FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Fifty-Eight: Laura Nyro

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

Part Fifty-Eight: Laura Nyro

___________

I included Laura Nyro…

in A Buyer’s Guide last year. On 8th April, it will be twenty-five years since we lost her. Still an underrated artist, her legacy and influence are huge. Her music stunning, beautiful and unique. I am going to end with a playlist of songs from artists influenced by her. Before that, as I did last year, I am grabbing some biography from AllMusic:

“During the singer/songwriter movement in the late '60s and early '70s, Laura Nyro was one of the most celebrated tunesmiths of her day, penning soulful, literate songs that took the folky introspection of her peers and infused it with elements of soul, R&B, jazz, and gospel, giving them an emotional heat that set her apart. Nyro was a well-respected recording artist, whose confident piano work and rich, expressive vocals made albums like 1968's Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and 1969's New York Tendaberry classics, and she demonstrated how powerfully classic R&B and girl group material had influenced her on the all-covers set Gonna Take a Miracle, recorded in tandem with Labelle. However, while she made great records, Nyro's passionate style was considered too idiosyncratic for the Top 40, and her songs were better known in versions recorded by other artists; the 5th Dimension, Three Dog Night, Barbra Streisand, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Peter, Paul & Mary all scored hit singles with her material. Nyro's frustrations with her lack of success as a performer, coupled with her desire to maintain her privacy, led to her periodically retiring from recording and performing, but latter-day efforts like 1984's Mother's Spiritual and 1993's Walk the Dog and Light the Light revealed she was still a compelling singer and pianist, while her social, political, and environmental concerns pushed her lyrics in new directions.

Laura Nyro was born Laura Nigro on October 18, 1947 in the Bronx section of New York City. Her father Louis Nigro was a jazz trumpet player who also tuned pianos, while her mother Gilda Nigro (born Gilda Mirsky) was a bookkeeper. By her own admission, Laura was not an especially happy child, and she retreated into music and poetry, teaching herself to play piano and soaking up the influences of her mother's favorite singers, among them Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, and Leontyne Price. By the time she was eight years old, Laura had started writing songs, and she would later attend the Manhattan High School of Music & Art, where developed a greater appreciation for folk and jazz styles. (Laura would also attend meetings at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, citing the latter as a major influence on her progressive political views.) In her teens, Laura would enjoy the sounds of the harmony groups who would gather at parties and on street corners, and developed a special fondness for girl group sounds, soul, and the great songs that came out of the Brill Building.

In 1966, Artie Mogull, a veteran A&R man and music publisher, hired Louis Nigro to tune the piano in his office, and Louis persuaded Artie to listen to his daughter sing her songs. The next day, Laura sang "Wedding Bell Blues," "And When I Die," and "Stoney End" for Mogull, and he quickly signed her to a publishing deal, while Mogull and his business partner Paul Barry became her managers. Laura had been using a variety of assumed names for her music at that point, and she settled on Laura Nyro as her professional handle once she turned professional. Nyro's new managers got her gigs at the famous San Francisco night club the Hungry i, as well as the groundbreaking 1969 Monterey Pop Festival, and that same year, she released her first album, More Than a New Discovery, on Verve-Folkways Records. Sales were modest, but Peter, Paul & Mary scored a hit with their version of "And When I Die," and Nyro's career began to take off.

David Geffen took over Nyro's management, successfully suing to void her previous contracts as they were signed when she was under 18. With Geffen's help, Nyro established her own publishing company and signed a new record deal with Columbia Records. Nyro's first album for the label, 1968's Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, was a more personal and sophisticated effort than her debut, in both songs and arrangements, and it received enthusiastic reviews in the rock press. Sales were good, though not up to the level of her critical acclaim, and the same was true for 1969's New York Tendaberry. However, Nyro was increasingly well regarded as a songwriter; the 5th Dimension had scored major chart hits with their versions of "Stoned Soul Picnic," "Sweet Blindness," "Wedding Bell Blues," and "Blowing Away," and Blood, Sweat & Tears hit the charts with "And When I Die," which drew discerning listeners to her original recordings of the songs. By the time Christmas and the Beads of Sweat was released in 1970 (which produced Nyro's only Top 100 single, a cover of "Up on the Roof"), she had sold her increasingly lucrative publishing company for $4.5 million, as more hits continued to flow from her pen; "Eli's Coming" was recorded by Three Dog Night to great success, and Barbra Streisand's album Stoney End featured three of Nyro's songs (and Streisand's version of the title track bore no small resemblance to the original recording on More Than a New Discovery).

In 1971, Nyro released Gonna Take a Miracle, in which she covered a handful of soul and R&B tunes she loved in her teenage years, with the vocal group Labelle helping her re-create the girl group harmonies of the originals. Later in the year, Nyro married and announced her retirement as she found herself at odds with her growing celebrity and embraced small town life. 1973 saw Columbia reissue More Than a New Discovery in a revised edition titled The First Songs. By 1976, Nyro had divorced, and she returned to the recording studio to cut the album Smile, which reflected a more relaxed, jazzy sound and a greater interest in Eastern philosophical and spiritual concerns. While most of Nyro's live performances had found her accompanied only by her own piano, she assembled a band to tour in support of Smile, and the concerts produced her first live album, 1977's Seasons of Light. The album was originally intended to be released as a two-LP set, but Columbia opted to edit it down to a single disc; the songs that were cut were later restored for a 2008 CD reissue. Nyro's next album, 1978's Nested, was recorded as she was expecting her first child, and while she played a few shows following its release, after she gave birth Nyro once again walked away from the spotlight to devote herself to her family.

It wasn't until 1984 that Nyro delivered another album, Mother's Spiritual, a lighter and more folk-oriented set that often reflected her views on feminism, the environment, and parenthood. Four years later, Columbia Records was eager for Nyro to record a new studio album, but she preferred to go out on tour with a band in tow. Columbia had no interest in releasing a live album from the tour, and 1989's Laura: Live at the Bottom Line, which included five new songs, was instead released by the A&M-distributed Cypress Records. (One of the songs, "Broken Rainbow," was written for an Oscar-winning documentary on the forced relocation of a Native American reservation in 1983.) .

From the late '80s onward, Nyro toured frequently, but it would be 1993 before she released another studio album, Walk the Dog & Light the Light (issued by Columbia), in which she added animal rights to the list of causes she supported in song. In 1994, Nyro would begin work on another album, but progress on the project came to a halt when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Nyro worked with Columbia Records to compile 1997's Stoned Soul Picnic: The Best of Laura Nyro, a two-disc career spanning anthology of her recordings. It turned out to be her swan song, as cancer claimed her on April 8, 1997.

In 2001, the unreleased studio recordings from 1994 and 1995 were issued by Rounder Records in a collection titled Angel in the Dark, while Christmas shows from New York's Bottom Line club from 1993 and 1994 were collected on the live release The Loom's Desire in 2002. 2004's Spread Your Wings and Fly: Live at the Fillmore East was another archival release that gave belated release to a concert recorded in New York in 1971. In 2017, Real Gone Music reissued the monophonic mix of Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and the original sequence of More Than a New Discovery in a package titled A Little Magic, A Little Kindness: The Complete Mono”.

To show how many fabulous artists have been influenced by Laura Nyro, the playlist below is a selection of songs from some hugely talented people! In October, we will mark what would have been her seventy-fifth birthday. Even though Nyro died nearly twenty-five years ago, her incredible music lives on. It will inspire people for decades to come. Here are some artists who definitely follow Nyro or they have been moved by her…

PHENOMENAL music.

FEATURE: A Buyer’s Guide: Part Ninety-Seven: Toni Braxton

FEATURE:

 

 

A Buyer’s Guide

PHOTO CREDIT: FAULT 

Part Ninety-Seven: Toni Braxton

___________

PERHAPS an oversight on my part…

but I have not featured Toni Braxton in A Buyer’s Guide as far as I can see! I have featured her before, but not in this series. To remedy that, I am going to highlight the albums of hers that you need to own. Her ninth studio album, Spell My Name, came out in 2020. Let’s hope there are plenty more albums from the R&B legend. Prior to getting to the albums, here is some biography from AllMusic:

“Blending fire and finesse, Toni Braxton has wielded broad appeal throughout a career studded with Top Ten pop and R&B/hip-hop hits, multi-platinum certifications, and major award recognition. Soulful enough for R&B audiences yet smooth enough for adult contemporary play lists, sophisticated enough for adults but sultry enough for younger listeners, and equally proficient at heartbroken and seductive material, Braxton made her solo debut at full power during the early '90s. Her first two albums, Toni Braxton (1993) and Secrets (1996), both went platinum eight times over, accompanied by a string of hit singles that included "Un-break My Heart," which ranks among the longest-running number one pop hits of the rock era. Each one of her subsequent albums has been treated as an event, whether it has followed a brief or extended break in studio activity. They have regularly debuted within the Top Ten, highlighted by Love, Marriage & Divorce (2014), a set of duets with long-term collaborator Babyface that made her one of the few artists to be handed Grammy Awards in each of three decades. From "Love Shoulda Brought You Home" to her first single of the 2020s, "Do It," Braxton's Top Ten R&B/hip-hop hits span a similar length of time. The latter appeared on her first album for Island, Spell My Name (2020).

Toni Michele Braxton was born in Severn, Maryland, on October 7, 1968. The daughter of a minister, she was raised mostly in the strict Apostolic faith. Encouraged by their mother, an operatically trained vocalist, Braxton and her four sisters began singing in church as girls. Although gospel was the only music permitted in the household, the girls often watched Soul Train when their parents went shopping. Braxton's parents later converted to a different faith and eased their restrictions on secular music somewhat, allowing Braxton more leeway to develop her vocal style. Because of her husky voice, she often used male singers like Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, and Michael McDonald as models, as well as Chaka Khan. Braxton had some success on the local talent show circuit, continuing to sing with her sisters, and after high school studied to become a music teacher. However, she soon dropped out of college after she was discovered singing to herself at a gas station by songwriter Bill Pettaway (who co-authored Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True"). With Pettaway's help, Braxton and her sisters signed with Arista Records in 1990 as a group dubbed simply the Braxtons.

The Braxtons released a single in 1990 called "The Good Life," and while it wasn't a hit, it caught the attention of L.A. Reid and Babyface, the red-hot songwriting/production team who had just formed their own label, LaFace (which was associated with Arista). Braxton became the first female artist signed to LaFace in 1991, and the following year she was introduced to the listening public with a high-profile appearance on the soundtrack of Eddie Murphy's Boomerang. Not only did her solo cut "Love Shoulda Brought You Home" become a substantial pop and R&B hit, but she also duetted with Babyface himself on "Give U My Heart." Anticipation for Braxton's first album ran high, and when her eponymous solo debut was released in 1993, it was an across-the-board smash, climbing to number one on both the pop and R&B charts. It spun off hit after hit, including three more Top Ten singles in "Another Sad Love Song," "Breathe Again," and "You Mean the World to Me," plus the double-sided R&B hit "I Belong to You"/"How Many Ways." Toni Braxton's run of popularity lasted well into 1995. By that time, Braxton had scored Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Female R&B Vocal ("Another Sad Love Song"), and tacked on another win in the latter category for "Breathe Again."

To tide fans over until her next album was released, Braxton contributed "Let It Flow" to the Whitney Houston-centered soundtrack of Waiting to Exhale in 1995. Again working heavily with L.A. Reid and Babyface, Braxton released her second album, Secrets, in the summer of 1996, and predictably, it was another enormous hit. The first single, "You're Makin' Me High," was Braxton's most overtly sexual yet, and it became her biggest pop hit to date. However, its success was soon eclipsed by the follow-up single, the Diane Warren-penned ballad "Un-break My Heart." The song was an inescapable juggernaut, spending an amazing 11 weeks on top of the pop chart (and even longer on the adult contemporary chart). Further singles "I Don't Want To" and "How Could an Angel Break My Heart" weren't quite as successful (hardly an indictment), but that didn't really matter; by then Secrets was already her second straight multi-platinum hit. In 1997, she picked up Grammy Awards for Best Female Pop Vocal and Best Female R&B Vocal (for "Un-break My Heart" and "You're Makin' Me High," respectively).

Toward the end of 1997, Braxton filed a lawsuit against LaFace Records, attempting to gain release from a contract she felt was no longer fair or commensurate with her status. When LaFace countersued, Braxton filed for bankruptcy, a move that shocked many fans (who wondered how that could be possible, given her massive sales figures) but actually afforded her protection from further legal action. She spent most of 1998 in legal limbo, and passed the time by signing on to portray Belle in the Broadway production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Braxton and LaFace finally reached a settlement in early 1999, and the singer soon began work on her third album. The Heat was released in the spring of 2000, and entered the Billboard 200 at number two, matching the highest position held by Secrets. Lead single "He Wasn't Man Enough" was a Top Ten hit and an R&B/hip-hop chart-topper. A brisk seller out of the box, The Heat eventually cooled off around the two-million mark and led to yet another Grammy win for Best Female R&B Vocal ("He Wasn't Man Enough").

Following the release of the holiday album Snowflakes, Braxton appeared in the VH1 movie Play'd and recorded More Than a Woman. Released toward the end of 2002 with half of its songs co-written with sister Tamar, it broke Braxton's streak of Top Ten studio albums and prompted a temporary move to the Blackground label. Libra, supported with the singles "Please" and "That's the Way Love Works (Trippin')," started a new streak of Top Ten entries in 2005. In Europe, it was re-released the following year with the addition of the Il Divo collaboration "The Time of Our Lives," the official 2006 FIFA World Cup anthem. It was around this time that Braxton became the main performer at the Flamingo Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Her show, Toni Braxton: Revealed, ran until April 2008, when she joined the cast of the competitive reality show Dancing with the Stars. After lasting five weeks before being voted off the show, Braxton completed Pulse, her first full-length for Atlantic. Issued in May 2010, it became her fifth Top Ten album.

Braxton further boosted her 2010s comeback profile by participating in another reality TV series, the long-running Braxton Family Values, which focused on her relationship with her mother and four sisters. Meanwhile, she reunited with Babyface to record the duets album Love, Marriage & Divorce. Released by Motown in 2014, it went to number four just before the duo starred in a Broadway production of After Midnight. Love, Marriage & Divorce won the Grammy Award in the category of Best R&B Album just months before Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir was published. The book detailed Braxton's triumphs, as well as her business and health struggles behind the scenes, and led to a similarly titled biographical television film.

Braxton's affiliation with the Def Jam label began in 2015 with her second holiday recording, Braxton Family Christmas. Although lupus complications hampered Braxton's touring schedule, she worked on a new album and in 2017 accepted a Soul Train Legend Award. Sex & Cigarettes, a set dominated by aching ballads, arrived in 2018. It reached number 22 and led to a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album, while "Long as I Live," a Top 20 R&B/hip-hop single, was up for Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance. The Top Ten R&B/hip-hop hit "Do It," featuring Missy Elliott, followed in 2020 as the first result of a new deal with Island Records. Spell My Name, on which she was also joined by H.E.R., arrived that August”.

I am going to whittle down her nine solo studio albums to the best four, the underrated gem, in addition to her latest studio album. There is a memoir that I thought I would also highlight. This is the essential work of the…

SENSATIONAL Toni Braxton.

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The Four Essential Albums

 

Secrets

Release Date: 18th June, 1996

Labels: LaFace/Arista

Producers: Babyfac/eKeith Crouch/David Foster/R. Kelly/L.A. Reid/Tony Rich/Soulshock & Karlin/Bryce Wilson

Standout Tracks: You're Makin' Me High/Talking in His Sleep/Let It Flow

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=96174&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Uy6GD6CqvEkWAdzxy7S1x?si=rwpUIdb1T22BCXdx0tCfXA

Review:

“Although she’s the daughter of a deeply conservative apostolic minister who didn’t allow her to listen to pop music when she was a little girl, it must not have been very difficult for Toni Braxton to relate to the songs crafted for her by writer-producer Kenneth ”Babyface” Edmonds. Babyface venerates love; for him, romance is a religion to be both studied and enacted. And on Braxton’s new album, Secrets, the singer and her recording mentor offer up a series of secular hymns to attraction and affection, betrayal and brokenheartedness, cooing and cohabitation.

You can hear their devotion in a song such as ”How Could an Angel Break My Heart,” cowritten by Babyface and Braxton. Over a lulling ballad melody, the singer makes her agony a thing of beauty, pausing with daring vocal timing over the lyrics’ details of a lover’s wayward behavior. And you can hear a different sort of testament to the redemptive powers of love in ”You’re Makin Me High,” the album’s airily funky first single. Both ”High” and the finger-poppingly upbeat ”Come On Over Here” give the lie to doubters who thought Braxton could sell only slow songs effectively.

Having sold more than 7 million copies of her self-titled 1993 debut album, Braxton had to face up to a big challenge. Toni Braxton had yielded a string of hit singles (”Another Sad Love Song,” ”Breathe Again”), and ”Let It Flow,” from the soundtrack to Waiting to Exhale, is presently a staple of urban contemporary radio. But sophomore albums are, as the cliche goes, jinxed, and Braxton must have worried, just a little, whether all those young one-name female upstarts — Brandy, Monica, Monifa, and their sisters — might render her languid take on love irrelevant.

But instead of trying to pursue the cutting edge and emulate the youngsters’ melding of R&B and hip-hop, Braxton has opted to skew older: Secrets offers space to veteran songwriter-producers Diane Warren and David Foster, who between them have worked with a slew of middlebrow behemoths from Barbra Streisand to Michael Bolton. Warren came up with ”Un-Break My Heart,” a tearjerker so grandiose and yet so intrinsically, assuredly hit-bound, it’s the kind of mass-appeal grabber that’s probably already sent a jealous Diana Ross diving for a comfort gallon of Haagen-Dazs.

Easily the worst song on Secrets and therefore worth lingering over for a second, ”Un-Break My Heart” (produced by Foster, so Babyface is guilt-free) is one of those the-verses-exist-only-for-the-swelling-chorus showstoppers that allude to emotions without ever actually embodying them. Braxton does her darnedest to plug some life into the song, to no avail. And no matter: This is the sort of MOR fodder that becomes a radio standby in spite of itself. Its selection by Braxton and coexecutive producers Antonio ”L.A.” Reid and Babyface was, in this sense, a shrewd, if artistically disappointing, one.

Braxton gets more solid material from other outsiders, like R. Kelly (whose ”I Don’t Want To” is a cool tune about romance in denial) and Tony Rich (co-writer of ”Come On Over Here,” a neo-Motown composition in the manner of Rich’s own best work).

As for the core Braxton/Babyface collaborations, well, they are diverse, witty, and exquisitely modulated. Indeed, Babyface’s ”Let It Flow” (also included here) is one of Braxton’s most successfully adventurous moments. A sultry tune that requires the singer to reach down to her lowest register, ”Flow” has a sinuous power, and it flows into the next track, ”Why Should I Care,” in which Braxton ascends to a high, breathy croon. Taken together, this pair of songs not only demonstrates Braxton’s technical range but confirms her ability to deliver Secrets’ sermons of sensuality — little gospels of good and bad loving — with unusual eloquence. A-“ – Entertainment Weekly

Choice Cut: Un-Break My Heart

The Heat

Release Date: 25th April, 2000

Label: LaFace

Producers: Teddy Bishop/Keith Crouch/David Foster/Jazze Pha/Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins/Keri/Daryl Simmons

Standout Tracks: Spanish Guitar/Just Be a Man About It/Maybe

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/master/143318-Toni-Braxton-The-Heat

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0UZsKcXzOehMvFWTiBlwMi?si=iBpV0MW9RX2i_QI3u0e_Jw

Review:

“Toni Braxton went through a lot in the years separating her star-making Toni Braxton and her 2000 comeback The Heat. Yes, she became a star, but she also went through a painful bankruptcy that delayed her sequel for years. Fortunately, you wouldn't be able to tell that there was so much behind-the-scenes drama from The Heat -- it's a confident, assured, sexy effort that reaffirms Braxton's status as one of the finest contemporary mainstream soul singers. She may not be as street-smart as Mary J. Blige, nor does she push the boundaries of the genre the way TLC does, but she has a full, rich voice that instantly lends her songs a sense of maturity and sensuality, especially since she never, ever oversings or misjudges her material. And, while that material can occasionally be a little generic, much of The Heat is built on solid ballads and smoldering, mid-tempo dance numbers. Producers as diverse as Babyface, Rodney Jerkins, Daryl Simmons, Teddy Bishop, and David Foster are responsible for various tracks on the album, which is typical for a big-budget, superstar release like this, but rarely are the tracks quite as consistent and cohesive as they are here. The skittering beats of "He Wasn't Man Enough" and "Gimme Some" are every bit as effective as the simmering title track or ballads "I'm Still Breathing" and "Spanish Guitar" -- or "Just Be a Man About It," an instant classic telephone breakup song, with Dr. Dre playing the wayward lover breaking the news to Ms. Braxton. True, The Heat slightly runs out of momentum toward the end, but there aren't many dull spots on the record -- it's all stylish, sultry, seductive, appealing urban contemporary soul that confirms Braxton's prodigious talents” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: He Wasn’t Man Enough

More Than a Woman

Release Date: 18th November, 2002

Label: Arista

Producers: Babyface/Gerrard C. Baker/Big Bert/Irv Gotti/Rodney Jerkins/Keri Lewis/Mannie Fresh/Andrea Martin/Ivan Matias/The Neptunes/No I.D./Chink Santana

Standout Tracks: Let Me Show You the Way (Out)/A Better Man/Lies, Lies, Lies

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=151013&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4loWAxPQnpNreGRDEmPMDo?si=eXvZXptcS_SGMqco5-4Z6Q

Review:

“Long before the likes of J-Lo and Britney Spears hypnotised the world with their frequently photographed rumps and midriffs, Toni Braxton spearheaded the cluster of desirable females with a knockout combination of seductive looks, silky vocal tones and an inclination towards dresses which seemed to be produced during a cloth shortage. But image aside, Braxton's career CV can't be laughed at. With six Grammys, seven American Music Awards and a total of 25 million worldwide album sales, record company bosses will be relying upon her to deliver the goods with her latest offering.

More Than A Woman is a diverse blend of danceable club numbers, trademark Braxton ballads and experimental tracks which borrow from the genres of rock and jazz.

First off is the feisty "Let Me Show You The Way (Out)". A new woman's anthem for 2003? I truly think so. Over a hammering hip-hop bassline, angry incessant piano chords and Braxton's calm but commanding vocals lies a telling tale of infidelity, which sets the theme for the majority of the album. Nothing demonstrates this so magically as "Hit The Freeway". What at first sounds like a quintessential Neptunes track - melodic synthesiser, staged handclaps and funky drum patterns - later transpires into an impressive slice of pop R&B. The chorus: "Farewell my lonely one, nothing else here can be done, I don't ever wanna see you again" is eagerly contagious. Revenge has never sounded sweeter.

For your dosage of classic love songs, turn to the elegant "Always". Harking back to the Toni of yesteryear,this is a tenderly honed R&B ballad with rich, multi-layered vocals, which add balance to the edgier, street-orientated tracks.

The album's surprise comes courtesy of Braxton's hubby, Keri Lewis who produced the standout track "Lies, Lies, Lies". The most notable element on this record is the usage of live instrumentation. Toni's vocals also provide an interesting mix, as her gravelly tones are pit against an electric guitar.

There's no doubt that More Than A Woman will sell bucket-loads. At age 34 Braxton is in a great position to serve both middle-of-the-road listeners with her high-powered ballads, as well the comrades of the streets with her attitude-ridden take on modern day living” – BBC

Choice Cut: Hit the Freeway (featuring Loon)

Sex & Cigarettes

Release Date: 21st March, 2018

Labels: Def Jam/Universal

Producers: Fred Ball/Antonio Dixon/Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds/Dapo Torimiro/Stuart Crichton/Tricky Stewart/Pierre Medor

Standout Tracks: Deadwood/Sex & Cigarettes/Sorry

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=1334468&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1nmxUznbVkZorzeY4olXco?si=L6x7ZjMFSwiN3NYvSU6FuQ

Review:

“Toni Braxton may have just got engaged to hip-hop mogul Birdman, but there isn’t any sign of a heel-clicking, lamppost-swinging flush of love here – she seems permanently marooned in a Mariana trench of post-breakup misery. This is of course her dominant mode. She remains best known for Unbreak My Heart, where the dejected singer knows how impossible the task of the title is, but is powerless not to request it. Lyrically, even upbeat hits such as You’re Making Me High are freighted with a quiet pain. Like Billie Holiday, Braxton’s voice reflexively bends towards sadness, and it continues to do so even when there’s a diamond on her finger.

A very strong trio of songs open this record, beginning with Deadwood, which has a fantastic singalong chorus alongside acoustic strumming and chardonnay-doused strings. Perhaps it could have benefitted from a more traditional power ballad arrangement, but it’s very good nonetheless. Braxton’s intonation of “deadwood” – putting the emphasis bitterly on the “dead” – is the kind of impactful, classy detail you can only paint after a lifetime of heartache songs.

The smooth R&B single Long As I Live has an even stronger central melody, but it’s the title track, a piano ballad, that really dominates this opening salvo: a tale of emotional abuse with Braxton at an Unbreak level of trauma, pleading “at least lie to me, lie to me” to a cheating lover who doesn’t bother to mask his scent of sex and cigarettes. By the end you can practically hear the snot and tears as she crumples. Lesser singers would tip it into camp; Braxton makes it shockingly raw.

She doesn’t quite reach those heights again, and there is some slightly rote production: the Viva La Vida ripoff of Coping and the already passé tropical house of Missin’. But there’s still a masterly emotional range: from simmering anger on FOH (“Boy you must be suicidal / Is that bitch right there beside you” scans with a chilling brilliance) to tender regret on My Heart. No real joy or happiness, mind – you do rather feel for Birdman listening to it for the first time” – The Guardian

Choice Cut: Long As I Live

The Underrated Gem

 

Toni Braxton

Release Date: 13th July, 1993

Labels: LaFace/Arista

Producers: Babyface/Vassal Benford/Bo & McArthur/Vincent Herbert/Ernesto Phillips/L.A. Reid/Daryl Simmons/Tim & Ted

Standout Tracks: Another Sad Love Song/Seven Whole Days/I Belong to You

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=96167&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/73ojqvZakvdkBxSg9pyPqz?si=-UE90LFMTAaT6GyOTB9gPA

Review:

“The music-buying public of the UK was not holding its breath for the first solo album from Toni Braxton, the perfect, pure voice from US gospel troupe The Braxtons (with her sisters Traci, Towanda, Trina and Tamar). However, when they heard her sumptuous phrasing, saw how beautiful she looked and heard her enormous hit, Breathe Again, she was made most welcome. Suddenly, it was as if she was everywhere. In her white vest, Braxton became an antidote: both to Mariah Carey stretching unlimited mileage out of every single note, and Whitney Houston, now a remote superstar in the wake of the global success of her box office blockbuster, The Bodyguard.

Spotted by producers and songwriters L.A. Reid and Babyface, Braxton was singled out from her group to record Love Shoulda Brought You Home, a track the duo had written for 80s torch songstress Anita Baker. The match worked. As a result, half of Braxton’s debut album sounds like Baker’s best work since 1986. Seven Whole Days is such an update on the Rapture singer’s formula, you actually think you are listening to Baker herself, and You Mean the World to Me is a very affectionate homage to Same Ole Love.

However, if it was simply pastiche, it wouldn’t have sold so well and been held in such high regard. It was the tracks on which Braxton found her own voice that made this album special. Another Sad Love Song showed how well an accomplished production team could perform when married with a superior vocalist. But it was the album’s third single, Breathe Again, that fully established Braxton. A delicate ballad that refused to resort wholly to cliché, it is brought to life by Braxton’s dreamy, breathy delivery. And it was huge. Breathe Again went to the US top three and to number two in the UK.

The single made the album sell and sell. Toni Braxton topped the US chart and made the UK top five. It was spritely, mature soul at its best – and just urban enough to make it the bedroom album for the hip hop generation. There’s no denying how glossy, overcooked, and, at times, overwrought it is, but there is little point in denying its beauty“ – BBC

Choice Cut: Breathe Again

The Latest Album

 

Spell My Name

Release Date: 28th August, 2020

Label: Island

Producers: Paul Boutin/Chris Braide/Toni Braxton/Ghara ‘PK’ Degeddingseze/Antonio Dixon/Kenneth Babyface Edmonds/Hannon Lane/Missy Elliott/Akeel Henry/Jordon Manswell/Jonathan Martin/Soundz/Dapo Torimiro

Standout Tracks: Dance/Gotta Move On (featuring H.E.R.)/Spell My Name

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=1797844&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7cVfHcCdsGH28PMMRdTQg5?si=NiTZAdVrRxOfhSDAEV1mBA

Review:

“Toni Braxton was one of the biggest pop and R&B stars of the 1990s, and after a few years out of the spotlight, began a career resurgence began with 2014’s “Love, Marriage & Divorce” album with Babyface, which continued with 2018’s “Sex & Cigarettes.” Now, a mere two years later, she’s back with “Spell My Name,” possibly her strongest album since her halcyon period in the mid-to-late ‘90’s.

She’s brought along several longtime collaborators. Antonio Dixon penned the song “Long As I Live,” and he’s all over this album, chiming in with the second single, the shimmery summertime disco stomper, “Dance.” He also co-wrote “Do It” with Braxton and Babyface, who is also omnipresent, not only as a songwriter but because this album was recorded entirely at his Brandon’s Way recording studio.

For her part, Braxton cowrote nearly every song on the album, and she and her collaborators have succeeded in deftly meshing her signature minor-key R&B sound with production and vocal arrangements that keep things classy but contemporary. The mistress of melancholy, Braxton has made a career out of heartbreak and this record is no exception: Even “Dance,” the only fully upbeat song here, arrives as the remedy to a break-up. Meanwhile, “Gotta Move On” featurs a slow and meditative 4/4 beat with swooping strings and Ernie Isley-esque guitar solos from special guest H.E.R.

Of course, Braxton brings powerhouse vocals to the songs.. The emotive, scene-setting chords that begin “Happy Without Me” is one of her best-ever recorded performances, with lyrics to match: “Nothin’s bruised but my ego/ Nothin’s hurt but my pride.”

With just eight songs (plus a remix), the album actually harkens back to the vinyl age, when the physical limitations of an album meant shorter track lists. But that’s just part of the overall vibe. This is a not an R&B record made on a bedroom laptop: It’s expensive sounding, with a stellar cast of collaborators and dramatic orchestrations. And by the time the country-soul closing track rolls up — fittingly, a Babyface number, with a put-your-hands-in-the-air chorus’ — fans will be ready to start the whole thing over” – Variety

Choice Cut: Do It (with Missy Elliott)

The Toni Braxton Book

 

Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir

Author: Toni Braxton

Publication Date: 20th May, 2014

Publisher: It Books

Synopsis:

“The bestselling solo R&B artist finally opens up about her rocky past and her path to redemption

While Toni Braxton may appear to be living a charmed life, hers is in fact a tumultuous story: a tale of personal triumph after a public unraveling. In her heartfelt memoir, the six-time Grammy Award-winning singer and star of WE tv's hit reality series Braxton Family Values is unapologetically honest in revealing the intimate details of her journey.

Toni and the entire Braxton clan have become America's favorite musical family, but what fans may not know is the intense guilt Toni once felt when she accepted a recording deal that excluded her sisters. That decision would haunt Toni for years to come, tainting the enormous fame she experienced as a popular female vocalist at the top of the charts. Despite her early accomplishments, Toni's world crumbled when she was forced to file for bankruptcy twice and was left all alone to pick up the pieces.

Always the consummate professional, Toni rebuilt her life but then found herself in the midst of more heartache. The mother of an autistic child, Toni had long feared that her son's condition might be karmic retribution for some of the life choices that left her filled with remorse. Later, when heart ailments began plaguing her at the age of forty-one and she was diagnosed with lupus, Toni knew she had to move beyond the self-recrimination and take charge of her own healing&;physically and spiritually.

Unbreak My Heart is more than the story of Toni's difficult past and glittering success: it is a story of hope, of healing, and, ultimately, of redemption” – Amazon.co.uk

Order: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unbreak-My-Heart-Toni-Braxton/dp/0062293281

FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Eighty-Seven: Jenny Hval

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenny Berger Myhre

Part Eighty-Seven: Jenny Hval

___________

ONE of the finest artists in the world…

this Modern Heroines concerns the brilliant Jenny Hval. Although she has released seven solo albums prior to Classic Objects, I want to make her current album the main focus. Iconic and among the most acclaimed songwriters around, Hval is Norwegian singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and novelist. A stunning artist whose music is absolutely phenomenal. Recorded at Øra Studio in Trondheim, Classic Objects is one of the best-reviewed albums of the year so far. I am going to end with a playlist of her best solo songs to date. Before that, I am going to combine a couple of recent reviews, alongside reviews for the fantastic Classic Objects. In this NPR interview, we discover why (compared to some of her other albums) Classic Objects is a brighter and more Pop-oriented release.:

“All of Hval's albums, in their own way, attempt to untangle the same struggle: the reality that her art, her desires, her body, plagued by history's gaze and capitalism's exploitations, have to be continuously reclaimed. Her latest, Classic Objects, expands on that project with a fluid, lively meditation on what it means to center her identity around being an artist, while grappling with the reality that her art exists tethered to a wider marketplace — one which constantly threatens to erode the personal, radical nature of her work.

A press release for the album claims Classic Objects is Hval's "version of a pop album," but the music here isn't pop so much as it's lighter than her more foreboding past work. Gone is the darkwave of The Practice of Love or the medieval gloom of 2016's Blood Bitch, replaced here with a jazzy, New Age sound. On songs like "Year of Sky" and "Cemetery of Splendour," thunderous bongos and shaken percussion give the songs an earthy, ritualistic aura, the latter ending with a spoken list of oddities found outside — branches, pine cones, cigarette butts — and the sounds of buzzing insects and revving cars and cyclists.

There's also long been a fervent religiosity to Hval's work, from the straight line she draws between her own sensuality and the ecstatic visions of Joan of Arc on 2013's Innocence Is Kinky to the throbbing, church-worthy instrumentals of Apocalypse, girl. Even her lyrics, which tend to unspool in poetic, casually conversational threads, can sometimes sound like sermons. Here, she continues her fascination with chest-clutching, Americana spiritualism on songs like "Year of Love," with its flat, pop Manzarek-style organ, and "American Coffee," which has a soulful choir tracking Hval's wild-out vocals. Once you get to the line where she sings about nursing a UTI and staring back at her own blood in the toilet, you know what it means to be a congregant of Hval's church: to remember that underneath society's projections, you're just flesh and blood.

The brightness of the music on this album reflects the ways in which Hval's more theory-driven tendencies as a songwriter are pulled back a bit. On Classic Objects, Hval's radical politics tend to hang in the background, bobbing in and out of the music's line of vision like deflated balloons that have clustered at the edges of a party in its last hours. The album opens up when Hval latches onto one of them and pulls it close to her, reminding herself that, actually, maybe she isn't as in control as she thought.

Classic Objects vibrates with the tension of "what could have been" had Hval made different life choices. On the album opener "Year of Love," she cheekily surveys the weight of her marriage — an act that arguably threatens her artistic and financial independence — like a museum attendee circling a sculpture. "In the year of love I signed a deal with patriarchy," she sings. But she also fills the album with voices and faces from her personal past — a studio space partner; roommates; her mother, scared in childbirth — revisiting life-shifting details like a scrapbook, cataloging the moments that have informed her art and made her her — more than just an artist, more than just a married person. And yet a shadow version of herself remains, a concept she confronts on "American Coffee": "Not she who stayed behind / She who quit everything, music and identity."

For Hval, music and identity is everything, and often one and the same. And art and what it means to protect it, to keep it an experimental extension and reflection of her selfhood, is a central concern of Classic Objects — sometimes ambiently, sometimes directly. On "Jupiter," she confronts the reality that not all art shares her same revolutionary ideals, looking at her reflection in the designer product-lined windows of the gluttonous installation "Prada Marfa" in the Texas desert. "Sometimes art is more real, more evil," she sings. "Just lonelier." Elsewhere, in the middle of the album's finale, "The Revolution Will Not Be Owned," Hval takes a meta beat to call witness to the political limitations of her own art embedded in the fine print. "This song is regulated by copyright regulations / And dreaming doesn't have copyright," she sings, the song's instrumentals building up around her. "I guess you could say: The revolution will not be owned."

Hanging over every minute of Classic Objects is the reminder that art and self-expression in its most potent form — vulnerable and politically unsparing — is precious, always threatened by the prospect of commercial ruin. Hval's work isn't easily codified, messily pushing and prodding against preconceived ideas about gender, sex, labor and desire, and so it constantly runs the risk of being flattened. And when she excavates her discomfort here with institutions like marriage and easily marketable strains of art, she shines a spotlight on the ways in which capitalist forces reorganize both art and love, threatening to mute their possibilities. Even the last few minutes of "Cemetery of Splendour," in which the trampling steps and trash of humans have invaded a natural terrain, traffic sounds dueling with the buzzing of insects, hold so much tension in such a small invasion”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jenny Berger Myhre

The Guardian recently spoke with Hval. They opinion how, whereas she has used her music to discuss pornography and patriarchy, Jenny Hval feels like a hypocrite for tying the knot. There were also some perks for Hval when it came to the recent pandemic lockdowns:

“Classic Objects isn’t wholly preoccupied with marriage. Hval’s pandemic experience looms large over much of the record, with the legal restrictions placed on artistic performance providing plenty of food for thought. The fact that live music events were halted gave her the impression that her work was generally considered “dangerous yet unimportant” – the perfect perspective, she says, for “any authoritarian government” wanting to make changes to society.

Even as things open up again, Hval is concerned that the music industry is continuing its slide into a “more conservative” mindset, with the economic toll of multiple lockdowns cementing the shift. In order to guarantee ticket sales, venues that “started out as subcultural hubs” are now “hosting bands that are already signed and touring the world”, she says. The datafication of music also rewards existing success. “I wonder if that trend will just keep going now that we try to measure everything,” says Hval. “There are so many numbers – they can distort good creative decisions.”

Yet lockdown had its perks. Hval felt the physical benefits of pausing her itinerant lifestyle; she has coeliac disease and felt liberated from the constant challenge of finding suitable food while on tour. She also entered a period of cosy domesticity, spending time with her husband, who got very into fermenting food and looking after their puppy – a task that led to the semi-passive consumption of endless trashy movies, the only art form undemanding enough to accommodate the pair’s newly dog‑centric attention spans.

Hval came to the conclusion that she “would be quite happy to be a hermit artist”, but a recent return to live performance reminded her that touring’s sacrifices are accompanied by a unique joy. “There’s some kind of magic about being on stage that I only remember [when I’m there],” she says. “There are some parts of me that only exist in that stage moment.”

Instead of turning her into a permanent recluse, the pandemic, and the change of pace it required, fed into a new approach to songwriting: “simple stories” to echo her experience of a simpler life. The lyrics in Classic Objects are more immediately intelligible than on her previous offerings, but pared-back Hval is still rich and complex. The gorgeously searching, organ-backed American Coffee references everything from Guy Debord and her mother’s fear of driving to watching French cinema while suffering from a brutal UTI. She admits her songs “did get more adventurous than I anticipated”, which, in retrospect, she is relieved about. “Otherwise I think I would have written something that I didn’t actually agree with”.

A truly awesome artist who is going to continue to bring us music of the highest order, Jenny Hval is most definitely an artist who will be looked back on as a legend and iconic artist of our time. She is one of the most astonishing lyricists I have ever heard. Classic Objects is among her best albums to date. DIY had this to say when they reviewed it:

“There was a painter in my first studio space,” Jenny Hval recalls on the title track of ‘Classic Objects’. “I remember she used to attach her own hair to her paintings.” Delivered with a conversational tone that runs throughout this eighth studio album, it holds up a mirror to Jenny’s pairing of the abstract and the personal. Much like the physical incorporation of the painter’s body into their work, ‘Classic Objects’ places personal experience front and centre, yet envelops it in a conceptual bubble. Not new to turning private developments into works of art, here Jenny adopts a new level of candour. Inspired by the lack of artistry during the pandemic, ‘Classic Objects’ is the response to a question asked by many over the past two years: Who am I? The answer lies throughout several personal stories, each recounted with a matter-of-factness at odds with the otherworldly sound. On standout ‘American Coffee’, a tale of global exploration is momentarily replaced by French philosophy, leading to a disarmingly abrupt finish. The album’s two epic set pieces close with natural sounds that directly contradict the tangible nature of the story at hand. ‘Cemetery Of Splendour’ concludes with a spoken list of objects, painting a haunting picture of the balance of the natural world and humanity. It all accompanies a sound that harks at traditionalism and modernity, driven by Jenny’s distinctive soft vocals. Yet what on previous records had created something ethereal and untouchable here generates something altogether more physical and tactile. ‘Classic Objects’ walks the line between art and humanity, between nature and fabrication, between the real and the conceptual. It’s the audible equivalent of a painting affixed with human hair”.

I am going to close with a glowing review from Pitchfork. Not normally ones to give albums acclaim (they tend to err more on the side of caution a lot of the time!), they were impressed by Classic Objects:

“She plunges further into the divide between seeming and being on “Jupiter” and the album’s title track. On the former, she squares herself against the beige concrete corners of the Prada Marfa art installation in the West Texas desert. “I am an ‘abandoned project,’” she sings. The line recalls Lydia Davis’ singular “Tropical Storm,” with Hval offering a lightly funny reminder of the constant upkeep and occasional chaos of the corporeal form. But it also brings to mind the premise that Joan Jacob Brumberg presented in her 1998 book The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, which examines the historical arc of pervasive messaging to girls about physical self-improvement. Hval further ponders material differences in “Classic Objects,” wondering whether the items in her hands are art or stuff, and how to kiss passive gold and marble.

Within the confines of her humanity, Hval settles into the contradictory realities of her existence—among them, being a proud feminist and independent artistic woman who decided to marry a man. She recoils at being subjected to the “industrial-happiness complex,” as she puts it. “‘It’s just for contractual reasons,’ I explained,” she sings on “Year of Love,” with black jeans offered as another signifier of efforts to defang the proceedings. The song’s jumpy organ melody feels like a feverish calliope, as if the carousel of “The Circle Game” had somehow gone a little lopsided.

Hval’s perspective gradually expands outward across the record, shifting from small personal details to bigger-picture observations. The heady “Year of Sky” spins from the appeal of finding oneself back to losing it again, where time and place are temporary anchors to an infinite expanse, and Hval ponders the afterlife in “Cemetery of Splendour,” with a plodding, earthy bass tone that cedes to a long tail of a woodsy field recording. She takes inventory of her environment in a voice of breathy wonder—leaves, birds, cigarettes, gum! gum! gum!—illustrating her exterior world with lovely and ugly things alike.

From the harp-dappled lilt of “Freedom,” where she wonders about institutional promises, Hval builds toward the stormy, piano-driven finale of “The Revolution Will Not Be Owned.” She basks in the notion that an interior world is the only space where absolute unbridled freedom exists—even songs are subject to copyrights, as she sings. She frames dreaming as “the plan without the plan,” a carnival of unconsciousness. It’s here that the being and the seeming collapse into nothing, where it’s possible to be free of the world and all its impositions. Absolute freedom, Hval suggests, lies in the willful abandon of opening up to the wild possibilities of the interior. In the great conflicting unknown, pleasant surprises, profound revelations, and life-changing love abound”.

One of the music world’s most important and respected artists, I am curious where Jenny Hval will head next. As she is married and her music has taken on a new tone and lyrical direction, this will be a new and exciting phase for her. If you have not discovered Hval and her beautiful music, then spend some time to immerse yourself in the wonder of…

A modern-day icon.

FEATURE: Paul McCartney at Eighty: Twenty-One: The Beatles on Film: A Hard Day’s Night

FEATURE:

 

 

Paul McCartney at Eighty

Twenty-One: The Beatles on Film: A Hard Day’s Night

___________

AS part of this forty-feature run…

ahead of Paul McCartney’s eightieth birthday in June, of course, there will be more than a few dedicated to The Beatles. I have already spent some time with their albums and best tracks. I will rank the studio albums, perhaps, in another feature. Today, I want to start a mini-run of The Beatles’ films. Starting at the beginning with 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night. Alongside the phenomenal album, I think this was The Beatles’ best film. In terms of the acting, every member is superb. There ia argument that Ringo Starr and George Harrison provide the best performances, though I love Paul McCartney’s acting. I shall explain more and give my impressions on the film soon. Before that, I want to bring in some details about a tremendous film. Here, first, is its synopsis:

“At a railway station, The Beatles (John, Paul, George and Ringo) run, hide and adopt disguises in order to evade their fans.

Cocooned on a London bound train, they are accompanied by Paul's irascible, wayward Irish grandad, their manager Norm and factotum Shake. In their carriage, a middle-aged gent, clearly a member of the class that thinks they own the railway (''I fought the war for your sort") challenges the group over opening a window and playing a radio.

After Ringo rejects a 'come hither' advance from a sophisticated lady in another carriage, they join Norm and Shake in the buffet car, where they make passes at two schoolgirls. Grandad causes a scene and is placed in the baggage compartment, where the lads join him. The Beatles engage in a jam session with the schoolgirls watching. The train arrives at Paddington, where hoardes of waiting teenage fans are held back by police.

In their hotel room hundreds of fan letters have arrived. Ringo receives an invitation to visit Le Circle casino club. This is seized upon by granddad who steals an elderly room attendant's suit and visits the club himself. The Beatles visit a nightclub, and on their return to the hotel find the stripped room attendant in a cupboard, who tells them what happened. Recognised by the Le Circle doorman in spite of their casual dress, the four manage to rescue granddad.

A limousine takes The Beatles to a television studio, where they are topping a variety show (which also features dancers, operetta excerpts and a magician) that evening. Again, there are hordes of fans outside. The four attend a press reception. During rehearsals, the television director becomes increasingly anxious, as the Beatles continually 'do their own thing' rather than follow the diktats of those in authority like himself. They take a break on the fire escape and visit a nearby playing field, where they are told to move on as it is "private property".

George visits an advertising agency where Simon, concerned with spotting "tomorrows trends today", is launching a new range of shirts for teenagers. As George is regarded as a 'trendsetter', Simon wants his opinion (pre-scripted, of course). George tells him what he really thinks of the shirts. Ringo does his own thing and goes walkabout along a river bank, where he chats to an urchin, visits a secondhand clothes shop and a pub. He is soon taken to a police station, as is granddad for aggressively hawking Beatles publicity photos. Granddad escapes and George, Paul and John arrive to rescue Ringo, and are subsequently chased by policemen.

The Beatles perform their songs on the TV show before a hysterical studio audience of teenage girls, climaxing with 'She Loves You'. The performance is a triumph, to the amazement of the TV director. The Beatles are bundled into a helicopter, and as it takes off into the stratosphere their publicity photographs are scattered to the crowds below”.

I often wonder what it was like turning up on that first day to film their very first film. Naturally, there would have been expectation and some nerves. They would have been excitement too! The Beatles Bible give some information about that fateful day in March 1964:

“On Monday 2 March 1964 The Beatles joined Equity, the actors’ union, only minutes before they began shooting their first film, the as-yet untitled A Hard Day’s Night

Their union memberships were proposed and seconded by Wilfrid Brambell and Norman Rossington, their main co-stars in the film. All gathered at London’s Paddington Station, where their train left at 8.30am from platform five. However, no filming took place at the station itself.

The specially-hired train was destined for Minehead and back, where for the next three days scenes were filmed in the suitably cramped setting. There was a dining car for The Beatles to eat in, yet during their designated 40-minute food break they preferred to sit outside the stationary train.

The Beatles’ dialogue was recorded using microphones hidden inside their shirts, but numerous retakes were required due to sound problems.

The train bit embarrasses us now. I’m sure it’s less noticeable to people watching in the cinema, but we know that we’re dead conscious in every move we make, we watch each other. Paul’s embarrassed when I’m watching him speak and he knows I am. You can see the nervous bits normally in pictures: things like the end – you make that on one day, and on the next day you do the beginning. But we did it almost in sequence. The first we did was the train, which we were all dead nervous in. Practically the whole of the train bit we were going to pieces.

John Lennon, 1964

Anthology

One of the actresses present on this day was Pattie Boyd, for whom George Harrison took an instant liking. They began dating shortly afterwards and married in January 1966.

The scenes of Beatlemania which greeted the group as they embarked on their journey caused a rethink in subsequent days’ filming. For the next five days they boarded at Acton rather than Paddington, and in the evenings were met by their chauffeurs at a variety of smaller suburban stations”.

Paul McCartney appeared with The Beatles in films such as Help! and Magical Mystery Tour. Alongside the film and the album, there was promotion. By the time A Hard Day’s Night was filming, Beatlemania was certainly growing! The band are seen in the film’s opening scene being chased by hordes of fans. It is pretty close to what life was like for them! I think A Hard Day’s Night stands out, is because it is the young band in a film that is about their daily lives. Directed by Richard Lester, it wonderfully features Wilfrid Brambell as John McCartney, Paul's grandfather. I love that relationship and story strand. All of the band are great in the film, but I feel McCartney offers a good mix of emotions. He does not ham things up too much; his acting is solid, and he is very charming and funny throughout. I am not sure whether fans and the media would have defined each Beatle in terms of their personality. Maybe Lennon was the more serious one; Starr the funnier one. McCartney was, maybe, ‘the cute one’. Never parodying the band or heightening the reality, A Hard Day’s Night looks and feels beautiful in black-and-white. McCartney is in some of the best scenes and moments. Him trying to keep his mischievous grandfather in check is brilliant! The bond he has with Lennon is especially endearing and important. At an early stage of their career, you can see Harrison, Lennon, Starr and McCartney enjoying themselves! I hope that McCartney remembers the film fondly. As he is eighty soon, it must be strange looking back on a film that is almost sixty years old!  A Hard Day’s Night is a hugely influential film, inspiring numerous spy films, The Monkees' television show and a tonne of Pop videos and future films featuring groups (one feels Spice Girls’ Spiceworld was directly inspired by A Hard Day’s Night). In a landmark and still-amazing film, Paul McCartney offers up…

A wonderful and warm performance.

FEATURE: Experiment I: Returning to the Notion of a Kate Bush Tribute Album

FEATURE:

 

 

Experiment I

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993 during filming of the short film, The Cross, the Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari 

Returning to the Notion of a Kate Bush Tribute Album

___________

HAVING read reviews…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for Army Dreamers (1980)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

of the recent album, Ocean Child: Songs of Yoko Ono, I have been thinking about Kate Bush and the lack of tribute albums out there. The Yoko Ono is a variety of artists covering her songs. It is a great album, and it will introduce her music to new people. Maybe not one of the most accessible or played artists, I think it was high time there was a tribute album! Although Kate Bush’s music is better known, I still feel there is something that can be done to make people aware of the full extent of her brilliance. Listen to the radio and, mostly, it is the bigger songs that are played. Rarely do stations go off the script and play a deeper cut. Because of this, I feel a lot of people define Bush too rigidly or have a narrow view of her music. Proper fans spend time listening to her album tracks, but I wonder how much of the wider world beyond that understand and are aware of songs like, say, The Wedding List? There are so many people that do not know some brilliant songs. Not that a tribute album would change that is a massive way. It is more of a salute to an innovative and pioneering artist who has so many supporters and fans. Seemingly more relevant than ever, demand would certainly be there for a tribute album!

 IN THIS PHOTO: Florence Welch (Florence + The Machine)/PHOTO CREDIT: Rhys Frampton for Sorbet Magazine

It would definitely not be the first time artists have been brought together for an album like this. In the past, there have been projects. They tended to feature smaller artists who are less widely-known. Look at some of the newer artists like The Anchoress who are inspired by Kate Bush. As I have said before, The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon is a fan. I have just interviewed Nerina Pallot about Bush. She has previously covered Moments of Pleasure (The Red Shoes). Even though some of Bush’s big musician fans have covered her music before, there is opportunity to organise a tribute album. The aim would be to look at deeper cuts, rather than the ones that everyone is familiar with. Everyone from Big Boi, St. Vincent, Rufus Wainwright, Guy Garvey, Anna Calvi, Fiona Apple, k.g. lang, Courtney Love, Darren Hayes, Björk and Florence Welch are fans. In terms of who could appear, there is no reason why major artists would either refuse or be expensive to book. In a previous feature, I think I suggested profits could go to a charity. Bush is a supporter of many, so proceeds could go there. Maybe the cost of putting it on vinyl would mean a big financial hit if that was where the profits were going. In any case, I would be fascinated to see how artists we know and love combine with upcoming acts. Tackling songs that show Kate Bush’s true depth and musical dexterity, they would put their own stamp on these songs. Maybe recording the songs at a studio that Bush has worked out of, like Abbey Road or AIR Studios.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy)

In terms of the number of tracks, I think there could be fourteen. Trying to take a song from each of her nine studio albums (I am leaving out 2011’s Director’s Cut), songs that have not been shared or played that much are brought to life and reinterpreted by some brilliant artists. I know The Anchoress likes the song, Egypt (from 1978’s Lionheart). Maybe Big Boi taking on a song from The Dreaming (Pull Out the Pin?). St. Vincent grappling with Waking the Witch or Mother Stands for Comfort? Nerine Paollot has performed Moments of Pleasure. I would like to hear what she does with a deep cut. I think Neil Hannon could do a brilliant rendition of a song such as James and the Cold Gun (The Kick Inside) or the brilliant Mrs. Bartolozzi (Aerial). I think there would need to be some bands in the mix. Perhaps pairing artists together. Anna Calvi together with Charli XCX? I am just putting it out there but, when it comes to Kate Bush-related projects, there has always been this gap that a tribute album could fill. I don’t think Bush could have any objections. Artists celebrating her work and showing their respect is not only a perfect way to mark her legacy. Maybe it would motivate Bush to record more music at some point. As there are U.S. artists who might not be able to get to the U.K. and record, they could record their parts closer to home. I was eager to put the notion of a tribute album back out there. I love the song, All the Love (from The Dreaming), and I have suggested it as a podcast title. It would actually suite a tribute album! Songs such as Experiment IV (the single from the 1986 greatest hits album, The Whole Story), The Song of Solomon (The Red Shoes), and The Fog (The Sensual World) would be brought to…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Anchoress (Catherine Anne Davies)

A wider audience.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Carson McHone

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Carson McHone

___________

I do not feature too many…

Country and Americana artists in my Spotlight feature. It is an oversight, and one I am trying to rectify. I only recently came across the music of Carson McHone, but I really love what she does. Her latest album, Still Life, is magnificent! Certainly one of the musical treasures of the year so far! I am building everything to a review of that album. Before I get there, it is worth putting in some background and interviews with the fabulous artist from Austin, Texas. Her debut album, Goodluck Man, came out in 2015. Since then, she has built her sound and fanbase. McHone is an artist that everyone needs to check out:

“There is something almost excruciating about the places in between. The feeling of falling. A reassertion of gravity as one step leads to another but just before the foot lands. The purgatory between borders, before clarity becomes whole.

Still Life, Carson McHone’s third album and second release with Loose Music, quivers like a tightrope, with songs about existing within such tension and surviving beyond the breaking point. These are stories of sabotage, confusion, and surrender. The album is a testament to the effort of reaching, sometimes flailing, for understanding and for balance. Still Life invites us to gasp at our own reflection and acknowledge the unsettling beauty in this breath.

McHone’s 2018 internationally released Carousel (Loose Music), produced by Mike McCarthy in Nashville, was a reimagining of songs from her formative years coming of age playing in Texas bars. It established her as a shrewd lyricist who raises unconventional questions with language equally at home in a short story or a poem. Still Life addresses a broader picture. It is thematically more refined and yet more daring. McHone’s voice remains front and center, but it’s richer, darker. Wielded more than woven. A gorgeously wrought instrument for pushing meaning forward.

McHone wrote the songs of Still Life in quiet moments between tours in her hometown of Austin, then recorded in Ontario with Canadian musician and producer Daniel Romano. McHone says of the session, “Daniel is a perceptive player, and his response was intuitive and organic. We attacked these songs as a blank canvas. Shadows sharpened and came to life as full vignettes that felt familiar in a magical way, a product of keeping things emotionally open. I think we picked up on things that were unwritten.” Together in a home studio they cut almost the entire record themselves, calling on two friends, the versatile Mark Lalama on accordion, piano, and organ, and David Nardi with some savvy saxophone, to round it out. The phrasing and tones recall John Cale, The Kinks, Richard and Linda Thompson—like-minded artists of the late ’60s and early ’70s, another era of transition and innovation.

On Still Life, this first-time collaboration between McHone and Romano reveals a compelling dynamic; the musical punctuation is intricate, erratic, and at times even playful. The arrangements provide texture to the landscape of the songs while sustaining the underlying thematic tension. The album opens with “Hawks Don’t Share,” a literary allusion to the creative sabotage that often confronts artistic alliance. A pair of sparring electric guitars sets the scene, mirrored in the line, We’re both boxers babe/ we don’t make love. Bright horns pop between phrases overtop a tight rhythm section. A jangly twelve-string leads into a driving chorus with big vocal harmonies and layered synth. The title track plays out an anguished spiraling.

Right at the point where language fails, the vocals break away into fuzz guitar and violent, incessant piano, as if the turmoil can only be expressed by music. In “Sweet Magnolia,” the strings, horns, and piano create a perfect orbit for the mannered intensity of a song that soars but is essentially spoken. “End of the World” builds with dark and dissonant violins over a repetitive major guitar progression, leaving us hanging on its final line, “Tell me what do you know of restraint?”. The punchy sax and tumbling toms of “Only Lovers” play into the ruse of pretending you haven’t already fallen when you have. The background vocals are like a playground taunt. On the buoyant “Someone Else,” McHone’s assured vocal delivery cuts to the punch: I’m caught between the two/ sweet despair and hope renewed/ say it ain’t profound babe. Behind her, the rollicking organ and hammering piano conspire to bust down the door and pull us along.

More than timeless, Still Life is timely, inherently modern, immediate. The final song, “Tried,” acts as a kind of eulogy for the in-between spaces these songs embody. The bardo one must emerge from. The album challenges us to take responsibility for what we experience and how we negotiate gravity moving forward. Still Life summons us to the present in all its complexity, daring us to join in the deliberation. Here is an exposé of conscience, and a confirmation of the inherently hopeful act of creation.

Let’s find a new language to use so we’re not confused”.

I did not know much about her prior to coming to this feature. It has been fascinating researching. I want to combine a couple of recent interviews. SPIN chatted with McHone about Still Life. She is someone whose musical has grown and diversified since her debut. It is hard to categorise and define her sound:

“Despite growing up around a subculture of musicians doing their best to mimic cowboy tropes, McHone was more interested in how songs become timeless and manifest in succeeding generations. “I grew up listening to a lot of Celtic music,” she continues. “I’ve always loved melodies that feel ancient but so, so urgent and still relevant.” As a result, McHone’s been able to assimilate folk, grunge, blues, and yacht rock sounds into kinetic, breathable compositions.

Four years after Carousel, she’s blossomed far beyond the genres she’s never fit into. Her Merge Records debut, Still Life, is a sweeping collection of technicolor and crooning balladry, a country vibrato that toes the line between alternative and Americana. The record’s orchestral arrangements, supplied by Ontario bulwark Daniel Romano, turn McHone’s songwriting three-dimensional. The project germinated at the beginning of the pandemic, when she and Romano retreated to Toronto and used the country’s lockdown protocols to hone their compositional chemistry and generate a palette of arresting, streamlined lyricism. “It’s the first record I’ve made where it’s an intimate thing between just two people,” McHone says.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chad Wadsworth 

The night before our video call, McHone says she watched Cool Hand Luke for the first time. She quickly picked up on the parallels between the infamous “failure to communicate” line and her own, “let’s find a new language to use so we’re not confused,” in “Fingernail Moon.”

“That’s all we’re trying to do, communicate, and the language that we use is so personal and it’s all based on our past experience, the things that we collect,” she says. “You have to, first, be in touch with yourself to know what you want to say, but then there’s this element of mystery about how people are going to interpret it.”

Taking linguistic inspiration from books like A Moveable Feast and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McHone is a vivid storyteller. Her lyrics have always been solemn, straight-to-the-point yet spacious; emotionally sprawling and inviting, even in her barnstorming, DIY days. During the zenith of “End of the World,” she asks the listener: “Tell me what do you know of restraint?” It’s a question McHone’s been workshopping the answer to because she writes such acute, centered language – but it’s her interactions with liminal space, and her articulation of tension, that establishes such good resonance. She, beautifully, gives us her life story, but empathetically leaves room for us to glean our own stories from it, too. “As an artist, the catalyst for involving yourself in the creative process is very personal, but you do have to take into account your audience,” McHone adds. “You want to be understood, but you also want to allow people to arrive themselves”.

I think that Still Life is one of the best albums of the year. Glide Magazine shared similar sentiments when they spoke with the remarkable Carson about Still Life recently:

“It’s only February, but I feel confident in saying that one of the best albums you will hear this year is Carson McHone’s Still Life, due out this Friday, February 25th on Merge Records. The Austin-based singer-songwriter has been performing much of her adult life and forged a respectable folk-rock meets country sound on her previous full-length albums, 2015’s Good Luck Man and 2018’s Carousel. Yet Still Life exists on a higher plane. The album is rich with instrumentation that feels full and commanding yet warm and inviting, with sentimental accordion, twelve-string guitar, horns, choir-like background vocals, and organ all coming together in one beautiful symbiotic wave of sound. McHone also seems to be tapping into a range of new influences, including British folk-rock, soul, 60s and 70s pop, and glam rock, all of which form a sound that, mixed with her complex lyricism, is vibrant and timeless. In other words, Still Life is not the kind of album you throw on once and forget about.

To make the album, McHone decamped far from her home base in Texas to the Great White North of Ontario. Here she linked up with the prolific Daniel Romano, who somehow found a break from constantly releasing albums to be able to produce and record the album along with a handful of super talented players. Romano – who has never been afraid to take his sound in new directions and shift from a country album to psych rock to paisley pop and more – clearly has a chemistry with McHone as Still Life truly feels like a collaborative effort.

As we emerge to a state of normalcy after a depressing couple of years, Still Life is exactly the piece of art that can lift spirits. McHone, who hasn’t played a show in two years, will also be hitting the road this spring with Romano and his band where she will undoubtedly treat listeners to these new songs. Recently, she took the time to chat about the making of the album, finding its sound, musical inspirations, collaborating with Romano and more.

You seem to be moving away from a more country-influenced sound to something a little more rooted in pop and soul on this new album. Were you consciously pushing towards a different sound than your last album?

I just followed where the songs lead. It’s not so much that my interests have changed, it’s more so that I’m learning how to listen to things more as a creator, in a way that I can pick things out and put them to use myself.

You worked with Daniel Romano in Canada on this album. Did being away from Texas and working with Daniel make you approach the music in a different way?

Daniel has made all kinds of music over the years and as we explored different feels, he could facilitate different options on the drums, or bass, guitars, etc. We made this record in the living room, because that’s where we were, and because things were locked down, but I do believe that making it when and where we did gave me some healthy perspective. Approaching these tunes in a completely different space, faraway from the place where I’d written them, physically and emotionally, solidified them – the things they carried either fell away or became clearer and more potent, standing there stripped of context and with a different backdrop.

When were these songs actually written? Would you say you were inspired to write during the pandemic?

All of these songs were written prior to the pandemic, but recorded during a lockdown, and the album seems to embody that time in an uncanny way. Time and space seemed to hover in this strange limbo, which is where these songs exist, in these elevated moments of introspection – it was a sort of pause, but it’s in that beat that change can begin, a shift can happen – the literal isolation allowed me that in a way”.

I want to end with a review for the stunning and instantly affecting Still Life. Holler. commended the range and excellence of Carson McHone’s third studio album:

“With Still Life, Carson McHone proves just how broad a church Americana really is; stirring up her own personal melting pot of musical experimentation and influences to create a diverse third full-length album.

From listening it becomes clear why she’s drawn comparison to the likes of Gillian Welch. Throughout the record, she displays a similar mastery of poetic lyrics, written from her hometown of Austin, Texas, then taken north across the border to Canada, to be arranged and recorded with producer Daniel Romano in Ontario.

The album’s title track has mazy guitar lines and genuine Americana warmth that pulls back and forth around McHone’s direct vocals. She nods towards Tom Petty’s band, the Heartbreakers, on ‘Hawks Don't Share’, with its duelling guitars, economical delivery and power pop undertone, as she sings: “I’ve got a soft spot for your madness and your fierce embrace / And the quiet violence in your face.” This pop-orientated approach is also heard in ‘Someone Else’, a jumpy and urgent track, and on ‘Only Lovers’, with its ironically jolly arrangement.

At its best, Still Life ticks every emotional and musical sweet spot, perhaps most notably with ‘Sweet Magnolia’, as McHone tries to avoid looking back with rose-tinted spectacles, lyrically capturing shades of Randy Newman’s peerless, pin-sharp evocations of place and time. On ‘Fingernail Moon’, choruses of layered, heavenly harmonies explore the sincere hope to “find a new language to use so we’re not confused”.

 Going in a completely different direction, ‘Spoil on the Vine’ features chiming guitar under McHone’s distorted, echoing vocals, making the song’s sentiment feel more distanced and otherworldly, as she pleads: “won’t you cry into my ears so that I can hear your tears.”

Contrasting with the more elaborate constructions and layers elsewhere, three tracks deliberately pare everything down and take it back to basics. ‘End of the World’ has acoustic guitars noodling away under McHone’s doubled-up vocals. ‘Folk Song’ lives up to its name, with keening tune and folky delivery of lyrics including the world-weary observation that “all the sense in all this round world will never save me from myself.”

Taking this formula to the extreme, her apt closing number, ‘Tried’ is short, spare and stripped back to almost nothing, just vocals and simple guitar. Maybe McHone is asking the listeners to muse carefully about what they’ve heard when she finishes the entire record with the entreaty, “when you write it say that I tried.”

Stripped back or full-blown, there’s something for everyone who loves Americana here - McHone is really flexing her musical muscles. Very promising”.

An artist that you need to check out and add to your rotation, Carson McHone is an amazing talent. Go and follow her on social media and listen to Still Life. Although we are not that far into 2022, it is most certainly one of the best albums…

OF the year.

____________

Follow Carson McHone

PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Kossler 

Official:

http://www.carsonmchonemusic.com/

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https://twitter.com/carsonmchone13

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https://open.spotify.com/artist/1IOeIjSSt8AcZXEriZXcvx?si=Uznc3F9uTj2ryVR5cLbKeg

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FEATURE: Blessed: The Iconic Jill Scott at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

Blessed

The Iconic Jill Scott at Fifty

___________

THE iconic and magnificent…

Jill Scott turns fifty on 4th April. The Philadelphia singer, songwriter, model, poet and actress is a legend whose albums are absolutely amazing. I especially love her 2000 debut, Who Is Jill Scott?: Words and Sounds Vol. 1, and 2011’s The Light of the Sun. To mark her upcoming birthday, I will end with a playlist containing her best cuts and finest moments. Prior to that, I am going to pull in AllMusic’s biography of the R&B/Soul queen:

“A poetic R&B powerhouse who handles slower, sensual material and bright anthems of pride and self-empowerment with equal aptitude, Jill Scott introduced herself at the beginning of the millennium with the Top 20 and multi-platinum Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds, Vol. 1 (2000). This debut also resulted in four Grammy nominations, including one for Best New Artist, an indication of the promise the singer has fulfilled and overshot throughout her career. After a pair of Top Ten, gold-selling sequels in the Words and Sounds series, Beautifully Human (2004) and The Real Thing (2007), and a Grammy win for the latter album's "Cross My Mind," Scott topped the Billboard 200 with her fourth and fifth LPs, The Light of the Sun (2011) and Woman (2015). Her substantial collaborative work is highlighted by three more Grammy-winning recordings: the Roots' "You Got Me," which she co-wrote, in addition to George Benson and Al Jarreau's version of "God Bless the Child," and Lupe Fiasco's "Daydreamin,'" both of which feature her vocals. Her extensive synchronous work as an actor includes multiple Tyler Perry projects, main roles in series such as The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and Black Panther, and an NAACP Image Award-winning role in Sins of the Mother.

From North Philadelphia, born and raised, Jill Scott planned on becoming a high school English teacher. However, she left behind her secondary education studies at Temple University to pursue theater, joined a local troupe, and eventually landed a role in a Canadian production of Rent. Back in her hometown, while reading poetry at the October Gallery, she caught the attention of the Roots' Questlove. Asked by the drummer if she wrote songs, Scott said yes -- which she later confessed was a lie -- and consequently became a co-composer of the Roots' "You Got Me." Scott was also the original featured vocalist, but MCA, the Roots' label, demanded that the group record instead with the established Erykah Badu. Issued as a single in January 1999, "You Got Me" became a Top 40 pop hit. Although it didn't feature her vocals, Scott did perform the song live with the Roots, as documented on The Roots Come Alive, released that November. The studio version went on to win a Grammy in the category of Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Since it wasn't a songwriters' award, Scott didn't receive one.

Two weeks after the street date of The Roots Come Alive, Scott's name appeared on the back of another new release, Will Smith's Willennium. She delivered the chorus for album finale "The Rain," co-produced by Smith's partner, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and it was with Jeff's support that she secured a deal with Steve McKeever's Epic-distributed Hidden Beach label. After working with Jeff, the Roots, and other Philly natives such as longtime creative partners Dre & Vidal and Carvin Haggins, Scott made her solo debut in July 2000 with Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds, Vol. 1.

One of that year's most favorably reviewed albums, it peaked at number 17 on the Billboard 200 and reached number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. "Gettin' in the Way," its biggest single, set the tone for Scott's career with its high placement on the Adult R&B chart, reaching number three. The Recording Academy responded by nominating Scott for three Grammys: Best New Artist and Best R&B Album, and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for "Gettin' in the Way." In 2001, a later single off the album, "A Long Walk," narrowly missed the Top 40, went Top Ten R&B/hip-hop, and made Scott an R&B Vocal Performance nominee in consecutive years. Experience: Jill Scott 826+, a double album of live and studio material (including a soaring 4hero collaboration), appeared that November. Its nine-minute, three-movement version of "He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat)" resulted in Scott's third straight nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

The next two volumes in the Words and Sounds trilogy, Beautifully Human and The Real Thing, were released respectively in August 2004 and September 2007, and entered the Billboard 200 within the Top Five. The first of this pair yielded a number ten Adult R&B single with the slow jam "Cross My Mind," which bagged a Grammy for Best Urban/Alternative Performance -- Scott's first win, to go along with another set of nominations for Best R&B Album and R&B Vocal Performance, the latter thanks to another loved-up single, "Whatever."

The Real Thing followed another Grammy award -- "God Bless the Child," a collaboration with George Benson and Al Jarreau, won Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance -- and generated the deeply contrasting Adult R&B hits "Hate on Me" and "My Love." More Grammy nominations followed suit: Best R&B Album and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (for "Hate on Me"), while Lupe Fiasco's Scott-enhanced "Daydreamin'" won Best Urban/Alternative Performance. Between Beautifully Human and The Real Thing, the singer performed at Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Additionally, the original version of the Roots' "You Got Me" received commercial release on Home Grown! The Beginner's Guide to Understanding the Roots, Vol. 1, while Collaborations, compiled by Hidden Beach, rounded up "The Rain," "God Bless the Child," "Daydreamin'," and other songs Scott graced, headlined by the likes of the Isley Brothers, Kirk Franklin, and Mos Def.

Scott wouldn't release another studio album until well into the next decade, but she was busy as an actor. Hidden Beach mitigated the absence of their star artist with Live in Paris+. Supporting roles in Hounddog and Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, and a main role in the series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, built up to a very active 2010 highlighted by the series Black Panther and the film Sins of the Mother. Scott's performance in the latter was acknowledged with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series, or Dramatic Special, handed to her after more than a dozen nominations in music and other acting categories that dated back to her first album. Scott didn't take a complete break from music during this period. She appeared on the Grammy-nominated "Love" by Chuck Brown, the godfather of go-go -- a distinctive D.C. style Scott had referenced in her own output.

In June 2011, Scott returned with her fourth proper album, The Light of the Sun, through her new arrangement with Warner Bros. It crowned the Billboard 200 and placed at number three in the Adult R&B Songs Top Ten; it included "So in Love," featuring Anthony Hamilton, and "Blessed," both chart-toppers. Another four years transpired between Scott LPs. Her most notable musical appearance during this phase -- involving roles in Baggage Claim and the biographical drama Get on Up, for which she portrayed Dee Dee Brown, James Brown's second wife -- was on Robert Glasper Experiment's "Calls." Woman, issued by Atlantic in July 2015, became Scott's second number one album, promoted with the Top Ten Adult R&B singles "Fool's Gold," "Back Together," and "Can't Wait." Meanwhile, Hidden Beach kept cranking out catalog titles, following a series of remix compilations with anthologies such as Golden Moments in 2015 and By Popular Demand in 2018. By the end of the decade, Scott had more than enough featured appearances to fill out another Collaborations-styled compilation, having uplifted material by Dr. Dre, Pusha T, De La Soul, and Big K.R.I.T.”.

Ahead of the fiftieth birthday of the wonderful and hugely inspiring Jill Scott, below are a collection of songs showcasing her at her very best. To be honest, her album deep cuts are pretty damn good too! If you are new to her work or need a reminder of how great Jill Scott is, then I think the songs below should give you…

A great taste of her brilliance!

FEATURE: Pass the Mic: Beastie Boys' Check Your Head at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Pass the Mic

Beastie Boys' Check Your Head at Thirty

___________

BY the time their third album…

arrived in 1992, Beastie Boys moved in a new direction. Although their first album, 1986’s Licensed to Ill, was successful, 1989’s Paul’s Boutique did not connect with critics straight away. Its sample-heavy and denser sound meant that it took years for the album to gain proper recognition. Check Your Head is the Beastie Boys moving away (to an extent) from a large amount of samples to using more natural instruments. Pass the Mic, Gratitude and So What'cha Want are classic slices from Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D. Produced solely by Mario Caldato, Jr. (who was one of the producers on Paul’s Boutique), Check Your Head made number ten on the Billboard 200. It was well-received, even if some were confused by the cross-pollination and new direction. At twenty tracks, Check Your Head is never sprawling and composed or too many weak tracks. With no track lasting as long as five minutes, there is focus and concision in terms of song length. I think that there will be a lot of celebration of Beasties’ classic third studio album on 21st April. It is one of the trio’s strongest albums. I am going to come to a couple of reviews. Before that, it is worth checking back on a couple of features that spotlighted an album that helped to revive and maintain the careers of one of Hip-Hip’s most important and innovative acts.

Loud Wire marked the twenty-ninth anniversary of Check Your Head on 21st April last year. Maybe out of necessity, Beasties moved to relying less on samples and playing their own instruments. They still managed to be uniquely them and hugely innovating regarding their sonics and lyrics:

“The trio had long shown their rock influences through samples on their Licensed to Ill and Paul's Boutique albums, but with Check Your Head, they began to shift more toward playing their own instruments and reclaiming the punk and hardcore roots of their pre-fame days before rap put them on the map. Part of the reason for this was the increasing restraints on sampling that were happening at the time.

In a 1992 interview with Uncut, Mike D. stated, "It's kind of a drag cause there's no real established guidelines … You just kind of have to do it and then try to make a deal for it." In doing so, they ran into a few issues. The Jimi Hendrix estate initially denied a wealth of samples used in the song "Jimmy James," but later granted the group permission. They were not as lucky when it came to a sample of James Newton who took the group to court over the use of a portion of his track "Choir" in "Pass the Mic." The band had paid Newton's label, but the artist was not happy with the situation. Eventually, the Beasties were found not liable for the sample.

But even with the sampling issues, the Beasties were already planning on breaking new ground. They started by building their own G-Son Studio with the help of producer Mario Caldato Jr. and keyboardist Money Mark. After the studio was built, it allowed the band the time and access needed to work out musical ideas without having to worry about studio budgets.

"There was talk of making it an instrumental record for a while," explained Mike D. on the 2009 Check Your Head reissue commentary. "For the first year and a half where we just came into the studio and played our instruments every day, we didn't even mess with the vocals for a long time." As a result, the band ended up with funk-based instrumentals like "Lighten Up" and "Groove Holmes," while other tracks were more jam-based like "POW" and "Namaste."

But this approach shouldn't surprise anyone knowing the Beasties' history. "Pretty much from our first indie record, we just do what we do in the moment," Mike D. told Hangin' With MTV. "We're just fortunate that other people are able to deal with it".

It is shocking to think that Beastie Boys needed to prove themselves on Check Your Head. A misunderstood classic, 1989’s Paul’s Boutique was too rich and accomplished for critics who were expected something simple and overly-accessible. Check Your Head was not a compromise; rather, it was an album that granted them the recognition and acclaim that they deserved all along. Albuism cast an eye back in 2017. They discussed the Beasties moving to Los Angeles (from their native New York) and almost starting over:

“Check Your Head, the Beastie Boys’ third official release, was a critical comeback album. People who weren’t there may have trouble believing that, but it’s the absolute truth. Paul’s Boutique, their dizzying, Dust-Brothers-produced, sonic-collage sophomore effort, now widely regarded as a classic, was nearly a career-killing commercial flop when it arrived in 1989. Yes, Paul’s Boutique may have gone Gold. But it was originally shipped platinum by Capitol Records, the Beastie Boys’ new label, on the heels of their five-million-selling 1986 debut Licensed to Ill on Def Jam, after a lengthy contract dispute during the late eighties.

So, what to do now, after making a highly slept-on, sample-based-symphony, which also served as a tribute to New York City, an album that by any commercial measurement, flopped?!? Well, move to Los Angeles, of course. Then, over the course of 1991, while as lifelong friends in their late-twenties having fun in the sun, workshop this garage-rap/rock “musical masterpiece.”

Make no mistake, Check Your Head saved the Beasties’ career. It also drew up a blueprint for the territory they would go on to mine for the duration of their shared prime. This formula might have taken them outside the realms of what true-school folks consider hip-hop, placing them perilously close to the alt-rock campfire that was raging at the time. But that was never truly their bag. This album remained true to who the Beastie Boys actually were. And in the words of Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye, in Last of the Mohicans, a film released during the same year, Check Your Head would go on to make sure that these three-brothers-from-another-mother, would “Stay alive, no matter what occurs.”

The Beasties did more than stay alive. With the Check Your Head’s release one quarter of a century ago, the Beasties would go on to thrive. Blessed with hindsight, we don’t think about this album in those terms now. But I clearly recall the first time I heard this album. It was near the cement stairs of a major bank in Philadelphia, near Independence Hall off Market Street, where a wonderfully multi-ethnic group of young skaters were pumping it on cassette out of a boombox while my friends performed rail-slides. As a hip-hop junkie, I’d already all-but-forgotten the Beastie Boys. Shortly after hearing “Pass the Mic,” the lead and arguably most crucial single on the album, the loud music coupled with teenage rebellion resulted in cops showing up. Next thing we all knew, we were running for what felt like our young lives. I will remember the way that new music, and moment, made me feel for the rest of my lifetime”.

In spite of some not completely bonding with Check Your Head, the reaction in 1992 was more supportive than back in 1989. Maybe at the time it was unusual for Beasties fans. Check Your Head is very different to Paul’s Boutique. Now, it was  bridge to their 1994 album, Ill Communication. AllMusic wrote this in their review of the masterful and dazzling Check Your Head:

“Check Your Head brought the Beastie Boys crashing back into the charts and into public consciousness, but that was only partially due to the album itself -- much of its initial success was due to the cult audience that Paul's Boutique cultivated in the years since its initial flop release, a group of fans whose minds were so thoroughly blown by that record, they couldn't wait to see what came next, and this helped the record debut in the Top Ten upon its April 1992 release. This audience, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, was a collegiate Gen-X audience raised on Licensed to Ill and ready for the Beastie Boys to guide them through college. As it happened, the Beasties had repositioned themselves as a lo-fi, alt-rock groove band. They had not abandoned rap, but it was no longer the foundation of their music, it was simply the most prominent in a thick pop-culture gumbo where old school rap sat comfortably with soul-jazz, hardcore punk, white-trash metal, arena rock, Bob Dylan, bossa nova, spacy pop, and hard, dirty funk.

<

What they did abandon was the psychedelic samples of Paul's Boutique, turning toward primitive grooves they played themselves, augmented by keyboardist Money Mark and co-producer Mario Caldato, Jr.. This all means that music was the message and the rhymes, which had been pushed toward the forefront on both Licensed to Ill and Paul's Boutique, have been considerably de-emphasized (only four songs -- "Jimmy James," "Pass the Mic," "Finger Lickin' Good," and "So What'cha Want" -- could hold their own lyrically among their previous work). This is not a detriment, because the focus is not on the words, it's on the music, mood, and even the newfound neo-hippie political consciousness. And Check Your Head is certainly a record that's greater than the sum of its parts -- individually, nearly all the tracks are good (the instrumentals sound good on their subsequent soul-jazz collection, The in Sound From Way Out), but it's the context and variety of styles that give Check Your Head its identity. It's how the old school raps give way to fuzz-toned rockers, furious punk, and cheerfully gritty, jazzy jams. As much as Paul's Boutique, this is a whirlwind tour through the Beasties' pop-culture obsessions, but instead of spinning into Technicolor fantasies, it's earth-bound D.I.Y. that makes it all seem equally accessible -- which is a big reason why it turned out to be an alt-rock touchstone of the '90s, something that both set trends and predicted them”.

I will finish off with a review from The A.V. Club. Even if Check Your Head is quite accessible and has been part of the landscape for almost thirty years, it is an album that is quite unconventional and odd:

“Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head has been a dorm-room staple and cultural touchstone for so long that it can be easy to overlook how staggeringly odd it actually is. It was just as radical a reinvention as its predecessor, Paul’s Boutique, but listeners by then were expecting the Boys to take big chances. They embraced the group’s strangely organic evolution into adventurous sonic astronauts who segued effortlessly from punk (“Time For Livin’”) to Meters-style funk to trippy psychedelia to ominous metal-infused rap-rock (the monster single “So What’cha Want”).

Head was a homecoming on multiple fronts, as the group headed back to New York after a fertile sojourn on the West Coast, and simultaneously returned to using guitars, drums, bass, and Money Mark’s powerhouse organ to recreate the sounds in their heads and record collections. With Head, the Beastie Boys treated the studio as their favorite instrument. They went a little crazy with the studio motherfuckery, though given the optimism and infectious good humor that pervades the album, it’s altogether likely that they piled on the distortion to avoid losing hip-hop credibility and revealing what nice, responsible young men they’d become. The remastered two-disc Head reissue includes a bonus disc of goofy outtakes and B-sides, though for every essential track like the Soul Assassin remix of “So What’cha Want,” there are a few ragingly inessential novelty numbers like “Boomin’ Granny,” “Honky Rink,” and an endless live jam with Biz Markie. The second disc compiles a lot of the silliness the Boys apparently had to get out of their system before they could release an album this (relatively) mature”.

On 21st April, we get to mark thirty years of the immense Check Your Head. Ingenious and overflowing with fruitful and hugely impactful ideas, I wonder whether some of those who put the album down slightly in 1992 will reassess in 2022. I do feel Check Your Head is an album that houses so many tracks the Beastie Boys’ best moments. Check Your Head contains a track called Pass the Mic. With their 1992 missile, Beastie Boys confidently…

DROPPED the mic!

FEATURE: Homesick: Remembering Deacon Blue’s Graeme Kelling at Sixty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Homesick

IN THIS PHOTO: Deacon Blue’s Graeme Kelling in Glasgow in 1999 

Remembering Deacon Blue’s Graeme Kelling at Sixty-Five

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ON 10th June, 2004…

IN THIS PHOTO: Deacon Blue (Dougie Vipond, Ricky Ross, Lorraine McIntosh and Graeme Kelling) on Bells Bridge, Glasgow, reforming for BBC Music Week and charity gig in 1999

the world lost Deacon Blue’s Graeme Kelling. The Scottish band’s original guitarist, he was integral when it came to their success and sound. Written by Paul English and containing photos and interviews with the band and memories from fans, the 2021 book, To Be Here Someday, has an affectionate tribute/chapter to Kelling. The band and fans talk about him and what made him so warm, popular and special (I will end with a few quotes). Much-missed, I wanted to spend a bit of time discussing Graeme Kelling. 2001’s Homesick - recorded in 2000 - was the final album to feature him (he was battling cancer but didn’t feature on the bulk of it). I want to end with a playlist of some of my favourite Deacon Blue songs. Ones that showcase Graeme Kelling’s guitar work and, as I said, prove how essential he was to Deacon Blue and their brilliance. The Independent wrote about Kelling in June 2004:

“As guitarist and founding member of Deacon Blue, Graeme Kelling helped the Scottish band establish themselves in the British album charts at the tail-end of the Eighties and well into the Nineties. In April 1989, the six-piece group topped the listings with their second album, When the World Knows Your Name, while the following year their Four Bacharach and David Songs EP reached No 2 in the singles chart when the lead track, a cover of "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" - originally recorded by Dionne Warwick - received an incredible amount of airplay.

Graeme Kelling, guitarist and songwriter: born Paisley, Renfrewshire 4 April 1957; married (one son, one daughter); died Glasgow 10 June 2004.

As guitarist and founding member of Deacon Blue, Graeme Kelling helped the Scottish band establish themselves in the British album charts at the tail-end of the Eighties and well into the Nineties. In April 1989, the six-piece group topped the listings with their second album, When the World Knows Your Name, while the following year their Four Bacharach and David Songs EP reached No 2 in the singles chart when the lead track, a cover of "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" - originally recorded by Dionne Warwick - received an incredible amount of airplay.

Despite considerable investment from Sony Records, Deacon Blue never repeated their UK success overseas and broke up in April 1994 after releasing two Top Five albums, Fellow Hoodlums (1991) and Whatever You Say, Say Nothing (1993), and the No 1 collection Our Town: the greatest hits of Deacon Blue”.

Born in Paisley in 1957, Kelling was raised according to the beliefs of the Brethren sect but turned away from their strict teachings in his teens. In 1984, he joined Dr Love, the Glasgow band led by the singer and songwriter Ricky Ross, who had secured a publishing deal with ATV Music on the proviso he formed a group to perform his compositions.

For a while, the six-piece could do no wrong. In 1991, they masterminded The Tree and the Bird and the Fish and the Bell, a charity album featuring the likes of their fellow Scots Hue & Cry, Texas, Lloyd Cole and Eddi Reader. Deacon Blue also appeared in a William McIlvanney BBC TV play, Dreaming (1990), and, following the release of their third album, Fellow Hoodlums, toured Europe and ended the year with a triumphant gig at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall broadcast on Radio 1 on New Year's Eve 1991.

The swirling single "Your Town" produced by the Perfecto dance team of Steve Osborne and Paul Oakenfold signalled a change of direction for the 1993 album Whatever You Say, Say Nothing but, despite a big international push, its success remained confined to the British Isles and Deacon Blue split the following year. Graeme Kelling subsequently ran his own recording studio and wrote soundtrack and incidental music for film and television.

In May 1999, he rejoined the original line-up of the group, ostensibly for an event benefiting the Braendam Family House at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow which sold out in 90 minutes flat. Renewed interest led to Deacon Blue's touring and recording again”.

Deacon Blue are touring this year. I hope to go and see them soon enough. I know that the band (Ricky Ross, James Prime, Lorraine McIntosh and Dougie Vipond (together with Gregor Philp and Lewis Gordon) miss Graeme Kelling very much!

I was eager to find an interview with Graeme Kelling. In 1999 (that year, Deacon Blue brought out Walking Back Home: their first album together since they disbanded in 1994). Guitarist spoke with Kelling before the release of a much-anticipated L.P. (that contained some older tracks together with some new compositions). It is archived on the Glasgow Skyline website, and it was conducted by Paul English:

“He may have co-written some of the songs that helped make Deacon Blue a household name in the 80s and 90s, but Graeme Kelling couldn't have penned a spookier script for the moment his son, Alexander Joseph, popped into the world.

"My wife was just reaching the final stages of delivery," says Kelling, picking up the story. " For some reason or other they had the radio on in the corner, and just as things were nearing their conclusion, Real Gone Kid came on. It was utterly unbelievable. My wife was lying there screaming - 'Get that thing off'. It has to be one of the most uncanny things that has ever happened to me."

After the band unplugged for the last time in summer 1994, its driving force, Ricky Ross, went solo, Lorraine McIntosh took a part in the films My Name Is Joe and Psychos, and formed a new band called Cub, while drummer Dougie Vipond became a TV presenter and occasionally plays for The Swiss Family Orbison.

Guitarist was lucky enough to meet their ex-guitar weilder and proud father, Graeme Kelling...

There must have been a few times at the height of the band's success when you had those 'I really can't believe this is happening to me' vibes.

Totally. My full time occupation when I was with the band, was making nonsense of it, because it's a totally unreal situation to be in. I spent eight years living out a fantasy, selling millions of records and touring the world with six other people. I played along with legends like Chris Rea (on 'Raintown') and Little Richard at a tribute to Woody Guthrie in the States. But it had its down sides too - we went busking once on Buchanan Street once and only made £4.20!

After Deacon Blue split up, Ricky Ross claimed that the band had run its course. Did you agree?

There was a period after it had been announced when we were on our 'Greatest Hits' tour when some of us said 'Why are we splitting up?' But we felt that we'd achieved all we were going to achieve musically. After a time, you get really familiar with the way that everything's played and you get really used to doing things in a certain way. We worked with Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osbourne on our last album to break that up. But in retrospect we were trying to force ourselves in to another jacket - a terrible looking spangly one - and didn't realise that what we had was actually quite special.

On the last studio album, 'Whatever You Say, Say Nothing', guitars became the major focus. Were you happier to see things going in that direction?

Yeah, I suppose a lot of songs before that were keyboard orientated, but Ricky wrote that album on guitar, and the songs were a lot more direct. Woody Guthrie had Guitar Kills Fashion written on his guitar, and that to me is what guitar playing is all about. I think people have lost a bit of the attitude that guitarists have. They can give you the directness to go straight for the jugular with a song.

What's your favorite Deacon Blue riff?

I love the intro to The Day That Jackie Jumped The Jail which is a bugger to play on my own. There's this bottleneck guitar part and I have to quickly scramble right down to the bottom of the neck. I think it was always crap when we did it live, but Mick does it now. That song also has a bottleneck wolf-whistle and I regret not having done more in the way of musical effects. A lot of what Frank Zappa did musically fitted the lyrical idea perfectly. So many of his tracks are amalgamations of musical ideas fitting lyrical ideas, and that's immensely entertaining”.

On 4th April, it would have been Graeme Kelling’s sixty-fifth birthday. I’d like to think he’d be in the band still, happily and loyally playing the hits! I can imagine that Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh will raise a glass to him. Maybe James Prime and Dougie Vipond will share memories or think of him. I love the albums Deacon Blue released after Kelling died, but I think that their very best and most interesting work was with him in the fold. So connected and cemented into the band, he brought something that no other musician could provide. Many of the songs in the playlist below show the sadly-departed and phenomenal Graeme Kelling at his very best. Ahead of his sixty-fifth birthday, I was thinking about a Deacon Blue song or album that would act as an appropriate title for this piece. Maybe When the World Knows Your Name (the band’s second album), or Your Constant Heart (from When the World Knows Your Name). I thought that Homesick was the right choice. It was the final album to feature Graeme Kelling. Like one pines for home and misses that stability and sanctuary when they are far away, so many people miss Kelling and what he gave to the world.

I want to end by quoting some lines from Paul English’s excellent recent book about Deacon Blue, To Be Here Someday. There is a fantastic chapter and section of the book that pays tribute to Kelling. We get these memories from the band, in addition to amazing words and insights from his wife, Julie. Drummer Dougie Vipond remarks: “Graeme brought such coolness…There were times when he just knew what I was going to do, and he would sit in these wee bits in between. He sat in a song’s groove, he gave us a grooviness that without him wouldn’t have been there. He was an amazing player”. Jim Prime (keyboards and pianos) says: “Graeme brought a dimension of cool to the band. He knew the right things, the right places, the right clothes”. Lorraine McIntosh (their amazing singer and soul of the group) stated: “When we listened to Fellow Hoodlums for #TimsTwitterListeningParty earlier this year (2021), I really appreciated how imaginative his guitar parts on that album were…He always made me laugh, Graeme”. Lead songwriter Ricky Ross had this to say: “We had an understanding of each other’s background, because we’d both been raised in the Brethren. Graeme came out of all that as Mr Rock’n’Roll, but we both knew that world. So he was the guy I wanted to take to the NME interviews, because I thought they would make mincemeat of me. But not Graeme”. There is still a lot of love for Graeme Kelling among the band members, From some bigger guitar parts to some great lines and notes where he was not necessarily at the front, below are some Deacon Blue songs…

IN tribute to the Paisley-born great.

FEATURE: A Long-Overdue Honour… Kate Bush and Her 2013 CBE

FEATURE:

 

 

A Long-Overdue Honour…

PHOTO CREDIT: PA 

Kate Bush and Her 2013 CBE

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I wanted to revisit…

 IN THIS PHOTO: On 30th November, 2014, Kate Bush attends a champagne reception at the 60th London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at the London Palladium/PHOTO CREDIT: David M. Benett/Getty Images

a great moment in 2013 when Kate Bush was awarded a CBE. On 10th April, this was a rare trip to see The Queen. I have written before how Bush has not received a Damehood or any further honours. I feel she is the sort of person who would welcome it. Some refute such honours, mainly because of our current government and their ineptitude. The CBE was a moment when Bush was recognised for her services to music – some thirty-five years after her debut album came out. It would be a year after this when she returned to the stage with her Before the Dawn residency in London. Rhino looked back on a great day for Kate Bush in their 2017 feature:

“Four years ago today, Kate Bush was named a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, which – we think you’ll agree – was a most excellent decision by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Kate Bush has never been what you’d call a social butterfly, so the mere fact that she made a public appearance to receive her CBE from the Queen was impressive in and of itself. In a highly unsurprising move, Bush opted not to speak to journalist in the wake of receiving her CBE, but she was kind enough to release a statement on the matter:

“I feel incredibly thrilled to receive this honour, which I share with my family, friends and fellow musicians and everybody who has been such an important part of it all. Now I’ve got something special to put on top of the Christmas tree”.

I bring up the CBE of 2013, as Kate Bush is nominated for the second year running induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Although she is deserving of a space there, I don’t think it will be her year (this is the third time she would have lost out). Often seen as a queen of music, meeting our actually Queen would have been quite an event for Bush! It was not the first time Kate Bush had met The Queen. In 2005, she seized on the opportunity to ask her for an autograph! Of course, The Queen does not give out autographs – Bush has said in interviews since how she made a tit of herself that day. I love the fact that she got to meet again our monarch – whose platinum jubilee is this year – and receive an honour that was long-overdue. I do wonder she will become a Dame at any point, or whether there are more honours coming her way. In terms of music prizes, it is also the right time for somebody to bestow her a lifetime achievement award or something similar. Given the rising acclaim, influence and fanbase she has, I do feel it is very much deserved! Such a phenomenal artist who is among our most treasured and loved, the day Kate Bush visited The Queen in April 2013 was a…

 PHOTO CREDIT: PA 

DEFINITE career highlight.

FEATURE: Going Out: Supergrass' In It for the Money at Twenty-Five: The Jubilance, Musicianship and Diversity

FEATURE:

 

Going Out

Supergrass' In It for the Money at Twenty-Five: The Jubilance, Musicianship and Diversity

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APRIL is packed with…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images

important album anniversary. Supergrass released their second studio album, In It for the Money, on 21st April. Following the amazing I Should Coco (which contained Alright), I think they strengthened on In It for the Money. This is my favourite album from them. In terms of the confidence, you can feel that they are hitting a real stride. As I do with album anniversary features, I am going to combine some features and reviews. When it arrived in 1997, Britpop was still going, but many of the bands who cemented and defined the movement had moved on. Supergrass were part of Britpop, and I think they retained some of the Britpop sound on In It for the Money. Their second album is broader and grittier than that. Songs like Richard III and Late in the Day are polar opposites. Hollow Little Reign and Sometimes I Make You Sad are brilliant album closers. Great deep cuts that are almost as strong as the singles, we have Sun Hits the Sky, Richard III, Cheapskate and Late in the Day. My favourite song is the incredible Going Out. It is the moment Gaz Coombes, Danny Goffey Mick Quinn and Rob Coombes at their coolest, most swinging and infectious! A lot of bands who put out albums in 1994 and 1995 took a different direction by 1997. The same is true of Supergrass. Maybe darker and edgier in places, those expecting something exactly like I Should Coco were disappointed. Though few were!

This was the band maturing and showing the full extent of their talents. There are a couple of articles that offer interesting perspective on the mighty In It for the Money. Loud and Quiet explored the album on its twentieth anniversary in 2017:

“So when ‘In It For The Money’ arrived twenty years ago today, it was slightly bamboozling: a band known for their lightheartedness had returned with what, from a certain angle, appeared to be a rather serious second album – thoughtful, expansive and gently melancholic, with distinctly fewer barrelling japes. If ‘I Should Coco’ was giddy with youth, ‘In It For The Money’ was the sound of growing pains, and two months after Blur had re-emerged with ‘Beetlebum’, it seemed Supergrass were keen to ensure that Damon Albarn et al didn’t have the monopoly on Britpop bands testing out more mature territory in 1997.

That said, ‘In It For The Money’ doesn’t represent a personality transplant in the vein of ‘Blur’. There are still the blaring horn riffs, sticky key changes and pop-punk passages that made ‘I Should Coco’ so loveable, and thankfully so – after all, one of pop’s most tiresome tropes is a once-playful band suddenly requesting decorum. Alongside that existing template, though, the band added colour, calm and a gentle complexity, but crucially never in a splashy way. Indeed, perhaps the album’s finest characteristic is exactly that modesty: songs like ‘Cheapskate’, ‘Sun Hits The Sky’ and the raucously enduring ‘Richard III’ are marked progressions in Supergrass’ songwriting and playing – there’s an extra chord investigated here, a neat prog-influenced flourish there – but it’s never presented remotely triumphantly. It all makes for a record of progress rather than reboot, which rather magically combines all the fun of their melodic guitar pop with a more composed joy of witnessing a maturation.

And nowhere on ‘In It For The Money’ is that spirit best encapsulated than on the gloriously resigned ‘Late In The Day’. The stripped-back first verse, sly extra half-bar in the bridge, the back-to-back solos – it all adds up to a sense of expanded imagination, of a gravity without earnestness. And then, as if to remind everyone that despite the solemnity this is still Supergrass, the attendant video – initially a piss-take of Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’ promo that descends into footage of the band larking about on pogo sticks – dodges any accusations of pomposity quite gleefully.

Nonetheless, it’s clear from ‘In It For The Money’ that three years being thumbs-up cheeky-chappy Supergrass was taking its toll, and lyrically, escape was on the brain: “Here I see a time to go and leave it all behind,” runs the album’s opening overture. The very next song sees Gaz Coombes yelling to himself, “I know you wanna try and get away, but it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever know”, and ‘It’s Not Me’ confesses that, “as everyone listened my head turned away”.

Even if there was not an instant anthem like Alright on In It for the Money, there is greater musicality and depth. A more adventurous album, In It for the Money is a defining moment from the Oxford band. Guitar.com revisited Supergrass’ second album in 2020:

“Yet the big shift between In It For The Money and its predecessor lies in how much the band upped the ante in terms of production and musicianship in the few years between writing the songs. While the second record lacks a timeless pop single like Alright in among its 12 tracks, what it offers instead feels like witnessing The Beatles’ musical transformation on fast-forward.

Going Out, the first single, was released almost a year before the album, in February 1996. Opening with a catchy 60s fairground-organ riff, it was a genie let out of the bottle: a great Townshend-esque guitar riff driven by Goffey’s pugilistic drums, its brief respite of a horn and piano section, its jam-session climax fading gradually into extended tremolo and ending with a guitar jack being pulled out, here was a taster of the experimentation to come.

They’re in it for the music…

The rest of the album, recorded in the sequestered setting of Cornwall’s riverside Sawmill Studios with engineer John Cornfield, continues the hyperactive burst of creativity and energy hinted at by that amazing single. With swerves at every turn, it weaves in a record collection’s worth of references and telling touches that disappear in a flash.

PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Natkin/Getty Images 

The title track sets the tone with a series of builds and releases that pack in menacing Happiness Is A Warm Gun-esque descending arpeggios, retro vocal harmonies, brass lines and a wall of OTT distortion and organ sound, topped off with an abrupt shrug of an ending. Next up is the rampaging Stooges stomp of Richard III, as magnificently manic as anything on I Should Coco but with just enough melody in the basslines to sweeten the dissonance in the furious guitar parts, which flit from octaves to wah lead lines to soothing hammered-on sus4 chords in the blink of an eye. There’s also a Theremin solo that you didn’t know you needed.

The rocky shuffle of Tonight flits expertly between distorted wall-of-sound rock guitar and brass flourishes, before the album’s musical high point, the majestic Late In The Day, takes the spotlight. The fade-in of a late-night Neil Young-flavoured strummed acoustic intro with major seventh chords smoothly gear-shifts into a harmony-laden 60s-pop jaunt worthy of the Kinks, before the middle section’s Moog solo foreshadows a mighty guitar solo with expressive unison bends – it’s pure melody, through a distorted lens.

Elsewhere, G-Song offers a downtempo, Blur-like psychedelic foray with a bombastic guitar solo tricked up with feedback, whammy bar, sustaining notes, harmony guitar, unison bends and tongue-in-cheek attitude. Sun Hits The Sky condenses around seven songs into its five minutes, happily smashing together ominous indie-rock chords and AC/DC-esque breakdowns with a wacky prog-rock-parody keyboard solo and a bongo outro.

Sonic juxtapositions like these make perfect sense on In It For The Money. It’s Not Me punctuates tender acoustic guitars with filtered synth bass and Cheapskate melds funk with backwards-reverb vocals and busy Paperback Writer-esque riffs, but the underlying sense of humour means none of it seems jarring or try-hard”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Rasic/Getty Images

It is worth collating a coupe of reviews for the supreme In It for the Money. AllMusic highlighted the textured nature of an album that nods back to their debut at various moments:

“Supergrass' debut album, I Should Coco, rushed by at such a blinding speed that some listeners didn't notice the melodic complexity of its best songs. On their second album, the cleverly titled In It for the Money, the band brings the songs to the forefront, slowing the tempos considerably and constructing a varied, textured record that makes their ambition and skill abundantly clear. From the droning mantra of the opening title track, it's apparent that the band has delved deeply into psychedelia; hints of Magical Mystery Tour are evident throughout the album, from swirling organs and gurgling wah-wahs to punchy horn charts and human beatboxes. Supergrass substitute such sonic details for I Should Coco's punky rush, and while that means the band only occasionally touches upon the breakneck pace of their debut (the hard-driving "Richard III"), it also deepens their joyful exuberance with subtle songs and remarkably accomplished musicianship. There might not be a "Caught by the Fuzz" or "Alright" on In It for the Money, but that's not a problem, since the bright explosion of "Sun Hits the Sky" and the nervy "Tonight" are just as energetic, and the album features introspective numbers like the gorgeous "Late in the Day" and "It's Not Me" that give it substantial weight. Even with all this musical maturity, Supergrass haven't sacrificed their good-natured humor, as proven by the detailed production and the bizarre closer, "Sometimes I Make You Sad." Sometimes, maturity turns out to be everything it's supposed to be”.

Finally, I want to quote from Pitchfork’s review of Supergrass’ In It for the Money. They reviewed the Remastered Expanded Edition last year. Despite some minor reservations, they do praise and admire the studio-born songs and the sense of confidence the band had when making their 1997 classic:

“Indulgence can be its own reward. Take In It for the Money, the wild, careening sophomore set from Supergrass. Flush with success and fresh out of adolescence, the Britpop trio embraced all the new adventures heading their way, a journey that steadily pulled them away from the frenzied pleasures of their 1995 debut I Should Coco. Where their peers sang of common people and wonderwalls, Supergrass concerned themselves with teenage thrills: buzzing on speed, getting busted by cops, telling dirty jokes, and hanging out with friends. At the center of the album was the smash hit “Alright,” an incandescent pop song about being young, dumb, and free. Other bands might have chased the charts by attempting to re-create the spirit of “Alright.” Supergrass instead chose to see how fast and far they could run.

In It for the Money isn’t so much a departure from I Should Coco as a progression. Often, it feels as if Supergrass are attempting to offer a crash course in the history of British rock, cramming in elements borrowed from the swinging 1960s and 1970s classic rock, then filtering these well-known sounds through the irreverence of punk. They still sound vigorous—witness the rampaging single “Richard III”—but they lack the exuberance that fueled their first album. The shift was necessary for their long-term survival. “Alright” threatened to pigeonhole Supergrass as loveable teenage imps, a role they played to the hilt in the song’s supremely silly video. (They played their part so well that Steven Spielberg believed Supergrass would be ideal candidates for a gen-X spin on the Monkees.)

Supergrass turned down Spielberg, choosing instead to do the things normal rock’n’roll bands do: play an enormous amount of shows before hunkering down in the studio to make another record. It helped that Supergrass had arrived just as the Britpop wave crested, its rising tide not only lifting the shaggy group into the Top Ten but putting them squarely within a happening scene. They shared space on charts and festival bills with the amiably straightforward likes of Cast, Sleeper, the Bluetones, and Ash, yet they were qualitatively different, possessing punk-pop smarts to rival Elastica, a brawnier musicality than Oasis, and a self-evident sense of humor.

All of this comes to a head on In It for the Money, an album where the riffs and jokes are wrapped in woolly psychedelia, blaring horns, and splashes of sweet melancholy. Where I Should Coco blew by at a breakneck pace, In It for the Money unfolds with a deliberate sense of drama, slowly coming into focus with the menacing swirl of the title track and proceeding to ebb and flow across its 12 songs. The record feels so unified that it’s remarkable to realize they entered the studio in 1996 with only two completed songs in tow, forcing them to write the bulk of the album during the recording sessions. Along for the ride was Rob Coombes, a keyboardist who was the brother of Supergrass frontman Gaz. He’d been on the band’s periphery for a while, hammering out the piano to “Alright” and playing woozy organ on “Going Out,” the stopgap 1996 single Supergrass released between their first and second albums, but he’s an integral part of In It for the Money, earning writing credits on all 12 songs and adding distinctive color throughout. (Rob Coombes would officially become a member of Supergrass in 2002.)

Listen closely—or spend some time with the clutch of monitor mixes and rough versions that fill the second disc of the new 3xCD deluxe reissue of the 1997 album—and it’s apparent that Supergrass did indeed write In It for the Money in the studio. Many of the songs are rooted in vamps that blossom into full songs: The slinky funk that propels the verses of “Cheapskate,” the circular stomp on “G-Song,” the lazy, shambling gait of “Hollow Little Reign” all bear telltale signs of compositions that began as group jams. None of these songs sound tossed off, though, littered as they are with overdubs, backwards guitars, and sound effects. Supergrass couldn’t resist any bit of studio trickery when they were making In It for the Money, yet they retained their sense of concise craft. The record feels vibrant, not overstuffed.

The triple-disc reissue of In It for the Money can dampen some of the album’s energy. Some fine B-sides, such as the tuneful neo-music-hall ramble “Melanie Davis,” are buried among the alternate mixes and working versions on the second disc, a collection of ephemera that plays better as individual tracks than as an album. The disc of live recordings is another story. Anchored by a full show from January 1998, a concert given nearly a year after the release of In It for the Money, the live disc shows Supergrass at full roar, turning these studio creations into breakneck rockers.

The title of In It for the Money is a nod toward Frank Zappa’s anti-hippie classic We’re Only In It for the Money. Supergrass may not sound anything like the Mothers of Invention, but their choice reflects the extent to which they were steeped in rock history. Supergrass never attempted to be innovators. They were magpies who busied themselves with figuring out how to assemble pieces of glam, psychedelia, punk, and pop in fresh, surprising ways. They would continue to hone their craft, making sleeker albums than In It for the Money, yet the group’s enthusiasm and imagination are at a peak here. They sound delighted to discover their full potential, and that giddiness remains infectious decades later”.

On 21st April, so many people will mark and celebrate a remarkable album. It came out when I was thirteen, and I was instantly and affectionately struck by the album. I followed Supergrass since then and still love them to this day! Whilst they released other incredible albums, I feel their finest moment is In It for the Money. It came out almost twenty-five years ago, but it still has the ability to surprise and offer up its multiple rewards. From its big hits to those deeper cuts, In It for the Money is…

IN a league of its own.

FEATURE: Mighty Fame Throwa: Saluting Pavement’s Debut Masterpiece: The Timeless Slanted and Enchanted at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Mighty Fame Throwa

Saluting Pavement’s Debut Masterpiece: The Timeless Slanted and Enchanted at Thirty

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THROUGHOUT April…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Gail Butensky

some enduring and wonderful albums are celebrating big birthdays. One of them is Pavement’s genius debut album, Slanted and Enchanted. Released on 20th April, 1992, it is often ranked as one of the must-hear and greatest albums ever. Led by the incredible Stephen Malkmus, Pavement followed their acclaimed debut with the equally-brilliant 1994 album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The California band released a masterpiece in 1992. Prior to its thirtieth anniversary, go and get the album on vinyl. Like I do with album anniversaries and stuff like this, I will highlight a couple of features about the album, ending with some reviews. One of the defining albums of the 1990s, Slanted and Enchanted is still played widely today. In a feature from last year, Guitar.com reviewed the album and discussed the background of Slanted and Enchanted. They also revealed how Pavement formed:

“Pop music catches on like a meme. It just takes a little bit of tinder, and it can become a phenomenon.” Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus astutely reflected in 2018. In the same interview (with Esquire) the then 52-year-old indie-rock godfather revealed that he was always keeping an ear to the ground, dissecting the modern pop charts mathematically to try to unpick its ever-changing, winning formula.

Little wonder that Malkmus is keen to decode the mechanics of success, his band’s unanticipated rise to the pinnacle of indie rock primacy some 27 years before wasn’t achieved via heavy major label promotion or deft chart-chasing, but by a conscious upturning of listener expectations. His breezy attitude to the recording process – and life in general – became central to Pavement’s slacker-rock appeal.

In 1991, the 24-year-old Malkmus was nervously putting the finishing touches to his band’s debut full-length album. Capturing the ramshackle sound of three young men pushing at the limits of listener tolerance, Slanted and Enchanted’s 14 tracks might have been intended as a wry 90s update of Stephen’s post-punk influences (The Fall and My Bloody Valentine in particular), but, through a combination of unkempt, dissonant chord structures, tangled, grubby riffs, tuneful, vibrant melodies and coolly delivered (but earnestly intelligent) lyrics, Slanted and Enchanted was a felicitous moment-seizer. And one which prescribed the DIY ethos of independent music for decades to come.

Maybe maybe

Formed by high school friends Malkmus and Scott Kannberg (aka Spiral Stairs) in Stockton, California, the pair’s initial ideas (aside from having fun playing local open-mic nights) was that they would experiment with freeform musical expression, and write material that evaded the howling anguish of the then on-the-rise grunge scene, or the pomposity of stadium rock. Malkmus and Kannberg were middle-class, suburban kids – and that’s what they wanted their own music to reflect. “Whatever soul you have being a suburban kid like us, what can you do that’s right that way?” Malkmus explained to MOJO in 1999, “Because we’re not Black Sabbath, we’re not working-class heroes and we can’t get away with that. Luckily we’re not hanging out at Met Bar, either, we’re not New York City hipsters or anything, so that’s our earthiness.”

Freeing themselves from the pressure of trying to be something they weren’t, the duo’s early sound fizzed with raw elements that would soon come to enthral the local indie scene. Early tracks such as the spritely jog of the heartbroken Box Elder or the ominous, angular spikiness of She Believes revealed Malkmus and Kannberg’s predilection for using their guitars as a diverse musical paintbrush. Complementing, and competing, with each other.

These songs, along with three others, were recorded at future drummer Gary Young’s ‘Louder Than You Think’ home studio in one four-hour session. The resulting first EP, Slay Tracks: 1933-1969, pulsed with Malkmus and Kannberg’s noise guitar, purposefully captured in tinny, near-transistor-radio quality (this was stressed by the wash of radio noise on EP opener You’re Killing Me. Pavement’s homespun production aesthetic was born. “When I first heard them, I did not understand it.” Young reflected in an interview with Vice in 2015, “I’d tell my friends in New York I just made this weird record and I don’t really know how to describe it.”

This gloriously sloppy debut EP was a riveting listen, organically shifting between furious squalls of guitar, and shaky arrangements that were barely able to stand, before decaying into abstract expressions of fury. Occasionally bolstered by an eccentric (and often improvised) rhythms – a result of Young’s spontaneous decision to leap behind the drumkit during the sessions. Another crucial ingredient in the developing stew, was Malkmus’s vocal delivery, which veered from a sardonic, idle cool, to a hormonal wail across the EPs run time.

Just 1,000 copies of Slay Tracks… were pressed, and released to surrounding independent stores by Kannberg’s self-run label Treble Kicker. This very first Pavement release was soon recognised as a word-of-mouth, underground gem by indie rock scribes and attentive devotees of their local Stockton scene. It was enough to pique the interest of Chicago-based Dan Koretzky, who was in the process of founding his own label Drag City. Recognising Pavement’s potential, he promptly signed the outfit, and two further EPs quickly followed.

Across Demolition Pilot J7 and Perfect Sound Forever Malkmus and Kannberg were given space to develop their sonic universe. At this point, Gary Young joined the Pavement ship full-time – squaring off competition from their then live drummer Jason Turner”.

The Quietus also shone a light on the brilliant Slanted and Enchanted in their feature from 2012. Reviewed in the month of its twentieth anniversary, the debut album from Pavement still sounds utterly stunning and fresh:

“On first listening to the album you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a demo, home-recorded on Portastudio using cheap cassette tape. And it would be an assumption not a million miles wide of the truth. The album was actually recorded at the home-studio of ex-hippy and Pavement drummer Gary Young and done so with little equipment or experience and on a very tight budget.

Though this might not sound particularly appealing at first, specifically to the auto-tuned ears of some readers, this is one of those many aspects of Slanted and Enchanted that makes it so magical.

The lo-fi production gives the listener an affinity with the band because knowing that the songs are not indebted to a producer's signature sound or vision, or sullied by over-production provides one with a more precise sense of what it was like recording this album, an impression almost of what it would have felt like to have been there at the time.

Because of this, Pavement's work has most often been likened to that of The Fall - specifically their early releases. Both groups embrace a raw, unpolished sound; one that seems to welcome dissonance and seeks to give the listener immediacy to the recording process.

And this is not just the opinion of music critics. The frontmen of both Pavement and The Fall (Stephen Malkmus and Mark E Smith respectively) have each acknowledged the apparent similarity, the former through his well documented love and indebtedness to the Manc post-punk outfit and the latter through a less flattering description of Pavement as Fall "rip-offs", saying "it's just The Fall in 1985, isn't it? They haven't got an original idea in their heads."

Aside from the shared sound, what also links the two bands is their lyrical content. Like Smith, Malkmus excels at a stream of consciousness lyrical style, one that baffles and entertains in equal measure.

Take the opening to the stand-out track form the album, 'Trigger Cut' where Malkmus sings "Lies and betrayals / Fruit-covered nails / Eeeee-lectricity and Lust". I've listened to this album countless time and still don't really know what that means. And yet, just as Smith's lyrics perfectly complement the chaotic music of The Fall, so too do Malkmus' with Pavement.

But odd lyrics and Fall-inspired musical simplicity can only take you so far. And what makes Slanted and Enchanted a truly great album (rather than just a good one) is the quality of the songs.

'Trigger Cut' remains one of the band's finer moments and arguably one of the most memorable and enduringly appealing indie tracks to emerge from that decade. It possesses everything that's good about Pavement, surreal cut-and-paste lyrics, Malkmus' unusual delivery, stripped-down production and an irresistibly catchy sound.

And it's the last of these that is most important. Without the band's capacity to craft genuinely catchy hooks and melodies, Slanted and Enchanted would have just been artless noise; or Yo La Tengo if you prefer. [Saucer of milk for Mr Keoghan! Ed]

And this ability to create order from the clutter, letting the undeniably wonderful song-writing of the band shine through, is evident on much of the album. Almost as impressive as 'Trigger Cut' are tracks such as 'Zürich is Stained', 'Here', and 'In the Mouth of a Desert'; each one succeeding in walking that fine line between genius and chaos.

But that's not to say that there aren't some dodgy moments. While not necessarily bad, songs such as 'Conduit for Sale!' and 'Chesley's Little Wrists' are significantly weaker than the rest. They probably could have been left off the album because their inclusion needlessly reveals what happens when a desire to create a messy-sound trumps song-writing, illustrating that the band is capable of sometimes getting it wrong.

But then what album, let alone what debut album, is without its faults? And Pavement at their weakest are still a hundred times more interesting than lots of other bands at their best.

I'd advise anyone who's never listened to Slanted and Enchanted to do so as soon as possible and those of you who haven't listened to it for a while to go back and enjoy it in its entirety.

This is music in its natural state, free from the modern belief that the trickery of the studio contains the key to success. It might be unpolished, messy and at times confusing but that's exactly what helps make it so great”.

I am rounding off with a couple of reviews of Pavement’s debut, Slanted and Enchanted. Even if their debut, debatably, was eclipsed by Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Slanted and Enchanted is a timeless introduction that will live and inspire for generations. This is what PopMatters observed in their 2004 review:

“No album title from the ’90s describes its sound so perfectly as this album. As grunge began to become oversaturated in 1992, Slanted & Enchanted offered a lackadaisical, sunny, Northern California alternative to all the heroin-drenched misery of Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots, helping to initiate the “lo-fi” trend of the early ’90s, which would be continued in subsequent years by the likes of Sebadoh, Beck, Guided By Voices, and Liz Phair. Recorded over a couple weeks at Young’s home studio, with Kannberg playing bass lines on a tuned-down guitar through a bass amp, it might seem on the surface an amateurish, cacophonous recording, but amidst the hodgepodge are some superbly constructed, albeit idiosyncratic pop songs. Unlike the often impenetrable, artsy noise rock of Sonic Youth, Slanted & Enchanted is actually fun: it’s noise you can hum along to.

The opening track alone is a knockout. “Summer Babe” starts off innocuously, with distorted, Dinosaur Jr. style guitars and Young’s pounding drumming (punctuated by a little hi-hat flourish after every two bars). Any notion of this being just another indie rock song is thrown out the window when Malkmus delivers his unforgettable first verse: “Ice baby / I saw your girlfriend / She’s eating her fingers like they’re just another meal / She waits there / In the levee wash / Mixing cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar.” This isn’t just pretentious gibberish. A brilliant bit of surrealist poetry that bears a slight similarity to West Coast poets Lew Welch and Bob Kaufman, Malkmus depicts a scene of summertime ennui and longing that sticks in your head immediately. Kannberg’s solos are sloppy, but mellifluous, as the song builds to the climactic chorus of “Every time I sit around I find I’m shocked.” It’s the ultimate slacker love song.

The hooks on the rest of the album are plentiful, as are the oblique lyrics of Malkmus, which are often ridiculously obscure. The fabulous “Trigger Cut” contains whimsical wordplay (“Lies and betrayals / Fruit-covered nails / Eeeee-lectricity and lust”) and a simple, yet contagious melody, complete with a fantastic break of “sha la la” falsetto vocals. The befuddling, Sonic Youth-ish “No Life Has Singed Her” has Malkmus intentionally garbling the words in the chorus (singing “No life for Ginger”), “In the Mouth a Desert” features a great guitar melody that breaks into a gorgeous solo at the end, not to mention a rare impassioned moment from Malkmus (“I’ve been crowned, the king of it / And it is all we have so wait / To hear my words and / They’re diamond sharp”), while “Zurich is Stained” boasts more of a breezy, country feel. “Loretta’s Scars”, the noise-drenched “Perfume-V”, and the exhausted-sounding “Our Singer” (featuring Malkmus’s great vocal delivery in the opening line, “I’ve been waiting / An-tiss-ipating”) sustain the momentum for the rest of the album, but it climaxes on the stunning ballad “Here”. Opening with the classic lines, “I was dressed for success / But success it never comes,” it perfectly encapsulates the plight of directionless, twentysomething Generation X-ers wondering what to do with their lives, but Malkmus then delves into more esoteric poetry, seemingly spewing words that just happen to sound good with the song’s plaintive melody: “And all the sterile striking it / Defends an empty dock you cast away.” It’s a beautiful mess of a song.

Malkmus and Kannberg may have been the driving creative forces behind the band, but Gary Young was their secret weapon. Pounding away relentlessly on the kit like the muppet Animal, Young has two settings: stop, and go. His fluid, often overly powerful drumming sometimes comes close to overwhelming the songs (just listen to those cymbal crashes near the end of “Summer Babe”), but his playful style works perfectly with the other two members, as his distinctive fills help set this album apart anything else you’ll ever hear. Young would go on to record the Watery, Domestic EP in 1992, but by the end of the year, his erratic behavior would force his bandmates to replace him with the more skilled, yet duller Steve West. As a result, the four albums that followed would lack the relaxed, goofy charm of the first record.

In “Conduit for Sale”, a song obviously inspired by his hero Mark E. Smith of the Fall, Malkmus hollers stream of consciousness lines, screaming “I’m trying!” 16 times in a row, and facetiously mispronounces the word “scion”, but in the middle of this mess hides a line that epitomizes what Pavement was all about: “Between here and there is better than either here or there!” On Slanted & Enchanted, Pavement lurked in the fringes, swiping sounds and hooks from myriad styles, doing things their own way; they refused to be categorized, and that quality is what makes the album still sound strong today. The glorious 2002 re-issue Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe, with its wealth of rarities and live performances, hammers home just how great this album was, a perfect introduction for curious younger listeners. Every bit as important and influential as two other albums from the same time period, Nirvana’s Nevermind and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, it’s the definitive sound of ’90s indie rock”.

I might actually wrap it there. Such a remarkable and original album that can be appreciated and loved by anyone who hears it, there will be a lot of celebration for Slanted and Enchanted on 20th April. For further reading, I will direct you to this 2012 feature from The New Yorker. Already cemented their talent and promise on their debut, Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted is…

SUCH a magnificent debut album.

FEATURE: O Superwoman: Laurie Anderson’s Groundbreaking Big Science at Forty

FEATURE:

 

O Superwoman

Laurie Anderson’s Groundbreaking Big Science at Forty

___________

QUITE a few…

IN THIS PHOTO: Laurie Anderson in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Lynn Goldsmith

pioneering and classic albums celebrate big anniversaries in April. On 19th, Laurie Anderson’s Big Science turns forty. Although the album was reissued in 2007, there is a new red vinyl version coming out on 9th April. I would encourage anyone to get the album, as it is a work of art! Coming out on the Nonesuch label, they provide us with some detail about the pioneering Laurie Anderson, and how Big Science came to be:

“In the early 1980s, Laurie Anderson was already respected as a conceptual artist and composer, adept at employing gear both high-tech and homemade in her often violin-based pieces, and she was a familiar figure in the cross-pollinating, Lower Manhattan music-visual art-performance circles from which Philip Glass and David Byrne also emerged. While working on her now-legendary seven-hour performance art/theater piece United States, Part I–IV, she cut the spare "O Superman (For Massenet)," an electronic-age update of 19th century French operatic composer Jules Massenet’s aria "O Souverain," for the tiny New York City indie label 110 Records. In the UK, DJ John Peel picked up a copy of this very limited-edition 33⅓ RPM 7” and spun the eight-minute-plus track on BBC Radio 1. The exposure resulted in an unlikely #2 hit, lots of attention in the press, and a worldwide deal with Warner Bros. Records.

'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.

And when justice is gone, there's always force.

And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!

At the time of its original release, the NME wrote of Big Science, "There’s a dream-like, subconscious quality about her songs which helps them work at deeper, secret levels of the psyche." With instrumentation ranging from tape loops to found sounds to bag pipes, Big Science anticipated the tech-savvy beats, anything-goes instrumentation and sample-based nature of much contemporary electronic and dance music. On the album’s 25th anniversary, Uncut noted, "The broader themes of alienation and disconnection still resonate, while Anderson’s use of loops and traditional/synthesized instrumentation is prescient."

"In the ’70s I traveled a lot," Anderson recounts. "I worked on a tobacco farm in Kentucky, hitchhiked to the North Pole, lived in a yurt in Chiapas, and worked on a media commune. I had my own romantic vision of the road. My plan was to make a portrait of the country. Big Science, the first part of the puzzle, eventually became part two of United States I–IV (Transportation, Politics, Money, Love). My goal was to be not just the narrator but also the outsider, the stranger. Although I was fascinated by the United States, this portrait was also about how the country looked from a distance. I was performing a lot in Europe, where American culture was simultaneously booed and cheered. But the portrait was also a picture of a culture inventing a digital world and learning to live in it. Big Science was about technology, size, industrialization, shifting attitudes toward authority, and individuality. It was sometimes alarmist, picturing the country as a burning building, a plane crash. Alongside the techno was the apocalyptic. The absurd. The everyday. It was also a series of short stories about odd characters—hatcheck clerks and pilots, preachers, drifters and strangers. There was something about Massenet's aria ‘O Souverain’—which inspired ‘O Superman’—that almost stopped my heart. The pauses, the melody. 'O souverain, ô juge, ô père' (O Lord, o judge, o father). A prayer about empire, ambition, and loss”.

There are a few really interesting articles out there about the tremendous Big Science. An Avant Garde and Art-Pop masterpiece, I wonder whether there were any albums quite like Big Science in 1982. The early-1980s saw a lot of innovation in terms of Electronic music and pushing the boundaries. On its thirty-fifth anniversary in 2017, The Vinyl Factory talked about the context of Big Science and how Laurie Anderson’s debut heralded in a new age for music:

“When she married Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed in one of music’s most sustaining partnerships, they came together as creative equals. On another, more artistic note, current enthusiasm for its 45th anniversary shows that Anderson also picked cannily when she distilled her 4 ½ hours-long orchestral and multimedia performance, The United States of America, into the comparative brevity of Big Science’s eight pungent tracks.

With her postmodern pixie haircut – allegedly first snipped by Winston Tong, the singer of West Coast art-rockers, Tuxedo Moon — Anderson was a fresh paradigm, who programmed to her own drum sample. Perhaps anniversaries act as too easy an anchor in our chaotic culture, but Big Science deserves its re-assessment. It seems now to have a quality of eerie prophecy.

The album’s anniversary is being celebrated as a birth of synthesized art-rock – pace Brian Eno — but let’s also dig Big Science as the harbinger of intersectionality that it is, sizzling somewhere between music and drama, social observation, politics, history, projection and humour; and with its sound just as unexpected, melodies, more abstract soundscapes, and for at least some among us, the pleasing and unexpected skirl of the bagpipes on the very funny ‘Sweaters.’

On the track ‘Big Science’ itself, her gentle vocal persuasion counterpoints a dirge of a drone, that could recall the harmonium and voice of Nico, Reed’s early bandmate/muse – except that Anderson’s tough fragility is tones apart from Nico’s deadpan, near-dead affectlessness.

Something about the brutish optimism of the early 1980s prompted the frequent use of the word “Big” (Disclosure, I co-created a TV music show back then called Big World Café and noticed we were part of a “Big” Moment before we said Moment, including this LP and the Tom Hanks flick.) The title’s nod to Science acknowledges the dream of technology as hope – and its limits.

There’s a suggestion of the era’s hysterical expansiveness in Anderson’s butterfly-wing-subtle deliveries, fluttering fast through meta levels of wry wit and seismic sighs at the human condition. Above all, right now, it is the chilling suggestion of creeping authoritarianism that makes Big Science feel so scary timely. Modestly lilting, the folksy intimacy with her characters makes her odd rigor all the more powerful. Take the airline pilot of opening track, ‘From The Air,’ professionally, detachedly and yes, robotically, steering the passengers through the imminent Big Crash. Is this the inner voice of the guardians of nuclear buttons in today’s Lukewarm War?

Beyond the famous early-girl-with-synthesiser aspect, perhaps the biggest surprise is how the emerging trends of the time, which proved durable, are so clearly limned: the neo-African kalimba-like sound, and above all the experimental fireworks of free jazz, sparkling off in several directions.

The entire exercise is steeped profoundly in the harmolodic concept of Ornette Coleman, a figure who also loomed large in her marriage; L&L, as Lou’n’Laurie called themselves, were regulars at Ornette soirees and events; he represented one of the few key constants and touchstones in their select pantheon. The biting spoken verse of the young Coleman’s wife, firebrand activist poet Jayne Cortez, also seems to resonate deep inside Anderson’s polished rage.

They called it art-rock but it is simply, timelessly, avant-garde.

The ultimate triumph of Big Science, and the key to Anderson’s longevity, resides beyond her mind and music’s admirable keen-ness, giddy hilarity and somber empathy. It is that growling animal thing, the wolf howling within the minimalism, rendering the supposedly cold synthesizer into an all too human instrument”.

I want to end with a couple of reviews. Even today, Big Science sounds so futuristic and unmatched. Whilst many artists have been influenced by the album, I don’t think anybody has managed to synthesise the same sound and visions as Laurie Anderson. It is a staggering work! This is what Pitchfork wrote about Big Science in 2007:

“Big Science comprises songs from Anderson's also quite prescient United States project, a multimedia performance art piece cum opera ("It seemed like everyone I knew was working on an opera," she recalls) that depicted America on the brink of digital revolution and capitalist nirvana, where the dollar trumped tradition and the apocalypse-- cultural, political, technological-- loomed large. In fact, given its themes and presentation, much of Big Science sounds every bit about "the present" as "O Superman" does, and its idiosyncratic execution (with stylistic nods to the minimalists and pal William S. Burroughs) has helped the disc weather the passage of time remarkably well. It's less a document of the early 1980s than it is a dark glimpse of the future recorded at the dawn of the Reagan era.

Anderson's ingenious move, musically, was utilizing the vocoder not as a trick but as a melodic tool. It's the first thing you hear on Big Science, looped in "From the Air" like some bizarre man-machine synth. The rest of the track revolves around a circular pattern of blurted sax figures and hypnotic drums. There's virtually nothing about it that screams its age as Anderson intones a wry announcement from a (caveman) pilot of a plummeting flight. "There is no pilot," she speaks. "You are not alone. Standby. This is the time. And this is the record of the time." It's a metaphor for every frightening thing about 20th (and now 21st century) living you can think of, and in its spare way it's enough to scare you silly.

The gloomy ghost town future-music of the title track sounds like the rueful ruminations of someone who sees the end of the world on the horizon and can't help but to chuckle a little at their impending doom. The austere soundscapes of "Walking & Falling" and "Born, Never Asked" convey a similar chilliness laced with a despair at once aloof and oddly wistful. "Example #22" is like a Can/Yoko/Eno chop-shop, its funky wordless denouement part chant, part celebration of the absurd.

In fact, one of the elements that makes Big Science so special is Anderson's sense of humor. In "Let X=X", Anderson offers, with a wink, "I can see the future, and it's a place-- about 70 miles east of here." It's a perverse punchline to some cosmic joke, and the human element back and forth of "It Tango" does little to dissipate the feeling that on Big Science it's the machines that are getting the last laugh at the expense of their masters. The future was yesterday. The future is now. Welcome to the future”.

I will finish with another review. AllMusic showed their admiration and respect for an album that was unlike anything at the time. Big Science was definitely not a commercial compromise or sell-out on behalf of Laurie Anderson:

“There was a backlash against Laurie Anderson in "serious" musical and artistic circles after the completely unexpected mainstream commercial success of her debut album, Big Science. (The eight-plus-minute single "O Superman" was a chart hit in England, unbelievably enough.) A fair listen to Big Science leaves the impression that jealousy must have been at the root of the reception because Big Science is in no way a commercial sellout. A thoughtful and often hilariously funny collection of songs from Anderson's work in progress, United States I-IV, Big Science works both as a preview of the larger work and on its own merits. Opening with the hypnotic art rock of "From the Air," in which an airline pilot casually mentions that he's a caveman to a cyclical melody played in unison by a three-part reeds section, and the strangely beautiful title track, which must feature the most deadpan yodeling ever, the album dispenses witty one-liners, perceptive social commentary (the subtext of the album concerns Anderson's own suburban upbringing, which she views with more of a bemused fondness than the tiresome irony that many brought to the subject), and a surprisingly impressive sense of melody for someone who was until recently a strictly visual artist. For example, the marimba and handclap-led closer, "It Tango," is downright pretty in the way the minimalistic tune interacts with Anderson's voice, which is softer and more intimate (almost sexy, in a downtown-cool sort of way) than on the rest of the album. Not everything works -- "Walking and Falling" is negligible, and the way Rufus Harley's bagpipes intentionally clash with Anderson's harsh, nasal singing and mannered phrasing in "Sweaters" will annoy those listeners who can't take either Yoko Ono or Meredith Monk -- but Big Science is a landmark release in the New York art scene of the '80s, and quite possibly the best art rock album of the decade”.

On 19th April, Big Science turns forty. Still astonishing and unique, I think people will discover Laurie Anderson’s debut fresh. It will be quite a realisation and revelation! An album that is still creating tremors, Big Science is one of the all-time great L.P.s. If you have never heard it before, then do yourself a favour and experience…

A marvellous and groundbreaking album.

FEATURE: Paul McCartney at Eighty: Twenty: The Playful, Child-Like and Whimsical Sides to the Songwriter

FEATURE:

 

 

Paul McCartney at Eighty

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney and his daughter Stella

Twenty: The Playful, Child-Like and Whimsical Sides to the Songwriter

___________

WHEN researching for features…

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney and his daughter Mary in Scotland in 1970/PHOTO CREDIT: Linda McCartney

to mark Paul McCartney’s eightieth birthday in June, I have been discovering new things about him. I have always known it, but I love the fact that he can write these deep and haunting songs like Eleanor Rigby (from The Beatles’ 1966 album, Revolver), alongside the more upbeat and fun. Since the early days of The Beatles, McCartney has always had this whimsical and child-like side. Maybe it was more from McCartney than anyone else in the band. Sometimes John Lennon was less keen on McCartney’s more child-like side. The band were hammered and drilled when it came to recording Abbey Road’s Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. A daft song, its lyrics are pretty dark. That said, it has a sense of fun and the silly. I think some of The Beatles’ best moments came when McCartney was writing these more playful tunes. It didn’t really start to happen until the band became more experimental. Written with John Lennon, Yellow Submarine was an early sign of the more child-like view of Macca. Sung by Ringo Starr, it is a song not intended for the band’s female audience or related to the band’s romantic lives. It is a step into something more fantastical. This continued on Good Day Sunshine (on Revolver). Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) has When I’m Sixty Four. Written years earlier, this is a very young McCartney writing a song about being old. As I look to his upcoming eightieth birthday, I wonder what he thinks of the tracks today!

Although these types of songs did not connect with critics as much as some of hid classics, I find McCartney to be at his most charming and delightful when, for instance, he is discussing northern characters growing old. Although the lyrics are not child-like, the sentiment and mood of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da is! Again, not a great favourite among the other Beatles or critics as such, it is a supreme Pop writer branching out and diversifying. I think one of the reasons why I fell for The Beatles as a child is because I could relate to songs like Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. I will end by discussing McCartney’s 2019 children’s book, Hey Grandude! Maybe his perspective is different now when he is writing for children or has that child-like view – as a grandfather and older man -, but I feel  there was this desire, maybe, for McCartney to return to childhood when writing some of these Beatles songs. Becoming famous and things being quite different and busier, maybe there was this escape and need to embrace something simpler and easier, songs such as All Together Now (from 1969’s Yellow Submarine soundtrack) is joyous! Even if these more whimsical and lighter songs do have elements of the sexual and saucy, there is a playful nature that has connected with children and adults alike. Being in a huge band like The Beatles and writing songs that weren’t necessarily targeted at the core audience or were instantly commercial, that was quite brave! For his cynicism, Lennon was definitely inspired by McCartney’s child side. Think about Hey Bulldog from Yellow Submarine or The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill from The Beatles. This was a man who, in spite of a harder edge, took something from McCartney that was more childish and sillier!

Thinking about McCartney’s solo output, right from his debut, McCartney, there was signs of this more childlike side. Teddy Boy is a song that springs to mind. 1982’s Tug of War contains Dress Me Up as a Robber, whereas we have songs such as Fine Line and English Tea (from 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard) that are lighter, have whimsy and project something almost child-like. There is definite eccentricity and silliness on English Tea. Quaint almost! I love the tone and sound of Mr. Bellamy from Memory Almost Full and Back in Brazil from Egypt Station! For Wings, he wrote songs like Bip Bop (from 1971’s Wildlife). 1974’s Band on the Run has Jet. I almost see that as a chant that children can sing to. It is definitely on the more playful side of things. Think about McCartney II from 1980 and pieces like Check My Machine are the sound of a man experimenting with sounds and accents to create something that was entertaining to him. A songwriter who could project silliness, lightness or something that didn’t have to be serious or predictable! From his teens right through to now, Paul McCartney has kept this child-like innocence at heart. He is an artist whose material is as broad as anyone who has ever lived. I don’t hold onto this assumption that songs like When I’m Sixty Four or All Together Now are more throwaway and not worth as much as, say, Hey Jude or Yesterday. Indeed, Hey Jude was written for John Lennon’s son, Julian, when Lennon left his wife to be with Yoko Ono. Dealing with that upheaval, McCartney showed paternal instincts and opened one of his most enduring songs. Maybe his more whimsical songs are a way for him to stay young or deal with stressful times. McCartney also wants to connect with a younger audience and not come across as too serious or predictable.

His children’s book, Hey Grandude!, is McCartney continuing to see the world through this prism. Not that the more child-like element of his is dominant in his songwriting - you can feel and hear it on albums he made with The Beatles, Wings and his solo material. He has grandchildren, so it seemed almost inevitable he would write a children’s book. Even though he is approaching eighty, I feel that McCartney will continue to write children’s books and include albums tracks that have that playful side to them. It is one of the best and most interesting aspects of his career. I love When I’m Sixty Four and Yellow Submarine. I think that the brilliance of Paul McCartney is that he can write these heart-wrenching songs that take it out of you. He can also switch the mood and take you to this more escapist world. It is one of many reasons why the world loves him so much! A quality that definitely should not be overlooked or dismissed in any way at all. I think, as McCartney enters his ninth decade of life, he will continue to splice whimsy and the child-like with the serious and personal. It gives his albums that emotional variation that make them so rich. It is what makes the beloved Paul McCartney…

A worldwide treasure!

FEATURE: Spotlight: Beth McCarthy

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Emris Media 

Beth McCarthy

__________

I interviewed…

the magnificent Yorkshire-born artist Beth McCarthy almost four years back now. Now situated in London, I think that it is high time I include her in my Spotlight feature. There is an E.P., coming from her soon. Having followed her music for over four years and loving what she has done since I interviewed her, everyone should follow McCarthy. Before I proceed, I want to bring in a few of the questions I asked her back in 2018:

 “For those new to your music; can you introduce yourself, please?

So. I’m a singer/songwriter from York and I’ve been on ‘the scene’ for around eight years now. People who follow me will know me for a more Country/Folk vibe but I’ve spent the last year working on a totally new Electronic/Pop sound that I’m super excited about.

You are a Yorkshire-based artist. Is it a great county to make music in? How important are the people and the vibe of Yorkshire regards your music?

I am so unbelievably proud to be from Yorkshire. I think we have some absolute gems when it comes to music and everyone just wants to help each other get to where they want to be which is amazing. Yorkshire supports Yorkshire. It’s magic.

Were you raised around a lot of great sounds? What sort of music were you raised on?

I was actually raised on Rock music! AC/DC, Meat Loaf and Deep Purple were all favourites of my dad so, ultimately, became the soundtrack to my childhood. The standout, though, was Queen and they remain one of my favourite bands of all time!

What do you hope to achieve by the end of 2018?

I try not to put time stamps on things as I’ve found it generally leads to disappointment! I’ve been in so many situations where things have been planned or promised and they’ve ended up taking far longer than expected or not happening at all which leaves this massive feeling of defeat.

These days, I just keep going ‘till I get to where I want to be and I don’t really keep track of the time. I know that, if I keep working hard, it’ll happen eventually so I just enjoy the ride!

What advice would you give to new artists coming through?

The best advice I ever got was from a doctor in London who I met during my time on The Voice. He’s a doctor to the stars and said that the three things you need to be successful in this industry are: talent, the skin of a rhinoceros and the ability to cope with extended periods of inactivity. Over the last couple of years, I’ve realised how true that is and it’s kept me going through some of the harder times”.

I want to mention McCarthy’s latest single, Friendship Bracelet, which was released late last year. I am excited to hear the next track from the E.P., No Hard Feelings, which is out on Friday (25th). I will get to an article about that track ion a minute. Prior to that, York Vision spoke with Beth McCarthy last summer. A big hit on TikTok and a rising artist who is among our finest young songwriters, they wanted to know more about her:

“Anyone who has been within 50 yards of TikTok will recognise Beth McCarthy, having seen her sobbing behind her steering wheel to ‘She Gets the Flowers’ – a video with 5.1 million

views.

If you’ve seen the dual TikTok of Will Joseph Cook’s ‘Be Around Me’ and her own ‘Omg Did She Call Him Baby?’, you’ll also remember her distinct, trembling voice. There is something vulnerable and fragile about her music that belies the incredible strength it imbues to her listeners.

McCarthy left many people’s dream job in radio the month that lockdown began, but quickly returned as her pursuit of success in London was “spoiled” by COVID-19. Explained as a role for “if music doesn’t work out”, the radio enables her need for “connection”.

“My main goal has been to write songs that connect with people and that people can relate to and listen to and go, that’s me, that’s my story.”

TikTok provides the perfect opportunity for this, according to McCarthy – particularly during a pandemic where we all have “that kind of want for real moments and genuine emotion.” Three years ago, she tells me, “If I’d have cried in my car and put it online, people would have been like, ‘She’s not okay!’” Now, people need to connect on a “vulnerable and raw and genuine level.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Louie Wittner 

However, McCarthy jokes that TikTok is still not a wholly comfortable platform. She admits to being “a little bit bitter that I spent ten years grafting my arse off to try and make it in music… and then I literally had to cry in a car. And that’s the thing that everybody’s listening to my music because of… I could have just done this the whole time?” This was something that picked up when she went on The Voice UK at 16 – maintaining that she did it to “get the experience”.

“I chatted absolute bollocks for like, a good 20 minutes,” she laughs. “But it worked for me… they were like, ‘Yes, you’re weird, and so are we! We’ll just stick with you!’” This plays out across McCarthy’s music as she rewrites the charts – from Lewis Capaldi to Noah Cyrus. “There are certain songs out there that I hear and I’m like, wow, that’s incredible. But I-I am the person they’re singing about, like, I’m not them.”

The power of this approach is perhaps best led through ‘Self Love Story” – a fundamental reworking of Taylor Swift’s 2009 hit. The famous, perhaps infamous chorus is replaced by: “You don’t need a prince when you’re already a queen / Write your own story / Where, baby, you are the lead.” She compares her role as singer-songwriter to being “the best friend or the big sister.” Her personal ethos is one based around self-appreciation: “I hate this narrative that people have of, like, needing someone else. The minute you start being, like, happy with yourself and comfortable with yourself, is the minute that all that attachment and sadness goes away.”

“I’m trying to take on everyone’s story on my little shoulders. I’m the Oprah of Music.”

Interaction with her audience has remained an integral element of McCarthy’s work – in the music video for ‘She Gets the Flowers’, a sequence of women write and hold up their stories of heartbreak. Simple and totally devastating, you leave the song consumed by the silence it leaves behind. She says that her next song is going to be building on the power within her rewrites – “We all cried together, and now we’re all going to get over it together.” Her aim is to “take the power back and take that moment where it’s like, okay, we’re really sad about that person, we’re really, really sad about that. But you know what, we’re okay”.

I think that everyone should follow Beth McCarthy (all the links are at the bottom). Friendship Bracelet is the current taste of her upcoming E.P. Make sure you listen to No Hard Feelings when it comes out this Friday. A sensational artist that I hope to see play live soon, she is an amazing talent with a very long future. Music Crowns covered Friendship Bracelet when it arrived in December:

“Beth McCarthy returns with another sensational alt-pop track: ‘Friendship Bracelet’. Her witty, storytelling lyricism stands out as she laments a friendship falling apart through hard-hitting lines and singalong melodies. Flooded with deep bass, shimmering strings and dynamic percussion, Beth McCarthy presents a magnetic indie-pop sound.

Discussing her new release, Beth reveals: “‘Friendship Bracelet’ expresses the petty and over-dramatic feelings that you experience when you lose your friend to a new relationship and in a way, is like a friend breakup anthem. I’m always unreasonably heartbroken when my friends get into new relationships because I suddenly have to share them with someone that they’re going to love more than me and the friendship will inevitably change. It’s also the worst thing EVER to be a third wheel so I wanted this song to encapsulate all those feelings of resentment, betrayal, sadness, and also the process of reminiscing on old times with that friend and almost grieving them as you know everything will be different now.

My favourite lyric in the song is ‘we were growing old alone together, that’s what you wanted ’til you wanted something better’ as I feel like it fully represents that feeling of being left behind in a friendship and is a feeling I’ve experienced too many times!”

‘Friendship Bracelet’ is the second single from Beth’s highly-anticipating upcoming EP, which boasts production and co-writing credits from Sophie Ackroyd (Nina Nesbitt, Benjamin Francis Leftwich). Accumulating almost 10 million streams, landing spots in coveted Spotify playlists and opening for Sigrid, Beth McCarthy is on her way to the top”.

An artist I have a lot of affection and time for, keep your eyes peeled on Beth McCarthy’s social media channels. I think 2022 will be a busy one for the Yorkshire artist. Go and see her perform if you can. She is a marvellous and hugely original artist who I have been a fan of for years now. I am in no doubt she will continue to grow and get some very big honours and gigs through her career. In the wonderful Beth McCarthy, we are lucky enough to have…

A very fine artist.

_____________

Follow Beth McCarthy

PHOTO CREDIT: Louie Wittner  

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/bethmaymccarthy

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/bethmaymccarthy/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2ba5BHaaNzyzG5ZEfKXIF2

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/bethmaymccarthy

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC51Jwy26FL8JU5Wt7UlIpJg

FEATURE: Turn It On: Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Turn It On

Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out at Twenty-Five

___________

I am going to source heavily…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Sleater-Kinney in Seattle in 1997

from others, as there have been some detailed and insightful articles and reviews written about Sleater-Kinney’s third studio album, Dig Me Out. Released on 8th April, 1997, it was produced by John Goodmanson and marked the debut of Janet Weiss, who would become the band's longest-serving drummer. Carrie Brownstein (guitar, vocals), Corin Tucker (vocals, guitar) and Janet Weiss (drums, percussion) were responsible for one of the greatest albums of the 1990s. Sleater-Kinney cemented their reputation and brilliance on 1996’s Call the Doctor. That album fought against gender roles, consumerism, and Indie Rock's male-dominated hierarchy. Even though Lora Macfarlane’s drumming on the album is great, the introduction of Janet Weiss unlocked something and took Sleater-Kinney’s music to new heights. The band’s 2021 album, Path of Wellness, does not feature Weiss. She left the band because she felt she was just the drummer, and not a creative equal in Sleater-Kinney. It is sad that someone so integral to the overall sound and success of the band has left. It makes the upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary of Dig Me Out bittersweet. One big reason why the album is a classic is because of Janet Weiss’ huge talent and innovation. Of course, the album is not only about Weiss. The songwriting and performance from the trio is immense throughout! At thirteen tracks running to a total of just over thirty-six minutes, Dig Me Out is focused and economic. There is definitely no filler on this hugely important album.   

I want to bring in a couple of features about Dig Me Out before getting to some reviews. The A.V. Club looked at Sleater-Kinney’s third studio album on its twentieth anniversary in 2017:

“That solid base gave Tucker and Brownstein more room to play with their interlocking guitar and vocal lines. Although both continued to tune their guitars down from a standard E to C-sharp (and still do), adding Weiss to the band forever liberated Sleater-Kinney from its lack of a bass player. Weiss’ precise, pounding beats filled the void just fine, with a little added volume from producer John Goodmanson, who noted in a profile of the band, “The awesome thing about having no bass player is you can make the guitars sound as big as you want.” The result is an aggressive, yet intricate dual-guitar attack that relentlessly plows forward with punk passion and danceable hooks, without any extended solos or self-indulgent noodling—or rock ’n’ roll wankery of any kind, even when it’s reinterpreting it.

Brownstein’s sharp opening riff on “Dig Me Out” serves as a thesis statement, an urgent warning to buckle up. The rest of the song zooms by in a panic, as an increasingly desperate-sounding Tucker sings, “I’ll wear your rings, your sores,” before belting out, “Oh god, let me out / There’s nowhere else to go.” Later in the album, “Not What You Want” resembles the Shangri-Las on speed, describing a tearful breakup in the front seat of Johnny’s car with both pedals pressed to the floor.

Tucker’s lyrics combine such relationship conflicts and confusion with a politicized take on the female body, as well as the transcendent power of the music itself, which is often the only thing giving her full ownership over herself. Without her guitar, Tucker seems broken, emotionally and physically (“Work ’til I can’t give / I’m a machine,” goes the call and response on “The Drama You’ve Been Craving”). It’s an idea that becomes literal on “Heart Factory,” which starts as an extended fantasy about feelings that can be turned on and off at will, until the chorus busts down the door with a defiant cry, “I’m not just made of parts.”

That interplay was made even more poignant by the relationship Tucker and Brownstein shared off stage, which had recently ended in heartbreak. Between Call The Doctor and Dig Me Out, Brownstein and Tucker were forcibly outed in a Spin interview describing them as “ex-lovers,” a fact that neither of them had made public at the time. In her memoir, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, Brownstein writes of the experience, “I told my dad that Corin and I had dated but that we didn’t anymore, which was the truth. I said that I didn’t think or know if I was gay, dating Corin was just something that had happened, which at the age of 22 was also the truth.” The relationship may have been over by the time Dig Me Out was recorded in the winter of 1996, but the wound was still fresh. That’s most evident on the poignant “One More Hour,” a snapshot of the exact moment when you know that while you might always love someone, you won‘t always be with them, delivered over skittish Gang Of Four-inspired guitar, and with Brownstein offering some consolation (“I know it’s so hard for you to let it go”) to Tucker’s anguished “I needed it.”

Toward the last third of the album, Dig Me Out turns even more reflective, waking up after the party with last night’s makeup smeared on its pillow and a pang of regret. Tucker’s vibrato-laden vocals and Brownstein’s spare guitar enhance the pathos of “Buy Her Candy,” a wistful song of longing after a perfect woman, as both a romantic and an aspirational ideal. (The narrator fears she can never measure up either way.) That uncertainty swells to epic proportions on album closer “Jenny,” where Tucker laments a lost love repeating, “Didn’t we almost have it? Didn’t you want it?” as guitars swell around her like the ocean.

Dig Me Out is frustrated with the suffering that women endure, but focuses that rage into a determination to survive. It embraces joy as an act of self-love, a defiant promise to get up, brush yourself off, and keep going despite the many painful obstacles that life throws your way. It’s a sentiment best reflected on “Things You Say,” a swirl of choppy guitars and churning emotions that ends with what could serve as the album’s manifesto: “It is brave to feel,” Tucker sings. “It is brave to be alive”.

In another twentieth anniversary feature, Stereogum discuss how quickly Dig Me Out was recorded. It is amazing to consider how such a great and enduring album was recorded over such a short period of time:

“Call The Doctor, Sleater-Kinney’s previous album, had hit like a bomb, and that album came out barely a year before Dig Me Out. And yet the band still figured out ways to level the fuck up on their third album. They lost Lori McFarlane, their perfectly capable drummer, and teamed up with Janet Weiss, probably my favorite drummer on the face of the Earth. That change did amazing things for them, anchoring their low end and giving them room to play around rather than just fire straight ahead. And Tucker and Brownstein seemed to think of themselves as something more — as rock stars, or something like it. The Dig Me Out cover famously quotes the Kinks’ The Kinks Kontroversy, demanding to be taken as seriously as any foundational classic rock. “Words And Guitar” nails the elemental power of what they were doing. “I make rock and roll,” Tucker howled on “It’s Enough” — as simple and defiant a statement of intent as you could ever want.

And as they were saying all this, Sleater-Kinney were still very much an underground band. Their last album had been a critical smash, but it didn’t exactly move massive numbers. They moved up from a tiny indie label to a less tiny indie label, and they probably started playing bigger rooms, but Dig Me Out was still an album made by the skin of its teeth. They got 10 days to record Dig Me Out — luxurious compared to the four days they had to make Call The Doctor, but not compared to anything else ever. They had to stay at Brownstein’s father’s place while making it because they didn’t have money for a hotel. The studio was bone-cold, and Brownstein has written about how they had to jump around and do aerobic routines between takes just to keep themselves warm.

So it’s a minor miracle that Dig Me Out even exists, that Sleater-Kinney had the vision to go for something so elemental and huge. And it’s a miracle for more than just material reasons. Tucker and Brownstein had been a couple, and they’d broken up not long before they recorded the album. That’s the sort of thing that would’ve broken up most bands — especially in that era, coming from a riot grrrl scene where bands rarely made it past one album. Instead, Sleater-Kinney used all that stress and hurt and anger to fuel the album. Brownstein has written about disconnecting emotionally while recording it, working on her “One More Hour” guitar parts and not even thinking about whether she was the person Tucker was singing about, the one who had the darkest eyes.

Dig Me Out is Sleater-Kinney’s greatest album, the one that will always jump into people’s minds when they think of the band. It’s not my favorite Sleater-Kinney album; that’s One Beat, now and forever. Maybe it’s not your favorite Sleater-Kinney album either. But it’s the one where everything absolutely clicked, where they rode some astral wave and burned their name into the history of American underground rock. It’s where they became legends. Dig Me Out isn’t a punk album, as Call The Doctor had been — not really, not exactly. Instead, it’s an album that lies outside subgenre designations, outside conversations. It’s where Brownstein and Tucker’s guitars became these tangled and intricate balls of melody, where they began to sound like a completely interconnected web. It’s where Brownstein’s icy, haughty vocals first held their own against Tucker’s otherworldly roar. It’s where Weiss came in and gave the band a whole new rhythmic dimension — hitting hard but treating her drums as an instrument rather than just a way to keep rhythm. It’s where they really became Sleater-Kinney.

Critics lost their minds for Dig Me Out, just as they’d done for Call The Doctor before it. And in a later age, that critical love probably would’ve been enough to push Sleater-Kinney closer to something resembling popularity. These days, the power of the internet is such that critical love can be enough to push a band into bigger venues, into higher spots on the festival posters that didn’t exist in 1997. (Back then, the closest thing we had to Coachella was alt-rock radio-station festivals, and Sleater-Kinney were emphatically not getting booked at those.)”.

It is worth highlighting a couple of positive reviews. Dig Me Out found very little but huge respect and praise when it arrived in 1997. That has continued to this very day. Pitchfork wrote about the album in 2014, following the release of a vinyl box-set of all of the band’s studio albums up until that point:

“Then, behold: Janet Weiss. She joined on 1997's breakneck Dig Me Out, an all-time great American punk statement, giving Sleater-Kinney the most crucial muscle a drummer can offer: not sheer force, but heart, taking the momentum to a new plane. Sleater-Kinney released their next four records with the larger Olympia feminist label, Kill Rock Stars, but none distilled the band's sound and attitude like Dig Me Out: sometimes brutal heartache, sometimes a menacing threat, always intelligent and extreme, there are enough hooks architected into these two- and three-minute songs to span several albums, but even the added dum-de-dum sugar seems as though it must be raw Portland agave.

"Little Babies" critiques stereotypes of motherhood, "Heart Factory" roars over synthetic emotions of the Prozac Nation, and the instantly classic "Words and Guitar" is an ode to rock that just feels necessary. At the peak of "The Drama You've Been Craving"—Tucker's "Kick it OUT!"—there are practically fireworks bursting on either side. Really, Dig goes from 0-to-100 within seconds of its opening salvo of a title track, which begs for transcendence from worldly oppression, "Outta this mess/ Outta my head."

Unlike so much in the trajectory of punk, there is no nihilistic self-destruction in the face of chaos. More than skepticism, anti-consumerism, or the glories of tattoo art, punk teaches empathy, a principle Sleater-Kinney practiced with nuance. This is why Sleater-Kinney's music shines a light despite its loudness, why it is easy to be alone with the songs and feel protected. Sleater-Kinney would never forego the optimism to believe their songbook could make us smarter, angrier, more tender and hopeful. Dig Me Out dreams of a better future, clawing itself up with every note.

The highlight of Dig Me Out and Sleater-Kinney's career, "One More Hour" is one of the most devastating break-up songs in rock. "Oh, you've got the darkest eyes," Tucker and Brownstein quaver in unison—the song is about their own short-lived romance—and the way Tucker extends the last word, it is like she can't let them go. There are complex feelings near clear ones, which is what break-ups are: someone wants to untangle the mess, someone wants to snip it apart. "I needed it," Tucker howls, hardly distinguishing where one word ends and another begins. "One More Hour" is sublime sadness, a kind one can only know when staring at the end of something and wanting desperately for it not to be so”.

I will end with SPIN’s take on the mesmeric and staggering Dig Me Out. This is what they had to say when they explored the album on its twentieth anniversary:

“Nobody wants to be radical anymore. On the right, radicals blow up family-planning clinics; on the left, they’re shaggy ’60s relics and fat, hairy manhaters who destroyed feminism for ordinary women. Even as slang, “radical” seems about as fresh as Pauly Shore in a pair of Bongo shorts.

Until you hear Sleater-Kinney. “Dig me out!” hollers Corin Tucker on the title track of the band’s new album. “Dig me in! / Outta this mess, baby / Outta my head.” Tucker’s singing about how rock’s monstrous noise rips off her skin, leaving her unprotected and gloriously unbound. As guitarist Carrie Brownstein turbocharges a riff rescued from Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s “China Girl” and drummer Janet Weiss applies dominatrix discipline to her kick drum, Tucker alternately guides the music’s onslaught and gives in to it. She lets the songs’ electric momentum strip her down to her emotional core—a pure and antisocial humanity. From start to finish, Dig Me Out aims for this place of undiluted emotion, where girlishness yields to the rage and joy of women who feel no need to charm.

Nurtured in the pink petri dish of Olympia, Washington, where women’s lib never went out of fashion and punk meant the gentle triumph of nerdy kids, Sleater-Kinney seemed at first like a glorious anomaly: politically radical artists whose rhetoric fired them up instead of weighing them down. Tucker’s voice was one of those wonders of the world that turned listeners into pilgrims; Brownstein drove her own path with raggedy-ass, blade-sharp guitar, and the songs gleamed with quick eloquence. Yet for all the harsh allure of their 1995 debut and last year’s Call the Doctor, Sleater-Kinney’s music remained, for the most part, more no than yes, a reaction against sexism instead of an attempt to imagine life beyond it.

On Dig Me Out, a rockin’ little collection of love songs and catchy dance numbers, Sleater-Kinney take the next step. Like the most radical feminist art, the album cuts into the meat of women’s everyday experience, aiming for depths untouched by the buttons-and-brows (or nose-and-belly-button-ring) conventions that identify what’s “feminine.” This is not an easy task in the pop world, where most female artists trade in these conventions, occasionally sassing back, but ultimately staying within familiar boundaries. Many women assume they’re liberated because they can choose which fantasty to modify. But self-determination doesn’t mean shit when you didn’t create the self you’re determining. And one thing rock ‘n’ roll’s beat can offer is a momentary sandblast that frees raw consciousness. When Tucker sings “I’ll touch the sky and say what I want,” she knows that the music is what opens her mouth.

It takes chops to achieve such a visceral liberation, and Sleater-Kinney now own them fully. Weiss, who joined the group last year, is both relentless and highly musical, and Brownstein has grown dexterous on guitar; her twisted melodicism, which always got its energy from wiry riffs instead of crunchy chords, is a full partner to Tucker’s vocal aerobatics. Sleater-Kinney now deliver the punch their words describe. “Words and Guitar” leaps and skitters with the just-released repression of early Talking Heads; “Dance Song ’97” uses a Farfisa for a new wave, Day-Glo mood. Even “Little Babies,” a fairly standard feminist protest against the maternity trap, gets an added bite from a rock-reveling chorus (“All the little babies go one-two-three-four!”). Over chords that sounds like the Clash taking a walk on the wild side, Tucker and Brownstein giddily admit their own need to suck the mother’s milk of the backbeat.

It’s a blast to get charged up by Sleater-Kinney’s suffragette rock, but Tucker and Brownstein make their most surprisingly radical moves within love songs. Most address women, and this unqualified declaration of lesbian desire immediately lifts them past typical wedding-bell romance. Both fragmentary and painfully intimate, the songs avoid erotic platitudes, instead exploring sexual longing in plain language. Tucker and Brownstein are listening to themselves, and what they discover isn’t simple. In the magnificent “One More Hour,” the chorus counterposes Tucker’s irrational heartbreak (“I needed it,” she repeats, her pitch rising) against Brownstein’s rote rationalizations and deadpan clichés. The argument ebbs and fades; it could be lovers feuding, or one friend consoling the other, or the bereft Tucker split against herself. In this moment what emerges is the clarity of partial vision, the understanding that who you are is a process, not reducible to parts.

Dig Me Out captures the noise of a soul-filled body shaking itself awake, and that’s an experience that bridges any gender divide. In it, guys as well as girls will hear the rattle of their brains and the flash of their libidos. The catharsis Sleater-Kinney seek is more than just fun; it’s a battle in earnest for the human right to know and possess yourself. Feminism was supposed to be about that fight, too, but it’s still sputtering under the weight of its own complacency. Sleater-Kinney push us back into the fray. If they wanna be our Simone de Beauvior, Dig Me Out proves they’re up to it”.

Ahead of its twenty-fifth anniversary on 8th April, I wanted to write about a wonderful album that is one of the defining statements of the 1990s. During a decade that saw so many scenes, genius releases and timeless albums, Dig Me Out ranks there with the best of them! If you have not heard the album in a while, make sure that you dig it out, turn it on and…

PLAY it loud.

FEATURE: Reel-to-Real: Fabien Baron: Madonna – Erotica (1992)

FEATURE:

Reel-to-Real

Fabien Baron: Madonna – Erotica (1992)

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IN October…

Madonna’s fifth studio album, Erotica, turns thirty. I am going to write features about it ahead of its anniversary. Even though the title song does not turn thirty until September, I wanted to explore it now. I am going to lean fairly heavily on a Wikipedia article that talks about the video. Pushing her sound, sexuality and confidence further than she did on 1989’s Like a Prayer, Erotica is an album where Madonna inhabits a character, Mistress Dita. Able to play this character, in a sense, allowed Madonna to write and release videos that were a little mor provocative and controversial. It is empowering to see the video for Erotica! Sexual, cinematic and highly captivating, I think that it is one of Madonna’s greatest videos. The first single from the album, the video for Erotica did attract a lot of attention. Not only because of its visuals and themes. Madonna, as the biggest Pop artist in the world at that time, had eyes and ears her way. There was so much press speculation and intrusion! This megastar was taking her music to new heights and levels. Directed by fashion photographer Fabien Baron, the video for Erotica is phenomenal. Justify My Love was a single released to coincide with Madonna’s greatest hits album in 1990, The Immaculate Collection. Similar in terms of its sexual content and steaminess, if anything, Erotica takes things further and is the Queen of Pop at her most alluring, commanding and boundary-pushing!

This Wikipedia article gives information about the amazing video for one of the most memorable and talked-about singles of the 1990s. Many Pop artists of the ‘00s were inspired by Erotica and the video for the title track:

"Erotica" is a song by American singer and songwriter Madonna. It is the title track from her fifth studio album, Erotica (1992), and was released as the album's lead single on September 29, 1992, by Maverick Records. It was later included on her greatest hits albums GHV2 (2001) and Celebration (2009). The song was written by Madonna, Shep Pettibone and Anthony Shimkin, while production was handled by the singer and Pettibone. Musically, "Erotica" contains spoken word vocals, and is an ode to S&M, with Madonna using a pseudonym called "Dita". She invites her lover to be passive while making love to her and leads him to explore boundaries between pain and pleasure.

The song debuted at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming one of the highest debuts on the chart history at the time, eventually peaking at number three. Additionally, it became a success on the Hot Dance Club Play chart, reaching the top position. "Erotica" also found commercial success internationally, peaking in the Top 10 in several countries including Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In Italy and Greece it peaked at number one.

“The music video for "Erotica" was directed by fashion photographer Fabien Baron. The video intercalates scenes of Madonna, dressed as a masked dominatrix with a gold tooth, with actual footage of the making of her Sex book; in these scenes Madonna is seen sitting topless in the lap of an older man, kissing model Naomi Campbell, wearing BDSM gear and riding a bicycle in the nude. The video also counts with cameos by celebrities such as Isabella Rossellini, Tatiana von Fürstenberg, Helmut Berger and Big Daddy Kane. Shooting for the footage of Madonna singing the song, took place on August 22, 1992, at The Kitchen in New York City while shootings for Sex took place at Hotel Chelsea and Times Square's all-male burlesque Gaiety Theatre. In order to imitate the look of old home movies and stag films, the entire video was shot with super 8 mm film. The video had its world premiere on MTV, on October 2, 1992. Upon its release, it was met with controversy; Susan Bibisi, from Los Angeles Daily News, called it a "virtual advertisement" for Sex". Entertainment Tonight had previously reported that Madonna herself had initiated the mayhem surrounding the video by walking bare breasted at designer Jean Paul Gaultier's fashion show and posing nude in Vanity Fair magazine. Richard Harrington from The Washington Post wrote:

In the video, Madonna becomes Dita Parlo, a masked, gold-toothed dominatrix from an indeterminate age, ready to help us cross the street at the corner of Pleasure and Pain [...] assuming different dominatrix roles and investigating assorted bondage scenarios before finishing up with some nude hitchhiking on a street remarkably free of pile-ups. Shot in grainy black and white, 'Erotica' has the feel of a stag film, though its quick cuts keep the viewer from seeing all that much.[

After its release, it was aired by MTV a total of three times, all of these after the 10 pm watershed, due to its highly charged sexual content, before being permanently banned; this made it Madonna's second video to be banned from airing by the channel, after "Justify My Love" in 1990. MTV spokeswoman Linda Alexander said, "The themes of the video are clearly aimed at a more adult audience. It is not appropriate for a general viewing audience". Madonna herself said she understood the channel's ban on the video; "MTV plays to a huge audience and a lot of them are children, and a lot of themes I'm exploring in my videos aren't meant for children, so I understand that they say I can't show it [...] I accept it". Rolling Stone's Anthony DeCurtis said that "This is pretty much normal Madonna fare, [...] But how much longer can you continue mining sexuality? In checking off your list of taboos, how far can you take them? At what point does it just stop being interesting?” Similarly, David Browne from Entertainment Weekly, asked "Haven’t we seen most of this stuff before? Can we be bored with the subject matter already? [...] no emotion is attached to the mechanics of these acts, so it's difficult to identify with or care about the characters”. The video was nominated for the 1993 Billie Awards in four categories: Consumer print, trade print (music) and consumer print (retail), the most for a single entry It also was ranked at number 16 on VH1's "50 Sexiest Video Moments". The video was made commercially available in 2009, when it was included, albeit in a censored version, on Madonna's Celebration: The Video Collection compilation; it had previously been excluded from 1999's The Video Collection 93:99. In October 2020, during the 28th anniversary of the studio album, the music video got remastered and posted on her official YouTube channel”.

Leading up to October, there will be a lot of talk and writing out there regarding Erotica and Madonna’s Sex book. As they turn thirty, there will be fresh perspective. I wonder what Madonna herself will say on the anniversary – and whether there is a thirtieth anniversary re-release in store for Erotica (and if the Sex book gets reprinted). This Today in Madonna History articles recalls a very special day in 1992 when New York’s The Kitchen was graced with the presence of one of the most influential artists on the planet:

“On August 22 1992, Madonna filmed scenes for the Erotica music video at The Kitchen in New York City with fashion photographer/director/designer Fabien Baron. These scenes consisted of Madonna in the character of her Sex book alter-ego, Dita, miming the lyrics to the song, and would be intercut with a selection of 8mm footage previously shot by Baron during the making of the Sex book.

Baron also served as art director for the Sex book, the Erotica album and single, and later for the Bedtime Stories album and its singles Secret and Take A Bow. He also directed the commercial for her fragrance, Truth Or Dare by Madonna, in 2012.

“She put that book out at the best moment. She timed it very well. She knows what she’s doing. And such drive. Some people want to lift stones and see what’s under it. She’ll be on a beach with millions of stones and want to lift every one of them”  – Fabien Baron”.

I really love the video for Erotica. It is challenging and bold without being too explicit or crude. If a male artist were to do a similar video (and they have through the decades, then they would not have got flak!). Madonna, as a woman in music, was subjected to judgment. Defying critics and those who attacked her, the Erotica album is one of Madonna’s finest works. Even though there was some slight pulling back and conservativism on 1994’s Bedtime Stories, Erotica’s title track is Mistress Dita taking the reins! This article explores how the vivid and wonderful video helped Erotica climb high up the charts:

“Proving to be shocking and highly controversial upon its release, the song served as the title track of Madonna’s fifth, eagerly-awaited album. Released to coincide with the steamy coffee table book she’d assembled, the directly and appropriately titled tome “Sex,” the video clip included a series of bold and somewhat pornographic vignettes. While critics, the religious right and many parents were less than thrilled with the video that featured Madonna in sadomasochistic gear, kissing supermodel Naomi Campbell and appearing topless in several scenes, it was agreed that the clip would be shown only after 10 p.m.. Viewed by some detractors as nothing more than an overt advertisement for her book, the video was shown only three times on television before being permanently banned, making it the second Madonna clip to achieve that status following her seductive clip for “Justify My Love” in 1990. The controversy paid off: The “Erotica” single climbed as high as No. 3 on Billboard’s singles chart and the album of the same name made it all the way to No. 2”.

With Fabien Baron helming a video of Madonna at her best, there is no doubt Erotica is one of the most striking and memorable videos ever. I think it took Madonna from this Pop artist on the verge of superstardom confirming her place as the Queen of Pop. Erotica’s video still seems and feels quite bold to this day! I think that Pop music has become a bit more reserved since the 1990s. It is a mixed blessing, but Erotica’s title track definitely opened the track for a generation of women in Pop. We will celebrate the track of the amazing Erotica album on its thirtieth anniversary…

IN October.

FEATURE: Lines, Crosses and Curves: Kate Bush and the Filmic Possibilities

FEATURE:

 

 

Lines, Crosses and Curves

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

Kate Bush and the Filmic Possibilities

___________

SHE did release a short film…

PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

in 1993 called The Line, the Cross and the Curve. That was a selection of her songs set to film. The material appeared on The Red Shoes, yet Bush wanted to do something a bit more filmic. She loves cinema, and she had directed some of her music videos up until that point. I really like the film, though Bush directed, wrote and starred in it. Taking on a lot at a time when she was so busy, maybe it was not the best time to take a short. I do think that Bush’s music is perfect for film. I have written features before asking if there will ever be a Kate Bush biopic. I have also discussed the need for new documentaries about her. Also, I have written about how Bush’s music and life could be translated to film. In the past, her songs have been used on the big screen. It is quite rare, so it needs to be a film that she approves of. I think that her songs are so diverse, yet they mean so much to so many people. Rather than there being a biopic or musical, a film that uses Bush’s music as the soundtrack would be wonderful. It would come down whether Bush would be comfortable having her music used as part of a soundtrack.

I think that originals plus artists covering her songs would be great. One of my other features explored the idea of a tribute or covers album. There have been one or two before, though they have not really featured bigger artists. Many people cover Bush’s work, but there is a list of artists that love her work that I would enjoy hearing tackle one of her songs. Maybe The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon and St. Vincent doing songs. Perhaps Björk and Big Boi providing an interpretation each of a classic. There could be four or five new recordings made especially for the film. I have been batting around a film that is sort of coming-of-age that either has a lead actress who is a massive Kate Bush fan, or else there is a film that is set to her music. Sort of like a narrative with different songs being visualised. I think that the first option is more likely. From the gorgeous tones of The Kick Inside’s (1978) The Man with the Child in His Eyes to 50 Words for Snow’s Snowed in at Wheeler Street (2011), there could be this fascinating story. Maybe a film set in the 1980s that would use her songs up until, say, 1988 or 1989. It could be this great mix of a teen coming-of-age, but it would also have more serious and deeper elements. I can’t recall whether anything has been done like this. There are artists whose music has been used this way (Blinded by the Light was a film set to Bruce Springsteen’s music), but Kate Bush has bene relatively untouched and under-explored when it comes to her music and the screen. Whether the protagonist would discover Kate Bush and find power in her music, or there is a semi-autobiographical element where some of the lead’s life and arc mirrors that of Kate Bush’s, I am not too sure.

 IN THIS PHOTO: St. Vincent

One cannot say that there is a lack of support, affection for and demand of Kate Bush’s music. Her popularity seems to rise by the year! I really like how people can just share her videos and music and that sparks huge conversation and admiration. Unlike big stars of today who have to tweet and post endless posts to get their music noticed and talked about, Kate Bush has this endless majesty and genius that means her music will be dissected and highlighted for generations. I love the split between Bush’s ‘70s music and what she produced in the 1980s. Her first two albums – 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart – have a more stripped sound that rely more on piano and voice. Themes mostly explore love, and there is this quality to her voice that is pure, sweet – yet there is also great passion and range. As she moved into the Eighties, one can feel shifts and expansions between 1980’s Never for Ever, 1982’s The Dreaming, 1985’s Hounds of Love and 1989’s The Sensual World. Songs like Babooshka and Army Dreamers (Never for Ever) could be represented and start the film. Then songs from The Dreaming like There Goes a Tenner and All the Love could be the next part of the first act. Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave could be act two, then you could go to a couple of tracks from The Sensual World for the final act.

There are, in fact, endless possibilities when it comes to plot and setting. Rather than this being a way to simply use Kate Bush’s songs in a film, a lot of the lyrics would be played out. A story would form around her words. Mixing in music video-style direction with different visual angles, it could be an engrossing and memorable film. The fan demand would be there but, in a more general sense, there would be success and demand. Because Kate Bush keeps reaching new people and her influence is vast, I do think there needs to be more projects that visual and represent this.  A film could combine elements of a musical, together with well-known artists covering her songs. There would be a mixture of romance, tragedy and drama. I am not sure what it would be called or what the plot is, but I can picture scenes and little moments that would combine into a pretty decent and original film (or T.V. drama). I feel we will see some books and other projects relating to Kate Bush through this year. Who knows what could shape up and appear in the coming months?! There is always hope that another album will arrive (2011’s 50 Words for Snow is her latest studio album), but she will be done when she is done! Her music will engage and inspire the new generation, but I reckon a powerful, funny, interesting and affectionate film where her music is at the heart of things would…

PROVE to be a big success.

FEATURE: In All Her Glory: Ranking Britney Spears’ Nine Studio Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

In All Her Glory

Ranking Britney Spears’ Nine Studio Albums

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EARLIER this week…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

there was news that Britney Spears is writing material for a new album. Her ninth, Glory, came out in 2016. Having won a long-drawn-out conservatorship battle against her father and those who have been controlling her career for years, it seems like this is a new phase for Britney Spears. Now forty, the Pop icon is looking ahead to fresh horizons. Maybe there will be big live dates later this year and some personal news. I think the music world is holding its breath for another album. Will it be confessional and angry, or will it be a return to the lighter, sexier Pop that she is known for? I think we will get something defiant, independent, strong and compelling. One of the biggest artists of the late-1990s and 2000s, it is good that she is in a happier space now. Ahead of a potential tenth studio album, I wanted to rank her nine albums. I think they are all very strong, though there are some that I prefer above the rest – even the lowest-ranking album is very good indeed. Here is my view when it comes to ranking…

THE albums of the inimitable Britney Spears.

_____________

9. Britney Jean

Release Date: 29th November, 2013

Label: RCA

Producers: A.C./Chico Bennett/Christopher Braide/Peter Carlsson/Cirkut/Diplo/Dr. Luke/Freshmen III/David Guetta/Derek Weintraub/Zach ‘Reazon’ Heiligman/Keith Harris/HyGrade/William ‘DJ Keebz’ Kebler/Kool Kojak/LWAM/Sebastian Ingrosso/Damien LeRoy/William Orbit/Otto Knows/Anthony Preston/Nicky Romero/Giorgio Tuinfort/Marcus van Wattum/Richard Vission/will.i.am

Standout Songs: Alien/Perfume/Body Ache

Review:

“Even now, just about to celebrate her 32nd birthday, Britney Spears remains as enigmatic as the Disney-groomed, emotionally insulated teen who greeted us in the late ’90s. It’s part of why we treasure her: The feeling that, even as she sings her most seductive or inventive songs, the real Brit’s off dreaming her unknowable dreams. Britney Jean, which takes its title from her family nickname and has been billed as the most ”personal” of her eight albums, tells you virtually bupkus about her struggles over the years. But in just 10 tidy songs, it brings us closer than ever before to that distant dreamer.

Of course, since it’s a Britney Spears album executive-produced by will.i.am in 2013, it also happily indulges the fantasies of endorphin-seeking EDM festival goers. Brit promises she ”won’t stop ’til you breathe heavy” on ”Body Ache,” a David Guetta track that nearly builds to a clobbering house beat, then cannily falls back. Thor’s hammer comes down instead on the other Guetta collaboration, ”It Should Be Easy,” in which Britney, will.i.am, and their AutoTune elves join hands to reflect vacuously on love. Dance music’s lousy with anonymous female hook singers right now, but these two songs transcend DJ filler because Britney never soft-pedals her voice’s uneasy layering of girly and libidinous. They’re based more in tension than release.

Britney’s tradition of messing with pop forms goes back at least 10 years, to the genre-splicing ”Toxic.” As often as she might withhold tabloid fodder from her lyrics, she puts a lot of trust in her producers. That translates to the weird and wonderful intimacy of ”Alien,” a gently pulsing track in which an actual extraterrestrial finally realizes she’s ”not alone,” and repeats the phrase until it is pitchshifted up like a departing space ship.

It also gives rise to less subtle pleasures, like the first single, ”Work Bitch,” a fabulous if campy dance track, and the bass bomb ”Tik Tik Boom,” in which Brit tells a lewd T.I., ”you got a sex siren in your face.” Alienation lurks in those songs, too — which naturally gives Brit’s duet with her younger sister Jamie Lynn, the morphing ballad ”Chillin’ With You,” a special poignancy. All we really learn is that Britney prefers red wine, and Jamie Lynn, white. But we share their warm, tipsy feeling all the same. B+” – Entertainment Weekly

Key Cut: Work Bitch

8. Blackout

Release Date: 25th October, 2007

Labels: Jive/Zomba

Producers: Danja/Bloodshy & Avant/Kara Dio/Guardi/Freescha/Fredwreck/The Neptunes/J.R. Rotem

Standout Songs: Piece of Me/Radar/Break the Ice

Review:

 “Public image is vital to pop stars, but few stars have been so inextricably tied to their image as Britney Spears. Think back to "...Baby One More Time" -- it has an indelible hook but what leaps to mind is not the sound of the single, but how Britney looked in the video as she pouted and preened in a schoolgirls' uniform, an image as iconic as Madonna's exposed navel. Every one of Britney's hits had an accompanying image, as she relied on her carefully sculpted sexpot-next-door persona as much as she did on her records, but what happens when the image turns sour, as it certainly did for Britney in the years following the release of In the Zone? When that album hit the stores in 2003, Britney had yet to marry, had yet to give birth, had yet to even meet professional layabout Kevin Federline -- she had yet to trash her girl-next-door fantasy by turning into white trash. Some blamed Federline for her rapid downward spiral, but she continued to descend after splitting with K-Fed in the fall of 2006, as each month brought a new tabloid sensation from Britney, a situation that became all the more alarming when contrasted to how tightly controlled her public image used to be. The shift in her persona came into sharp relief at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, as she sleepwalked through a disastrous lip-synch of her comeback single "Gimme More," a disaster by any measure, but when it was compared to such previous meticulously staged VMA appearances as her make-out with Madonna in 2003, it made Britney seem like a lost cause and fallen star.

All this toil and turmoil set the stage for her 2007 comeback Blackout to be a flat-out train wreck, which it decidedly is not -- but that doesn't mean it's a triumph, either. Blackout is an easy album to overpraise based on the lowered expectations Britney's behavior has set for her audience, as none of her antics suggested that she'd be able to deliver something coherent and entertaining, two things that Blackout is. As an album, it holds together better than any of her other records, echoing the sleek club-centric feel of In the Zone but it's heavier on hedonism than its predecessor, stripped of any ballads or sensitivity, and just reveling in dirty good times. So Blackout acts as a soundtrack for Britney's hazy, drunken days, reflecting the excess that's splashed all over the tabloids, but it has a coherence that the public Britney lacks. This may initially seem like an odd dissociation but, in a way, it makes sense: how responsible is Britney for her music, anyway? At the peak of her popularity, she never seemed to be dictating the direction of her music, so it only stands to reason that when her personal life has gotten too hectic, she's simply decided to let the professional producers create their tracks and then she'll just drop in the vocals at her convenience. Even the one song that plays like autobiography -- "Piece of Me," where she calls herself "Miss American dream since I was 17" and "I'm miss bad media karma/another day another drama," complaining "they stick all the pictures of my derriere in the magazines," as if she wasn't posing provocatively for Rolling Stone as soon as "Baby" broke big -- was outsourced to "Toxic" producer/writers Bloodshy & Avant, who try desperately to craft a defiant anthem for this tabloid fixture, as she couldn't be bothered to write one on her own. Instead, she busies herself with writing the album's two strip-club anthems, "Freakshow" and the brilliantly titled "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)" (surely the successor to such trash-classics as Soundmaster T's "2 Much Booty (In Da Pants)" and Samantha Fox's timeless pair of "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)" and "(Hurt Me! Hurt Me!) But the Pants Stay On"). Every piece of gossip in the four years separating In the Zone and Blackout suggests that her head is in the clubs, yet it's still a bit disarming to realize that this is all that she has to say.

Britney may not have much on her mind but at least she pockets so deep she can buy the best producers, hiring Bloodshy & Avant, the Clutch and the Neptunes, among others, to help craft an album that cribs from Rhianna's sleek, sexy Good Girl Gone Bad and the chilly robo-R&B of Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds. Emotionally, this isn't a progression from In the Zone, but it is a cannily contemporary dance album, sounding nearly as fresh as Rhianna and JT, even if it's hardly as trendsetting as either. Then again, Britney hasn't set the pace for the sound of dance-pop since her first two Max Martin-driven productions, and her skill -- conscious or not, it doesn't really matter -- has always been to get the right producers at the right moment, which she surely does here. Those producers turn Blackout into a sleek, shiny collection of 12 guiltily addictive dance tracks where the only weak link is Britney herself. Never the greatest vocalist, her thin squawk could be dismissed early in her career as an adolescent learning the ropes, but nearly a decade later her singing hasn't gotten any better, even if the studio tools to masquerade her weaknesses have. Strangely enough, the computer corrections either emphasize her irritating, strangled delivery -- nowhere more so than on "Piece of Me," where she's sharp, flattened, and clipped, the vocoder stabbing at the ears like a pick -- or she disappears into the track entirely, just another part of the electronic tapestry. Naturally, the latter cuts are more appealing, as they really show off the skills of the producers, particularly the Clutch's lead single "Gimme More," Bloodshy & Avant's relentless "Radar," the new wave shimmer of "Heaven on Earth," the stuttering electro-clip of "Break the Ice," or the spare, silly chant of "Hot as Ice." When Britney is pushed to the forefront, she garners too much attention, as she tries too hard to be sexy -- a move she could pull off before, when carefully controlled pictures of her in schoolgirl uniforms, cat suits, and tight jeans filled in the blanks her voice left behind. Now, those images are replaced by images of Britney beating cars up with umbrellas, wiping her greasy fingers on designer dresses, and nodding off on-stage, each new disaster stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image, so when she tries to purr and tease on Blackout she repels instead of seduces. That's the new Britney, and as she's always been an artist who relies on image, her tarnished persona does taint the ultimate effect of her music, as knowledge of her ceaseless partying turns these anthems a bit weary and sad. But if you block that image out -- always hard to do with Britney, but easier to do here since the tracks sound so good -- Blackout is state-of-the-art dance-pop, a testament to skills of the producers and perhaps even Britney being somehow cognizant enough to realize she should hire the best, even if she's not at her best” – AllMusic

Key Cut: Gimme More

7. Circus

Release Date: 28th November, 2008

Labels: Jive/Zomba

Producers: Benny Blanco/Bloodshy & Avant/The Clutch/Dr. Luke/Fernando Garibay/Nate ‘Danja’ Hills/Rob Knox/Greg Kurstin/Let's Go to War/Max Martin/The Underdogs/Gary White/Nicole Morier/The Outsyders/Guy Sigsworth

Standout Songs: Circus/Out from Under/Kill the Lights

Review:

“Britney Spears is making a habit of putting out albums with titles that promise more self-revelation than she’s ultimately able to provide. Last fall, she released Blackout…which turned out not to have anything to do with experiencing blackouts. This year, it’s Circus, with a title track that’s not about the madhouse her life has become but just a brag about her prowess as a whip-cracking sexual ringmaster. In the studio, however, she’s no auteur, and with her producer-writers seemingly calling the creative shots, Spears is only as interesting as they are on any particular day.

Initially, that’s not interesting enough. Circus‘ first half has hitmakers like Dr. Luke and Max Martin bringing their B game to rote dance tracks like ”Shattered Glass” (pronounced glah-ee-ass) and the puerile ”If You Seek Amy” (sound it out to hear why it’ll be a middle-school sensation). But halfway through, Circus shifts from defiant booty calls to subtler material; suddenly, it’s a first-rate electro-pop album. The Danja-produced ”Blur” is a remarkably pretty song about (finally!) an actual blackout. ”Mmm Papi” giddily sets her littlest-girl voice against a guitar right out of 1960s go-go rock

The standout is ”Unusual You,” a pulsating ballad where a woman of experience finds unexpected love: ”Didn’t anyone tell you you’re supposed to/Break my heart, I expect you to/So why haven’t you?” Mostly, Spears still presents herself as fantasy object, but here might be her own fantasy — of real acceptance. Next time, Britney, flash us more of that. B” – Entertainment Weekly

Key Cut: Womanizer

6. Britney

Release Date: 31st October, 2001

Label: Jive

Producers: BT/Rodney Jerkins/Brian Kierulf/Peter Kvint/Max Martin/The Neptunes/Rami/Josh Schwartz/Justin Timberlake

Standout Songs: Overprotected/I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman/Boys

Review:

“To thwart bootleggers, and perhaps the reviewing process, reviewers get to hear Britney Spears third album once: on a swivel chair in the middle of her record company's office whilst all around workers get on with their daily chores.

But even after just one play it's clear 'Britney' is Spears' coming of age album. This is not an album exclusively for playground dance routines, this is an album of late nights and nightclubs, of self-discovery and self-doubt. She's clearly manoeuvring herself into Madonna's slipstream, but a better comparison can be made with Janet Jackson's 1986 album, 'Control', where Jackson powerfully announced her womanhood with an explosion of club-dominated pop. 'Britney' pulls off exactly the same trick, both musically and lyrically.

She enlists an array of top grade songwriters to facilitate this, including Rodney Jerkins, Dido and her boyfriend, *N SYNC's Justin Timberlake. It's The Neptunes, though, who spin the darkest magic with their two tracks - even if the lusty electro funk of 'I'm A Slave 4 U' and 'Boys' are essentially the same songs telling exactly the same story: that it's better to be a slave to the rhythm than to any man. Timberlake, meanwhile, provides backing yelps on his re-write of *N SYNC's 'Pop', 'What's It Like To Be Me', as well as a bizarre lyric for his fiancee to sing. "Do me right", growls Britney, "or we're through". Is this a memo from Justin to himself, or to her? Indeed, the fact Britney, 19, has so little lyrical input into all this soul bearing (including an icky trio of love ballads towards the end, written mainly by old Swedish men) somewhat lessens its dramatic impact. That it takes Dido - a woman staring into the harsh glare of her thirties - to sum up the projected mood of a young woman bidding farewell to the comfort of her teens with 'I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman' is ironic. That Dido forces Britney to pitch in with the kind of come-down funk for which Dido's become unjustifiably famous is downright cruel.

Britney and 'Britney' still works best when making a good pop cheese and dance sandwich: there's the ace Rodney Jerkins-produced version of Joan Jett's 'I Love Rock'n'Roll', which does exactly what is says on the tin. There's the crackle and Euro pop fizz of 'Overprotected' ("I'm so fed up with being told to be something else but me", howls Spears over a song written and produced by Max Martin and Rami). There's the roaring disco of 'Anticipating' (take that, Kylie!), but best of all there's 'Boombastic Love' which has exactly the same chorus as 'Oops...I Did It Again!'. All of this is better than the slow-paced navel-gazing. Then again... "It does improve the more times you hear," urges one of Jive's Britney-battered workers as we leave. Alas, that must remain a moot opinion “ – NME

Key Cut: I’m a Slave 4 U

5. Oops!... I Did It Again

Release Date: 3rd May, 2000

Label: Jive

Producers: Timmy Allen/Larry ‘Rock’ Campbell/Barry J. Eastmond/Jake/Robert ‘Esmail’ Jazayeri/Rodney Jerkins/David Kreuger/Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange/Kristian Lundin/Steve Lunt/Per Magnusson/Max Martin/Rami/Paul Umbach/Eric Foster White

Standout Songs: Stronger/Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know/Lucky

Review:

“Given the phenomenal success of Britney Spears' debut, ...Baby One More Time, it should come as no surprise that its sequel offers more of the same. After all, she gives away the plot with the ingenious title of her second album, Oops!...I Did It Again, essentially admitting that the record is more of the same. It has the same combination of sweetly sentimental ballads and endearingly gaudy dance-pop that made One More Time. Fortunately, she and her production team not only have a stronger overall set of songs this time, but they also occasionally get carried away with the same bewildering magpie aesthetic that made the first album's "Sodapop" -- a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga -- a gonzo teen pop classic. It doesn't happen all that often -- the clenched-funk revision of the Stones' deathless "Satisfaction" is the most obvious example -- but it helps give the album character apart from the well-crafted dance-pop and ballads that serve as its heart. In the end, it's what makes this an entertaining, satisfying listen” – AllMusic

Key Cut: Oops!... I Did It Again

4. Femme Fatale

Release Date: 25th March, 2011

Label: Jive

Producers: Ammo/Billboard/Benny Blanco/Bloodshy/Cirkut/Dr. Luke/Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins/JMike/Henrik Jonback/Magnus/Max Martin/Oligee/Fraser T Smith/Sandy Vee/Shellback/Stargate/will.i.am

Standout Songs: Till the World Ends/I Wanna Go/Criminal

Review:

“Femme Fatale? The title of Britney's seventh album suggests a mystique redolent of cigarette holders and smouldering glances across cocktail parties. A more accurate title might be "In Season". For these are 12 all-out mating calls, issued on an endlessly pulsating dancefloor, in which Spears dispenses with any other subject matter save her unquenchable lust.

Spears went big with this predatory insatiability around the time of 2007's Blackout, released concurrently with what appeared to be a nervous breakdown. It was a little weird at the time, how she conducted herself like a Duracell sexbot in song, while her children were being removed and her affairs handed over to her father.

But the idea of dead-eyed female lubriciousness is now a Britney staple, and this album is better at it than most. Femme Fatale's first two singles – "Hold It Against Me" and "Till The World Ends" – have garnered praise, despite being two of the less arresting songs on the album. The standard is high. The cringe-making "Criminal" aside, there are no noisome ballads cluttering up the steady throb of Auto-Tuned solicitation.

There is, moreover, one copper-bottomed work of pop finery on this album. "How I Roll" is a thrilling digital workout penned mainly by Bloodshy & Avant (they did "Toxic" and "Piece of Me") which you could describe as ghetto-Nordic, via MIA. It sounds like a sweet come hither soundtracked by a shop full of digital toys, until the line "You could be my fuck tonight" reaffirms the thematic status quo.

Dancing has rarely been a more obvious referent for sex standing up than on Femme Fatale. "I Wanna Go" is all hi-NRG booty calling, with a possible reference to New Order's "Blue Monday" thrown in. But it's not just Britney with her hands in the air. American pop seems to have caught a wholesale case of European rave pox. For the past decade, Stateside pop has more or less equated with mass-market R&B, tweaked by frequently Scandinavian auteurs employing hip-hop production techniques.

Of late, though, the steady tish-tish of continental dance music – inaugurated, arguably, by Madonna's Confessions on a Dancefloor (2005) – has turned into an all-out all-nighter.

Synth stabs, techno builds, house pianos and Ibizan dynamics have conjoined with high-end digital production to create a new hybrid pop. The Black Eyed Peas have been movers in the field, linking up with French dance producer David Guetta on various tracks. Curiously enough, though, the token will.i.am track on Femme Fatale is the most old-school work here, a deeply silly chant-along in which Britney declares she "could be the trouble" and "you could be the bass" ("Big Fat Bass"). Do you see what they did there? The bass, of course, grows ever more tumescent.

"Gasoline", meanwhile, offers an extended petrol metaphor for desire in which the line "my heart only runs on supreme" should be commended. It would be tempting at this point to say that Britney is on fire, having turned in the "fierce dance record" she promised. But let's just say: she's hot to trot” – The Observer

Key Cut: Hold It Against Me

3. ...Baby One More Time

Release Date: 12th January, 1999

Label: Jive

Producers: Jörgen Elofsson/David Kreuger/Kristian Lundin/Per Magnusson/Max Martin/Rami

Standout Songs: (You Drive Me) Crazy/Sometimes/Born to Make You Happy

Review:

“The song that sparked the beginning of the pop princess herself, Britney Spears, as well as years of iconic Halloween costumes, started back in 1997, when Spears first tried to join girl group Innosense, and instead was singed to her own record label with Max Martin, where she was given the demo for “Hit Me Baby One More Time” (originally rejected by girl group TLC).

It was shortened later to “…Baby One More Time” because producers were worried it held connotations of domestic abuse. The song “…Baby One More Time” featured on Spears’s debut studio album of the same name, which released in January 1999. But the pop song of the century released in October 1998, and it reached number 1 in every country it charted in.

Before Spears got her record deal she was already an American sweetheart, having performed on Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club, and it was here that she was discovered as a star. She worked alongside Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling, all of whom became stars in their own right.

But this album marked Britney’s ongoing success. Opening with “…Baby One More Time”, the album introduces a poppy up-beat style, and “makes its presence known in exactly one second”. It’s a great way to grab a listener’s attention for a debut album. The next track, “(You Drive Me) Crazy”, might sound like an unfamiliar version if you listen back. The track was made more popular with “The Stop Remix”, and was used for the music video, giving it more substance a second time round.

As we move into “Sometimes”, we get an airy, romantic-comedy type song. It’s everything associated with a young Britney, with slow, relaxing vocals, accompanied by delicate percussion and soft backup vocals. The song, also a single, made it to her singles collection album, entitled Britney: The Singles Collection, which features 4 other singles from her 1999 album, including “…Baby One More Time”, “Autumn Goodbye”, “(You Drive Me) Crazy [The Stop Remix]”, and “Born To Make You Happy”.

The next song, “Soda Pop”, shows Spears revisiting her countrified vocals a little more, and stepping away from the iconic voice she moulded for herself so carefully. The singer channels her friend Christina Aguilera (XTina), and also her old-self, when she performed alongside Justin Timberlake on the Mickey Mouse Club. With such strong, deep vocals, it was astounding to see that she’d changed her singing style, but thanks to doing so, she stood out.

And so did “…Baby One More Time”’s music video. The schoolgirl singing in the halls became Britney’s most iconic look (after the “Oops!… I Did It Again” red latex suit), and it skyrocketed her career. With her look and voice complete, her first album paved the way for this sweet, innocent new star. But Britney had other plans for her future…

“Born To Make You Happy” was a record that fitted well with “Sometimes”. It was airy and light, with low piano notes playing throughout. However, unlike “Sometimes” and “Soda Pop”, this track used flats and sharps to create a more sorrowful sound. Worried that she’ll lose her love, the song explores this emotion and plays on it, with the song progressing to a happier ending as the tune switches octaves towards the end. Uplifting and reassuring, it’s a love song for the ages.

Surprisingly, upbeat “I Will Be There” and ballad “E-mail My Heart” were never singles, but they were favourites for many from the album. The latter explored a more emotional side of the album, depicting a softer vocal-d Spears, professing her love. It was warm and soothing, perfect for her teen girl audience at the time” – We Plug Good Music

Key Cut: ...Baby One More Time

2. In the Zone

Release Date: 12th November, 2003

Label: Jive

Producers: Bloodshy & Avant/Brian and Josh/Roy ‘Royalty’ Hamilton/Jimmy Harry/Penelope Magnet/Moby/The Matrix/R. Kelly/Rishi Rich/Guy Sigsworth/Shep Soloman/Mark Taylor/Trixster

Standout Songs: Me Against the Music (feat. Madonna)/Outrageous/Brand New Girl

Review:

“For the most part, In The Zone is a big, fat, thumping love letter to the dancefloor, which makes Madonna’s involvement (on lead single “Me Against The Music,” arguably one of Britney’s finest moments and one of her mentor’s worst) even more appropriate. Britney’s unabashed devotion to dance-pop is, perhaps, the one thing that truly links her to the big M, as she presses her body “up against the speaker” the way Madonna did back in the early ‘80s. Tracks like the Southern-fried, banjo-infused “(I Got That) Boom Boom,” which features Atlanta party rap duo Ying Yang Twins, and the string-laden, Bollywood-style “Toxic” find Britney dabbling in hip-hop, but it’s clear her heart lies in the clubs. Britney beckons to an anonymous dance partner on the ambient-techno number “Breathe On Me,” exploring (perhaps for the first time in her career) the eroticism of restraint: “We don’t need to touch/Just breathe on me.” Curiously, the sexy thump of the song is briefly interrupted when Britney simultaneously channels George Michael (“Monogamy is the way to go,” she whispers) and Lauren Bacall by way of Madonna (“Just put your lips together and blow!”).

After a night at the club (and, interestingly, little actual physical contact), she passes out on a couch in the “Early Mornin’” (with hypnotic beats, bass loop and synth flute courtesy of Moby) and finds some self-gratification on the Middle Eastern-hued ode to masturbation “Touch Of My Hand.” The only hint of pure pop is the retro Euro-dance/pop number “Brave New Girl” (yes, we’re assuming Britney actually had the chutzpah to evoke the Aldous Huxley classic without having read the book). “Outrageous,” a collaboration with R. Kelly, includes a telling parallel that reveals a lot about one of music’s biggest—as Alanis Morissette would put it—treadmill capitalists: she sings “my sex drive” and “my shopping spree” with the same dripping gusto. For a girl who’s always seemed too sexed-up for her age, In The Zone finds Britney finally filling her britches, so-to-speak. Her little girl coquettishness actually works now—maybe because, at 21, she’s finally a woman. And she’s a self-referential one, at that: “Am I too hot for you?/Did you check out my video?” she asks a prospective boy-toy on “Showdown.” Yes, Britney, we all have. And that’s the way you like it” – SLANT

Key Cut: Toxic

1. Glory

Release Date: 26th October, 2016

Label: RCA

Producers: BloodPop/Burns/Cashmere Cat/DJ Mustard/Jason Evigan/Oak Felder/Andrew Goldstein/Oscar Görres/Ian Kirkpatrick/Mattman & Robin/Nick Monson/Alex Nice/Robopop/Lance Eric Shipp/Twice as Nice/Tramaine Winfrey

Standout Songs: Private Show/Do You Wanna Come Over?/Clumsy

Review:

“The soft commercial performance of 2013's Britney Jean made it clear that it was time for Britney Spears to shake up her recording career -- a move made somewhat less urgent due to the success of Britney: Piece of Me, the residency show she launched at Las Vegas' Planet Hollywood a few months after the release of Britney Jean. Sin City's influence can be heard within the splashiness of the arrangements of certain portions of Glory, the 2016 album designed to be Britney's return to the Top 40. To that end, Glory downplays the show biz glitz of Vegas in favor of modern dance-pop, one with EDM undercurrents and hip-hop overtones. Sometimes echoes of other stars can be heard -- Justin Bieber's Purpose appears to a primary text -- but despite this contemporary gloss, the album usually relies on sounds of Spears' past, trading heavily on the cloistered dance of Blackout and the shimmering neon of Femme Fatale. Glory is much lighter than either album, a reflection of Britney's maturation -- the softer nocturnal numbers make a play for Ellie Goulding territory, but they could slide onto adult contemporary -- and her willingness to be goofy. Some of the highlights are the silliest songs: the swinging "Clumsy," the overheated flamenco chorus of "Do You Wanna Come Over?," and "Private Show" and "Slumber Party," a pair of heavy-breathing come-ons that never manage to seem sexy despite the flood of innuendo. Such moments accentuate Britney's playfulness, an aspect of her persona that's been in hibernation for nearly a decade, and it's a welcome return, as is Glory as a whole: it feels as fun and frivolous as her earliest music while retaining the freshness of her best mature work” - AllMusic

Key Cut: Slumber Party (ft. Tinashe)

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Fifty-Seven: Betty Wright

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

Part Fifty-Seven: Betty Wright

___________

ONE of the saddest music losses…

of the past few years happened on 10th May, 2020. The legendary and hugely influential Betty Wright died aged only sixty-six (she died from cancer). Mentoring artists and providing a catalogue that has been sampled through R&B, Pop and beyond, she is someone who has left her mark and will continue to inspire new artists for many years to come. I will come to a playlist of songs from artists who have either been mentored by her or are natural successors. Before getting to that, here is some biography and background about the superb and missed Betty Wright:

“Betty Wright is a soul and R&B singer with deep gospel roots. She influenced a generation of female singer-songwriters and continues to influence the world of hip hop, who sample some of her more famous material.

Born singing gospel with the family group, the Echoes of Joy, Wright began experimenting with R&B music in 1965 when she was only 11. In 1968, she released her first album, My First Time Around, by the age of 14, and scored her first national hit, "Girls Can't Do What Guys Can Do". But it was not until the end of 1971 that Wright's most successful phase of her career began to take place. The song, "Clean Up Woman", became a Top 5 pop and #2 R&B hit, and would later influence a remix of Mary J. Blige's "Real Love" single with the sample of its guitar riffs; R&B girl group trio SWV's "I'm So Into You" also featured a sample from "Clean Up Woman," as did Afrika Bambaataa's song "Zulu War Chant", and Sublime's "Get Out!" remix. In 1974, Wright scored big with the songs "Tonight is the Night" (about a real-life love affair that happened with Wright when she was a teenager) and "Where is the Love" (which won her a GRAMMY for Best R&B Song).

After experiencing the Alston labels apparent dissolution in late '79, she rebounded founding her own record label, Ms. B Records in 1985. In1988, Wright made music history by being the first woman to have a gold record on her own label, (self written, arranged, produced, and published). With the release of Mother Wit, which featured two of her biggest hits in years, "No Pain No Gain" and the "After The Pain." On both songs, Wright displays her powerful upper register capabilities and seven-octave range.

By 2001 a compilation album The Very Best of Betty Wright was released, along with her first studio album in several years, Fit for a King. After co-producing the first two Joss Stone albums, (2003, 2004) multiple GRAMMY nominations, Vocal production on Diddy and Keyshia Cole’ Last Night (#1),a Vocal Coaching spot on Making the Band 3, which spawned the group Danity Kane, Wright managed to squeeze in an amazing collab with her dear friend Ms Angie Stone which garnered them a GRAMMY nomination in Best duets category. Ms. B is also vocal coach to Lil Wayne, who she declares has the memory of a space alien: a phenomenon. Wright also co-produced the critically acclaimed Bible Belt, the freshman presentation of Diane Birch, who came to Ms B "s writing camp and got more than she bargained for...the hook-up...which is why they call her Mama.

This Mother of 5 ( Aisha, Patrice, Patrick*, Chaka, and Asher, (*deceased due to gun violence Dec 25, 2005.)) still manages to mentor several young singer/songwriters in a home-based camp called The MOST, which is an acronym for Mountain Of Songs Today, Wright has been instrumental in the careers of hundreds of artists (vocal coaching, production, song writing, backing vocalist and co-ordinator, music consultancy, etc)The likes of Beyonce, Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Lopez, Joss Stone, Mia X, Trick Daddy, Flo Rida, DJ Khaled, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Alice Cooper, Bill Wyman(Rolling Stones) and on and on til the break of dawn.....!”.

To honour and recognise the influence and important of Betty, here are songs from artists who owe her a debt. Whether she has coached and supported them, or one can hear an artist taking their lead from Wright, there is compassion, respect and affection for an artist who we will never see the likes of again. This Inspired By… is about the powerful, influential, timeless and…

TRULY stunning Betty Wright.