FEATURE: Looking Ahead… Songs from Albums Turning Fifteen in 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Ahead…

 

Songs from Albums Turning Fifteen in 2023

__________

LOOKING ahead to 2023…

I am doing a run of features marking great albums celebrating big anniversaries. I am now at 2008 –albums from a very strong year for music. Albums that are going to be fifteen in 2023. I am marking this anniversary with a playlist of songs from that year. It was a hugely broad year for music, and there are some brilliant songs in the playlist below. I am looking forward to covering 2013 next, but let us continue with remarkable albums turning fifteen next year. Such an important anniversary, these songs below are wonderful. If you are not sure which top albums came out in 2008, then the playlist below gives you an idea of how epic…

THE year was.

FEATURE: Revisiting... Kae Tempest - The Line Is a Curve

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting...

 

Kae Tempest - The Line Is a Curve

__________

AN artist who is more of a poet…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Wolfgang Tillmans

and voice of their generation, Kae Tempest’s latest album, The Line Is a Curve, is among this year’s absolute best. I am including it in Revisiting… as it may have passed some people by. This year has been a phenomenal one for music, with so many interesting albums released. Everybody needs to spend time with Tempest’s latest gem! I may do one more of these features before the end of the year and throw some fresh light on an album released this year. Maybe those not familiar with Kae Tempest’s work would not have heard The Line Is a Curve. Their music is so remarkable, and the lyrics are among the most profound, moving and direct. The way Tempest can  cut the core and get inside the heart. That is a gift they have had for years now. One of their most astonishing albums to date, I will end with just a couple of the reviews. They are glowing. Released back in April, The Line Is a Curve refers, I think, to sexuality and gender. In August 2020, in an Instagram post, Tempest came out as non-binary. Formerly recording as Kate Tempest, Kae Tempest is an artist who is finally more comfortable in their skin. Being who they want to be, rather than what others perceive them to be. They are just starting out on this new path, but is it great knowing that there is a sense of freedom and a new chapter starting for a remarkable songwriter, rapper, author and poet. I will come to some reviews for one of this year’s finest albums. First, The Guardian interviewed Tempest ahead of the release of their latest album. I have selected a few passages, as it is quite a revealing and hard-hitting talk:  

“Coming out has been huge,” Tempest says, tentatively. “A beautiful but difficult thing to do publicly.” The process has been fraught with pain and uncertainty. “It’s hard enough to say: ‘Hey look, I’m trans or non-binary,’ to loved ones. And I have this twin life beyond my friends and family.”

“Trans people are so loving, so fucking beautiful,” they say. “I think of my community, and how much strength I’ve got from people telling me I don’t have to go through this alone.” Tempest feels the power of visibility. “If I hide, and I’m ashamed of myself, it’s [as if] I’m ashamed of them.”

Tempest is on more solid ground expressing themselves through their work, and their latest offering is no exception. Next month sees the release of their fourth solo album, The Line Is a Curve. Their first two albums received Mercury prize nominations. Tempest has already written three plays, a novel and six poetry books and last year published On Connection, their debut work of nonfiction. “But it’s starting to hit me how different this album is from everything else,” they say, “how far it could potentially go. It’s reaching for something beyond what the others have been.”

Musically, The Line Is a Curve is certainly a more introspective and personal affair than what has come before; Tempest’s lyrical and performance prowess, however, remains consistent. Each track goes in deep: “I can feel myself opening up … I’ve stopped hoping, I’m learning to trust; let me give love, receive love, and be nothing but love.”

For the first time in eight years, Tempest’s face is emblazoned on the artwork, too. It’s a sign, they say, of wanting to invite listeners in, in a way that previously felt difficult. Tempest spent years simultaneously desperate for the spotlight, and hugely uncomfortable inside it.

“For the last couple of records,” they say, “I wanted to disappear completely from the front-facing aspects of the industry.” There was a genuine desire to let the work speak for itself; constantly grappling with the fact that as a writer their output was enough, yet putting out music meant being public-facing. “But this time, I want to be different.”

“This whole album, and this process, and me coming out, is me squaring myself with the idea of what being a musician is,” they say, “and how that differs from being a playwright or an author, where you can be less visible.” Part of Tempest longs for that invisibility. “At the same time, what am I scared of? It’s my life.” Maybe, they say, openness might be healing. “The pain of what it used to be – to be interviewed or on telly, that pain is also about [gender] dysphoria,” they say. “And because I’m doing something to treat that, maybe it’s not going to hurt this time”.

“I am aware my brain is fucking intense,” they reply, cracking a smile. The room feels lighter. “It’s like this weird mate always hanging out with me.” In the past, they’ve crashed hard. “Back in the day, I’d come back from a tour and I’d fall over. I couldn’t even make it to bed. It would take me days to fill the reservoir again.” Now, they hope things might be different.

“I was always me on stage,” they say, “but I was hiding who I was, including from myself … When I perform I go to the depths; beyond gender, beyond body. I leave everything behind. That’s why it was addictive.”

This time, though, it will be Kae Tempest transcending. “I’ve not had a tour where I’ve known this iteration of myself,” Tempest says, eyes closed. “It’s going to be joyful, although I’ve got no fucking clue where it’ll take me”.

This is Tempest’s show, but musicians who have been playing with them since they first began gigging provide little smatterings of drums, guitar, tuba, cornet, and french horn. Further contributions come from Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten (whose verse on “I Saw Light” feels conservative and glib compared to Tempest’s incisive and intimate imagery) and former BROCKHAMPTON member Kevin Abstract, who was introduced to Tempest through Rick Rubin, the album’s executive producer. Tempest and Carey have spent the last several years learning from the studio guru, using their time at Shangri-La trying to reconstruct the relationship between Tempest’s intricately polysyllabic verses with Carey’s post-dubstep productions. On 2019’s The Book of Traps and Lessons, their first Rubin-produced project, Carey reined in his sound, leaving more space for Tempest’s words. Carey and Tempest repeat this formula on The Line Is a Curve: As Carey’s synths brood, Tempest explores a whole poetry anthology’s worth of meters. Their dramatic delivery functions like a musical monologue, and their lyrics, which are stuffed with glottal stops and plosive consonants, function like a layer of percussion against Carey’s largely beatless electronic meanderings.

Throughout, Tempest balances character study, vignettes, monologues, and prosaic details that function metonymically—“Discarded masks, empty tubes/The colds, the flus,” they rap on “Salt Coast”—with each detail reconstructing the universe we live in. Tempest’s visceral yet temperate delivery is comparable to Little Simz’s calm conviction. Like Simz, too, Tempest is almost Biblical in their mode of address. Tempest’s linguistic instinct, however, is nearly peerless. The tight iambic trimeter of “Nothing to Prove”—ten lines of six slick syllables—sounds like bullets. Elsewhere, on “Priority Boredom,” where each verse is dedicated to its own vowel sound, the monotony of individualism is cleverly represented with congested “or” sounds: “Priority boredom/Gorging/Four courses/Forced absorption,” they spit, the words like slushy fruit in their mouth”.

Let us round up with a review from DIY. Maybe not quite as highly-reviewed and well-received as, say, 2016’s Let Them Eat Chaos, The Line Is a Curve is still a phenomenal album with some of Kae Tempest’s most heartfelt, moving and stunning lyrics. As someone renowned for their gift with words, The Line Is a Curve does not disappoint! It is an album that becomes richer and more rewarding each time you pass through it:

“The art of passing stories down through generations has long been replaced by the ability to capture words as data, to be stored until beyond human obsolescence. But even though this art is no longer practised, Kae Tempest is unafraid to share their experiences with us all, in the form of beat-laden, lucid poetry. The minimal beats on ‘The Line Is A Curve’ lean on Kae’s spoken vocals, the artist directing them, as opposed to the other way around. Their handpicked transcontinental roster of collaborators stretches from Brockhampton’s Kevin Abstract on ‘More Pressure’ to the glacé lullaby of fellow Londoner Lianne La Havas. Each word is meticulously delivered, with the strength given to each syllable making the entire record a heady and vivid listen. We are instantly placed in Kae’s shoes, surrounded by the same media onslaught, bubbling anxiety and artistic growth they experience every time they open their eyes. ‘Salt Coast’ utilises meandering coastal metaphors to paint an evocative picture of Kae’s headspace, while the minimal ‘I Saw Light’ sees Tempest team up with Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten, delivering an enchanting masterclass in duet poetry. On ‘The Line Is A Curve’ Kae Tempest removes their mask, revealing an intimate and often blunt aperture into their lived experience. Rife with feelings of ephemeral isolation and deep personal anxieties, they have realised a new wave of modern storytelling, forging ‘The Line Is A Curve’ as an answer to an open call for honesty”.

A typically amazing and gifted performer, I cannot wait to see Tempest hit the road next year. I think they have completed some dates in promotion of The Line Is a Curve, but there is gong to be hunger and demand to see more dates come to pass. With a loving and loyal fanbase there is this support behind Tempest in what has been a changeable and challenging year in many ways. I hope that 2023 is a year where Kae Tempest experiences so much…

SUCCESS and happiness.

FEATURE: Looking Ahead… Songs from Albums Turning Twenty in 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Ahead…

 

Songs from Albums Turning Twenty in 2023

__________

LOOKING ahead to 2023…

I am doing a run of features marking great albums celebrating big anniversaries. I am now at 2003 –albums from the first big anniversary year of this century. Albums that are going to be twenty in 2023. I am marking this huge anniversary with a playlist of songs from 2003. It was a hugely exciting year for music, and there are some phenomenal songs in the playlist below. I am looking forward to covering 2008 next, but let us continue with remarkable albums turning twenty next year. Such an important anniversary, these songs below are incredible. If you are not sure which great albums came out in 2003, then the playlist below gives you an idea of how awesome…

THE year was.

FEATURE: An Artist Primed to Go Stratospheric in 2023: The Sensational and Mesmeric Madison Beer

FEATURE:

 

 

An Artist Primed to Go Stratospheric in 2023

PHOTO CREDIT: Dana Trippe for Glamour

 

The Sensational and Mesmeric Madison Beer

_________

WITH one of the coolest and most recognisable names…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Bethany Vargas

in modern music, Madison Beer is an artist I wanted to return to. I have previously written about her remarkable 2021 debut album, Life Support. Beer co-wrote the album and co-produced most of the tracks. I have argued how it is a hugely underrated album. One of the most impressive and stunning debut albums of last year, I think that the New York-born twenty-three-year-old artists is going to ascend to enormous heights. There are so many amazing solo artists out there right now, but I think Beer can join the most popular artists of the mainstream. I have written a Spotlight feature about her before, but I wanted to highlight Beer again as she is an amazing artist who recently released Showed Me (How I Fell In Love With You). Inspired by The Turtles’ version of the classic, You Showed Me, it was a wonderful and hypnotic song. It ranks alongside my favourite singles of the year. Beer also released the incredible song Dangerous earlier this year too. It was another big year for an artist with a massive following across Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. I have a lot of affection and respect for Madison Beer. Such a mature and inspiring young woman, she has faced a lot of criticism and overcome do many hurdles. As someone who has borderline personality disorder, it must be incredible challenging on a day-to-day basis. Maybe Life Support was written from a slightly darker place, but it is an honest and remarkably moving album that everyone needs to hear.

I want to come to a few interviews from earlier year. Madison Beer will be releasing her second studio album next year I think. New singles have even bested the staggering work on Life Support. Here is someone who is very young yet sounds like an established star. She is an artist who will collaborate with some massive peers and see her new album proclaimed and given huge respect. I want to start with some excerpts from a Glamour interview back in August:

“As Madison prepares for the release of her second album and launches her newest single, she sits down in her backstage glam room with me to talk about inner work, her thoughts on TikTok music “I don't really care if I'm never like the biggest thing on the planet, I'd rather stay true to my artistry in my integrity and the things that I like.” she says, and what her full-beat actually looks like.

Pick me apart why don’t you…

“I've sort of been picked apart since I was super young. I got discovered when I was 12. So I've had my appearance commented on for a majority of my life, which wasn't easy. It's never gotten easy. It still isn't easy. I think that it definitely messed me up a lot especially when I was younger because in the years that I was supposed to be playing with makeup and figuring things out, people were making fun of me and saying that I looked ugly or weird or whatever. I feel like I was never really given like a full chance to just experiment with what kind of makeup I liked or what style I was into. I was always bullied for anything that I tried. People were telling me things I didn't see before… So that made me kind of crawl into a shell a bit.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Dana Trippe 

Busy doing the inner work

“For anyone struggling with self image I think it all starts with you and with your relationship with yourself. It's a lot deeper than our appearances and what we wear and what we do. A lot of us have a lot of healing to do I think. You'll be surprised when you do inner work on your soul and your heart, how that manifests itself into how you present yourself, how you act and how you function in reality. It definitely affected me a lot and I was realising that I maybe was partially confused and conflicted because I wasn't happy with who I was internally.”

I love the person that I am now, but teen-me needed a real pep talk

“I think just getting older, obviously inherently helps a lot, but I had to do a lot of inner work, to be able to stop intrusive thoughts. I understand that I was letting people's opinions affect me, which is human and normal and that's totally fine. I don't feel any shame for letting people affect me as a child, and even now people’s opinions still do. Growing up, it was definitely harder, because I didn't know who I was. I was still trying to figure out, who is Madison Beer as a human being first and foremost, and I didn't know the answer to that. So when people were already hating on everything I was before, I couldn’t even give myself the chance to decide if it was right or wrong. That was really tough and confusing.”

I’m really proud of my new music…

“I think that the new music is very true to me and true to the music that I listen to in my everyday life. It sounds a lot like the things that I get influenced by. So I'm really excited to have an album and music out there that's I would actually listen to. I'm not saying my album now isn't but I guess I’m growing and I'm changing. The whole album in general has been a very emotional, awesome experience for me because I really just tried to let go of all the pressures that I put on myself.”

Tiktok is ruining music

‘I guess also TikTok has really ruined a lot of music where it's like labels and stuff are like, ‘we want a TikTok hit’. That's so stupid. It literally goes away in two minutes and it's honestly insulting. Music is my art, it's my passion. It's what has literally kept me alive my entire life. Now you're telling me I have to make a f*cking song that's gonna be sniped for 15 seconds for kids to dance, to? Like f*ck off. It's like that scene, I forget what movie it is, where this guy gets assigned to be a police officer and then they have him working the parking meters on his first day, but he's like, all I wanted my whole life was to be an officer and yet I'm literally putting coins in readers. You know what I mean? You literally dream to be an artist and then you are f*cking writing TikTok songs. That's not gonna happen ever with me and I don't really care if I'm never like the biggest thing on the planet, I'd rather stay true to my artistry in my integrity and the things that I like. So don't expect any TikTok hits coming from Madison Beer. If it happens organically. Great, but if not, oh well”.

On a bit of a tangent, like music peers such as Taylor Swift, not only is Beer a remarkable writer and producer. I think she could enjoy some huge acting roles. I would love to see her on the big screen more. Maybe that is a lot of pressure now but, with an amazingly loving fanbase and people comparing Beer to some of the modern greats, there will be a lot of demands this year. NME spoke with Beer in September. Among other subjects, they discussed the influence of Billie Eilish, and receiving deserved co-producer credits on her songs:

“Even if I still have to shout to be heard, I am heard and that’s enough,” she said. “I know what I deserve, I know what I worked for, what credit I should be given. I think that’s also another topic of misogyny in the industry.”

Beer added: “I think that women get discredited a lot and undermined for their intelligence and their ability to do things the same way men can. I definitely always want to fight for the producing credit or the directing credit or whatever I did on tour because I think it’s important for people to see a woman’s name in those titles, so they can know you indeed can do the same thing.”

When asked who she felt in the industry was doing a great job of creating change for artists, Beer mentioned Eilish and her brother Finneas as examples.

“The first person who comes to mind is Billie Eilish, because I think the topics she touches on in her music are so prolific,” she said. “She speaks about things that a lot of other artists don’t and are maybe afraid to, which is valid because we’ve all been conditioned to be afraid of speaking about certain things.”

Beer added: “What her and Finneas have created is really incredible and I really look up to them. They are two people I am very glad to see at the top because there are some who aren’t the best and who don’t stand for the right things, and I think [they really do].”

The singer also pointed to Eilish’s track ‘Your Power’ as an example of using your voice in the industry, pointing to the track’s subject matter of abuse of power and gaslighting.

“A song like, ‘Your Power’ that’s a difficult song to write and I think the fact that she did that and the fact that she fought for it to come out as one of her singles probably wasn’t an easy sell, especially to her label,” Beer told NME. “I’m sure she had to fight for that to come out, that’s awesome. She also directs her own videos, everytime I watch one of her videos and see ‘directed by Billie Eilish’ I’m like, ‘that’s my girl’.”

Last month, Beer played Reading & Leeds for her first time, and prior to the performance, she said she was “really excited about”.

“I’ve heard it’s awesome,” she said. “I hope I fit in, I hope everyone likes it. I’m a bit nervous [as] I feel like there’s a lot of way cooler people than me on the line-up, so I’m like ‘do I fit in here!’, but hopefully it’ll be fun”.

Before getting to the final interview, I want to bring in a feature from The Line of Best Fit. Catching up with her in October, they spoke with an artist currently working on her new project (whether that is an album or something else). Beer was also nearing the end of a busy year of touring. The interview led to Beer choosing songs that mean a lot to her. The selection are surprising and wonderful. I chose a few that caught my eye:

“Beer’s learned restraint and maturity have come from years of trial and error. Indeed, her new music reflects that too. Though her older tracks often feature complex layers of electronic production, she’s shifted course in her newer offerings. Beer’s latest single “Showed Me (How I Fell In Love With You)” feels effortless. It’s right in Beer’s wheelhouse, taking cues from ’60s records, an era that excites her above all others. The instrumentation is straightforward and slick, the vocals restrained while still showcasing Beer’s prowess as a singer.

“I’m excited for everyone to hear it because I think it’s a really good example of the new direction I’m going in,” she says. “I’ve been in the industry for so long, I was such a baby when I started, so I think it’s only natural that as I’ve gotten older my music has also progressed and changed with me. And I don’t think I’m done by any means.”

And as she continues to evolve into making music that she’s increasingly proud of, part of that process has been consistently drawing on the people and influences that ground her the most. Her Nine Songs selections were chosen with that ethos in mind. “I picked songs that reminded me of certain people or happy moments for me, anything I could tie memories back to or that I’ve found a lot of inspiration in.”

“Tragedy” by the Bee Gees

I love the Bee Gees and I always have, but funnily enough I’m not as into them as my little brother is - they’re his favorite band. We were in the car around three summers ago, and he was playing “Tragedy” and singing along to it. He has this amazing voice. We probably played it 70 times through this one specific summer - we listened to it every single day.

So much about that summer was amazing. We live in New York, so we were just having fun and driving around in the Hamptons. It was beautiful, and we were being silly, which was so needed after so many years of not living together. I love spending time with him, he’s one of those people I can completely relax around.

I always think of my brother when I think of this song, and so it’s one of those songs that will always put me in a better mood or put a smile on my face.

“In My Life” by The Beatles

I’m a huge Beatles fan, they’re my number one for everything. Part of it is the ‘60s, which to me were the best years for music. I don’t know why, it’s not a meticulously thought-out opinion or anything, it’s just the music that’s stuck with me. I think it was a different time, people were more eager to be themselves and experiment, and it was such a cool coming of age time for music.

When I listen to music from then, I feel really connected to it, so that’s why I always reference it. I try to do anything I can to pull inspiration from that era and give people some of its essence in my music. I try to give people the same feeling from my songs that I get listening to ‘60s stuff.

With “In My Life” specifically, I’ve known this song pretty much my whole life, but it didn’t have such an important meaning to me until about five or six years ago. I was with my dad, and we were having a really deep, important conversation about a lot of things to do with our relationship. We were driving and talking and this song came on shuffle, and I remember for a second it cut the tension and we were able to both just listen to it. We both were crying by the end of the song, but because we were having a conversation that felt super serious and deep and heavy, it was somehow able to lighten things up again. It was a way to say, “I love you.”

“Wake Up Alone” by Amy Winehouse

Amy has always been one of my biggest inspirations. She’s an incredible talent, it’s otherworldly.

This song in particular, while maybe not my most played, it’s the most special, because my best friend Lena showed it to me. She told me about this record and when I told her I’d never heard it, she couldn’t believe it. She then said to me, “You should totally cover this song.”

She had brought up the idea of the cover to me one night when we were on FaceTime and sent me the song the next day after I told her I hadn’t heard it. She just kept saying, “Dude, listen to it.” And I did, and I loved it. The record is 6/8, and I love 6/8 records, the beat of them is beautiful. Lyrically, too, it’s very special.

Lena suggesting that cover did a lot for me, because when I was first doing covers on YouTube I was always told to make covers of songs that, frankly, I didn’t want to do. They were songs that didn’t feel right to me and weren’t showcasing my vocals. So to hear someone finally say that I would sound great on something that I loved and knew I would sing well felt really good.

That’s also just the bigger picture of Lena, she makes me feel really seen. She holds a really special place in my heart. She lives in Maryland, so we don’t see each other often, but we talk every day online”.

Having been in the music industry for over a decade, Madison Beer is not new. She is an artist still coming through. Someone who will hit her peak in years to come. Having been featured on numerous covers and with her streaming figures skyrocketing, there is no doubt she is a major artist. I feel everyone should know about her. She did reveal in this interview (from October), that she has finished off her new album. It will be exciting to hear:

“I know you co-produced a lot of ‘Life Support’ - do you usually have a clear idea of the sounds you want in a song or does that get workshopped?

I go in with a list of inspiration and sounds that I wanna work from, so I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want.

I get the feeling you’re a real perfectionist. How do you know when a song is finished?

My fans would say I have a really hard time with that. It took me like five years to finish my first album, solely because I was like “wait, I wanna add one more thing!” I’m letting go of that a bit now. When I listen to the album we delivered a month or two ago, I am like “I wanna do this different”, but I think that’s how it’s always gonna be, and I just have to allow myself to grow in other areas. It’s okay if something changes, and I can always perform it differently live! It’s fun to give songs a new life when they’re out, so I’m trying to let go of that a little.

PHOTO CREDIT: Niamh Louise shooting Madison Beer during her Life Support Tour

I’m sure you’re not thinking about what would be ‘a hit’ when you’re writing songs, but do you feel pressure when it comes to things like chart positions?

No, I don’t because I don’t really chart anyways! It’s something that I’ve changed my perspective on a lot. Growing up, hits and charts were everything and that was what I was always told needed to be achieved, whereas now my focus has changed. I want [to make] something that really resonates with people; something that people organically listen to and love, and if it’s not top five on radio or the biggest hit in the world, that’s totally fine. “Selfish”, for example – my biggest record – that’s not considered a hit, because it was never on the charts. It started streaming massively a year after it came out. I stopped playing those games with myself and I’ve freed myself from the shackles of thinking “this has to do this”. That’s not my goal. My goal is to make music and if it clicks, it clicks. If not, I’m proud of it regardless.

That’s good to hear. I guess that must help it to feel less like a job, too—because I imagine there are times that it does.

Yeah! And it sucks the fun out of it, ‘cause you’re only setting yourself up for disappointment when you might not chart; you might not do those things. I just don’t think my music deserves that. I don’t even put it on myself; I’m like “you’re amazing, if you don’t chart, that doesn’t mean I love you any less”, you know? That’s the relationship I have with it now.

You’ve been quite vocal about the problems with the industry on tracks like 'Dear Society', where you said the magazines had treated you like you were “21 since 17”. Do you think there have been any cultural shifts since you wrote that track?

That’s really interesting that you bring that up. I was just talking to someone recently about how I had photos leaked when I was like 15, 16 and I wrote a lot about that on International Women’s Day a couple of years ago. It’s definitely mind-blowing because – I say this as cautiously as I can – I don’t think that a girl in my position would be treated the same way today. I received a lot of hate at the time, my photos were spread everywhere, and I do think the internet has changed in that regard.

I see a lot of younger, underage girls who are more protected now, but I’m so sad that it took people like me to get there and I do think we have leaps and bounds still to go. I don’t think the priority of the internet is child safety, or protecting influencers or artists who are super, super young, and I wish that it was seen as more important. But I do think that it has changed a lot and I don’t think someone in the same position would get the same backlash as I did.

A lot of your last album came from a dark place - are you in a better headspace now?

In ways, yeah, for sure. I’ve realised that healing is not linear and neither is your mental health journey. I think there are ways that I’m better and there are ways that I’m worse, but I’m taking things day by day and I’m definitely in an overall better place than when I wrote Life Support. I was very suicidal then; I was going through a lot of really dark things. I feel like I’m in a better place with my healing; I’m more at peace with things that have happened in my life, and that feels really good.

"Loving those parts of yourself that are unchangeable is important – I’m always gonna be a sensitive person. I’m always gonna be someone that takes things to heart. I don’t look at these things in a negative way anymore..."

If you don’t mind, I’d love to chat about borderline personality disorder (BPD) briefly. There’s a lot of stigma and misinformation out there online – how have you found the journey to understanding your diagnosis?

I think that mine is a journey, for sure. BPD isn’t the only thing that I’m diagnosed with – although I think it’s the most significant, there’s also other things that are crippling to me everyday – but what I can say about it is that the biggest shift and the biggest blessing has been my perspective change with how I view myself. For a long time, I was surrounded by people – in relationships, or on social media – who made me feel awful. They made me feel like everything I thought was right was wrong, and that screwed me up in ways that I can’t even describe. There’s been a lot of undoing for me. I used to hate what I now know as my BPD ‘outbursts’, I guess you can call them, but what’s beautiful now is that I actually look at them at a bit of a strength sometimes.

I don’t hate that I overthink stuff. I think it’s awesome that I can run through things thoroughly. And although it might feel like the end of the world when someone cancels plans, I love my capacity to care. There are of course times that I’m like “relax”, and moments that I wish I didn’t have to struggle with this, but with a lot of therapy, learning, healing, and looking at things in a different light, I think that’s been a big change in perspective. Loving those parts of yourself that are unchangeable is important – I’m always gonna be a sensitive person. I’m always gonna be someone that takes things to heart. I don’t look at these things in a negative way anymore.

If I can say this to anyone listening – whether you’re diagnosed with BPD or you’re just someone who’s mean to yourself – give yourself some positive affirmation. ‘Cause a lot of stuff in society is down to conditioning; being sensitive is deemed bad, and having your own back can come across as being defensive. As long as you have good intentions, speak from your heart, and mean well, I think everything else is gonna be okay, and that’s the biggest thing for me.

What’s been inspiring your lyrics recently?

Well, I’ve finished my album and when I was finishing it up, I was honestly really inspired by my therapy sessions! I feel like I’ve learned a lot about myself and I’ve really been able to make peace with things that have transpired in my life. I have a song in my album that’s about… a lot of things, and I’m not gonna tell you too much because I’m trying to be good and keep things secret for now! But there’s one song that’s about feeling a bit dissociated from my younger self and feeling like I kinda had formative years of mine taken, in a way, and just giving myself that; acknowledging that, and being like “hey, it’s okay to mourn homecoming, prom or camp”. Allowing myself to be empathetic towards myself has been amazing, and I think that’s been really inspiring for me. There’s a lot of that on the album that you’ll hear”.

A truly brilliant young woman and influential artist who is not only compelling future artists. She is a very honest and warm human who is connecting with her fans. Giving them strength and heart, this is a phenomenal talent who will be around for decades more. I hope that Madison Beer comes to the U.K. next year and tours, as there are a lot of fans here. Whatever you do, go and show the beguiling and super-talented Madison Beer…

SO much love.

FEATURE: All the Things I Should've Done That I Never Did: Imagining Kate Bush’s Alternative Career Arc

FEATURE:

 

 

All the Things I Should've Done That I Never Did

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

 

Imagining Kate Bush’s Alternative Career Arc

__________

THE title might be a bit misleading…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Colin Davey/Getty Images

but I have been thinking about a few events and things that Kate Bush suggested or started but never completed or fulfilled. Another feature inspired by Tom Doyle’s new book, Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. Bush has been the subject of many other books herself, but there was a suggestion that she would write her autobiography. I think Off the Tracks was the title (though I haven’t got a copy of Doyle’s book to hand, so someone may correct me), though that never came to light. I know why there would be demand to have one of there. Such a popular and original artist, what a fascinating read that would have been. Someone more comfortable writing songs and recording, maybe it would have been too revealing and time-consuming writing a memoir. I have been thinking about the offers and things that Bush would have done or explored but never did. Sort of paraphrasing her 1989 song, This Woman’s Work, which she wrote from an expectant dad’s perspective. In it, there is this sense of regretting all the things (he) never did or said. I often wonder how much of Bush is in that song, but she has explained its origin. I can see why a memoir would have been great, but also why she would not want to commit. That was earlier in her career, bur I am curious whether the offer has come back up since.

Bush did release a book of lyrics, How to Be Invisible, four years back, but that was lyrics already written. Since she wrote articles and correspondences earlier in her career, I am thinking about whether Bush has actually written any longform pieces since. She has written updates and posts to her fans, but nothing in the way of books. I think, if she had released a memoir back in the 1980s or 1990s, then she might have felt too exposed or that she had to ‘set the record straight’ when it came to gossip or perceptions about her. The music is Bush’s way of communicating, and she has always guarded her personal life. A memoir might also have signalled a career. Things have changed since then, so I wonder whether that would be more inviting. After the success Bush has had this year, maybe not a tell-all or career-spanning memoir. Instead, perhaps a chapter or time of her life. I do feel there is a book inside Kate Bush, and it would strike me as something she would take to. I am sure she had many offers, and it does not mean that her career would be over. Maybe there will be another album, so that would probably take priority. The almost-memoir Bush was going to write was shelved but 2023 and beyond might be a different story. Let’s see what comes about.

There are a couple of other areas that Bush could have stepped into. Recording and promotion has dominated her career, so acting wasn’t that big. She did do a bit of acting. She appeared in Les Dogs: a Comic Strip episode from 1990, Bush played the part of a bride. The band are Les Dogs, and there is a gun battle at a wedding where many of the guests die. Bush played a silent part, but she did take in a central role in the 1993 short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. One that she directed and wrote, it is her biggest acting role ever. I think that short failed or was not received well because Bush took on too much. She is a very capable actor and one who could have thrived under the right director. Maybe requiring a little coaching and more time, 1993 was a year when she took on too much. Bush was offered a role opposite Oliver Reed in 1986’s Castaway. The role went to Amanda Donohue. Bush would have essentially been naked with Reed on a desert island, so you can understand why she turned it down! She contributed a song for the film, Be Kind to My Mistakes, that opens the film. I know Bush got offered a load of acting roles. Someone who is very funny and shows such dynamic and theatrical range through her music videos, I have said before how she would have made a great actor. If a memoir would have been premature or not a great move, maybe acting would have taken her away from the studio. I do feel a few well-chosen roles would have been interesting. Something comedic or a thriller. She would have been approached for gothic and darker roles based on Wuthering Heights and perception about her. I do wonder what was put Bush’s way in the way of scripts.

Dedicated to her music, acting might have been a diversion or distraction Bush could have done without. Still, it seems like an opportunity missed that she did not take to the screen more. I can see her doing a drama or film in 1985 or 1986 (not Castaway) where she really shone and would have gone on to do other things. As she guards her privacy and never wanted fame, that might have brought unwelcomed press intrusion and celebrity her way. The third career trajectory actually relates to music. It is touring. Or just live work. Bush did take The Tour of Life around the U.K. and Europe in 1979. She was on stage after that and it wasn’t the case 2014’s Before the Dawn was the first time she was on the stage since 1979. That said, she didn’t do anything large-scale between 1979 and 2014. Again, recording got in the way I guess. I feel that Bush might have felt touring would have taken too much time away from new music and she would be on the road endlessly. A couple of groups that really inspired her, The Beatles and Steely Dan, gave up touring during their careers and dedicated themselves more to the studio – and, in the process, they created their most popular works. I think a lot of artists are expected to tour every album they release. After 1979, there would have been demand for Bush to tour Never for Ever (1980). Maybe The Dreaming (1982) would be less demanded, but it would have made a fascinating live show! Imagine pairing Never for Ever and The Dreaming?! Also, after Hounds of Love (1985) exploded, I can imagine that intensified. Maybe Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave would have been too hard to stage (though she did do it fort Before the Dawn) and she released videos for three of the four songs from the album’s first half.

Regardless, Bush only toured one and did one residency. She often said in interviews how she will do a tour or is trying to figure it out. Like writing a book or going into films, perhaps touring would have taken Bush’s career in a different direction and robbed her of time writing and being in the studio. Although she loved 1979’s The Tour of Life, I feel it is the exhaustion that put her off touring altogether. Performing this demanding show each evening and pushing her voice, body and soul to the limit, there wouldn’t have been much personal appeal. She loved her fans, but maybe repeating herself and traveling (she especially hared flying) would have meant fewer albums. It is hard to balance the desires of the fans with that of the artist. In Kate Bush’s case, I think the physical toll was the deciding factor when it came to ending touring. One of the only reason Bush did a residency in 2014 was because her young son Bertie helped persuade her. She stayed in London in Hammersmith and did not take Before the Dawn anywhere else. One of the big tragedies is the world did not get to see many of Bush’s songs taken  to the stage. Apart from it being a chance to see these songs come to life in a live setting, tours would allow Bush to mix songs from different albums. One can speculate about Kate Bush and what would happen if things worked out differently. I have been thinking about it because she was going to write a memoir and it was never to be – something that still could happen. Although there were so many things that she could have did but never did, we are always eternally grateful for…

ALL that she has given us!

FEATURE: Spotlight: WILLOW

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Jordan Kelsey Knight for Kerrang! 

 

WILLOW

__________

PERHAPS artist it is strange…

to feature an artist in a Spotlight feature who has been recording for years now. To be fair, at twenty-two, WILLOW is still at the start of her career! Even so, Willow Camille Reign is the daughter of actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. She has won many awards, including a Young Artist Award, an NAACP Image Award, a BET Award, and nominations for two Daytime Emmy Awards and an MTV Video Music Award. Many might recall but, back in 2010, Smith launched her music career with Whip My Hair. Known now simply as WILLOW, she comes from a hugely successful and talented family. In terms of her acting and music, she does not follow her mum and dad too closely. She very much has her own direction and career. A prolific artist and talented songwriter, she released lately I feel EVERYTHING last year. I shall come to this year’s <COPINGMECHANISM>. Perhaps her strongest album yet, I feel WILLOW grows greater, more assured and consistent with each release. She is at a point, at such a young age, when she is getting on the radar. The music radar that is. I think her acting work is more widely known. I am going to end with some reviews for <COPINGMECHANISM>. You can buy the album here. I want to start off with some interviews. GLAMOUR spoke with WILLOW (as ‘Willow Smith’ in this interview). Among subjects discussed was how, as a Black artist, she was discriminated against and pigeonholed when it comes to genre:

“Willow Smith is someone who is used to standing out. She is a Hollywood tale as old as time; daughter of superstars who has spent most of her life in front of the press. She is only 21, but there are already many titles in her orbit: singer, songwriter, actress, guitarist, spokesperson. It’s a place where many children of celebrities can crash and burn, jostling with the pressure of living up to the blinding star quality of their parents. But Willow seems to have found the antidote, and is making a name for herself, all on her own. When we meet on a Monday morning in June, speaking over Zoom, Willow calls in from her GLAMOUR cover photoshoot in a studio in Paris. Her settings are as expected of someone reared for stardom; she is surrounded by a flock of handlers, the styling team, her trusted makeup artist Raoúl, her management, assistants, PRs and more. She is also on duty today as ambassador for Mugler’s Alien Goddess fragrance; her second collaboration with the brand, fronting the campaign for the new Alien Goddess Intense Eau De Parfum – yet another marker of a mini-mogul set for growing fame.

“It’s no secret that Black artists in the alternative scene often suffer pigeonholing and discrimination in comparison to their white peers. Even someone as big a star as Willow has found herself constrained, and resisting unfair treatment has been something she’s had to become used to.

“When I wanted to do a rock album, there were a lot of executives that were like, ‘Hmm…’ she says, frowning. “If I had been white, it would’ve been completely fine; but because I’m Black it’s, ‘Well… maybe let’s just not’ – and making it harder than it needs to be.” That double-standard is something that raises concerns with her for her peers in the scene. “If I go through that, every single other Black artist is getting the pushback [too].”

In 2021, the artist dropped Lately I Feel Everything, an album that would largely define her as someone known to play with different genres. From acoustic down to nü-metal, it was Willow’s first professional foray into the alternative music scene.

“I love all different kinds of music, I don’t like to box myself into anything,” she tells me. “I was trained to be an R&B singer so I went in that direction. But I’ve always had a huge affinity for rock music ever since I was just a wee bean.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Thom Kerr

Lately I Feel Everything came as a result of pushing back with execs to make what was true to her – and of course, the record turned out as a success. But she held little surprise that it came out that way, crediting her “vision” in staying true to herself in the face of discomfort. “The most beautiful changes on earth don’t happen by being comfortable and expecting other people to change. You have to put yourself on the line sometimes. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is,” she says.

In her opinion, it’s a case of allowing “people of colour, women and all marginalised communities [to] step out of the boxes that society wants to put us in. Not even just in music, but in every part of our lives – that’s the special sauce.”

We talk about other trailblazers like Nova Twins, Bad Brains and Skunk Anansie frontwoman Skin, all Black artists who have pioneered a place in the scene. She is now one of those names paving the way for individuality as she gears up to release follow-up album Coping Mechanism this month,, but also feeding the resistance she witnessed from her mother into her own music.

“Music has been at the forefront of some of earth’s biggest paradigm shifts,” she states. “Part of the reason I love it is because it’s such a strong agent of change. I definitely think there’s always more to do in [terms of] the way that we do business in these artistic branches and endeavours. It’s systematic oppression. If we start to undo that, then hopefully real change can happen.”

I ask her how she thinks we can make better spaces for women in music and what can be done to make women feel more empowered in the music scene. “I think the music scene reflects the world,” she finally says.

“For a long time, women have been looked at and expected to be in these boxes. It’s up to the people who have been a part of the oppressing, but it’s also up to us to step out of that. That’s scary, and it’s sometimes dangerous.

We need to make better spaces for each other and stop expecting other people to make spaces for us. We need to start holding our sisters, and start listening to each other the way that we wish other people would.”

Though we keep silent on recent familial issues, Willow does not have a problem being candid. Publicising issues of mental health and her own experiences with anxiety is something important to her. Sharing advice for how fans and others can alleviate symptoms is something she’s passionate about, and she talks to me about her own mental health management.

“Sometimes [managing your mental health] is so overwhelming that you can’t really bring yourself to do much else besides reminding yourself of the things that really matter,” she says. “For me, I love a good mantra. Recently, my mantra has been, ‘I accept everything as it is, and I’m grateful for it.’ Repeating that over and over again; that’s been really helping me”.

Having made an impression at such a young age, WILLOW has maintained this incredible career. It would be easy to compare her To Will Smith, but you feel this conscious effort to push away from that and do her own thing. In this Billboard interview, WILLOW was asked about her family and recent controversy. She also revealed a particular artist that she would like to work with:

“Though she may have first gained fame as a 9-year-old, Willow’s current cavalcade of music firmly sets her apart from child stars who withered on the vine, burnt out by a demanding industry or left unable to nimbly evolve into compelling adult creators. She never resigned herself to becoming a novelty act or coasted on the credentials of her megastar parents, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.

And despite the constant scrutiny of her family, Willow has stayed above the fray — even, most recently, this past March, when her father slapped Academy Awards host Chris Rock following a joke he made about her mother’s alopecia. The ensuing media firestorm, Willow says, didn’t derail her creativity or “rock me as much as my own internal demons.”

“I see my whole family as being human, and I love and accept them for all their humanness,” she says. “Because of the position that we’re in, our humanness sometimes isn’t accepted, and we’re expected to act in a way that isn’t conducive to a healthy human life and isn’t conducive to being honest.”

Perhaps because she knew this early on, Willow learned the power in a judicious “no” and steered her career in a direction that always felt true to her, even as it changed. Today, she’s in complete command of her musical fate. Perched on the couch, as she prepares for her Billboard photo shoot in a humid warehouse near her Los Angeles hometown, she doesn’t miss a beat discussing her art, speaking with her hands and disrupting her own train of thought to gush about her latest inspiration: “I think the monks have it right.” Witnessing her independence and authoritativeness, it’s easy to see why Willow’s team follows her lead, even if it means working on a new marketing plan every few months to keep up with her steady output.

And when it comes to delivering her message, Willow says that any oft-repeated clichés about her current musical medium are beside the point. “People only say rock is dead because rock was so influential in a political way,” she says, punctuating her speech like a preacher on a pulpit. “Right now, it’s not serving the same purpose as it did in the past.” She sees a resurgence in people of color injecting it with purpose, like Kenny Hoopla and Nova Twins. And Willow’s own credibility in rock is increasingly undeniable: Lately I Feel Everything landed in the top 10 of Billboard’s Top Rock Albums chart, while her MGK collaboration “emo girl” did the same on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs. She has worked with rock stalwarts Travis Barker and Avril Lavigne, the latter of whom says she was “blown away by” Willow and her “clear vision of who she is and where she wants to go.”

Willow never imagined Lavigne would agree to collaborate (“I really didn’t think she was going to say ‘yes’ ”), but when they linked up in the studio, they bonded over the skepticism they both experienced as women in rock. “You’ll kill yourself trying to be perfect for the masses. Bunk that. That’s a losing game,” Willow says, tossing her hands up with indifference as she thinks about the people who called Lavigne a poser in the early 2000s. “If you don’t like me, I’m grateful for you, because it shows I’m authentic enough to not be for everyone.”

At any rate, she is interesting to plenty of musical contemporaries who matter much more than any passing naysayers — like, for instance, Camila Cabello, who met Willow when they meditated together with former Hindu monk and British author Jay Shetty. After, Cabello reached out to Willow to collaborate. “We had very beautiful spiritual experiences together and we had connected. That was the only reason I was down to do the song,” Willow says. That, and the track “goes hard”.

Prior to moving onto reviews for WILLOW’s latest album, this NME feature interested me. <COPINGMECHANISM> was discussed, but the topic of festivals also was introduced. WILLOW talked about playing Reading & Leeds. For a festival that still struggles when it comes to gender inequality, it is good to know that she got to wow the crowds and add something incredible to the weekend this year:

“It’s only been just over a year since WILLOW released her critically acclaimed fourth album ‘Lately I Feel Everything’, which furthered the pop-punk renaissance with the likes of ‘Grow’ and ‘Gaslight’ and featured guest appearances from Travis Barker and Avril Lavigne. Not wanting to let the momentum dip, the 21-year-old has swiftly returned with the crushing brilliance of her new LP, ‘<COPINGMECHANISM>’ (out October 7).

Asked by NME if she feels like she’s on a creative roll, WILLOW replies: “I really do. After ‘Lately I Feel Everything’, I said to myself I wasn’t going to make another album for a while. Even when I got [in the studio] with Chris [Greatti, producer], I was still telling him that I wasn’t going to make an album. But, slowly but surely, it became a very strong project.”

For the latest in NME’s In Conversation series, we caught up with WILLOW in London to discuss her new album, dream collaborators, her debut novel and more. Here’s what we learned.

‘<COPINGMECHANISM>’ might arrive just 14 months after WILLOW’s last album, but its genesis goes back much further than the fast-paced follow-up suggests. “I was always looking back at some old notes in my phone, and I had a folder and it was called ‘Coping Mechanism’,” she explains. When the star looked at the date on the folder, which at the time contained just three songs, she realised she’d started it all the way back in 2018: “This idea has been with me for a long time.”

The inspiration to reignite the work in that folder, though, is more recent, and finds WILLOW doing something she thought she’d never do. “I hate to say it, because when I made music when I was younger I really wanted to stay away from the idea of heartbreak and romantic love,” she says with a wry smile. “I felt like it was so played out. I just felt like everyone talks about that, and it’s just boring. But then your girl got her heart broken. And you know what, I said, ‘Maybe this is the time for me to make that album’. This is that album.”

WILLOW has often spoken about her love for metal and her desire to dabble with the genre. On ‘<COPINGMECHANISM>’, she finally gets her chance: the likes of ‘Perfectly Not Close To Me’ (feat. Yves Tumor) find her turning her vocals into a scream, while a host of abrasive, heavy guitar riffs fill the record. Stepping into that zone on this album made the most sense, she says, because of her producer, Chris Greatti.

“Greatti plays the guitar like a freaking titan,” WILLOW explains. “He just plays like he’s in the music. I feel like the music he likes to play the most is metal, and so that’s his forte. We just worked really well together. I wanted to do that and he was like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this – which direction should we take it?’”

Although WILLOW says she felt “so comfortable” working in that area with Greatti, she does note that metal is “not my forte”: “I can play some metal riffs, I can. But it’s not the thing that I do the best. I wish it was, and soon it might be.”

This album might not be the last time we hear the young artist experiment with metal sounds, either. “Oh, 100 per cent,” WILLOW replies when asked if she feels like she has more to explore in the genre. “I was actually playing a lot of seven-string [guitar] last year, I was super, super-obsessed. I need to get back on that because once you commit to something, you really do get better at it fairly quickly. So it just takes the commitment.”

Take one look at WILLOW’s discography and you’ll notice an impressive list of bona fide musical legends within her collaborations. The aforementioned ‘Lately I Feel Everything’ featured Blink-182 drummer Barker and pop-punk queen Avril Lavigne, while over the years she’s also teamed up with Machine Gun Kelly, Nicki Minaj, Camila Cabello and more.

Impressive as that list may be, WILLOW isn’t done working with her heroes just yet. “Oh my goodness,” she begins as she flips through her bucket list of collaborators in her head. “I want to work with Les Claypool from Primus. I also want to work with the main singer of Hiatus Kaiyote, Nai Palm: she’s amazing. There’s so many people I want to work with, the list could be infinite.”

What, then, does WILLOW look for in a collaborator? “Someone [who] is open to being experimental, and to doing things that other people may not be into doing,” she says. “And I just look for a friend. Like, if I really love you and you inspire me as a person, I’m down. I love working with people who I love – that’s really the only criteria.”

WILLOW made her debut appearance at Reading & Leeds back in August, putting in an incendiary performance on the festivals’ main stage. “It was so crazy,” she says, looking back at the weekend. “There were so many people there. I was honestly like, ‘What is going on?!’ It was so much fun and I got to perform some new songs there – I felt like the reaction to them was better than I ever could have imagined, and I’m just really grateful.”

The history of R&L isn’t something that’s lost on the LA star, either. After all, WILLOW says that she always loves performing in Europe and the UK. “The way that people consume music in the UK is just different,” she explains. “I think people in the UK care a little bit more about the quality of the music and not just what it looks like [compared to the US]”.

The amazing <COPINGMECHANISM> is among the best albums of the year. I would urge everyone to listen to it. It is clear that WILLOW is a megastar-in-waiting who is creating unbelievable music. Kerrang! had their say on <COPINGMECHANISM>:

“2021’s lately I feel EVERYTHING was a fine maiden foray into the realm of alternative music from WILLOW. A record that leaned on the pop-punk revival in both sound and personnel (Travis Barker was a collaborator on a number of tracks), it proved she had something to offer the rock world, and in its at times unconventional delivery, it suggested its young creator had the potential to become a serious creative force with the guitar. With <COPINGMECHANISM>, that promise is realised through 11 tracks of eclectic, interesting and (largely) collaborator-free rock that see WILLOW well and truly come into her own.

The intentions are clear from the outset. Within its first minute, opening track <maybe> it’s my fault goes through three stark stylistic changes that run the gamut of indie-rock to metal, but it all hangs together well, as does the similarly eccentric Falling Endlessly, where WILLOW’s excellent grasp of vocal melodies come to the fore. Like lately I feel EVERYTHING, the songs don’t hang around – of the 11 songs, only a couple cross the three-minute mark – but its fast becoming an admirable trait of her music that its able to get the job done so convincingly in such a relatively short amount of time.

Lyrically, plenty of youthful angst remains – ‘I’ll never be fine if you won’t be mine,’ she cries on the sprightly hover like a GODDESS – but there’s zero temptation on <COPINGMECHANISM> to take the predictable route and pair such words with standard pop-punk fare.

Smart, confident and put together with a real sense of intrigue, WILLOW’s latest record is a testament to having the belief to forge your own path. As coping mechanisms go, this one sounds like a winner.

Verdict: 4/5”.

I will finish off with a review from NME. Maybe not quite as known as some of the biggest albums this year, <COPINGMECHANISM> is an album that stunned and engrossed me the first time I heard it. So many people are looking forward to seeing where WILLOW heads next:

“The album’s closer ‘Batshit’ is a sweet-sounding realisation. Clanging drums and screeching guitars ring out before a brief ethereal vocal harmony from the 21-year-old floats across them, and she details a story of her seeing through time wasters and liars she’s come across in life. “If I was you I would watch out / Whatever you do, it better be true, I’m coming for you,” she warns. It might seem like she’s singing to someone else, but she could also be directing those words to herself, shedding the things she no longer likes about herself and taking accountability for her actions. It’s as though the teenage angst WILLOW once harvested for her previous album is starting to transform into mature life lessons for the punk rocker.

On all her albums, WILLOW shares honest reflections of herself, lovers and friends in her music. That’s no different on ‘<COPINGMECHANISM>’. After “taking this adventure on [her] own”, the star’s loving ethos is now all she tries to preach on ‘curious/furious’. During her Reading main stage debut back in August, she shared a similar message, getting her fans to call back to her, “I am love… You are love… We are love,” knowing how much that affirmation has helped her heal.

Curious/furious’ is also a feel-good release of the sadness and confusion WILLOW used to present on her tracks and highlights her dynamic musicianship too. Its timid verses are in stark contrast to the track’s chorus; being muted and vulnerable while explaining her past inner turmoil makes the brightness of the chorus’ riffs all the bigger and better. It’s almost like there’s a poetry behind her musical intentions – you can’t have highs without the lows.

Throughout her recent exploration of rock music, the 21-year-old artist has mainly tapped into the nostalgic nature of the ‘00s punk she grew up on and saw her mother do in the band Wicked Wisdom. On her last album, she collaborated with multi-generational superstar Avril Lavigne on ‘G R O W’ and Lavigne’s sound is heavily used throughout WILLOW’s recent work. That doesn’t mean she can’t have her own moments of genius and uniqueness, though.

On ‘<COPINGMECHANISM>’, you can tell the star is using her influences to make her own seminal sound. Playing around with nostalgic sounds of ska and pop-punk, ‘hover like a GODDESS’ shows off her idiosyncratic fusions. The verses are jerky and bouncy, taking on the fun found in a Reel Big Fish track. As soon as the drums and bass come bursting in, though, it flips back into the punk-rock sound she’s become known for. It’s tracks like these that show what the sonic future of this bright young thing’s sound could be.

Over a relatively small number of tracks compared to some of the bloated albums that get released today, WILLOW has opted for quality over quantity once again. However, despite utilising a similar premise as on her last album by plucking her feelings away on a guitar, ‘<COPINGMECHANISM>’ is still an important record in her musical progression. In the poetic and thoughtful nature of it, as well as the odd glimpse of where she could go next, WILLOW’s fifth record should be noted as her breaking sonically mature new ground”.

An artist who has already broken through but someone not known to all, the incredible WILLOW is going to have a very prolific and fascinating career. Already influencing other artists, the twenty-two-year-old is bound for glory! Many might try to compare her to her parents or other artists, but the brilliant WILLOW is…

IN a league of one.

____________

Follow WILLOW

FEATURE: Looking Ahead… Songs from Albums Turning Twenty-Five in 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Ahead…

  

Songs from Albums Turning Twenty-Five in 2023

__________

LOOKING ahead to 2023…

I am doing a run of features marking great albums celebrating big anniversaries. I am now at 1998 – albums from that almost unbeatable year that are going to be twenty-five in 2023. I am marking this big anniversary with a playlist of songs from 1998. It was a hugely exciting year for music, and there are some phenomenal songs in the playlist below. I am looking forward to covering 2003 next, but let us continue with remarkable albums turning twenty-five next year. Such an important anniversary, these songs below are incredible. If you are not sure which great albums came out in 1998, then the playlist below gives you an idea of how brilliant…

 THE year was.

FEATURE: Looking Ahead… Songs from Albums Turning Thirty in 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Ahead…

 

Songs from Albums Turning Thirty in 2023

__________

LOOKING ahead to 2023…

I am doing a run of features marking great albums celebrating big anniversaries. I am now at 1993 – albums from that killer year that are going to be thirty in 2023. I am marking this big anniversary with a playlist of songs from 1993. It was a hugely exciting year for music, and there are some amazing songs in the playlist below. I am looking forward to covering 1998 next, but let us continue with sensational albums turning thirty next year. Such an important anniversary, these songs below are massive. If you are not sure which great albums came out in 1993, then the playlist below gives you an idea of how spectacular…

THE year was.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: The Specials – More Specials

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

 

The Specials – More Specials

__________

BECAUSE of the hugely unexpected loss…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Specials in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Grecco Productions Inc.

of The Specials’ Terry Hall earlier this month, I have been thinking about the group that he led. One of the most influential Ska bands ever, the 2 Tone legends formed in Coventry in 1977. After some early changes, the first firm lineup of the group consisted of Terry Hall and Neville Staple on vocals, Lynval Golding and Roddy Radiation on guitars, Horace Panter on bass, Jerry Dammers on keyboards, John Bradbury on drums, and Dick Cuthell and Rico Rodriguez on horn. Iconic songs like Ghost Town and Too Much Too Young are embossed in music history. Such a phenomenal singer and lyricist, Terry Hall was the heart and guts of the band in my opinion. A massive loss to music, I wanted to look at one of The Specials’ best albums, More Specials, for Vinyl Corner. You can get a copy of this classic album on vinyl. An L.P. that houses Enjoy Yourself and Rat Race, More Specials is a treasure that everyone should own. I want to bring in a couple of reviews for an album released on 19th September 1980. This is what the BBC had to say in their review:

“So how does The Specials’ second album sound, nearly 30 years after its first release?

The group had stormed the British charts in 1979 with a brash, high energy brand of pop ska. But on this album keyboardist Jerry Dammers starts to become their production mastermind. Damners' favourite musical textures are odd and particularly British: basic rhythm boxes, brass sections in full cry, and a variety of cheesy keyboards and fairground and cinema organs.

There’s a brace of very strong songs with very good tunes. Two of them sounded even better as hit singles: Stereotypes and Do Nothing. But others are good enough to be hits too: the kitchen sink drama of “I Just Can’t Stand It”, the sad tale of “Pearl’s Café”.

While the tunes are jolly, the lyrics are bleak. English life is portrayed in all its drab, suffocating despair and there’s no way out. The Poor Little Rich Girl escapes to London only to end up in porn films. The air flight of International Jet Set is a claustrophobic nightmare which ends with the passengers screaming as the plane crashes. The irony of the two versions of Enjoy Yourself is very black indeed. It’s certainly accurate; life in Britain wasn’t much fun around then. But there are times when this unremitting gloom tips over into self-parody. And the second, dub half of Stereotypes is self-indulgent, while Sock It To ‘Em JB and Holiday Fortnight are filler.

The album sounds like a first draft of the Specials finest hour. Nine months later, Dammers organised all the different elements here together into Ghost Town, one of the greatest number one singles in UK pop history. After that the group fragmented. So More Specials has lots of quality, and is almost a classic”.

I will wrap things up in a minute. Even though the lyrics are political and as charged as they are on The Specials’ eponymous album of 1979. Following that album’s success and impact, band member Jerry Dammers stepped up as the band's leader where he broadened their 2 Tone sound to incorporate other genres of music. More Easy Listening. That blend works effectively and shifted The Specials on. There was some disagreement within the ranks about a fairly radical sonic shift, so we find a few different genres and sounds fighting one another throughout. I think they blend and merge brilliantly. More Specials features The album features collaborations with The Go-Go's members Belinda Carlisle, Charlotte Caffey, and Jane Wiedlin, in addition to Rhoda Dakar from The Bodysnatchers, plus Lee Thompson from Madness. In their review, AllMusic noted the following:

“Less frenzied than its predecessor, but more musically adventurous, More Specials was nearly as popular in its day as its predecessor, falling just one chart place below their debut. It kicked off in similar fashion as well, with a classic cover, this time with an exuberant take on Carl Sigman and Conrad Magidson's 1940s chestnut "Enjoy Yourself." A slower, brooding version with the Go-Go's in tow brings the album to a close, taking the place of the set-sealing "You're Wondering Now," which brought the curtain down on their first set. But there the similarities come to an end. The rest of the album is comprised of originals, including a pair of instrumentals -- the Northern soul-esque "Sock It to 'Em JB" and the Mexican-flavored "Holiday Fortnight" -- as well as a duo of minimally vocalized pieces, the intriguing "International Jet Set," and the overtly apocalyptic "Man at C&A." But fans had already been primed for the band's changing musical directions by the release the month before of "Stereotypes," its spaghetti western aura filled with the group's more mournful mood.

It's an emotional despair taken to even greater heights on "Do Nothing," as the group futilely searches for a future, but musically stumbles upon a cheery, easygoing rhythm more appropriate to the pop styles of the English Beat than the angrier sounds the Specials had made their own. But to prove it's no fluke, there's the equally bright and breezy "Hey, Little Rich Girl," boasting fabulous sax solos from Madness' Lee Thompson. However, it's an immortal line from "Pearl's Cafe" that Terry Hall and the guesting Bodysnatchers' Rhoda Dakar deliver up in duet that best sums up their own, and the country's pure frustration: "It's all a load of bollocks, and bollocks to it all." It was an intensely satisfying set in its day, even if it wasn't as centered as their debut. The group seems to be moving simultaneously in too many directions, while the lyrics, too, are not quite as hard-hitting as earlier efforts”.

Nobody expected such awful news as the death of Terry Hall. I would urge people to seek out More Specials, but also listen to the entire catalogue from The Specials. Also listen to some of Hall’s other work, including Fun Boy Three. One of music’s nicest people and greatest talents, it is so sad that we have had to say goodbye to…

A music genius and innovator.

FEATURE: Looking Ahead… Songs from Albums Turning Thirty-Five in 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Ahead…

 Songs from Albums Turning Thirty-Five in 2023

__________

LOOKING ahead to 2023…

I am doing a run of features marking great albums celebrating big anniversaries. I am now at 1988 –albums from that absolutely wonderful year that are going to be thirty-five in 2023. I am celebrating and illuminating that with a playlist of songs from the year. 1988 was a hugely exciting year for music, and there are some classic songs in the playlist below. I am looking forward to covering 1993 next, but let us continue with sensational albums turning thirty-five next year. Such an important anniversary, these songs below are huge. If you are not sure which great albums came out in 1988, then the playlist below gives you an idea of how wonderful…

THIS year was.

FEATURE: The Best Music Biopic of 2022… Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

FEATURE:

 

 

The Best Music Biopic of 2022…

  

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

__________

STARRING the sensational…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Naomi Ackie in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody/PHOTO CREDIT: Landmark Media/Alamy

Naomi Ackie in the title role, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a brilliant music biopic that celebrates the late icon rather than demonising or scandalising her. Ackie’s remarkable performance is responsible for many of the impassioned reviews. A superlative performance, you can tell how much effort and time Ackie spent embodying Houston to ensure that she was natural and convincing. Whilst the film uses Houston’s voice for the singing, English actor Ackie ensures that the accent and cadence is spot-on. A definite rising talent, Ackie is someone to watch closely! There have been some terrific music biopics this year (including Elvis), but I think that Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody has that extra something. Ackie is so convincing as Whitney Houston. The balance between being true to facts and also not whitewashing is just right. Rather than lingering on Houston’s troubles and addiction issues, there is plenty of celebration of the music and her undying and staggering talent. I want to bring in some articles relating to the film. Among the interesting takeaways from this article in The San Diego Union-Tribune, Kasi Lemmons (the film’s director) discusses Ackie and how she brings warmth and passion to the role:

“The screenplay for “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” was written by two-time Academy Award nominee Anthony McCarten. His previous credits include the 2014 Stephen Hawking biopic “The Theory of Everything” and the 2019 Freddie Mercury/Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Some of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody’s” scenes vividly recreate high-profile events in Houston’s life, including her bravura (albeit pre-recorded) performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 1991 Super Bowl and her stunning 1994 medley at the American Music Awards of “I Loves You, Porgy,” “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and “I Have Nothing.” Rickey Minor, who was her musical director for a period, including for the AMA telecast, is portrayed by Dave Heard.

But “I Wanna Dance with Somebody’s” primary source for details on Houston’s life was Clive Davis, who — as the founder of Arista Records — signed the then-teenaged Houston to his label in 1982. He spent two years helping her make and hone her debut album, then worked with her for the rest of her recording career.

But Davis, now 90, did not meet Houston until she was 17. He came in and out of her life in the years that followed, mostly in a professional capacity but also as a periodic father figure.

Davis co-produced “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” He is also a key supporting character, heroically portrayed by Stanley Tucci, in a film that presents Davis’ recollections as unquestioned fact.

Did the combination of these unusual factors mean Lemmons had an even more formidable balancing act to negotiate?

“You know, it was slightly tricky,” said the director, whose telling smile as she spoke suggested that “slightly” may be a diplomatic understatement.

‘Not a documentary’

“I’d never done that before,” Lemmons continued. “I’d never worked with an estate (of a deceased star), where every recent memory and emotion about (Houston) and how her story should be told (was so strong).

“I thought that was tremendously interesting and enriching. Clive is a wealth of knowledge and he brought all that. And Rickey (Minor) ... was also a wealth of knowledge.”

Houston did not write a memoir. If she kept any diaries, they remain a secret. Where, then, does reality stop and poetic license begin in a film that includes many private conversations?

“Naomi and I both say this film is like a poem about Whitney. It’s not a documentary,” Lemmons stressed.

“It’s a movie that has emotional authenticity, even in terms of some of the dialogue, because we were working with people who remember the dialogue. But it’s not a documentary. It’s not really Whitney.

“But it gives you Naomi’s beautiful performance and the essence of who this woman she portrays is, her triumphs and struggles. I think (there is) emotional truth and power to her performance as Whitney”.

In this feature from The Guardian about the film, Anthony McCarten, who has written the first big budget Hollywood biopic of the star, states that this new film corrects the myths and narrative of Houston being this tragic figure. In the ten years since Whitney Houston died, four films have tried to tell her story. More concerned with sensationalism and tragedy, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is much more balanced and complete. There is much more compassion and celebration – though the film does not shy away from the more heartaching and rawer moments:

“Towards that end, a great deal of the film centers on the creation and performance of her music. At the same time, that music sounds dramatically different from the way it did on the studio recordings, in live concerts or in TV performances. Everything has been buffed and amplified to take advantage of a modern movie theater’s Dolby 5.1 sound system. The result thunders right through you. All the vocals come from Houston, but the breaths of the actor who plays her, the British star Naomi Ackie, have been deftly incorporated to make the physicality of the performance palpable. “It’s got to sound, and feel, like she’s singing live,” Lemmons said. “And Naomi knew every breath of the songs.”

The depth of those breaths, and the dexterity with which Houston deployed them, are two elements that McCarten considers key to her brilliance. “Any musician who ever stood behind her during her performances would often note that this small frame of hers could magically expand,” he said “She would take in a breath with her whole rib cage. They say whales can do this when they sink miles beneath the ocean. They expand their ribs to hold enormous amounts of air. The way Whitney could hold that ballast of air, combined with the force with which she could sustain the high notes and add vibrato, was majestic.”

 Of course, the high-wire drama of her music found a mirror in the constant tug between the triumphs and tribulations in her life. One controversial aspect that’s presented with more frankness and specificity than in any previous depiction is her relationship with her friend and business associate Robyn Crawford, who had no involvement in the film. While earlier works strongly implied a lesbian relationship, the new film makes it physically explicit. According to Lemmons, part of that has to do with details offered in Crawford’s memoir, published in 2019. McCarten said the public’s changing attitudes towards sexuality also played a part. “We live in a much more tolerant time,” he said. By contrast, “being open in the ‘80s was very, very difficult”, he said.

The pain of that judgment is driven home in the film by the strongly disapproving attitude towards the relationship displayed by Whitney’s father as well as her mother, Cissy Houston. Both Lemmons and McCarten believe that if Houston had come up in today’s age of non-binary pop stars like Janelle Monae and Demi Lovato, she could be fully out about her relationship with Crawford. As to how Houston viewed her own sexuality, Lemmons believes she was “fluid”, while McCarten opts for the description “bi-curious – at least in her younger days”.

 The futility of placing a single label on Houston’s sexuality was something she shared with Davis. One scene in the film shows him revealing a male lover to her. While Davis didn’t talk about such things in public then, he wrote about it in his 2013 memoir. “It was important to Clive to put that in the film,” said Lemmons. “He and Whitney had that in common.”

One sexual aspect that’s notably absent from the film is an assertion made in the 2018 documentary by Kevin Macdonald that the singer had been molested by a female friend of the family when she was young. Though the estate had authorized that film, McCarten said “They were very unhappy” with the result. “They felt that Kevin had overrun the boundaries of the deal that they had,” he said. “The accusation at the center of it was unsupported by anything that (Whitney) had told anyone else. For Kevin to have based a documentary on it seemed fragile. I would have needed a substantial amount of supporting evidence to include that.”

The new film is more direct in dealing with the issues in Houston’s life surrounding race. It recreates the infamous scene at the Soul Train awards where she was booed and features a scene during a radio interview at a Black station in which the DJ echoes a common complaint of the day: that her music was “too white”. McCarten’s script has Houston calling out the inherent racism in that view with righteous clarity. At the same time, such accusations wounded her deeply. “To have your own people calling you an ‘Oreo,’ is extraordinarily painful,” Lemmons said. “I would certainly hope that the conversation would be different now.”

The lack of nuance in Houston’s day underscores the pain she experienced for falling on a fault line of assumptions about both race and sexuality. Worse, she had battles within her own family, most notably with her father, who served as her manager. Shortly before his death he sued her for $100m. In the film, he’s depicted as treating her more like a financial asset than a human being. “I had a personal experience with John that shook me up,” Lemmons said. “He was the one who spoke to me about ‘the brand’. That was very chilling. That was his daughter that he was talking about!”.

Before coming to a review that is positive but also hints at some possible issues, Movie Guide provided their review of, in my view, the best and most powerful music biopic of 2022:

“WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY is a biopic of the late pop singer Whitney Houston and focuses on her triumphs, trials and tribulations, all of which sadly, in one way or another, led to her tragic death due to a quote “accidental drug overdose” unquote, but the movie also has some positive references to Whitney’s Christian background and ongoing faith. I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY has a dynamic, superlative performance by Naomi Ackie as Whitney, and another excellent performance by Stanley Tucci as music producer Clive Davis, but it whitewashes some aspects of Whitney’s behavior and has lots of strong foul language, some mostly implied references to Whitney’s drug abuse and depictions of Whitney’s brief lesbian relationship with her best friend, an immoral relationship that Whitney rejected more strongly than the movie suggests.

The movie follows Whitney as she sings in church and nightclubs under her mother, Cissy’s, tutelage. Cissy is a professional singer in her own right, but she never achieved the heights of stardom her daughter did. A senior in high school, Whitney is on the verge of becoming a professional singer. However, although she and her family go to church, Whitney has been having a lesbian relationship with her best friend, Robyn Crawford, who’s started college. The two are shown kissing and smoking a marijuana bong in one short sequence.

 Whitney’s budding singing career attracts the attention of Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records. Davis is impressed with her singing, and he offers Whitney a record contract in April 1983, four months before her 20th birthday. However, as she begins working with Davis, Whitney beaks off her relationship with Robyn. She tells Robyn she’s worried about going to Hell because of their illicit relationship. The movie implies there’s also been some pressure from her mother to break off the relationship, though the two young women remain friends.

Whitney’s first album in 1985 becomes a huge hit, generating three Number One hits. She hires her friend Robyn as her personal assistant and her father as her manager. Behind the scenes, as her record career continues to soar, Whitney tells Robyn she wants to marry a man and have a family. After dating several celebrities, including Eddie Murphy, she begins seeing popular singer Bobby Brown in 1989. They get married three years later, a year after Whitney gives a stunning performance of the national anthem at the Superbowl.

Whitney decides to start making movies, and her 1992 debut, THE BODYGURD with Kevin Costner, becomes a huge hit. It also generates a Number One hit album and a Number One hit single for Whitney, a cover song of Dolly Parton’s 1974 hit, “I Will Always Love You.” The album won the 1994 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Meanwhile, in 1993, Whitney and Bobby have a baby daughter, Bobbi Christina.

In the late 1990s, Whitney and her husband begin having more serious problems. One scene shows a battered Whitney, who’s been beaten by her husband. Their alcohol and drug use and tumultuous marriage receive widespread media coverage. She starts to miss scheduled performances and in the early 2000s learned that her father had been mishandling her money.

The rest of the movie shows Whitney trying to recover from her abuse of alcohol, cocaine and pills. Despite a six-year recording lull, she releases her final album in 2009. The album reaches Number One, her first since the BODYGUARD album, but Whitney’s drug and alcohol abuse has taken a toll on her beautiful singing voice.

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY tells a story of triumph and tragedy. Naomi Ackie delivers a dynamic, superlative performance as Whitney. The movie uses Whitney’s voice during the musical numbers, but the viewer can see that, in the musical numbers, Ackie is fully invested in singing the songs like Whitney sang them. Another excellent performance is by Stanley Tucci as Clive Davis, Whitney’s long-time record producer and friend”.

Most of the reviews for Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody have been positive. I think it sets out to be more positive and less controversy-focused than other films before. The Guardian argue that the decision not to look at Houston’s drug use and sexuality is a negative. Despite that, Peter Bradshaw was moved and impressed by Naomi Akcie’s remarkable and strong lead performance:

“The movie skates over the still fraught subject of who was supplying Houston with drugs and who therefore effectively enabled her sad death, and it simply does not mention that Houston’s grownup daughter herself died just three years later in a grimly similar way. Documentaries have tiptoed around the allegations that family members had to source drugs on tour; this film conveniently invents a shifty-looking white guy who asks Houston for her autograph and then cash and drugs are surreptitiously exchanged under cover of Houston getting pen and paper from her bag. Nor does this film mention the theory from Macdonald’s documentary that Houston was sexually abused as a child by a cousin.

It does however deliver the big scenes and big moments, especially her amazing performance of the national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl. But a boilerplate music biopic like this usually runs in four stages: tough beginnings, success, crisis and redemptive comeback. Whitney’s life can’t give us the last of these and this film averts its gaze from the grim final reality of that hotel room in 2012, preferring to circle back in flashback to the triumph of Whitney’s performance at the 1994 American Music Awards, in which she sang her famous medley of I Loves You Porgy, And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going and I Have Nothing.

The ultimate questions are not really answered: was Whitney a gay woman whose problems stemmed from being imprisoned in the closet? Was she a gospel/R&B genius whose agonies arose from being a pop princess for white audiences? Or was it simply that she had to use drugs to relieve the stress of a touring schedule she was forced into by her big-spending family retinue? It could be any of these, and the film touches gingerly on each possibility. But it’s a muscular, heartfelt performance from Ackie”.

I think we will see some interesting music biopics next year (including the Madonna biopic). It is hard to balance an artist’s true life and darker moments with their highs and true brilliance. Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody does not swerve some of the more difficult and complex aspects of Whitney Houston, but it is more to do with her brilliance as an artist. Whilst not flattering Houston, it does correct and address the sensationalist view of her. Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody does the late legend producer. Naomi Ackie is remarkable in the lead role, whilst Stanley Tucci is brilliant as Clive Davis. The film is a treat for Whitney Houston fans, but I know that it will also alert new listeners to her amazing music…

AND timeless legacy.

FEATURE: Please Say You Won’t Forget Me: Kate Bush’s Home for Christmas at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Please Say You Won’t Forget Me

 

Kate Bush’s Home for Christmas at Thirty

__________

ONE of those Kate Bush songs…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during her 1979 Christmas special/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

that is sort of relegated or not often played, I guess its seasonable nature does count against it! It originally appeared in the BBC television show, The Comic Strip Presents film Wild Turkey, screened on 24th December, 1992. Ahead of its thirtieth anniversary, I wanted to shine a light on a great track. I guess when we think of Kate Bush Christmas songs, people would naturally name December Will Be Magic Again. That single was released in 1980, around the time of the release of Never for Ever. I am going to come to the lyrics of the song and write why Home for Christmas needs to get more airplay ahead of its thirtieth anniversary. It is a great Christmas song that, whilst not a classic or Bush’s best song, does deserve more attention and exposure. Home for Christmas was released as the B-side to the U.K. single of Moments of Pleasure and as the B-side to the U.S. single, Rubberband Girl. Bush also released a privately pressed 3" C.D. single in a Christmas card, issued in December 1993. Whereas December Will Be Magic Again was a single (though it did not chart high), it is a shame that Home for Christmas did not get its own single release. I guess the fact the song is under two minutes limits its appeal as a single. I like the fact Bush recorded this short song and it featured on television.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: John Stoddart 

Quite traditional in terms of its story and lyrics, I think the relatable aspect of the song and Bush’s reliably beautiful vocal makes the song stand in the memory. In the song, Bush casts herself as the heroine, waiting for someone to return for the Christmas holidays:  “You know that I'll be waiting/To hear your footsteps saying/That you'll be coming home for Christmas”. There are themes that would appear in later Bush work. Look at 2011’s 50 Words for Snow and there are themes of, obviously, snow, but also separation. That can be heard on the Elton John duet, Snowed in at Wheeler Street. Here, there is another scene of lovers being distanced and unable to reach one another: “If I only had wings/Then I would fly to you/Through all the snowy weather/We'd be together/No one makes me feel the way you do”. Whether it is the conditions causing the issues or they are unable to see one another for a different reason, you can feel this sense of yearning coming through. I guess everyone wants to be home for Christmas, so you can appreciate Bush’s final desire and wish: “You know that I'll be waiting/To hear your footsteps saying/That you'll be coming home”. This is a relatively short feature, but one that I was keen to write. Before the end of 2022, I will explore other bits and pieces related to Kate Bush, including the success she has had throughout the year. I often wonder why Bush didn’t record more Christmas songs. Maybe there is a limited appeal but, as Home for Christmas is thirty on Christmas Eve, I felt it important to highlight it. One of her lesser-known songs, I hope that people hear the song. It is a short and beautiful Christmas treat that people…

SHOULD not forget.

FEATURE: Saluting a Rap Queen… My Favourite E.P. of 2022: Bree Runway’s WOAH, WHAT A BLUR!

FEATURE:

 

 

Saluting a Rap Queen…

PHOTO CREDIT: Fraser Taylor

 

My Favourite E.P. of 2022: Bree Runway’s WOAH, WHAT A BLUR!

__________

A sensational talent…

who is A Rap queen and a superstar, I wanted to mention Bree Runway. The Hackney Hip-Hop legend-in-the-making has been making music for years now. She put out her mixtape, 2000and4Eva, in 2020. I have already written about my favourite albums of this year, and I have also written about the best singles. I have also written about the best debut albums and some really great E.P.s from 2022. I wanted to spotlight my favourite E.P. of this year. A bit of a surprise drop from Bree Runway, there are not a lot of interviews around it – annoyingly, the one there is free to reads but I cannot copy it into this feature! CLASH were among those to react to the news of the forthcoming E.P. from Bree Runway, as WOAH, WHAT A BLUR! came out on 8th December:

“Bree Runway has shared her new project ‘WOAH, WHAT A BLUR!’ in full.

The Hackney all-rounder has enjoyed a stellar year, opening 2022 with a Clash cover and a full-throttle headline show at Brixton Electric.

Since then, she’s accelerated. Bree Runway is a true phenomenon, a blaze of colour and originality on an otherwise flat UK pop scene.

Linking with regular collaborators EASYFUN, LIOHN and Khlar, her surprise five-tracker ‘WOAH, WHAT A BLUR!’ is on streaming services now.

A natural over-sharer, Bree holds conversations on love, heartbreak, and mental health, while man-of-the-moment Stormzy drops past on epic highlight ‘PICK YOUR POISON’”.

FADER did actually speak with Bree Runway about WOAH, WHAST A BLUR! You can listen to the interview above, but what came out of it was a sense of disappointment and anger. The E.P. news was leaked early, and I guess Bree Runway wanted to announce the project herself closer to the time. Feeling hurt by things and considering it was rude for fans to talk about the E.P. ahead of time, I feel there has been a bit of a mess coming from what should have been an incredible occasion. To be fair, she does not really see WOAH, WHAT A BLUR! as an E.P. more a mini-E.P. or an appetiser before the main meal of a possible album next year, this is something for fans. Something for people to hear before something larger arrives. I can appreciate why Bree Runway might feel aggrieved or does not want WOAH, WHAT A BLUR! talked about too much or seen as more than it is. She has released several E.P.s previously, and they are all stunning and different. I think she is being very modest! I love Bree Runway’s music, and WOAH, WHAT A BLUR! has instantly become my favourite E.P. of the year. There have been some great E.P.s released this year, but I feel WOAH, WHAT A BLUR! is at the top. I might also write about another E.P. from this year that I love. It is from girl group FLO, and it is called The Lead. Bree Runway to say that the project is regal, vulnerable, honest and glamorous. She stated how now she’s interested in blending textures and making new shapes. Not wanting people to get too ahead of themselves, she was keeping her cards close to chest. Whilst WOAH, WHAT A BLUR! is an E.P. that is a blend of sounds and rollercoaster of emotions, it is also a fabulous and hugely impressive standalone work!

 PHOTO CREDIT: Fraser Taylor

I want to bring in a review from NME. Big fans of Bree Runway, they were very positive about an E.P. that was a surprise to many. Its creator felt a little angry the fact that she recorded it in a  week, pretty much under a quilt and does not want to work that way. Perhaps preferring a more luxurious setting and fancy studio in L.A., there is a rawness and urgency to her new E.P. Maybe she is not so angry now it is out there, but I can appreciate she did not want fans talking about it before it was announced. Regardless, what came out of the whole thing is a superb selection of songs that confirms her place as one of the finest voices in Rap right now!

“Bree Runway has spent the year correcting her underdog status. The world has finally caught up to her inventive pop music in 2022 with a BRIT Rising Star nomination, a sold-out US tour, and an NME cover to boot. To cap it all off, the fashion queen of British pop-rap has released a surprise project, ‘Woah, What A Blur!, that offers more of her it-girl personality and ventures into new electronic styles.

The sound of revving engines careening off into opener ‘Archive Mami’ is an invigorating start. Bree gives the low-down on who is on top (“And if you say that I’m a nobody online / Why the hell did Gaultier sent me shit from the archive?”), but the song is cut criminally short. You’re left fiending to hear the full version, but the next track ‘BREEE!’ makes amends with tight melodic rapping threaded through weighty bass kicks.

 Bree taps into her confident, opulent self on the hulking Baltimore club track ‘That Girl’. Doused in metallic production flourishes, she lets loose on Ballroom-tinged raps that have a touch of Cakes Da Killa in their slinky wit. “They salty ’cause I bring the pepper / I’ll be the it girl, now and forever”, she spits. “Sickening body, it’s unfair / I can pronounce everything I wear”. Bree’s cocksure performance brings out something of a thematic sum-up for her year: “I already been that girl / If you bad and you know it, better show out, girl”.

The sole questionable moment on the release is ‘Pick Your Poison’, a plucked-guitar Afropop duet with Stormzy. It’s about two people trying to connect despite having different attitudes towards drinking, but you can practically envision the music video of the two leaning on opposite sides of the same wall singing out into the distance. It lacks Bree’s typically inventive spark: while there is room for her to make a slower ballad – as the brilliant, Jai Paul-ish ‘Somebody Like You’ from this year proves – here, she feels caught in a pop formula.

‘FWMM’, however, shows Bree becoming an album artist with a captivating confessional. She expresses a desire for intimacy from her partner over a bedrock of warm interstellar synths, before taking the route of D’Angelo’s ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel)’ and painting the climax of intimacy through a godly rise. ‘Woah, What A Blur!’ is an exploratory collection that goes to multiple stylistic places, but if Bree Runway’s forthcoming debut album fills in the gaps, her stardom will be impossible to downplay”.

I shall leave it there. If some (Bree Runway included) feel it is not her best and most representative work, she should be very proud of a fantastic E.P. It has made a big impression on me, and it does mean many will ask about an album. There is no confirmed date, but you know there is going to be huge excitement around that possibility. Such an inspiring artist putting her unique footprint on Rap and Hip-Hop, I know 2023 will be a great year. If this one has been a bit of a blur, she did leave us with…

A brilliant E.P.

FEATURE: The Queen’s Speech: Kate Bush’s Christmas Message, and Her Hopes for Peace and Joy in 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

The Queen’s Speech

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005 for a promotional photo for Aerial/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

 

Kate Bush’s Christmas Message, and Her Hopes for Peace and Joy in 2023

__________

THIS time of year…

 PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush fans around the world get a treat in the form of a message from our favourite artist. True to form, queen Kate Bush has delivered a Christmas message. Like the past couple of years, it is full of thanks for those who give so much to us (in this case, nurses), and she signals hope for next year. A need for resolve and optimism. I often feel like this is the musical equivalent of the Queen’s speech. It is a beautiful and universal message that is typical of someone who is so concerned for others. So caring! Before continuing on, here is what Bush posted to her official website:

“Every year seems to fly by a little faster. They say this happens as you get older, but there’s no doubt that the speed of life is accelerating at a greater rate than ever.

I don’t think any of us have ever known a year like this one. Life became incredibly frightening in the pandemic, but just as we think it might be over soon, it seems to keep going. It’s a bombardment – the horrific war in Ukraine, the famines, the droughts, the floods…  and we lost our Queen. Many of my friends were surprised at how upset they were at her death especially as we aren’t royalists, but I think her passing became a focus for grief, for unexpressed loss that so many people had felt during the pandemic.

It’s been a crazy, roller coaster year for me. I still reel from the success of RUTH, being the No 1 track of this summer. What an honour! It was really exciting to see it doing so well globally, but especially here in the UK and Australia; and also to see it making it all the way to No 3 in the US. It was such a great feeling to see so many of the younger generation enjoying the song. It seems that quite a lot of them thought I was a new artist! I love that!

IMAGE CREDIT: Kate Bush 

Again, thank you so much to everyone who supported the track and made it a hit.

I wonder where on earth we’ll all be at the end of next year? I hope the war will end. I hope that the nurses will be in a position where they are appreciated – they should be cherished. Let’s all hope that next year will be better than this one. I keep thinking about hope and how it was the last to fly out of Pandora’s box. Sometimes it’s all that seems to glow in the dark times we find ourselves in right now.

I used a little robin in some of my Christmas gifts to friends this year. I felt that this humble little bird, which symbolises Christmas could also symbolise hope in the context of Emily Dickinson’s beautiful words: Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

I‘d like to think that this Christmas when joy is so hard to find, hope will perch in all our souls. Merry Christmas! All best wishes, Kate”.

I put this feature out pretty quickly, as I was not expecting the words she wrote in this post! There are some very typically Bush things. Of course, she gives her love to nurses and hopes they get paid fairly. She is worried about the invasion of Ukraine and hopes the people there are safe. Whereas many artists would not post a Christmas message or would lead with something about the music or their own success, Kate Bush does not do that!

Bush also thanked fans around the world for the success of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). The song was featured on Netflix’s Stranger Things. It got to number one in the U.K. and other nations – it originally hit number three here in 1985 -, and it is only Bush’s second-ever U.K. chart-topping song (after 1978’s Wuthering Heights). Nobody expected this to happen for Kate Bush at the start of the year. She was very involved in ensuring the song’s placement was to her satisfaction. Working with the show’s creators, The Duffer Brothers, Bush was very thankful to them and the show for introducing that song to a new generation. As she said, it is almost like she is a new artist! So many people who might not know about her work now have their eyes and minds opened to a legendary artist whose music is timeless and like nothing else! Bush reflected on the Queen’s death, and I think the fact Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) reached three in the U.S. excites her. After so many years, the country has embraced her like never before! My favourite part of the message is that she has put a little robin in the gifts for her family and friends. It does seem that birds are powerful and important to her (read her Christmas message from last year to see what I mean). Symbolic of something hopeful, peaceful and strength-giving, they have made their way into her work and messages for a while. From their use and role in 2005’s Aerial to the fact that, years ago, Bush was asked who her favourite singer was. Instead of naming an artist, she named a bird! It seems that their call and song not only influences her own music, but it goes deeper than that.

From their beauty and calm they give to people, Kate Bush has this deeper connection with birds. I might explore this more in a future feature. Here, in her Christmas message, it is the festive and humble robin that is at the centre. Her words here are beautiful and so true: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul”. Those Emily Dickinson words are attached to a robin in this case. After such a retched year (we seem to say that every year now!), there are positives, perhaps, ahead. The end of the terror in Ukraine. Parity and equality for those striking right now. Maybe, who knows, a snap General Election and new government! In any case, there is resolve for betterment and togetherness. There is no explicit mention of new work from Bush herself, but the fact she is so in awe and thankful for all of the love that has been shown to her this year makes me think she is working on music! That feeling that she wishes for peace and hope in 2023 leads me to believe that she will also reflect this through music! Maybe I am reading too much into it, but I think it would be a shock if no music was released, as Bush seems to be in this position where her music has found a whole new generation. After Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was propelled back up the charts and into the public consciousness, Bush is being discussed again and her work is being highlighted. An immortal talent whose music is always relevant, this year has been so important and wonderful for her! I can imagine Bush in her lovely house preparing Christmas presents, watching T.V. and surrounded by lights, a warm fire and a beautiful garden! Let’s hope that her thoughts turn to new music. If not, it is brilliant that she still communicates with fans and we get these lovely and emotional words. It leads me – on behalf of all Kate Bush fans around the world – to wish this icon and music goddess…

THE happiest Christmas and new year!

FEATURE: Spotlight: Maude Latour

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Maude Latour

__________

AN artist I cannot believe…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Braylen Dion for The New York Times

I have not included in this feature yet, Maude Latour is a name to watch. With a voice similar to that of Phoebe Bridgers, the Swedish-born artist is a sensation. She lived in London and attended Hong Kong International School before attending the Brearley School in Manhattan. She graduated from Columbia University this year as a philosophy major. Beginning songwriting at age fifteen, Latour released her first E.P., High School High, in 2018. She is a self-described as a "worshipper of the overly lyrical metaphysical world”, she puts her experiences with heartbreak in songs that are dream-like. Detailing living in New York, Maude's music contains a universal quality. I want to open with a quick profile from The New York Times from July:

“Name: Maude Latour

Age: 22

Hometown: New York City

Now lives: In a four-bedroom apartment near Columbia University, with the same four roommates she has lived with since freshman year.

Claim to fame: Ms. Latour is a singer-songwriter whose plush indie pop grapples with impermanence. She writes about composing a letter to her future self, cleaning a bedroom that always gets messy and, on her recent single “Trees,” mourning the loss of her grandmother, whom she searches for in the space between branches. Ms. Latour filmed the song’s music video during her final semester as an undergraduate at Columbia this spring, between classes on Virginia Woolf and the history of philosophy. “I’m majoring in, ultimately as a philosophy major, life being fleeting,” Ms. Latour said.

Big break: A self-described choir kid, Ms. Latour began songwriting at 15 and uploading her music to Spotify at 17. In March 2020, during the early pandemic lockdown, Ms. Latour posted a video of herself singing “One More Weekend,” an upbeat rendering of an early college heartbreak, to TikTok, where it has been viewed more than 455,000 times. (It has more than 28 million streams on Spotify.) In 2021, during her junior year, Ms. Latour was applying to summer jobs when record labels approached her. She signed with Warner Records and released an EP, “Strangers Forever,” last October. 

Latest project: Ms. Latour went on a North American tour this spring, squeezing in six shows during spring break and the rest on weekends. Ms. Latour said she cried onstage at Bowery Ballroom in Lower Manhattan, while dedicating her song “Lola” to friends in the audience who are survivors of sexual assault. (“Keep my girls protected/ I’m turned on when I’m respected,” she sings.) “Diderot says you can’t have authentic emotions onstage,” said Ms. Latour, referencing the French philosopher’s “Paradox of the Actor.” “I was like, ‘What?’ All I do is go onstage and feel and bleed out my emotions in front of people.”

Next thing: Later this month, Ms. Latour will play Lollapalooza, her first festival, on the same day as Metallica. “I’m on the same stage as them, so their drum kit and stuff is going to be behind me,” she said. Ms. Latour is also working on an EP she described as a queer coming-of-age set in the “enchanted forest” that is New York City. “The way I feel at the old age of 22 is so much more complicated than when I was 19,” she said. “I’m trying to grow up with my music.”

Borrowed threads: Ms. Latour’s iridescent, Y2K-era stage outfits are a joint effort between herself and her four roommates. The magenta corduroys, rhinestone belt and rust-orange Nike jacket she wore on tour were sourced from her roommates’ closets. Wearing her friends’ clothes helps ease Ms. Latour’s nerves. “I feel hugged by their presence,” she said”.

I will move on to an interview from Alt Press. Comparing her to Lorde, they headlined the interview saying Maude Latour navigates the blurred lines of female friendships. It is fascinating finding out more about the extraordinary artist:

“I have not featured yet, Maude Latour reminds me a lot of Phoebe Bridgers. She has that similar huskiness and smokiness in her voice. She has released three E.P.s to date. This year’s 001 was released in September, and I think it is her most complete work yet. I wonder whether an album will come next. Latour was born in Sweden. She lived in London and attended Hong Kong International School before attending the Brearley School in Manhattan. Latour graduated from Columbia University in 2022 as a philosophy major. Taking up songwriting from the age of fifteen, she released her first E.P., High School High, in 2018. A hot and supremely talented name to watch through 2023, I wanted to bring in a interviews from this year with Latour so that we can find out more about the remarkable artist.

“Her effervescent pop songs (think Lorde’s “Green Light” and Hayley Kiyoko’s “for the girls”) provided the ultimate high-energy escape for users scrolling for the next sticky earworm. “People on the app are so funny — when they love something, they love it so much,” the 22-year-old singer says. It was evident for Latour in the nearly 100,000 fans she quickly amassed.

It would be a year-and-a-half until Latour was back on campus at Columbia University, and when she returned as a senior, plenty of her classmates had heard her music (thanks to TikTok, of course). “People would pass me notes in the library saying, ‘Oh, love your music,’ or I'd go into the library and people would be whispering my name,” she recalls.

The New York-based pop newcomer, who went to an all-girls school growing up, has become known for using her music to reflect on the complexities of female friendships and sexuality. In February 2021 she tweeted, “its really the binary/phallic constraints on love and emotion that cause us to put love into boxes. feminine love is fluidity, boundaryless, friendship and romance blur, it is true feeling and it has no ends.”

In March, she shared “Lola,” an ode to her best friend. The TikTok where she played the song for Lola happened to receive more than 220,000 likes. One commenter wrote, “Maude really out here blurring the line between friendship and relationship,” to which she replied, “i wish i could tell u the whole story. This song will have to do in the meantime.” Another asked if the single would be “playing when you walk down the aisle to Lola,” and queer icon FLETCHER declared, “i’m so here for this.”

“I've been an advocate for this, blurry, indescribable love that's friendship, but [it’s] so much deeper, and all of your relationships are confused by it.” Latour describes her historically all-girls school as “a place where all these feelings mush.” She’s still navigating these complicated relationships, which she’s “starting to realize are not fully sustainable” as she grows up and develops deeper feelings. She described these relationships on TikTok as a “complex lovefriendblur.”

Focusing on these friendships has continuously proven to be significant lyrical fodder for her. “I'm not in love right now,” Latour confidently declares. “But I am nurturing friendships. It took me a second to realize that they need as much care as a romantic relationship. If it’s done right, this gets to be a source of love and life for you for years.” As she figures it out, she calls her music “an actual real-time reflection of how I'm feeling.”

On her latest track “Probabilities,” Latour seems destined for superstardom, ready to join her icons, including No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani. Her upcoming EP is slated for release Sept. 30 and follows her 2019 EP Starsick 2021 EP Strangers Forever.

Rather than romance, she has other things to focus on — like preparing to embark on a major tour. She’s hitting the festival circuit, playing Lollapalooza, ACL and Music Midtown. Her shows, which she describes as “rave parties,” have created an incredible community for her. “It’s this intangible world, and promoting and sharing comes to fruition in a concert,” she says. “[The music] gets the closure it needs, and it's cool to meet people and be a real person off the screen.”

She also plans to write songs daily, spend time in the studio and watch Love Island — a notoriously time-consuming endeavor. Latour is focused on crafting “perfect pop songs and a sonic universe, the way No Doubt does, or the way that every artist I love has done.”

Latour, however, will need to navigate some change, though along the way. Much of her music and video content — largely shot on the Columbia campus — has been directly linked to New York. With a whirlwind year ahead, she’s bracing for a departure from the city she’s called home for the past several years. “I've lived my life through the lens of New York City for so long,” she notes. “Once I lose New York as the backdrop for everything, I'm curious what will replace it”.

I will wrap up with an interview from Ones to Watch. There is no doubt that Maude Latour is going to be among the most important artists coming through next year. I hope that shew tours in the U.K. at some point:

“Ones To Watch: Hi, it’s so great to meet you! Congrats on the success of your current headlining tour! How does it feel finally being on tour as we emerge at the end of the pandemic?

Maude Latour: It feels so much better than I ever could have imagined. I was nervous; I've never done more than one show in a row. But it has been so fulfilling, and I'm so happy about it. It's so fun, and I'm learning so much about myself. I feel like I'm truly finding my purpose and it’s such a spiritual experience. I can’t wait to get so much better at it and push this medium of live performance. I know it’s my mission and what I'm meant to do, so I'm so ecstatic about it.

Your tour is arranged strategically because you're also a student at Columbia University. What is it like being both a full-time student and a breakthrough artist? It seems like an extremely difficult balancing act.

I'm definitely glad that it’s almost over, but it’s actually fun! I like being busy, and I love school. I love being in college, it’s such a privilege and I totally try to soak up every moment of it. The shows also keep my focus on what I'm going to do after college and it brings together so many of my college friends. It’s such an integrated part of my college experience at this point. We're having a party for the song coming out. All the music videos are made with my friends. My friends help me run every event that I do, they help me make every TikTok. Being an artist can be really lonely sometimes and it’s just been such a collaborative coming-of-age project for all of us. I feel really lucky.

PHOTO CREDIT: Anna Koblish

I'm sure you're looking forward to graduation in a few weeks! Do you have any plans or bucket list items that you want to do once you leave university?

I still haven't comprehended that I'm graduating. I will do some tours, I want to make an album and I want to pretend that I'm in college forever. I want to have fun forever and mainly be with my friends!

I know that you've lived all over the world and moved around a lot in your formative years. What ultimately drew you back to New York?

I've lived in Sweden, London, New York City, Hong Kong, and am now back in New York. I don't know where I'm going to go after college, I was thinking LA but I might not be able to leave this place. I don't know!

I physically don't know how to leave New York. It's just constant inspiration. I love the four seasons, I love the feeling I have here. I actually feel like I'm a part of this city. I feel so much love and pride in this city, and I love how small I feel in it, I feel so tiny. I love New Yorkers, and I love the people, they are so cool. I want to hang out with them forever. It just feels like home. I know it really well, and I feel like myself when I'm here.

Has New York influenced your creative process?

Yeah, the sublimity of feeling so small and being a part of a large city; I definitely have this taste of being a part of something bigger than I can comprehend. I got a sense of independence when I was really young and went to high school here. I was jetting around the city by myself around thirteen and it made me have all these experiences that showed me that life is the story, and I wanted to write about it. I think the project that I'm currently working on is definitely a tribute to the city, so I have to be here to write about it!

What are other things that you draw inspiration from when it comes to songwriting besides your immediate environment?

I think I keep writing about friendship, and I think it’s because my friendships are such an enormous emotional relationship in my life that have been different from romantic relationships. Friendships that I care more about get prioritized before anything and loving someone in a friendly way. I think that I've written a lot of songs about friends and it’s because I went to an all-girls school in high school and that was a place where the lines of friendship and romance blurred for me. And sometimes they turn romantic but it’s really about this love that can't be defined, which is a theme that I keep coming back to.

Do you feel that your creative process has changed between your first EP Starsick and your  most recent EP Strangers Forever?

Yes, it definitely has. My last EP I wrote in my room and now these songs are just coming from living a little more instead of sitting down to reflect. They are coming out from living in the real world. They're definitely becoming harder to write. They haven't been the same journal entry songs, and it’s a little more of asking what is the most important thing to me. When I was sixteen, I wondered if my songs would get more complicated when I turned twenty, and when I turned twenty, I wondered how I'll keep making this medium when I turn 22. And now that I'm 22, I feel many different feelings. A lot of the things I used to say aren't as simple as I thought, but I realized that I can grow up in this medium and in songwriting.

When I listen to my old songs, the feelings still resonate, much more often than the words do. But sometimes I'll hear the words and be like wow, I knew that about myself, without really knowing it, and now I really know it and I can't believe I could tell then. In "Furniture," there's a line "I wanna sing until I drown / because when the music gets loud / and I'm singing in front of a crowd" and I wasn't singing in front of crowds then and now performing is such a thing. It was more of a dream and now I'm singing that line in front of a crowd, so that has been really crazy.

Speaking on the growth and trajectory of your music, you're releasing your new single  "Lola." Was there something you wanted fans to take away from the single?

This is my favorite song in the entire world. This is actually really me giving my best offering that I can give, and I can't even imagine getting it off my chest. Of course, so much of this song is attributed to the friendship that I've had with this girl named Lola. We've been best friends and inseparable for years and it’s also a friendship that has complicated parts. Parts that weren't just friends and now we were just friends, but I wrote it at a time when I was figuring out what we were. It’s definitely attributed to this ambiguous friendship that I keep meeting with more than one person. It's really how love feels to me, and I'm not sure if it’s because I'm a fluid bi girl, but I want us to embrace all the ways that love appears to us. I thought this project wasn't going to be as focused on love, but it’s actually more about love than anything I've ever written.

This song is also about the girls and queer people that I love. I wanted to write a song about protecting my sisters, my real sister, and my friends. When we share this power, when we support each other and have each other’s backs, the ferocity and this fierceness of women and queer people working together and protecting each other... there’s nothing more powerful than a confident girl and a confident person. I think that it has the magical power to make whoever hears it feel their power.

"Lola" is all about the women in your life that you feel connected to and have an affinity for. Who are some of the women in the music industry that you are currently listening to?

Watching Doja and SZA win their Grammy made me cry, so definitely them. Everything is going to change whenever SZA releases her album. Doja was really the music when I listened to when I was going through a breakup and writing my last album. I just remember thinking that she made me feel awesome and not sad and small, and that is my favorite feeling when it comes to music”.

A truly amazing artist who you need to get behind and follow, Maude Latour is going to be a big name soon enough. I discovered her a little while ago, but I think this year has been her most productive and accomplished. I know she will put out some amazing music next year. Every music fan needs to be aware of…

THIS treasure.

____________

Follow Maude Latour

FEATURE: Merci: The End of 2022 Gift: Little Simz’s Spellbinding NO THANK YOU

FEATURE:

 

 

Merci

  

The End of 2022 Gift: Little Simz’s Spellbinding NO THANK YOU

__________

ONE thing you can always rely on…

IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz at Fabrique Club on 5th December, 2022 in Milan, Italy/PHOTO CREDIT: Francesco Prandoni/Getty Images

in the music world is not to predict anything too easily. It is December, so one would assume artists are done releasing albums – or at least the big players and the mainstream acts. You might also feel that the very best music arrives in the spring and summer. Again, jumping to those sort of conclusions might lead to (rather good) disappointment. I wanted to bring up the amazing Islington-born artist Little Simz. She won the Mercury Prize earlier in the year for the towering and monumental Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. That was released in September 2021. Prolific since then, she has released singles and been pretty busy! I am not sure whether she is calling it a project, mixtape or album, but NO THANK YOU came out on 12th December. Not many artists of her calibre and popularity release albums that late in the year. I think most feel you can get more momentum and sales bringing it out earlier in the year. In this case, Simz had been working on the album and clearly had things to say. Not only do we get another arresting, unique and instantly classic chapter from Simz. She has also ended 2022 with a real gift. This year has seen album releases from heavyweights like Beyoncé (RENAISSANCE), Björk (Fossora) and Taylor Swift (Midnights). NO THANK YOU was released on the independent label, Forever Living Originals. I think it is a little more stripped-back than Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. You still get some sweeping moments, but there is a bit more of a loose vibe to this album. Alongside the orchestration, you get songs where Simz is at the front, maybe accompanied by something funky and effectively simple.

I want to bring in a couple of reviews for NO THANK YOU. Annoyingly for many journalists, they had been put out their list declaring the best albums of 2022. Though, that is quite a nice problem to have! Many were revised in the wake of Little Simz’s fifth studio album. With very little fanfare and hype, it is has gained huge accolade because it is heartfelt and insightful. With her heart on sleeve, you get something hugely impressive and personal. One of the most consistent and innovative artists in the world, this end of year gift will be toured next year I am sure. I want to first bring in parts of an interview from a Rolling Stone U.K. from a few months back. Simz (real name Simbiatu ‘Simbi’ Abisola Abiola Ajikawo) was discussing her role in the T.V. series, Top Boy. It is interesting that she had recorded this album but the world was unaware. An excellent actor, I think we will be seeing her in a lot more next year:

“There’s a calm to Ajikawo, noted often in press promoting her last album (and by me, when we first met, in 2019). She sets her mind on something, then moves towards it, without fanfare. You see that in how she gets security to silence this place, in how she asserts herself on the shoot (more on that later). And it’s clear in how she’s stepped into the character of Shelley on Netflix’s Top Boy reboot. She seemed to casually move into acting, having built a career as a rapper for more than a decade. But the real story’s not that simple. As she picks up Rolling Stone UK’s Television Award, is she likely to sit back, satisfied with her accomplishments so far? Not quite.

Before you get any ideas, she won’t be drawn on the plot for the next, and final, season of Top Boy. “This season I was definitely stretched,” she begins. She wanted “to make sure I gave Shelley her due diligence and did everything in my power to make sure she goes out the right way. However, that” — then cuts herself off — “you’ll see it anyway.” All she’ll offer now is a smile. Season two saw single mum Shelley grow even closer to titular top boy, Dushane Hill (played by Ashley Walters). The season closed with a major twist. Something to make people gasp. As much as Ajikawo loved seeing fans online react in real time, she scrunches up her face saying one word: spoilers.

“I’ve always thought,” and she kisses her teeth, “‘Just chill.’ I understand the excitement for it, but let people enjoy it at their pace.” She’d tweeted as much, in March, when the season dropped in full (“lol yo chilllll on the spoilers”). “People wait so long for it, that to go, ‘I’m gonna tell you the end plot’ when it’s just dropped, is a bit…” her voice trails off into nothing. But, she sums up, “That’s the internet.” It’s one of the few times talking about Top Boy when she looks irritated. Back to her zen state, she brushes it off.

Mostly, she enjoys being able to discuss her acting rather than only her music. When I ask how she knew she could act as a child, she stops. “No one’s ever asked me that before. I don’t know!” I prod, offering up stories of my failed attempts to break into acting at a similar age. “I just felt like, ‘Yeah, I can embody different people. I can use my body in different ways, and step outside of both myself and my comfort zone.’ And I actually enjoy it.”

It’s like flexing a different muscle. As Little Simz, she’s in charge. It’s her vision, accelerated by her ideas. She is, after all, a solo artist. She built a career from freestyling as a teen and self-releasing mixtapes to winning awards — she also won a Brit in February — with that singular drive. Being part of a franchise took some getting used to. “It’s like a football team: everyone’s coming together to make this thing work. You’ve got to have trust in your teammates,” she says. Sometimes, when they’re doing press as a cast and she can’t quite come up with the right line, she’ll turn to Walters or Jasmine Jobson (Jaq), as if to say: “Help me out.” She and Walters have clicked since her audition. The prompt? For him to make her laugh. “And he did — that was it. It was super quick and simple,” she says. She remembers them laughing, shooting and re-shooting a sad scene from season two with Marsha Millar (who plays Pat, Dushane’s mum). When she describes the story, it’s so clearly loaded with in-jokes that I barely understand why it was hilarious. But she’s beaming. You had to be there.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kosmas Pavlos

As our time wraps, we rattle through the books and TV we’ve been into lately. Ajikawo reads a lot, pulling out a highlighter to slash across passages she’ll want to signpost to her future self. She’s heavy on reading philosophical self-help at the moment and shouts out M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled. “It felt like it was written for me.” Her partner had recommended it to her, and she only realised she already owned it (with different cover art) once she’d finished it. “His segment on love, and on what the definition of it means — if there is one…” she trails off again, but it stuck with her. Peck described love as, she says, “the act or will to nurture your growth, or someone else’s”. And that resonated. Now, she’s wading through The Way of Zen by Alan Watts — “very difficult book to read. I have to read it in silence,” she says, smiling.

It’s not all philosophy, though. She watches Curb Your Enthusiasm to unwind, and Love Island when it’s on. I recommend she adds Abbott Elementary to the roster, and she sounds excited to give it a try. Before she goes, she mentions she’s got a coffee table book coming out. One filled with photos, art, scribbles from her journals, and interviews — “it’s not my life story, or an autobiography. That’s not the vibe.” She sounds delighted, recalling an interview she did with Dr Karen Joash, “a Black woman who works in the NHS and private healthcare. It’s cool that I can sit down, having conversations with people like her, and actually learn.”

As for the music? Again she won’t be drawn on detail. I ask if she’s writing a new album. “Could be.” A chuckle. “There will be more to come eventually.” But she’s keeping that to herself. “I’m a public figure, in a way, but I’m a private person. I also think people value mystery. You don’t have to share everything, you know? Or you stagger it. I might share stuff that I’m going through now in 20 years,” she says.

Ajikawo refuses to give everything away, to be the type to be very online or a wide-open book. “I give a lot of myself, but I still have some stuff for me. I need to,” she says. That may well be how we ended up in the neutral territory of this restaurant. That’s part of the allure with Little Simz, the artist and actor: unless you’re in her inner circle, you can never really know for sure”.

I will round off with a couple of (the many) positive reviews for NO THANK YOU. This is what Rolling Stone said in their assessment of a latecomer for the best album of 2022:

“LITTLE SIMZ IS like a hood BBC anchor. Her songs come off like quiet but spicy broadcasts, as if she checked in for a soothing afternoon chat if that somehow involves a soul-scorching read. Pleasant but snarky, Simz combines Queens Gambit cordiality with Top Boy aggression to marry well-bred flows to blistering bars. Appropriately, the London-born MC (and skilled actress) flaunts a thespian’s remarkable range: she gives us humor, charisma, and a lot of feels.

Emotion is Simz’s secret weapon. She has a knack for sharing heartfelt tales with marked conviction that settles deep in your sternum. She’s a bona fide technician, no doubt. But the sheer technicality of her rhymes is not at odds with her natural ability to craft poignant songs that make you laugh, cry, and silently rage. On No Thank You, the follow-up to her excellent 2021 breakthrough Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, Simz gives us 10 choice cuts (showcasing her brilliance and breadth) that convey the whole emoji board of riveting emotions.

Those battle-ready bars distinguish “Gorilla,” where Simz, over loping bass and crisp percussion, spits, “I’m cut with a different scissor/From the same cloth as my dear ancestors.” And it’s captivating to hear her effortlessly unpack a couplet that floors you as she skillfully pivots to the next bruising punchline.

But “Broken” is a boon of self-reflection, and it’s arguably Simz’s most powerful song to date. Buoyed by the strains of a choir, Simz describes how racism afflicts her, wasting her time, energy, and agency. “It shouldn’t be a norm to live your life as a tragedy/To live your life in a state of confusion and agony,” she sighs. And you’re reminded that being Black means being in a constant state of rage.

On “No Merci,” Simz kicks caustic bars (“I’m a human landmine/I am not a human being you can gaslight”), indicting lames that want her “stuck up in the matrix.” Meanwhile, “Heart on Fire,” with its blithe hook asserting that “my life is a blessing,” is her stirring manifesto. But the soulful “Sideways” is the obvious standout. Here, Simz embodies snappish warrior energy, confirming her calm sovereignty: “Walkin’ in my light, my shadow is protectin’ me/Never movin’ sideways, I done this shit my way.” We’re forever thankful for Simz’s bold originality”.

Who knows where Little Simz will head next! Someone who seems to just grow more astonishing and talented, it is exciting to see the twenty-eight-year-old put out an album that ranks alongside the best of her career so far. NO THANK YOU underlines what a force she is. This is what The Guardian wrote when sitting down with this staggering work:

“All of this is punchily, powerfully and, occasionally, wittily done. If you’re going to compare the matter of being signed to a major record label to the lot of a slave, you might as well do it with a lyric as sharp as “I refuse to be on a slave ship, give me all my masters and lower your wages”. (It’s worth noting that Simz releases music on her own label, via a distribution company.) That said, there’s no doubt that No Thank You’s impact is vastly potentiated by the work of producer Inflo, who worked on both Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and 2019’s Grey Area, and whose approach to his project Sault – no promotion, no live performances, no interviews, music apparently released as and when he feels like it, even if that means putting out five albums on the same day – seems to reflect the manifesto outlined on Angel: “Fuck rules and everything that’s traditional.” The album feels far more like a direct collaboration than a producer simply coming up with beats for an artist to rap over. Most of the tracks conclude with lengthy instrumental codas, where Simz effectively cedes centre-stage to Inflo’s lushly inventive arrangements, which, with their swirls of choral vocals and swelling strings, nod to the oft-sampled work of both David Axelrod and Charles Stepney without ever seeming like straightforward homage. Nearly half of Silhouette’s six and half minutes is Simz-free, taken up with dramatic orchestration, booming drums and backing singers.

You can see why she feels comfortable stepping aside on an album that bears her name alone: Inflo’s productions are uniformly fantastic. On X, he conjures up a wall of percussion that variously evokes a marching band, west African drumming and rolling breakbeats. Sideways features a head-turning blast of sampled vocals, sped up until it feels harsh. Who Even Cares is beautifully warped soft soul: Simz singing, rather than rapping, her voice subtly but noticeably Auto-Tuned.

It ends on an optimistic note, with Control: a straightforward and rather sweet love song, backed only by piano. Exactly how her career progresses from here is an intriguing question. She’s clearly had enough of doing things the way she did previously. The lyrics to Heart on Fire seem to suggest she feels she became too bound up in the quest for commercial success and its financial rewards: as they progress, her ambitions shift from buying her mum a house to owning 100 pairs of shoes, a list of desires that “never stops growing, and you don’t know even what you do this for”. What that means for the future isn’t really explored: perhaps she intends to take an approach more akin to that of Sault. If it means more albums like this, that should be fine, and she seems to know it. “This ain’t music one overlooks,” she snaps on Sideways, quite correctly”.

  A sensational album from someone who we are very lucky to have, I wanted to spotlight Little Simz’s NO THANK YOU, as nobody expected it to arrive. As I said, you do not get many huge and unexpected albums coming out in December! A Christmas treat for her fans, go and listen to the masterpiece. A possible Mercury prize contender for 2023, I know that Little Simz will continue to dominate…

NEXT year.

FEATURE: Before a (Sort of) Live Studio Audience… Revisiting the Magnificent 1979 Christmas Special, Kate

FEATURE:

 

 

Before a (Sort of) Live Studio Audience… 

Revisiting the Magnificent 1979 Christmas Special, Kate

__________

AS we are in December now…

and looking towards Christmas, I wanted to pop in a few Kate Bush Christmas features. I will come to discuss her single, Home for Christmas, which was released in 1992. I wanted to spend some time with the underrated and sometimes forgotten Christmas special, Kate. Filmed at Pebble Mill Studios and broadcast on 28th December, 1979, it must have been exciting for fans to see this unique show on the screen. Earlier in 1979, Bush had performed The Tour of Life around the world. She had that live experience under her belt, because her gigs before that were a lot more modest. She had done live performance on T.V., but The Tour of Life was this huge stage production that was a whole new level. Conversely, Kate is a smaller affair. You can hear a studio audience cheering and clapping songs, though it was not recorded with an audience. It has an artificial quality that must have created this odd sensation. Having been used to playing before huge audiences months earlier, Bush was in a studio doing live versions (the vocals were recorded earlier and mimed in the performance) of songs from her first few albums. In fact, apart from some other treats, Bush was premiering songs that would appear on 1980’s Never for Ever. A single that was released in 1980, December Will Be Magic Again, was performed during the show – though it had its premiere days earlier for the Christmas Snowtime Special (22nd December). I am going to draw in a few revisiting features about Kate/her 1979 Christmas special. It was not just Bush and her band performing in the 1979 special. She was joined by Perter Gabriel. He performed solo, and there is a haunting duet of Roy Harper’s Another Day. The was a reason why Harper wanted to collaborate with her. He sang backing vocals on her 1980 song, Breathing, whist she duetted on the track, You, on Harper's album, The Unknown Soldier (1980).

Some people disregard Kate, as it is seen as inessential and a bit bare. There are a couple of odd set designs and performances (Egypt and Ran Tan Waltz spring to mind), and one glaring issue: only one of the songs, December Will Be Magic Again, is about Christmas! The set is not Christmassy, and Bush does not perform carols or any Christmas standards. I wonder whether there was any discussion about whether to include something more Christmas-like, as it is a T.V. special broadcast at Christmas that is more designed to promote Kate Bush and her music, rather than evoke something of the season. In their feature in 2019, Medium investigate the songs and whether they relate to Christmas. There is a section of the feature that I wanted to bring in:

“For the uninitiated, the Kate Bush Christmas Special (titled simply Kate on-screen) aired on the BBC on December 28th, 1979. Bush was in between albums at the time, having released Lionheart in November 1978 and in the the middle of recording Never For Ever, which would come out in November 1980. Despite the lukewarm critical and commercial reception for Lionheart, the Christmas special came hot off the massive success of Bush’s Tour of Life, her first (and, until 2014, only) concert tour, and one she embarked on after turning down an opener slot on Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk tour.

It’s important to mention the Tour of Life here, since the Christmas special’s choreography borrows heavily from that tour. But where she sang live on the Tour of Life, she lip-syncs to pre-recorded tracks here and incorporates pre-recorded video segments. As a result, the Christmas special plays out more like a crazy, longform music video than a traditional stage show.

Kate answers the age-old question: “what would happen if the BBC gave a Christmas special to an incredibly ambitious 21-year-old art rocker who also smokes a ton of weed?” 40 years have passed since it came out, and it’s just as weird and wonderful as the day it first aired”.

Some pick at the performances and the fact that it is a lesser staging of The Tour of Life. Unable to replicate the feel and scale for T.V. broadcast from a studio, there were those who disliked Kate and felt it was a missed opportunity. I feel the biggest question comes around the nature of the show and whether it should have been shown at Christmas. I think it is actually a nice and unusual twist. Not everything shown at Christmas has to be about the holiday. This was simply a nice live show featuring Bush performing some known songs, new cuts, and a great set of songs from Peter Gabriel. Perhaps not cheery and evoking much delight, there are some wonderful moments. I love Bush and Gabriel’s duet on Another Day. The rendition of December Will Be Magic Again is one or two. It was released as a single, but never performed live when it was released in 1980. Bush never released a video for it. The best version of the song, Kate is worth watching alone for this remarkable performance! There is this selection box approach to the songs selected. We get a nice mix of flavours and sounds, and Bush is committed throughout. Other highlights include a very rare performance of The Wedding List. That would appear on Never for Ever the year after, but it was never released as a single. With her brother Paddy playing a couple of roles during the performance (a vicar and a gun-toting groom assassin), it is wonderfully realised and choreographed performance! I am going to go on, but I want to bring in Far Out Magazine’s featured about a ‘forgotten’ Christmas show:

“Featuring just one recognisably Christmassy song, it is a mind-bending theatrical odyssey that sees Bush perform a range of tracks from her first three albums, with a rendition of Erik Satie’s ‘Gymnopodie No. 3’ thrown in for good measure.

By the time Kate Bush sat down to write ‘December Will Be Magic Again,’ she was in the middle of recording her third album Never For Ever, a record which would land Bush such hit singles as ‘Babooshka’, ‘Breathing’, and ‘Army Dreamers’. Despite the tepid reception of her sophomore album Lionheart, she’d managed to win back her fans with her spectacular Tour Of Life concert tour, which was praised for its originality and spectacular visual appeal. Having been forced to turn down a slot supporting Fleetwood Mac on their Tusk tour, it was clear that Bush was in the midst of one of the busiest and most creatively rewarding periods of her life, and she wanted more.

So, when she was invited to host her own TV Christmas special in 1979, she jumped at the chance. Directed by Roy Norton, the 45-minute performance saw Bush bring the theatricality of her stage show to the small screen, offering her suburban-bound teenage fans the chance to see her in action. From the moment she jumps into the frame, dressed like some chiffon-clad bat, it’s clear Bush has no intention of offering us any of the wholesomeness of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas specials – rather her intention is to thrill us into submission.

Surreal and heartwarming in equal measure, Kate: Kate Bush Christmas Special 1979 is a wonder to behold. As well as containing some hilariously overblown choreography, (including the moment in ‘Them Heavy People’ when one of Bush’s dancers breaks a glass bottle over her head) it also features a couple of amazing cameos, including one by Peter Gabriel.

So, if you’re looking for something unusual to watch this Christmas, look no further”.

I am going to wrap up in a minute. I can see why some are not huge fans of Kate. It is a special broadcast at Christmas, though it never really marketed itself as a Christmas bonanza with lots of songs set around the time of year. Instead, it is this broadcast that keeps her live momentum going, acts as some promotion for her first two albums and what was to come. It also makes me wonder whether it will be released onto DVD. There is a Japanese release that also has a Hammersmith Odeon set from The Tour of Life, but nothing else is available from what I can see. On 28th December, it will be forty-three years since the Christmas special, a.k.a. Kate, was broadcast on the BBC. I do hope that we get to see this show on the BBC again, as this year has been a big one for introducing Kate Bush’s music to new people (though it was shown in the summer). They would get a kick from seeing the 1979 special. I really love it, and I would agree that it is underappreciated and sort of lost. Not seen as an essential part of her cannon and catalogue, I would encourage people to give it a watch, because there are so many great moments. Another brilliant one is Bush’s performance of Symphony In Blue. The lead song from 1978’s Lionheart, you get tingles listening to her delivery. It is a beautiful song that is a bit of a Bush deep cut. Recorded in October 1979 at the BBC’s Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham, with choreography by Anthony Van Laast (who choreographed for The Tour of Life), the barmy, brilliant, and bountiful Kate is something that…

EVERYONE needs to see.

FEATURE: Looking Ahead… Songs from Albums Turning Forty in 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Ahead…

  

Songs from Albums Turning Forty in 2023

__________

LOOKING ahead to 2023…

I am doing a run of features marking great albums celebrating big anniversaries. I am now at 1983 – that was the year I was born! Albums from that incredible year that are going to be forty in 2023. I am highlighting this with a playlist of songs from that year. 1983 was a simply brilliant year for music, and there is plenty of gold to be heard below. I am looking forward to covering 1988 next, but let us continue with sensational albums turning forty next year. Such an important anniversary, these songs below are iconic and huge. If you are not sure which great albums came out in 1983, then the playlist below gives you an idea of how wonderful…

 THE year was.

FEATURE: Revisiting… Beyoncé - RENAISSANCE

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

 

Beyoncé - RENAISSANCE

__________

THIS it feature is normally…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Carlijn Jacobs

for great albums of the past five years that didn’t get all the credit they deserved first time around and need a new spin. I have used the last few or so for albums released this year that are either underrated or warrant another listen. The reason I am featuring Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE is because it is one of her best albums, but there might be some who have not heard it. Maybe feeling it was going to be like her other albums, RENAISSANCE is different to 2016’s Lemonade. Whereas that album seemed more personal and featured more R&B and Hip-Hop, RENAISSANCE has a lot of Disco, House and Dance. It seems like it is from a golden era, compared to the somewhat more modern and urgent Lemonade. RENAISSANCE is the first instalment of a trilogy project. Beyoncé conceived and recorded the album during the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking to inspire joy and escapism in listeners who had experienced isolation and to celebrate a club era in which marginalized people sought liberation through Dance music. One might think critics would react less warmly to an album not quite as striking and personal. One that sort of sounds similar to her earliest solo work. In fact, there have been huge reviews across the board! There were some a little mixed towards RENAISSANCE when it came out, whilst there was this enormous explosion of attention on social media.

As it was released in July, I wanted to come back to the album now and recommend it to those who might not have heard it. Proving herself to be one of the most inventive and consistent artists ever, Beyoncé is at her best on RENAISSANCE. I will come to a couple of reviews for RENAISSANCE soon. I could not find interviews with Beyoncé where she discussed the album and its origins. Instead, there is a great feature from The Ringer, where they highlight how Beyoncé has cemented her place in music history from Lemonade in 2016, to her Coachella headline slot in 2018, to her latest album with RENAISSANCE. They also highlight how Beyoncé’s lyrics and perspectives have shifted:

“Renaissance marks a new method of storytelling from Beyoncé: If Lemonade was an exercise in building a longform musical narrative, her latest record clips together individual scenes as part of a larger world-building project. The universe Beyoncé has created on Renaissance is one of joy, pleasure, hedonism, regained confidence, and assured power. Though she’s previously explored these themes, they feel recontextualized given the social and political climate in which she is releasing the record. This new mindset is perhaps most evident in her takes on feminism and power, which has shifted dramatically since the beginning of her discography. On the breakout single “Break My Soul,” Beyoncé sings joyously about quitting her job in order to focus on love and pleasure, while a Big Freedia sample encourages listeners to “release” their work and stress.

“They work me so damn hard, work by nine, then off past five,” Beyoncé laments. Her sentiment comes in direct opposition to her 2011 hit “Run the World (Girls),” wherein the artist celebrated the working woman: “I work my nine to five, better cut my check.” Other tracks, like opener “I’m That Girl” reify the artist’s colossal confidence and swagger while separating her from the opulence often associated with her stardom: “It’s not the diamonds, it’s not the pearls, I’m that girl.” On Renaissance, power is derived not from money, work, or status, but rather the “release” of all of these things that previously defined Beyoncé’s artistry and persona. The record finds the artist at her most free-spirited, which, in a sense, puts her at her most powerful in turn.

While the lyricism and themes of Renaissance find Beyoncé putting old ideas in a new light, its music and production illustrate her ability to step onto entirely new ground and experiment with genres that have yet to be heard in her expansive discography. Powerful Afrobeats are plentiful on Renaissance, making the tracks feel gloriously decadent and effortlessly danceable. The record’s fifth song, “Energy,” finds Beyoncé rapping over seductive, tropical instrumentation as Jamaican American reggae artist BEAM describes the sublime energy of the club. On “Move,” which features Nigerian musician and producer Tems, an infectiously danceable beat mirrors the song’s encouraging lyrics: “Move, move, move, skrrt off, make room / stampede coming through,” Beyoncé proclaims as the track accelerates, emulating the immediacy of a flood onto the dance floor. In a testament to Beyoncé’s range, those quick-paced Afrobeats live right next to several more ethereal, disco-inspired tracks on Renaissance; impossibly smooth transitions allow both sounds to not only coexist but coalesce on the album. “Cuff It” and “Virgo’s Groove” utilize an effective combination of psychedelic strings, light brass instrumentation, and a grounding, funky bass line to create a shiny, uptempo groove perfect for the dance floor. The album’s closing track, “Summer Renaissance,” solidifies Beyoncé’s ode to disco via references to Donna Summer’s classic 1977 hit, “I Feel Love.” She even dives into light EDM: “All Up In Your Mind,” coproduced by hyperpop artist A.G. Cook, has an undeniably electronic feel.

On Renaissance, Beyoncé pushes herself to journey into genres that feel surprising even for an artist of seemingly infinite range. One of the most surprising and lyrically impressive songs on the record is “Church Girl,” which finds the artist singing about “Church girls acting loose” and “bad girls acting snotty” over a staccato bounce beat built around a hymnal sample from the prominent gospel group The Clark Sisters. Beyoncé grew up in the church and sang in her church choir, experiences which translate beautifully onto this track: the song is at once a celebration of the gospel tradition and a subversion of the often rigid, misogynistic standards Black women are held to under Christianity. Her religious expertise comes through clearly in her subtly clever lyricism. “Nobody can judge me but me, I was born free,” the artist proclaims, a play on the common Christian saying that “only God can judge you.” An undeniably danceable anthem, the track goes beyond simply encouraging listeners to “drop it like a thotty” to advocate for bodily autonomy within the church and outside of it. In the Christian tradition, children often undergo Communion, a ritual where they eat a wafer that symbolizes the body of Christ. “Now you are the body of Christ,” reads Corinthians 12:27, “and each one of you is a part of it.” When Beyoncé declares that “soon as I get in this party, I’m gonna let go of this body,” it feels like a direct rejection of this Christian ideal, a proclamation that her body is hers to dance and move how she pleases. In a way, the track operates as a musical mirror to Beyoncé’s 2016 hit “Daddy Lessons,” a boisterous country jam wherein the artist’s Texan Christian father “swore it on the Bible” that she needs to protect herself from and even “shoot” dangerous men. “Church Girl” is a continuation of Beyoncé’s rejection of a patriarchal Christian tradition, and the track stands as a reminder that she can bring us to church on her own terms”.

I will finish with a couple of reviews. There was so much love out there for the joyous and phenomenal RENAISSANCE! This is what AllMusic noted in their review of an album that surely sits alongside the very best of this year. It is definitely one of my favourites:

“Break My Soul" offered much to dissect as the preliminary single off Renaissance, Beyoncé's first solo studio album since Lemonade and part one of a promised three-act project. Integrating a flashback to early-'90s crossover house hit "Show Me Love," the resilience anthem -- reinforced with an echoing gospel choir and sampled Big Freedia exhortations -- came across like a nostalgic dance remix preceding the original version. Instead, it slid neatly into place on the parent LP not only as an accurate representation but also as a foreshock to an hour-long housequake filled with irrepressible exuberance in celebration of self and sisterhood. Among those to whom Beyoncé dedicates Renaissance is her late gay cousin and godmother, Uncle Jonny, credited for introducing her "to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album." The multitude of dancefloor sounds cultivated and celebrated since the late '60s in underground clubs by liberation-seeking gay, Black, and Latino dancers has been a natural ingredient in Beyoncé's recordings since the birth of Destiny's Child (take the use of the Love Unlimited Orchestra's proto-disco exemplar "Strange Games & Things" in "No, No, No, Pt. 2"), but it is the basis of Renaissance.

The LP is top-to-bottom danceable and sequenced with each track setting up the next, through the ecstatic finale, where Beyoncé most potently mixes sensuality and aggression, claiming her man with nods to Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Cowley, and Larry Heard. "Cuff It" is a disco-funk burner with Nile Rodgers' inimitable rhythm guitar and a slick quote from Teena Marie's biggest ballad, though it has all the vigor of Lady T's uptempo classics. The more relaxed "Virgo's Groove" is designed for circling the rink with its delectably plump bassline and handclaps, and moves to a private room where Beyoncé commands, in one of the set's many memorable turns of phrase, "Motorboat, baby, spin around." Renaissance pulls from the more recent and present sonic developments with equal guile. Dancehall-derived dembow is stretched out for the strutting opener "I'm That Girl." "Heated" works a chugging Afrobeats rhythm, and is keenly trailed by the swollen dubstep pulsations of "Thique." The most exciting moments fearlessly blend and switch eras. "Pure/Honey" alternates between a duly vulgar ballroom brush-off and pop-funk rapture, and "Church Girl," a rousing gospel-bounce marvel, weaves the Clark Sisters with the decidedly less-reverent DJ Jimi and the Showboys. Beyoncé is vocally up to the challenge of juggling the almost-innumerable quantity of styles and references, sighing, purring, beaming, belting, and spitting fire with all the required conviction and attitude. Her congregation of fellow writers, producers, and vocalists is a formidable assembly of close collaborators (the-Dream, Tricky Stewart, Mike Dean, NOVA Wav), younger trailblazers (Honey Dijon, Kelman Duran, Tems), and legends (Grace Jones, Raphael Saadiq). Act II will presumably have at least one ballad. They're not missed here”.

I’ll finish with CLASH’s effusive recommendation of an album from a music legend. After a couple of decades or more in the industry, you cannot predict or write off Beyoncé! If you have not spun RENAISSANCE, then I would urge you to do so as soon as possible:

“On ‘I’m That Girl’, the opening track from her long-gestating seventh album ‘RENAISSANCE’ – the first act of a planned trilogy – Beyoncé offloads a series of hubristic declarations as an audibly frantic sample of Tommy Wright III’s and late Memphis rapper Princess Loko’s ‘Still Pimpin’, ripples like an engine underneath. A slow rapture of self-love unfurls as Beyoncé’s announces “all these songs sound good”. Is she wrong? No, she isn’t. All sixteen tracks warrant that admission.

‘RENAISSANCE’ arrived without the visual accompaniment we’ve come to expect from the auteur. The Houstonian opted instead for a more conventional rollout, letting the songs simmer in the imagination of her listeners. The effect is already palpable. The space-age glitchtronic odyssey ‘Alien Superstar’ – the album’s jewel in the crown – is already a viral hit on Twitter and TikTok; the soaring chorus scoring hyper-feminised animation and digital memes curated by creative fans.

Since ‘4’, Beyoncé has mainstreamed fringe sounds to the masses. Bypassing trends and hits, she’s oscillated between pop-skewed R&B aspirations and a synthesis of modernist sounds. On ‘RENAISSANCE’, she completely leans into her musical impulses with unmitigated passion and poignancy. Beyoncé has never sounded more uninhibited, more whimsical or “cosier” than she does on ‘RENAISSANCE’. From the hedonism of Studio 54 disco, to the highs of Hacienda clubland and Detroit techno, Beyoncé puts her proverbial stamp on a ravey revivalist trip through era-defining dance. Wild and gleefully self-possessed, ‘CLUB RENAISSANCE’ is an unceasing hour-long DJ mix that rewards stamina; a summon to commune on the dancefloor and unburden the mind and unshackle the body from the flames that threaten to engulf us all.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mason Poole

‘RENAISSANCE’ memorialises Beyoncé’s late Uncle Johnny, who lost his life to AIDS as her career began to flourish in the early 00s. Beyoncé credits her ‘godmother’ with exposing her younger self to the underground subculture of queens, femmes, ballroom splendour and its language of aspirational fantasy. The legacy of these lost souls looms large throughout: Beyoncé pays tribute to the Black trans and genderqueer innovators who birthed these fiefdoms on the dancefloor, prizing them back from gentrified hands. On the languorous sway of ‘Cozy’, Beyoncé zealously lists the colours of Daniel Quasar’s ‘Progress’ pride flag, a powerful nod to marginalised LGBTQ+ people of colour.

‘RENAISSANCE’ doesn’t just pay homage to the spiritual antecedents of the Black queer tradition through idioms, it embraces the culture of “serving” through collaboration that is so integral to its survival: ‘Cozy’ and the penultimate track ‘Pure/Honey’ features production by house music forerunner Honey Dijon, and queen-speech regality from drag archetypes Kevin Aviance and the late Moi Renee, who add veracity and “cunty” realness to Beyoncé’s brand of shit-talking flagrancy.

At times Beyoncé has been criticised for a maintaining a too clean and sterile approach to her work. On ‘RENAISSANCE’, she masters the art of controlled chaos. ‘Heated’ – the older, nastier sister of ‘Bow Down’ – is a guttural siren cry; the final minute loaded with the most outlandish pomp and posturing you’ve ever heard on a Beyoncé track. ‘Church Girl’ threads together the consecrated and profane, recalling the seismic vocal yelps of ‘Get Me Bodied’ backed by a chipmunk vocal loop of ‘Center Thy Will’ by the Clark Sisters, producers No I.D. and The-Dream creating a scratchy bounce base for Beyoncé to wax lyrical about sisterhood and the right to self-determination. She knows she has sauce; she wants you to tap into yours as well.

‘RENAISSANCE’ surveys the lusty and febrile Dionysiac dimensions of after-hours music. This is grown people music. Beyoncé offers the listener a brief respite from the churning soundscape midway through, lowering the tempo for the lush retro segue of ‘Plastic Off The Sofa’ and ‘Virgo’s Groove’. Beyoncé has always excelled in her vocal production work, but here her ornate harmonies are soothing and indelibly smooth, mirroring the ecstatic rise and fall of synchronised motion, of sex, of groovy basslines and eternal monogamous love.

Pain is no longer a prelude to transcendent art. ‘RENAISSANCE’ is instead a prolonged flex; a parade of joy, emotion, coked-up glam and excess. It’s delirious and dicey, denotative without being derivative. Yes, Beyoncé’s the “greatest living entertainer” but what about her foresight, her finely-tuned instincts or her vocal ingenuity. The word ‘genius’ isn’t bestowed upon Beyoncé the way it is for Kanye or Kendrick; if ‘RENAISSANCE’ doesn’t convince you of her merit or her unerring willingness to produce sprawling bodies of work that are editorially precise, prismatic and rhythmically audacious, nothing will.

9/10”.

One of 2022’s best albums, I have featured it in Revisiting… as some may not have heard the album. Even if you have, then it is one that needs to be played again and again! In future features, I will investigate a couple of albums from this year that may have been overlooked a bit. When it comes to RENAISSANCE, there was a lot of love out there for it. It will be fascinating to see where…

THE magnificent Beyoncé heads next.

FEATURE: Looking Ahead… Songs from Albums Turning Forty-Five in 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Ahead…

  

Songs from Albums Turning Forty-Five in 2023

__________

AS I continue…

this feature series, I am arriving at a very special year for music! I am doing a run of features marking great albums celebrating big anniversaries. I am now at 1978. Albums from that marvellous year that are going to be forty-five in 2023. I am going to celebrate that with a playlist of songs from that brilliant time. 1978 was a hugely exciting year for music, and there is plenty of gold to be heard below. I am looking forward to covering 1983 next, but let us continue with sensational albums turning forty-five next year. Such an important anniversary, these songs below are legendary. If you are not sure which great albums came out in 1978, then the playlist below gives you an idea of how incredible…

THIS year was.