Gun that was the armed bible for ongoing Black plight and self-preservation”.

I will wrap up with this review from Pitchfork. Singing its praises, they say of Mama’s Gun how this is an album “dense with ideas and sounds that draw from the past and look toward the future. Released in November 2000, it embodies the millennial tensions of that pivotal year”. Anyone who have never heard Mama’s Gun needs to investigate it right away:

“But Mama’s Gun turned an important page as she set out to pair songs that evoked the art of exquisite and romantically-charged lingering and hanging (the “urban hang suite,” as Maxwell would call it on his own debut album from 1996) alongside songs about being fed up with stasis, isolation, restriction and aborted dreams. In contrast to Baduizm, Mama’s Gun offers a more pointed, sustained, and grounded statement about what it means to get tired of waiting out and wading through the wretchedness of urban blight, the perpetual threat of police brutality and lethal force, the baggage from bad relationships and the sometimes oppressive voices inside one’s own head.

Those voices open the record’s first side in a cacophony of whispers as Badu admonishes herself about a laundry-list of unfinished tasks, nagging fears, and floating enigmas swirling through her mind (“I have to write a song… I have to remember to turn on the oven… warm up the apartment… Malcolm… Malcolm… I need to take my vitamin”). What cuts through the noise is a burst of sonic muscle—pure soul energy compressed into 10 initial seconds: the joyful ensemble (Chinah Blac and YahZarah) bellowing in Rufus-meets-Brand New Heavies unison as longtime collaborators Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson on drums, James Poyser on piano, Pino Palladino on bass, and Jeff Lee Johnson on guitar lay down a robust opening riff that sounds definitive and defiant. The opening moments of Mama’s Gun sound much less like anything off of Badu’s first record and instead resonate unmistakably in the vein of two other releases from earlier that year, Common’s fourth studio album, Like Water for Chocolate, and D’Angelo’s game-changing Voodoo. All three albums were recorded simultaneously at Electric Lady. All three benefitted from the skilled hand of legendary engineer Russell Elevado, who mixed each LP and drew on vintage recording techniques to evoke the ghosts of venerable albums past. And most crucially, all three featured MVP player Questlove acting improvisationally at the center of an alternative black pop universe at the turn of the millennium, one with clearly nostalgic tenets that nonetheless held fast to present communal concerns and future Wonder-inflected aspirations.

This was neo soul at arguably its most prolific and thrilling moment of growth and possibility. Innovated by black Gen-Xers who ardently valued and sought to revive their parents’ and their older siblings’ music and the albums that soundtracked their childhood, neo soul runs best on a seductive combination of cultural nostalgia, black solidarity dreams, and the will to couple sensually with an ideal partner while paying attention (somewhat but not always) to the politics of gender equality. And the list of remarkable artists who broke onto the scene alongside of Badu working this sound in the year of and leading up to 2000 underscores what a busy, passionate, and productive time it was.

From 1993, when Me’shell NdegéOcello stepped out ahead of everyone with Plantation Lullabies on Madonna’s Maverick label to D’Angelo’s 1995 first effort Brown Sugar (often erroneously referred to as the first in the genre) a year later to Maxwell’s debut (Urban Hang Suite) to Lauryn Hill’s insta-classic Miseducation in ’98 to oddball soulster Macy Gray’s one-hit smash On How Life Is in ’99, to the year 2000 when Jill Scott made her first LP (Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Volume I), these were exciting times when black singer-songwriter musicians were referencing Black Panther memoirs, African-American Studies history books, and deep cuts from reluctant soul icons like Bill Withers. In the days after Voodoo dropped into the world, New York Times critic Ben Ratliff would famously describe the genre as “a mature music, and a family music, for living rooms, rather than for the streets.”

“Penitentiary Philosophy,” the charging, opening track on Mama’s Gun pulls all of these ambitions together. Bursting with the energy and the righteous discontent of King’s letter from a Birmingham jail (in which he declared to the world “why we can’t wait” for liberation), it recalls the sonic palette of Maggot Brain-era Funkadelic while venturing further down the road of trenchant social critique that Badu had already begun to walk on Baduizm’s “Other Side of the Game,” her third single off of that album and one that planted her firmly in the run of socially-conscious hip-hop culture. With its looped sample of Stevie’s “Ordinary Pain,” “Penitentiary Philosophy” stays focused on the perils and corrosive effects of streets that don’t love you, streets that can trap you. “Here’s my philosophy/Livin’ in a penitentiary…” she declares, dropping verses like Gil Scott-Heron, “Brothers all on the corner/Tryin’ to make believe/Turn around ain’t got no pot to pee/Make me mad when I see you sad… you can’t win when your will is weak/When you’re knocked on the ground….” In the same year that David Simon dropped “The Corner” and two years before his masterpiece “The Wire,” Badu was still singing about the effects of the game from a woman’s point of view (something Simon’s shows were often, at best, half-assed about doing). Still the caring sister who observes the ensuing crisis from the sidelines, Badu has morphed on this track out of the role of devoted bystander into full-scale Last Poet”.

I do hope that there are features published in November. Twenty-five years after the release of Erykah Badu’s second album. One of those albums that I could listen to over and over again. I know there have been smatterings of activity from Erykah Badu over the past few years. However, there is a collaborative album, Abi & Alan (with The Alchemist), coming out this year I understand. Having recently toured, there will be separate tour dates to mark twenty-five years of Mama’s Gun. You can also get details from this podcast episode. It is an exciting time where Erykah Badu looks forward and back. Back at a classic. When I think of Mama’s Gun, there is really…

NOTHING quite like it.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Remembering the Great Janis Joplin

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Janis Joplin shot for the cover for her 1970 album, Pearl/PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Feinstein

Remembering the Great Janis Joplin

__________

ON 4th October

it will be fifty-five years since Janis Joplin died. She was one of the most accomplished, talented and iconic Rock vocalists of her generation. It is amazing to think how far Joplin could have gone. We lost her at the age of twenty-Severn. Recording two albums as lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company and two solo albums, I wanted to mark the upcoming anniversary of her death by collated some of her best tracks. Those that showcase her brilliance. A voice like no one else’s, I am going to start out with some biography. For those who may not know about Janis Joplin and why she is so revered and acclaimed. Last year, Classic Rock told the story of the First Lady of Rock. I am not going to bring in the whole thing. Instead, I was fascinating to read about Janis Joplin’s early life. Before she began her professional career. There was going to be a Janis Joplin biopic that should be out soon. There was some development and update late last year. It will be interesting see how Joplin is portrayed on the screen and what angle the biopic takes:

“Her sister Laura Joplin tells Classic Rock: “There was a certain frustration in her about some aspects of her life. It was hard to have relationships when travelling that much, and she was having ideas of… trying to live a more balanced life in terms of the amount of time she toured. I don’t think she was trying to leave the music business.”

Sam Andrew, Janis’s friend and guitarist in Big Brother & The Holding Company and The Kozmic Blues Band, agrees. He says today: “I could see her going through a ‘retirement’ and it would turn out to be a temporary phase, too. The ‘picket fence’ doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion. People who want a safe harbour don’t realise they would have to lose themselves completely to obtain that safety.”

Only three months after her sisterly exchanges on the train with Bonnie Bramlett, working toward a complete withdrawal from drugs and quietly arranging for a less frantic lifestyle, Janis died from an accidental overdose of heroin.

Janis Lyn Joplin came into the world on January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas, the first child born to her parents Seth and Dorothy. After six years Janis gained a sister, Laura, and baby Michael arrived four years later to complete the family.

They enjoyed a remarkable childhood, with their mother Dorothy determined to help them develop their initiative, creativity and independence. She taught Janis to play the piano, encouraged her flair for painting, and ensured that all three children discovered the magic of books and music and imagination. Dorothy insisted that the only boundaries they need worry about were those of the family and of society; their personal limits were endless.

Their father Seth was a strong and philosophical figure, a deep thinker who urged the importance of curiosity, enquiry and knowledge, but at the same time revelled in the home-made games and toys he produced for the youngsters.

In return for the respect that both parents demanded from their children, they gave the same back. Janis, Laura and Michael grew up knowing that their ideas and opinions were valued. They were invited to choose their own mealtime menus, served from a homely kitchen rich with the aroma of Southern cooking.

Asked her favourite memories of Janis at home, Laura replies: “Oh, being girls, trying on clothes together, cooking, family dinner conversations, things like that. It’s that wonderful quality of being loved and accepted and having someone to share growing up with. Janis reading books to me when I was younger, having her read Alice In Wonderland. Just very special times.”

Michael was seven when Janis started coming and going from the family home, but he holds dear certain recollections of his sister in her late teens and early 20s: “Her playing the guitar, her painting… Those were the best memories,” he says. “Janis helping me learn to draw. She was a very good renderer, and I wanted to be as well. She helped me. And I still use the simple rules she gave to a ten-year-old.”

Dorothy Joplin, herself from tough, farming stock, would never have suggested to her daughters any possible subservience to men in later life, or any undue emphasis on appearance.

Raised to be resolutely herself, to chase her own rainbow and try to rise to its height, the teenage Janis found herself increasingly at odds with her sternly conservative neighbours.

Janis worked as a keypunch operator in Los Angeles and sang in the coffee houses of the Venice Beach beatnik community. She hitched to San Francisco, went back to Lamar College, waitressed in a bowling alley in Port Arthur, soaked up jazz in New Orleans. In 1962 she began a fine arts course at Austin’s University of Texas, where she joined a group of like-minded artists, writers, poets, cartoonists and musicians in a bunch of dingy, rented flats known collectively as The Ghetto.

This was a key period for Janis. Her personal outlook was supported by her peers and also by a growing voice from the outside world, with people starting to protest at racial and female oppression.

Her artistic endeavours began to take a back seat to music. Taking up the autoharp, she formed The Waller Creek Boys with friends Powell St John and Lanny Wiggins, playing folk and bluegrass on campus and at venues in the wider Austin area.

Threadgill’s was one such bar. Its proprietor, country singer Ken Threadgill, was the first person to recognise Janis’s star quality. He suggested she accompany herself on guitar; he stressed the emotional substance that is central to the best music; he triggered her sidestep into blues singing. She never forgot him.

Janis had made her recording debut before moving to Austin. A jingle sung to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land, it was intended as an advertisement for a Texan bank. But TV and radio audiences unfortunately never got to hear the first efforts of a rock-legend-in-waiting; someone decided that the target market could live without her proclamations that ‘this bank belongs to you and me’.

At the University of Texas Janis worked on a wild and tough, protective image, swearing, drinking, smoking cigarettes, dealing grass and allegedly experimenting with peyote and Seconal. No longer just ‘one of the boys’, she became romantically and sexually involved with men and, sometimes, women. Outside her own, liberal circles, she was treated with caution, if not scorn”.

On 4th October, it will be fifty-five years since we lost Janis Joplin. One of the most remarkable artists who has ever lived, though her life was brief, she definitely left her mark. Such a powerful, expressive and spine-tingling voice, artists such as Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine, Amy Winehouse, P!nk, and Alanis Morissette are directly influenced by her. The impact of her music is still being felt…

AFTER all of these years.

FEATURE: Something Changed: Pulp’s Different Class at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Something Changed

Pulp’s Different Class at Thirty

__________

IT is great to…

talk about a band’s classic album when they are still together. Few would have imagined that the Pulp we heard in 1995 would still be together thirty years later. On 30th October, Pulp’s fifth studio album turns thirty. Following 1994’s His ‘n’ Hers, this was part of a golden run for Pulp. Not that they were finding their feet – as they had been around for years -, but it is clear that this band were at their peak. It is no wonder that Different Class was a massive success. Reaching number one in the U.K. and winner of the 1996 Mercury Music Prize, since then, Different Class has been ranked alongside the best and most influential albums ever. There is a thirtieth anniversary edition coming soon. NME reported the story:

“Now, to mark its 30th anniversary, the Sheffield band have announced details of an expanded reissue, to be released as both a quadruple LP set and as a double CD. It will be out on October 24 via Universal Music Records on behalf of Island Records and you can pre-order your copy here.

The release will include the full performance the band gave as Pyramid Stage headliners at Glastonbury 1995, an iconic set that came several months before the release of ‘Different Class’, after they were asked to fill in for The Stone Roses with just 10 days notice.

Speaking about the release, frontman Jarvis Cocker has said: “This 45rpm double album version of ‘Different Class’ will make it sound a whole lot better. We were obsessed with the fact that this was our ‘Pop’ album (we had finally achieved some ‘popularity’ when ‘Common People’ was a hit) &, as everyone knows, all pop albums have 12 songs on them: 6 tracks per side.

“Only problem: this took the running time of the record to 53 minutes. We were told this would compromise the audio quality of the vinyl record – but we were more bothered about not compromising the quality of our Pop Dream. Now, 30 years later, we are finally ready for ‘Different Class’ to be heard in all its glory. Different Class indeed”.

To mark thirty years of a landmark album in British music, I will explore a few features about it. A review that highlights the brilliance of Different Class. Rather than bring in some archive interviews, I want to get to some features to start us off. In 2015, NME provided an oral history of Different Class. I was twelve in 1995, so I recall how Different Class was being talked about. It is a fascinating album that was everywhere in a year when British music was incomparable:

“With ‘His ‘N’ Hers’ spawning Top 40 hits in the form of ‘Do You Remember The First Time?’ and ‘Babies’ (on its re-release), Pulp had emerged after 15 years in the indie gutter as pivotal movers and shakers of the Britpop scene. The sudden attention, however, struck Jarvis Cocker as odd after so many years as a waggle-fingered wannabe.

Jarvis Cocker (Pulp singer): “The first time the fame things really struck me was when I was on holiday in the south of England, and these big blokes would lumber up to me and I’d think, ‘Oh shit, I’m in for a right hammering here for looking like a weirdo,’ and they’d shake my hand and say, ‘Like your song, mate’. That was nice… Of course, as soon as I get used to it, some big bloke will lumber up to me, I’ll say, ‘Hello, who shall I sign the autograph to?’ and he’ll twat me for being a weirdo. There was a time when I was quite paranoid about going out. Not really getting hassled but, even if people don’t say anything to you, you can still see them nudging each other going, ‘Oh, ’e’s ’ere’, and it’s just like, ‘I just fancied a drink, really’. But I don’t complain about it, because I used to do it myself if someone famous walked in. It’s like what people say if there’s a disaster: ‘I never thought it would happen to me’.”

Melissa Laurie (Pulp’s PR in 1995): “Everybody was quite surprised, the way things were going. Pulp had spent a long time in the wilderness. There were loads of people saying, ‘They’re really old, they’re never gonna do it, they’ve been going round for years’. There was a sense of, ‘Is it really happening?’”

Jarvis Cocker: “You can kind of lose it, because people let you get away with murder, ’cos you’re a famous person. So, if you’re not careful, you can turn unto a really horrible person, just because you can take advantage of people all the time… I’ve always tried to strive to be as irresponsible as I possible can, so it’s difficult to discipline yourself”.

The first glimpse of material from Pulp’s fifth album came over the summer of 1994, when ‘Common People’, ‘Disco 2000’ and ‘Underwear’ began appearing in festival sets. But Pulp’s star really ascended, however, with the runaway Number Two success of ‘Common People’, which captured the musical and political tone of the decade (pop, anti-Tory) with its euphoric melodic crescendos and sharp-witted defiance of class tourist snobbery”.

Spotlighting twenty-five years of Pulp’s Different Class in 2020, Guitar.com commended the genius of a seismic album. One that I think altered the course of the band and those around them. Those who think Different Class is not a guitar album should rethink. This feature highlighted an album filled with “songs about love, class and leaving an important part of your brain somewhere in a field in Hampshire”:

“You might think that Different Class is not a guitar-centric album, Doyle’s Farfisa organ responsible for many of its signature hooks, but there are tonnes of guitar tracks on the record. Russell Senior used his Fender Jazzmaster throughout the sessions; Mark Webber, who’d joined the band earlier that year, played a Gibson ES-345, Les Paul and Firebird and Cocker, a seriously underrated player who according to engineer David Nicholas laid down a significant chunk of the guitar work on the record, a Vox Marauder, Ovation-12 string and Sigma acoustic. When it came to Common People, a surging multi-layered opus that gallops breathlessly from 90bpm to somewhere around 160, Cocker’s decision to add one more part to the puzzle proved crucial. Thomas having filled all 48 tracks on the desk, Cocker decided to put down an acoustic guitar part using his Sigma. “It brought the whole track together,” remembered the producer. “It was just a brilliant idea. That acoustic guitar just welded all these disparate elements together.”

“Jarvis is an incredible guitarist and I recorded him with the same mic that I used to record his vocal,” remembered engineer David Nicholas of the one-take contribution that transformed the song into a hit.

Elsewhere, there’s the the glorious strutting (F/B♭) riff that provides the basis for the wistfully nostalgic Disco 2000; and listen out in the sweeping Serge Gainsbourg-esque Live Bed Show for the sizzling EBow part. The utterly gorgeous Something Changed, carried by rich open chords, a strummed acoustic rhythm and an inspired strings section, has a delightful solo and even ode to raving Sorted For E’s & Wizz is underpinned by the crisply strummed Sigma. The dark, cinematic epic F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. presaged the shadowy post-Britpop comedown of 1998 follow-up This Is Hardcore, while the dubby Monday Morning has a darting riff that frolics joyously around Cocker’s vocal. Pulp’s three guitar players were absolutely essential to Different Class”.

I will come to a review soon. However, I found this feature from Stereogum from 2015. There will be a lot of new articles written about Different Class ahead of its twentieth anniversary on 30th October. Before coming to a final feature, I would advise people check out this one, that looks at a singular album that still sounds incredibly fresh, intriguing and filled with interesting people. I think it is the people, in the songs and on the cover, that has provoked so much discussion and theories. These visions and songs that tell these stories that so many people can relate to:

“Different Class represents the weird sort of magic that can happen when a band takes nearly two decades to find its voice. The Pulp of Different Class weren’t musically bright and brash, the way their Britpop peers were. Instead, they were slick and intricate and gauzy and atmospheric, picking up tricks from Serge Gainsbourg and Angelo Badalamenti and Lodger-era Bowie rather than Slade and Madness and Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie. Cocker might’ve been gawky and professorial in person, but he’s built up the confidence needed to sound like absolute sex on record. On Different Class, he manages to be flirty and creepy and charming and just slightly dangerous, often all at once, and it does it all while telling these grand and considered stories. The lyric sheets of Pulp’s records famously included a request: “Please do not read the lyrics whilst listening to the recordings.” Different Class is the moment that Cocker earned our compliance.

In the past year, there have been a couple of news stories about Pulp that weren’t really about Pulp. Instead, they were about women that Jarvis Cocker was singing about on different songs from Different Class, the Pulp masterpiece that turns 20 today. First story: A pioneering mental health worker, the woman Cocker was singing to on the song “Disco 2000,” died of bone marrow cancer at the way-too-young age of 51. Her name really was Deborah, and we’ll have to take Cocker’s word that it never suited her. Second story: A Greek newspaper reported that it had figured out who Cocker was singing about on “Common People,” reporting that the only woman who’d come from Greece with a thirst for knowledge and studied sculpture at St. Martin’s College, at least when Cocker was also studying there, was actually the wife of the current Greek Minister of Finance. (She must have a thing for elegant fuckups.) Cocker had once said that “Common People” was about a real woman but admitted that she hadn’t pursued him but that he’d pursued her. Both of these stories resonated in odd ways, at least to me, mostly because it had never occurred to me that Cocker was singing about real people. Instead, Deborah and the woman from Greece were pure abstractions, rendered through Cocker’s point-of-view, made to stand for things like upper-class privilege and the longing that can come from a platonic friendship. But it should’ve always stood to reason. The Cocker of Different Class was such a pointed and specific observer of human nature that it only makes sense that he’s lived his stories. And so maybe every song on Different Class is about a different real person or a different real experience. Still, finding out that the woman from Greece was a real person was like learning that Larry David is the real George Costanza. It makes perfect sense at the same time that it annihilates a whole fictional universe”.

In 2020, the BBC told the story of Different Class and discussed its impact. An album that documented modern Britain in 1995 and, then and now, does. I will pick up the article from the point where it talks about Common People and its success. It is great reading about Pulp briefly reforming and playing together but essentially that was it. Now, with them in the spotlight with a new album, this year’s More, it gives Different Class new context and weight:

“On Common People Cocker tore into class tourists, inspired by a well-to-do Greek girl he met at Central Saint Martins who wanted to try slumming it in Hackney for a while – “smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend she never went to school”. Hidden underneath those irresistible pop hooks is a mounting anger not just at her but all those who co-opt a working-class identity as a shortcut to authenticity – without ever dealing with the fear, uncertainty and absence of choice that comes with having no money. Towards the end of the song Cocker is practically spitting. “You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning or control, and with nowhere left to go”.

His anger is even more palpable on I Spy, a song in which someone who has nothing observes those who have everything – all the while plotting how to “blow [their] paradise away”. While fantasising about how he’ll infiltrate this Ladbroke Grove life, he compares his own: “My favourite parks are car parks. Grass is something you smoke, birds are something you shag. Take your Year in Provence and shove it up your ass.”

Pulp had spent most of their lives on the outside looking in, making them the perfect champion of the disempowered

But if a young Cocker thought the odds were stacked against him in the 80s and early 90s, he’d be even more raging now. Class privilege – especially in the arts – has only worsened. Last year, research by Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission found that 20% of British pop stars were privately educated (compared with 7% of the general population). Figures from 2018 showed that just 44% of the intake at the Royal Academy of Music came from state schools, with the Courtauld Institute of Art only slightly better at 55%. “A bunch of young working-class kids from the north really storming into the charts and onto the front pages of the papers… back in the 90s it was hard,” says Banks. “It seems almost impossible now.”

Pulp had spent most of their lives on the outside looking in, making them the perfect champion of the disempowered. “Being able to observe without being observed yourself, you get to see the real sort of underbelly or workings of what goes off in life,” says Banks.

No detail passed Cocker by, from “the broken handle on the third drawer down of the dressing table” (F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E) to the “woodchip on the wall” in Disco 2000. His stories were specific, but reflected a wider society, too – as in Sorted for E’s and Whizz, a song inspired by Cocker attending raves in the late 80s. “Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel, or just 20,000 people standing in a field?” With illegal raves now on the rise again in the UK, he could easily be talking about 2020, not 1988. In fact, aside from calls to “meet up in the year 2000”, so much of the album and its themes of being young and out of options feels pertinent in the current day.

The album reached number one and went on to win the Mercury Music Prize. A sell-out arena tour followed. Pulp were no longer the outsiders. It felt good – to begin with, at least. “When you’ve been in the desert so long and you reach the oasis you jump in and fill your boots,” says Banks.

Cocker had achieved his lifetime ambition to be a pop star – but he would later liken it to “a nut allergy”. The infamous 1996 Brit Awards, where he ran onstage during Michael Jackson’s performance of Earth Song to wiggle his bum to the audience – and ended up getting arrested on suspicion of assault (it was video footage captured by David Bowie’s team that got him off the hook) – turned the dream of pop stardom into a nightmare. Speaking recently to the New York Times he said: “In the UK, suddenly, I was crazily recognised and I couldn’t go out anymore. It tipped me into a level of celebrity I couldn’t ever have known existed, and wasn’t equipped for. It had a massive, generally detrimental effect on my mental health.”

His disillusionment – repulsion, even – with fame, played out on Pulp’s next album, This Is Hardcore, a record about “panic attacks, pornography, fear of death and getting old.” On opener The Fear, he sang: “This is the sound of someone losing the plot/Making out they’re OK when they are not”. If Britpop was already halfway out the door, this album gave it one last brutal kick to see it on its way.

“At the time we just laughed at [Britpop],” says Banks. “We’d been lumped in with many, many scenes over the years. We just couldn't relate to it, we weren’t bothered and the nearest we were to Britpop was Russell [Senior] wearing some Union Jack socks. It was always labels that other people foisted upon us.”

After releasing their seventh album, the Scott Walker-produced We Love Life, in 2001, Pulp went on hiatus for a decade, reforming in 2011 for a series of live dates. They played their last gig – for now at least – in their hometown of Sheffield in December 2013”.

If people celebrate Different Class and very much frame it around Common People, it is worth noting how strong the entire album is. How many gems there are. From Bar Italia to Mis-Shapes to Something Changed. There is not a weak moment on the album. Every song tells a story and forms this incredible and hugely memorable whole. In 2016, Pitchfork published their review of Different Class. There are some interesting observations:

“Cocker’s ambivalence about the masses also informs “Sorted For E’s & Wizz,” which—with “Mis-Shapes” as its double A-side—became Pulp’s second UK No. 2 hit of 1995. A wistful flashback to the illegal outdoor raves of the late ’80s and early ’90s, “Sorted” sees Cocker swept up in the collective celebration yet remaining deep down a doubtful bystander. “Is this the way they say the future's meant to feel?” he muses disconsolately, “or just twenty-thousand people standing in a field?” As the Ecstasy wears off and dawn peeks grimly over the horizon, Cocker finds the sensations of unity and bonhomie to have been ersatz and ephemeral: not one of the ultra-friendly strangers he’d bonded with earlier in the night will give him a lift back to the city. Still, he can’t quite shake the lingering utopian feeling that divisions of all kinds really were magically dissolved for a few hours. In the CD single booklet, a four-word statement of perfect ambiguity spells out his sense of rave’s fugitive promise: “IT DIDN'T MEAN NOTHING.”

Class is far from the only theme bubbling away in this album, though. At least half the songs continue the love ‘n’ sex preoccupations of His ‘N’ Hers, tinged sometimes with the yearning nostalgia of earlier songs like “Babies.” The treatment on Different Class ranges from saucy (“Underwear”) to seedy (“Pencil Skirt,” the hoarsely panting confessional of a creepy lech who preys on his friend’s fiancé) to the sombre (“Live Bed Show” imagines the desolation of a bed that is not seeing any amorous action). “Something’s Changed,” conversely, is a straightforwardly romantic and gorgeously touching song about the unknown and unknowable turning points in anyone’s life: those trivial-on-the-surface decisions (to go out or stay in tonight, this pub or that club) that led to meetings and sometimes momentous transformations. Falling somewhere in between sublime and sordid, the epic “F.E.E.L.I.N.G. C.A.L.L.E.D. L.O.V.E” exalts romance as a messy interruption in business-as-usual: “it’s not convenient...it doesn’t fit my plans,” gasps Cocker, hilariously characterizing Desire as “like some small animal that only comes out at night.”

Sex and class converge in “I Spy”—a grandiose fantasy of Cocker as social saboteur whose covert (to the point of being unnoticed, perhaps existing only in his own head) campaign against the ruling classes involves literally sleeping with the enemy. “It’s not a case of woman v. man/It’s more a case of haves against haven’ts,” he offers, by way of explanation for one of his recent raids (“I’ve been sleeping with your wife for the past 16 weeks... Drinking your brandy/Messing up the bed that you chose together”). Looking back at Different Class many years later, Cocker recalled that in those days he thought “I was actually working undercover, trying to observe the world, taking notes for future reference, secretly subverting society.”

“I Spy” is probably the only song on Different Class that requires annotation, and even then, only barely. Crucial to Cocker’s democratic approach is that his lyrics are smart but accessible: He doesn’t go in for flowery or fussy wordplay, for poetically encrypted opacities posing as mystical depths. He belongs to that school of pop writing—which I find superior, by and large—where you say what you have to say as clearly and directly as possible. Not the lineage of Dylan/Costello/Stipe, in other words, but the tradition of Ray Davies, Ian Dury, the young Morrissey (as opposed to the willfully oblique later Morrissey).

Cocker’s songs on Different Class are such a rich text that you can go quite a long way into a review of the album before realizing you’ve barely mentioned how it sounds. Pulp aren’t an obviously innovative band, but on Different Class they almost never lapse into the overt retro-stylings of so many of their Britpop peers: Blur’s Kinks and new wave homages, Oasis’ flagrant Beatles-isms, Elastica’s Wire and Stranglers recycling. On Pulp’s ’90s records, there are usually a couple of examples of full-blown pastiche per album, like the Moroder-esque Eurodisco of “She’s a Lady” on His ‘N’ Hers. Here, “Disco 2000” bears an uncomfortable chorus resemblance to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” while “Live Bed Show” and “I Spy” hint at the Scott Walker admiration and aspiration that would blossom with We Love Life, which the venerable avant-balladeer produced.

Mostly though, it’s an original and ’90s-contemporary sound that Pulp work up on Different Class, characterized by a sort of shabby sumptuousness, a meagre maximalism. “Common People,” for instance, used all 48 studio tracks available, working in odd cheapo synth textures like the Stylophone and a last-minute overlay of acoustic guitar that, according to producer Chris Thomas, was “compressing so much, it just sunk it into the track.... glued the whole thing together. That was the whip on the horse that made it go”.

With Pulp touring and with new material out, a young and unexposed generation are discovering their work. They get to hear the band play songs from Different Class three decades after its release. A chart-topping, award-winning masterpiece from the group, 30th October will see new acclaim for Pulp’s fifth studio album. If Jarvis Cocker recently joked that the album’s title is relevant when we consider an anniversary reissue will unveil the album’s full glory and sonic brilliance, it also refers to its superiority compared to other albums that were released in 1995 – in one of music’s best years. Different Class has a very…

APT title!

FEATURE: Hail to the Queens! 2025: Another Year Where Women Are Dominating

FEATURE:

 

 

Hail to the Queens!

IN THIS PHOTO: Hayley Williams/PHOTO CREDIT: Jacob Moscovitch

2025: Another Year Where Women Are Dominating

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I am going to come to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Blaz Erzetic/Pexels

some live and album reviews. An illustration of why women have been dominating music this year. I am going to mention specific artists, though I feel most of the best albums of this year have been from women. Most of the promising artists of 2025 I feel are women. It is not to sideline men or disregard their work. The music industry is still misogynist and sexist. Women still have to fight for equality, and there is imbalance through out the industry. What galls me is how slow it is seeing any progress. Some truly huge live gigs and festival appearances, together with remarkable albums and stunning songs, means that women are ruling right now. It has been this way for years now. However, this year especially, there have been some truly outstanding albums from women. I will bring in a few of those. However, more than simply celebrating women in music and how much they are adding in terms of value and legacy, it is worth looking at the industry as a whole and how far we have come. I think that, in terms of radio airplay and festival slots, there is still a gender divide. Progress slow in that regard. So many of the best newcomers are women. You do wonder how they will fare in years to come. Will they struggle to get booked as headliners or find it harder to get their music played? In terms of studios, there are small steps regarding women as producers. Even though there are still vastly more men in professional studios, incredible women like Catherine Marks are inspiring women coming through. However, taken as a whole, there has not been a vast move forward. In terms of opportunities and women in positions of power. Sexism and inequality still very much prevalent. Given the dominance that is coming from women, why is this not being translated into opportunity and parity?! It is something I write about a lot. With every slight improvement here, there is a step back there.

In terms of the best live performances of the year, there have been so many highlights to choose from. I think a few from Glastonbury stand out. CMAT arguably was the highlight of the festival. Rolling Stone UK were among those who awarded CMAT’s Pyramid Stage set a five-star rave. Her new album, EURO-COUNTRY, is among the best of the year. In terms of future festival headliners and icons, CMAT is on the precipice of superstardom:

“She tells the crowd that this is the scariest moment of her life, but commands the enormous field with apparent ease, making the crowd laugh, sing and do the Dunboyne, County Meath Two-Step with pure delight. Her songs come from a base of country music but are also packed with hooks, performed impeccably by The Very Sexy CMAT Band.

Before new song ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’, she commands the attention of the camera as she explains that the song isn’t actually a diss track about the TV chef, but a meditation on her own ability to hate. It’s one of countless songs in her catalogue to bring poignancy and laughs together in a way that dilutes neither.

Many might have been drawn to this set via the viral TikTok dance to ‘Take a Sexy Picture of Me’ – the ‘woke macarena’ as it’s been dubbed – but it takes more than that to become a true star with longevity.

Luckily, CMAT has it all. Her songs are catchy, poignant and well-crafted; on stage, she’s a powerhouse of performance, cracking gags and diving into the crowd, but not forgetting to make her final statement a call for a free Palestine. Come the end of 2025, she’ll be the artist that defines the year”.

There are a couple more live reviews I want to spotlight. Little Simz curated this year’s Meltdown Festival. She performed a great set with the Chineke! Orchestra. DIY heralded her captivating stage presence and prowess. Even though they called it a ‘return’ – which is a word applied to every artist at some point, and drives me nuts! -, this was not someone who has ever been away or anything less that at the forefront. Anyone who thinks Simz was returning has clearly not been following her career! She proved why she is one of the world’s best artists:

“New material from ‘Lotus’ - the latest addition to her already sparkling canon of work - chronicles Simz finding light in the dark after a dispute with close collaborator Inflo; Simz sued the producer back in January after he failed to repay a loan of £1.7m. Imagery of sharks and snakes stalk the songs, which manifest in the venom charging through Simz’s flow on ‘Thief’, bleeding directly into the thrilling industrial warble of ‘Flood’.

“I’m so pleased we can play this album for you tonight,” Simz says. “But first of all, let’s throw it back.” On her cue, the strings strike-up the doe-eyed ‘Two Worlds Apart’ which holds the audience accountable to some thrilling call and response; then, 'Marijuana' and 'Kendrick Lamar' are both belted out without restraint. The set shimmies between the light and dark at an expert pace. Pure joy erupts throughout the cathartic ‘I Love You, I Hate You’ and the double dose of guest Obongjayar on ‘Lion’ and ‘Point & Kill’. ‘Free’ and the hypnotic Latin shuffle of newbie ‘Only’ offers oxygen to the lighter moments, bobbing atop the orchestral flourishes rising behind her. These songs feel elegant, floaty and weightless in the live setting; it’s pure bliss.

The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a seated auditorium in practice, but the logic of a Simz show defies its purpose. As the band reset after a fierce rendition of ‘Venom’ - which starts off with Simz in the conductor box - a ripple of people start to nestle back into their seats. “What are you sitting down for?” she laughs, shaking her head as the groovy bars of fun throwaway ‘Young’ spark up. “Na na na, you’re not allowed to do that.” Simz is gifted at riffing with the audience, flitting between humorous and charming asides like these, to open-hearted vulnerability. “This song makes me uncomfortable,” she says ahead of the delicate ‘Lonely’. “Sort of like opening a letter in front of somebody it’s addressed to - but I think I can trust you guys,” she adds.

You catch the feeling that much of Simz’s catalogue is built for this specific grandiose set-up; a touch of theatrics always underpins her work, as is evidenced on the back and forth of ‘Blood’. Wretch 32 emerges from the corner of the amphitheatre as the pair play out a phone conversation between two siblings. They end up back-to-back, centre stage, as Cashh sings out the song’s hook and entrances the crowd into a sea of arm waving.

Judging by the darkness surrounding the new material (which drips with a loss in confidence, pain, and betrayal), it’s a wonderful thing to see Simz claw back what’s rightfully hers. The set caps off with the confessional lullaby ‘Selfish’, the anthemic ‘Woman’, and a thunderous rendition of ‘Gorilla’ - a triple threat if there ever was one. The latter sparks pandemonium, and in referencing one of her earliest bars penned aged 11 - “Sim, simmer, who’s got the keys…” - it marks a real full circle moment. Each thread loops back to the start of her career, sees her back in the city she has conquered, and finds her back at the top where she belongs. It's a spellbinding return”.

I do want to talk about rising artists. Women as solo artists and in bands. However, when it comes to highlighting the best of the best, you often have to go to mainstream artists. Sabrina Carpenter played some sold-out shows at Hyde Park in London in July. Playing at BST Hyde Park, NME heralded the command of a Pop giant who is at the top of her game. If modern Pop is dominated by Taylor Swift, there are other titans like Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx and Dua Lipa. Billie Eilish. So many compelling artists who will endure for decades:

“The announcement of her upcoming album, ‘Man’s Best Friend’, due out on August 29, whipped up a storm of controversy thanks to its cover, which sees Carpenter on her knees at the feet of a man while he pulls her hair. Discourse questioned whether her horny schtick had officially run out of road, but ‘Manchild’, the recently-released first single from the upcoming record, elicitsed one of the biggest responses of the night. Fans know every word and throw their arms in the air as they scream along with lyrics that lament the state of modern dating, proving that internet drama has no real sticking power in a field of powder-blue babydoll dresses.

From there, Carpenter cycles through a tight setlist that’s as much a showcase of her back catalogue as it is the kind of genre gymnastics she can do. She performs songs like ‘Coincidence’ and ‘Sharpest Tool’ from ‘Short n’ Sweet’ semi-acoustically, giving space to her trilling country-tinged vocals and quippy songwriting, while performances of ‘Because I Liked A Boy’ and ‘Couldn’t Make It Any Harder’ provide moments of belting catharsis.

But all of that feels like edging before the big release, which no doubt Carpenter could write an expertly cheeky lyric about. A ‘Parental Advisory’ warning emblazons the screen before ‘Bed Chem’, which Carpenter sings to a top-down camera as she lies on a bed. It’s the moment in her tour where she’s joined by a male dancer and some Austin Powers-esque shadow work with a screen that shows them enacting a sex position. This time, she invites two male dancers who kiss each other before they all fall into bed together. As the lights dim, a chorus of “Happy Pride!” breaks out in the crowd.

Then comes ‘Juno’, the big crescendo, where Carpenter does her usual bit of ‘arresting’ a hot person in the crowd. On tour, this slot is usually given to her celebrity friends and admirers, but this time, she chooses a fan who’s been warming the barricade all day. It’s a nice reminder that, though celebrity cameos make for good TikTok viral moments, there’s something much more genuinely heartwarming about seeing someone get noticed by their favourite artist.

Talking of viral stunts, Carpenter has been making waves on tour for picking new sex positions to act out as part of ‘Juno’ each night to the lyric “Have you ever tried this one?”, including a much-discussed Eiffel Tower in Paris. This time, she forgoes the bit to let off two t-shirt guns into the crowd, which is the same move she did at her most recent headline slot at Primavera Sound in Barcelona. Still, she’s far from censoring herself, as she corrals the crowd to sing “I’m so fucking horny” along with the lyrics at the top of their lungs, which may be one of the more joyful things you can experience in a field.

Finally comes ‘Espresso’, the moment even the slightly concerned dads in the crowd who are mentally figuring out how to explain the concept of bed chem to their 10-year-old daughters on the way home can’t help but bop along to. Fireworks shoot out of the stage as Carpenter sings the biggest song of her career, which is only a year old, but somehow feels like the only song ever made. It’s catapulted the singer from an artist orbiting the pop girl league tables to one of its reigning champs, but her command of this space is a testament to the years of graft it took to get there. All she needed was time”.

So many album of the year contenders are going to come from incredible women. Hayley Williams’s Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party is one of 2025’s best albums. Previously having released a surprise song cycle, it was made official with this album released last month. This is what KERRANG! wrote in their review. Whether you know her only from her work as leads of Paramore or are a fan of all of her music, there is no denying how brilliant and important Hayley Williams is. LOUDER recently wrote how Williams is slaying in an industry still dogged by misogyny and sexism:

“It’s been a perplexing summer so far for Hayley Williams fans, feeling like a whiplash of violent yellow aesthetics and sorrow-driven songs. The first glimpse of this new era came in July, arriving like sprawled out puzzle pieces on a ’00s-inspired website, which would ultimately become the Paramore vocalist's third full-length, Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party. Building the jigsaw, though, was a task awarded to us, and while the vision is near complete, she's already teasing there are two more songs to come.

It’s hard to think what else could be missing from this body of work; the most beastly out of all of Hayley's solo records, EDAABP is somewhat of an enigma given she has remained relatively tight-lipped on the inspirations behind it, and the lack of order disrupting any straight narrative to begin with. The first chunk of the album nails her tactic of making high-impact, fizzing tracks that sound so incredibly alive, as an undercurrent of depression runs beneath if you listen closely enough – while the chorus of Glum ascends heavenly, Hayley quizzes, ‘Do you ever feel so alone / That you could implode / And no one would know?’

In this way, this album harks back to Paramore’s After Laughter. There’s a climbing synth motif on Love Me Different that feels familiar with this in mind, and many tracks feature the recurring theme of water – a metaphor Hayley uses to describe love and her views on relationships that she’s ran with across all of her solo records, but notably on After Laughter’s Pool.

While she excavates even deeper into herself on this release, Hayley also casts her net far and wide lyrically: True Believer, an examination of religious hypocrisy and racism, is bold, brilliant, and quietly scathing. Accompanied by dystopian, spaced-out piano, Hayley draws on how these themes play out across America: ‘They pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all their children / They say that Jesus is the way / But then they gave him a white face.’

Marking her first release outside of Atlantic Records, Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party is the most vast summation of Hayley’s story so far. A musical purge of trauma patterns, depression, love, loss, and of course, ego, the wit and honesty of Hayley’s lyricism is the shining star of this work. It’s an unboundless exploration of a life lived under the scrutiny of misogyny and in the public eye from one of our time’s most creative and fearless artists”.

There is one more album I want to quote a review of. Or a mixtape, I guess. PinkPantheress released Fancy That earlier in the year. It is one of the best releases of the year. Pitchfork provide a positive take on the rise of a terrific British artist that has a distinct sound and is in her own lane. Someone that deserves a lot more attention and praise:

“Fancy That is a portal into an alternate universe where UK garage successfully crossed the Atlantic and fashion froze in 2006. But apart from the more superficial choices (the cover’s Lily Allen–inspired graphic collage, the decision to shoot the music video for “Stateside” in a JCPenney parking lot), Pink’s world-building plays out most vividly in her music. After largely forgoing samples on Heaven Knows, Fancy That is an encyclopedia of references that far exceeds stale Y2K cosplay. Subtle clues like the Panic! at the Disco strings that segue into “Tonight” or the hilarious, stoned call-and-response with a Nardo Wick sample on “Noises” are juxtaposed against some thrilling acts of appropriation. “Illegal” blazes into the mix by isolating and supercharging the synths from Underworld’s “Dark & Long (Dark Train Mix),” while “Girl Like Me” takes a Basement Jaxx sample and spins it out into a roaring speed garage banger. British dance music has caught a second life across Gen Z pop; PinkPantheress’ tour through the hardcore continuum is lived-in and substantial, bringing the legacies of producers like Sunship, Adam F, and MJ Cole into the present while strutting her own glittering new path.

Apart from garage and jungle, PinkPantheress is deeply inspired by emo, an influence heard most clearly in the bleeding-edge intensity of her songwriting. Vulnerable motifs repeat throughout her early music, like the humiliation of being caught emoting in public (“Pain,” “Just for me”), or death as a marker for a relationship’s furthest limits (“Nice to Meet You,” “Ophelia,” “Mosquito”). Though she colored in these feelings with a degree of subtlety, the metaphorical extremes exposed the youthfulness of her perspective. What’s wonderful about Fancy That is how bold and funny it is: This Pink won’t buckle under pressure or spiral when left alone. She takes romantic and everyday disappointment in glorious stride. “Stars” pulls double duty: offering a sympathetic ear to a friend who’s unlucky in love, while soundtracking her own frustration with an unreliable plug. The romantic-sounding “Romeo” is a thoroughly modern kiss-off that delivers the fatal blow with a couplet as withering as it is inclusive: “You can fall in love with boys and girls and in between/So I promise that you shouldn’t waste your time on all of me.”

Pink is equally forthright about sex and desire. It’s thrilling to hear her put Abercrombie & Fitch hotties through their paces on “Stateside,” paying her respects to Estelle and putting a sexy spin on the “special relationship” all in one go. But “Tonight” is even more impressive: a song-length come-on where the fast-paced thump mirrors a dawning sense of romantic urgency. Even if she plays the directness of a hook like “You want sex with me?/Come talk to me” for giggles, there’s an overriding sweetness that kicks the song into a higher level of feeling. She occupies the space between the bouncing, full-bodied bassline and plaintive keyboards with a plainly stated want that would be unthinkable on her introverted early releases. Having come so fully into her own, PinkPantheress still aspires to reach out to you”.

These are just a few examples of women dominating on the stage and in the studio. I do hope that the next few years sees some balance occurring. So many incredible women reshaping genres. From Pop acts like JADE to great young bands coming through that are shaking up Alternative and R&B, it is a really exciting time for music. There is a lot of emphasis on Pop. Women dominating. Last year was one where women made a huge contribution. Albums from Beyoncé and Chappell Roan among those released in a landmark year for women. Alternative Pop and Rock seeing women on top. Women also very much at the centre of the GRAMMYs earlier this year and showing why the tide should turn. The same story at the BRITs. If last year was seen as a hopeful new era for women, there have been steps back. Multiple male artists accused of sexual abuse and crimes. Airplay for women not where it should be. The majority of festival headliners at major events being men. If the music press is dedicating column inches and time highlighting wonderful upcoming artists and established queens alike, there is still a way to go. We can see future icons like Doechii. Brilliant bands like Die Spitz. Pop being dominated by women. They are adding so much to the industry but there is still a lot of darkness and imbalance. Showing them proper respect and ensuring that their phenomenal talent is recognised and true equality happens…

IS long overdue.

FEATURE: Major/Minor: Has Music Journalism Become Less Critical?

FEATURE:

 

 

Major/Minor

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

Has Music Journalism Become Less Critical?

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WHEN I asked that question…

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

I was thinking ‘critical’ as mean or less positive, rather than detailed and in depth. It is true that the language and structure of reviews has changed through the years. Look at album reviews from the 1990s and 2000s and I do think that there has been a shift. Maybe altering to suite the Internet age and the way we digest media, I do think there have been some positive changes. I got into music from reading music reviews in publications like Q and NME. Few of those great music magazines are around today. MOJO is perhaps one of the last of those established greats. Pitchfork used to have a reputation for being very mean and edgy. They would rate albums out of ten and score most pretty low. I remember reading a review for Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature that was very insulting. Maybe critics equating being edgy and dismissive with being popular and relevant. Perhaps mirroring what was happening in film and culture. Perhaps a cynicism that mirrored political events or something rank and unseemly. I have read so many interviews from as recent as the mid-2010s that are deliberately unpleasant and try and grab you by their gall and front rather than the quality of language and criticism! I know music critics are meant to be critical when they should be, though I find there was this vein of nastiness that ran through a lot of journalism. Maybe as far back as the 1960s. Recently, I wrote a feature where I asked why albums do not get negative reviews like films do. I mean, you do get albums that get a one or two-star review, but it very rare. That was not the case years ago. Can we assume that music is better or, more likely, critics are less willing to be negative about music? It takes a particular misjudged album to get a one-star review, whereas film critics still dish them out. If not a kindness, there is an unwillingness to return to the past and a style of journalism that did see critics savage albums when required.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

The reason I am returning to this subject is because of a new article from The New Yorker that asked if music criticism has lost its edge. Is it a case of more positive or fewer negative reviews meaning an edge is gone, or are journalists more aware of modern culture? So much negativity and hatred online, is it piling on or too much to add to that? You can be objective about music without having to be nasty. I guess you do not get the same sort of cutting or slightly sarcastic reviews as before. Critics giving an album one or two stars and throwing in some humour and bite. Is that a good or bad thing? I myself avoid reviewing albums I do not like because I can’t bring myself to be unkind. You can be honest, though I think at a certain point you tip into being actually critical. I do not see any albums reviews like that now. I do think that many critics are actually adding a star or positivity to their reviews compared to what they actually want to do so that their words do not come back to bite them. People going after the reviewer! I will continue in a minute. However, I wanted to take parts of that excellent and thought-provoking article from The New Yorker:

“There is something a bit funny, at any rate, about pop-music criticism, which purports to offer serious analysis of a form that is often considered (by other people, who are also, in a sense, critics) rather silly. In 1969, Robert Christgau, the self-proclaimed Dean of American Rock Critics, began writing a Village Voice column called “Consumer Guide,” in which he assigned letter grades to new albums. He took pleasure in irritating the kinds of rock-loving hipsters who “considered consumption counterrevolutionary and didn’t like grades either.” He described the music of Donny Hathaway as “supper-club melodrama and homogenized jazz” (self-titled album, 1971: D-), and referred to George Harrison as a “hoarse dork” (“Dark Horse,” 1974: C-). In 1970, in Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus, another pioneering rock critic, began his review of Bob Dylan’s “Self Portrait” by asking, “What is this shit?” One of the era’s best-known critics, Lester Bangs, specialized in passionate hyperbole. In a 1972 review of the Southern-rock band Black Oak Arkansas, for the magazine Creem, Bangs called the singer a “wimp” and suggested (“half jokingly”) that he ought to be assassinated—only to decide, after more thought, that he quite liked the music. “There is a point,” he wrote, “where some things can become so obnoxious that they stop being mere dreck and become interesting, even enjoyable, and maybe totally because they are so obnoxious.” Something similar could have been said about Bangs and the other early critics of what was commonly referred to as “popular music”—a usefully broad term, although sometimes not broad enough. In 1970, Christgau ruefully conceded that some of his favorite groups, like the country-rock act the Flying Burrito Brothers or the proto-punk band the Stooges, might more accurately be said to make “semipopular music.”

Over the years, “critically acclaimed” came to function as a euphemism for music that was semipopular, or maybe just unpopular. This magazine’s first rock critic was Ellen Willis, who in 1969 wrote presciently about the way that rock and roll was being “co-opted by high culture”: fans, as well as critics, were trying to separate the “serious” stuff from the “merely commercial.” One of her successors was the English novelist Nick Hornby, who eventually grew curious about the chasm that separated the records he loved from the records everyone else loved. In August, 2001, he published a funny and audacious essay titled “Pop Quiz,” in which he listened to the ten most popular albums in America and relayed his thoughts, some of which would not have sounded out of place coming from an opera box in the Muppets’ theatre. He didn’t mind Alicia Keys but was bored by Destiny’s Child and depressed by albums from Sean Combs (then known as P. Diddy) and Staind, a neo-grunge band. One need not hate this music to enjoy Hornby’s acerbic survey of it: whenever I think of Blink-182’s pop-punk landmark “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket,” which is often, I think of Hornby wondering just how everything had got so stupid. “My copy of the album came with four exclusive bonus tracks, one of which is called ‘Fuck a Dog,’ but maybe I was just lucky,” he wrote. In a sense, he was lucky: back in 2001, fans who wanted to hear “Fuck a Dog,” a brief but well-executed acoustic gag, had to seek out one of three color-coded variants of the CD.

There is another argument to ask whether we actually need music criticism. People are online and have this forum to voice their opinions. However, music journalists have this particular talent and ability to judge and describe music in a way your average music lover cannot. They have experience and this passion that means their opinions are important. I think so, anyway. Are music journalists, in their zeal to be less critical and needlessly sharp, losing perspective? One positive thing is the fact there are more websites and avenues where you can read music criticism. Get various perspectives on an album. However, I do feel that the tone and approach to reviewing has changed. Only very occasional when you get very negative reviews or an album that gets scathing or edgy attention. Websites like Pitchfork that once normalised a much more judgemental approach and rarely gave out positive scores for albums have changed their tune (slightly):

In 2018, the social-science blog “Data Colada” looked at Metacritic, a review aggregator, and found that more than four out of five albums released that year had received an average rating of at least seventy points out of a hundred—on the site, albums that score sixty-one or above are colored green, for “good.” Even today, music reviews on Metacritic are almost always green, unlike reviews of films, which are more likely to be yellow, for “mixed/average,” or red, for “bad.” The music site Pitchfork, which was once known for its scabrous reviews, hasn’t handed down a perfectly contemptuous score—0.0 out of 10—since 2007 (for “This Is Next,” an inoffensive indie-rock compilation). And, in 2022, decades too late for poor Andrew Ridgeley, Rolling Stone abolished its famous five-star system and installed a milder replacement: a pair of merit badges, “Instant Classic” and “Hear This.”

Even if you are not the sort of person who pores over aggregate album ratings, you may have noticed this changed spirit. By the end of the twenty-tens, people who wrote about music for a living mainly agreed that, say, “Hollywood’s Bleeding,” by Post Malone (Metacritic: 79); “Montero,” by Lil Nas X (Metacritic: 85); and “Thank U, Next,” by Ariana Grande (Metacritic: 86), were great, or close to great. Could it really have been the case that no one hated them? Even relatively negative reviews tended to be strikingly solicitous. “Solar Power,” the 2021 album by the New Zealand singer Lorde, was so dull that even many of her fans seemed to view it as a disappointment, but it earned a polite three and a half stars from Rolling Stone. Some of the most cutting commentary came from Lorde herself, who later suggested that the album was a wrong turn—an attempt to be chill and “wafty” when, in fact, she excels at intensity. “I was just like, actually, I don’t think this is me,” she recalled in a recent interview. And, although there are plenty of people who can’t stand Taylor Swift, none of them seem to be employed as critics, who virtually all agreed that her most recent album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” was pretty good (Metacritic: 76). Once upon a time, music critics were known for being crankier than the average listener. Swift once castigated a writer who’d had the temerity to castigate her, singing, “Why you gotta be so mean?” How did music critics become so nice?

There is also this generational thing. Maybe a certain style of writers that found it normal or expected to be ‘honest’. Without filter. Many of those who were in their twenties or thirties when they started have either retired, left music journalism or have softened their approach. Perhaps knowing about musicians and struggles with mental health and the realities of being an artist has opened their mind and changed how criticism operates. If an album is objectively poor or bland, critics using less spiky and acidic language. Less directed at the artist and maybe a more muted or balanced language that is more aimed at the music and aesthetic. Even massive artists who are overhyped or release a terrible album not given a booting as once they would. In my previous feature, I gave the example of Katy Perry and Will Smith who have recently released pretty insipid and unimpressive albums. In spite of a few one-star reviews, the critics of today have written differently and less critically than they would, thirty, twenty or even ten years ago. The New Yorker made an interesting point when they highlighted how fan culture and these tribes are a lot more powerful and notable than decades ago. They can go after a journalist if they insult their favourite artist. The Internet gives them an outlet to find that journalist, or at least trash the publication or website. Share the review in question and cause issues. There is a lot to consider before you type a word of a review now.

Are critics playing it safe through fear of fans’ backlash, offending an artist or being seen as aggressive or unkind at a time when we need to be more positive and together? It is an interesting line of discussion I would like to hear other people’s opinions on:

Perhaps the most infamous review of “The Tortured Poets Department” was published in the music magazine Paste. It had a cantankerous opening sentence that Lester Bangs might have enjoyed (“Sylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this!”), but no byline; the magazine said that it wanted to shield the writer from potential “threats of violence.” For similar reasons, the Canadian publication Exclaim! declined to identify the author of certain articles about Nicki Minaj, whose fans can be ferocious. Often, I suspect, writers have decided to keep their most inflammatory views to themselves. “I think sometimes I can tell when a writer politely demurs, without saying as much,” one editor told me. “They’re just, like, The juice ain’t worth the squeeze”.

I shall leave it there, as this is a bigger subject than I can do proper justice to. I was fascinated by the feature from The New Yorker. I have noticed how there are way more four and five-star albums reviews. The language, whilst perhaps not as colourful, idiosyncratic and fascinating, is nicer, deeper and perhaps not aimed to make headlines for the wrong reason. No longer cool or desired for critics to be edgier or curmudgeonly. Some might bemoan that, though I do think that there are two things to note. Music is experiencing this wonderful peak, so it is natural that reviews reflect that. I would like to see more bite and some subjective criticism for more albums rather than critics pulling punches. The way social media can mobilise criticism against journalists; fans are so protective of artists, and that has affected a lot of things. Critics worried about the effects of being attacked. Despite there being few characters like before where you would get these caustic or negative reviews that were entertaining to read, there is a kinder approach. I think that critics are going deeper with the music and there is this thoughtfulness and open-minded approach that was not there as much before. In my view, music criticism is…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

BETTER for it.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Die Spitz

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Die Spitz

__________

I am writing this…

before 12th September, which is when Die Spitz’s debut album, Something to Consume, is released. Rough Trade have shared some words on it, which I shall get to in a minute. This quartet follow their 2023 E.P., Teeth, with an absolute gem. Hailing from Austin, Texas, Ava Schrobilgen (vocals/guitar), Chloe Andrews (drums), Ellie Livingston (guitar/vocals) and Kate Halter (bass) are a band to behold. Quite rightly getting so much buzz and attention! By the time you read this, there will be reviews out for Something to Consume:

“Absolute gem of an album from Die Spitz on Third Man. Ferocious, versatile, raw, and unapologetic. It has the same thrill as hearing Hole for the first time.

When the Venn diagram of passion, friendship, identity, and artistry collide, it can feel as if fighting words are spitting from your veins. And as postmodern society crumbles, Die Spitz giddily bounce between a dozen different ways to push back.

If the world of rock music were an ice cream shop, the Austin quartet have sampled each flavor, flipped the freezer over, and started dancing with the employees they helped unionize.

On their debut album, Something to Consume (via Third Man Records), Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston, and Kate Halter fight against the inescapable consumption that surrounds life. "There's a political side to it, but addiction and love can also be all-consuming," Livingston says.

And as the foursome trade off instruments, swapping songwriting and vocal duties, and generating powerful songwriting in concussive bursts, Die Spitz have created their own little pocket of the world where we can all stand on the edge together”.

I am going to end with a live review from a show in London where Die Spitz killed in London in the summer. A five-star review from LOUDER. I am coming to a few recent interviews with the group. With Something to Consume shaping up to be one of the best albums of this year, Die Spitz are also one of the most important bands around. Original and with incredible chemistry, they are both an incredible studio group but sensational on the stage. They have all the components to go very far in the music industry. The first piece I want to source from is The Line of Best Fit. Hailing a phenomenal and future-legends Punk quartet from Texas, The Line of Best Fit note how Die Spitz “abide the ‘separate but together’ approach, allowing space for each of their personalities to burn brightly”:

“Deciding on the moniker ‘Die Spitz’ – which, aptly, is German for pointy or sharp – during a Fireball whiskey-induced session, the quartet gained prominence with their evocative, mosh-ready sound. Taking inspiration from bands such as Black Sabbath and Nirvana to create distinct hits such as “Hair of Dog” and “I hate when GIRLS die”, the group have used their shared experiences to hone their sound into punchy, unapologetic rallying calls – as they put it, with the aim of inciting mayhem.

Previous EPs such as The Revenge of Evangeline in 2022 and Teeth in 2023 are a testament to this fact. Both hold nothing back, with Evangeline showcasing the band’s tenacity for anarchic and hell-raising punk, while Teeth artfully employs gruesome lyricism and power chords to connect with audiences over themes of female rage. It’s no surprise that the latter album won Album of the Year at the Austin Music Awards in 2024. Since then, the band have harnessed their experiences and expanded their process so that their debut LP, Something to Consume, builds on what came before it – using it as an avenue for experimentation in both their sound and lyrics.

“We have a lot of respect for each other,” De St. Aubin tells me, “so we’re not overbearing and trying to control the process of anyone’s writing. I think that’s why it comes about so naturally.”

“We don’t only write the song ourselves,” Schrobilgen, who had been resting her voice up until this point, says, entering the chat by sitting down on the arm of the sofa. “We bring it to the band and then we let them give their two cents and write their own parts for their instruments and all of that.”

Their debut with Third Man Records, Something to Consume finds the band experimenting with the various music genres that inform each of them individually. In doing this, Die Spitz have created a kaleidoscope of defiant, melancholic, and celebratory music that weaves together the multiple strings of alternative subgenres they grew up admiring, effortlessly telling the band’s story so far.

Hitting ears on 12 September 2025, Something to Consume also enables De St. Aubin, Halter, Livingston, and Schrobilgen to unfurl their wings and express themselves in various other ways. Girlhood is a spectrum and Die Spitz depict this in a very relatable way. This is evident in tracks such as “Punishers”, which De St. Aubin wrote after taking inspiration from the 2000 cult teen classic Twilight, creating a melancholic sound that is deeply romantic in its lyrics and evokes the blue-hued filtered imagery distinctive of the first film.

Being able to perform and travel with each other has been a huge highlight for the four women. It’s for this reason that their live shows are so energetic and memorable, like their set at Mohawk during SXSW Marshall Day 2025, which saw Livingston sing whilst sitting on Halter’s shoulders as she played bass. There is a love and trust that runs deep between the members of Die Spitz, giving them all the confidence to experiment and express themselves individually and help shape the image and sound of the band, making them a powerful group both on stage and in the studio”.

As with all of my Spotlight features, I am interested to know how other people view them. What they say in interviews. I can give my views on their music and, months or years back, I would have reviewed an album like Something to Consume. However, I feel collating interviews gives us a good impression of the artist and where they are. It brings me to the penultimate interview. This one is from FADER. A band who, they say, are on the right side of history with their music and are a wrecking ball against oppression, Die Spitz cannot be ignored. That’s what I meant then I said they are important. They are using their platform to put out music that is not just needed right now in terms of what it is saying. Their messages and music will affect and inspire people now but will also be remembered and quoited years from now. Perhaps a more casual chat with some, let’s say, mix of trivial and serious questions, I like the responses Die Spitz offer:

“What’s a motto that you think everyone should live by?

Eleanor: Go through life grabbing it by the balls.

Ava: Fake it till you make it.

Kate: Wipe front to back.

Chloe: I used to tell myself “expect the worst to get the best.” It was a motto I made up as a kid which essentially means that you should keep your expectations low so that you’re never disappointed.

What’s your favorite song to play live right now and why?

Eleanor: "American Porn." I feel that song pretty intense when we play, especially if there are creeps at the show.

Kate: "Big Boots." This song didn't make it on the album because we had too many good songs but it always gets the crowd moving. Also I get to slap the bass.

What’s your favorite song to play live right now and why?

Eleanor: "American Porn." I feel that song pretty intense when we play, especially if there are creeps at the show.

Kate: "Big Boots." This song didn't make it on the album because we had too many good songs but it always gets the crowd moving. Also I get to slap the bass”.

NME made no apologies when they called Die Spitz the “most exciting new rock band on the planet”. It is no exaggeration! I am relatively late to them and have only really known about them for weeks. However, the Texas four-piece have a loyal and passionate fanbase that is growing larger and larger. The band have a series of U.S. dates and some Canadian gigs. I am not sure if they are coming to the U.K. next year but, having been here before and wowed critics and fans, there is going to be demand for them to come back soon:

“Something To Consume’ also hangs together better than it ever should because of the bone-deep chemistry between the quartet. On the surging ‘Red 40’ and ‘Riding With My Girls’, their camaraderie seems impenetrable, like being confronted with a collective ‘fuck you’ from a bunch of people in their bulletproof early-twenties. It’s also deeply aspirational. You want to be a part of their team, headbanging at the lip of the stage as Livingston stomps a fuzz pedal half to death with a red cowboy boot. “I think that’s the foundation of friendship underneath our band – the collaboration that comes from that closeness,” Schrobilgen adds.

The roots of that friendship run deep. Halter, Livingston and Schrobilgen have been tight since they were kids, and began playing music together in what would become Die Spitz when Covid ran roughshod over the usual avenues teenagers have to spend time together. In a recent interview with the Line of Best Fit, they described De St. Aubin’s introduction almost in terms of pulling someone in from a life lived in parallel — different schools but the same town, same obsessions. “I think we all have similar moral compasses, similar ways of viewing life,” Livingston observes now.

Recorded with producer Will Yip, whose work with Mannequin Pussy, Nothing and Scowl seems to cover a decent amount of Die Spitz’s existing real estate, the record sounds huge, but it deliberately doesn’t sound in any way clean, precious or formulaic. You can see the dirt beneath the fingernails of every riff, glom onto the intention behind each rib-cracking kick-snare hit. “Some of the albums he’s produced are my favourites of all time – I’m a huge Title Fight fan,” Livingston says. “He made it big. It needed to be big.”

At every available opportunity, they also ramp up the chaos and theatre, adding an appropriately visceral dimension to lyrics that already read as all-consuming. In their hands, love is a dependency, apathy a lurking threat. On ‘Voir Dire’, perhaps the record’s most outwardly political song, it’s like De St. Aubin is done with it all, crushed by the rinse-repeat machinations of late-stage capitalism and American politics in protecting the dudes at the very top at all costs. “It’s easy just to fade / Disappear into the dim-lit corner that you’ve made,” she sings”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana for NME

I am going to end by heading back. Only back to July, and LOUDER’s review of Die Spitz. Playing their first London gig at the Downstairs at the Dome. Even though they played that show on 10th July, LOUDER ran their review on 18th July. However, their insistence that everyone needs to see the group and order Something to Consume echoed by so many others. There is no doubt that Die Spitz are among the greatest new bands of the past decade:

“Die Spitz's arrival in London to play their first ever UK gig coincides with the announcement of news of the forthcoming September release of their debut album, Something To Consume, on Jack White's Third Man Records. Here's a tip, pre-order it or pre-save it, or do whatever you need to do to hear it, because the Austin, Texas band are going to be stealing hearts and minds in a big way over the next 12 months and far beyond, and you will want to be on board asap.

Originally, the quartet - vocalist/guitarist/drummer Ava Schrobilgen, drummer/vocalist/guitarist Chloe De St. Aubin, vocalist/guitarist Ellie Livingston and bassist Kate Halter - were booked to play the 150-capacity Shacklewell Arms in east London tonight, but when that show sold out in a heartbeat they were upgraded to the Downstairs at the Dome, a room with twice the capacity. This too is sold out. And it's easy to see why the buzz is already building on the group. While the streaming numbers for their debut EP, 2023's Teeth, are not remarkable, their reputation as a fearsome live act has been amplified from a whisper to a scream over the past two years, thanks to tours with the likes of Amyl and The Sniffers, Viagra Boys and Sleater-Kinney, plus some wildly exuberant showcases at the SXSW festival in their hometown. And tonight, with the crowd drawing closer to the stage with every passing minute, and the energy levels in the room multiplying with each passing song, Die Spitz are nothing short of fucking awesome.

Tonight's setlist is balanced between songs already out there (the pummelling Hair Of Dog, the raging I Hate When Girls Die, the slow-burning, seething My Hot Piss), and those earmarked for inclusion on Something To Consume: the much darker-than it-sounds Pop Punk Anthem, the toxic relationship-dissecting Punishers, the punky Riding With My Girls. There are no dull moments, there's very little pausing for breath, and there's zero filler. Every so often Livingston or Halter will jokingly flex their muscles, in classic body builder poses, but you don't need the visual prompts to hear that there is no excess fat on these songs, or to know that Die Spitz won't be making themselves smaller for anyone, anywhere, as they take on the world”.

I am going to finish here. I am surprised there have not been interviews from publications like Rolling Stone or The Guardian. However, when Something to Consume is in the world next week and it picks up a raft of inevitable five-star reviews, Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe Andrews, Ellie Livingston and Kate Halter are going to be firmly under the spotlight of the biggest corners of the music press. I have heard them played on BBC Radio 6 Music here and there is a great deal of anticipation and affection in the U.K. An explosion of popularity and excitement in their native U.S. For anyone who has not twigged why Die Spitz are being hailed as the best band in the world right now, that is going to change…

VERY soon!

________________

Follow Die Spitz

PHOTO CREDIT: Nicole Miller

Official:

https://www.diespitz.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/diespitz/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0zfZmpHTu0MlkkNr5KHeXE?si=Px7WCKgzSxO4_MnPLNURDQ

YouTube:

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

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/diespitz/

FEATURE: Spotlight: Madison McFerrin

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: VAM Studio

Madison McFerrin

__________

I was pretty sure that I had…

written a Spotlight feature about the wonderful Madison McFerrin. Maybe she can correct me but, looking through the archives, there does not seem to be one! Rectifying this, I wanted to explore an artist who I have been following for a while. Her debut album, I Hope You Can Forgive Me, was released in 2023. I raved about it when it came out. Her new album, SCORPIO, was released on 24th June. It is another fabulous album from an artist that people need to know about. Perhaps more acclaimed in her native U.S., there are fans here in the U.K. that would love to see her perform. I will end with a review for SCORPIO. However, before getting there, I want to include a few interviews from earlier this year. Maybe it does not go into as much depth about SCORPIO as other interviews. However, FLOOD Magazine recently chatted with Madison McFerrin about a successful Tiny Desk performance and a remarkable second studio album. This stood out to me:

“McFerrin is thriving, fresh off a successful Tiny Desk, a new album—Scorpio—and a blooming relationship through it all. So when she tells you how well she’s doing, understand: this is not bragging, it’s the factual self-assessment of an artist objectively on the rise. “[The Tiny Desk video], in terms of the numbers that I’ve been seeing, has been doing better than a lot of the videos in the last couple of months,” she tells me frankly one sunny Los Angeles morning over Zoom about a month prior to the album drop. “I’m really excited because I think I’m a really great performer, and I think that the fact that now people get to see that is only going to help expand my career, because performing is also my favorite thing to do. I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to do it.”

This is Madison: no aw-shucks-who-me? false modesty, which can be so grating anyway. She’s ever humble and ever grateful, but we both know the drill. If she weren’t also very, very talented, we wouldn’t be talking about her music. So let’s talk about her music: Her instrument is her voice, layered over itself and looped back to create smooth and funky soul a cappella harmonies unique in the modern pop canon. “I hear harmony in my head and can sing it best—it takes me a second to figure it out on the piano, but if I hear harmony in my head, I can sing it. I feel very rooted in that,” she says, explaining that her signature vocal layers developed organically during her early live shows, playing around with a loop pedal and synthesizer.

She’s also extremely generous—generous with praise (re: Tiny Desk: “For my band mates who went along with me, I think we all did a really fantastic job and it wouldn’t be doing as well as it is if it weren’t for the collective”) and generously judicious with her output. She knows listeners don’t have infinite hours to listen to new music, and if she wants them to digest an entire album in one go, well, it just can’t be that long”.

I want to go back to 2023 for now. I found an interesting interview with Fifteen Questions that I think provides some good background. A bit of context around her debut album. The point of these features is to discover as much as possible about artists who are either coming through or hit a new stride. It is worth heading back a couple of years to get a sense of what McFerrin was being asked in 2023:

“Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I honestly can’t say where the impulse comes from, I can only explain it to be from a higher power.
Even though I’m really into writing down my dreams, they don’t often make it into my songs. Instead, I’m usually drawing from personal experiences, relationships and what’s happening in the world around me.

For example, my song “(Please Don’t) Leave Me Now” came directly from experiencing a near-fatal car accident.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I don’t, but maybe I should start! I love some green tea. Baking also gets me in a zone.

I’ll try writing a song after the next time I make scones.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

I always start with the groove, be it the chords or the drum beat. Having that flushed out makes the rest of the writing process flow much easier.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Lyrics come last nine times out of ten. I really love writing melodies, that’s where I try and challenge myself. A great example of that for me is my song “Know You Better.”

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

All the time! But in the spirit of following the ideas, I generally just go with it. Sometimes you need to go someplace else to really figure out where you’re going.

Some of my best songs are the product of going in that other direction when it wasn’t my intention.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

It’s one-hundred percent spiritual for me. My creative state, being writing or performing, is when I feel most connected to a higher power”.

I am going to move to a feature where Madison McFerrin took a track-by-track guide through SCORPIO. However, before getting there, I want to bring in this interview from Type.Set.Brooklyn, as she is one of three singers who appears on Tyler the Creator’s new album, Don’t Tap the Glass. For her, this is a huge moment where she has that Tyler co-sign and also has released her second album. An artist that you definitely cannot ignore:

“That conviction has been with McFerrin since childhood. She decided she’d be a singer in kindergarten and never looked back. Now 33 and based in Los Angeles, she’s spent the past decade quietly building a body of work that reflects both her artistic lineage and her distinct vision. Her father is Bobby McFerrin, the legendary jazz vocalist behind “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and Madison says watching someone live out their passion daily gave her permission to believe it was possible, too.

“I never had any kind of question that it wasn’t a possibility for my life,” she recalls. “People keep asking me what I'm going to be when I grow up. I’m going to be a singer. And I just stuck to it.”

That belief is paying off. This year alone, she’s delivered a standout NPR Tiny Desk set and released Scorpio, her second full-length album, both of which show an artist in full command of her craft. And now, she’s found herself alongside Yebba and Pharrell as one of the few featured voices on Tyler new project.

Despite the moment of mainstream shine, McFerrin isn’t switching gears. She’s still independent—and still moving on her own terms. This summer, she’s headed out on tour, determined to continue her momentum.

“I've gotten so many messages from people being like, ‘Wow, I can't wait to dive into your catalog,’ and that’s such a big win for me,” she says. “If you're going to be independent, you have to have confidence. You can't be independent and be like, ‘Oh, I don't think I'm very good.’ It’s not going to work that way. I had to stick to my guns and just be like, ‘I’m really that girl,’ and now the rest of the world is going to find out”.

I am going to shift now to a great piece from Wonderland. Talking them through the making and creation of her sophomore album, Wonderland hailed SCORPIO as “Groove-laden and subtly cinematic”. If you have never heard Madison McFerrin, then I would thoroughly recommend you dig this album out. It is one of the best of the year. McFerrin talks about all the phenomenal tracks on SCORPIO. I have selected a few from the interview:

“From the very opening refrain of “Heartbreak”, the first track that blesses the stunning sophomore album from Madison McFerrin, the artist’s intention is clear — to overawe. Across SCORPIO, the acclaimed singer-songwriter uses her voice with purpose and nuance, an instrument as well as a guiding narrator, deftly spin webs of encompassing harmonies that complete and augment much of the subtle soul-tinged backdrops.

It’s a work that is confident and exploratory, full of musical highlights and sticky songwriting; the produce of an artist fully accomplished in her lyrical vision and sonic ideology. To breakdown the record, McFerrin drops by Wonderland for the latest edition of our track-by-track series.

Read the track-by-track…

Track 1 (Side A): “Heartbreak”

“Heartbreak” was one of the last songs I wrote on SCORPIO, but I instantly knew it was the opener. It goes on a musical journey that is very similar to my own – starting a cappella and gradually adding more instrumentation. Not only that, it sets the stage for the storytelling of the album, which is very important to me as a songwriter. It’s the full Madison McFerrin experience in a single track.

Track 2: “Ain’t It Nice”

When co-producers Julius Rodriguez and Maddi St John first played me the beat for “Ain’t It Nice,” I was hooked. I was having so much fun listening to the music that the melody and lyrics just flowed out of me. I was freshly single and dating when we wrote this and I wanted something that reflected that fun cat and mouse period that happens at the start of a new connection. The song is flirty and fun in an old school kind of way that I absolutely love – you can’t help but dance!

Track 7 (Side B): “Run It Back”

I go back and forth, but “Run It Back” might be my favourite song on the record. I wrote it late one night, hours before I was going to be hopping on a flight to Tokyo. Horniness is a pretty universal feeling, particularly when you’re single. This is essentially the drunk text you want to send, but definitely should not. Originally it was just going to be me on piano, but why do that when you can have the incredibly talented Cory Henry instead???

Track 8: “Lesson”

The 2 saddest songs on SCORPIO are also the hardest technically for me to sing (there’s a therapeutic analysis in there somewhere). I cried while writing “Lesson,” it struck that deep of a cord. This had been my first breakup, and after 8.5 years, there was a lot of grief to deal with. I was asking myself a lot of questions around why I had gone through such a difficult relationship, “Lesson” is all of that in song form. I knew I wanted significant strings on, so I brought on my friend JasmineFire (who also provided strings on “I Don’t”) for some added co-production. Grief is an important part of life, writing this song really helped me get through mine.

Track 9: “blue”

So the joke of it all is that I’m being dead serious when I say the refrain “but it seems it isn’t fair/when blue’s the only colour that you wear” – he very literally only wore blue. Because of that, it took me a second to not only associate that colour with him. I needed a blue detox, and my favourite way to detox anything is to write about it. It’s an intimate song, so my dear friend, Balam Garcia, and I got together to make this beautiful piece. Sometimes voice and guitar is all you need”.

Let’s come to the review that I said we would end with. Albumism shared their views on the tremendous SCORPIO. They rightly point out how Madison McFerrin’s vocal and lyrical gifts come to the fore on her second studio album. The more I listen to it, the more I get from it. Such a rich collection of songs that demands repeat listening:

“Madison McFerrin’s second album SCORPIO finds her making strides forward from her loveable, if at times, slight debut album I Hope You Can Forgive Me (2023). Here, she extends and develops her vocal arrangement skills and songwriting whilst retaining the same attitude to brevity that her debut embraced.

Affairs of the heart, the breakdown of relationships and ex-lovers’ comeuppances are the main subjects and what she excels at is changing the dynamics in a song and making songs that last barely three minutes seem greater in scale as a result. There is also a feeling that her voice is stronger here than on her debut album—the delightful harmonizing was always there, but here there are runs and notes held than belie extra confidence and strength, such as on one of the standouts, “Run It Back.”

And “Run It Back” is a fine example of the various strengths of the album. It begins with just her voice and the piano, before handclaps and backing vocals arrive as it builds to a climax. There’s no bass and drums, but it is funky, a prime example of the notion that sometimes it is not the notes themselves that create the atmosphere (as pretty as they may be), but rather the gaps between them. McFerrin drips with sultry seductiveness throughout and her vocals are magnificent.

“I Don’t” is another song that feels grand in scale but is actually less than three minutes. Once again (as throughout) her vocal harmonies are a delight, but the intensity of the piece is accelerated by a welcome fuzzed-up guitar solo from Willow (Smith). I’m always really happy to hear an electric guitar solo in R&B or soul music, as it echoes work by such luminaries as Ernie Isley and Prince—reminders that Black guitarists from those genres belong in the upper echelons of those never-ending (and slightly boring?) conversations about “the greatest” and so forth.

On “Blue,” it is the acoustic guitar that accompanies McFerrin’s remembrance of a loved one and the simplicity of the accompaniment offers proof that her vocals don’t need to be steeply banked and harmonized to kingdom come to be striking, emotive and memorable. There’s a rare appearance of strings on the melancholy “Lesson” and, again, her voice shines while there is a hint of Billie Holiday phrasing when she sings “you were a lesson.”

Perhaps the overriding impression on the album is strength. I’ve mentioned already the change to her voice, but the lyrics also tell the tale of someone knowing when to walk away from a relationship. On penultimate track “The End” she says, “I need a little more than you’re willing to give” and on the dance floor inflected “Over > Forever” she sings, “time to get your shit together” to her (ex) lover. She knows when to demand her worth.

This album definitely demonstrates a deepening and widening of McFerrin’s talents and deserves a place in people’s collections or on their playlists”.

At the end of this month, Madison McFerrin starts a tour of the U.S. and North America. She is going to bring SCORPIO to her fans. I do hope that she plays in the U.K. soon. It has been an important and exciting year for her. I loved her debut, I Hope You Can Forgive Me, so I was curious what she would deliver with a second studio album. It is remarkable and affirms my love of her music! An extraordinary artist that I know is going to keep building and searching and will be making albums for many years to come, everyone needs to follow…

THE supreme Madison McFerrin.

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