FEATURE: The November Playlist: Vol. 4: We Only Want YOU This Christmas

FEATURE:

 

The November Playlist

IN THIS IMAGE: Rita Ora 

Vol. 4: We Only Want YOU This Christmas

__________

I told you there would be…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The 1975

a few Christmas songs appearing soon enough and, lo and behold, they are coming through! I have included a couple in the pack but the return of Rita Ora has excited a lot of critics. I have included a track from her latest album, Phoenix, in addition to songs from Sam Fender, LUMP; The 1975, The Streets and Weezer. It is another great week for music and covers a pretty wide spectrum. Have a listen to the selection of these new tracks and I know you’ll have much to enjoy. It is a top week for music and, as you will see, we have not been subjected to a huge amount of Christmas material. Let’s enjoy another week or relatively Christmas-free tracks because, this time next week, I feel…

WE will get a pretty big dose!

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Getty Images/Artists

___________

Rita Ora – Only Want You

Blood Red Shoes – Howl

LUMP – May I Be the Light

Dan Caplan (ft. Sinéad Harnett) – Closer to You

Billie Eilish – come out and play

Mai Kino – Young Love

The Streets (ft. Chip, Grim Sickers) - Call Me in the Morning  

The 1975 - Sincerity Is Scary

AJ Tracey – Doing It

PHOTO CREDIT: Tawni Bannister for Time Out Chicago

John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda - Cheering For Me Now  

Wengie – Ugly Christmas Sweater

Marlon Williams – Beautiful Dress

Claire Richards – My Heart Is Heading Home (This Christmas)

Jamie Lawson – Testify

Sam Fender – Poundshop Kardashians

Vitas – Fade

PHOTO CREDIT: REX

Wiley – Raise Your Glass

Ed Harcourt – Keep Us Safe

Nita Strauss – Mariana Trench

Jaden Smith – SOHO

Weezer – Zombie Bastards

Mike Posner – Stuck in the Middle

Hunter Hayes – This Christmas

Stalking Gia, Blackbears – miracles

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Cayley

Perfume Genius – Not for Me

Cody Simpson – New Crowned King

Call Me Loop – Business

issac gracie – broken wheel  

Quincy Jones (ft. Chaka Khan) – Keep Reachin’

Grandaddy – Bison on the Plains

Clean Cut Kid – Deafening

Mauwe – Balcony Dreams

FEATURE: Merchant Ivory: T-Shirt Day 2018: Sporting Your Favourite Music Merchandise with Pride - and the Very Real Problem of Fake Options

FEATURE:

 

 

Merchant Ivory

IN THIS PHOTO: Stuart Maconie (bottom row, second from the left) and the BBC Radio 6 Music RadMac team proudly boasting their T-Shirt Day 2018 choices/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC 

T-Shirt Day 2018: Sporting Your Favourite Music Merchandise with Pride - and the Very Real Problem of Fake Options

__________

BBC Radio 6 Music have just completed…

 IN THIS PHOTO: BBC Radio 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq embracing his love of band T-shirts/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

their T-Shirt Day 2018 and it provided the chance for listeners, between seven A.M. and P.M., the chance to share their music T-shirts. Whether a classic band tee or a solo artist new to some of us; songs were tailored to their iconic finery. There has been a banquet of great music and it has been a great way of bonding listeners and introducing many of us to new music – I even got a Madonna track played (Express Yourself) after showing a photo of me wearing a Madonna T-shirt! It wasn’t only a chance to get people proudly sporting their favourite music T-shirts but it shone a spotlight on the best and worst sides of merchandise. If you have been to a live gig lately, you probably saw a merchandise table somewhere. Smaller artists tend to have less of a spread and big acts can have anything from posters and T-shirts to caps, cups and pretty much anything you can think of. How much does something like a T-shirt cost and bring in for an artist? Looking at this BBC article and we can see the figures broken down:

But more than simply a memento from a gig, or a way of showing your musical colours, band T-Shirts can be of considerable importance - to both artist and fan. So, we’ve decided to dig a bit deeper to find out just how important band T-Shirts can be.

After all, merch is a considerable part of a musician’s income. The Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association reported that the global music merchandise market (of which T-Shirts are a considerable part) was worth $3.1 billion in 2016, up 9.4% from the $2.83 billion generated in 2015. To put that in perspective, the gross revenue from live music concerts worldwide during 2016 was $4.88 billion; while the global market for recorded music that same year was worth $15.7 billion, according to IFPI. So, still a vital source of income for artists.

Of all music merchandise, band T-Shirts continue to be the items that spark fans’ interest the most. Christiaan Munro, director of merchandise company Sandbag, who work with acts like Radiohead and Arcade Fire, tells us: "The T-Shirt is always the biggest seller - for every artist"... 

“T-Shirts are now such a big part of how acts make money as revenue from physical sales experiences a decline. But revenue and profits are not the same thing, so how much of the money you paid for a T-Shirt actually makes it back to the artist you’re supporting?

Willis says many of the acts they work with would expect to pay around £5 per unit for printing and production for a T-Shirt based on a run of 50-250 garments. A bulk order could see the per-unit cost drop to £2.50 but that would be based on 1,000+ items, something only the largest of acts could comfortably sell out of and not be left with mountains of unsold stock.

However, there are many hidden costs that the consumer does not see. In the UK, VAT swallows up 20% of the sale price. Then at the venue, acts can be charged either a flat fee or a percentage of turnover for that night for simply having a merchandise stand at the venue. "This is the thing that really needs to be said – the people who earn the most out of the products, apart from the tax man, are these concession companies," says Sandbag director Munro.

Artists can make around £4.80 from a T-shirt sold for £20.

For hosting and staffing the merchandise stand, many venues with a capacity of around 10,000 and upwards take anywhere between 20% and 30% of gross – even as much as 40% in some cases. For acts on the road, Munro estimates that – after the venue cut and taxes are accounted for – they might have to work with 55% of the retail price. So, for a T-Shirt that cost £5 to make and sold for £20, the margin after deductions would be £6 - of which the act’s managers would typically take 20%, so that’s really more in the region of £4.80”...

 

“For venues around the 1,000-capacity level, acts may be charged a fee of £60-80 for a table at the back of the venue regardless of how much merchandise they sell. Grassroots venues though, specifically those with a maximum capacity of 300, normally charge nothing for merchandise tables. So this can often allow smaller, DIY acts to take home more of your £20”.

It is a hard balance when it comes to T-shirts and how much a band can make. I attended a small gig last month and noticed T-shirts selling for about fifteen or twenty quid. The cost of making the T-shirts was minor but few people were milling – even though the designs were great and the quality was fantastic. Even though it can be hard enticing fans to buy merchandise, there is a bit more say when it comes to total profit and how much they get to take home. You can see from the figures above that there are a lot of people who take a cut. A venue needs revenue and some of the pie and people working the stall will get some; the manager and then, by the time profits are split with the band, it is not a huge amount. Even though it can be hard to get a great deal of merchandise, it is a very important was of connecting with fans.

In fact - as the BBC article explains - more can be made (in some cases) from streaming:

“Meanwhile, some acts who handle all their royalties themselves can often take home a lot more from streaming. Car Seat Headrest, for example, revealed last year that he had made almost $30,000 from streams of his self-released albums since 2013.

For a CD sale, an act could again earn anything from a single-figure royalty percentage to 20% – but this is after the retailer’s cut, VAT, mechanical royalties and manufacturing costs are deducted. If an act, however, controls their own publishing and acts as their own label, recording at home for next to nothing and selling £10 CDs at the back of their gigs, after manufacturing costs are taken out (which can be as little as £320 + VAT for 500 units in a card wallet), they could be looking at 90% margin after they have covered the cost of the pressing run. It is important to note, however, that these are only guide figures and every act will be operating under very different circumstances”.

As the BBC Radio 6 Music celebration showed; people are holding onto their old T-shirts and showing their colours with pride. I have some newer T-shirts – including Queens of the Stone Age – but I know people who have some classic deigns that are worth quite a bit. T-shirts and merchandise are a great way of forging tribes and creating this identity. We all want proof we attended gigs or show our backing of particular artists.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

It is great seeing a great merchandise stand and, given the way we get we get music these days, many artists rely on merchandise for money. There is a problem with over or under-demand and that can create waste but, if one person buys a piece of merchandise, then that connection can be more potent and life-long than anything else. How do we know about the people streaming the music and those listening away from gigs?! If you can see people wearing T-shirts or carrying some band merchandise then that is a solid bond and can lead others to discovering music. I, like many, have discovered new bands/artists through the BBC Radio 6 Music celebration but, in the outside world, many are discovering great artists through seeing others wearing some merchandise. There is another problem that is hard to police: counterfeit merchandise and bootleggers selling unauthorised and unofficial merchandise. I was reading an article from 2014 that, sadly, is still very relevant today:

“If you’ve purchased a band t-shirt on Amazon, there’s a good chance it’s fake.  According to research conducted by Andy Young of merch-focused startup Tunipop, more than half of the band t-shirts floating around on Amazon are complete knock-offs.  Young surveyed 100 of the top US artists, and discovered the following:

o    51 artists had merchandise available on Amazon.

o    Out of those, 47% had products that were only available as counterfeits.

o    The other 53% had a mix of authentic and ‘questionable’ items available.

“Frankly, the list of artists doesn’t matter. Just pick one,” Young told Digital Music News.  “The problem is almost across the board inside Amazon”...

“So, where is the outrage from the industry?  How can artists, suppliers and management be so quiet when millions of dollars are at stake?”

Part of the answer, according to Young, is that most merchandise (including t-shirts) are sold on the road.  Young estimates that 80% is sold at venues, in usually controlled environments (ie, at a stand at the gig).  The remaining 20% is sold online, so it’s harder to dedicate resources to policing it”.

How easy is it to control and monitor those selling fake band merchandise and depriving artists of money that should be going to them? This article shed some more light:

“On top of assaulting a band’s bottom line, bootleg merchandise is difficult and sometimes even impossible to fight.

“The market is fluid and bands are constantly trying to address the bootleg problem as the bootleggers become better at evading detection,” says entertainment lawyer Scott Burroughs. “Depending on the artist, there can be more people outside the venue selling bootleg stuff than authorized sellers offering the real deal.”

To make matters worse, enter: the internet. Bootleg sellers outside of shows are nothing new, but websites like Amazon, which is just the massive tip of the e-com iceberg, are making it exponentially easier to sell unauthorized merchandise, and exponentially more difficult for bands to track all of that merch down”...

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images 

Given how hard it is to track down bootleg sellers, and how much harder it is to actually succeed at stopping them, trying to get fans to only buy authorized items is probably the best solution. The easiest way to know a t-shirt is legitimate is to buy directly from the band at a show or on their website, but wading out into the world of retail, especially online, can take fans into murky territory.

“Spotting bootleg merch online is like spotting a spam e-mail, you have to have an eye for what is official and what is not,” Vince Edwards of Metal Blade Records notes.

There’s merch sold at shows and merch sold online, and then there’s another seemingly ever-expanding curveball: the band name-splashed fashion items from mega-retailers like H&M, Forever 21, and Urban Outfitters. The question of “legitimacy” here is really more about fan cred. Stores this big can’t get away with ripping bands off, and when they try to, they tend to get sued, or at least forced to pull the designs”.

IN THIS PHOTO: BBC Radio 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne getting into the spirit of T-Shirt Day 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: @laurenlaverne

There is the issue regarding big retailers selling unofficial merchandise and making a profit from it or, in fact, anyone making their own merchandise. I have seen a lot of T-shirts and seemingly official merchandise from various sellers but you know that it is fake. I have heard from a lot of artists, popular and new alike, on the subject and they are divided. Many are furious others are profiting from their name like ivory hunters; this unethical and unseemly practise; from small stallholders to major websites. They do not feel it is fair for others to trade on their name and not give any money where it should go. On the other hand, if people are wearing that artist then that is raising awareness. Some artists struggle to shift a lot of merchandise so the fact people are going online and buying is good, right?! It is a hard moral dilemma but I feel this almost sacred connection between artist and fan should not be exploited by retailers and vendors. It might seem expensive parting with a lot of money for a T-shirt but consider how much the artist gets. Unlike your everyday T-shirts; band merchandise can be cherished for years and make that huge impact. How many of us are willing to dispense with a great T-shirt or piece or merchandise we bought after a gig?! The memories held are very special and, as said, others will see that artist on you and ask – that can connect existing fans with new fans and, like that, the artist has fresh support.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Shaun Keaveny and the breakfast team showing off their music tees for T-Shirt Day 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

It is wonderful seeing people proudly talking about their favourite music T-shirts and merchandise and I know what an important source of income it can be. The fact so many other people profit from a band/artist and their merchandise (vendors and the venue) means it is extra-important to make sure you are buying official merchandise. I guess it is good – if you buy unofficial products – you are still showing support but the morals surrounding depriving an artist all-important finance does not sit well. I am worried, when I am online ordering a musician’s merchandise, whether it is legit and how much money goes to them. The important thing is showing your support but it is vital we ensure, when thinking of buying merchandise, we go to official sites and buy, if possible, at gigs. In any case; BBC Radio 6 Music T-Shirt Day 2018 has been a raging success and shows how so many different artists are connected by that love of something so simple – the chance to wear these brilliant threads and show our love. Whilst songs and gig memories might only last a few months or years; the sacred and exciting merchandise can recruit new followers to an artist and those shared memories can last...

 IN THIS PHOTO: Louis Theroux and a favourite band T-shirt/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

FOR generations.

FEATURE: Sisters in Arms: An All-Female, Autumn-Ready Playlist (Vol. IXX)

FEATURE:

 

 

Sisters in Arms

IN THIS PHOTO: FLOHIO 

An All-Female, Autumn-Ready Playlist (Vol. IXX)

__________

THE weather is getting rather chilly…

so we need some decent tunes to get into the blood and warm us up! Things are going to get more bitter so I am preparing for some musical remedy. This latest instalment of female-led songs features multiple genres and will appeal to a wide audience. If you are looking for something more charged and energised then you are set; if you want a bit of seduction and cool then there are some songs in the mix. Have a look at the rundown of brilliant tracks and you’ll find something that catches the eye! It is another great selection of some of the best rising female...

IN THIS PHOTO: Sarah Darling 

ARTISTS around.  

ALL PHOTOS (unless stated otherwise): Getty Images/Artists

____________

Brooke Fraser – Human

Miranda Arieh – The End

FLOHIO – Toxic

Liela Moss – New Leaves 

girl in red – forget her

Lucy Mason – Runaway

Self Esteem – Rollout

PHOTO CREDIT: Rory Donaldson

Peluché – Figure Me Out

PHOTO CREDIT: Nathan Moas

Lupa J – You’re in My Headphones

Missy Higgins – Peachy

Sarah Darling – Diamonds

GVgrace – Fuck Golf

PHOTO CREDIT: Lucy Feng

Mai Kino – Young Love

PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Venturini

Juniore – Magnifique

PHOTO CREDIT: Shervin Lainez

Monogem - Shade

PHOTO CREDIT: I like what you look like

BATTS – Mars

PHOTO CREDIT: Jinling Jade

Matilda Eyre – The Calling

Kira Isabella – Stupid Heart

Shay Lia – The Cycle

PHOTO CREDIT: @felice.c0m

The Beaches – Fascination

RuthAnne – It Is What It Is

Blanche – Moment

Kara Marni – L Word

PHOTO CREDIT: Muffadal Abbas

Raphi – Money 

Radiant Children – Tryin’

PHOTO CREDIT: @_christinaislas

Molly Burch – First Flower

Jess Morgan – Death of a Ballroom Dancer

Megan McKenna – Everything But You

FEATURE: Curves and Trends: Why a Genuine Show of Strength and Honesty Should Not Be Questioned and Cheapened

FEATURE:

 

 

Curves and Trends

  IN THIS PHOTO: Little Mix are raising awareness around body issues in their single, Strip/PHOTO CREDIT: Little Mix/Rankin 

Why a Genuine Show of Strength and Honesty Should Not Be Questioned and Cheapened

__________

THIS piece has been ‘inspired’ by an argument…

PHOTO CREDIT: Little Mix

that is breaking out regarding Little Mix stripping for a promotional photo concerning their latest album, LM5. The photo/still from the video shows the members with words written on their bodies. It is a promotional for their track, Strip, that shows them facing the camera with words written on their bodies. It is meant to show what women have to face and expectations placed upon them. The members have shown a naked sense of honesty and revelation; not designed to sell records and make headlines but show the realities of being a woman and how they have pressure put onto them daily. This article gives the details:

“Seven years and five albums in, Little Mix are continuing to prove themselves models of empowerment and body positivity. Those themes run deep throughout the Brit girl group’s new album, LM5, and to celebrate their big release day on Friday (November 16), they debuted not one, but two stunning videos.

The first, “Strip,” was co-directed by photographer Rankin and features inspirational activists like Bryony Gordon and Nimco Ali, along with featured artist Sharaya J and the girls’ own family members. Fittingly, Jesy, Jade, Perrie, and Leigh-Anne “stripped” down for the black and white affair, covering their skin with nothing but derogatory words like “slutty,” “talentless,” and “ugly.” It’s a striking image, and their confident, liberating lyrics give it all the context you need: “Take off all my makeup ’cause I love what’s under it / Rub off all your words, don’t give a uh, I’m over it / Jiggle all this weight, yeah, you know I love all of this / Finally love me naked, sexiest when I’m confident”...

Upon releasing the video for “Strip,” Little Mix tweeted, “This is so special to us, from the amazing women we worked with, to the message of the song. It’s EVERYTHING we wanted LM5 to represent!”

Along with “Strip,” the group also debuted an eye-catching video for “More Than Words.” In it, featured artist Kamille basically becomes an honorary fifth member of the tribe, joining the girls as they belt the thundering power ballad against hazy backdrops that compliment the song’s glitchy vocal stylings. Don’t miss the stormy climax, during which they weather a wild rainstorm while proclaiming their undying devotion.

Little Mix’s very empowering, very poptastic LM5 is out now”.

Most people have not had an issue with Little Mix’s shot/video and what they are doing – there is an objectionable voice in the pack. There has been a row brewing involving, no surprises, Piers Morgan! This article gives you some developments and background:

“Pop star Ariana Grande has hit out at Piers Morgan with a series of tweets in defence of women who choose to show off their bodies.

The ITV presenter criticised girl band Little Mix for posing naked.

He mocked their "feminist statement" and accused the group of using sex to sell records.

Grande, who Little Mix has supported on tour, then waded in to the spat: "I use my talent AND my sexuality all the time because i choose to...

also @piersmorgan, i look forward to the day you realize there are other ways to go about making yourself relevant than to criticize young, beautiful, successful women for everything they do. i think that’ll be a beautiful thing for you and your career or what’s left of it. 🖤

— Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) November 21, 2018

"Women can be sexual AND talented. naked and dignified. it's OUR choice," Grande tweeted. 

Piers Morgan is known for being a provocateur on issues like this.

During a debate about the image and Little Mix on ITV's Good Morning Britain earlier this week, he said the girl band were using a naked photo shoot for attention and accused them of "using sex to sell records".

But Morgan made it clear he didn't buy their message of body positivity.

"Here's a great idea, girls - if you want to really empower yourselves, get naked and put the word slut all over your body," Morgan said on GMB, before showing a mock photo-shopped image of him posing with insults all over his body.

"Why don't we stop pretending that getting your kit off is feminist empowerment?" he added, citing other celebrities who have posed nude including Kim Kardashian.

The row between the band and Morgan then escalated further when member Jesy Nelson told the BBC's Nick Grimshaw on Radio 1 she was not surprised by his comments before using an expletive to describe the TV host.

She then posted pictures of herself posing in underwear on her Instagram account.

In recent days, Morgan had also accused the Ellen DeGeneres show of hypocrisy for a segment where she "celebrated" images of handsome men, including some partially clothed.

Ariana Grande's mother, Joan, waded into the row by quoting Morgan's tweet about Dixie Chicks and saying: "Didn't your mother ever teach you, if you have nothing nice to say, don't say it!"...

IN THIS IMAGE: Piers Morgan’s ‘response’ to the Little Mix-Ariana Grande row/PHOTO CREDIT: @piersmorgan 

The presenter then replied, doubling down on his accusation that the band were using their nudity to sell records.

Joan issued a scathing reply, saying: "Trash talk for the sake of denigrating women doing their jobs is at best misogynistic and at worst undignified and ignorant!"

Grande then clapped back at Morgan with a series of tweets of her own about women's right to choose to show their bodies off.

The singer also accused him of hypocrisy while supporting the band, who have toured with her and performed at her One Love Manchester concert”.

I think Morgan’s point in all of this is that men would be criticised for stripping and trying to sell music that way and Little Mix have stripped down so they can get more fans in and court more headlines. In his Daily Mail column; Morgan talked about modern feminism and a couple of women who are not, I presume, his kind of feminist:

“Hypocrisy is sadly a prevalent theme with much of modern feminism.

The likes of Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski have both built hugely lucrative careers out of stripping off in the supposed name of ‘feminist empowerment’”.

In the case of Kim Kardashian-West and celebrities who have been known to strip down for no reason; I agree there are times when it has been problematic. There have been occasions when Kardashian-West has been talking about body-shaming, body size and diets and has revealed these photos of her; all curvy, slender and sexy. Maybe her intentions were good – to show everyone is beautiful etc. – but it seems, when you have a near-perfect figure, it is almost insulting to post photos like that.

Many women will see models and celebrities and feel inferior and weak. I feel artists and figures like Kim Kardashian-West mean well but their actions can be misguided and, for the most part, her words and potent messages can be more powerful than stripping down. One could call it (stripping) feminism but one could also claim there is sensationalism and exhibitionism. I think it is great if women want to show some curves and show their bodies on Instagram or whatever and their actions should not be questioned. It is empowering and, at a time when there is rife sexism and sexual assaults against women, if it gives them confidence and inspires others then all the better! As a heterosexual male, it may seem like I am encouraging voyeurism and titillation. There is a marked difference between reality T.V. figures and artists like Little Mix. Morgan’s cynicism can be seen as him baiting and attacking like we are used to – when is he ever out of the news?! – but he is stepping into a conversation he is ill-equipped to understand. I know Morgan has asked Ariana Grande onto Good Morning Britain to ‘settle things’ but one suspects he would argue and throw his weight around. The reason I have been compelled to wade in is because of the assumption revealing any flesh, in music, is a marketing ploy.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Ariana Grande/PHOTO CREDIT: @ArianaGrande

Let’s set aside models and reality T.V. stars and whether shots of them topless/scantily-clad in mirrors is their version of feminism or something they feel compelled to share with the world. I might get in trouble if I sit on the fence there but, in music, why would anyone assume Little Mix’s photo was designed to score streams and sales?! Consider, first, their typical demographic. Not to be all-sweeping but one feels most of their fans are teenage girls – they certainly are not marketing to people like Piers Morgan and myself. Maybe there are older males who listen to their music but few are going to go out and listen to their music because they are showing their curves! I have heard their music and like most of it but would not call myself a fan. I did not see that image (at the top of this piece) where they have words written on their skin and get arousal – sexually or commercially. I am not rushing to Spotify to stream their latest album because, if I do, they might show more of themselves in future! The photo shows potent and alarming words that look at things women have to deal with – from slut-shaming and sexism to being judged ugly and useless (either by men or their peers). They could not have made such a bold statement clothed and the juxtaposition between these common and upsetting terms and them revealing themselves leaves a lingering impression.

 IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images

The objective was not to be objectified; they want to be taken very seriously and I think their brand of feminism, to argue against Morgan, is very inspiring and fine. I do not believe they aimed to court any extra sales and ensure they drawn in a different demographic. A lot of the people who will see the image and buy Little Mix’s music – teenager girls and children – will see their favourite stars addressing issues like fat-shaming and sexism and are not shying away. At no point between conception and execution of the photo are marketing men salivating at the prospect of randy teenage boys and leery older men getting their jollies seeing Jesy, Jade; Perrie and Leigh-Anne cupping their breasts and touching their skin. There is a huge moral, philosophical and intended divide between Little Mix’s photo and some rather racy shots being posted to get some more Instagram followers. Ariana Grande has, rightly, stated it is rather cheap and cynical to attack beautiful and honest young women; questioning what they are doing and sneering. Look at modern music and there are bold and inspirational artists like Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande; Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Katy Perry and, for nearly every one of them, sexuality and nudity plays some role. Whether it is a photo or part of a music video; the intention is expression, empowerment and honesty.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kim Kardashian/Kardashian-West/PHOTO CREDIT: Presley Ann/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

I admit there have been cases in music where sex has been used to sell. Some videos have featured semi-naked women just to get people talking and that is another matter. A lot of these videos feature male artists and directors and their ambition is to get some cheap attention. Little Mix and their contemporaries realise the work and what they are saying is important and, as I say, their demographic is largely young and female. There is something alluring and racy seeing a female artist in a very charged video or a provocative photo but it is art and expression – they are not wondering how many extra fans they can get out of this. Look back at artists like Madonna and how, even early in her career, she used sex as a way of pushing against conventional and conservatism. There were, sure, times she was literally selling the concept of sex but her videos and photos were designed not to cheaply sell records but show her personality and fight against repression. She was expressing herself and sex is a healthy part of life – talking about it in music is great and, if it not taken too far, then why complain and judge?! Madonna was paving a way for female artists and still fights today about sexism and the patriarchy. This easy and unflinching judgement from Piers Morgan seems to apply to all female artists. If they are seen to take their clothes off then, naturally, they are struggling and need to get their careers back on track!

They’re too busy shouting at me to remember... even though when they stop shouting they realise I’m right. https://t.co/kzwCF38st5

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) November 22, 2018

If Little Mix had simply been standing completely naked and cheekily winking at the camera then, yes, I would not see a pure motive for that. That is not them – or most other female artists – and they are very proud of the photo (quite right). If you are going to question every woman who has disrobed or been a bit edgy for a photo then you will have your work cut out. In some cases, there is a fine line between art and exploitation/commercial gain but that was not the case here. Think about the campaigners and strong feminists who are fighting against this very male and unhelpful type of comment and what message it is sending out. I have been following Jameela Jamil’s work and how she is standing up against body-shaming and those who degrade women. She is one of this generation’s most vocal and important figures; tackling those who judge women’s bodies or have unrealistic and crude expectations. Jamil constantly is being exposed to men who are attacking her views and displaying the kind of ignorance that should have died decades ago. We have a long way to go combating sexism and abuse but she is taking huge strides. There do seem to be double standards when it comes to nudity and what the ‘intent’ is. There have been plenty of male Popstars through the years who have stripped to their underwear and, even though their intent is less expression and more salaciousness; nobody gets on their cases and criticises them.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Jameela Jamil who, like Little Mix, has raised awareness regarding body issues and shaming/PHOTO CREDIT: Ramona Rosales for The Guardian

Why should a band like Little Mix have to answer for themselves when their intentions are pure and they are trying to fight against sexism, hatred and judgement?! It is no surprise Piers Morgan has been making the news – and claiming to be the victim when faced with a backlash – and I do wonder how his Good Morning Britain co-host, Susana Reid, puts up with him! She has, on more than one occasion, ripped up his script or got angry because he has gone too far or said something foolish. I would agree that there have been cases where artists have stripped and shown flesh to sell and get tabloid inches but this is as far from the truth as possible regarding Little Mix. The more these kind of stories bubble up – when there are objections and dubious attacks – then the longer it will take for equality and any sort of real conversation to take place. Little Mix, as you can see from what is written on them, are taking a stand, showing a very striking image and trying to raise awareness. The assumption they are engaging in some salacious and crude marketing ploy to get extra money and fans is ridiculous. We should be on the same page and trying to stamp out harsh expectations, cruelty and discrimination – if someone is trying to make a positive difference then questioning that is only adding to the issue. I shall leave it there and move past it but I know there have been some words exchanged between Little Mix, Piers Morgan and Ariana Grande. Whether a consensus and truce can be called then I do not know but I hope he can see why his reaction is misjudged.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Little Mix

The last thing I will mention regards whether they should have used ‘real’ women for the video/shot and not themselves. This article from Metro makes a valid point:

“While PR expert Hayley Smith of Boxed Out PR does believe the whole thing has ‘a feeling of discomfort as it feels as if they are using this for PR to sell records’, she does believe their message is something that still needs to be applauded. ‘It’s a relevant topic and they’re showing support of it,’ she added to Metro.co.uk. ‘I don’t think it’s a case of sex sells, as they aren’t trying to reach a male audience, they’re trying to empower a female audience and they certainly shouldn’t be slut shamed for it.’ Their clip has been praised by body confidence advocates and fans are loving the tune. But despite the tune being a certified bop, Piers was fuming at the idea: ‘What is empowering about this? Get your kit off, airbrush yourself to within an inch of your lives… ‘What’s the point of it? Using nudity to sell their album…It’s using sex, sexuality to sell albums.’

PHOTO CREDIT: @sauvageisland/Unsplash 

Smith added that while they invited a studio of faces in do dance in their underwear alongside them, the girls should have used every day faces for the album cover, shot by famed photographer Rankin, instead of themselves, if they really wanted to shout their message. ‘I think it would have been a better move if they used real girls (and guys) on the album cover. Using themselves feels somewhat antiquated and they’ve missed a real opportunity to make a huge impact,’ she continued. ‘Using real people, with their insecurities and online insults written on them would have been incredibly powerful, and the girls could have joined them’”.

Maybe they should have used everyday women in the video but that is something they could think about. It would have made the video a bit more rounded but, for a promotional shot, they would have needed to have an image of themselves. Maybe they can take this on board but I feel Piers Morgan’s viewpoint is flawed and wrong. If anything, the video/photo has done exactly what it set out to do...

 IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images

GET a conversation started!

FEATURE: Fifty and Out? Is There an Age Limit When It Comes to Artists Hitting Their Creative Peak?

FEATURE:

 

 

Fifty and Out?

IN THIS PHOTO: Noel Gallagher (whilst touring as Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds in 2018) with Charlotte Marionneau in Paris/PHOTO CREDIT: Sharon Latham (from the book, Any Road Will Get Us There (If We Don’t Know Where We’re Going) 

Is There an Age Limit When It Comes to Artists Hitting Their Creative Peak?

__________

I have been investigating ageism in music a lot…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

and do feel artists get pigeonholed and written off when they hit a certain age! It is interesting listening to legendary figures and which radio stations stop playing their music – there seems to be an age bracket for all of the big broadcasters. Maybe they will be consigned to BBC Radio 2 when they go past forty and it seems demographics and a misguided perception of relevance dictates an artist’s radio life. I think there is too much ageism and discrimination that needs to be addressed but I do wonder whether there is this feeling that an artist only writes great music when they are younger. Whilst I feel all artists should be allowed exposure and have something important to say; there is that argument as to whether artists, legendary and not, hit a peak and then it is a matter of steady decline. I think this question applies to the classic musicians we grew up with and have entered a new creative phase. If you look at two of my favourite female artists, Kate Bush and Madonna; they are both sixty and have no plans to retire. One can say, from a critical standpoint, they reached their peak around the 1980s. Madonna enjoyed success in the 1990s – 1998’s Ray of Light was a blockbuster – but, since then, it has been a case of great albums but nothing that hit her vibrant and eye-watering brilliance of the earlier days. Bush, similarly, has created brilliant albums later in her career – 2005’s Aerial (when she was in her forties) is seen as one of her finest achievements; 2011’s 50 Words for Snow (when Bush was in her fifties) is incredible – but most, when we think of the heady days, sort of stop by the late-1980s.

All those iconic Pop artists, from Prince and Michael Jackson through to David Bowie, had their ‘day’ and one can debate whether they managed to equal their peak later in life. David Bowie might be one of the rare exceptions regarding resurgence. He enjoyed a run of wonderful albums but, when we ponder the best of his output, we tend to have our minds in the 1970s and 1980s. That golden period – between 1971 and 1977 – when records like Aladdin Sane (1973), Young Americans (1975) and Low (1977) arrived (Bowie was in his twenties and thirties). Prince’s very best albums were created, largely, between 1982 (1999) and 1992 (Love Symbol) and the master was in his mid-twenties/thirties during that time. The reason I am bringing up this topic is that some musicians feel the notion there is an age limit and cut-off regarding quality and critical peak is a lie. They say some of their best work comes when they pass fifty and grow older. Maybe there is something subjective regarding quality. An artist might feel more comfortable and natural writing when they pass fifty – or they feel like they do not have to please radio stations and labels – whereas critical acclaim tends to happen earlier in a career. It is a generalisation to state critics stop listening when artists approach middle-age but I feel there is something to be said for youth and how artists write at different times in their life.

I am sure the likes of Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher will say they are producing their best work right now but one suspects this is more a commercial pitch or, as I say, they feel freer and less constrained by commercial pressure and hype. Does that sort of pressure lead to creative brilliance or are periods in time more impactful? One could say the reason the likes of Madonna and Noel Gallagher peaked when they were in their twenties and thirties was the climate around them. Madonna was living in a different times and music was very different; she was making her records in a different way and, as a younger woman, her ideals and ambitions were different. Gallagher, as a member of Oasis, was propelled by the Britpop rush of the 1990s and was writing in a band. Many might say Oasis’ first two albums (1994 and 1995) were their only relevant and decent offerings; a defined period in time when they were able to encapsulate a definite momentum and produce music the world needed to hear. Every accomplished and established artist seems to have that energy and desire when they are young and, largely, their music changes course and sound when they get older. Maybe Madonna is the exception but the artists I have mentioned so far sort of slowed down and became less bombastic when they hit their forties and fifties. Perhaps it is that case of having to write a particular sound that is seen as ‘age-appropriate’ or they feel foolish trying to recapture that youthful zing.

There is a definite difference between music peak and ‘musical paralysis’ – when we stop discovering music and tend to fall back on the songs we grew up around. This article explains more:

“Did you know that you’ll likely stop discovering music right before you turn 28?  The strange phenomenon is called “musical paralysis”.  And researchers have found that users, on average, stopped discovering new music at 27 years and 11 months.

The research, commissioned by the streaming music service Deezer, surveyed 5,000 adults from the UK, the US, Germany, France, and Brazil.

Researchers found that music fans will first hit their “musical peak” several years before entering into a “musical paralysis.”  During the ‘peak’ age, they’ll listen to ten or more new tracks per week.  Then, they’ll stop discovering new music altogether.

Surprisingly enough, the ages of both musical ‘peaks’ and ‘paralyses’ varied by country.

For example, in Brazil, music fans will hit their ‘peak’ right when they turn 22.  They’ll stop discovering music altogether just 2 months after turning 23.

In France, the average listener hit their musical peak 4 months after their 26th birthday.  Just 3 months after turning 27 – under a year later– they’ll reach their musical paralysis age.

The peak age for German music fans is 27.  They’ll stop discovering new music exactly 4 years later.

In the UK, people hit their peak 5 months after their 24th birthday. As with German users, they don’t reach their musical paralysis age until much later — 6 months after turning 30”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Johnny Marr (circa 2014)/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Maybe musicians are like us when it comes to discovery and how their mind works. The younger artists are still curious about music and new sounds and put that into their own work. There is that freedom and the impetus; they have more fascination and going through a different phase of life. The fact they (musicians) are still blossoming and have very different responsibilities/experiences (the younger artists have different political takes and views on life, sex and music). Johnny Marr (The Smiths) has stated, lately, that his current solo work is his finest work. Most people would disagree and state Marr was at his peak when he was paired with Morrissey – as The Smiths created some of the defining songs of the 1980s. Maybe, as The Atlantic shows, there are differences between disciplines. Maybe creative peak differs depending which field of the arts you are in:

“We Peak Young The New York Times' Sam Tanenhaus, age 54, acknowledges "an essential truth about fiction writers: They often compose their best and most lasting work when they are young. 'There’s something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them budding or promising, when in fact they’re peaking,' Kazuo Ishiguro told an interviewer last year. Ishiguro (54 when he said this) added that since the age of 30 he had been haunted by the realization that most of the great novels had been written by authors under 40"...

We Peak in Middle Age Science journalist Jonah Lehrer, age 28, writes, "it's hard to settle this argument using anecdotes. Fortunately, a psychologist at UC-Davis, Dean Simonton, has assembled the historiometric data. He finds that the vast majority of disciplines obey an inverted U curve of creativity. The shape of the curve captures the steep rise and slow fall of individual creativity, with performance peaking after a few years of work before it starts a slow, gradual decline."

For instance, Simonton has found that poets and physicists tend to produce their finest work in their late 20s, while geologists, biologists and novelists tend to peak much later, often not until they reach late middle age. Simonton argues that those disciplines with an "intricate, highly articulated body of domain knowledge," such as physics, chess and poetry, tend to encourage youthful productivity. In contrast, fields that are more loosely defined, in which the basic concepts are ambiguous and unclear - examples include history, literary criticism and biology - lead to later peak productive ages. It takes time to master the complexity; we need to make lots of mistakes before we get it right.

It is interesting comparing painters and musicians, scientists and novelists and when their ‘peak’ occurs. I feel music, unlike art and literature, finds greater truth in the notion that younger artists – those in their twenties, thirties and forties – are more creative and adored than those who are a bit older.

It takes me back to the issue of music tastes and peak and whether we sort of switch off and rest on our laurels as we go through life:

“For men, the most important period for forming musical taste is between the ages of 13 to 16. Men were, on average, aged 14 when their favorite song was released. For women, the most important period is between 11 and 14, with 13 being the most likely age for when their favorite song came out. It also found that childhood influences were stronger for women than men and the key years for shaping taste were tied to the end of puberty”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @_rxshxxd/Unsplash

Do we often put too much focus on the lead/songwriter and forget, at all stages, they have producers and writers helping them – many of them might be slightly older. This piece makes some interesting points:

“In other words, while many people do their best work at average ages given what it is that they do, we have the capacity to excel at any age.

Truth is, we go through stages in our lives, and there are opportunities to do our best at various periods. What’s more, the differences in the way we view accomplishments at different ages can be extremely valuable to society collectively–especially when people work together. The innovation potential at the intersection between “young genius” and “old master,” for instance, is huge, especially when both parties are open to listening to and learning from one another.

No one wins Best Actress or Actor without the work of a director and a supporting cast. Pulitzer and Hugo winners would go prizeless but for their editors; Grammy winners have producers and songwriters; and Nobel Prizes are often won, to borrow a line from Isaac Newton, by “standing on the shoulders of giants”.

There are other reasons why we perceive artists being at their ripe best in their earlier years. A lot of times, we fall for musicians because of what they are saying and some relatable anger. I have mentioned Madonna and back in the 1980s and 1990s, she was talking about sex, being emotionally and physically revealing but also capable of writing songs that encapsulated youth, freedom and fun.

A lot of fans and critics would have been her sort of age – or younger – and they could relate. Many older or younger listeners might not have been able to relate so I wonder if there is subjectiveness regarding age and the fact we feel closer to artists who are similar to us. I think a lot of slightly older listeners might feel more connection to someone like Noel Gallagher and Johnny Marr now because they have that aspect in common – it is one of their peers making music. Many artists tend to hit gold early because they transcend from discovery and mistake-making and then discover that sweet spot. Look at the likes of Noel Gallagher and how do you possibly top something like (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? Gallagher was twenty-eight when that record came out and it followed an epic debut, Definitely Maybe. Oasis, even by 1997, were declining and not able to hit the same critical and creative stride they had even a couple of years before. Johnny Marr was twenty-two when The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead came out – they had reached that height and could never quite replicate the same magic. A lot of us, because of the age in which we discover an album, tend to feel that this work is sacred and, if it is not a copy of that, then it is a failure. Artists are always growing and moving but we all have those periods/albums that are seen as ‘best’ – can musicians ever please everyone and is nostalgia blurring our perceptions?

There are a lot of other factors. Many musicians, when they are popular and have hit that peak, do not have the same need to create a legacy and make that commercial impact. Popular culture shifts and it is unrealistic to think someone like Johnny Marr could get the same sort of focus as a solo artist as he did as part of The Smiths in the 1980s. Artists learn more as they grow older and I feel it is the lyrical and sonic side of genres like Pop where you see a definite age limit. Maybe, when artists get to fifty, they naturally evolve into a less electric and vibrant mould and that does not strike the ear in quite the same way. Many say Jazz and Classical artists can improve with age because of the professionalism and maturation of sound; Pop and other genres put lyrics and vocals at their fore so that means themes and a feeling of familiarity will be a bigger deciding factor. It is a complicated debate and there are many different aspects to consider. I do feel like artists over fifty should not be written off and it is awfully naïve to feel there is a definite where artists are seen as commercial and meaningful. Artists like Kylie Minogue and Melanie C have attacked radio stations for side-lining their music and, when they have reached a particular age, certain broadcasters have dropped loyalty and not seen them as viable. I disagree with this ageism but what of creative peak? I think it was Johnny Marr who claimed he is producing his best work now and most people would disagree. I have regard for these music legends but I do not feel it is nostalgia or pop culture’s changes that mean we feel they were at their best in their twenties and thirties – the fact is, they were stronger back then. Damon Albarn has just turned fifty and, whilst producing stunning records, he was at his finest when penning Blur classics in the 1990s and 2000s. Artists are still relevant and needed when they hit middle-age but I feel that argument of quality is an easy one to settle. Many have their own views but I think musicians (outside of Classic and Jazz) hit their peak...

IN THIS PHOTO: Damon Albarn in 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: Aaron Richter/Contour by Getty Images

BEFORE the age of fifty.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights

__________

A lot of people do not really look at an individual song…

 IN THIS IMAGE: The single cover for Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights (1978)/IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images 

and think about how it started life and why it is so highly regarded. I want to put certain tracks under the microscope – ones that mean a lot to me – and get to their heart(s). This might be the last time this year I get to write about Kate Bush – any excuse, me! – so it is only right I put her first. A debut single can be a hard thing to pitch. Most artists do not have the pull to call the shots and make any real demands. If they are with a record label, other people might write the single and the artist may only get a lot of say. Even if a songwriter feels they have this superb debut single, it may not be a sentiment shared by those who make the decisions. Kate Bush faced this sort of opposition when pitching Wuthering Heights. EMI’s – her label at the time – Bob Mercer wanted to release the more conventional James and the Cold Gun as the first single but Bush, knowing Wuthering Heights was special, fought for her choice! Given the fact Kate Bush was a teenager at the time and this was the first single the public were going to hear; standing up against the record label was a brave thing to do. Not many established artists today would combat a label’s opinion but Bush, on her first time through the machine, was passionate and angered – rumours that she broke down in tears show this song and her career meant so much.

IN THIS IMAGE: The cover for Kate Bush’s 1978 album, The Kick Inside/IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images

Bush was someone, right from the off, who wanted more of a say regarding her music’s direction and sound – The Kick Inside, where Wuthering Heights is placed, is an album Bush has sort of distanced herself from. I will talk more about this unique song and why it has impressed and resonated through the years but, even before the song was released, it seemed like Kate Bush and Emily Brontë shared some D.N.A. They share a birthday and Wuthering Heights’ heroine, Catherine/Cathy, shares a forename with the iconic songwriter. Kate Bush’s inspiration for Wuthering Heights was not the book itself but a documentary/T.V. show she caught the final ten minutes of – where Heathcliff was being haunted by the ghost of Cathy outside his window. Everything about the creation of Wuthering Heights is wondrous. You have this ingénue songwriter who was captivated by this T.V. adaptation and decided, on 5th March, 1977, to sit at a piano one night (when there was a full moon) and pen this amazing song. The fact so few artists have covered the song since its release on 20th January, 1978 shows what an intimidating and rare bird Wuthering Heights is! The single was not expected to do well and nobody really thought it would do much in the charts.

It charted in 1978 and rose to the top spot within three weeks. It became the first U.K. number-one written and performed by a female artist and is viewed (by critics) as one of the finest songs ever. Although Kate Bush re-recorded the vocal for the song in 1986 (for The Whole Story), the original is still the absolute best. Not only has Wuthering Heights’ unusual source of inspiration not been repeated much – how many artists write about a famous novel or literary heroine?! – but Bush’s delivery was the source of music interest. The fact she was ridiculed because of her performance style and video – more on that later – did get to her but all of Bush’s attributes made the song was it is. The way she floats and twists lines; her pronunciation and sheer passion is immense. The Wuthering Heights video allowed Bush’s love of dance to show and, again, provided us this unique and beguiling talent. Andrew Powell (the song’s producer) stated the vocal performance was done in a single take and there were no overdubs. The session started at midnight and, with Bush encouraging everyone throughout, it was all completed by five or six in the morning. There was a lot of discovery and naivety in the studio when Wuthering Heights was being created but there was one person who was cool, professional and supportive: Kate herself:

“All of this served as Kelly's starting point for the very first Kate Bush session, during which he was "learning as I went along and dreadfully insecure. I give full credit to Andrew [Powell] and the great musicians, who were very supportive, while Kate herself was just fantastic. Looking back, she was incredible and such an inspiration, even though when she first walked in I probably thought she was just another new artist. Her openness, her enthusiasm, her obvious talent — I remember finishing that first day, having recording two or three backing tracks, and thinking 'My God, that's it. I've peaked!'"

So, then; how did all the parts come together and what was the atmosphere like in the room at the time? The Sound on Sound article explains:

“The live rhythm section that Jon Kelly recorded for 'Wuthering Heights' consisted of Kate Bush playing a Bösendorfer grand piano, Stuart Elliott on drums, Andrew Powell on bass and Ian Bairnson on a six-string acoustic. And in terms of the miking, Kelly adhered pretty closely to Geoff Emerick's favoured choices while adding some of his own.

"Kate always recorded live vocals, and they were fantastic, but then she'd want to redo them later. In the case of 'Wuthering Heights', she was imitating this witch, the mad lady from the Yorkshire Moors, and she was very theatrical about it. She was such a mesmerising performer — she threw her heart and soul into everything she did — that it was difficult to ever fault her or say 'You could do better.'"

"That was a huge room, twice as big as the live area in Studio Two," Kelly remembers. "It could accommodate between 60 to 70 musicians, and had high ceilings and a lovely, bright sound. Everything sounded great in there. I miked the first violins with a couple of 87s, as I did for the second violins, the violas, the French horns and as overheads — back then you could have called me Mr. 87. At least there were FET 47s on the cellos. I'd try to use as few mics as posssible in Studio One because the room sounded so good and there was this phase thing going on — the more mics you used, you could fool yourself into thinking it sounded better, but things would cancel one another out and you'd lose the vibrancy... 

Ian Bairnson's electric guitar solo, which winds its way through the closing stages of 'Wuthering Heights', was played in the Studio Two control room, his Les Paul going through a Marshall head and Marshall 4 x 12, miked with... yes, a pair of 87s, one close, the other about four feet away.

"Ian warmed up and developed that solo while I got the monitoring right, and there was one take that was just great," says Kelly. "Being in the control room, he missed the feedback from the amp, and I can remember telling him to get close to the speakers, expecting this to do the same. You can tell I was pretty naïve..."

 IN THIS PHOTO: Engineer Jon Kelly in 2004/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

It is amazing to think how quickly and smoothly the track came together; how fast wrote it and how, over forty years after its release, nobody has created anything with the same mood and magic. Kate Bush, in 1978, was assured and an unpredictable creator. The Telegraph when putting Wuthering Heights under the spotlight, shed more light:

“Paranoid about being labelled, Bush strove to keep changing after Wuthering Heights. She said she wanted people to “chase after her”, to find out what she’d do next. “If I really wanted to, I could write a song that would be similar to Wuthering Heights. But I don’t want to. What’s the point?” she said in 1978.

This explains why over 40 years, it’s been impossible to anticipate her next move. She’s constantly created extraordinary musical netherworlds that have, in turns, taken in mainstream pop, Philip Glass-like minimalism and Balearic house, to name just three. To this day, Bush remains one of pop’s last great eccentrics. Her sold-out and critically lauded run of 22 shows at Hammersmith Apollo in 2014 showed what a force she remains.

But it was the uniqueness of Wuthering Heights that gave her this licence to experiment. Its release announced the arrival of an honest, unusual and fearless performer, rather than the arrival of a singer of piano ballads based on Victorian gothic literature...

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

As all truly great performers would, Bush used her unforgettable and idiosyncratic debut as a springboard rather than a template. And it is sadly unimaginable, in our more homogenised pop climate, with its fragmented listening patterns and lack of must-see TV music shows, that a song such as Wuthering Heights would have such a national impact if released today.

I first encountered the song when watching a VHS of her ‘best of’ compilation, The Whole Story. Two videos of the song was released – one with Kate Bush wearing a red dress; the other in a white dress – but it is, essentially, her dancing in time to the song. The fact such a simple conceit could stay in the mind and become this iconic visual proves Kate Bush, even then, was peerless and like nobody else. Wuthering Heights went against the boring Pop grain and did not play by any rules. I have not heard another track even vaguely like Wuthering Heights since 1978 and (the track) never loses its appeal. From the twinkling and seductive piano notes to the legendary and aching guitar solo at the end; Wuthering Heights is a masterful piece of songwriting that gave the world this wonderful artist. Kate Bush is still creating – she has just remastered and reissued her back catalogue and a book of lyrics, How to Be Invisible, is out next month – but she never flew as high as she did on the debut single. It can be quite intimidating having this genius debut single but it acted as a springboard for Bush. Wuthering Heights is an amazing and strange song; a timeless classic and filled with nuance and visions. It is a dreamy epic that, forty years later, has yet...

TO find an equal!         

FEATURE: Different Year, Same Problem: Whilst Genre Diversity Is Defining Major Festival Headline Slots, There Is One Pressing Question: Where ARE the Women?!

FEATURE:

 

 

Different Year, Same Problem

IN THIS IMAGE: The official poster for next year’s Reading and Leeds Festivals/IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images/Press 

Whilst Genre Diversity Is Defining Major Festival Headline Slots, There Is One Pressing Question: Where ARE the Women?!

__________

MAYBE the women of music have asked for some respect…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Stormzy at this year’s Wireless Festival/PHOTO CREDIT: Mohamed Abdulle/Mabdulle

or been a bit too good in terms of album quality because, lo and behold, it seems we are in for another male whitewash regarding festival headliners! I was pleased when Glastonbury announced Stormzy as their first (Friday) headliner because, as much as anything, it means Grime and Rap is getting more of a look-in. For a festival that has doggedly avoided putting artists like this at the top of the bill; Glastonbury is responding to changes and showing itself to be open-minded regarding the potency of Grime. Look at the headliners announced for next year’s Reading and Leeds Festivals and, again, there is no the normal slew of tired and recycled Rock bands! We have seen the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Eminem take to the Reading and Leeds headline stages, so the fact Post Malone has been announced as one of the four headliners is no real/seismic shock. In terms of the others…there is a bit of a mixed bag. Considering The 1975 are just about to release their album, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, it seems like their time is now. It is their third album so they have had time to build their stage presence and fanbase and will be able to get the punters in – one of the concerns regarding Stormzy headlining Glastonbury is the fact he has only released one album and, as such, can he fill a set adequately?! Twenty One Pilots are also headlining and, whilst not a huge name, they have a good fanbase here.

The fact is, annoyingly, there is American dominance at a British festival! I know quality needs to reign but The 1975 are the only British headliners for 2019! Stormzy has got Glastonbury off to a British start but, to track back to Reading and Leeds, and the formulaic, predictable log has been dropped: Foo Fighters. I love Dave Grohl and he is rightly considered one of music’s titan icons but when was the last time Foo Fighters dropped a biblical album?! Critically, the last album of theirs to get a pretty decent feedback was Wasting Light in 2011. In fact, one has to go back to the 1990s in order to find the best Foo Fighters albums. So, I have to ask; why go for a band that, whilst great in the live setting, are neither fresh nor providing anything great?! It is a case of them cranking out songs people want to hear (their classics) and the new ones that most are not too bothered with. Foo Fighters headlined Glastonbury last year and I was baffled by that appointment! It seems like we cannot have a major festival in this country without the band being booked. It is an appallingly lazy, tragic and depressing booking than demonstrates the issue with festival organisers. Look at the five names I have mentioned and you will notice a lack of women...

 IN THIS PHOTO: Nadia Rose (someone who could produce a stonking Reading and Leeds headline set)/PHOTO CREDIT: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

One might argue there have been few good Rock albums from women and so, when it comes to the big festivals; isn’t this just a reaction to demand?! Even if Reading and Leeds and Glastonbury were Rock-focused, then there are plenty of names to select! If some of the more traditional and rigid festivals have not made themselves malleable to trends and changes; Reading and Leeds has shown it is willing to diversify. A lot of huge Rap and Grime talent was on the bill last year and there were female artists further down. Glastonbury’s Grime revelation is pleasing and, again, what of the women?! Grime has some major female players, new and classic. Think about an icon like Ms. Dynamite or fresh blood like Lady Leshurr and you have choices but, as this article explains, Grime is a genre which is not as open and accommodating to women as they should be. Even so; we have Nadia Rose and Ms Banks who, I feel, could make more pleasing headliners than Foo Fighters. Think about Hip-Hop and you have a veritable banquet of choice! You could have an icon like Neneh Cherry or rising talent like Cardi B or Nicki Minaj; some other-genre women like Rihanna, M.I.A. or Dua Lipa; maybe Courtney Barnett, Laura Marling or Beyoncé, St. Vincent, Anna Calvi…or Christine and the Queens! I could rattle on for hours about the possible selections but there are some great black artists in the list that would add some much-needed diversity to the Reading and Leeds headliners!

 IN THIS PHOTO: Beyoncé (the perfect headliner for all your festival needs!)/PHOTO CREDIT: Invision for Parkwood Entertainment

The suggestion women are not able to handle a headline slot at festivals like Reading and Leeds is absurd! Someone like St. Vincent could own Reading and Leeds and blow everyone else away; someone like Courtney Barnett could do a brilliant headline set and there are female-led bands like Wolf Alice – who have just won the Mercury Prize! – would be perfect. There are a lot of great female bands around that are ready to shine and one has to imagine the likes of HINDS and Dream Wife are ready to shine. In any case; how can anyone claim the same-old, same-old all-male headline trend be a good thing?! Festivals like Reading and Leeds and Glastonbury have been dragging their heels for years and, while they are expanding their horizons regarding genre and tastes; female artists are being denied the headline slots. I know artists such as Billie Eilish will be playing Reading and Leeds next year but there are plenty of like-minded female artists who are bigger than could take a headliner – take Lorde, Katy Perry and Kacey Musgraves. Perry, in fact, has just been named the highest-earning female in music and my mind keeps coming back to Beyoncé, oddly. I am not sure whether he price tag is ridiculously high but she would crap over any headliner the major festivals have to offer up for next year!

Look at the names listed on this females in music power list and the honours about to befall SZA, Kacey Musgraves and Hayley Kiyoko and it is clear there are some incredibly potent female artists who are making way for others, leading a charge and influencing many! This BBC article responds to the gender gap and inequality and states that, although there are optimistic changes coming for 2019; festivals are still not doing enough:

“The BBC recently named Beyonce and Taylor Swift as the two most powerful women in music.

The person behind them (and above Adele) in third might not be a household name, but is "shaking up the industry".

PRS Foundation's boss Vanessa Reed has been praised for her work in trying to close the gender gap in a traditionally male-dominated business.

From from festival line-ups to producers, she says "doing nothing" to make a change "is not an option". 

The PRS Foundation funds new music and new talent across all genres.

This week its campaign to persuade festival organisers to have equal numbers of male and female performers by 2022 is meeting with European Parliament to put forward its concerns and ideas.

"Audiences want something different," says Vanessa, who is in charge of Keychange.

"There are talented women out there who aren't getting the same opportunities as men.

"There's still some resistance but I think people are beginning to realise that doing nothing is not an option"...

IN THIS PHOTO: PRS Foundation's boss Vanessa Reed/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images      

“So far, 140 festivals around the world have signed up to the pledge.

"Coming up against so many male artists in this industry... it's tough and it's annoying," says Rita Ora.

"But at the same time it's amazing for women like us when we do get a gig like Glastonbury Pyramid stage.

"You're just like, 'Wow I'm amongst all these incredible artists and hopefully one day it'll really change'."

PRS Foundation says women represent less than 20% of registered songwriters, and that when Keychange was started in 2011 only two percent of producers in the UK were female.

"When I started I didn't know any other women who were working," explains Catherine Marks, who was the first female to win producer of the year at the 2018 Music Producers Guild Awards.

"Maybe five years ago I started hearing about lots more women getting involved.

"It could be that women perceived it as a too male-dominated world and didn't want to get involved... it could just be that they weren't interested in production.

"But I think those feelings have changed and it's important to recognise that."

Catherine adds: "I've never really noticed too much of a divide, I maybe felt that as a woman I needed to work harder but nobody ever told me to".

I wonder, exactly, why men are automatically booked – many have not released decent material for years; others are unpopular or less established – whereas women have to ‘prove’ themselves. What about Lady Gaga and Lana Del Rey?! How about a few icons like Madonna and Janet Jackson?! I could rattle off dozens of names who have proven themselves and are able to captivate audiences around the world. Robyn, who has just released the insanely-good Honey, is someone who is ripe for headline attention!

Whilst there is a pitch to create parity and evolution, the facts speak for themselves:

“We know that the issue of gender inequality in the music industry is urgent: in 2018, just 14 per cent of performers at US festivals were women, and the gender pay gap at some of the biggest music-focused companies is a staggering 30 per cent. Of the world’s 600 most popular songs this year, only two per cent were produced by women. The statistics highlight a vital need for inclusivity and representation for women – on stage and behind the scenes. Statement Festival in Sweden, for example, was a direct response to sexual assaults in local festivals, and is for women only, and Mujeres en la Musica, a Spanish documentary campaign, highlighted that music industry money largely goes to men.

Working to combat these issues is Keychange, a pioneering music initiative bringing together the industry, national governments, European Parliament and the European Commission, with the aim of tackling the gender imbalance. Keychange, run by the PRS Foundation, has built a manifesto based on the work and ideas of women participating in their programme, which originally started as a talent development pool and sprung from there. That includes 60 emerging women artists and DJs from across Europe – like Jamz Supernova and Violet Skies – and seven international festivals across 18 months.

This manifesto builds on Keychange’s ask of music festivals and conferences to pledge a 50/50 gender balance on their line-ups by 2022. Over 130 festivals from 22 countries took them up on it, and we’re already seeing results.

“Festivals aren’t only festivals, they’re marketplaces for the music industry – that’s why it’s so important, we have influence on the headliners of tomorrow,” Alexander Schulz of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn festival explained”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: The 1975 (who have just been announced as one of Reading and Leeds’ headline acts for 2019)/PHOTO CREDIT: Billboard

It is all very well the likes of Glastonbury saying they are accommodating female artists but they speak like they are housing degenerates who are unfit for society! You do not need to give them a platform and make small changes. There are countless female artists, from every genre, who are ready and willing to headline festivals! They have the pull to bring in the masses and the talent to go down in history. Denying that fact and sticking with the same tired and plodding bands is a bull*hit move! Critics are raving about albums from female artists and radio stations are playing the songs. If this is not translated into festival exposure then how are the next generation of female musicians going to see that they can make it?! Look at the festival bookings now as you will see man after man topping things.

IN THIS PHOTO: SZA (a name I was surprised to see missing from Reading and Leeds’ line-up for next year - maybe she will be announced at a later date?!)/PHOTO CREDIT: Billboard

I applaud the diversification of sounds and booking artists like Stormzy and The 1975 but I have a horrible feeling Glastonbury will book another two men. There has been talk Madonna might be booked but that seems a long shot. I dread to think who will headline – probably Muse and Coldplay – but I very much doubt two female acts will be booked...maybe it will be all-male once more. It seems hard to believe there will be a fifty-fifty gender split by 2022 given the rate of ‘progression’! Maybe there are changes behind the scenes and out of sight but we need to see women visible and given their just rewards! I am sorely disappointed by the male-dominated headline bookings and it is wrong to blame them directly! The blame lays entirely at the feet of those organising Glastonbury and Reading and Leeds. Given the opportunities available and the crop of wonderful female artists who could dominate a headline slot I say, once more...

IN THIS PHOTO: Lana Del Rey (whilst she ‘appears’ on this fake Glastonbury poster, she could prove a popular headliner)/PHOTO CREDIT: Interscope Records

SHAME on you!

FEATURE: Burning Down the House: Bringing a More Theatrical and Original Approach to Live Performance

FEATURE:

 

 

Burning Down the House

 IN THIS PHOTO: David Byrne during his American Utopia tour (venue location unknown)/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images 

Bringing a More Theatrical and Original Approach to Live Performance

__________

MY eye has been caught by an article on the NME website…

 IN THIS PHOTO: David Byrne and his troupe at the Hammersmith Apollo on 23rd June, 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: Vianney Le Caer/REX

that looked at some modern artists who are doing something different with the live performance. Rather than the usual gig experience – artist/band turns up with a support act and then plays a set and maybe an encore comes – technology is allowing something different to gigs. Not only are we seeing some artists take a more technological approach to gigs but some are taking a theatrical, symbolic and original approach. Talking Heads gigs of old were never normal and predictable so it is no surprise to hear David Byrne bring something beguiling and educational to his latest tour. His American Utopia tour, as NME explain, is more than a man playing songs as we’d expect:

“Even if you’ve never been subjected to such pretentious whimsy, everyone’s seen a set a bit like it – a disappointing phone-in effort from an artist who used to break creative boundaries. Like resting on laurels, too many rely on legacy.  It’s why David Byrne’s ‘American Utopia’ tour – hyped to high heaven for completely understandable reasons – is all the more refreshing in contrast, bucking the trend.

Skipping barefoot across the stage, flanked by a roving cast of marching-band dancers who dive in and out of the curtains lining the stage, David Byrne’s show is carefully choreographed, but – as with Christine and The Queens’ current show – it manages to feel very human. It’s the opposite of alienating; the joy is pure and infectious. Even an alien landed straight from another galaxy with no working knowledge of the Talking Heads’ staggering impact would get it straight away. Hell, it doesn’t matter if you’ve only ever heard ‘Psycho Killer’ sampled on Selena Gomez’s ‘Bad Liar’ (banger)...

 

Tellingly, Byrne also subverts another tradition, too – instead of ending on a huge banger of his own, he swerves in a different direction and closes every show with a cover of Janelle Monáe’s 2015 song ‘Hell You Talmbout’. It feels fitting to see a true innovator using his time in the spotlight to pay it forward”.

I guess it can be quite routine and uninspiring if an artist as established and well-known as David Byrne does the usual gig thing. Rather than have a setlist of Talking Heads songs and solo material; Byrne brings something physical, high-concept and precise to his shows but makes it accessible and, odd, simple. Not only does one – attending his gigs – get the songs known and loved but there is a piece of performance art. Maybe those words lead people to something arty and pretentious but, with Byrne, he is unifying dance, theatre and technology into something magical. The Guardian, when attending one of his American Utopia gigs, provided their take:

“This unprecedented, exquisite live show finds a 12-strong band in near-constant motion, with percussion to the fore: at several points, half a dozen musicians are playing bits of drum kits hanging off harnesses they are wearing, a cross between an American high school marching band and a Brazilian carnival procession. (The harnesses are so discreet, the keyboard player’s instrument appears to hover in mid-air.) Everyone is in (normal-sized) grey Kenzo suits and barefoot; by the end, backing vocalist Chris Giarmo’s jacket is entirely black at the back, and Byrne’s own back is piebald with sweat”.

 

“Pop is no stranger to troupe dancing, but working musicians don’t normally move this perfectly, rearranging themselves like psychic starlings into clumps or lines, posing, vogue-ing, proceeding backwards in circles; choreographer Annie-B Parson is the architect of these manoeuvres. You can see the link to a previous Byrne outing – 2015’s US-only Contemporary Colourshows, since released as a film – which found Byrne reinterpreting the US sports pastime known as “colour guard”, where flag-spinners join marching bands for half-time performances.

This set, by contrast, is all grey and minimal and yet somehow just as kaleidoscopic. A huge swath of songs – Talking Heads songs, Byrne solo outings drawn from various periods, covers, collaborations – have all been subtly rescored to fit a show heavy on funk, fun, drama, shadowplay and a sprinkling of overt politics. Between two recent songs – Dog’s Mind and Everybody’s Coming to My House – Byrne encourages everyone to vote “in every election they possibly can”.

Maybe it is more of an American artist thing – as NME’s article explored – but I wonder whether artists are properly utilising technology or developing live gigs. Consider how far music production has come and how we share it: can we really say the gigs and viewing experience has made similarly big steps?! One can never get rid of the traditional and high-energy show – imagine the likes of IDLES or Foo Fighters employing dancers and have something high-concept working away whilst they were thrashing, swaggering and generally owning the stage!

 IN THIS PHOTO: St. Vincent at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on 2nd September, 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: Sonja Horsman for The Observer

There is a division line in terms of the genres/artists who are taking this approach but I feel the art world is divided. We might see albums employing elements of theatre, dance and technology but do we often get to see a gig, from a mainstream artist, like that?! In the case of David Byrne; he is someone who uses music as education as much as entertainment. In tandem with his American Utopia album; he has launched a website dedicated to feel-good stories and has done lectures and, in many ways, brings an academic side to his work. Perhaps it would be odd seeing Byrne performing his epic songs in an ordinary way: bringing in dancers and introducing much more physicality, spectacle and imagination into the mix leads to a more enriching and emotional memory. You will go to a gig, as many have, and come away inspired and changed. This somewhat new approach to live performance has been controversial. As NME stated; St. Vincent accrued some divisive reaction when she tried something new:

“Towards the end of last year, fresh from releasing ‘MASSEDUCTION’, St Vincent put on one of the most divisive shows in recent memory. Parring off the convention of a support act entirely (instead she opted to screen her short horror film The Birthday Party) Annie Clark also did away with almost every element that you’d associate with a typical live show. A band was nowhere to be seen; a curtain unfurled to reveal a screaming face instead. Clark performed alone with her guitar, backed by garish day-glo visuals, for the entire show...

Far from indulging the usual patter between songs there was zero audience acknowledgement, and in stark opposition to the brute physicality of her previous live shows – touring ‘St Vincent’ Clark frequently injured herself mid-performance – any movement was clinical and small. Shifting her microphone a metre to the left for one song, turning robotically to her right for another, it was less a gig, more a visual collage. It left some staggered by the bold move towards minimalism; others simply scratched their heads in confusion”.

She was not the only one whose deep messages and thought-provoking material required a performance that seemed to match the lyrics and themes being explored:

“Currently on tour in the UK, Christine and The Queens has also taken a turn towards the theatrical, using a cast of charismatic dancers – each with distinct styles and clear personalities – to help pull her audience closer. As with St Vincent’s ‘MASSEDUCTION’ her latest album ‘Chris’ also plays heavily with tensions around power and lust. Except in Christine’s case, she’s largely questioning how these things are typically wielded by women in the spotlight. To cut a long story much shorter, society doesn’t tend to be a massive fan of women in assertive command of their sexuality – Christine and The Queens, however, doesn’t really give a shit about this weird expectation. ”I’m just trying to deflect the male gaze and to sabotage it slightly,” is how she put it, talking to NME for our Big Read with the star earlier this year. “I’m horny, and I desire, and I’m sad, and happy, and joyful.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Christine and the Queens (Héloïse Letissier)/PHOTO CREDIT: Jamie Morgan

In terms of the types of artists who are embracing the unconventional and changing the nature of live performances; it is unlikely to extend much to the Pop mainstream. I think it would be dangerous for someone like Dua Lipa or Ed Sheeran to change what they do considering their popularity and what their fans expect. Maybe it is insulting – not meant to be – but David Byrne and St. Vincent appeal to a more mature and deep-thinking audience. If you had an artist whose demographic was very young and were screaming the whole set then they would not stand for the sort of thing you’d see at a David Byrne gig. Dancers, routines and theatre have always been part of the live show for many artists but there is this small band bucking trends and taking risks with their shows. It is a lot to do with personas and new personalities being revealed. The Christine and the Queens-Chris and St. Vincent-MASSEDUCTION are different to their earlier work! The themes being tackled in these albums – and for David Byrne – are more political, provocative, perhaps, and require something challenging. If these artists simply delivered this big and potent songs as a Pop artist would – or in a more conventional manner – one wonders whether the results would be as emphatic. Consider this review of a recent Christine and the Queens show:

“The otherwise sparse stage is adorned for the first act by a floor to ceiling painting of bucolic rolling hills, creating the perfect backdrop for low-slung single Girlfriend and its sprightly choreography.

During the emotionally ravaged Paradis Perdus, the lights on the painting shift and a thundercloud that had seemed to be resting calmly in the distance hovers into view. Later, the screens fall away altogether, replaced variously by banks of lights, plumes of green smoke and fluttering fake snow. At one point, a dancer seems to literally go up in smoke. It is modern theatre cajoled into a pop concert framework...

Joined by six dancers, Chris swaps the supple, loose-limbed movement of her debut for a more animalistic physicality, jostling sweatily with her cohorts on opener Comme Si and providing the centre around which they spin like orbiting planets during a spectacular 5 Dollars. The choreography is so far removed from your typical pop show – at one point, during the harpsichord heavy The Stranger, the dancers mimic the rise and fall of a wave, as if in slow motion – that when they do line up for a typical dance break, as on the horny strut of Damn (What Must a Woman Do), it feels cathartic. As the song crashes to a close, keen to really hammer home the lineage she’s channelling, she chucks in a quick snippet of Janet Jackson’s Nasty for good measure”.

Another artist, who I have mentioned, who is pushing boundaries is St. Vincent. Last year, when she played Brixton Academy, she divided people with a show that consisted of a short film; her playing songs to a simple backing track and no other performers. Last month, when playing Cambridge, this review shows Annie Clark has lost none of her ability to move and cause worried whispers:

“The banks of lights at the rear aren’t the only things pulling the crowd’s eyes out on stalks. Everyone on stage is dressed in tight flesh tones which, for a couple of seconds, registers as nudity – save for Clark’s thigh-high dominatrix boots and belt. (The band are in fact wearing leotards, dresses or shapeless jumpsuits)...

Then you notice the male players have bowl-haircut wigs and what look like tights over their faces – as though they are about to rob a bank, or worse. Drummer Matt Johnson (formerly of Jeff Buckley’s band) and keyboard player Daniel Mintseris are featureless mannequins, while the women – Clark and Toko Yasuda, who plays bass and keyboards – get to breathe normally. As a performance, it’s hard to read precisely: of a piece with the plasticity, kinkiness and electronics swirling around the Masseduction songs and their videos, but with the tables turned: Clark is nobody’s vapid eye-candy, but a female musician playing with gender roles, control and abandon; very forbidding, a little inviting.

Does it all get a bit samey? Well, yes – although effective, the heavily stylised aesthetic of this show does grate, and the weirdness that used to be a feature of St Vincent’s output seems in thrall to a number of familiar 80s motifs. Back then, Robert Palmer had a notorious video in which a gaggle of models were dressed up as musicians. Although it’s clear that St Vincent is purposely performing a kind of takedown of that robotic, gazed-upon femininity, after a while, it becomes hard to separate from empty sexiness.

Gradually, though, as the sweat makes its way through her hair, Clark becomes more naturalistic as the set draws to a close. Laughing, she tries to insert Cambridge road names into New York and delivers Smoking Section with a husky, Left Bank feel”.

Perhaps we have not seen a mass movement of artists going against the conventional grain but we have seen some big artists do something very different with their sets. Whether it is risky or a natural evolution of the live set; I think we will see more artists experimenting and bringing a cinematic, theatrical and strange edge to their shows. Whether enflamed and intense like Christine and the Queens; artistic and stunning like David Byrne or a quirkier St. Vincent approach; it is good seeing these musicians try something different. I think one of the reasons why venues are struggling and why a lot of us are not going to gigs is because we know what to expect. The decades-old routine or support acts coming on and then the artist tackling their material in a very normal way sounds sensible but how likely is that show – unless they are truly iconic – going to stick in the brain?! You can bet the likes of David Byrne have left many speechless recently and that, in no small part, is due to the way the live show is approached. Perhaps it will take a while for most of the big artists to follow the likes of Christine and the Queens but I think the results speak for themselves. I want to go to a gig to hear the songs I know and love but I want to be moved and involved in something spectacular and unique. A lot of gigs provide the former but the latter, sometimes, lacks. With innovators and pioneers transforming live gigs and making them more of a spectacle; they are bringing the humble stage to...

IN THIS PHOTO: Christine and the Queens at Bournemouth International Centre on 17th November, 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Reid   

A new era…                                                      

FEATURE: An Ideal Romance: The Beauty of Collaborations

FEATURE:

 

 

An Ideal Romance

IN THIS PHOTO: LUMP (Mike Lindsay and Laura Marling)/PHOTO CREDIT: Mathew Parri & Esteban Diacono  

The Beauty of Collaborations

__________

MOST people realise music trends have changed…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Arctic Monkeys in 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

over the past decade or so. There was a day, not an age ago, where bands had a big say and there was a lot of great music from them. This year has not exactly been lazy when it comes to bands and their glory – we have the likes of IDLES and Arctic Monkeys flying the flag – but there is not the scene there was back in the 1990 or last decade. I know there are a tonne of bands coming through and a load of stunning acts that are picking up awards and creating great music. Music, still, is very much about the solo artist. Look at the top-twenty albums from this year – in terms of the critical reaction – and they are from solo artists. I am not sure when the change happened but music has become more and more a solo endeavour. Many might say that is quite lonely and wonder where bands have gone but are bands going out of fashion?! Maybe they will not disappear from the consciousness of the mainstream. I do wonder how we got to a time when the band market ruled to now: solo artists are dominant and providing us with the finest albums (by and large). I do wonder whether a lot of the best bands have past their best days and the finest of the new breed are fighting to get attention.

I know there will be a swing back towards bands and we will see years when band-created music rules but, as of now, I have to ask whether sheer numbers is the problem. I feel there is something freeing and liberating with the solo artist. They can do what they want and are more flexible regarding genres and splicing sounds. Back when there was a bigger and more mainstream-visible band scene, it was easier to succeed and be visible. Now, I feel there is less of a demand for groups and what they are doing – a lot of festivals are reflecting this. Duos are a great ‘compromise’ but are still not as potent and popular as the solo artist. I think musical collaborations are providing a lot of promise. Look at LUMP and what they are putting out right now. Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay are this dream partnership that are creating fantastic sounds. It can be the case solo artists who have their own vibe and fanbase can find new delight and ambition when they join with another. I am more familiar with Marling’s work but am not as au fair with Lindsay. Tunng is the twisted Acid-Folk band started by Lindsay and it is completely different to what Laura Marling has put out. Both are incredible musicians and they are a potent force when joined together.

IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images

There is not the same bulk and crowding as you’d get in a band of four or five huge musicians; it is a duo that unites the diverse and wonderful sounds of Marling and Lindsay. I love solo artists and what they are releasing but do wonder whether there will ever be that shift back to bands. Until that happens – if it does at all – I feel these musical collaborations are a great step. LUMP is an interesting name and idea and is not a million miles away from Laura Marling’s solo work. Lindsay has brought something distinctly him to the mix and it is wonderful hearing these two musicians fuse and create something memorable and tantalising. LUMP spoke with The Line of Best Fit regarding collaborations and their favourite partnerships. There are, as The Line of Best Fit say, risks when you bring together artists with these high expectations:

“The results aren’t always golden - have a listen to Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Ebony and Ivory’ - but when artists find a natural chemistry together, the songs they write complement and enhance one another and create something brilliantly new in the process.

Such joy can be heard in Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay's work together as LUMP. Their spirit of collaboration is writ large throughout their eponymously titled record, where Marling adds words and vocals to Lindsay’s music and is literally spelt out on the final song, “LUMP is a Product (credits)”, which starts with the lyric “LUMP is a product of Mike Lindsay and Laura Marling.” There’s also the mysterious LUMP himself in the mix, the figurative embodiment of their work and the albums’ cover star who they’ve described as “Bagpuss but mixed with a yeti".

LUMP are showing what magic can be created by joining two musicians with different sounds/pasts and putting them on the same page. One of my favourite recent pairings is Matthew E. White and Flo Morrissey. They brought out Gentlewoman, Ruby Man last year and it is a selection of eclectic cover versions. I was not too familiar with either artist but they sound incredible together. I sought out Flo Morrissey after I heard the album and compared her work (solo) with the duo’s album. It is a partnership that Marling and Lindsay enjoyed:

“Laura: “The record they did together, Gentlewoman, Ruby Man was very good and actually it’s probably the easiest equivalent to LUMP in some ways. I thought it was a brilliant use of her timeless, weird ‘60s’/‘70s vibe and his production style."

Mike: “I hadn’t actually heard it and what’s been nice about doing this is the opportunity to listen to things; you can explore a little bit. I know both artists but I hadn’t heard their collaboration and I really loved it when Laura sent it through. I don’t always sit down and listen to records when they come out, it sometimes takes a nudge or two here or there for me to notice what’s going on in the world".

I hope this is not a one-off project from Morrissey and White and the fact LUMP are doing what they are can be traced back to Gentlewoman, Ruby Man. Another collaboration that is named in the article is Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave’s track, Where the Wild Roses Grow.

This was a big mainstream, big-name collaboration that one did not see happening. Certainly, the styles of Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue are as different as you can imagine. The 1995 duet was a case of big names forging their voices together and showcasing new layers. Few had heard that sort of soothing and alluring sound from Minogue and it was a more romantic, if dark, territory for Cave. Lindsay and Marling have their views:

“Mike: “I threw this one in, I don’t know if you know it or not Laura?”

Laura: “I remember it, I haven’t really listened to it since it came out, but I remember thinking it was an amazing clash of two worlds and a very smart move on both of their parts.”

Mike: “My ten year old self used to have posters of Kylie Minogue on my wall, I’m a secret fan of early Kylie. This was the turning point for her, when suddenly her whole persona of a sweet pop star kind of disappeared. It was amazing she was singing with Nick Cave and that’s definitely a sign of the greater than the sum of its best parts scenario - Nick Cave hadn’t worked with someone like that before, from that side of the pop world and she hadn’t gone over to the dark side. It’s a great song, this is about collaborations and ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ is a good one”.

There are, as we know, cases where artists are getting together and collaborating. You do not have to look too hard on the weekly Spotify recommendations and there are a whole host of artists combining for some track. A lot of the time, I find these collaborations excessive and driven by commercial needs. You often get four or five random names on a song and it can sound cluttered and cheap. A lot of these collaborations are designed to get streaming figures up and that commercial. Consider a song like Girls that saw Rita Ora join with Cardi B, Bebe Rexha and Cardi XCX together and you’d think, on paper, something brilliant could have come out. They are four of music’s biggest names but, in reality, the song is a rather lacklustre and slight offering that does not linger in the mind. The best collaboration of this year is the group, boygenius. Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker are the ‘supergroup’ and their eponymous E.P. has gathered huge acclaim. NME assessed the E.P./album in these terms:

“Backed by just a finger-picked acoustic guitar, it sounds like its being sung as the women drive down a quiet road in middle-of-nowhere America on their way to the next set of walls and doors. In the song’s final seconds, the guitar softens further, their soaring voices drawing out the final line until it cuts off abruptly midway, reinforcing that sense of brevity. It’s a notion that works on more than one level, too; much like its creators’ time in any one place, ‘Boygenius’ is all too fleeting, a record that leaves you yearning for more”.

This, again, is a project I hope continues like LUMP and Matthew E. White and Flo Morrissey. Rather than abandon their solo careers; Bridgers, Dacus and Baker have been able to bring together their new songs/thoughts together and are turning heads. Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, last year, brought us Lotta Sea Lice. There is a natural symmetry and companionship between the musicians and their styles, to me, fuse naturally. Barnett and Vile are not that far apart in terms of their lyrical style and delivery and I feel that was a reason why they recorded an album together. Both are still recording solo – Barnett’s recent record, Tell Me How You Really Feel, is one of this year’s best – but I think it is great she and Vile have an outlet if they want to try something different. One off-duets/collaborations can work brilliantly – I think the best is still Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart – but they can be hit-and-miss. I think more artists should join together and create something unusual/unexpected. You get it more in genres like Pop and Hip-Hop – where big names get together for a track or album – but they can fizzle. I think the likes of LUMP show well-known artists can step out of their normal world and make music together. I hold high hopes boygenius make another album and we get more from Flo Morrissey and Matthew E. White.

Neko Case, k.d. lang, Laura Veirs released the case/lang/veirs album in 2016 and that was met with positive reviews. The musicians have their established and respected solo careers but, like boygenius, there is this sisterly and instant bond within the group. Whether it is a duo like LUMP or a trio; a supergroup-style band...if the chemistry is right then it can be a wonderful thing to behold! I would love to see more of these collaborations/groups form and show what can happen when you bond these popular and defined names into a new project. From Beyoncé and Lady Gaga uniting on Telephone; Beyoncé and Jay-Z forming The Carters or Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars giving us Uptown Funk; you get that power when you bring together these great names. Maybe bands will have their day again but, right now, these great musical collaborations provide something different and fresh. Who knows what combinations and hybrids we could get in 2019?! The collaborations this year – LUMP and boygenius – have been hugely successful and there will be great demand for more work. It is clear the music scene is more attuned to the solo artist and they are getting most of the press. I feel there are remarkable bands about to spring to the mainstream but think about these great and organic musical collaborations and how great they sound. Apart from the odd disastrous single through the years; if you get the right partnership(s) then it can pay dividends! I have only cracked the surface of collaborations I music but the last few years has seen some mighty musical forces emerge. We might be familiar with an artist in their own milieu and zone but, when they stand aside and work with another great name – or several artists come together – what comes from them...

CAN truly stagger the senses!

FEATURE: Queens, IDLES and a Cherry on Top: The Best Albums of 2018

FEATURE:

 

 

Queens, IDLES and a Cherry on Top

IN THIS PHOTO: Héloïse Letissier, A.K.A. Christine and the Queens/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images  

The Best Albums of 2018

__________

A lot of others are putting together…

 IN THIS PHOTO: IDLES/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

their lists of the year’s best albums and there has been some stiff competition this year. I have been thinking about the best records from 2018 and, in no particular order, have assembled the very finest. From the incendiary and extraordinary sophomore album from IDLES to Anna Calvi’s remarkable Hunter; it has been a wonderful year for music that has seen some of the decade’s finest emerge. Have a look at the rundown and selection of this year’s finest discs and I hope you agree with (at least) some of the choices. It is very clear that 2018 has been a wonderful and varied...

IN THIS PHOTO: Neneh Cherry/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

TIME for music!

ALL ALBUM COVERS: Getty Images

________________

Janelle Monáe – Dirty Computer

Release Date: 27th April, 2018

Labels: Wondaland/Bad Boy/Atlantic

Review:

“Although Monáe sings that she won’t “spell it out for ya,” the multi-hyphenate artist came out as pansexual in a recent Rolling Stone interview—or, as she put it, “a free-ass motherfucker.” That revelation signifies the next step in her evolution, as an artist and an individual. Technically speaking, Dirty Computer is a wonder, deft and cohesive in its blending of genres, but Monáe’s declaration—really, a call to action—lends the album a sense of urgency. On Dirty Computer, the erstwhile Electric Lady loses the metal and circuitry, but none of her power or artistry, cementing her status alongside Prince in the hall of hyper-talented, gender-fluid icons who love and promote blackness” – The AV Club

Standout Track: Crazy, Classic, Life

Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour

Release Date: 30th March, 2018

Label: MCA Nashville 

Review:

“Everything clicks perfectly, but the writing has an effortless air; it never sounds as if it’s trying too hard to make a commercial impact, it never cloys, and the influences never swallow the character of the artist who made it. In recent years, there have been plenty of artists who’ve clumsily tried to graft the sound of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on to their own. On Lonely Weekend, possibly the best track here, Musgraves succeeds in capturing some of that album’s dreamy atmosphere without giving the impression that she’s striving to sound like Fleetwood Mac. It’s an album that imagines a world in which its author is the mainstream, rather than an influential outlier. It says something about its quality that, by the time it’s finished, that doesn’t seem a fanciful notion at all” – The Guardian

Standout Track: High Horse

Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

Release Date: 11th May, 2018

Label: Domino

Review:

“The Sheffield band’s journey has now taken them from “chip-shop rock’n’roll”, in Turner’s own words, to their very own ‘Pet Sounds’: the threads have been dangling for years, but Turner’s finally tied them together in a rather magnificent bow. Depending on where you’re sitting, this album will likely either be a bitter disappointment or a glorious step forward. But to where, exactly?

The album’s title is a fitting one: this record feels a lot like gazing into the night sky. At first it’s completely overwhelming – you’ll be trying to connect the scattered dots on this initially impenetrable listen, and maybe even despairing when it doesn’t all come together. But when the constellations show through, you’ll realise that it’s a product of searingly intelligent design” – NME

Standout Track: Four Out of Five

Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel

Release Date: 18th May, 2018

Label: Milk!/Mom + Pop/Marathon Artists

Review:

“The source of Barnett’s frustration is a moving target though – and she is both fuelled and exhausted by it. Need a Little Time, whose melody is at once bright and flat, feels like a conversation with herself: “You seem to have the weight of the world upon your bony shoulders.” The peppy isolationist anthem City Looks Pretty is conflicted too, dabbling in optimism and nihilism, succumbing to neither: “Sometimes I get sad / It’s not all that bad / One day, maybe never / I’ll come around.”

As much as finding a neat conclusion might lighten that mental load, Barnett has none to offer here. All she can do is show her workings, but leave the problems unanswered” – The Guardian

Standout Track: Charity

Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!

Release Date: 18th May, 2018

Label: Milk!/Mom + Pop/Marathon Artists

Review:

“‘Violence’ is the first standout, a mazy, bassy call to arms. Like many of Parquet Courts’ best songs, it functions as an alarm clock, a cattle prod. “Violence is daily life,” they chant, Savage considering the “pornographic spectacle of black death” that is the human condition. But the frontman is there for the listener too, offering us his hand as he spits, “Savage is my name because Savage is how I feel… My name belongs to us all… My name is a threat”.

This band have long articulated the inertia of acclimatising to adult life, and ‘In And Out Of Patience’ – a classic Parquet number – does so almost flippantly. “I’m neither here nor there,” muses Savage. It’s there again on the breakneck ‘Extinction’, Savage poking fun at his daily existence (“I’m trying not to turn into a psychopath”) over impatient guitars” – NME

Standout Track: Freebird II

Father John Misty – God’s Favourite Customer

Release Date: 1st June, 2018

Labels: Sub Pop/Bella Union

Review:

“God's Favorite Customer is littered with asides and in-jokes, peaking with the winking self-parody of "Mr. Tillman" and bottoming on "The Palace," where Tillman offers the revelation "Last night I wrote a poem/Man, I must've been in the poem zone." As Tillman's voice is pushed to the front of the mix -- there's no hiding from the many words of this singer/songwriter -- it's difficult to avoid his lyrics, which will either play as devilishly clever or solipsistic slop depending on your perspective. Then again, that double edge is also by design: Father John Misty means to provoke and soothe in equal measure, which is precisely what he does on God's Favorite Customer” – AllMusic

Standout Track: Mr. Tillman

Jorja Smith – Lost & Found

Release Date: 8th June, 2018

Label: FAMM

Review:

“Any artist of note will tell you they’re influenced by all kinds of different musical genres, and Jorja Smith is no exception. On ‘Lost & Found’, the hook on ‘Teenage Fantasy’ is straight out of an early ‘00s R&B cut. Jazz exerts a force right from the album’s title track (and indeed throughout) and, needless to say, Dizzee Rascal interpolation ‘Blue Lights’ nods to her affinity with rap, a discipline in which she regrettably dabbles on freestyle ‘Lifeboats’. The moments at which Smith manages to distill any of these genres into something entirely her own are truly special.

It’s the first full length album from a young creative brimming with ideas and promise. While ‘Lost & Found’ doesn’t feel like Jorja Smith’s magnum opus, it’s a brilliant first draft” – CLASH

Standout Track: Blue Lights

Anna Calvi – Hunter

Release Date: 31st August, 2018

Label: Domino

Review:

“Like gender, the record also examines sexuality. Calvi has flirted with a queer point of view before, as on "I'll Be Your Man" from her 2011 debut. But Hunter is the record which fundamentally lives and breathes queerness, a record where on "Chains" she suggests, "I'll be the boy, you be the girl/I'll be the girl you be the boy." Unlike earlier efforts, this feels less like theater for theater's sake, and ultimately, unbridled and infinitely real. On "Wish," for instance, she's never sounded so liberated, and that lack of constraint bleeds into her guitar playing, hinting at a newfound joy amid the curious majesty of her music.

Hunter is the record where, more than any other, Calvi's talents have fully crystallized. The true character of her music has been unleashed and will likely see all those PJ Harvey comparisons finally fade, eclipsed by the radiance of this tough yet open-hearted work” – AllMusic

Standout Track: Hunter

Neneh Cherry – Broken Politics

Release Date: 19th October, 2018

Label: Smalltown Supersound

Review:

“Now the multi-faceted agent of cool is back with a fifth solo album, ‘Broken Politics’. It’s ostensibly more restrained than preceding ‘Blank Project’ from 2014 yet holds a subtle potency. Continuing the artist’s collaboration with Four Tet, and longtime writing partner Cameron McVey, its stripped back sonics zero in on Cherry’s beautifully clear, distinctive vocals that slip periodically into spoken word as they wrap around rich and poignant lyrics.

Her social commentary emerges from a deeply personal perspective, at no point despondent but often melancholic and at times defiantly direct. ‘Fallen Leaves’ pleads: “Just because I’m down/Don’t step all over me.” Trip-hoppy, dub-backed ‘Kong’ protests the refugee crisis, while sinister-edged single ‘Shotgun Shack’ takes on gun violence.

A slow burn of an album, ‘Broken Politics’ artfully cuts through a turbulent, noisy world” – CLASH

Standout Track: Shot Gun Shack

IDLES – Joy as an Act of Resistance.

Release Date: 31st August, 2018

Label: Partisan

Review:

“Everything about ‘Joy As An Act Of Resistance’ is just so perfectly realised. The band began to write the album immediately after they finished work on ‘Brutalism’ – and it shows. The songs feel lived in, the record’s overarching message – that of the necessity of unity, positivity and loving yourself – so empowering that it almost amounts to an entire worldview. It’s even more powerful for the fact that Talbot worked on the album in the midst of massive personal trauma. This is a proper classic punk album, one that people will turn to in times of need, one whose authors are unembarrassed about still believing that art can manifest positive change. As Talbot roars on ‘I’m Scum’: “This snowflake’s an avalanche” – NME

Standout Track: Samaritans

SOPHIE – OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES

Release Date: 15th June, 2018

Labels: MSMSMSM/Future Classic/Transgressive

Review:

“But where once those tracks were tinny, here they have become steroidally imposing, gilded with distortion and industrial heft. Based around catchy chants, perfect for skipping rope games conducted by dominatrices, Ponyboy, Faceshoppingand the Aladdin-quoting Whole New World/Pretend World are dazzlingly brash and butch. Pretending is less successful – a stately bit of Tim Hecker-ish ambient, where her very particular sonics get lost in reverb – but it leads into the album’s biggest pop moment, Immaterial, where all the latent J-pop vibes get brought to the fore in a high-speed pachinko cacophony.

Despite software advances, so many electronic producers are content to lapse into nostalgia or a safe, compromised emotional range; Sophie has crafted a genuinely original sound and uses it to visit extremes of terror, sadness and pleasure” – The Guardian

Standout Track: Faceshopping

Jon Hopkins – Singularity

Release Date: 4th May, 2018

Label: Domino 

Review:

“In terms of Hopkins’ career trajectory, this isn’t quite as good as his last album, 2013’s Immunity, which was something of a breakthrough for the Englishman, but it does feel like the continuum. Like Immunity, it’s beautiful and it’s heartbreaking – as attractive as a sunrise peaking out over an doomed industrial zone. There’s humanity in desolation. Hopkins knows it to be true. That’s why we desperately need him out here” – The Irish Times  

Standout Track: Echo Dissolve

Eleanor Friedberger – Rebound

Release Date: 4th May, 2018

Label: Frenchkiss Records

Review:

“For so many people, the 2016 election activated a sense of uncertainty or inspired aimless wandering. There’s something closer to home happening to Friedberger on Rebound, though. On “Everything” she sings of a coveted romance, “a man in Greece, a girlfriend in Italy.” “Are We Good?” gives her an approximation of what that relationship might be like: “I proposed to a woman for a man last night.” But the experience is remote and dissatisfying. Friedberger isn’t exactly part of the action. While it continues her project of self-investigation, Rebound does not quite feature the Eleanor Friedberger we’ve come to know from her first three albums. It’s as though part of her has receded from view, as she tries to figure out—as we all do, all the time—what happens next” – Pitchfork   

Standout Track: Everything 

Shame – Songs of Praise

Release Date: 12th January, 2018

Label: Dead Oceans

Review:

“First impressions and preconceptions do few bands many favours, but Shame seem to have had to work hard to shelve such opinions on ‘Songs Of Praise’. The power and ferocity with which they do so across the album - as well as its rollocking instrumentation and clear social conscience - makes it a triumph.

“In a time of such injustice, how can you not want to be heard?” Charlie offers in ‘Friction’, before he launches himself into a roaring chorus, and on ‘Songs Of Praise’, Shame shout louder than anyone else at the moment, and make a claim to become Britain’s best new band” – DIY

Standout Track: Concrete

Let’s Eat Grandma – I’m All Ears

Release Date: 29th June, 2018

Label: Transgressive Records

Review:

“Like a magic eye puzzle falling into place, ‘I’m All Ears’ has only slightly shifted the band’s focus, but suddenly it all makes sense. ‘Hot Pink’ had signalled scuzzier intentions, but that track’s crushing drop transpires to be only one of many tricks up the Norfolk duo’s sleeves. Later singles ‘It’s Not Just Me’ and ‘Falling Into Me’ sound nothing short of invincible, the latter continually shapeshifting each time you think you’ve got it nailed down.

But if they’ve perfected the modern pop template associated with acts like SOPHIE (on production duties here) - and they have - it’s somehow not the most impressive element of the record. The second half of the album includes a pair of breathtaking epics, ‘Cool & Collected’ and ‘Donnie Darko’, that showcase a songwriting maturity well beyond their 18 and 19 years. Somehow it all fits. Let’s Eat Grandma, it turns out, are nobody but themselves” – CLASH

Standout Track: Hot Pink

Robyn – Honey

Release Date: 26th October, 2018

Labels: Konichiwa/Interscope

Review:

“Perhaps as a tribute to her connection with Falk, Robyn made Honey with other close friends. Along with Klas Åhlund, her collaborator since the Robyn days, the album features lush, expressionistic tracks produced by Kindness' Adam Bainbridge ("Send to Robin Immediately") and Mr. Tophat ("Beach 2K20"). However, her main creative partner is Metronomy's Joseph Mount, who contributed to over half the album and brings a crisp synth-pop edge to "Ever Again," which finds a stronger, wiser Robyn promising herself to never be this devastated again. The eight years between Body Talk and this album would be a lifetime for almost any artist, and several lifetimes for a female pop star, whose career longevity isn't usually measured in decades. However, Robyn continues to make the trends instead of following them, and with Honey, she enters her forties with some of her most emotionally satisfying and musically innovative music” – AllMusic

Standout Track: Honey                              

Young Fathers – Cocoa Sugar

Release Date: 9th March, 2018

Label: Ninja Turtle

Review:

“Cocoa Sugar bursts with the weird warmth of an ice burn, a sizzling stew of Tricky-covers-the-Fall garage rap. Each song is nasty, brutish and short, bristling with imagination. Wow shackles its motorik angst to a dead-eyed drawl, seasoned with abattoir squeals. In My View is a slugabed’s vision of anthemic pop, while Toy is the most conventionally vicious rap here, every word a wound. The trio reckon this is their most “linear” album, which seems a stretch. It feels just as estranged of pop’s traditional structures and strictures as they’ve always been. It feels exhilarating; it feels like freedom” – The Observer  

Standout Track: In My View                    

Christine and the Queens – Chris

Release Date: 21st September, 2018

Label: Because Music

Review:

“You don’t need to see her dancing to work out that Letissier is a fan of Michael Jackson – but you also catch an occasional echo of Scritti Politti’s pillowy white funk, not least on opener Comme Si, and, on Feel So Good, the clank and grind of both Jam and Lewis’s work on Janet Jackson’s 1986 album Control and the Art of Noise’s sample-mad dance music. She just writes fantastic songs: the melody of 5 Dollars is perfe ctly poised between sweetness and melancholy; What’s-Her-Face frames a lyric about self-loathing with an ominous cloud of electronics; Damn (What Must a Woman Do?) conjures a crowded dancefloor at 4am so effectively you can virtually feel the perspiration dripping from the ceiling. It is an album about pop music as much as any of the other topics it addresses. Or rather, about a belief in pop music as something more than ephemeral – as a vehicle for ideas, a space in which you can transform yourself – in an era when pop is supposed to have lost its longstanding hold over its audience, when it’s not supposed to amount to much more than a pleasant soundtrack or minor distraction. Get it right, Chris implies, and it can still be powerful” – The Guardian

Standout Track: Feel so good                 

Cardi B – Invasion of Privacy

Release Date: 5th April, 2018

Label: Atlantic  

Review:

“The Latin trap "I Like It," with Bad Bunny and J Balvin, is a notable highlight, a potential chart-buster in waiting. Surprisingly, Invasion is not just sneering street bangers about her "money moves." Bittersweet infidelity dirge "Be Careful" finds Cardi yearning for a solid relationship with a real man, not an unfaithful one (all signs point to Offset). On "Ring," a smooth R&B jam that features Kehlani, Cardi is vulnerable, revealing a well of pain beneath her tough-as-nails facade. "Thru Your Phone" is unflinching and relatable, wherein Cardi burns with vengeance as she poisons her cheating man with bleach in his cereal and a good old-fashioned stabbing. It's cartoonish but real, a confession of thoughts that are all too familiar to the scorned. This balance between over-the-top party starters and thoughtful reflection makes Invasion of Privacy an impressive debut for a rising star who can back up her outspokenness with raw talent” – AllMusic

Standout Track: Bodak Yellow

Boy Azooga – 1,2, Kung Fu!

Release Date: 8th June, 2018

Label: Heavenly   

Review:

“The sense that Newington has poured everything into this significant debut ensures an emotional resonance at the heart of songs like ‘Waitin’, with the spiralling repetition of its weary chorus set to cause all kinds of borderline obscene tingles within festival-goers over the coming months.

The love for his craft that Newington clearly possesses is writ large across these eleven songs and the bloated Sabbath crescendo of closer ‘Sitting On The First Rock From The Sun’ is a bizarrely fitting finale. It feels like a release, entirely lacking cynicism, simply the right thing for that moment in the song. It’s a philosophy that Boy Azooga lives by on ‘1, 2 Kung Fu’ to often giddying effect” – CLASH

Standout Track: Loner Boogie

FEATURE: Starting the Decade in Style: Part II/V: The Finest Albums of 1970

FEATURE:

 

 

Starting the Decade in Style

PHOTO CREDIT: @jacegrandinetti  

Part II/V: The Finest Albums of 1970

__________

THE reason I am putting together this feature…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @danedeaner/Unsplash

is to shine a light on the albums that started a decade with a huge deceleration. I feel it is hard to define what a decade is about and how it evolves but the first and last years are crucial – I have already looked at decade-ending albums. I am bringing to life this feature that celebrates albums that opened a decade with a mighty amount of quality and gave inspiration to those who followed. In this second part, I am focusing on 1970 and the best ten records from the year. The 1970s was a wonderful and inspiration time and some of its best records were released right at the start! Have a look at these ten 1970-released albums and look at the brilliance that greeted the start....

 PHOTO CREDIT: @manuelsardo/Unsplash

OF the 1970s.

ALL ALBUM COVERS: Getty Images

______________

George Harrison – All Things Must Pass

Release Date: 27th November, 1970

Label: Apple

Review:

“The language of physical media still haunts our vocabulary. Streaming services debut playlists that get dubbed “mixtapes”; we pull music from the available air and pipe them through our phones like water from a tap, and we still call use quaint words like “LP” and “EP” to describe them. For that legacy, we have artifacts like All Things Must Pass to thank. Today, albums like this are a bit like old ruins: They are important to keep around, even if they mostly remind us of what has changed. This dichotomy is the kind of thing that Harrison, who exited the earth in 2001, would probably have appreciated. All Things Must Pass is a monument to impermanence that has never once, even for a moment, left us” – Pitchfork  

Standout Track: My Sweet Lord

 

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin III

Release Date: 5th October, 1970

Label: Atlantic

Review:

“And even the rockers aren't as straightforward as before: the galloping "Immigrant Song" is powered by Robert Plant's banshee wail, "Celebration Day" turns blues-rock inside out with a warped slide guitar riff, and "Out on the Tiles" lumbers along with a tricky, multi-part riff. Nevertheless, the heart of the album lies on the second side, when the band delve deeply into English folk. "Gallows Pole" updates a traditional tune with a menacing flair, and "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" is an infectious acoustic romp, while "That's the Way" and "Tangerine" are shimmering songs with graceful country flourishes. The band hasn't left the blues behind, but the twisted bottleneck blues of "Hats off to (Roy) Harper" actually outstrips the epic "Since I've Been Loving You," which is the only time Zeppelin sound a bit set in their ways” – AllMusic  

Standout Track: Since I’ve Been Loving You

Derek and the Dominos – Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs

Release Date: 9th November, 1970

Labels: Polydor/Acto

Review:

“Every song within this album tells a love story, but none are as enthralling or sincere as "Layla". This is Eric Clapton's passionate confession to Patti Boyd, the wife of his best friend, George Harrison. The song expresses all of the unrequited love Eric Clapton had silently kept locked inside himself. "Layla" is a very unique piece of music because of its rather contrasting movements. It begins as an eruptive, guitar-driven song, but as it progresses it transcends into a delicate piano ballad. Eric Clapton's performance in this song is among one of his best. The guitar solos are fiery and aggressive, expressing all of the intensity and frustration that seems to posses our emotions when we're in love. The latter half of the song is just as mesmerizing, providing a sensitive yet affectionate sound induced by the coalescence of Duane Allman's soothing slide guitar and Bobby Whitlock's sentimental piano arrangements. Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is often recognized as one of the definitive releases in classic rock, and it is certainly one of Eric Clapton's finest efforts. The bluesy sound that coats the music of the album will be sure to prove itself as a captivating listen to the very end” – Sputnik Music  

Standout Track: Layla                                      

The Beatles – Let It Be

Release Date: 8th May, 1970 (U.K.); 18th May, 1970 (U.S.)

Label: Apple

Review:

“McCartney in particular offers several gems: the gospelish "Let It Be," which has some of his best lyrics; "Get Back," one of his hardest rockers; and the melodic "The Long and Winding Road," ruined by Spector's heavy-handed overdubs (the superior string-less, choir-less version was finally released on Anthology Vol. 3). The folky "Two of Us," with John and Paul harmonizing together, was also a highlight. Most of the rest of the material, by contrast, was going through the motions to some degree, although there are some good moments of straight hard rock in "I've Got a Feeling" and "Dig a Pony." As flawed and bumpy as it is, it's an album well worth having, as when the Beatles were in top form here, they were as good as ever” – Entertainment Weekly

Standout Track: Let It Be

Joni Mitchell – Ladies of the Canyon

Release Date: March 1970 

Label: Reprise

Review:

“Joni Mitchell writes some of the finest tunes around and matches their flowing hesitancy with her enduring epiphanies and modern parables. Her clever inner rhymes and stylized satire have been around for years—recall Tom Rush's "Circle Game" and Judy Collins' "Both Sides Now"? Ably matched here by "For Free," "Conversation" and the already CSNYed "Woodstock," not to mention the elusive "The Priest" or the incisive "Ladies of the Canyon" and seven other enigmatic, poetic word-journeys that move from taxis to windows to whiskey bars to boots of leather and racing cars. Plus the fact that Joni has now mastered the piano to the point where she employs it rather than guitar on nearly half the cuts—she plays it shrilly with a lot of echo and lingering notes, giving certain songs even more dimension and wideness. Other innovations this time out are a mild use of horns and even vocal choruses on some cuts. The choruses don't work for me—I think they ruin her long-awaited version of "Circle Game"—but the point is debatable. The use of horns is excellent—in particular the minor riff at the close of the stunning. "For Free” – Rolling Stone

Standout Track: Woodstock

Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water

Release Date: 26th January, 1970

Label: Elektra

Review:

“At the other extreme are sprightly tunes that hearken back to the duo's Fifties roots: "Cecelia," whose echoed hand claps sound like an early hip-hop drum loop, and "Keep the Customer Satisfied," the antic tale of a flimflam man staying ahead of the law. During the Bridge sessions, Garfunkel was often working on the film Catch-22 in Mexico; Simon gently notes his absence in "The Only Living Boy in New York." The notion of life chapters closing also permeates the folksy bossa nova "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright." It's ironic that "Bridge Over Troubled Water," a gospel-style song of reassurance and solidarity that Simon wrote as a vehicle for Garfunkel's golden tenor, would be one of their final collaborations. But they exited on an exhilarating note” – Rolling Stone  

Standout Track: The Boxer

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew

Release Date: 30th March, 1970

Label: Columbia

Review:

“The first thing that Bitches Brew made clear is that Miles was keenly interested in expanding the idea of what his music could be, and was starting to stretch it way out. The title track runs 26 minutes, which then and now is at the extreme end of what a side of vinyl on an LP can hold; the opening "Pharaoh's Dance" also breaks 20 minutes. And these pieces weren't lengthy compositions or single jams, but were assembled by Miles and producer Teo Macero through editing-- unrelated tracks could become one piece through the miracle of the razor blade and magnetic tape. For an improvisatory art form that was founded on the idea collective expression in the present moment, the idea of stitching together pieces into a new whole was radical enough on its own. But Miles was changing his approach in several ways simultaneously as the 1960s came to a close” – Pitchfork  

Standout Track: Bitches Brew

 

John Lennon – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

Release Date: 11th December, 1970

Label: Apple

Review:

“It was a revolutionary record -- never before had a record been so explicitly introspective, and very few records made absolutely no concession to the audience's expectations, daring the listeners to meet all the artist's demands. Which isn't to say that the record is unlistenable. Lennon's songs range from tough rock & rollers to piano-based ballads and spare folk songs, and his melodies remain strong and memorable, which actually intensifies the pain and rage of the songs. Not much about Plastic Ono Band is hidden. Lennon presents everything on the surface, and the song titles -- "Mother," "I Found Out," "Working Class Hero," "Isolation," "God," "My Mummy's Dead" -- illustrate what each song is about, and chart his loss of faith in his parents, country, friends, fans, and idols. It's an unflinching document of bare-bones despair and pain, but for all its nihilism, it is ultimately life-affirming; it is unique not only in Lennon's catalog, but in all of popular music. Few albums are ever as harrowing, difficult, and rewarding as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band”– AllMusic   

Standout Track: Working Class Hero

 

The Stooges – Fun House

Release Date: 7th July, 1970

Label: Elektra

Review:

“And Fun House is where Iggy Pop's mad genius first reached its full flower; what was a sneer on the band's debut had grown into the roar of a caged animal desperate for release, and his rants were far more passionate and compelling than what he had served up before. The Stooges may have had more "hits," but Fun House has stronger songs, including the garage raver to end all garage ravers in "Loose," the primal scream of "1970," and the apocalyptic anarchy of "L.A. Blues." Fun Houseis the ideal document of the Stooges at their raw, sweaty, howling peak” – AllMusic    

Standout Track: Down on the Street

 

James Taylor – Sweet Baby James

Release Date: February 1970

Label: Warner Bros.

Review:

“Taylor only shifts from this stance a couple of times. “Oh Baby, Don’t You Loose Your Lip On Me” is less than two minutes long; bluesy yet random, it sounds like studio hi-jinks used to fill out an album. But the other exception, “Steam Roller,” is a different story. Here Taylor is earthy and lowdown with definitely crude electric guitar behind him as he moans “I’m gonna inject your soul with some sweet rock and roll and shoot you full of rhythm and blues.” Then a miasmic, brass riff to make sure things stay tough, followed by a particularly timely and potent couple of verses: “I’m a napalm bomb for you baby/stone guaranteed to blow your mind/ and if I can’t have your love for my own sweet child/there won’t be nothing left behind.” A double-entendre tour-de-force pulled off effortlessly.

This is a hard album to argue with; it does a good job of proving that his first effort was no fluke. This one gets off the ground just as nicely, as Taylor seems to have found the ideal musical vehicle to say what he has to say” – Rolling Stone

Standout Track: Fire and Rain

FEATURE: The Daisy Age, Huge Growth and Potholes in My Lawn: De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising: Its Place in Hip-Hop’s Golden Era, Sheer Brilliance and Lack of Online Availability

FEATURE:

 

 

The Daisy Age, Huge Growth and Potholes in My Lawn

IN THIS IMAGE: The cover for De La Soul’s 1989 masterpiece, 3 Feet High and Rising/ALL IMAGES/PHOTOS (unless credited otherwise): Getty Images 

De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising: Its Place in Hip-Hop’s Golden Era, Sheer Brilliance and Lack of Online Availability

__________

MANY have their opinions regarding Hip-Hop’s ‘golden period’…

and when it was at its most potent. Every year sees some brilliant Hip-Hop albums and modern stars like Kendrick Lamar are doing brilliant things and pushing the genre to new heights. I am amazed that Hip-Hop continues to produce such majesty and can hit remarkable peaks. Whilst there is a great collective of artists doing their own thing and producing sensational work; I feel the masters really laid down the rules and produced the yardstick back in 1988/1989. There were fantastic Hip-Hop albums prior to 1988. Go back to 1986 and Run-D.M.C.’s Raising Hell arrived in 1986 and it was a bold move for the third record. Run-D.M.C. were on a hot streak already but few could have seen Raising Hell come along. Produced by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons; it was Rubin’s love of Metal and Rap that created a tougher, tauter and more explosive album. Not only is there a reinvention of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way but the palette of sounds is amazing! There are a tonne of drum loops and heavy beats; so many layers that made it a guide and bar for Hip-Hop albums to follow. Eric B. and Rakim’s Paid in Full arrived the following year and the album was recorded inexpensively and quickly. Again…Russell Simmons of Def Jam Records made a push and signed them to Island Records.

Rakim wrote the songs in about an hour while listening to the beat; he recorded the lyrics in a booth and read the lyrics from a piece of paper. The duo worked in forty-eight-hour shifts and completed the record in a week. There was no calculation and precision: the duo was putting together sounds that felt right and natural. The reviews and praise that came in for Paid in Full were extraordinary:

“Paid in Full was released during what became known as the golden age hip hop era.[44] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Sasha Frere-Jones called it "one of hip-hop's perfect records",[38] while Alex Ogg considered it to be the duo's magnum opus in his book The Men Behind Def Jam.[3] Rakim's rapping on the album set a blueprint for future rappers and helped secure East Coast hip hop's reputation for innovative lyrical technique.[13][45] Author William Cobb stated in To the Break of Dawn that his rapping had "stepped outside" of the preceding era of old school hip hop and that while the vocabulary and lyrical dexterity of newer rappers had improved, it was "nowhere near what Rakim introduced to the genre".[44] The New York Times' Dimitri Ehrlich, who described the album as "an artistic and commercial benchmark", credited Rakim for helping "give birth to a musical genre" and leading "a quiet musical revolution, introducing a soft-spoken rapping style".[46] Allmusic's Steve Huey declared Paid in Full one of hip-hop's most influential albums and "essential listening" for those interested in the genre's "basic musical foundations".[20] MTV ranked it at number one in "The Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time", stating it raised the standards of hip-hop "both sonically and poetically" and described it as "captivating, profound, innovative and instantly influential".[15] The album is broken down track-by-track by Rakim in Brian Coleman's book Check the Technique[47]”

To me, this album was one of the first seed planted in the minds of De La Soul. 1988 would have a profound impact as, off of the back of the growing tide, Public Enemy, N.W.A. and Eric B. & Rakim produced ground-breaking and seismic records. Eric B. & Rakim released Follow the Leader and, as would be common of the other icons of the year; sampling and splicing sounds helped elevate their potent and powerful messages to new heights. Paid in Full was crammed with great sounds but its follow-up was a slicker, tighter and more consistent album. N.W.A. released the incendiary and explosive Straight Outta Compton that, whilst rallying against corruption, racism and suppression; there were a tonne of samples. It is seen as one of the most important Hip-Hop records regarding pushing the genre forward and opened eyes in 1988. Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, whilst less sweary, was another charged and titanic album whose clever and eclectic use of samples helped to spotlight augment some incredible messages. 1988 was a phenomenal year for Hip-Hop and, with lesser-celebrated albums like He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince) helping to create an epic and evolving scene, it would inspire those who arrived in 1989. This was the start of a terrific boom for Hip-Hop and the duel pillars of Public Enemy and N.W.A. put out these socially aware and skilful albums that married serious and inspiring lyrics with a kaleidoscope of sounds.

1989 was defined by two especially great Hip-Hop records: Paul’s Boutique and 3 Feet High and Rising. There are rumours that Beastie Boys and De Le Soul were in each other’s company and the former heard the latter’s new album. Beastie Boys, hearing the insane and vast samples on 3 Feet High and Rising, despaired and knew they had to up their game. Beastie Boys were in-exile and suffered mixed reviews after their debut album. They would receive puzzled looks and muted reviews when Paul’s Boutique was released in 1989 – few knew what to expect and how to handle such a complex and ambitious record. Whilst Paul’s Boutique seems to have similar traits to records like Paid in Full and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back; 3 Feet High and Rising was a different beast and signified a more peaceful and less confrontational style of Hip-Hop. The record was the first of three collaborations between De La Soul and producer Prince Paul and is seen as one of the greatest Hip-Hop albums ever. It has the same depth and variety as previous works of genius but its messages are rooted in peace, fun and something less potent. Completely different, lyrically, to the work of N.W.A. and Public Enemy; it was another bold shift in Hip-Hop and helped spearhead a ‘Flower Power’/’Daisy Age’ style of Hip-Hop.

Again, the spread of positive opinion was amazing to see:

“It is listed on Rolling Stones' 200 Essential Rock Records and The Source's 100 Best Rap Albums (both of which are unordered). When Village Voice held its annual Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 1989, 3 Feet High and Rising was ranked at #1, outdistancing its nearest opponent (Neil Young's Freedom) by 21 votes and 260 points. It was also listed on the Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Released amid the 1989 boom in gangsta rap, which gravitated towards hardcore, confrontational, violent lyrics, De La Soul's uniquely positive style made them an oddity beginning with the first single, "Me, Myself and I". Their positivity meant many observers labeled them a "hippie" group, based on their declaration of the "D.A.I.S.Y. Age" (da inner sound, y'all). Sampling artists as diverse as Johnny Cash, Hall & Oates, Steely Dan and The Turtles, 3 Feet High and Rising is often viewed as the stylistic beginning of 1990s alternative hip hop (and especially jazz rap).[23]

"An inevitable development in the class history of rap, [De La Soul is] new wave to Public Enemy's punk," wrote critic Robert Christgau in his Village Voice review of 3 Feet High and Rising: "Their music is maddeningly disjunct, and a few of the 24-cuts-in-67-minutes (too long for vinyl) are self-indulgent, arch. But their music is also radically unlike any rap you or anybody else has ever heard — inspirations include the Jarmels and a learn-it-yourself French record. And for all their kiddie consciousness, junk-culture arcana, and suburban in-jokes, they're in the new tradition — you can dance to them, which counts for plenty when disjunction is your problem."[22]

Rolling Stone magazine gave the album three stars and concluded that it was "(o)ne of the most original rap records ever to come down the pike, the inventive, playful 3 Feet High and Rising stands staid rap conventions on their def ear"[18]”

Artists like Macy Gray and James Lavelle have been inspired by the risks, experimentation and sheer wonder of 3 Feet High and Rising. Not to mention, of course, all the Hip-Hop artists who would try and follow De La Soul’s masterpiece!

 IN THIS PHOTO: De La Soul in 1989

I want to end by bringing in a great piece that sort of ties together some important aspects regarding the album. It looks at 3 Feet High and Rising in the context of those ‘golden years’ (1988/1989 to 1991/1992; that start came in 1986…) and how it managed to transform Hip-Hop. It also mentions one of the biggest issues regarding the record: the fact it is unavailable to stream online. Some say it was De La Soul who screwed up – singing a contract that meant their music would not be available electronic – but it is a shame the only way one can hear this epochal creation is through physical sale. That is no bad thing but its absence online has been noted by the band themselves who regret this. This Pitchfork article looks at 3 Feet High and Rising and how it followed such gems like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back:

“Consider that in the preceding 12 months, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Straight Outta Compton, Critical Beatdown, Lyte As a Rock, and In Full Gear had made a massive impact in hip-hop. All of these records commanded attention, wore their sizable ambitions on their jackets. But while their New School peers stood tall, offering righteousness (Public Enemy), rebellion (N.W.A.), street wisdom (MC Lyte), style-war futurism (Ultramagnetic MC’s) and crowd-pleasing showmanship (Stetsasonic) to hip-hop’s expanding audiences, De La Soul were the quiet kids lingering at the edge of the cipher, withdrawn and a little mysterious, conversing in coded language meant to distance themselves from all the big personalities jockeying for position around them”.

IN THIS PHOTO: De La Soul on Long Island in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Janette Beckman 

One of the biggest differences between the world of West Coast artists who seemed to offer a brand of Hip-Hop that was striking, rallying and had anger at its heart – then there was De La Soul:

“But the narrative of the album is still framed by a tired contrast between the rise of N.W.A. and the West Coast gangsta rap and that of De La Soul and the Native Tongues’ ”completely unthreatening” “message of positivity.” De La never asked to be the saviors of hip-hop, much less to answer for all the supposed pathologies that critics wanted to put on Black masculinity and Black popular culture. Instead, De La Soul defined their outsiderness through a weird, wild, and wholly self-referential creativity. Their MC names were “Sounds Op” and “Yogurt” spelled backwards. Their album would be full of inside jokes, invented slang (“A phrase called talk” was their rhyme style, “Public Speaker” was a dope emcee, “Buddy” was a hot body, and “Strictly Dan Stuckie” meant “awesome”), and an odd mix of preoccupations ranging from TV to Aesop’s fables to Luden’s cough drops to, of course, sex”.

It is amusing to think of the stark contrasts between Hip-Hop artists battling police, being put down by politicians and having to experience violence and hatred.

On one of my favourite cuts from 3 Feet High and Rising; De La Soul spoke about a suburban battle that was less to do with gun violence and border disputes and more concerned with neighbourhood disputes – Potholes in My Lawn, one suspects, was a story of De La Soul’s place in Hip-Hop and how their peers viewed them:

“The Black suburban imagination of Long Island rappers offered a distinctive kind of street romance and horror. Public Enemy rapped about cruising the boulevards in muscle cars, their adrenaline amping up their politics of provocation. De La Soul’s second single, “Potholes In My Lawn,” was a battle rhyme refracted through the brutal status consciousness of the ‘burbs. De La played the family on the block coming into success, only to be met with the envious rage of the Joneses next door. Trugoy complained, “I don’t ask for a barbed wire fence, B, but my dwellin’ is swellin’.” Meanwhile, imitating wannabes lurked in the bushes. These rhyme-biting rappers took the form of vermin leaving unsightly craters all over the front yard. The crew repatched the potholes with daisies. Individuality trumped suburban conformity”.

During recording, there was this quest to put denser sounds together and throw more ambition into the lyrics. A lot of the songs on 3 Feet High and Rising concerned juvenile topics yet there was no lack of intelligence and originality from De La Soul. Genius tracks like The Magic Number – band philosophy and their personal mantras – captivated and remain hugely popular to this day.

One of the hardest things De La Soul had to face after 3 Feet High and Rising arrived was a backlash. Many threatened physical violence and the band were seen as soft hippies and not as credible and purposeful as their Hip-Hop peers.

“If Black complexity had been the meta-message lost in De La’s big crossover, abstraction, abjection, and humor were the winning trifecta of 3 Feet High and Rising. The skits and interludes poked fun at more of their obsessions—funky smells (“A Little Bit of Soap”), fashion trends (“Take It Off”), and porn flicks (“De la Orgee”). The funniest featured hip-hop party-starters veering off script (“Do As De La Does”). The game show skit might have been a transferral of rap’s meritocratic competition into something absurd—no one wins but the audience: Were you not entertained?”...De La Soul were making a point about the power of culture to mobilize people to action or immobilize them with fear. It was an idea they explored more explicitly on their fable, “Tread Water”.

3 Feet High and Rising followed those monumental, sample-heavy records like Straight Outta Compton and Paid in Full but took a more humorous and easy-going nature – whilst not skimping on the genius, scope and skill! One wonders whether we could ever see an album like this again because of sampling clearance and legalities:

“Today’s debate over sampling is mostly mind-numbingly narrow, shaped largely by big-money concerns that are ahistorical, anti-cultural, and anti-creative. The current regime rewards the least creative class—lawyers and capitalists—while destroying cultural practices of passing on. Post-hip-hop intellectual property law rests on racialized ideas of originality, and preserves the vampire profits of publishing outfits like Bridgeport Music, that sue sampling producers while preventing artists like George Clinton from sharing their music with next-generation musicians, and large corporations like Warner Brothers that continue to disenfranchise Black genius”.

There have been some big albums that employed samples but nothing, since the turn of the century at least, that have had the same effect and range as 3 Feet High and Rising. You would think it would be easier to sample work and get clearance but it seems there is even more litigious barrier and problems facing those who want to create their own 3 Feet High and Rising. One big tragedy is we might not see 3 Feet High online anytime soon. This article explains why De La Soul’s early work cannot be found on sites such as Spotify:

“The influential trio’s 1989 debut 3 Feet High and Rising is widely considered a masterpiece of the rap genre but, along with follow-up De La Soul is Dead, is unable to appear in digital form because of the many samples the band used.

MC Kelvin Mercer, known by his alias Posdnuos, described finding out that the group’s early contracts were for vinyl and cassette only as “really heart-wrenching”.

“It’s an unfortunate place we’ve been put in as a group,” he told the BBC. “Our contracts on those early albums said specifically ‘vinyl and cassette’. The wording wasn’t vague enough to lend itself to music technology”...

 

De La Soul heavily sampled an eclectic range of artists from James Brown and Michael Jackson to Smokey Robinson and Johnny Cash. Their record label got legal permission for most of them back when the band first began but in order to stream or download these songs, new deals must be cut for the albums.

The only hope of hearing them online now rests with Warner Bros, who owns the tapes. Sadly, according to Posdnuos, they “just don’t want to deal with it” due to the time involved in carefully going through each song to check every sample is cleared. The lengthy process has been “draining” and further hindered by staff changes, he said”.

One reason why Hip-Hop masterpieces like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 3 Feet High and Rising are so important is not just because of the messages and the fact it highlights problems affecting the black population in America – there have not been that many similar British Hip-Hop albums or scene – but the way music is spliced together. You get to hear about the struggles and problems that afflict sectors of U.S. society overlooked but, in the process, disparate artists and genres and woven together and this brings that music to new generations. Pitchfork’s article explains:

“Pos’s production on “Eye Know” put Steely Dan into conversation with Otis Redding and the Mad Lads, his work on “Say No Go” Hall and Oates with the Detroit Emeralds. The musical chorus of “Potholes in My Lawn” pointed not only to Parliament’s 1970 debut Osmium, but to the African American roots of country and western music...

IN THIS PHOTO: De La Soul, circa 1990/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Together, the sampled sounds of the Jarmels, the Blackbyrds, the New Birth, and even white artists like Led Zeppelin, Bob Dorough, and Billy Joel, make a strong case that all of American pop is African-American pop, from which everyone has been borrowing. Sampling—De La Soul sampling Parliament, Obama sampling Lincoln, Melania sampling Michelle—is nothing less than the American pastime, the creative reuse of history amid the tension between erasure and emergence that is central to the struggle for the republic. No one can ever do it as big as De La Soul did”.

Hip-Hop has not seen such a golden and productive time since the late-1980s and a lot can be learned from albums like 3 Feet High and Rising. Maybe more modern Hip-Hop artists like Eminem and Dr. Dre helped provide the genre another exciting burst in the late-1990s/early-2000s but nothing like the world saw in the late-1980s. Some might say things started with Run-D.M.C. in 1986 or Eric B. & Rakim’s Paid in Full the year after. It is clear the explosive during 1988 – with Public Enemy and N.W.A. - propelled a sample-heavy reaction from De La Soul. It was a peaceful and colourful alternative to the rather sharp and political albums from some quarters. It garnered some criticism and heat from certain quarters – feeling De La Soul were wet and opposed to Hip-Hop’s ideals – but it was a stunning progression and evolution in Hip-Hop. Even through there is a notable 3 Feet High and Rising-shaped hole in the streaming marketplace few can deny the genius and legacy of this 1989...

WORK of brilliance.

FEATURE: Now That’s What I Call Music! at Thirty-Five: The Compilation Series That Succeeds in a Streaming Age

FEATURE:

 

 

Now That’s What I Call Music! at Thirty-Five

IN THIS PHOTO: The cover for the first Now That’s What I Call Music(!) (released in the U.K. on 29th November, 1983)/ALL IMAGE/PHOTO CREDIT (unless credited otherwise): Getty Images

The Compilation Series That Succeeds in a Streaming Age

__________

THERE are times when one is permitted…

to look back fondly and not be accused of nostalgia and being sappy! It is never good being stuck in the past but it is also important to note where our music tastes grew and where we came from. The Now That’s What I Call Music! was born thirty-five years ago (on 28th November). Before I give my memories (you can hear the first compilation here) and argue why the series continues to appeal; here is some historical background from Wikipedia:

“The idea for the series was conceived in the office of Virgin Records in Vernon Yard, near Portobello Road, by the head of Licensing and Business Affairs at Virgin Records (1979–1990) – Stephen Navin, and General Manager (1983–1988) – Jon Webster.[2] The concept was taken to Simon Draper (Managing Director at Virgin Records) and then Peter Jamieson (Managing Director of EMI Records (1983–1986)). Jamieson had similar plans to launch such a compilation and he immediately agreed to the partnership. The deal was negotiated and finalised on Richard Branson's boat moored in Little Venice.[3]

The series took its name from a 1920s advertising poster for Danish bacon featuring a pig saying "Now. That's What I Call Music" as it listened to a chicken singing. Richard Branson had bought the poster for his cousin, Simon Draper, to hang behind Draper's desk at the Virgin Records office. Branson wrote "He was notoriously grumpy before breakfast and loved his eggs in the morning, so I bought him the poster, framed it and had it hung behind his desk.".[3] The pig became the mascot for the series', making its last appearance on Now That's What I Call Music 5.[4] It has recently made a reappearance on the cover of Now That's What I Call Music! 100, which was released on 20 July 2018...

The first Now was released on 28 November 1983[5] and featured 30 UK hit singles from that year on a double vinyl LP or cassette. Although the compilation of recent hit songs into a single release was not a new concept (K-tel and Ronco, for example, had been issuing various artists' compilations for some years), this was the first time that two major record labels had collaborated on such a venture. Virgin agreed to a deal with EMI, which allowed a greater number of major hits to be included (the first album in the series included a total of "eleven number ones" on its sleeve). The album went to number one, and soon after, CBS/WEA's The Hits Album, adopted a similar format to Now!. The two series co-existed for the rest of the 1980s, but when Universal joined the collaboration the Now! series was more successful commercially. The Out Now series by MCA and Chrysalis was also established as a rival to the series,[6] but was short lived”.

We have just seen the one-hundredth edition of the series come out (in July) and it is remarkable that the Now (if I can shorten it?!) series has reached such a milestone! I remember the BBC article that took us inside the Now offices as the decisions flew regarding the tracklisting for Now’s huge one-hundredth:

"It's Now day!" declares Jenny Fisher, settling into a sofa in a relaxed, but cramped little room on the second floor of Abbey Road.

Quietly spoken but authoritative, she's here to decide, compile and master the tracklisting for Now That's What I Call Music 100, which is set to be one of the year's biggest-selling CDs...

The Now series began in 1983 as a way of showcasing the success of Virgin Records which, at the time, was having an unprecedented run of hits with acts like Culture Club, Phil Collins and UB40.

They took the idea to EMI, who were so impressed they linked up with Virgin to release it - the first time that two major labels had collaborated in such a way.

Today, the series is so big (120m sales and counting) that all the record labels get a look-in. But that doesn't mean that compiling the 100th edition will be easy.

"It looks like we won't be able to clear Drake," sighs Steve Pritchard, a 58-year-old motorcycle enthusiast who's been a custodian of the series for more than half his life.

Steve has been working on Now since its 19th edition (side one, track one - The Clash, Should I Stay Or Should I Go) and it's not the first time he's struggled to get permission for a song.

"Historically, a lot of big American artists didn't really understand Now," he explains.

"They saw it - erroneously - as cannibalising their own sales. We were never able to access Madonna, for example."

Still, Drake hasn't been crossed off Steve's master list just yet. Some songs get cleared right at the last moment… and we're only just getting started.

He's joined in the studio by Peter Duckworth, who's been working with him since Now 20 (side one, track one - Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff, Dizzy). Jenny is a relative newcomer, having signed up for Now 82 (side one, track one - Fun ft Janelle Monae, We Are Young).

For the 100th anthology, however, disc two is being handed over to classic hits from previous compilations, including Phil Collins (who opened the very first album in 1983) and Robbie Williams (who's appeared more times than anyone else).

That means the mixing session at Abbey Road is over - but the work is far from over.

Jenny scurries off to her office, where she has to write a biography for every artist on the compilation. Her text gets sent to a designer, who works through the night to finish the artwork.

"Then we listen to the CDs all the way through three times looking for any explicit lyrics or audio that doesn't sound right," Jenny says.

"Hopefully by tomorrow night, we'll be completely happy with it, and we can send it to manufacture and start the process on Wednesday morning".

One of the problems that exist with Now is the demographic of genres. Look at any number in the series and you will see more Pop music than anything. When I was growing up and listening to the series – as I shall explore later – there was Dance and Electronic stuff but it was mostly Pop. It seems exceptional and amazing to consider, given we all do our own playlists, we still have an appetite for Now. The fact the latest edition sold well was not to do with history and nostalgia but the fact we want the best of the current crop in an album. There is something wholly unsatisfying about having a digital playlist and listening on a phone. You want to have something physical because, as you grow older, these Now C.D.s are the sound of a particular time.

Whereas studio albums can sound dated and have potency in the moment; Now seems to age without wrinkles and provides pleasure and nuance whenever you play it. Maybe it is the eclectic selection of songs and the range you get but there is always something to enjoy. I think of the Now series as pick ‘n’ mix. You get so many colours and flavours in there and it is a real treat. Many might say the quality of the music has gone down since the 1980s (or when it was at its peak) but that is another argument. We all have our opinions regarding quality but I feel Pop still plays a big part. It is amazing when you look at any compilation and see entire genres wiped out. Take the 1980s and the brilliant Hip-Hop that was coming out in 1988/1989. Maybe it was Now 16 or 17 around about that time but, I know, there was music by Phil Collins and other Pop acts included. Consider the Hip-Hop genius from De La Soul, Public Enemy; Eric B. & Rakim and Beastie Boys and that didn’t make it on there! In essence, the Now series is about chart music and the mainstream. There is nothing wrong with that but, like these decade-defining compilations; does it truly reflect music in a particular time or is it a very Pop-biased viewpoint?!

Maybe there is a very narrow and particular sound that you get with the series but, for those who want Hip-Hop, Metal and other genres then there are compilations and albums that do the job! I think we have that taste because it, as I said, defines a year and you can look back in years to come and compare how music has evolved. In many ways, Now is a way of charting the changes in the mainstream and the tastes of the public! My first exposure to Now was, as I have mentioned before, 24. This came out in April 1993 and I might have got it for my birthday (9th May). For a then-ten-year-old, it was exciting having this assortment of chart songs in my hand. In fact, the compilation exists in C.D. form at my family’s home but I bought it originally on a double-cassette. The giddy joy of reading the notes and credits on the inserts and popping the tape in the deck...pure bliss! I was blown away you could have Shaggy, k.d. lang and Paul McCartney on the same compilation! Before the Internet and streaming, the only way we could get a compilation was to record (perhaps, illegally) material from the radio. You could put a blank tape in one deck and then hit ‘record’ when the chart show was on. It was horribly crude and awkward but having a lot of top-class material on cassette/C.D. was wonderful. There are articles that poll the Now series and rank the very best. Here is one from Metro and, aside from the omission of my favourite, it is hard to argue against their top choices. There is a general consensus that the majority of the finest Now compilations were released in the 1990s – a few from the 2000s, I guess.

If you are looking for a particular Now compilation then there are details here but a lot of people think Now That’s What I Call Music! 44 as the best. It is the biggest-selling and came out right at the end of the 1990s. Bangers and gems from Lou Bega, Britney Spears and Moloko cannot be sniffed at. I remember, tragically, Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit of...), being one of the songs I was listening to when I opened my GCSEs in 1999! I think there are a lot of happy memories for those of us who were school-age around that time. Even if you are younger/older; you cannot deny there is a lot of fun and catchy music on there! The music seems to defy age and you can pick up what is on there and instantly get behind it. No matter which one of the series is your favourite, it makes you feel warm and happy listening back to the artists that were popular when you were younger. Every one of the Now compilations has some tragic crap on there but that is the charm – you’ve got to have a little bit of greenery among the sweets! Many of us have our own memories and reasons why Now is very much the sound of the present – but has that important nostalgic feel to it.

This article from The Independent shows what I am on about:

“...And yet Now! got a lot right from the start. An eye-bulging 11 No 1s were present on the first edition, but look again and you’ll find the latent influence of punk through the presence of Malcom McLaren, The Cure and Stiff Records’ definitive version of Kirsty MacColl’s “They Don’t Know” (courtesy of Tracey Ullman).

It was a democratic hallmark of Now! albums that all genres must be represented and soon entire sections of the record would be devoted to different types of music: “dance” sides emerged strongly in the late 1980s/early 1990s just as “indie” sides were a staple through Britpop. In fact, it could be argued that Now! did as much in the pre-digital age to diffuse music’s tribal instinct as Spotify does today.

Elsewhere care was taken – as with artist albums – to ensure that an upbeat opener (in this first instance, the Phil Collins-does-Supremes “You Can’t Hurry Love”) was matched with a closing ballad (Culture Club’s overlooked “Victims”). How much the listener appreciated this book-ending over the course of 30 tracks is open to debate, but it’s a tradition that exists to this day with Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa’s “One Kiss” being complemented by Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” for Now 100...

 

Nothing lasts forever and, looking back, the school holiday sound-tracking Now 12 of of 1988 was a personal peak. Within 18 months, myself and Now! would go our separate ways, the age of innocence over for both of us. As a new decade began, Now! moved towards a more straightforward, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin approach, gaining sales but losing some of the charm of earlier collections.

Me? I’d heard The Stone Roses’ debut for the first time and things would never be the same again. The Smash Hits subscription was cancelled and the NME installed in its place. Now! was then: I had the Nineties to be getting on with.

Yet while I was away, the series prospered; 1999’s Now 44 was the most successful to date – selling 2.3 million copies, at the height of the CD market thanks to big hitters such as Britney Spears and Robbie Williams.

 

Yet in the age of personal curation that followed, Now!, perhaps the ultimate curator, would somehow come into its own. At the same time, the idea that the internet would render everything before it obsolete proved false; instead, we were in for an era of co-existence. Things weren’t replaced, simply enjoyed side by side.

Hence Now! CDs continue to be played in cars across the country, hours after their drivers have enjoyed a Spotify-assisted morning run and before they returned home to their Crosley turntables”.

It is great to see how Now affects people in their own way and the memories that have been provided. Again, here is an example where you can feel the passion coming from the page:

“Jonathan Isaby has every album in the series. Here he explains how they have formed the soundtrack to his life.

When I was given an old 1950s transistor radio by my grandmother in the summer of 1986, at the age of eight, I tuned it to Radio 1 and immediately got into the pop music of the day.

With artists like Bananarama, Duran Duran and Five Star in their heyday, I was hooked.

And by the time I got a brand new (if highly unsophisticated) radio/cassette player for my tenth birthday in December 1987, I knew I wanted to start creating a music library of my own.

Like most kids of the time, I would try to tape songs off the radio, but was always frustrated by the DJs' ramblings over the beginning and end of tracks, so there was only one thing for it - buy the music for myself.

The Now albums are - quite literally - the soundtrack to my life. I'm quite a nostalgic person and I can pluck any one at random and immediately be transported back to a particular time.

The albums provide a brilliant snapshot of the music I was enjoying at any given moment: Now 28 takes me back to the summer of 1994 after I did my GCSEs and was about to go into sixth form...

Now 34 was what I was listening to during my first term at university in 1996 with tracks like the Spice Girls' debut single Wannabe and Wonderwall by Oasis.

Now 67 was released around the time I met my now wife in 2007 and brings back fond memories (she tolerates the collection by the way)”.

I will continue to keep a look out for new Now compilations but there is a lot of profit to be found if you have kept an older one back. Not that you’d want to part with it but auction sites are selling a lot of the better compilations for a lot of money. It shows the value of Now is ongoing and people are keen to snap up the classics. Whilst other compilation C.D.s might be flagging, we cannot get enough of Now and all the goodness it provides. In ten days’ time, as we tip our caps to a thirty-five-year-old series; I will look back at the best Now had to offer and see where it might head. Given the fact there is a big birthday coming out, dust off – either digitally or physically – your favourite Now compilations and let...

 PHOTO CREDIT: @oviidaniel/Unsplash

THE good times roll!

FEATURE: To Wit, To Woo: Why Modern Songwriters Can Learn a Lot from the Old Masters

FEATURE:

 

 

To Wit, To Woo

IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images 

Why Modern Songwriters Can Learn a Lot from the Old Masters

__________

MAYBE this is a generational thing…

IN THIS PHOTO: Jacqui Abbott and Paul Heaton/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

but I tend to find there are fewer and fewer songwriters who are providing something human and interesting in their lyrics. I know a lot of songwriters are putting their relationships and personal concerns into the mix but how often does one see relationships portrayed in a very real way? By that, I mean the suburban houses and silly arguments; throwing wit into things and having two-hander songs?! It seems there is a distinct formula for artists in regards relationship dramas or songs in general. Before I come to my point; this piece has been inspired by an album of Paul Heaton-penned songs, The Last King of Pop. The Housemartins and Beautiful South lead is currently working/touring with Jacqui Abbott (The Beautiful South) and the former bandmates have released successful albums together. This article gives details regarding the album:

“One of the UK’s most prolifically gifted songwriters Paul Heaton will release a career spanning album on 16 November 2018 on the Virgin EMI label.  Entitled The Last King Of Pop it will feature 23 of the finest songs from throughout Paul’s extraordinary music career, including hits from his days in the Housemartins, through his time in the multi-platinum pop co-operative The Beautiful South, his solo years, and up to the present day in his long-standing collaboration with former Beautiful South singer Jacqui Abbott.

From the Housemartins’ glorious 1985 debut single ‘Flag Day’ to the Beautiful South’s chart dominating pop standards ‘Don’t Marry Her’, ‘Rotterdam’ and ‘Perfect 10’ through to last year’s Heaton & Abbott smash hit ‘I Gotta Praise’ they’re all present and correct….and there’s also room for a 2018 re-record by Paul and Jacqui of the Beautiful South classic ‘A Little Time’, and a brand new song, a deliciously infectious ska-pop paean to a lifetime of jukebox dancing and pop music obsession entitled ‘7”Singles’...

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images 

To celebrate the release of ‘The Last King of Pop’, Heaton and Abbott will play 3 very special live shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Sheffield City Hall and Blackpool Empress Ballroom at the end of November where they will perform the album in full.

The dates are as follows:

24 November: Blackpool, Empress Ballroom
26 November:  Sheffield, City Hall
28 November: London, Royal Albert Hall”.

The Beautiful South went through different incarnations and saw three different female singers come through. Abbott is, to me, the female voice of The Beautiful South and the perfect foil to Heaton. Someone who can throw back some wit and spike but perfectly blend in harmony when needed. The band was seen, by some, as middle of the road. Not quite as cool as a lot of the best 1990s/2000s bands and never the funkiest outfit, for sure. The fact the band would often appear at gigs in coats and project a rather middle-aged image, from the start, market them as a ‘guilty pleasure’.

I feel this is wrong. Maybe the songs were not as hook-laden and anthemic as a lot of the stuff coming through but, from the first album (Welcome to the Beautiful South, 1989), there was this wit and incredible originality. Look at songs like You Keep It All In and this repressed scene of domestic tension. Song for Whoever is as flippant as the title suggests: Heaton earning money and chart success from the tears of his various lovers – the more they cry, the wetter his pen becomes with ambition. Some critics labelled Heaton and the band as being caustic and grumpy but many could not get their head around the ordinariness and revelation of the lyrics. Every line was real and talked of a world, a working-class one, that was not being projected that much. In 2018, you do not see many songwriters pen the same sort of songs as Paul Heaton. Love songs tend to be quite ordinary and you are not often taken too far away from the predictable scenes. It is not only the lyrics that strikes me but the make-up of The Beautiful South. Three vocalists (Paul Heaton, Dave Hemmingway and Briana Corrigan/Jacqui Abbott/Alison Wheeler) and songs that would literally present a conversation. Heaton never writes about women in a sexist or unknowing way and is unafraid to write songs with arguing lovers or a couple that slyly jab at the other. I am not going to give a complete history of the band but what they stood for – in terms of lyrics and the sort of wit you got – was amazing. It is a shame they split but I am glad Heaton and Abbott are still performing together.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon (1985)/PHOTO CREDIT: © Michael Putland

Look back a bit further and songwriters like Paddy McAloon spring to mind. The leader of Prefab Sprout, the last album was back in 2013 (Crimson/Red). Paddy and his brother Martin are the only remaining members from the original line-up but McAloon, as a songwriter, has few equals. From 1984, with their Swoon debut, the band was being highlighted for their exceptional songwriter and sound. At the heart of the mix were McAloon’s words. Maybe some of the early material features too much juxtaposition and it is a bit stuffed but, in terms of language and wit; nobody in that era seemed to have the same muscle and intelligence as McAloon. Perhaps The Smiths’ Morrissey – the third northern writer I am mentioning – could match that blend of wit, tragedy and florid language but from Two Wheels Good (the U.S.)/Steve McQueen (the rest of the world), critics were taking note of this unique and talented writer. AllMusic, writing retrospectively, provided their thoughts on the album:

“Smart, sophisticated and timelessly stylish, Two Wheels Good (titled Steve McQueen throughout the rest of the world) is a minor classic, a shimmering jazz-pop masterpiece sparked by Paddy McAloon'switty and inventive songwriting. McAloon is a wickedly cavalier composer, his songs exploring human weaknesses like regret ("Bonny"), lust ("Appetite") and infidelity ("Horsin' Around") with cynical insight and sarcastic flair; he's also remarkably adaptable, easily switching gears from the faux-country of "Faron" to the stately pop grace of "Moving the River." At times, perhaps, his pretensions get the better of him (as on "Desire As"), while at other times his lyrics are perhaps too trenchant for their own good; at those moments, however, what keeps Two Wheels Good afloat is Thomas Dolby's lush production, which makes even the loftiest and most biting moments as easily palatable as the airiest adult-contemporary confection”.

 

My first taste of Prefab Sprout was The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Taken from their third album, From Langley Park to Memphis; it is seen as the band’s biggest track but many critics felt it was too commercial and not as sharp as earlier songs. Cars and Girls is a Bruce Springsteen pastiche (taking away the romance of the road and girls) whilst The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll is about a faded and deluded singer who thinks he is all that. When Jordan: The Comeback arrived in 1992 – following the odd bump in the road – critics raved and this was seen as an album that could break America. Entertainment Weekly, in this review, look at the contrasts and complexities of McAloon’s words:

“With few exceptions, highbrow pop music-making is a commercially treacherous occupation. Nonetheless, Newcastle’s Prefab Sprout — something of a British answer to Steely Dan — has done quite nicely, purveying evanescent music and frequently loopy subject matter. With Jordan: The Comeback, the quartet is poised to reach a wide American audience as well.

For all their fascinating intelligence, McAloon’s ironic lyrics can be difficult to pin down. Following the whimsical conception of ”Looking for Atlantis,” the arch iconography of ”Jesse James Symphony,” and the Presleyesque content of the beautiful title song (and others: Elvis is one of the album’s thematic threads), it’s hard to resist searching the sincere sentiments of ”All the World Loves Love” for a subtext that isn’t there”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Morrissey (1984)/PHOTO CREDIT: Nick Knight for The Face

I have mentioned a couple of songwriter and tipped a nod to Morrissey – and maybe there is a geographical element. The last lyricist to put a new spin on love and regular life was Alex Turner. The Arctic Monkeys’ frontman has been weaving exceptional rhymes and visions since the band’s debut album back in 2006. Like the aforementioned; Turner was looking around everyday life and scenes that he was walking through and putting them into music. Perhaps these northern writers have a very different experience to the predominantly southern/American writers who are dominating the charts now. There are some special and fascinating songwriters who can take life’s ordinary sides and make them shine but, for the most part, they are away from the mainstream. I keep getting review requests from people and, largely, the songs are about heartbreak or some sort of change. The most depressive part is the same synopsis and pitch. All the songs seem to be saying the same thing and said in the same manner. It seems there is this formula and restrictive mind-set from writers; they get caught in a loop and their language can be very narrow. I have mentioned male names but look at female songwriters such as Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell and they have created incredible songs that are so different to anything around them.

It is dangerous replicating songwriters and looking back too much but there are lessons that can be learned. As music is becoming sadder, slower and more repetitive; are we just accepting this format and accepting music that is pretty brief and familiar? Those artists who break habits and producing something stunning are fewer and rare and I feel a lot of wit and freshness has been lost from music. I always love discovering a songwriter who can make me smile or tackles life from a different side. I am not saying every song needs to sparkle with its language and wit but I think we are all starting to get lazy. The quality of my writing, I feel, could be better and too much time on social media and conversing in a very electronic way means we are not as together and fluent as we used to be. I am scaling my interviews right back because of the standard of written response and writing less (from next year) as I am making silly errors. My need to move into the radio/audio side of things is the result and does songwriting have the same problem? My biggest problem with music today is the rather unengaging and unmemorable lyrics. This does not apply to everyone but I feel a lot of artists are more interested in sound and production rather than standout lines.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @neonbrand/Unsplash

One gets bored hearing the same sort of lyrics and the clichés pour; the hyperbole, strain and unengaging words pounding in the ear. Maybe there were faults and flaws when we look at those songwriters such as Heaton, McAloon and Morrissey – not to forget the likes of Patti Smith – and maybe it is a generational shift. I think their upbringing was more humble than a lot of their peers so their perspective was not the same. Maybe too many modern artists have that comfort and, if they are struggling, anger is replacing the charm and foibles of their setting. It might tie into a piece I wrote recently about the fun escaping music and I think lyrics as a whole are getting more predictable and boring. I would prefer to hear something sarcastic and snide – two lovers poking one another – and see words beautifully crafted and contorted than the usual delivery of routine and predictability. We might have gone past that point where we can encourage this sort of change but I know there are songwriters out there who have not lost that sort of edge. There are plenty out there who are brilliant lyricists who can write in a very interesting way. They are being buried and lost in a rabble of plain and generic artists. Whilst I yearn for something uplifting with a hint of the humorous; a bit of bitterness with a side order of domestic grumbling, let’s hope the current crop can take notes from those whose music...

WE are listening to decades after it first came out.

FEATURE: Starting the Decade in Style: Part I/V: The Finest Albums of 1990

FEATURE:

 

 

Starting the Decade in Style

 PHOTO CREDIT: @annietheby/Unsplash 

Part I/V: The Finest Albums of 1990

__________

THE reason I am putting together this feature…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @dmitrybayer/Unsplash

is to shine a light on the albums that started a decade with a huge deceleration. I feel it is hard to define what a decade is about and how it evolves but the first and last years are crucial – I have already looked at decade-ending albums. I am bringing to life this feature that celebrates albums that opened a decade with a mighty amount of quality and gave inspiration to those who followed - I will cover 1970, 1980; 1990, 2000 and 2010. In this first part, I am focusing on 1990 and the best ten records from the year. The 1990s was a truly biblical decade and some of the very best records from the decade were released right at the start! Have a look at these ten 1990-released albums and I am sure you will agree that the 1990s was a hugely....

 PHOTO CREDIT: @priscilladupreez/Unsplash

EXCITING time.

ALL ALBUM COVERS: Getty Images

______________

Sinéad O'Connor – I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

Release Date: 20th March, 1990

Labels: Ensign/Chrysalis

Review:

“But the album plays like a tour de force in its demonstration of everything O'Connor can do: dramatic orchestral ballads, intimate confessionals, catchy pop/rock, driving guitar rock, and protest folk, not to mention the nearly six-minute a cappella title track. What's consistent throughout is the frighteningly strong emotion O'Connor brings to bear on the material, while remaining sensitive to each piece's individual demands. Aside from being a brilliant album in its own right, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got foreshadowed the rise of deeply introspective female singer/songwriters like Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan, who were more traditionally feminine and connected with a wider audience. Which takes nothing away from anyone; if anything, it's evidence that, when on top of her game, O'Connor was a singular talent” – AllMusic

Standout Track: Nothing Compares 2 U

Pixies – Bossanova

Release Date: 13th August, 1990

Labels: 4AD/Elektra

Review:

“By now most of us have heard 'Velouria'. Not as immediate as 'Gigantic' or 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' as far as singles go, but still a delightfully wiggy window to the world of Black Francis and the maddest thing to have been seen on Top Of the Pops since The Wombles wee Top Ten regulars.

'Ana' and 'All Over The World' would not be out of place on 'Aladdin Sane', with Black Francis doing his best Bowie impersonaton. 'Ana' is a brief repetitive piece, just six lines long. The lyric book shows us the firs letter o each line spells out S-U-R-F-E-R, while on 'All Over The World' Black Francis claims "I am a derangement." And we believe him.

'Stormy weather' flirts with the kind of omnious doom The Jesus and Mary Chain use” – NME

Standout Track: Velouria

Cocteau Twins – Heaven or Las Vegas

Release Date: 17th September, 1990

Label: 4AD

Review:

“Yet, a few words do stand out, primarily that title phrase: “Heaven or Las Vegas.” The Cocteau Twins’ music has always sounded otherworldly, and their many fans would certainly describe it—and rightly so—as heavenly.

But Las Vegas? It stands out as an odd, jarring reference. Their fantastical music would seem to brook nothing quite so earthly, so garish, so thisworldly as Sin City, which hauls unlikely baggage into “Heaven or Las Vegas”: gambling, corruption, tacky tourism, and cheesy crooning. But if we forget everything we know about the city and reduce Las Vegas to its atomic elements—millions upon billions of lights—perhaps we might see heaven in the radiance. This is essentially how the Cocteau Twins’ music works: Fraser’s voice doesn’t behave the way a pop singer’s voice typically behaves, nor does Guthrie’s guitar deliver the usual melody or rhythm. Along with bass player/keyboardist Simon Raymonde, whose contributions shouldn’t be discounted, they found new ways to use old instruments in the 1980s, in the process devising a unique and wholly beguiling sound” – Pitchfork

Standout Track: Pitch the Baby                    

Paul Simon – The Rhythm of the Saints

Release Date: 16th October, 1990

Label: Warner Bros.

Review:

“Each new cut comes as a surprise. The first song, ”The Obvious Child,” begins with confident drums that resound with special exuberant zing because they were recorded outdoors in a resonant city square in Salvador, Brazil. Then, at the start of the second song, ”Can’t Run But,” there’s a change of emotional weather; the drumming yields to a nervous patter of marimba and percussion. Later tracks are suffused with the liquid melody of African guitar or explode with bursts of soul-music horns, vividly etched against a prancing African beat. One buoyant song, ”Proof,” also has an introspective side, and dissolves into an interlude so high and timid it seems barely able to stand on its own. Yet somehow it does.

Simon’s voice, meanwhile, floats over everything, sounding both calm and earnest, eager and detached. It’s the voice of a man who endures the workaday world of achievement and suffering but longs in his heart for perfect peace” – Entertainment Weekly

Standout Track: The Obvious Child

Sonic Youth – Goo

Release Date: 26th June, 1990 

Label: DGC 

Review:

“The answer, of course, is to make the record an elaborate joke on the idea of making a commercial record, a hermetic, album-length parody that's the equivalent of putting those waggling-finger quotation marks around the whole thing.

The songs revolve around catchy, nonsensical choruses--things like "My friend Goo / Just says, 'P.U.' " or "I don't wanna / I don't think so"--that stick with you as insistently as anything ABBA ever came up with. Great swaths of dissonant guitar noise move the way radio hooks are supposed to, and they become radio hooks themselves. There's always a beat to grab on to, sometimes tribal, sometimes poppy, but always danceable, and "Goo" rocks as hard as Mudhoney, while working on about half a dozen more levels. Call "Goo" the "Exile on Main Street" of the snide generation” – Los Angeles Times

Standout Track: Kool Thing

Deee-Lite – World Clique

Release Date: 7th August, 1990

Label: Elektra

Review:

“Groove Is in the Heart" defined the summer of 1990 on radio and MTV with its delicious combination of funk, modern dance sheen, and Lady Miss Kier's smart, sharp diva ways. Add in guest vocals and bass from Bootsy Collins (a pity his hilarious video cameo wasn't represented here), brass from the original Horny Horns duo of Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker, and a smooth mid-song rap from A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip, and the results sounded good then and now. The rest of World Clique offers variations on the song's theme, with Kier's sweet, light vocals and DJs Dimitri and Towa Tei making it work in various ways. It's still a bit surprising that Kier didn't go on to greater fame on her own, because she definitely has not merely the pipes but the personality to carry something on her own -- compared to the dog-whistle vocal calisthenics of someone like Mariah Carey, there's no contest. Check out her work on songs like "Good Beat" and the amusing sass of such numbers as "Try Me on, I'm Very You." The two musicians come up with a seamless, adept flow throughout, merrily raiding whatever they so choose in the past for their own purposes. Disco is the heart of it all, with everything from hip-hop breaks to bubble-salsa piano -- even early Depeche Mode! -- taking a bow; hints of the future genre-mashing Towa Tei would make his own trademark are already plentiful. Bootsy and the Horny Horns crop up at other points as well, adding just enough classic funk to blend with the crisper electronic pulses and arrangements” – AllMusic

Standout Track: Groove Is in the Heart

Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet

Release Date: 10th April, 1990

Labels: Def Jam/Columbia

Review:

“Fear of a Black Planet from 1990 made kindling of the previous summer’s anti-Public Enemy sentiment, quoting the group’s biggest critics in interludes and ribbing them in the songs. “Contract on the World Love Jam” weaves negative news reports into a scene-setting intro; later “Incident at 66.6 FM” sets outraged calls from a Chuck D squareoff with New York political radio host Alan Colmes over sedate keys and drums, playing the grumps for squares without even responding to their charges. A late album Terminator X showcase snarkily titled “Leave This Off Your Fuckin Charts” is a tenacious dare. Elsewhere, Fear pulls the camera off P.E. to speak to community issues. “Anti-Nigger Machine” and “Who Stole the Soul?” levied heavy accusations of censorship while “911 Is a Joke” explored black community police mistrust and “Fear of a Black Planet” tackled apprehension about interracial dating. Sourcing Public Enemy’s media struggles back to age-old racial strife was a brash, heavy-handed play, but Fear’s genius trick was coating its righteous rage in music that aimed to groove where earlier songs seemed to want to maim” – Pitchfork

Standout Track: 911 Is a Joke

Eric B. & Rakim – Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em

Release Date: 19th June, 1990

Label: MCA Records

Review:

“Eric B. mixes beats and snatches of melody with a be-bop drummer’s sure, steadily swinging hand; he’s the Max Roach of the twin turntables. Listen to how he echoes and comments on Rakim’s lines throughout “Keep ‘Em Eager to Listen” without ever stopping the groove. And on “Untouchables” these two take hip-hop straight to the astral plane. Whether scratching up the late-Sixties sound of freedom jazz or matching a walking acoustic bass and a wailing trumpet to the call of the funky drummer, this bold attempt at cross-generational fusion says more about the Afro-American cultural continuum than a truckload of medallions and dashikis. A lot of rappers talk about “dropping science” these days; Eric B. and Rakim just do it” – Rolling Stone  

Standout Track: Run for Cover

The Breeders – Pod

Release Date: 29th May, 1990

Labels: 4AD, Elektra Records

Review:

“Though the album doesn't feature as many of Donelly's contributions as was originally planned -- which was part of the reason she formed Belly a few years later -- songs like "Iris" and "Lime House" blend the best of the Pixies' elliptical punk and the Muses' angular pop. Pod reaffirms what a distinctive songwriter Deal is, and how much the Pixies missed out on by not including more of her material on their albums. With their unusual subjects -- "Hellbound" is about a living abortion -- and quirky-but-direct sound, songs like "Opened" and "When I Was a Painter" could have easily fit on Doolittle or Bossanova. But the spare, sensual "Doe," "Fortunately Gone," and "Only in Threes" are more lighthearted and good-natured than the work of Deal's other band, pointing the way to the sexy, clever alternative pop she'd craft on Last Splash. A vibrantly creative debut, Pod remains the Breeders' most genuine moment” – AllMusic   

Standout Track: Glorious

Depeche Mode – Violator

Release Date: 19th March, 1990

Label: Mute

Review:

“Then "Enjoy the Silence," a nothing-else-remains-but-us ballad pumped up into a huge, dramatic romance/dance number, commanding in its mock orchestral/choir scope. Follow-up single "Policy of Truth" did just fine as well, a low-key Motown funk number for the modern day with a sharp love/hate lyric to boot. To top it all off, the album itself scored on song after song, from the shuffling beat of "Sweetest Perfection" (well sung by Gore) and the ethereal "Waiting for the Night" to the guilt-ridden-and-loving-it "Halo" building into a string-swept pounder. "Clean" wraps up Violator on an eerie note, all ominous bass notes and odd atmospherics carrying the song. Goth without ever being stupidly hammy, synth without sounding like the clinical stereotype of synth music, rock without ever sounding like a "rock" band, Depeche here reach astounding heights indeed” – AllMusic

Standout Track: Enjoy the Silence

FEATURE: Quiet Is the New Loud: The ‘Fan’ Who Wasn’t There: Why the Strange Case of Threatin Is Not So Unusual

FEATURE:

 

 

Quiet Is the New Loud

ALL IMAGES/PHOTOS (unless credited otherwise): Getty Images 

The ‘Fan’ Who Wasn’t There: Why the Strange Case of Threatin Is Not So Unusual

__________

IT is not often you get something lighthearted to report in music…

where you can all get together with the same reaction: This is just plain weird, right?! Maybe it is not such a joke for those who have been scammed and mislead but many might be familiar with the rather odd case of Threatin and the fact they – or ‘he’ – has been touring and promising all these fans, sales and big shows. It was, in fact, an illusion and something that makes one wonder why he went to such lengths. Here are the details regarding the story:

“With hundreds of ticket sales, legions of social media followers and adoring messages posted online from teenage fans, Californian metal band Threatin appeared more than ready to conquer the UK music scene.

Venue managers liaised with an apparent booking agent and record label, gladly signing them up in the hope of sell-out crowds.

The reality was a rather different story. This band was unknown, they had no fans and no management.

They toured the country playing to completely empty gig venues and as they did so last week,  their story began to unravel.

The band, and in particular the sole permanent member Jered Threatin, has been accused of creating a fake legion of fans in order to land the UK tour.

Rob Moore, singer and guitarist in hardcore punk band Dogsflesh, which supported Threatin in Newcastle to an audience of four people, said: “The effort that he's gone to to portray himself as a big star is quite phenomenal...

"In all the years I've been involved in music I've never known anything like this.”

The band Kamino, which supported Threatin in Bristol, said they began to do their own digging and allege that the entire tour was based on fabrications stemming from paid social media “likes” for each show.

“Having delved deeper we realised the same practices were in place on his YouTube channel, his Facebook page, even on previous US tour dates listed on his website,” they wrote online.

“And when looking more closely at his website - all the industry contacts listed don't exist. Essentially, the entire history of Threatin is a lie”.

It seems Threatin’s figurehead enjoyed playing to near-empty venues and seemed to get some strange kick off of promulgating this ruse and having barely anyone turn up. Looking at the cover designs for his music and the aesthetics and there is something a bit Spinal Tap about it! If it were a fake Popstar or Folk artist, someone who looked the real deal, then it would be more baffling but, looking at the whole Threatin project, and it does seem like this rather comical and weird conceit.  There are tweets and videos going around of this band playing to empty venues and seemingly enjoying themselves. Whilst the saga is over and they cancelled their last couple of dates, one wonders what the impact is on venues.

This is one of those weird-as-crap situations that, like a nuclear disaster, one hopes they do not have to see again! The fact that Threatin successfully managed to dupe venues and purport this rather elaborate hoodwink makes me wonder whether it will start a trend. Maybe the goal was for this grand hoax to generate more publicity and curiosity than the music ever would – which is rather sh*t to be honest – and get some sort of odd ‘curiosity fame’. Like hostages being drawn into this odd and rather interesting situation; one does not hope the band is given any record deals and undue publicity after this. The venues that have been misled have shown anger and relief and, aside from a bit of humour here and there, it has been a bit embarrassing. In cases where the band played in the U.K. and Europe, it seemed like the venues were paid but the fact they reserved an entire evening to this band and had no bar sales and any other revenue means a lot of money has been lost. It seems amusing and bizarre from the outside but it makes me curious as to whether, going forward, venues will need some way of corroborating bands/artists’ stories of fanbases/ticket sales. The vast majority of artists out there are legitimate and do not go to such ridiculous lengths to get gigs but, if there are benefits and profits to be made by Threatin – maybe people will buy their music out of sheer curiosity – then struggling and anonymous bands might try the same thing.

I hope we do not see anything like this again because it looks bad for the venues and they have to lose a night that could have gone to a genuine act. It is embarrassing for the support artists who were hoping for exposure and new fans and the whole charade is a bit mystifying and strange. There was no situation where the band would have got money and positive media attention. They faked ticket sales and fan numbers on social media and there is no way they can come back from it. Threatin are not going to suddenly see those fake numbers replaced by real fans and get gigs off the back of this. Although there has been nothing quite as stupefying and film-worthy as this – maybe that was the plan?! – it is not unusual for artists to exaggerate their worth and popularity. It has been happening for a few years but I wonder why any artist would buy online followers and go to these kinds of lengths. It seems, in the modern market, Facebook and Twitter numbers are more important than the quality of the music. Whereas genuine artists can create great music and get fans that way; there is this whole other world where people are buying followers to boost their numbers; it makes them seem more attractive and huge and, for sites like Spotify that have a bare-minimum membership in terms of followers – this has recently changed – it is a duplicitous and scurvy way of going about things.

It is not just buying followers and that side that bands employ. Some artists publicise hoaxes and use them to gain traction:

“Most people only learned of L.A. band Yacht when its members claimed to be revenge porn victims in May 2016. In a fake effort to get ahead of a leaked sex tape (which later turned out to be a dull music video posted on PornHub), Yacht announced it would be selling copies of it for $5. But Jezebel then revealed the hoax for what it was and the band issued an apology”.

Some say buying followers and taking a rather nasty route in is okay. This article argues some positive aspects:

“When explaining why I believe purchasing social media followers is a good thing, I always use the analogy of a party.

Nobody wants to go to a party until there are plenty of people there and it’s in full force, right? But if that’s the case, how is one supposed to get a party started? The same can be said for your Twitter or Instagram page. Why would anybody want to click the follow button on an account with 25 followers, even if the content seems to be great upon first glance?

Feel free to invite all of your friends and pre-existing fans to join you in these places, and then do a quick Google search to see about upping those numbers. You don’t need many, and in fact, why purchasing, you should do so intelligently. If you are an artist with only a few songs out and yet you have 50,000 followers on Twitter—we’ve all seen these people—nobody is going to believe you, and your efforts will end up backfiring, making you look like a fool in the process...

PHOTO CREDIT: @sharonmccutcheon/Unsplash 

Think before you buy.

Will 500 followers make you look appear to be on your way? 1,000? Maybe start with one and eventually spend your way to that second figure? There are many different ways to go about this, but you need to be aware that people are going to quickly glance at your follower counts and judge you instinctively based on them.

Now, you may be thinking that this is all an exercise in vanity, and I’d say you’re right, but only partially. Having a respectable follower count on popular platforms shows that some people have invested in you, if even in some small way (and even if they aren’t real, but that’s just between you and I). It tells those that might be potentially interested in booking you to play a venue, a festival, or even to sign to a label that there are people out there that are interested, and that there might actually be something to the artist in front of them”.

 There is this argument – for those who buy followers – that promoters, venues and streaming sites have a minimum number when it comes to followers and fans. It can lead artists to buy these followers and create fake profiles. This article from 2016 brought together Music Consultant and Internet marketing veteran Tony Harris regarding whether musicians should buy followers:

“As Twitter’s dominance as a platform reaches its apex, the phenomenon of fake profiles have emerged, and the tens of millions of bot accounts created by marketers are flooding Twitter with spam and noise. Thousands of fake accounts are created weekly, diluting and distorting the effect of this large community. As auditing tools allow more transparency into the authenticity of accounts, it becomes more and more crucial not just to build numbers, but quality followers – the ones that have true value as influencers, brand ambassadors and people who engage and spread awareness of the brand. The illusion of a massive following is often just that, with the reality being that only a fraction of the perceived audience ever sees content tweeted from the account. There’s usually an even larger number of inactive or low-quality followers, that are real users but not likely to see or share or engage in the content. I was quoted in this Associated Press article about the Fake Follower Industry. (You can find that article here)...

PHOTO CREDIT: @freestocks/Unsplash 

It seems like everywhere you turn these days, you need to have a lot of followers on social media in order to get noticed. It’s not just talent scouts who are looking. If you want to get press coverage, there’s no story unless you have a big following. It’s democratized eyeballs. A periodical will not necessarily even write about an artist unless they know the artist retweeting or sharing that interview will bring them a certain number of eyeballs. Press people and journalists, booking agents, A&R people, talent scouts – all these people now need to see a huge following on social media in order to take interest in an artist”.

There are plenty of articles that argue against paying for followers because, in a tough and competitive market, it is unfair for talented artists who cannot afford to buy fans be overtaken by people who take a quicker route:

“To the untrained eye, social media numbers are important. However, if you delve, you'll notice inconsistencies. For example, a band may have a ton of "followers," but few likes on their photos. Alternately, a band may have lots of Soundcloud plays on a particular song, but few comments.

The music market is a brutal one. Any advantage, even an inflated or false one, could result in an opportunity not otherwise had. However, at some point, if you cheat, it will all fall apart for you. Potentially, in a very embarrassing way, like at a gig. Not only is cheating unfair to other bands, but funding endeavours that enable you to cheat causes a complex problem in the music market...

 

I am an advocate of any media that attempts to create a new stream of income for musicians, especially after the destruction of the CD market. Radio-like streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio and so on, hold a lot of promise; they compensate artists per song play. Some argue that they don't compensate artists enough. However, these services represent the promise of a new way for musicians to make money.

My fear is: will schemes that allow people to buy popularity proliferated into other areas of the market? Could they destroy promise of new income streams for musicians?”.

Whilst this is not quite the same as Threatin and what they did; there is all manner of fakery and exaggerated numbers online. You are never too sure whether the Facebook and Twitter numbers are real and whether we are too dependent on numbers. When all is said and done; campaigns, gigs and promotion should be based around genuinely great music that does not need misleading social media numbers and any sort of paid marketing. I often feel like streaming figures and follower numbers is the exact opposite of truth and appeal. The artists with fairly moderate and realistic follower numbers tend to be the best. These mainstream artists with millions of followers seem, on the surface, to be the best and top of music but their actual sounds are average and overly-commercial. It might be naïve of me but I wonder whether music has become too numbers-driven and business-minded. Given the number of people coming into music; is it possible to have a purely talent-based system where quality gets you where you need to be? The case of Threatin seems weird and a one-off but there are plenty of artists buying their fanbase and paying to make themselves more popular than they really are. I think it all needs to stop and there needs to be some system where bands/artists buying followers needs to be stamped out. Let’s hope the pantomime of Threatin does not lead to impersonators and repeat performances but, if you look close enough, there are plenty of other artists out there who are...

 PHOTO CREDIT: @rawpixel/Unsplash

NOT all they seem.

FEATURE: The November Playlist: Vol. 3: I’ll Follow the Girl Anywhere…

FEATURE:

 

The November Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: The Japanese House/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Vol. 3: I’ll Follow the Girl Anywhere…

 __________

THIS week is a reliably busy and eventful one…

IN THIS PHOTO: Regina Spektor/PHOTO CREDIT: Shervin Lainez

that sees fresh releases from The Japanese House and Regina Spektor. I have been looking at what is out there and have combined Rita Ora, Chris Cornell and The Smashing Pumpkins together with some of the more under-the-radar, underground cuts. It is a great blend of sounds that will get into the head and kick the weekend off in style. Take a look through the best of the new releases and the wonderful variety on offer. Every week brings wonderful treats through and this week is particular special and important. This is, perhaps, the last week we will be able to enjoy regular and traditional music before the dreaded Christmas tracks…

IN THIS PHOTO: Rita Ora

COME out of the woodwork!

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Getty Images/Artists

___________

The Japanese House – Follow My Girl

Regina Spektor – Birdsong

The Vaccines – All My Friends Are Falling in Love

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Alone on the Rope 

PHOTO CREDIT: Amber Pollack

Sundara Karma – One Last Night on Earth

Rosie Carney – Zoey 

Maggie Lindemann - Would I

Rita Ora – Velvet Rope

Lewis Bootle – Take Me Home

PHOTO CREDIT: Wolf James Photography

Holly Walker – Straight Line

PHOTO CREDIT: Julie Rowland

Talos – See Me

Dawn Wall – Rain God 

Alessia Cara – Not Today

Papa Roach – Not the Only One

Hozier - Movement 

Marshmello - Together

The Chainsmokers – Beach House

The Good, the Bad & the Queen - Merrie Land

Chris Cornell, Soundgarden – Flower

PHOTO CREDIT: Linda Strawberry

The Smashing Pumpkins – Travels

Jennifer Lopez – Limitless

Ellie Goulding, Diplo and Swae Lee - Close to Me 

Tallia Storm – It’s the GC

Liv Dawson – I Like You

Lo Moon – For Me, It’s You

Leo Kalyan – the edge

Hannah Jane Lewis – Do It Without You

YONAKA – Death by Love

L Devine - Daughter

Betty Who – Between You & Me

Mumford & Sons - Beloved

Anderson .Paak – 6 Summers

FEATURE: If the Boots Fit... Is it Fair for People to Criticise Glastonbury for Booking Stormzy as the First Headliner for 2019?

FEATURE:

 

 

If the Boots Fit...

IN THIS PHOTO: Stormzy/PHOTO CREDIT: © Alex De Mora for CRACK

Is it Fair for People to Criticise Glastonbury for Booking Stormzy as the First Headliner for 2019?

__________

IT seems you can never please everyone…

We’re delighted to announce that Stormzy is confirmed as the first headliner for Glastonbury 2019. The multi award-winning British MC will headline the Pyramid Stage on Friday, June 28th. pic.twitter.com/xXhKPuKC3z

— Glastonbury Festival (@GlastoFest) November 15, 2018

and the announcement Stormzy is headlining Glastonbury next year has been met with a mixed reception! If you have not heard the news and not familiar with Stormzy’s work; The Guardian reacted to the booking:

“Grime MC Stormzy has been announced as the first headliner of the 2019 Glastonbury festival.

Posters announcing the news appeared in Oxfam stores in Streatham, near Stormzy’s hometown Croydon, and in the town of Glastonbury itself, reading “Stormzy Friday! First Glastonbury headliner revealed” in the festival’s distinctive house font. Stormzy himself then posted the message on Instagram, with the caption: “THE HEADLINE ACT - GLASTONBURY 2019, well lets be fucking having ya then.”

It will be the London rapper’s most prestigious live show yet, and a new high point on a remarkable career trajectory. He broke through in 2015 with the freestyle Shut Up, originally recorded in a London park, and released his debut album Gang Signs & Prayer in 2017, which went to No 1 and earned him two Brit awards. Closing out that Brits ceremony, he delivered an attack on Theresa May for her handling of the Grenfell disaster, and criticised the Daily Mail.

He has since published his first book as part of an ongoing partnership with Penguin Random House to nurture and publish aspiring young writers, and also partnered with Atlantic Records to create his own record label.

It’s still relatively rare that a rapper headlines the festival. Noel Gallagher famously protested the booking of Jay-Z in 2008, who retorted by starting his set with a performance of the Gallagher-penned Wonderwall. Kanye West meanwhile headlined in 2015 to a mixed reception.

Glastonbury’s 2019 festival takes place 26-30 June, following a fallow year in 2018. Around 200,000 tickets for the festival sold out in just 30 minutes when they went on sale in October”.

 IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images

Those who are opposed to his booking claim that his only album, Gang Signs & Prayer, is not enough to get him to a headline stage. That record, released last year, was met with huge acclaim and celebration. AllMusic provided their take:

“The album continues to shift, gradually at first, with harder tracks alternating with R&B or gospel numbers; by the halfway point, "Cigarettes & Kush," mellow vibes dominate the record. The refusal to pack the track list with bangers is the differentiating factor between Stormzy the grime MC and Stormzythe artist, elegantly showcasing that grime doesn't have to play by the rules, and that artists can express themselves outside of boasting and smack talk, acting as ammo for the argument that diversity and creativity are still prevalent in the scene”.

The Grime scene in the U.K. is growing and inspiring new artists to the spotlight. Long gone are the days when Dizzee Rascal rose to prominence but that absence has been filled by a variety of solid and exciting artists who look set to have a long future. Stormzy is, unofficially, seen as one of the leaders of the scene and is delivering some powerful words. I know he has only released one album but, as many people are pointing out; Oasis headlined Glastonbury in 1995 after only one record – the world-class introduction, Definitely Maybe.

I know there is a huge difference between the situations. Oasis dropped a Britpop-ready masterpiece that was awash with anthems and solid tracks. It was an album ready for stadiums and huge festivals; the chance to see a band elevated to the country’s biggest stage just as their careers were starting. There was a feeling Oasis were voicing something exciting and about to make history. Stormzy’s debut album has a different sound/appeal but, at a time when the nation is falling apart and there is so much grumble and spin from politicians; there is a lot of attention and love for those with a political voice and social conscience. I feel, rather than get a well-known band to take the first headline stage; this seems more like a political statement. I do not feel it matters Stormzy has only released one album: the popularity and potential is already there and he has a strong fanbase. Rather than wait a few albums and capture him at a point where he is taking his music in a new direction; we will see something different and edgy. Stormzy’s live performances are commanding and hugely memorable and I feel he can take to the Glastonbury stage and triumph. The Pyramid Stage saw Radiohead conquer last year so, next year, will we see the same reaction for Stormzy?!

The timing is very interesting. The ongoing Brexit shambles keeps getting more pantomime by the day. The Cabinet is coming undone and divided; it seems a leadership challenge to Theresa May cannot be far away – which slimy and malodorous challenger will succeed?! It is a right mess and nobody knows this like Stormzy. He has taken shots at the P.M. and knows the Conservatives do not speak for the nation. There is a whole sector of people who feel cheated, overlooked and distant. Until there is a Labour leader in power, the voices of millions will be ignored. It seems natural, in that context Stormzy would make the grade. I feel, by the time Glastonbury rolls around in June, we will know whether Brexit is a success and it seems perfect Stormzy will take to the stage and tell it like it is. I wrote yesterday, on social media, the fact there have been so few black artists on the headline stage through the years. Aside from Kanye West, Beyoncé; Jay-Z and Stevie Wonder; not too many names spring to mind! How many black artists did one see headline before the 2000s?! I will come to the subject of gender soon but it is a big step having a black artist top the Glastonbury bill. Many people, myself included, have critisised the lack of variety and diversity at Glastonbury’s peak stage. Maybe there has been a slight evolution in terms of bands/sounds - but there has not been a big shift if you think hard.

There have been many getting annoyed the traditional Rock/Pop/Alternative sound of Glastonbury is being taken in a more Grime and Hip-Hop direction. R&B and Soul artists have taken to Glastonbury’s main stage and it is not unusual to have Stormzy headline. Whether you think one album makes him inexperienced and unable to cope with the pressure begs questions. It will be interesting to see what his set consists of. I guess he has time – between now and next year – to release another album so might have a natural set all ready and waiting. If not, then there might be longer renditions of his songs, covers or rare tracks that did not make it to Gang Signs & Prayer. I am not against a Grime artists headlining Glastonbury and feel, for a festival to evolve and reach new generations, it needs to react to what people are listening to and an artist who can articulate the voices and needs of the people. Rather than book the same old bands and familiar faces; this is a new and interesting move that will be interesting to see. It will be intriguing seeing whether Stormzy can provide a full and unique set – but I know he will handle it and deliver the goods! We are not sure who the other two headliners will be but it could be Madonna or The 1975; maybe it will be Sir Paul McCartney.

 IN THIS PHOTO: IDLES (the natural next choice as Glastonbury headliners?)/PHOTO CREDIT: Press/Getty Images

I feel, given the booking of Stormzy; maybe another intense and vital act like IDLES might get their shot. They have released two albums and their recent record, Joy as an Act of Resistance, is viewed as one of the best records of this year. I do not think a Glastonbury headliner should be defined by age, class and experience. If they feel right and can bring something special to the festival then that is fair. Many, me again, were annoyed by the headline slots of Foo Fighters and Ed Sheeran last year. The former have played there before and brought little new and original to their set whilst Sheeran’s spotlight seemed a reaction to commercial success – his acoustic and softer approach to music seemed at-odds with the grandeur and immense platform Glastonbury provides. In a big to reverse that and, at the same time, offer diversity – racial and sonically – it is a good move from the organisers (one feels Emily Eavis was most instrumental in the decision). Maybe IDLEs or another band will get one of the other two slots but I feel, as good as Stormzy will be, there needs to be more consideration given to female artists. Not only have there been so few black artists headlining Glastonbury but that is the case with women too. Look back at the past fifteen Glastonbury festivals and only three women have headlined (out of forty-five!). Only four black artists have headlined the past ten festivals (not including next year), so it is clear something needs to be done!

 IN THIS PHOTO: Beyoncé/PHOTO CREDIT: Tyler Mitchell for Vogue (September 2018)

Beyoncé, I think, is only black woman to headline in the last twenty years and there are so many fantastic female artists who would do a fantastic show. Not only could Beyoncé reign again – she has done a lot since her last headline slot in 2011 – but there is the likes of St. Vincent, Christine and the Queens and  Janelle Monáe who could seriously own it. Throw in Björk and Lana Del Rey; Taylor Swift and legends like Kylie Minogue and there is plenty of choice. I would love to see Beyoncé on the Pyramid Stage and it would be a good accompaniment to Stormzy’s set. My big fear is there will be no female headliner or only the one – even one is not redressing the balance and not an adequate response to the problem. I am pleased Stormzy gets a chance to make some history and take Glastonbury in a new direction...but there will be some groans and discontent still. For those who feel a Rock band or Pop artist should be a headliner – or every slot should be in that mould – then who would you suggest?! We need a headliner who has the power and potency to unite people and bring a great show to Worthy Farm and not too many names come to mind. You need someone new who has not headlined before and something original.

I feel the time is right for Glastonbury to make a change and be bolder when it comes to their headline names. GQ wrote an interesting piece that reacted to the announcement and asked whether Stormzy has enough crossover appeal – can he connect with those who prefer something guitar-based and a bit more ‘traditional’?

“Fail to have a crossover success, though, and the rapper may need to go on a freestyle rant against Theresa May just to stop the vast audience from drifting. Because that’s the risk here. Stormzy is electric live. In 2017, his set on the Other Stage was a weekend highlight. He commands the stage with an energy and poise that makes other acts look flat. However when, say, Arctic Monkeys headlined after two albums in 2007, they had "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor", "Brianstorm", "Fluorescent Adolescent" and many more. Yes, Stormzy won the two main prizes at the Brits this year, but if his fans can have a concern with him topping the Pyramid Stage in 2019, it’s that it’s a little too early, a little too bold. It took even Ed Sheeran three albums to headline, and he’s a bigger draw than God.

The next eight months are key then, as to what his new songs are like, and who he brings on stage as a guest. The will, frankly, is for him to succeed. Gang Signs & Prayers is excellent. He is a phenomenal person and a perfect live act. He has already annoyed the pillocks. This is way more exciting than Mumford & Sons. But the nagging feeling, until the lights go up after the encore and we see how many people have stayed to see him to the end, will be: was it too soon?”

I know he can keep the crowds hooked and involved and produce a truly excellent set. The first headline name seems next year’s Glastonbury will be more promising than last year – if they book a woman, that is! – and many ask whether Stormzy can feel the big shoes required to dominate the Pyramid Stage. As Stormzy says in his hit, Big for Your Boots: “I’ve got my size twelves on my feet...”. The Grime leader is not too big for his boots or too young to step into the shoes of the headliners of old. As the country crumbles and we do not really have a cohesive and popular leader; it seems like music has a potential leader...

 IN THIS PHOTO: Stormzy/PHOTO CREDIT: © Alex De Mora for CRACK

IN Glastonbury’s first headliner!

FEATURE: Sisters in Arms: An All-Female, Autumn-Ready Playlist (Vol. XVIII)

FEATURE:

 

 

Sisters in Arms

IN THIS PHOTO: Chlöe Howl  

An All-Female, Autumn-Ready Playlist (Vol. XVIII)

__________

IN this new edition…

 IN THIS PHOTO: DaniLeigh

I have been searching for songs (there is a LONGER mix in there too) that summon the colours and contrasting emotions of autumn. There are the fizzy and sunny moments where there is rush and excitement; there is also the darker moments and contemplation that provides some calm and reflection. Here is a selection of female-led offerings that will get into the heart and is guaranteed to lift the mood. I hope you find something that strikes a chord and gets under the skin. The weather is a bit changeable so there is no telling what we are in for over the next few days. I am sure things will be fine and we will all be in for some good weather. Make sure, whatever you do, you take these...

WONDERFUL artists with you.  

ALL PHOTOS (unless stated otherwise): Getty Images/Artists

____________

Anna Clendening – Invisible

PHOTO CREDIT: Zak Tassler

Rachel Ohnsman – The Sea

Emily Magpie – Last Train

Saachi – Redcoat

PHOTO CREDIT: Jennifer-Lynn Christie

Claire Ridgely - California

PHOTO CREDIT: Claire Marie Vogel

Madison Cunningham – Location

Heather Cole – Good at Friends

Liv Dawson – Good Intentions

Kayla Mickelsen - Try

Chlöe Howl - 23

Freya Ridings – Lost Without You (Instrumental)

Kwamie Liv – Last Night

Nina Schofield – My Life

Evalyn – Big Bad City

Rosie Carney – Zoey

Maya Jane Coles – Other Side

Yazmyn Hendrix – Stay with Me

Dido – Hurricanes

Hannah Jane Lewis – Do it Without You

 PHOTO CREDIT: @shootmejaz

Bee Arnold – Dry Your Eyes

Lydmor – Vild

 PHOTO CREDIT: Natacha Horn Multi Media Artist

Tanita Tikaram – Wonderful Shadow (Acoustic)

Emily James – Foreign Land

Loren Gray – Kick You Out

DaniLeigh – Blue Chips

 PHOTO CREDIT: Aronimus Guy

Hazel Marimba – Marimba Haze

Broods – Peach

Regina Spektor – Birdsong

FEATURE: Season’s Bleatings: Will Advertisers Ever Strike the Right Musical Tone for Christmas?

FEATURE:

 

 

Season’s Bleatings

IN THIS PHOTO: Sir Elton John stars in the latest Christmas advert from John Lewis/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images/John Lewis 

Will Advertisers Ever Strike the Right Musical Tone for Christmas?

__________

OVER the next couple of weeks…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @jasmint/Unsplash

we will see more supermarkets and retailers unveil this year’s Christmas adverts. Invariably, these adverts will be accompanied by pieces of music and it got me to wondering about tone and popularity. In visual terms, we have seen some rather memorable examples through the years. Whether they are going for something sappy or emotionally vulnerable; playing or cheesy or going for cute – the more exclamations of “Awww!” and “Ooohhh!” we can draw then the better! Usually, we will get a family scene and, animated or live, a child bewildered by the joy of Christmas or some cute animal leading the way. I am not usually emotional when seeing the adverts – as they are not real and are designed to hock the products of a huge and rich company – but I can understand why some people might feel a bit teary with some of them. I have no objection to the nature of the adverts and the fact they are designed to make money and play on our emotions but, when it comes to the music side of things, has anyone ever got it right?! I am one of these people who wonders why the ‘classic’ Christmas tunes/carols cannot be used for adverts? I realise these companies want to blend the modern with classic so they tend to have something quite classical and comfortable regarding the themes/scenes of the advert and then bring in a modern reworking of an older song. There might be a commercial or emotional reason why we see, every year, the same sort of singers featured and the type of songs used.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Amelia Warner (Slow Moving Millie)/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Slow Moving Millie covered The Smiths’ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want for John Lewis in 2011 and, whilst permission was given to use the song, the results were sadly familiar. It seems there is a particular tone and dynamic for every seasonal campaign. In 2015 – a few years after the aforementioned John Lewis campaign – another female singer, Aurora, covered Half the World Away (Oasis) for their Christmas pitch (see below). Whilst each advert had varied success – the latter was a more controversial and divisive one with an elderly man on the moon; the former more traditional and less ambitious – they were very similar in terms of songs. Both, strangely, used songs by Manchester bands; both tracks (the originals) are quite emotional but were transformed in the hands of the new vocalists. Each song title suggested family, unity and a need for togetherness; a yearning and hopefulness coming through but, sadly, each rendition bleached the original song and delivered something rather lumpen into the stocking. I realise it is lazy to rehash Christmas carols or can be tricky getting rights to play an existing song but the dynamic of employing a breathy/sweet female singer and having various shades of beige presented each year does take the edge off of things.

I do wonder whether the way we react to Christmas adverts is too strongly influenced by the songs. I realise the words and deliveries are meant to add to the advert and convey a clear message but so many of the songs are listless and mediocre. There are articles like this that rank the Christmas ads and collate the best but, as we have become more advanced and given more options; the nature of adverts has become narrow and singular. Older adverts have switched between live action stories and concentrated on different aspects of Christmas – heightening the appeal of the food or focusing on charity and togetherness. The last few years, more and more, are relying on schmaltzy and saccharine concepts, albeit some are done with ingenuity and a fresh angle. Whether there is an animation or something visually arresting; there is a certain amount of sappiness and caramel that has replaced invention and variation. I guess, when advertisers limit their palette and spectrum, the music has to match. The choice of singers is bafflingly limited. Every year, it is another female singer who seems to be cut from the same cloth as every other Christmas advert-scoring performer. The choice of cover versions is odd and, like I said, the cover versions are rather limp and pointless. I do wonder whether advertisers need to think about the music/singer choices and understand the music that accompanies their visuals can be as compelling as anything – often eliciting more emotion and potency than the film itself.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @mtaneva2001/Unsplash

Apart from the ‘banned’ Iceland T.V. advert – one that has an ecological message that rallies against our overuse of palm oil and how it is affecting the environment. The advert was banned on the grounds it is too political and controversial. People are campaigning for the ban to be lifted and it is one of the rare occasions where an advert’s message has outshone anything else (in a negative or divisive manner). Look around at the past six or seven years and it has been the same slew of rather anodyne and un-festive musical offerings. Maybe this year will see a sea change but it seems Sainsbury’s’ latest advertising commercial, not only goes down Sap Lane, but treads very close to a John Lewis campaign. The setting and visuals are reliably nauseating and family/child-orientated – advertisers assume Christmas is reserved for children and completely lost on adults – but the music choice, again, is stilted and odd. You cannot accuse the child who sings the New Radicals’ You Get What You Give of being the same as Slow Moving Millie and the usual parade of rather vanilla-scented singers but there is something completely offputting and pointless about the ‘musical aspect’. Like many other adverts that use popular songs; someone has taken the lyrics/title and thought to themselves it would be perfect for their campaign. Not only does the 1990s classic have nothing to do with Christmas but it means, again, a great song has been tortured and strangled.

Luckily, retailers like Tesco and Marks and Spencer have avoided major music faux pas. The former barely has any music at all whilst the latter, featuring Tom Jones, has at least avoided the usual traps that retailers get themselves into. I think music can heighten an advert, if done right, and help compliment the visuals. That is what the aim is, surely?! Advertisers need to think about striking the right tone without offending or being boring. I wonder why the classic Christmas songs are being avoided and why Carols cannot be reimagined. If people do insist on picking popular tracks and getting someone modern to sing them, there needs to be a rethink and rebranding. I would like to see more soulful voices chosen and songs that have a more ‘Christmas feel’. There seems to be this divison between companies like Sainsbury’s tackling a well-known song or others, like Lidl having a more traditional background. In either case, I feel something is missing and a great imagination needs to go into the musical choice. This brings me to the latest Christmas advert that, whilst bolder regarding its music and focus; it has drawn some sighs and suggestions from people. John Lewis, realising the machine-processed identikit singers wrecking some northern classic is not the right approach.

Whilst they have cranked up the saccharine to the maximum – I do have a heart somewhere! – the musical decision, again, has drawn some provocation. The Guardian explains why they some doubts regarding Sir Elton John’s appearance in the latest advert:

“The 2018 John Lewis ad is heartwarming. Elton John sits alone at his piano, playing Your Song while moments of his life flash before his eyes. He sings in a stadium, he sings in the studio, he sings in a pub, he sings at a school concert. It’s a very sweet advert with a very simple message: somebody better call Elton John an ambulance right away, because this is exactly the sort of thing that happens right before you die.

In fact, the advert is probably too heartwarming. Just a few weeks ago, the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was heavily criticised for its toothless portrayal of Freddie Mercury’s worst excesses, and the same could be said for the John Lewis advert. Elton John isn’t a great pop star because he sings songs about little dancers, crocodiles that rock and being able to stand up. No, Elton John is a great pop star because he is knotty and complicated and, well, a bit of a dick sometimes”.

Musical memories start to flood by and, just when you think the sugar-sweet visuals cannot get any more tear-jerking; there is a bit of humour and surprise thrown in:

“The music now reaches a crescendo, and then …

It’s Christmas morning again. Elton finishes playing Your Song and, with a nostalgic tear in his eye, gently shuts the lid. But then he notices the cameraman in his peripheral vision and loses his temper, screaming profanities and flinging vases until the cameraman is forced to escape and flee for his life. Finally, the new slogan appears: “John Lewis. If we can deal with him, we can deal with you”.

Oh, wait! That was The Guardian’s finale and, to be fair, one that would have made for a better ending – not very Christmas-like is it?! I like the angle of a popular musicians recalling their memories and, by putting music right in the spotlight, a big risk has been taken. It is good to see a more emotional side to Elton John – rather than him having a diva strop – but it seems to be more about him than Christmas; the budget must have been huge and many have criticised the cost of the advert at a time when John Lewis is tightening its belt. Is it possible to get the music just right and keep the cost pretty low? Hiring a lesser-known artist to perform the song is a way to do that but it does not have the gravitas of a truly big name. If you do get these titans in the frame then you need to make sure what they are singing or what they are representing gets the balance right. Maybe it is impossible to strike that right chord (get it?!) and please everyone. Many people argue Christmas it too materialistic so one cannot really have an argument against the music of a Christmas advert – when we should be focusing on the message and purpose. The thing is, the Christmas adverts are representing organisations who feed (literally) this commercialism so, as such, if we are to buy into their campaigns then they need to consider and perfect every point.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @sholt680/Unsplash

The latest crop of Christmas adverts ranges from ‘political’ and unique (Iceland) to the usual fare (Sainsbury’s) to something a little less music-focused (Tesco). John Lewis, as you’d expect, have drawn a lot of focus and, again, the high-cost retailer has incurred losses in the Christmas advert race. I wonder why it is so difficult for advertisers and these big stores to get the tone right and understand how impactful a great musical backing can be. We sing Christmas carols because they are timeless and pure; we love popular songs because they resonate and have that quality. It seems, in the hands of the advert makers, there is less beautiful chemistry than a messy sort of sludge. I am never going to be swayed to a supermarket/shop based on their Christmas campaign but I am likely to be a bit put off by a particularly sickly/atonal advert. Maybe I will come around to the Elton John-featuring John Lewis campaign or be less inclined to scowl when seeing the Sainsbury’s advert come on.  Maybe the solution is a lot simpler: mute the sound and, whilst watching the advert unfolds, play...

 PHOTO CREDIT: @mariahashby/Unsplash

MY own musical accompaniment!