FEATURE: Spotlight: Coi Leray

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 Coi Leray

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SOMEONE who is going to…

be a huge name and has already taking massive strides, Coi Leray (Coi Leray Collins) began posting music to SoundCloud and released her single Huddy along with her debut mixtape Everythingcoz in 2018. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Hackensack, New Jersey, Lerya is the daughter of rapper and media mogul Benzino. I want as many people who do not know about Coi Leroy about her. To do this, there are some interviews and features that are worth bringing in. Her amazing debut album, Trendsetter, was released last year. I think a lot of people were down on the album as it didn’t chart too high. Maybe equating commercial success with worth, it is actually a superb album that did not get the credit it deserved! Perhaps there were too many collaborations. Coi Leroy is a strong artist who is at her best when out front. I think her future music will be her strongest yet. It is clear she is a phenomenal artist with a massive future. I want to start off with something recent from Billboard. Speaking with her last month, it is a shame that articles and press labels her debut as a disappointment or failure. It wasn’t. It just didn’t chart high – which does not mean the material on the album is inferior:

“Last year, Coi Leray’s confidence level was low after her first album, Trendsetter, debuted at No. 89 on the Billboard 200. With a rough opening week, a residue of doubt seeped into her career and caused the affable star to hit the pause button. Despite her dismal debut, acts such as 50 Cent and Nicki Minaj lent support and encouraged her to stay positive, because they knew success was near. Fast forward nine months later, and Leray is smiling again, thanks to the success of her blistering Hot 100 hit “Players.”

“I’m 25, and sometimes you don’t know everything,” Leray says inside the Billboard LA offices on a balmy Friday afternoon. “I look at constructive criticism, even in a negative way. I try to figure out how to learn from it — just taking it and bringing it back even better. You don’t know everything. I learned the power of listening is key.” Leray’s bounce-back is a testament to her assiduous work ethic. Upon completing her Billboard interview earlier this January, she zipped to France for Paris Fashion Week, where she glowed in her see-through ensemble at the Yves Saint Laurent fashion show. Then, she hit the studio to work on new music with Pharrell.

Leray’s resurgence comes via her Grandmaster Flash-sampling single “Players,” a modern-day spin on the 1982 seminal hit “The Message.” Leray’s sing-songy hook and clever quips (“Applebottom make em’ wanna bite”) are TikTok gold, and blasted the record from social media sensation into Hot 100 territory. “Players” also received a jolt from a few remixes, including DJ Saige’s mashup of Busta Rhymes’ 1997 classic “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See” and DJ Smallz’s Jersey Club remix. Thanks to the bevy of remixes, “Players” sits comfortably at No. 54 on the Hot 100 this week, a new peak for the hit record.

“This lifestyle is so unexpected,” says Coi while petting her dog Brixx, who accompanied her to the interview. “Being in the industry, it’s so unexpected. You never know what you’re going to wake up and do tomorrow. I have paranoia like, “F–k, what’s next?” You gotta think positively. If I had positive paranoia, it would be good.”

You put out Trendsetter last year and it had some hits. Looking back on it, what grade would it get and why?

I would give Trendsetter like an 8.5. I think the project was amazing, honestly, because “Blick Blick” was such a big moment for me. I feel like we put the focus on that song, and I really wish we could’ve catered to other songs — because there were so many other amazing features and songs on the project that I think are amazing.

I’ve been recording music for three years now, and a lot of those songs were scattered within that time with me being ready to drop. Me being so versatile and doing so many things, I don’t want to take the focus off the music — so I always thought it was important for me to drop so, people don’t get lost in the sex appeal or the dancing or the cooking or whatever it is.

Do you still have that competitive fire?

I don’t have competitive fire. I don’t compete with them, because you just can’t. At the end of the day, I do know that it’s a competition. If I ran track, I’m trying to get first place. I don’t give a f–k if we go to the same school or are on the same team in the same jersey. If they said, “Yo race Coi down the street!” You don’t think I’m not about to try to dust her? This is my sister! Girls with the same energy, it’s like, “Oh you fire? I’m fire and I’ll see you at the top.”

The best thing about this industry, there’s room for everybody. That’s why it’s no competition. B–ch, I could be here and you could be here right with me. At the end of the day, even if we at the top of the mountain, I’ma be Coi and you gonna be you, and we could trade places or I could become someone else. I’m gonna determine my greatness, my destiny, and my future. What’s for you is for you, while we’re at the top together. Steel sharpens steel.

Some of my favorite female artists out right now that I truly love — like, GloRilla is my favorite. I like Ice Spice, I like Cardi and I think Nicki [Minaj] is one of the greatest artists of all-time. I like Meg and I think Doja [Cat] is one of the biggest artists and best female artists as well. Flo Milli too. Lola Brooke is fire. I love her cadence, voice, and energy. There’s so many fire women out there to the point where I love it.

I hope everybody continues to get their flowers. When I’m focused, I’m focused on me and when we run into each other, hopefully we collab and make a lot of girls come together and show unity. What’s the thing where Miley Cyrus was singing with Rihanna? You remember when they was all on stage? It was like Beyoncé, Shakira, Rihanna, Fergie, Miley Cyrus. It was one of the best moments in female history. It was just unity. All the fire top b–ches on stage singing at the time same time. I’ve never seen that in the past eight years”.

In October, COMPLEX featured the sensational Coi Leray. Maybe, after some low album sales for her debut, many might have written her off. It is clear from Trendsetter that she is someone who is going to have a very long and successful career. For anyone who has not heard Trendsetter, do go and spend some time with an incredible artist from a truly original artist.

“Coi Leray wants respect put on her name.

During an appearance on Amazon Music’s Bars and Nuggets podcast, Leray addressed the criticism she faced over her debut studio album Trendsetter. Though it delivered multiple viral hits, the star-studded record underperformed on the charts, as it entered the Billboard 200 at the No. 89 slot with 11,500 album equivalent units earned in its first week.

Despite the low figures, the 25-year-old is confident Trendsetter is still the “best album of 2022.”

“They try to shit on my album. My album’s about to be gold. Let it be gold and you got to let them know,” she told host Bimma, the Storytella at the 50:50 mark above. “You got to champion you. They said the first week it sold 11,000 sales. It’s so crazy, because out of all the albums that drop, nobody like, goes viral like that, like…but of course, Coi Leray is perfect [for] headlines. It’s like, cool. I keep their lights on, they keep my lights on. I don’t mind the blogs doing whatever they gotta do, right? But y’all gonna respect me. Y’all gonna appreciate me.”

Leray argued that an album’s success isn’t strictly based on pure sales, as platforms like TikTok and YouTube can turn records into major hits. She also highlighted everything she’s achieved over the past two years, most notably securing big-name features—like Nicki Minaj, Lil Durk, G Herbo, and Fivio Foreign—for her first full-length. “I have some of the most hottest artists in the world on that project that I got organically, myself, just being myself,” she said at the 51:30 mark. “Shout out to everybody that is on my project. All those features is, each and every single last one of them, people believed in me and they see my talent for what it is.”

She went on to point out that she had hit Billboard charts before Trendsetter’s release, and has since earned multiple platinum certifications and award nominations. “Obviously, the music was good,” she said before addressing her haters. “They try to knock you down and really try to poke you and poke you and poke you. And it’s better when you poke at them.”

Leray said her main focus is being there for her family, rather than paying attention to her critics. “You think I care about what people like? I can fucking take care of my family,” she explained. “I’m the big dog now. I fuckin’ wear the pants. I take care of family. And that’s what God put me here to do. I’m going to continue to do that.”

Coi also touched on her rocky relationship with her father, Benzino, whom she’s called out several times over social media. Though she declined to get into details about the “internet shit,” she admitted there are many things she appreciates about her dad, specifically his approach to music-making.

“At one point my dad was doing music and I’ll be like, ‘Damn, like, he’s always at the studio,’ and I was like, ‘Yo, you doing this music, like, are you are you OK with the fact that it’s not on the radio?’ He said, ‘Yo, I do this for me. I don’t do this for them or them. I get in the studio and I make my music because this is what I want to do.’”

Elsewhere in the interview, Leray opened up about being body-shamed and how she has since learned to love herself more. She recalled reading comments criticizing her physique and the toll it took on her confidence.

“The skinny stuff did bother me just a little bit, just a little bit, because I’m such a good person, and I really look in the mirror and don’t think there’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t know why. I just don’t fuckin’ think so,” she said at 30:00. “I just look in the mirror, be like, ‘Damn, girl.’ I feel like everybody should do that. Like, you got it. And of course, I’m a girl, of course I want a bigger butt. But I also like the big butt I got now. It’s a little cute big butt. I shake that shit…I go crazy”.

I would urge everyone to check out the music of Coi Leray. I reckon that this year will be a pretty busy and active one for her. After a debut which, although it sold low, promised a lot, I think will see her step on and release a fairly quick follow-up. It is clear there is a lot of passion and determination in her heart. Leray is someone everyone should keep an eye out for. V Magazine featured her and underground rap legend and D.J. Angie Martinez in October. They spoke with one another about their early inspirations, come up in the genre, and hopes for the future of Hip-Hop:

“A rising force in the rap game, Leray connects with underground rap legend and DJ Angie Martinez as the pair speak on their early inspirations, come up in the genre, and hopes for the future of Hip Hop

“CL: I’ve always just been a hustler and was inspired to just make music. I mean, in my lyrics I always write through experience and all my music is [inspired by] experience and just my life. And I'm able to really use [music] as not only a journal, but a place to really escape and give my fans something that they can also listen to and relate to as well and help them get through what they're going through. Do you feel like New York influenced your sound coming up?

AM: Oh, definitely. Absolutely, you create what you know. And I was really influenced by New York rap artists, especially of the '80s and early '90s. By the time I had started playing around as an artist and in the studio working on my first album, all of those influences started to come up—I was inspired by all of what was happening in New York and also just what was happening in the city. We made a song called "Live at Jimmy's." Jimmy's was the popping spot back then. Even the artists that I featured on the album and the sound of the beats and all of that is definitely influenced by this city.

CL: I read somewhere that you kind of came up with Lil' Kim and were both nominated for a Grammy together?

AM: Yes, we were nominated for a Grammy for "Ladies Night," which is so crazy to me because literally that might have been the second or third song I'd ever been on. My first one was with KRS-One and Redman. Imagine your first song ever is with KRS-One and Redman—mine was! And then later they had been doing this "Ladies Night" song, Un Rivera was putting it together. And he called and asked if I would do it because they had just heard me rap on this other song—I think this was maybe just the second song I was ever on. So yeah, they called and I got to be on set with Lil' Kim, Da Brat, Missy Elliot, and Left Eye and just have this wonderful experience that would stay with me for a lifetime, man. I mean, it wasn't just the girls on the song—the girls that showed up for the video, Mary J. Blige, TLC—it just was such a dope representation of all the women in the industry, and we had a great time together.

She’s amazing, she of course is an icon. I have so much respect for her. I literally can remember the first time Biggie told me on the radio that he had this girl and she could rap, she rapped like a dude, but she was sexy—he was describing her in such a way like nothing we'd ever seen before. And when Lil' Kim finally did come out, obviously, she didn't disappoint. She superseded anything, but Big always had that vision for her. I really remember him being on the radio and describing what type of artist she was and telling New York that they should be excited about her, and it's just crazy to see how she over-delivered. Now I’m curious, you’ve been so successful recently, have you had to face any obstacles? Especially as a female in this industry?

CL: Entering the industry, as a young Black female artist, I really didn't worry about too much. I guess that was because I didn't know so much and I really wasn't so deeply in it in the beginning. I really didn't overthink anything, I didn't think about anything. I just knew that I wanted to be a good person, I knew I wanted the world to see me. I knew I had to apply pressure, I knew there's so much competition out there, so no matter what, you just gotta keep going. I kept that [spirit] and stuck that with me. And I kept my team with me, I’ve had the same people since day one and it ended up turning out really, really good.

AM: I definitely agree with you, I didn’t really think about it coming up. When I was getting into the business, nah, there were definitely not a lot of women. But I just never thought about it. When I was starting Hip Hop, radio was starting at the same time, so I was in this new genre of radio. When I was starting, commercial Hip Hop radio was really just beginning, so I was just happy to be part of launching that. And in New York, I just loved what I was doing so much. I did it with blinders on and I was probably naive to maybe if I was being treated differently because I was a woman or if there were things that were going on around me. I worked so hard, I just had blinders on. I didn't pay attention to the noise. But, you know, I had to develop ways to just be around guys all the time.

AM: So what would you say your goal is with the music you create? How do you want your listeners to feel?

CL: I feel like the goal that I have when I make my music is just for the shit to be fire and obviously get off what I need to say. I’ve actually been in the studio non-stop for the past 60 days straight, working on amazing music back to back to back to back, coming up with so many amazing things. And sometimes as an artist, my goal here—I'm trying to be here forever and it's a lot of strategy and trusting, it's a process to that super stardom longevity and I feel like I'm just slowly taking my time. I'm in the right place and I just can't wait till people hear this new music because it's amazing. And when I make my music, it's for me, but it's also for everybody. I don't get in the studio and be like, “Yo, I'm about to make a song, how can I make people like me tomorrow?" Like no, I get in there and I just be myself always, 10 toes, and just create and whatever goes from there leaves the room. Whether it's a hit, whether it's a single, doesn't matter what it is, I'm proud of it”.

One of the big names people need to keep abreast of, the phenomenal Coi Leray is primed for major stardom. Even if some discount her stunning debut album, she will build up stronger. Already inspiring so many other people, this year is set to be a big one. If you are not aware of her music and wonder, then go and check her out…

RIGHT now.

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Follow Coi Leray

PHOTO CREDIT: Munachi Osegbu

Official:

https://www.coileray.com/#/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/coileray/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/coi_leray

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6AMd49uBDJfhf30Ak2QR5s

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiHc6oRZnXXZHZlaxbNkfQg

FEATURE: Second Spin: De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising

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THIS is me jumping the gun a bit…

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

as De La Soul’s debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, will be available on streaming services from next month. I am unable to include it in full at the moment. There are a few reasons why I am including this 1989 classic in Second Spin. I normally reserve this feature for albums that are under-appreciated or were ignored the first time around. Instead, this is an album that has always been a gem, but it should be listened to by those who have not heard it. An album with an iconic cover. Also, sadly, one of Del La Soul’s founding members, David Jude Jolicoeur (a.k.a. Trugoy the Dove), died last weekend. It was gut-wrenching and unexpected news. Aged fifty-four, it was a Hip-Hop legend leaving us too soon. A final reason to investigate 3 Feet High and Rising is that the album is being re-issued on physical formats on its thirty-fourth anniversary. I will come to some features/reviews for an album that defines the Daisy Age of Hip-Hop. In 1989, at a time when a lot of Hip-Hop was more political and angered, De La Soul beckoned in something different. Hugely innovative and intelligent, there was more emphasis on togetherness, humour and peace. Whilst some fans and artists found this against what Hip-Hop was about, the influence and importance of De La Soul’s masterpiece debut has been recognised. Starting an alternative Hip-Hop movement which would expand in the 1990s, even though the Daisy Age did not last too long – De La Soul’s second album, 1991’s De La Soul Is Dead was emphatically the death of that (as you can see from the album cover!) -, the sampling, spirit and brilliance of 3 Feet High and Rising impacted so many others and was very important.

For anyone who is a fan of De La Soul and this majestic album, here is where you can pre-order an album that should be part of everybody’s record collection. I cannot overstate how important and brilliant 3 Feet High and Rising is. For anyone a little unsure, it will only take a few seconds before it captures you completely:

“3 Feet High and Rising is the debut studio album by American hip hop trio De La Soul. It was released on March 3, 1989, by Tommy Boy. It marked the first of three full-length collaborations with producer Prince Paul, which would become the critical and commercial peak of both parties. Critically, as well as commercially, the album was a success. It contains the singles, Me Myself and I, The Magic Number, Buddy, and Eye Know. The album title came from the Johnny Cash song Five Feet High and Rising.

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

There is a lot to cover when it comes to 3 Feet High and Rising. Because of contract situations and issues with clearing samples, it has been unavailable on streaming services. It has also been hard to get a copy on vinyl for a reasonable price. Such a relief and liberation that this pioneering album is now coming out on a range of physical formats and streaming. It makes it accessible to a new generation and wider audience. I remember when the album came out first time. I was a small child, but I was instantly struck by tracks such as The Magic Number and Eye Know. The Quietus told the story of 3 Feet High and Rising in 2019 for its thirtieth anniversary. They spoke with people connected to the album, including its producer, Prince Paul, and group member Posdnuos. I have selected some sections that caught my eye:

“De La Soul's early moves were fortuitous. Alongside a friend they knew through school - the Stetsasonic member and DJ, Prince Paul - the trio (Posdnous, Maseo and Trugoy the Dove, who later changed his performing moniker to Dave) almost fell in to a way of making music that was an extension of their friendship and lifestyle. That they were immediately embraced and celebrated by their peers was not despite their different sound and style, but because that out-of-nowhere individuality fitted perfectly into hip hop's Golden Era, when the key ingredient that every artist had to have was a singular vision and an unassailable belief in the unlimited possibilities the music could afford them.

“Chuck D (Public Enemy): "Among the great innovators of the classic era, somebody who just decides to say, 'You know man, fuck it. If they're there, then we're gonna totally be on this other side', was De La Soul and Prince Paul. And Prince Paul also comes from the understanding of the most under-rated group of the classic era, and possibly of all time - Stetsasonic. The first hip hop band: the band that made The Roots understand the way they could go in the 90s. In Stet you had minds like Deelite and Daddy-O, and also Prince Paul, whose ideas manifested into De La Soul, these young innovators from Long Island. And when you see a record like that, you go 'What the fuck? These guys is crazier than we are!' That was the beauty of that era: everybody had to carve out their own private Idaho."

Posdnous: "We were the same kids who had every Kool G Rap album, every Rakim song, all the early Juice Crew stuff. We loved Run DMC, knew every lyric to [Boogie Down Productions' debut] Criminal Minded. We were just fans of the music. Whatever was out at that time, that's what we were on, hardcore or not. But regardless of what we were into, we always were all about what we were gonna do when we ever got the chance to get out there. It wasn't like we thought to ourselves, 'We're gonna try our best and make sure we come out as different as possible from what's out,' it's just that it was the natural way how we were. We had the funk and soul from Mase's side, the calypso and soul from Dave's side, and my father's jazz and blues and soul and gospel side, and we just put that all together with our own influences."

The making of 3 Feet High And Rising starred half of the rappers in New York and the occasional random bloke turning up in the studio for no readily apparent reason. As a natural outgrowth of the fraternal and collaborative vibe of the sessions, the Native Tongues collective formed around De La, their friends and like-minded artists the Jungle Brothers the other anchoring point of the unit. Quietly, almost accidentally - certainly without any deliberate attempt at it - this extended family changed the way rap records were made, and altered the industry around them forever.

(Prince) Paul: "That was a very quick record. We did that in two, two-and-a-half months, and the reason it even took that long is 'cos I was still with Stet and I had to go on tour in between us recording, so there was some time taken off until I came back so I could finish the album. And that was a pretty low budget. I think we got about $25,000 in total. Everything came out of that: the recording, and we all got paid out of that."

Pos: "Myself and Dave were in our first year of college, and Mase was still in high school. We were just blown away by everything. We were living out our dreams. A lot of the songs was all stuff that was out of our parents' collections, we would put it together, and Paul would add the spice to it, the recipes that make it right. He would help arrange it with us. It was such a great time."

Paul: "I think the main vibe this time was, 'Yo, wow! I'm in control! And people listen to me! And not only do people listen to me, they respect me!' Which, you know, made me... I wouldn't say 'cocky,' but it was so nice to have people say, 'Yo Paul, what do you think?' Or, 'Whatever Paul says.' And that was amazing. The environment was fun, because Calliope was like a penthouse studio. Acoustically it was horrible but it had so much space. It was so comfortable."

Guru (Gang Starr): "In [Calliope], the main things that were there were a turntable, with a mixer, for sampling and also for scratching. Premier used to bring his [SP] 12 with him, and the disks. We used to do 8-hour lockouts whenever we could get 'em, 'cos that was a busy studio at that time."

Paul: "We'd just all be sitting around listening to stuff. They had a turntable set up and a mixer, and we all had stacks of records. 'OK, play the beat on the main speakers, play it loud... Alright!' And then we'd have something playing, thinking about whatever was on the record... 'Yeah! That'll work, but can we pitch-shift it so it'll fit in key? Yeah, that's good. Oh, yeah! That's hot!' It was just... whatever popped into mind. And I think it almost made me a madman because I had so much control - I wasn't used to that. Every little idea, every little fantasy of wanting to do stuff, I was able to do. And they [De La] were great. Those guys are very artistic, and I learned a lot from them during that time. So it was a good trade-off”.

I want to come to an interesting retrospective feature from Albumism. They wrote about 3 Feet High and Rising in 2019. Thirty years after its release, it was still compelling people to write and explain why it means so much. That will be the case next year when it turns thirty-five. As the album is being reissued and is having this roll-out, I wanted to reference this phenomenal work from Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maseo:

“It’s hard to oversell how 3 Feet High and Rising was borderline alien compared to anything that had been released before it. There had been other crews that were left of center, like Ultramagnetic MCs and the Jungle Brothers, (more on them in a sec), but De La Soul were positively indecipherable. Pos, Dove, and Mase, along with producer “Prince” Paul Huston came together to craft the definitive oddball hip-hop album that created the lane for others who wanted to “try something different.” And while making the album, Prince Paul encouraged De La to experiment as much possible, try new things, and not be afraid to make mistakes. It’s this wide-eyed and liberated attitude that give 3 Feet High and Rising a lot of its charm.

It made sense that they came together with the aforementioned Jungle Brothers and the fledgling group A Tribe Called Quest to form the groundbreaking Native Tongues clique. The crew became synonymous with outside-of-the-box thinking in regards to hip-hop music, and 3 Feet High and Rising is the foundation for their movement.

When I first heard 3 Feet High and Rising, I didn’t quite get “it.” I was 13, and the album was a bit too odd for me at the time. The group used obscure slang and their lyrics and skits seemed to be filled with in-jokes that were inscrutable except to those in their immediate crew.  A classmate had to explain to me that “Potholes In My Lawn” was about people stealing their rhymes; I would have had no idea otherwise. Still, I’d dug the singles, especially the “Buddy” remix, which I’d gotten to know through its low-budget but madcap video. What a difference a couple of years made, as I revisited 3 Feet High right around the time that its successor De La Soul Is Dead (1991) surfaced, now more open to its idiosyncrasies and bizarre moments.

Much of the attention of 3 Feet High centers on its production, handled by Prince Paul. Specifically, it centers on the sample sources for the album. A lot of hip-hop artists mainly subsisted on samples from James Brown and Ultimate Beats and Breaks Records. De La Soul and Prince Paul were one of the first groups to utilize records from eclectic sources as the bricks and the mortar for their tracks. They sampled songs from relatively obscure artists like the Mad Lads and Cymande, and untouched musical ground like Steely Dan and Liberace. The album’s title is taken from a line in an early Johnny Cash song. The type of creativity that De La used on this album is functionally infeasible for a major label hip-hop release in 2019, due to the massive costs associated with the sample clearances. It’s one of the biggest reasons why Tommy Boy Records only recently worked out a deal to get the album onto streaming services.

As mentioned earlier, the album’s subject matter can be hard to decipher, but the group spends the album positioning themselves as rejecting the traditional definition of what it means to be a rapper. “Me Myself and I” remains the group’s anthem in that sense, expressing the importance of substance above traditional style, and how if the music dope, their dress doesn’t really matter. The point was hammered home in the video for the song, which was about rejecting the ultra-machismo driven image of what many associated with being a rapper. The group came to dislike the track, and for years prefaced live performances of it with chants of “We hate this song. We hate this song. We hate this song, but you love this song.”

3 Feet High still holds up as a towering artistic achievement for the group and hip-hop in general. It’s an extremely influential album, and it’s hard to imagine the evolution of abstract or even underground hip-hop without its existence. As mentioned above, De La came out of their experience with the album far less easy going and much more disillusioned. As a result, they followed it up with De La Soul is Dead, their explicit rejection of their “D.A.I.S.Y.”-centered image.

Even though De La Soul have been determined to prevent 3 Feet High and Rising from narrowly defining them as artists, the album is an essential component of their legacy, and the album that connected the most with their fans and other artists. Thirty years later, De La remain one of the best beloved groups in hip-hop music, with an unflinchingly loyal fanbase that follows them across the globe and supports their music whenever they choose to release an album. If this is the fruit that this album bore, then perhaps daisies really aren’t so bad”.

Before ending with a couple of reviews, Billboard marked twenty-five years of a classic in 2014. They did a track-by-track review of 3 Feet High and Rising. I have selected reviews of my favourite songs from the album:

“The Magic Number”

Sets forth the De La Soul agenda and affirms the group as a trio. “Fly rhymes are stored on a D.A.I.S.Y. production/ It stands for ‘Da Inner Sound Y’all’ and y’all can bet/ That the action’s not a trick, but showing the function,” Pos spits, spelling out the acronym, D.A.I.S.Y. Perhaps because of daisies and their symbolic affiliation with sixties counterculture, De La would go on to be labeled as the first hip-hop hippies. Rappers with open minds. A novel concept.

“Ghetto Thang”

One of the rare moments on the album that deals with issues of poverty, “Ghetto Thang” explores the seedier side of hood life. “Infested are the halls, also the brains/ Daddy’s broken down from ghetto pains/ Mommy’s flying high, the truth is shown/ The kids are all alone,” Trugoy spits. In a sense, it’s De La’s attempt at explaining something they can’t ignore. They may look outside their surroundings for inspiration, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t aware of what’s going on.

“Eye Know”

The opening guitar riff from the Mad Lads’ “Make This Young Lady Mine” provides the cheerful backing track for Pos and Trugoy to kick something in the ear of the ladies they’re mackin’ on. Again, more references to the D.A.I.S.Y. age. And who wouldn’t want to get with these easy-going casanovas?

“Potholes In My Lawn”

A song ostensibly about other rappers stealing De La’s rhymes, “Potholes In My Lawn” was the group’s second single and only a minor hit, reaching No. 22 on Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart. Reverence for the cut has certainly grown since then. In 2004, via NASA rover, it became the first rap song to be played on Mars. Maybe it wasn’t a big hit here, but on other planets, hey…

“Buddy”

The original version featured the Jungle Brothers and Q-Tip, and while it’s a solid record, the remix, which sees De La recruiting Queen Latifah and Monie Love, is a certified hip-hop classic. Although the remix isn’t on “3 Feet High and Rising,” it’s difficult not to acknowledge its legacy as one of the greatest posse cuts of all time. It’s popularity, reaching No. 2 on the Rap Singles chart, effectively announced the Native Tongues as a formidable rap crew.

“Me, Myself and I”

The song that put De La Soul on the map, reaching No. 1 on the Hot Rap Singles chart and the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. “Me, Myself And I” is built on a sample of “(Not Just) Knee Deep” by Funkadelic, and finds the group firing back at critics in the scene, who had issues with their hippie swag. “Now you tease my Plug One style, and my Plug One spectacles/ You say Plug One and Two are hippies, no we’re not, thats pure plug bull,” Pos rhymes. The tune has been a rallying cry for people who just want to do their own thing and not be judged ever since”.

Of course, there have been impassioned reviews of 3 Feet High and Rising through the years. There are a couple that I want to refer to. AllMusic provided some interesting details and notes in their five-star assessment of the mighty 3 Feet High and Rising. An album that not only is one of the best of 1989 – it is one of the greatest albums in music history:

“The most inventive, assured, and playful debut in hip-hop history, 3 Feet High and Rising not only proved that rappers didn't have to talk about the streets to succeed, but also expanded the palette of sampling material with a kaleidoscope of sounds and references culled from pop, soul, disco, and even country music. Weaving clever wordplay and deft rhymes across two dozen tracks loosely organized around a game-show theme, De La Soul broke down boundaries all over the LP, moving easily from the groovy my-philosophy intro "The Magic Number" to an intelligent, caring inner-city vignette named "Ghetto Thang" to the freewheeling end-of-innocence tale "Jenifa Taught Me (Derwin's Revenge)." Rappers Posdnuos and Trugoy the Dove talked about anything they wanted (up to and including body odor), playing fast and loose on the mic like Biz Markie. Thinly disguised under a layer of humor, their lyrical themes ranged from true love ("Eye Know") to the destructive power of drugs ("Say No Go") to Daisy Age philosophy ("Tread Water") to sex ("Buddy"). Prince Paul (from Stetsasonic) and DJ Pasemaster Mase led the way on the production end, with dozens of samples from all sorts of left-field artists -- including Johnny Cash, the Mad Lads, Steely Dan, Public Enemy, Hall & Oates, and the Turtles. The pair didn't just use those samples as hooks or drumbreaks -- like most hip-hop producers had in the past -- but as split-second fills and in-jokes that made some tracks sound more like DJ records. Even "Potholes on My Lawn," which samples a mouth harp and yodeling (for the chorus, no less), became a big R&B hit. If it was easy to believe the revolution was here from listening to the rapping and production on Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, with De La Soul the Daisy Age seemed to promise a new era of positivity in hip-hop”.

I will end with part of Pitchfork’s extensive review. One of the main talking points about 3 Feet High and Rising is the use of samples. A facet that got the album into trouble and meant that it was denied to so many for many years, it is also one of the defining aspects. Fusing together left-field and eclectic artists into these brilliant songs, it should reignite the question as to whether sampling laws and copyright issues are too stringent. It is potentially denying us of something very special. Artists will have the ability to introduce people to music they might not have otherwise have heard:

“De La Soul were making a point about the power of culture to mobilize people to action or immobilize them with fear. It was an idea they explored more explicitly on their fable, “Tread Water.” There were animals, squeaky organs, friendly humming—at the time, journalist Harry Allen called it the most African song he’d heard in hip-hop—but “Tread Water” also offered perhaps the most ambitious hope on the record, that De La’s music might help us all elevate our heads above the water. In this polar-cap-melting, politically disastrous age, the song feels prophetic.

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

By contrast, the processes of sampling and layering on 3 Feet High and Rising and other hip-hop classics of that era demonstrate the opposite: expansively, giddily democratic—Delacratic, even—values.

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

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

Available to stream and buy from 3rd March, that is also the date De La Soul’s entire catalogue is coming out. It means that you can witness and buy their phenomenal debut album, but you can also hear how the group evolved and changed. Even if they denying their Daisy Age roots and wanted to distance themselves from being seen as hippies or a bit soft, they should be very proud of what they released in 1989. It is so sad that Trugoy the Dove will not be with us to see the reaction to the reissue of 3 Feet High and Rising. He was instrumental in getting it made and ensuring that it is a wonderful album that influenced so many others. As a tribute to the great man, I wanted to show my love for De La Soul’s…

TIMELESS and genius debut album.

FEATURE: We Have to Let It Linger: The Cranberries’ Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

We Have to Let It Linger

The Cranberries’ Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? at Thirty

_________

ON 1st March, 1993…

the Irish group, The Cranberries, released their stunning debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? One of the best debuts of the 1990s, it was written entirely by the band's lead singer Dolores O'Riordan and guitarist Noel Hogan. The much-missed O’Riordan is the band and album’s strongest point I think. Her voice makes every song sound so essential and moving. Upon its release, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? reached one in the U.K. and Ireland. Amazingly, The album spent a total of eighty-six weeks on the U.K. chart! A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the album came out in 2018. Even though we lost O’Riordan in January 2018, her incredible talent and influence still resounds and resonates. The Cranberries’ debut album is her at her absolute best. Co-writing the songs with guitarist Noel Hogan, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, what a talent O’Riordan was! I want to get to a few reviews for the simply divine and timeless debut from The Cranberries. In Pitchfork’s review from 2021, they give us some introduction as to how Dolores O'Riordan joined the band. It is so compelling that it makes me wonder whether we should get a biopic about The Cranberries so that we can see this story come to life!

“O’Riordan grew up about 10 miles outside Limerick in the rural townland of Ballybricken. The youngest of seven children, and one of two girls, O’Riordan learned early on that her voice would set herself apart: She was the precocious student that was asked to sing in Gaelic in front of the class, the tiny niece uncles brought around local pubs to entertain sloshed patrons. On her first day of secondary school, O’Riordan declared that she was going to be a rockstar before launching into a Patsy Cline song. She would go on to sing with a school choir that would frequently sweep the boards at Slogadh, an Irish youth arts festival. A devout Catholic, O’Riordan would later credit the church where she played the organ as the place that helped her envision music as a potential career. In 1992, she contextualized her band’s success as a kind of religious karma: “I could be just superstitious, but I think what’s happening now is a kind of a reward.”

After the audition, as O’Riordan headed out the door, the band handed her a tape with a loose sketch of a song—maybe she could think of some lyrics? The track consisted of four simple chords but, as O’Riordan remarked a few years later, “I took them home and I just wrote about me.” One week later she returned with a song that would change the foursome’s lives. Inspired by O’Riordan’s first kiss and the swift sting of rejection, “Linger” condenses every stage of heartache into four-and-a-half minutes of pop perfection with a few humble tools: an acoustic guitar riff, O’Riordan’s wistful humming, Lawler’s rolling drumbeat, and swooning orchestrals that aim for visions of grandeur far beyond the cheap synthesizer that produced them. The problem, as O’Riordan tells it, is that she gave her heart to someone, they stomped on it, and now she’s left holding the pieces. “But I’m in so deep/You know I’m such a fool for you/You got me wrapped around your finger,” she sings, her Irish brogue warming the edges of every syllable. All she wants is a little compassion moving forward: “Do you have to let it linger?”

As if galvanized by their new member, the band quickly began writing and performing with a newfound intensity. As O’Riordan later recounted, she initially assumed that people would find the cards-on-the-table emotion of songs like “Linger” too “girlie girlie.” “The music was so emotional I found that I could only write about personal things….I was sure that it would be considered soppy teenage crap, especially in Limerick, because most bands are really young (men), and their lyrics are humorous or mad. They don’t go pouring their hearts out,” she said. But the appreciation of O’Riordan’s vulnerability proved a point: everybody’s got a heart that breaks.

Once relegated to brief mentions in the local newspaper, by the summer of 1991, the band—now blessedly called the Cranberries—were British indie media darlings, especially after they signed a reported six-figure deal with Island. The press was especially charmed with O’Riordan, who was initially as unguarded in interviews as she was in song. Despite her shy nature and tendency to sometimes perform with her back to the audience, O’Riordan became the band’s mouthpiece, offering soundbites about her unfamiliarity with basic music equipment and passionate endorsement of the Catholic church.

That fall, Melody Maker visited the O’Riordan home in the Ballybricken and spotlighted the family’s soon-to-be-slaughtered Christmas turkeys, a kitschy Jesus clock, and supposed “gallons and gallons of Lourdes holy water.” “The Cranberries in general, and Dolores in particular, bring new meaning to words like innocence and naivete,” an Irish magazine quipped. (“Just because every second word isn’t ‘fuck’ and every song isn’t about sexual intercourse, people think it’s innocent,” O’Riordan retorted in 1992.) O’Riordan’s songwriting was vulnerable and her origins were certainly humble. But more often than not, these details played into sexist attitudes that align emotional awareness with fragility rather than a certain strength.

In March of 1993, after extensive soul-searching and some behind-the-scenes managerial drama, the Cranberries released their debut, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? If the band’s initial ascent to fame had exploited O’Riordan’s sensitivity as an oddity, Everybody Else bears no evidence that her heart was hardened as a result. “Linger” reappears and ascends to “Be My Baby”-levels of yearning thanks to the grandiose handiwork of producer Stephen Street, who had worked with the band’s beloved Smiths on albums like Meat Is Murder and The Queen Is Dead. “Dreams,” which articulates how falling in love is thrilling and terrifying all at once, achieves similar heights. From the first words out of O’Riordan’s mouth—“Oh my life/Is changing every day/In every possible way”—“Dreams” embraces the uncertain adventure ahead. With every new line, the band seems to breathe in fresh new air, constantly revitalizing themselves in real-time; at one point, O’Riordan lets out a defiant yodel, a vocal tradition that she was taught by her father.

Everybody Else is an album about relationships and the ways that a pair of people can love and hurt each other with equal intensity. Unfortunately, O’Riordan is consistently the one whose heart is getting broken. (“I was always one for the tears,” she once said.) Across 12 songs, the wind that once swept O’Riordan up into a gust of romantic euphoria has disappeared, leaving her desperate to understand where she—or her lover—faltered and everything fell apart. “Sunday” examines the dissolution from both sides, beginning with the other person’s unhurried romantic indecision, which is conveyed atop a gentle string arrangement. As if to express how destabilizing this waffling makes her feel, when it’s O’Riordan’s turn to vocalize her own perspective, the song shifts into a tighter, more upbeat melody. “You’re spinning me around/My feet are off the ground/I don’t know where I stand/Do you have to hold my hand?,” she tells her aloof lover. “You mystify me.”

While only “Dreams,” “Linger,” and “Sunday” channel swirling bliss, every song on Everybody Else blazes a path towards catharsis. Sometimes the exact conflict O’Riordan is trying to process can be difficult to pinpoint—“Still can’t recognize the way I feel,” she sings at one point—but this is an album that sinks into the idea that simply feeling can be enough. When O’Riordan is conflicted about a breakup, as on opener “I Still Do,” the band kicks up a grungy squall around her. Meanwhile, the seething betrayal of “How” boils over into a flood of rage, urged on by a blistering guitar riff, which Noel Hogan delivers as if he were trying to outrun the fire set by O’Riordan’s anguish. The Cranberries sound ridiculously tight as a unit, but their most expressive asset is always O’Riordan’s voice. In the band’s early days, she was often compared to Sinéad O’Connor; a feeble observation rooted in the fact that they were both Irish. But on the Cranberries’ heavier songs, O’Riordan moved into a class of her own: Every syllable becomes a tussle in miniature, either ripped from her mouth in protest, spat out in disgust, or bursting forth in delicious victory. On “Not Sorry,” you can hear her lips curl around each word: “Cause you lied, lied/And I cried/Yes, I cried, yes I cry, I cry, I try again,” she bellows, channeling the Gregorian chants that captivated her as a child”.

I can’t find too many features about how the album was made. There is this interview from 1993 that is worth checking out. I would advise people buy Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We? on vinyl if they can. It is a breattaking album that still sounds as fantastic all these years later. It turns thirty on 1st March. On its twenty-fifth anniversary, Albumism paid tribute to the remarkable work of The Cranberries. An album without any weak moments, Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We? Is a huge treat:

“Comprised of twelve meticulously crafted, compact songs with an average run time of 3:20, Everybody Else Is Doing It is wholly devoid of filler and packs a melodic, melancholic punch very much in the vein of The Smiths’ most beloved fare, albeit without their infamous frontman’s caustic swagger and sneer. And while the soaring, evocative soundscapes constructed by the Hogan brothers and Lawler warrant plenty of praise, it is unequivocally O’Riordan’s versatile vocals and introspective lyrics that command the most rapt attention.

Just 21 years old at the time of the album’s arrival, O’Riordan invites the listener on an autobiographical journey from adolescence to adulthood, the vicissitudes of young love providing the central thematic focus from beginning to end. "I know exactly what every song on that album was about," O'Riordan explained to Rolling Stone in 1995. "And I know exactly what night I wrote it on and why I wrote it. And I'm kind of proud of them because they do elaborate very much how I felt at that time."

Somewhat surprisingly considering the album’s critical and commercial success, first stateside and subsequently in the UK, only two official singles were released. But each of these songs is damn near flawless. Unveiled five months before the album launch, lead single “Dreams” is an uplifting love song that finds O’Riordan reveling in new love, her sweet—yet never saccharine—vocals gliding seamlessly atop the lush, propulsive arrangement.

Even more revelatory is “Linger,” the ode to fading love that catapulted The Cranberries’ profile when MTV latched on to the black and white, Jean-Luc Godard inspired video, with radio stations across the U.S. following suit shortly thereafter. Replete with sweeping, string-laden orchestration coupled with O’Riordan’s yearning, lilting vocals, it’s a perfect specimen of pop ballad grandeur, a timeless tune that remains just as fresh and inspired today as it was twenty-five years ago.

Non-single standouts abound across the expanse of the album, the theme of reconciling love and loss pervasive throughout all of them. The haunting album opener “I Still Do” finds O’Riordan grappling with her conflicted feelings toward her lover. The same disposition resurfaces later on “Sunday” and “Wanted,” each propelled by jangly guitar work reminiscent of The Smiths and The Sundays’ most transcendent moments.

The music and O’Riordan’s lyrics assume a noticeably more sullen tone on the brooding “Pretty,” in which she takes a condescending lover to task, and “I Will Always,” a lovelorn, lullaby-like lament about setting her partner free to explore his independence.

Not all is weighed down by doom and gloom, however, as the percussive “How” unfurls as a seething kiss-off to a wayward lover, while “Not Sorry” serves as an anthem of redemption, with an empowered O’Riordan reclaiming her sense of self in the wake of an abusive relationship. Sonically, “Not Sorry” contains early signs of the band’s penchant for juxtaposing soft, ethereal melodies with more abrasive, thrashing guitar work, the latter of which would become more prominent in their ensuing repertoire, as best evidenced by subsequent singles such as “Zombie” and “Salvation.”

Once dubbed by Rolling Stone as “Ireland’s biggest musical export since U2,” The Cranberries were initially overlooked in the UK, largely overshadowed during the much ballyhooed yet ultimately ephemeral mid ‘90s Britpop movement that saw the likes of Oasis, Blur, Suede and Pulp, most notably, rise to stratospheric heights of stardom. But while the vast majority of Britpop bands—with the exception of the Gallagher brothers’ outfit—stalled in their quest to penetrate the North American market in a meaningful way, the unassuming quartet from Limerick was able to secure a rather fruitful niche in the U.S., and one that endured with their next pair of releases, 1994’s No Need to Argue and 1996’s To the Faithful Departed.

A quarter-century on, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? remains an indispensable artifact of the band’s early career, their innocence and ambition on full display, before critical and commercial acclaim deservedly greeted them. And for those of us who continue to grieve for the late Dolores O’Riordan, the dozen songs contained therein offer at least some solace that while she is no longer with us, her inimitable voice, words and spirit are eternal”.

I am going to finish with a review from AllMusic. I wonder if the surviving members of The Cranberries (Noel and Mike Horgan and Fergal Lawler) are planning anything for the thirtieth anniversary of their debut. I hope that there is celebration. Of course, it will be bittersweet, as Dolores O'Riordan will not be with us to mark it. Fans around the world will mark thirty years of The Cranberries’ debut on 1st March:

“Title aside, what the Cranberries were doing wasn't that common at the time, at least in mainstream pop terms; grunge and G-funk had done their respective big splashes via Nirvana and Dr. Dre when Everybody came out first in the U.K. and then in America some months later. Lead guitarist Noel Hogan is in many ways the true center of the band at this point, co-writing all but three songs with O'Riordan and showing an amazing economy in his playing, and having longtime Smiths/Morrissey producer Stephen Street behind the boards meant that the right blend of projection and delicacy still held sway. One can tell he likes Johnny Marr and his ability to do the job just right: check out the quick strums and blasts on "Pretty" or the concluding part of the lovely "Waltzing Back." O'Riordan herself offers up a number of romantic ponderings and considerations lyrically (as well as playing perfectly fine acoustic guitar), and her undisputed vocal ability suits the material perfectly. The two best cuts were the deserved smashes: "Dreams," a brisk, charging number combining low-key tension and full-on rock, and the melancholic, string-swept break-up song "Linger." If Everybody is in the end a derivative pleasure -- and O'Riordan's vocal acrobatics would never again be so relatively calm in comparison -- a pleasure it remains nonetheless, the work of a young band creating a fine little synthesis”.

I am such a huge fan of The Cranberries’ Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? In turns potent and powerful before revealing romance, vulnerability and passion, it is an album with so many layers and depths! It is no wonder it is still discussed and cherished today. When it turns thirty on 1st March, I think that this classic album will reach new fans. That is a great tribute to the faultless debut from the…

LIMERICK band.

FEATURE: The Final Note: Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The Final Note

Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five

__________

BECAUSE Kate Bush’s…

debut album, The Kick Inside, turns forty-five on 17th February, I haven’t got much more time to discuss it before the anniversary. The final anniversary feature about The Kick Inside concerns its title track. I have written about it several times before, but I am compelled to come back. There are certain tracks on Bush’s 1978 debut album that could not be anywhere else. Moving really does happen to open The Kick Inside, as it begins with whale song, and the lyrics are about a young woman coming out of herself and blossoming in confidence. It is the perfect way to open a debut album. Also, Wuthering Heights ends the first side. Again, it is perfect, as it keeps the listener hooked and provides this mighty half-way point. Another track that could not be anywhere else is The Kick Inside. One of her most remarkable moments, it is typically unconventional! One reason why Bush’s debut album is so respected and loved is because she was challenging and hugely original right from the start. When it came to the common subject of love, she was still breaking away from the predictable and describing lust and desire in such interesting and different ways. The Kick Inside’s title track is one of the most fascinating entries in Bush’s catalogue. It is a song that perfectly ends The Kick Inside.

Inspired by so many different sources, the songs that form The Kick Inside are so varied. Almost a tapestry in terms of the different threads the teenage Bush weaves, the sublime and sad title track is the perfect swansong. I will come to the very final note and embers of the title track and album. That is a major reason why I love the album so much. You listen to it and are affected and moved. The Kate Bush Encyclopedia has combined a couple of interview snippets where Bush discussed The Kick Inside. It is a fascinating background and story:

“The song The Kick Inside, the title track, was inspired by a traditional folk song and it was an area that I wanted to explore because it's one that is really untouched and that is one of incest. There are so many songs about love, but they are always on such an obvious level. This song is about a brother and a sister who are in love, and the sister becomes pregnant by her brother. And because it is so taboo and unheard of, she kills herself in order to preserve her brother's name in the family. The actual song is in fact the suicide note. The sister is saying 'I'm doing it for you' and 'Don't worry, I'll come back to you someday.' (Self Portrait, 1978)”.

Few artists of that generation were writing anything like The Kick Inside! In fact, it is less likely artists now would tackle anything such as incest or a song influenced by Lucy Wan. The ballad’s heroine can alternately be called Lizie, so Lizie Wan is a title many might know it by. This murder ballad/Child Ballad 51 (The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century) did get referenced more directly in the second verse of an early demo where Bush sang “You and me on the bobbing knee/Welling eyes from identifying with Lizie Wan's story”. The lines that appear on the album version are “You and me on the bobbing knee/Didn't we cry at that old mythology he'd read!/I will come home again, but not until/The sun and the moon meet on yon hill”. I think they are among the most vivid and beautiful words Bush has ever written. Always compelled by the more unusual and old-fashioned in many ways, an album that came out in 1978 takes a lot from way further back. Wuthering Heights is a perfect example. Emily Brontë’s only novel came out in 1847. Almost an author or a poet, there is something classical about her songwriting. According to her Bush’s brother Paddy (who appeared on the album), she took sections from Lucy Wan and processed and used in a very unusual way.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Walter/WireImage/Getty Images

The end of the song, as I have said before, is an ellipsis. Rather than a big outro or something tidy, there is a sort of trailing off and echo into the void. “Oh, by the time you read this” seems to sign off a suicide note. Maybe a letter from a sister to her brother to say that by the time he reads this she will be gone. It is utterly heartbreaking - but the way Kate Bush delivers the words keeps it from being scarring or depressing. It is almost this acceptance that this is what had to happen or she is going to be a better place. I don’t know. I have always been fascinated by the title song. An artist that signs off her debut album with a song and line like that is fearless and incredibly daring. You sort of wait and wonder what the first song of her second album would sound like. As it was, Lionheart (also released in 1978) begins with the sumptuous Symphony in Blue. The Kick Inside is forty-five on 17th February, and it is great that people who have never heard it will experience this wonderful album. All of the thirteen songs are magnificent and distinct, but there is something about the stunning title track that stops me in my tracks! One of the best vocal performances on the album, Bush fills the song with so much conviction and emotion. That final line and note. The way she holds the note and lets her voice almost wither and disappear gradually. It is a remarkable moment on one of the most important debut albums ever! The Kick Inside’s title track ended a debut album from a superb and mesmeric talent. In that moment…

A legend was born.

FEATURE: Within You Without You: George Harrison at Eighty: The Essential Playlist

FEATURE:

 

 

Within You Without You

George Harrison at Eighty: The Essential Playlist

_________

IT is always sad…

when we mark a big birthday for an artist who is no longer with us. I had to take the opportunity to look ahead to George Harrison’s eightieth birthday. 25th February is when the world marks the eightieth of one of the music world’s greatest ever artists. Harrison died in 2001 at the age of fifty-eight. Hugely influential with The Beatles, as a solo artist, and part of Traveling Wilburys, he will always be remembered. I wanted to celebrate his life and legacy with a playlist. I will come to that shortly. Here, as I am prone to do when it comes to sourcing biographies about incredible artists, is AllMusic to provide some depth and detail about the genius George Harrison:

“Nicknamed "the Quiet Beatle" at the height of Beatlemania, George Harrison did indeed seem somewhat reserved compared to the other members of the Fab Four. He favored wry wit to Ringo Starr's clowning, and he never indulged in either John Lennon's penchant for controversy or Paul McCartney's crowd-pleasing antics. He preferred sly provocations to larger-than-life bravado. Harrison's measured, considered persona was reflected in his music, particularly his clean, composed lead guitar parts but also in his earliest songs for the Beatles where he didn't seem to waste a line. With the introduction of psychedelics, spirituality, and Indian music in the mid-'60s, George's horizons expanded considerably and he started to come into his own as a musician, releasing a pair of experimental albums on Apple's Zapple offshoot before settling into a songwriting style that spliced Dylanesque introspection with his natural pop grace, while also developing a unique slide guitar technique that owed nothing to the blues. Later Beatles albums hinted at this flowering of talent; The Beatles and Abbey Road contained some of his strongest work, with the latter including the standard "Something," a song Frank Sinatra called "the greatest love song of the past 50 years."

Still, it wasn't until the 1970 release of All Things Must Pass, the post-Beatles triple album that was effectively his solo debut, that the general audience appreciated the depth of his talents. All Things Must Pass and its smash single "My Sweet Lord" -- a single that topped the charts around the world -- also cemented Harrison's image as a mystic seeker, a reputation underscored by his 1971 superstar charity event The Concert for Bangladesh and 1973's Living in the Material World, back-to-back hits that established him as a superstar outside of the Beatles. His winning streak hit some rough spots in the mid-'70s, with his last two albums for Apple -- 1974's Dark Horse and 1975's Extra Texture (Read All About It) -- slowing his momentum, leading him to a respectable plateau where he stayed after establishing his Dark Horse label in 1976 with the release of Thirty Three & 1/3. Over the next six years, Harrison recorded fairly steadily and racked up some hits, but he didn't have a full-fledged comeback until 1987's Jeff Lynne-produced Cloud Nine. Thanks to the singles "Got My Mind Set on You" and "When We Was Fab," the album became a Top Ten hit around the world and Harrison followed the record quickly with the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, whose 1988 album Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 grew out of solo sessions for a Harrison B-side. The Wilburys turned out to be George's last hurrah. After their final album in 1990, Harrison turned toward the Beatles Anthology reunion, and then maintained a low profile as he battled two types of cancer, succumbing to lung cancer in 2001. By that point, his legacy as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century was secure.

George Harrison was born in Liverpool on February 25, 1943, the last of the four children Harold and Louise Harrison had. He fell in love with music at an early age, sketching pictures of guitars in his school notebooks before he acquired his first guitar in 1956. Like many British teenagers, he was equally inspired by rock & roll and skiffle, the variation of folk popularized by Lonnie Donegan. He played in a skiffle group called the Rebels prior to meeting an older fellow schoolmate named Paul McCartney. This set George on the path of joining a different skiffle outfit -- one McCartney had with John Lennon -- when he was just 15. Named the Quarrymen, the group would turn into the Beatles, with that group's lineup solidifying in 1962 when Ringo Starr replaced original drummer Pete Best.

Harrison sang the lead vocal on "Do You Want to Know a Secret" on the group's 1963 debut Please Please Me, and his first original song came later that year when "Don't Bother Me" showed up on With the Beatles. Over the next few years, he'd sing lead on songs either written by Lennon & McCartney or by one of his idols -- on 1964's Beatles for Sale, he sang Carl Perkins' "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" -- but generally gained attention for his nimble guitar, which alternately rang and stung. He started to emerge as a writing force in 1965 with songs on Help! and Rubber Soul -- the latter contained two noteworthy compositions in the sneering "Think for Yourself" and "If I Needed Someone" -- but in 1966 he made a forceful impression with Revolver's barbed "Taxman" and "Love You To," the latter indicating his newfound love for Indian music and culture and Eastern spirituality. Soon, the Beatles followed his lead on a pilgrimage to India in 1967, during which their manager Brian Epstein died, thereby setting the group off on a path toward its eventual dissolution. Harrison's increased artistic growth during this period certainly fueled the breakup. Upon returning from India, George entered a purple patch of creativity, producing more songs than he was allowed to feature for the band's 1968 double album The Beatles. Tensions between the group members reached a boiling point during the sessions for Get Back, a project that was shelved and turned into Let It Be in early 1970, but the band got together for one last album, Abbey Road, a 1969 effort bolstered by "Something," a Harrison ballad that turned into a modern standard almost immediately upon release.

"Something" provided a launching pad for Harrison's solo career, but he'd already been dabbling in solo projects since 1968. That year, the Beatles launched their Apple Corps collective of businesses, one of their enterprises being an experimental label called Zapple. George released Wonderwall Music that year, becoming the first Beatle to release a solo album, and this collection of Indian music was followed in 1969 by Electronic Sound, an album where Harrison experimented with synthesizers. A better indication of the sound George chose to follow once he officially went solo in 1970 came with his on-stage cameos during Delaney & Bonnie's 1969 British tour. Along with Bob Dylan and the Band, these American blues-rockers had an influence on All Things Must Pass, a sprawling triple album produced by Phil Spector that functioned as a spectacular introduction to George Harrison the solo artist. Bolstered by "My Sweet Lord," a single that hit number one throughout the world, and the Top Ten "What Is Life," All Things Must Pass topped the charts in the U.S. and U.K., elevating George above John, Paul, and Ringo's stardom. His rise was not without controversy -- Bright Tunes Publishing sued Harrison for copyright infringement in 1971, claiming "My Sweet Lord" plagiarized the Chiffons' 1963 "He's So Fine"; George lost the case but, in a byzantine turn of events, he wound up with the publishing to both songs after his then-manager Allen Klein purchased the rights to "He's So Fine" -- but there was no question Harrison came into his own.

George followed All Things Must Pass with something equally grand: a benefit concert for the refugees of war-torn Bangladesh. Upon the urging of his friend Ravi Shankar, Harrison arranged a star-studded benefit held at Madison Square Garden on August 1, 1971, enlisting his friends Starr, Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Billy Preston to play; it was the first all-star charity show, setting the template for those to follow. Although there were problems dispersing funds, the concert was a success, as was the album, which went gold in the U.S. and won the 1973 Grammy for Album of the Year. Also in 1973, Harrison released Living in the Material World, his second studio album and his second number one, assisted by the single "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)," a number one hit in the U.S. that topped out at eight in the U.K. He supported the record with an extensive series of North American concerts, the first tour launched by a Beatle. Upon its conclusion, he released his next album, Dark Horse (his tour shared the same title), a record greeted with mixed reviews and softening sales; it failed to chart in Britain, although it did peak at four in the U.S., where the title track went to number 15.

Harrison closed out his contract with EMI and Apple in 1975 with Extra Texture (Read All About It), an album that fared better in the U.K. and performed respectably in the U.S., due to the single "You." He quickly launched his own Dark Horse label in 1976, inaugurating the imprint that November with Thirty Three & 1/3. (Apple released The Best of George Harrison, containing solo and Beatles cuts, almost simultaneously.) Supported by the modest hits "This Song" and "Crackerbox Palace," the slightly slicker Thirty Three & 1/3 wound up a bigger hit than its two predecessors, thereby starting Harrison's Dark Horse years off on a slight rebound. This continued through 1979's eponymous album, a record highlighted by the soft rock hit "Blow Away," a single that peaked at number 16 in the U.S. but went no further than 51 in the U.K.

Harrison rebounded with 1981's Somewhere in England, thanks in no small part to the hit "All Those Years Ago," a song fashioned as a tribute to the murdered John Lennon and featuring contributions from Ringo Starr and Paul and Linda McCartney. Despite this hit -- which went to two in the U.S. and 13 in the U.K. -- the record failed to go gold in either America or Britain, and Gone Troppo, released just a year later, sank from view quickly. George slid into a relatively quiet phase, concentrating on raising his son Dhani -- he was born in 1978, the first and only son of George and Olivia Harrison, who also married in 1978. Harrison concentrated on his film company HandMade Films, a company started in 1978 with the intent of financing Monty Python's silver-screen debut Life of Brian but gained momentum in the early '80s thanks to the release of 1980's Bob Hoskins gangster drama The Long Good Friday and Terry Gilliam's 1981 fantasy Time Bandits; the company would also release the acclaimed Mona Lisa (1986) and Withnail and I (1987), before becoming mired in money problems surrounding the runaway production of the 1986 Sean Penn and Madonna vehicle Shanghai Surprise. George stayed involved in music largely through live guest appearances, popping up at charity concerts and tributes, but he also appeared on Dave Edmunds' oldies-inspired soundtrack for 1985's Porky's Revenge.

Eventually, Harrison began work on his ninth studio album, hiring Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra as co-producer. Lynne brought a lush, glossy sheen to 1987's Cloud Nine, a sound that was instrumental to the record's success. Preceded by a bouncy rendition of James Ray's forgotten chestnut "Got My Mind Set on You," a single that turned into a number one hit in the U.S. and reached two in the U.K., Cloud Nine was an undeniable comeback, reaching the Top Ten on both sides of the Atlantic and earning a platinum certification in the U.S., assisted in part by its second single, "When We Was Fab." In the wake of its success, Harrison and Lynne returned to the studio to record a B-side with the assistance of Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty. This session turned into a full album with the superstars calling themselves the Traveling Wilburys. Accompanied by the single "Handle with Care," their record, The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1, appeared in October 1988 and it was selling well prior to the December death of Orbison. Its second single, "End of the Line," helped cement its success and it wound up being certified platinum three times in the U.S., reaching a peak of three; it wound up in the Top Ten in every major country around the world, save the U.K., where it topped out at number 16. The Traveling Wilburys released a second album, Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 3, in the fall of 1990. While it didn't sell as well as its predecessor, the record nevertheless went to number 11 in the U.S., where it also went platinum.

Following the 1992 release of Live in Japan and some live appearances that year, Harrison once again receded from the spotlight, reuniting with the surviving Beatles to assemble their 1994 archival Anthology project, an effort that also included working two existing Lennon demos into a finished project with the assistance of Lynne. After Anthology wrapped, Harrison produced Ravi Shankar's 1997 album Chants of India, but his output slowed further following a 1997 diagnosis of throat cancer. Over the next few years, Harrison dealt with several different health issues (he also suffered a serious knife attack by an intruder in 1999), and in 2001 his lung cancer spread to his brain. On November 29, 2001, Harrison passed away from lung cancer.

After his death, his son Dhani and Jeff Lynne completed Harrison's unreleased recordings and they were released as Brainwashed in 2002. George was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 and, over the next decade, there were several archival projects, including a 2004 box set of his Dark Horse recordings and the 2009 compilation Let It Roll. In 2011, his life was the subject of a documentary film from Martin Scorsese called George Harrison: Living in the Material World; it was accompanied by a collection of rarities called Early Takes: Vol. 1. George's Apple recordings were remastered and released in 2014 as a box set called The Apple Years 1968-75. A hefty, handsome collection of LP reissues -- aptly titled "The 50th Anniversary Edition" -- of All Things Must Pass was commemorated by a series of deluxe reissues of the landmark album, each featuring a new mix supervised by Dhani Harrison and Paul Hicks. The Super Deluxe editions also contained a wealth of demos and outtakes”.

To mark what would have been George Harrison’s eightieth birthday on 25th February, below is a playlist collating his best tracks from his time in The Beatles, Traveling Wilburys, and his amazing solo career. It is a fulsome tribute to a masterful songwriter. He is someone who has written some of my favourite songs ever. So sad that the brilliant George Harrison is no longer with us. That said, because of his timeless and brilliant music, he will…

ALWAYS be with us.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Jessie Murph

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Jessie Murph

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IN December…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Talie Eigeland for NOTION

the incredible Drunk in the Bathtub was released. The work of the amazing Jessie Murph, one can watch stunning music videos of songs from the mixtape/album. It is a looking like a very promising year for the teen sensation. I am fascinated by artists and their relationship with TikTok. It is a platform that Murph received some backlash on, but she has also found a huge and supportive audience. As someone who grew up in Alabama, it is quite a conservative part of the U.S. Maybe not seen as a traditional career or something she should pursue. She has had to fight back against misogyny, criticism and bullying. A multi-instrumentalist with an incredible voice and music that has this power and sense of real purpose, it is no wonder she has connected with so many young listeners. After overcoming some real hurdles and growing up in a part of America where musical opportunity and exposure is less obvious and harder to get, it is encouraging to see Jessie Murph triumphant and look forward. I think that she is going to have her best year yet. After putting out an incredible mixtape last year, there are eyes on her. I wonder what will come next. I think there is so much respect out there for an artist who is going to have a long career. When you read about Jessie Murph and hear her story, you will her to succeed and prosper. She deserves acclaim and respect. I want to draw in a few interviews with the amazing Jessie Murph. Before getting to them, here is some brief biography from First Avenue:

“Underneath a unique blend of modern production with echoes of distant guitar and evocative vocals, Jessie Murph tells the kinds of stories we all relate to, but we might be too uncomfortable to disclose to the world at large. Thankfully, she’s not shy in her songs. The 18-year-old Alabama singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist gushes emotion through the cracks of her dominant, yet lilting croon, staring down heartbreak, anxiety, and darkness without filter or any fucks given.

This open-hearted honesty has endeared her to a following of nearly 10 million across platforms and asserted her as a critically acclaimed force. The stress of a fractured family, bullying in school, outdated expectations for women, and latent backwoods misogyny pushed Jessie to cling tightly to music and never let go. She listened to everyone from Adele and Lady A to 6lack and Lil Baby, learning piano, ukulele, and guitar and writing songs of her own.

After a taste of viral popularity on YouTube, she launched her TikTok during 2020. Beyond popular covers, she gained traction and connected with audiences by way of originals such as “Upgrade,” “Look Who’s Cryin Now,” and “Sobriety.” However, “Always Been You” affirmed her as a powerful presence. It gathered north of 115 million global streams, while Stereogum pegged it as one of “2022’s Potential Pop Hits.”

Between praise from OnesToWatch, Flaunt Magazine, Hits, and more, she tallied over 100 million streams with “Pray,” “I Would’ve,” “While You’re At It,” and “How Could You.” However, she opens up once again on her 2023 debut mixtape, Drowning [Columbia Records], and more to come”.

It is no surprise to read that there is no Plan B for Jessie Murph. Someone for whom music is such an important portal to communicate with others and also tell her story, you can hear the authenticity of her songs. They come from someone who wants people to hear her words. Not chasing success or trying to fit into markets and follow others, this is a young songwriter on a mission. NOTION featured Jessie Murph back in May. She underlined how music is very much her path;

“Jessie Murph seems wise beyond her age. Courageous in her ability to tap into viscerally raw emotions for her art, Jessie’s lyrical matter is unflinching in its vulnerability and honesty. Touching on everything from heartbreak, her own struggles with mental health to her strained relationship with family, Jessie’s uniquely powerful vocals deliver an emotion that suggests a life lived beyond her seventeen years.

Although she was signed at only sixteen, Jessie is far from naïve. As a young woman in the industry, Jessie already possesses an air of gravity when it comes to which direction she envisages taking her sound. However, her love affair with music goes back long before she signed her name on a contract. Coming from a musical family in Alabama, Jessie has been penning tracks and playing multiple instruments since she was a child. It seems for her, music has always been the only option.

After moving cities and facing criticism for posting TikToks in a closeminded community, Jessie pushed forward, ignoring the noise and staying adamant in trusting her process. With over seven million followers on the platform to date, there has to be something serendipitous about proving her doubters wrong.

PHOTO CREDIT: Talie Eigeland

You have such a strong fan base on TikTok and YouTube. What kind of message are you hoping to portray to them through your music?

I mean honestly, I’m not trying to portray a message other than just be yourself.  I feel like I’ve been through so much in my life where people didn’t approve of what I wore or what I said or what I posted so I know first hand how shitty that feels and I just never want anybody else to have to go through that.  Even if it seems like you’re alone or nobody around you supports you for who you are, I just want my fans to know that there are people out there who love them for who they are. Like I literally love all of my fans so much.

You can play guitar, piano and the ukulele. What are some of your first memories of making music? Did you always know you wanted to be a musical artist?

I always knew I wanted to do it from a very little age. I grew up, especially when I was younger, I grew up in a chaotic household. There was a lot going on. And I just remember using music to kind of get me out of that craziness. And yeah, I think that’s kind of how it started. And I was like, wow, I actually want to do this as a career. I knew that from about six or seven.

You got signed as such a young age at 16. Being such a young woman in the industry, how do you make sure your voice and creative vision is really heard and honoured?

Honestly, TikTok plays a huge role in it. Because me being like, ‘I have a vision. This is what I want to sound like, this is what I want to write about.’ Being able to put it on TikTok, and so many people resonating with it, kind of is all the validation people need to be like, ‘Oh, shit, this works. And people like this and people resonate.’ You’ve got to prove yourself a little bit. But yeah, it’s been pretty good so far”.

Mixing Hip-Hop, Country and Pop together to create this intoxicating and heady cocktail, there is no doubt Jessie Murph’s music stands out. She is someone who has had to react to people telling her she couldn’t say certain things or do that. So many women in the industry are held back, underestimated, treated badly and seen as inferior. Coming into Country and Hip-Hop – genres that are still largely populated by men -, Women in Pop wanted to know more about the amazing Jessie Murph:

“Both country and hip hop are heavily, heavily male dominated genres, obviously there are women in there, but it's very much divided, shall we say. You're going at it as a young woman, and anyone who's young going into this, but in a very male saturated industry and genre, I imagine there must have been a certain amount of second guessing. Can you talk me a little through your approach to music?
I grew up in a really small town, and everybody was like, ‘you need to act like a lady, you need to not say that’ about the things I was saying in my songs. With hip hop and country being male dominated, I love that about those genres, that's what almost draws me to it. Because I'm not a dude, but I can say the same shit they can. That really motivated me to be more angstful in my songs.

With the music you do, and I guess the superhuman that you channel into it, what is ‘being a lady’ to you’? What does that mean?
You know, I really hate that phrase, because I heard it a lot growing up.

It's it awful?!

It’s awful! I'm like, what the fuck does that mean? I really don't think it means shit, you should be who you want to be.

I think that’s greatest answer. ‘I don't think it means shit! I read that you had a less than ideal youth in quite a conservative town with incredibly conservative values, and that comes into your music. Can you talk to me a little bit about your history within that element of society and how it affected you as the artist that you are today?

Yes, of course. As I was saying earlier, people were very against the things I was saying in songs. I started on TikTok, so everybody would watch my TikToks and send them around, and the parents more so than anybody were just not having it, because of the things I was saying. And them telling me ‘you can't say that, you need to act like a lady’ made me like, ‘okay, I'm gonna say it more’. I feel you can hear in my earlier songs that they're a little bit more explicit and that's why, because I was so like, ‘oh, I can't? I'm gonna do it the most I can now!’

Do you think there's something incredibly empowering about being joyously spiteful?!

That's one of my favourite emotions!

As a young female solo artist, In the time that you've been within this industry, have you've ever felt you've needed to push harder or be louder or be better or stronger to be taken seriously within the industry with regards to creative decisions?

Not necessarily. I have an amazing team around me but there are times where I have to stand my ground and I have like a little voice in my head that's ‘trust your gut’. Most of the time that comes into play with certain lyrics or production elements, but overall, it's been pretty great so far”.

I am going to end with an interview from Ones to Watch. It is going back to 2021. It is interesting to see, even in just over a year, how much Jessie Murph has progressed – and seeing the fanbase and admiration she has built. You know that, in years to come, she will establish herself as one of the biggest artists around! I wanted to finish with this interview, as Murph is asked about her home state and mother. The importance of where she come from and those around her:

“Ones To Watch: There's a quote from Oscar Wilde: "Be yourself, everyone else is taken." When did you realize that it's okay to be different?

Jessie Murph: I love that quote - probably the beginning of my sophomore year of high school I'd say. I was on the cheer team and did competitive figure skating - everyone around me kind of looked/acted/dressed very similar to each other. I definitely tried to fit in for a while. Looking at old pictures of myself, I was super blonde and dressed how I was expected to dress. Eventually, I just realized that I was spending more energy and trying way harder to be someone I wasn't rather than just being myself... and it was f**king exhausting!

What happens when you go on tour and play in Alabama? Do you think their perception of you will be different now?

Oh, definitely I think. I feel like they used to kind of judge me for wanting to take risks and pursue this crazy dream but now that it's actually happening, they're able to be more supportive. It also obviously wasn't every single person that was critical - there were people who had my back from the beginning. When it was actually going down though, it felt like the critics and haters were way louder than the supporters.

Your mom has always been one of your biggest supporters. How important was this relationship growing up?

My mom has always been very supportive of me. No other moms in the small town where I grew up would've let their daughters express themselves in the way that I was. It was so cool of her to allow me to just be myself. I'm eternally grateful because I really don't know how I could've done any of this without her.

You originally blew up thanks to the help of social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube. What's next for you as an artist?

I hope to show people all different sides of myself honestly. I'm so excited to get on the road and start playing some shows later this year. I've never even been to a concert before let alone actually performed at one, so my first ever concert experience is going to be my own which is wild! But, I'm just really excited to get in front of fans and start meeting people in person especially because I talk to so many of them in my DMs. Also, I think releasing a lot more music, cool music videos and visuals will continue to showcase who I am and where I'm headed as an artist”.

Go and follow Jessie Murph, listen to Drunk in the Bathtub, and read up about her. Definitely an artist who is among the most promising of this year, I hope that her music gets more attention in the U.K. and beyond. I think Murph is still better-known and played in the U.S. That is something that hopefully will change soon enough. Keep your eyes on the terrific Jessie Murph, as there is…

A lot more to come.

____________

Follow Jessie Murph

PHOTO CREDIT: Talie Eigeland for NOTION

Official:

https://www.jessiemurph.com/

TikTok:

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

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/jessiemurphhh/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2yLzlEFtIS0Q9UkyBZdQA7?si=rH5YM7BkR0aS-5ktOvbhLQ&nd=1

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/jessiemurphhh

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOu-8cNd_UZV0VTUPgPpGsg

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/jessiemurphhh

FEATURE: Shortlists: Creating a Single, All-Inclusive Music Award Show in the U.K.

FEATURE:

 

 

Shortlists

IN THIS PHOTO: Wet Leg, who won the Breakthrough Artist, and British Group awards at the recent BRITs/PHOTO CREDIT: Diana King for Billboard

Creating a Single, All-Inclusive Music Award Show in the U.K.

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I will cast my mind…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Charli XCX/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

back a couple of weeks or so. This month has seen big award ceremonies in the U.S. and U.K. The GRAMMYs in America, and the BRITs here celebrated the best and brightest in music. A couple of things were highlighted at the BRITs. Whilst the GRAMMYs were more diverse and gender-equal than previous years, the BRITs struggled to respond to criticism that their Artist of the Year category featured no women. Also, being held on a Saturday night, it did not pull enough younger viewers away from other options. A lot shorter than the GRAMMYs, I think it lacks the authority of the U.S. ceremony. In terms of the number of categories and the general pull of the event, the BRITs seems less important. I want to suggest a move when it comes to combining the music award shows we have in the U.K. Writing in The Guardian Alexis Petridis discussed Harry Styles’ triumphant night. He also made a point that, as a lot of his audience are teens, they were probably not tuned in to the BRITs and watching him scoop four awards:

“Without wishing to sound hopelessly unpatriotic, the Brits is an awards ceremony that exists in the shadow of the Grammys. It almost invariably takes place a week or so after the US Recording Academy doles out its gongs in a ceremony that’s bigger, more star-studded and with more impact than the Brits can ever hope for, not least because the public seem to have rather more investment in who wins. Declining interest in the Brits is something you suspect even its organisers are aware of: you can detect an urge to drum up more attention in this year’s decision to shift the ceremony from midweek to a Saturday for the first time.

And sometimes, the US awards just foreshadow what’s going to happen at the Brits: from the moment Harry Styles snatched the album of the year Grammy from under Beyoncé’s nose, you somehow knew he was going to sweep the board in London. And so it proved.

He went home with virtually everything bar the onstage Autocue: best artist, best album, best song and best pop/R&B act. For good measure, his chief collaborator Kid Harpoon got best songwriter: there was always the chance the British Phonographic Industry gave it to him for his work on acclaimed US singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers’ second album rather than the multimillion-selling, No 1-in-27-countries Harry’s House, but you wouldn’t bank on it.

How moving the Brits to a Saturday was supposed to lure its target market away from social media and on-demand streaming – or indeed just going out with their mates – is an intriguing question. You rather got the feeling that most of this years’ viewers might have been old enough to remember the days when the Brits seemed to give Annie Lennox an award every year, and that they might have spent the evening asking “who’s that?” whenever 2023’s stars appeared. Which can’t possibly be the Brits’ desired effect”.

I disagree with those who say that award ceremonies are pointless. There is merit in recognising merit. I don’t think ceremonies are corporate or they only recognise the most commercial artists. Saluting brilliant artists, albums and songs is important. I think a problem here is that we have a few on the calendar that could be rolled into one. One reason why the GRAMMYS succeeds is because it has a lot of categories. You are covering the spread and, by and large, there are not too many notable omissions. The BRITs have been criticised for having a category that lumps in Pop and R&B without including R&B. The Mercury Prize solely salutes the best album from a U.K. or Irish artist from the past year. I guess it is good to have award ceremonies like that, and NME’s annual bash. I just feel like there could be one that covers everything. Including most genres, several album prizes (including best debut), E.P., film soundtrack, music video, breakthrough artist, icon, best live tour, and so forth. It would rival the GRAMMYs in terms of its completeness and, hopefully, be more inclusive when it comes to gender and genre. I know each award ceremony has their own identity and vibe, but there is scope to have a one-stop British award night that recognises all the best and brightest. Maybe it is hard to completely win teen audiences, but something can be worked out.

I get the feeling the likes of the BRITs will continue to slip when it comes to things like gender equality and recognising genres like R&B. So many artists get missed from award ceremonies, so broadening the categories in terms of the number shortlisted would be a god idea. Rather than five or so artists being shortlisted, having seven-nine in each category would mean less exclusion. When it comes to albums, there is too much to choose from to be quite narrow and stingy! I think that, if you have a genderless category like Artist of the year, widening that to seven or eight shortlisted and ensuring that there are women included eliminates the problem the BRITs created. As much as anything, it would allow for musical performances and a night to rival the GRAMMYS. It is a shame that there is backlash against any award ceremony, because they are meant to be celebrations. Maybe one held in the spring at the Eventim Apollo that is longer and more inclusive than the likes of the BRITs, NME, and other award ceremonies would solve a lot of issues. It would be interesting to see! Whatever the solution, criticisms and genuine concerns need to be taken on board. Ensuring women are not excluded, that genres are not lumped together as an afterthought, and having a diverse range of categories is essential. Let’s hope that one way or another, next year’s award ceremonies here…

ARE free from exclusion.

FEATURE: To Have and to Hold: Madonna’s Ray of Light at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

To Have and to Hold

Madonna’s Ray of Light at Twenty-Five

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EVEN though I have written about Madonna…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Frank Micelotta/Getty Images

a few times through the last month or so, it is worth coming back to her music, as there is a very special album that turns twenty-five soon. In fact, that anniversary occurs on 22nd February. The seventh studio album by Madonna, Ray of Light was a departure in terms of sound and aesthetic. 1994’s Bedtime Stories had House and Club elements, but Ray of Light was much more radical in terms of its reinventions and evolutions. More Techno-Pop at heart than anything she had done before, it also brought in Ambient, Trip-Hop, Psychedelic music, and Middle Eastern influences. In terms of her vocal performances and range, this was at its peak. Mysticism and spirituality were big themes and guides throughout due to Madonna embracing Kabbalah, whilst also studying Hinduism and Buddhism. There was a different direction planned for Madonna’s album. She started work with producers Babyface and Patrick Leonard (who she had collaborated before). Seeking something different and fresh, she hooked up with William Orbit. Even though the recording sessions were the longest she had experienced and there were hardware issues – because Orbit’s tech was breaking down quite a bit -, the collaboration was perfect. Orbit helped bring something to Madonna’s music that had never been there before. I am going to get to a couple of reviews for Ray of Light. There are plenty of features that have been written about this incredible work. Forward-thinking and career-redeeming in a way (as many had written Madonna off or felt Bedtime Stories was not up to standard), this was the Queen of Pop proving why she had that title.

I remember getting the album when it reached the U.K. in March (the 22nd February first release was in Japan). I was – and still am – a huge Madonna fan, and I had heard singles such as Frozen before I bought the album. Such a rewarding listen, Ray of Light had echoes of her earlier work, but this was an album that very much fitted into 1998. Madonna couldn’t very well repeat what she did before and stay fresh and typically original. Ray of Light, to me, is her most important work. Remarkable that, fifteen years after her eponymous debut, Madonna was reaching these amazing highs. It is not only the bigger songs like Ray of Light and Frozen that linger in the memory. There is plenty of intrigue, magic and wonder in Drowned World / Substitute for Love, Skin, and To Have and Not to Hold. It is an album that, twenty-five years after its release, still sounds utterly vibrant, vital and relevant. As Madonna is going on tour very soon, let’s hope that there are songs from Ray of Light included in her set! I want to start by taking some bits of a feature from The Quietus. Lucy O'Brien wrote about Ray of Light for its twentieth anniversary in 2018:

“In February 1998 Madonna’s new album was literally a ray of light in stodgy UK charts made moribund by the Britpop comedown (Oasis’ Be Here Now, Stereophonics et al), and industry hits like the Titanic soundtrack. In the US it wasn’t much better, with Celine Dion and Garth Brooks at the top. The only other women on the album chart were Spice Girls, All Saints and Aqua, so unsurprisingly Madonna saw off the competition with aplomb. With its icy electronica and pulsing beats, Ray Of Light appeared as the pick-me-up for rave generation. It marked Madonna’s maturity as an artist, brought the MOJO demographic on board, and signalled to the world that a so-called pop bimbo can break down the barriers of that pop/rock divide.

However, it hadn’t been an easy journey, and despite its sunny title the album is a voyage into the darkness and terror of grief. Like Dark Side Of The Moon, it is an elegiac study of ego, mental disintegration and the fear of death. Pink Floyd’s epic drew on ‘70s psychoanalysis, R D Laing and the divided self, while Ray Of Light captures the 90s zeitgeist with its references to Kabbalah and the subconscious. Dark Side uses the sun and moon as symbols of life and death, while Ray Of Light revolves around the duality of sea and sky. Both albums require the listener to go the whole journey to get the full effect.

The album came at a crucial time for Madonna. After the high octane success of the 1980s, her 1990s were testing and difficult. Slut-shamed over her Sex book and the Erotica album, Madonna engaged in angry attention-seeking exercises like saying “fuck” 13 times on Late Show with David Letterman. She had lost confidence, and the tentative R&B of 1994’s Bedtime Stories felt like marking time. Veering off into musical theatre with the Evita project took her into safe MOR territory, but, ironically, rather than turning her into a 1980s pop has-been, those strenuous theatrical songs sung with a full orchestra gave her voice depth and tone. By then Madonna was in her late 30s and re-evaluating life, casting around for answers in study of Yogic philosophy. The birth of her daughter Lourdes in 1996 knocked out some of that infamous ego, so that when she returned to the studio in 1997 for the Ray Of Light sessions she had discovered a more intense, personal voice than the so-called “Minnie Mouse on helium” of earlier years.

Ray Of Light was created in old school prog rock fashion – with mainly one producer, over a period of months, in an intensively collaborative process. “She produced me producing her,” said William Orbit. Recorded in a modest studio in an unfashionable part of LA, the album was intentionally un-industry. Early sessions with Babyface were shelved, and Madonna’s longtime producer arranger Pat Leonard was sidelined in favour of an awkward English eccentric whose hardware kept breaking down. Although Orbit’s perceived amateurism made her nervous, Madonna knew from his dancefloor remix of 1990’s ‘Justify My Love’ that he could create the futuristic tone she craved. With Bass-O-Matic’s Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Bass (named after a Pink Floyd album), and the rave anthem ‘In The Realm Of The Senses’, Orbit had already declared an interest. Kabbalah and new motherhood opened Madonna’s mind, but it was the alchemy between her and Orbit – his trippy underground vibe and her willingness to experiment, that triggered her transformation of consciousness. With Ray Of Light they created the sonic space and musical textures for the sparse poetry that’s embedded in her songwriting. Previous hit-driven albums, with the exception of moments on Like A Prayer and Erotica, hadn’t allowed room for that potential to emerge. For the first time she could express herself in-depth.

Madonna did her background reading – everything from JG Ballard to Anne Sexton to Shakespeare’s sonnets were inspirations here – and did lengthy songwriting sessions with Leonard and Rick Nowells (“her lyric writing was poetic and intelligent,” the latter says, “she knows how to channel a song”) before she set foot in the studio. Once there, little Lourdes was installed in a playroom, and Madonna focused on the tracks that would eventually piece together a story. “I traded fame for love/ Some things cannot be bought… Now I find/ I’ve changed my mind,” she sang on opening track ‘Drowned World/Subsitute for Love’. The apocalyptic dreamscape of JG Ballard’s Drowned Worlds sets the tone. From there she moves into ‘Swim’, a low-slung electro song where Madonna delves into the religious themes of her pop past as the Sin-eater, carrying “these sins on my back”. ‘Ray of Light’ then provides a giddy moment of reawakening, with Orbit pushing her to sing a semitone higher than her comfort zone in order to stretch out that sense of hedonist abandon. This is the song, with its accompanying Jonas Akerlund video – all speeding lights, winking urbanscapes and fast motion skies – that relaunched her career, that married techno beats to cranked-up oscillators and wall-of-sound pop, and begged the question, did Madonna neck a zesty pinger?”.

I will move on to a feature from Rolling Stone. Rob Sheffield looked at Ray of Light twenty years down the line. Although he hints at some minor flaws, this album was hugely important in terms of Madonna’s career and the wider music world. It remains so enormously influential to this date. You know so many artists who have taken the album to heart:

“By all rights, Ray of Light should have been a pretentious disaster. Yet it turned out to be a new peak, setting Ms. Ciccone off on a glorious four-year run: the 1999 single “Beautiful Stranger,” the 2000 album Music, the 2001 Drowned World Tour. If you’re the kind of fan who reveres her as a musician first, not a celebrity, this was the hot streak of her life. You could compare it to Elvis Presley’s mature phase with the ’68 Comeback Special and From Elvis in Memphis. Except at 42, Elvis was dead, while Madonna was just gearing up for her next phase, where she discovered Kabbalah, converted to Judaism and started asking people to call her “Esther.” Never say she isn’t ecumenical.

Ray of Light is easily the most intense pop album ever made by a 39-year-old – Madonna spends these songs celebrating her newborn daughter, mourning her long-lost mother and reckoning with her messed-up adult self. She also contemplates her newfound Lilith Fair–era consciousness, going off about karma and yoga. As she explained in Billboard, “I feel like I’ve been enlightened, and that it’s my responsibility to share what I’ve learned so far with the world.” Ominous words from any pop star, let alone this one. But she made it feel mighty real. (Like another album we all loved in 1998: Hello Nasty, a spiritual manifesto from the opening act on her first tour, the Beastie Boys.) Even those of us who’d devoted our lives to worshipping Madonna weren’t prepared for an album this great.

Strange as it seems now, people back then were mildly obsessive about the idea of Madonna being “over.” Predicting the end of her career was a weirdly popular Nineties fad, like swing dancing or psychic hotlines. The semi-monthly “is she finally done?” debate kicked up every time she did something ridiculous, which she did all the damn time, from her poetic musings in the Sex book (“My pussy is the temple of learning”) to her erotic thriller Body of Evidence, where she played a serial killer who specialized in humping men to death. The U.K. music mag Melody Maker, for its 1992 year-in-review issue, polled experts on the year’s big question: Has Madonna turned into a pathetic exhibitionist? The wisest answer came from (of all people) Right Said Fred’s lead singer: “Being an exhibitionist is only pathetic when nobody’s watching you”.

The goth power ballad “Frozen” was the first hit, but “Ray of Light” was the one that really summed up the new Madonna in one big kundalini disco rush. It came from the same place as the Talking Heads’ similarly titled Remain in Light, about how the world moves on a woman’s hips. The album’s premise was trip-hop, as we called it then – the moody electro-funk sound perfected by Massive Attack, whose mind-freak opus Mezzanine dropped around the same time. (She’d worked with them in 1995 – a bluer-than-blue cover of Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You.”) I interviewed Massive Attack in March 1998, right after Ray came out, and naively asked if they’d noticed how much it sounded like them. Yes, in fact, they noticed. As Daddy G cheerfully told me, “I put on that first track and said, ‘Here we go again”.

I will round off with a couple of reviews. SLANT discussed a bit of background. It is amazing what was happening in Madonna’s life leading up to the release of Ray of Light. Few people would have expected anything like they heard in 1998! It was a revelation of an album. With masterpieces on it that ranked alongside her career-best, I don’t think there have been many other albums like it since. Ray of Light is enormously influential, yet Madonna seems to have hit a peak:

“Madonna’s Ray of Light marked the singer’s return to pop music after a four-year detour that took her from Argentina to motherhood to spiritual reawakening. After reuniting with longtime songwriting partner Patrick Leonard—who played a key role in many of Madonna’s biggest hits in the 1980s and whose contributions to this, her eighth album, are often overlooked—Madonna called on U.K. electronica whiz William Orbit to assemble a batch of songs that nimbly married electronic music with pop.

With “Frozen,” the album’s first single, Madonna, Leonard, and Orbit crafted a pop masterpiece on the level of “Like a Prayer.” The lyrics are uncomplicated but the statement is profound in its clarity: “You only see what your eyes want to see.” Madonna and Leonard’s bewitching melody and cinematic string arrangement is pumped up by Orbit’s expressive drum fills and pulsating electronic effects. Tracks like the frenetic “Skin” and “Shanti/Ashtangi,” a Yoga techno prayer only Madonna could pull off, are similarly lacquered with a bubbly electronic sheen.

For all the studio gimmicks, however, live guitars and percussion play a prominent role throughout. Orbit’s cycles of analog synths and electric guitar licks perfectly supplement the elasticity of Madonna’s then-newly-trained vocal cords. The title track finds the singer in a celebratory tech-frenzy. Whether it was an epiphany of the spiritual or sonic kind (Ray of Light marked a dance-rooted homecoming for the pop star), her elation was unmistakable: “Quicker than a ray of light, I’m flying…And I feel like I just got home!”

Though she’s made an entire career out of revealing herself, Madonna hadn’t been this emotionally candid since Like a Prayer. Layered with vocal samples and buoyant drum n’ bass beats, “Drowned World,” the title of which was inspired by J. G. Ballard’s apocalyptic novel of the same name, sums up much of Madonna’s personal tribulations with fame: “I got exactly what I asked for/Running, rushing back for more…And now I find, I’ve changed my mind.” “Mer Girl,” the album’s final track, is a surreal meditation on mortality and the death of the newly dubbed Ethereal Girl’s mother: “The earth took me in her arms/Leaves covered my face/Ants marched across my back.” Ray of Light was a rebirth, the sound of a queen, sitting on her throne, taking inventory of her icy, empty fortress—and not liking what she saw one bit”.

I’ll end with part of the review from Pitchfork. I have been reading various reviews for Ray of Light. Everyone highlights different aspects of the album and Madonna when they heap praise. I love the fact that Ray of Light connects me to my teenage self – when I first heard the album -, but it also sounds so great and striking today. I am learning so much about the album twenty-five years later:

“Orbit’s work throughout gives Ray of Light a unified tonal consistency, a kind of cohesion that masterworks are made of. He has a light touch with techno textures, both relaxed (flashes of acoustic guitar ground some of the most digitized moments) and danceable—after all, it can’t be a Madonna album if it can’t work in the club. “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” opens the album with bleary sound effects that pulse like the sound of sonar. This submerged quality of sound will become the bleary canvas for the album’s philosophical manifesto, as clear a declaration as can be imagined of the new Madonna that we will meet on the album. Here, she not just embodies her reinvention, as she had done with previous creative shifts, but goes ahead and describes it in full detail. There is no missing the point.

In the hangover from the hedonism that was her early ’90s era, Madonna gave birth to her first child, Lourdes and had begun to embrace yoga and the Jewish mystical practice of Kabbalah. Gone is the wry kinkiness and, at least according to her, the addiction to the spotlight, replaced with wisdom and patience and a powerful maternal instinct. “I traveled ’round the world, looking for a home/I found myself in crowded rooms, feeling so alone,” she sings on “Drowned World.” “Now I find I’ve changed my mind/This is my religion.” It is a moving song, arguably the album’s best. In the music video, as she says these last words, she is seen smiling and hugging a toddler who has her back to the camera, a girl we assume to be Lourdes. Maybe those pulsating beats that open the album evoke not so much a world under the sea, but a child’s heartbeat heard through amniotic fluid, or even the sound of this new version of Madonna being gestated. Whatever they mean to you, Madonna, once more likely to embrace a near-naked man in one of her clips, manifests as a publically doting mother right before our eyes.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mario Testino

Reinvention, thanks to the template that Madonna set, is almost a cliché ritual in pop, like a motion that must be gone through for every star who needs a hook upon which to hang their new album. So too is self-discovery: How many times have you heard an artist claim that this album, the newest one, is her or his “most personal one yet”? But on Ray of Light, Madonna is so all-in committed to her metamorphosis that it’s hard not to believe her. “Nothing Really Matters” is a Buddhist-lite song about living in the moment and discarding the selfish motives of stardom. Even the notable love songs on the album, like the transcendent “The Power of Good-Bye,” are about turning away from the chaotic romantic entanglements that once characterized her public life and lyrics. “You were my lesson I had to learn,” she sings, as if all the turmoil she sang of on past albums had just melted away.

With what’s happened to the culture since, it’s easy to bemoan Madonna opening up the floodgates of this airy, sacred lifestyle: Ray of Light has to be in some ways to blame for Goop and the countless other millionaire celebrities—everyone from Jessica Alba to Dr. Oz—who preach the gospel of wholeness and wellness, sanctimonious and Instagram spirituality. And yet, on Ray of Light, Madonna sounds so confident and alluringly in control of her powers, you might be able to overlook the more dubious moments, like “Shanti/Ashtangi,” in which she recites a hymn in Sanskrit over a techno-pop beat.

Madonna had recently taken voice lessons for her role in the musical Evita and, as she put it about her work prior to improving her technique, “There was a whole piece of my voice I wasn’t using. And I was going to make the most of it.” Her newly trained voice explodes out of the speakers on the title track, the character of her upper register suddenly like crystal. Though “Ray of Light” is “a mystical look at the universe and how small we are,” it’s also just one of the strangest songs in history to ever become a radio smash, a sugar-high piece of acid-club psychedelia. She also exposes a certain vulnerability that had not been on display in the heady days of Erotica. “Mer Girl,” which closes the album, is a tender psalm about the death of her mom. It ends the album on a remarkably reflective and unresolved note, while also pointing to the reason Madonna has needed to be so many different people across her life to begin with: “I ran and I ran,” she sings. “I’m still running away.”

Madonna played a large role in reopening mainstream American music to the club sounds of Europe in ways that have reverberated since. You can hear Ray of Light in artists as disparate as Britney, who worked with Orbit years after Madonna on “Alien,” to the adventurous producer and vocalist Grimes, who called Ray of Light a “masterpiece.” It is important, in 2017, to reveal something serious about yourself and the world through your work if you are a pop artist, and much of this can be traced back to Ray of Light, not to mention Janet Jackson and George Michael, who in the years before also made ambitious and weighty records”.

One of the best albums of the 1990s, it is also one of the most important in Madonna’s career. On 22nd February, Ray of Light is twenty-five. Fans around the world will celebrate and remember an album that refreshed a music scene that was being dominated by predictable Pop. Sure, there were innovative albums outside of that but, as someone seen as a Pop artist, Madonna shook things up. Ray of Light is credited for bringing Electronica music into global pop culture. Another typical revolution from…

A music maverick.

FEATURE: Revisiting… Charli XCX - CRASH

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

Charli XCX - CRASH

_________

IN the last of my Revisiting…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Emily Lipson

features that nods to great albums from last year, I want to mention Charli XCX’s amazing CRASH. Released in March, it was the fifth album from the Pop pioneer. Whilst it got some great reviews, there were some that were more mixed. CRASH should have been nominated for more awards. It has been decidedly missing from nominations and further kudos. One of the absolute best albums from last year, CRASH is a stunning work from an artist who keeps on growing stronger. Songs such as Baby and Good Ones are among the best of Charli XCX. In fact, the whole album is remarkable. I will get to a couple of the positive reviews for the stunning CRASH. There are interviews worth bringing in. There are a couple of interviews that I want to bring in first. Rolling Stone spotlighted and spoke with the amazing Charli XCX early last year:

“A strong narrative around Charli XCX has been that she’s too forward-thinking to win, something of an underdog. The fact that hyperpop crystallised as a genre during the pandemic is partly why the world finally caught up to her. She’s considered the figurehead of this sound of the 2020s. “I think hyper-pop becoming this word that people can umbrella a lot of artists under is definitely a familiarisation of a certain type of sound, which before was seen as quite uncontainable,” Aitchison explains. “You couldn’t put these artists on a playlist because they didn’t really sound like anything and now with that genre title, it makes certain sounds and artists easier to digest for people who maybe weren’t accessing that kind of sound on their own without the guidance of a Spotify playlist. I think that makes certain things about my project a bit easier to understand.”

The messaging of that project alienated a proportion of potential listeners, too. Her lyrics are about partying until oblivion and loving and hating yourself in violent doses; medicating your stress with hedonism. It has, at times, elevated the superficial and sybaritic to an art form, which is why it’s beloved by so many. She made music for people who liked to have a nihilistic laugh, who embraced working hard and playing harder during the grind of late-capitalism. If you can’t beat them, join them and be the best, says Charli XCX (a Leo, if astrology means anything to you). In other words, it’s just not that deep.

Her persona, like her sense of humour, is at turns flat, sexy and dissociative. But her uneasy lyrics draw red circles around her own flaws: she is frequently hardest on herself. In an age of empowerment feminism, this brash self-adoration and self-loathing wasn’t easily digestible. She was too dominant, multi-faceted and flippant to be your typical British female mainstream pop star or to be universally loved by the masses. At a moment in which “dissociative feminism” is being discussed as a trend on the internet, celebrity is having a deranged avant-garde moment with artful staged paparazzi shoots, performative love and unhinged interviews, and shitposting online is the norm, it would seem that the culture is in step with Charli XCX.

Aitchison herself is against the idea that celebrities should be accessible and “real”, the mode of celebrity culture in the 2010s, crucially in full force while she was navigating the bulk of her pop career. “I enjoy that early-2000s era of celebrity where Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are just being iconic and being these otherworldly figures,” she says. “It’s the same with musicians, to be honest. I want my favourite musicians to shock and surprise me and annoy me and completely flip my brain. I don’t want to feel safe with the work that they provide me. I want to be constantly kept on my toes and not be able to see what’s coming next from them.” For her, that’s Kanye West, Yung Lean, Tommy Cash and her collaborator Caroline Polachek. “I think that’s what makes a great public figure, celebrity, artist, musician, performer, whatever: to not be able to predict what happens next. That’s the fun of celebrity, I suppose.”

“It’s hard for me to not sit on this call with you and destroy everything I’ve built because I’m feeling really reckless. It’s actually really a challenge in self-control, press, at the moment”

For Aitchison to enjoy her new album, she had to surprise herself. The insular, fast-paced construction of how i’m feeling now informed its follow-up: “I knew I had to turn it up to high-octane, ten, pop-star level for it to feel fresh for myself.” Crash should have existed first: ‘New Shapes’, ‘Good Ones’, ‘Every Rule’ and ‘Twice’ were written, at least in part, before the previous album began but the pandemic halted it. She knew she wanted to put her own money into this big, impressive pop album and not being able to travel to collaborate with pop producers or put on her biggest tour yet made the entire venture redundant.

By September or October 2020, a few months after how i’m feeling now was finished and released, Crash became her focus. “This album was originally going to be called Sorry If I Hurt You and I liked that title because that sentence is both past, present and future,” she says. “You can say that sentence to someone as if you hurt them in the past or as if you’re going to hurt them or if you’re about to do it right there and then.”

Of all tenses, the album is most indebted to the past. While making it, she listened to Control by Janet Jackson and songs by Cameo (though generally doesn’t consume music while in creation mode because it is a distraction). Inspiration for her retro bombshell look came from watching live performance videos of Madonna, 80s interior design and movies like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. You can see the research in the campiness of her humping her own gravestone in the video for ‘Good Ones’ or the bouffant hair with deadness between the eyes on the single covers: the visuals are equally indebted to sexploitation films, Elvira and Pat Benatar”.

Even though CRASH reached number one in the U.K. and was voted as one of the best albums of 2022 by many sites and publications, I still don’t think it got all the credit it deserved. Such a remarkably strong and accomplished album. In October, NME spoke with an artist who was reflecting on her most successful album to date. She had also ended a five-album deal with Atlantic Records. It seems, very much so, that her future is firmly in her hands:

“Compared with her previous releases, this year’s ‘Crash’ – her first Number One album in the UK – marked a tonal shift for an artist who has simultaneously rejected and courted the mainstream over the course of her decade-plus career. As Charli notes to NME: “I don’t feel like I’ve had a very traditional trajectory…”

As a teenager, the Essex-raised artist took out a loan from her parents to fund the recording of her unreleased promo debut ‘14’, which remains a fun, scrappy listen. Her debut album proper, 2013’s ‘True Romance’, combined a clear love of clean pop melody with an eclectic ear for subversion, sampling the likes of Gold Panda and Blood Orange. Just when mainstream stardom seemed as if it could be beckoning, she veered the other way with the uneven, pop-punk influenced ‘Sucker’ in 2015. Here, Rita Ora guest spots and mega-hits like ‘Boom Clap’ jostled side-by-side with yé-yé songs about wanking (‘Body of My Own’).

Instead, recalling the cartoonish, mechanicised funk production of Janet Jackson’s 1986 classic ‘Control’, and touching on themes of creative independence along the way, ‘Crash’ ended up feeling like the quintessential Charli album. “What you want, I ain’t got it,” she sang on ‘New Shapes’, seeming to briefly allude to her non-traditional career trajectory alongside Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek; two similiar artists who interchangeably infiltrate and move away from mainstream pop.

PHOTO CREDIT: Terrence O’Connor 

On the chart-bothering ‘Used To Know Me’, which heavily samples from Robin S’s ‘90s house hit ‘Show Me Love’ Charli meshes together her undeniable ear for a pop banger with more complicated musings that seem to hint at the space she now occupies as an artist. “You say I’m turning evil, I say I’m turning pure.” Why does she think this internal creative grappling stems from? “There’s this subconscious resistance that I just can’t undo,” she replies. “I just can’t fully let go of the reins.”

Charli offers up the theory that her music contains an integral sense of “push and pull”, continually tugging her between two distinct worlds. As well as striving to be “the mainstream Pop Girl,” there’s also an impulse pulling her towards the “deep end, and doing something a bit more left. I think that’s always going to be a battle that I have,” she points out, “but I also think that it’s that tension that makes me make the music that I make.”

“I like playing games with pop music. Pop music has never just been as simple as being a pop star and releasing music. In a way I would love it – if it was just that for me – but then I think I would be a more boring artist who will probably be forgotten. I enjoy the nuances of this fucked up industry and game-playing and all of these strings that happen behind the scenes… I’m enjoying that element of pop music. I enjoy poking fun at it, I enjoy buying into it, believing it, rejecting it, being a mess, and the chaos within it”.

I am going to wrap up with a couple of reviews for the magnificent CRASH. DIY had their say in an excellent and insightful review. Even though Charli XCX is a very modern and innovative artist, her final album with Atlantic was her looking back in some ways. Playing with expectations and the formats of Pop. As a result, I think that CRASH should get a tonne of respect. So many people are going to be intrigued to see where the mighty Charli XCX goes next. Her sixth album is going to the most speculated of her career:

“It’s a bold move to tease an album’s release with an image of your own gravestone on Instagram, but then again not every pop star is like Charli XCX. From her breakthrough in the early ’10s and hits ‘I Love It’ and ‘Break The Rules’, to her influential hyper-pop innovation and love for experimentation in projects like ‘Pop 2’ right through to her landmark lockdown album ‘how i’m feeling now’, Charli’s been a pioneering tour-de-force of the pop world for nearly a decade. Now her fifth full-length ‘CRASH’ arrives, and Charli is ready to add to her legacy of boundary-pushing records.

For album number 5, Charli has placed a tongue-in-cheek emphasis on this record being the end of an era in her career, as well as a new beginning. The aforementioned gravestone was part of a winking nod to ‘CRASH’ being “the fifth and final album in my record deal…”. She’s been filling her social media with lighthearted ‘tips’ for new artists (“tip for new artists: it only gets worse” one reads, “tip for new artists: suffer in silence” states another),and has been embracing a deal-with-the-devil motif. “I’m exploring what it means to be a pop star on a major label in a not very current way,” she’s previously explained. “And that’s really fun to me.” Welcoming us to her “new chapter [that] embraces all that my life has to offer in today’s world - fame, glamour, inner demons and global hits”, this may be her final record in her contract, but Charli was never not going to go out with a bang, opting for yet another album that delivers something exciting and unexpected. Moving away from the hyper-pop that has characterised her most recent releases, ‘CRASH’ delivers a sublime slice of punchy power-pop helmed by an all-star lineup of producers including AG Cook, The 1975’s George Daniel, and Ariel Reichstaid (the latter having previously worked on the singer’s debut ‘True Romance’). ‘CRASH’ is glistening with influences ranging from Janet Jackson to Cyndi Lauper, and fist-pumping power-pop tropes that shone throughout the best of the ‘80s.

The record kicks in with thumping drums as Charli sings how it “ended all so legendary” over twinkling synths on the opening title track. The nostalgic pop influences quickly seep in, further highlighted by its guitar-solo finale. Elsewhere, previously released singles, such as the iconic Caroline Polachek and Christine and the Queens featuring ‘New Shapes’ and the ‘September’-sampling Rina Sawayama collab ‘Beg For You’, shine brightly, while the pounding and anthemic ‘Good Ones’ stands as one of the best from Charli’s back-catalogue. But at no time does Charli lose her forward-thinking pop flair either.

The dramatic ‘Move Me’ and ‘Lightning’ reinvent what pop and dance ballads should be, while ‘Constant Repeat’ is a refreshing slice of pure pop that shimmers as Charli sings about a relationship that could’ve been (“you could’ve had a bad girl by your side”). Dynamic strings open up the sleek, sexy bop ‘Baby’, and ‘Every Rule’ explores falling in love under tricky circumstances over dreamy synths. ‘Used To Know Me’ is a dance-floor ready club-pop number, while infectious ear worm ‘Yuck’ sings about simping hard (“that boy’s so mushy, sending me flowers, I’m just trying to get lucky”). ‘Twice’, which Charli originally premiered in a livestream concert back in March 2021, brings a close to the 12-track record on a shimmering note as she sings about living in the moment (“All the things I love are gonna leave me, one day you’re never gonna be there / I tell myself to take it easy, don’t think twice about it”).

‘CRASH’ may be closing a chapter for Charli but it is in no way a swan song. Instead, she once again explores new ventures, crafting a pop album that celebrates the old classics as well as the new, and cements her status as a true pop trailblazer”.

I will finish off with the review from The Line of Best Fit. Such a varied, confident, fascinating album that pleased existing fans but brought new ones onboard, CRASH really should have got a lot more love from some that it did. That is the nature of music, I guess. Some will miss out on the true strength of an album. In any case, CRASH is one of the best from 2022. One that people should take some time and revisit:

“Fearlessly tackling a spectrum of gritty, experimental instrumentals, the Cambridge-born singer has grown accustomed to having her vocals warped, skewered and scattered over everything from trilled hi-hats and ricocheting breakbeats to ghoulish harsh noise, with no sounds off-limits. Sure, her relationship with commercial music has coexisted alongside these leftfield explorations, but it’s her outings alongside the likes of PC Music head honcho A. G. Cook, cult favourites 100 gecs, and the late, great SOPHIE which have come to define her catalogue of late. Going back to basics for her fifth album was therefore something which few envisaged, but the decision makes perfect sense – Crash is nothing short of a victory lap.

Every bit as effervescent as its pandemic-induced predecessor, how i’m feeling now, Crash is the culmination of several years of work. Recorded partially pre-COVID, its lyrics span multiple relationships, and its personnel includes Oneohtrix Point Never – whose contributions here predate his record-breaking work on The Weeknd’s Dawn FM – as well as True Romance producers Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen. Elsewhere, chart mainstay Digital Farm Animals, most notable for his recent work with YouTuber-turned-popstar KSI, injects some good old-fashioned UKG flavour into the Rina Sawayama-assisted “Beg for You”, and Cook resurfaces on the atypically mellow offering “Every Rule”, in which Charli achingly grapples with the moral dilemma of breaking off an existing relationship in order to pursue somebody new.

Nods to the sounds of yesteryear crop up a few times over the course of the LP: the bubbly duet “Beg for You” manages to stitch together elements of throwback songs by September and Milk Inc. and simultaneously play to its two singers’ strengths, while “Used to Know Me” finds Charli celebrating her independence over a reworked version of Robin S’s evergreen floorfiller “Show Me Love”. Having recently revisited Stromae’s “Alors On Danse” on the Saweetie-assisted mega-hit “OUT OUT” with Jax Jones and Joel Corry, she’s clearly got the bug for Eurodance, and has no problem repurposing these universally familiar melodies for a 2022 audience; a challenging task which she recently described as striking a balance between “nostalgia” and “pure futurism”.

At the same time, she’s just as comfortable dabbling in the kind of cheeky, funk-inflected earworm primed for TikTok; the hilarious “Yuck” finds her aghast at a love interest’s cringeworthy displays of affection, however well-intentioned they may be, and the recent single “Baby” is a vibrant assertion of her sexuality, decorated with fast-paced guitar licks. With live instruments present throughout, these arrangements stand in stark contrast to how i’m feeling now’s electronics – here, the meandering electric guitar lines at the end of title track “Crash” and the flamenco-esque flourishes on the late entry “Lightning” are a real treat, crossing over into a hybrid soundscape entirely absent from her last album. Where that was detached and synthetic, this is connected and organic; a celebration of hope, love and spontaneity as both her catalogue and the world at large inch closer to some semblance of their old ways”.

A wonderful album from one of our very finest artists, there is nobody in music like Charli XCX. After the success of CRASH, it will be curious seeing what direction she takes. I think she could appear in films and broaden her career. When it comes to album six, maybe something more stripped-back, or she may explore new genres. Whatever she does, it will be fantastic! If you have not experienced CRASH, then go and check it out…

AS soon as you can.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Yoko Ono at Ninety: A Selection of Her Great Work

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Yoko Ono at Ninety: A Selection of Her Great Work

_________

I think that Yoko Ono…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Yoko Ono with John Lennon

is one of the truly great artists. I apply that to music and her actual art. Such a truly important and pioneering human, she turns ninety on 18th February. Not only is she crucial in the story of The Beatles but, as part of the Plastic Ono Band (with John Lennon), she is an amazing talent. A peace activist and someone who has worked tirelessly to preserve the memory of John Lennon, she is someone we should all cherish. A spectacular person, I wanted to mark her upcoming ninetieth birthday with a playlist of some of her great work. These are either songs she has written or features her on vocals. Before getting there, AllMusic provide biography about the great Yoko Ono:

“Throughout her lengthy career as a multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist, Yoko Ono remained a visionary. Before her romantic and creative partnership with John Lennon, she was an established figure in the world of avant-garde art and music. A classically trained vocalist and pianist, Ono worked with John Cage and LaMonte Young in the early '60s and had connections to the Fluxus art movement. When she and Lennon began making music together in the late '60s, she challenged him to become a more experimental and autobiographical artist. Meanwhile, her music blended rock, jazz, and the avant-garde with the same boundary-breaking attitude of her work in other art forms, ranging from the free jazz influences of 1970's Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band to 1971's more structured Fly to the subversively feminist use of glam, funk, and pop on 1973's Feeling the Space and Approximately Infinite Universe. Her '80s output spanned 1981's Season of Glass, her brilliantly harrowing response to Lennon's murder, to 1985's idealistic Starpeace. During the '80s and '90s, the importance of Ono's work as a forward-thinking musician was increasingly realized. Artists such as Elvis Costello, the B-52's, and Sonic Youth covered her songs, while 1992's Onobox made her music more widely available. In later years, Ono refused to rest on her laurels, and 1995's Rising was just as confrontational as her earlier music. Along with her success as a dance artist in the 2000s and 2010s, she collaborated with younger musicians such as tUnE-yArDs, ?uestlove, and her son Sean Lennon on albums like Take Me to the Land of Hell. Ono also continued to be a tireless advocate for peace and the environment, and helped keep Lennon's memory alive with memorials includeng Strawberry Fields and the Imagine Peace Tower.

Yoko Ono was born February 18, 1933, into a wealthy Japanese family in Tokyo. Her childhood was somewhat lonely and isolated; her father, a banker and onetime classical pianist, was transferred to San Francisco a few weeks before she was born, and her socialite mother was often busy throwing elaborate parties. She didn't meet her father until age two, when the family moved to San Francisco. However, they returned to Tokyo three years later to avoid the anti-Japanese backlash that was beginning in the United States in response to Japan's growing military expansionism. Ono was educated at the Gakushuin School, the most exclusive private school in Japan (the Emperor's sons were her classmates). She began classical piano lessons at age four, and began lessons in lieder singing at 14.

In 1945, her mother took the family to the countryside to escape Tokyo, in time to survive the massive Allied bombing of the city; however, rich city dwellers were unwelcome, and the Ono children were often forced to beg for food.

After the war, Ono's family moved to Scarsdale, New York. She remained in Tokyo and became the first woman to enroll in Gakushuin's philosophy department, but dropped out after a couple of semesters. Ono joined her family in the States in 1952, where she attended Sarah Lawrence College. While studying music with André Singer, she became fascinated with the work of 12-tone composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. When Ono wanted to go further afield with her music, Singer familiarized her with the work of avant-garde artists like Henry Cowell and John Cage. During this time, she also began dating Juilliard student Toshi Ichiyanagi, who shared her interests and became her husband in 1956. The couple moved to Manhattan in 1957, and Ono made ends meet by teaching Japanese art and music at the Japan Society, among other sporadic jobs (she'd rejected her parents' wealth and the attendant lifestyle). The couple's Chambers Street loft soon became a hot spot in the nascent downtown New York art scene. From December 1960 to June 1961, Ono frequently staged "happenings" (sometimes in partnership with minimalist composer LaMonte Young) that featured music, poetry, and other performance, and John Cage used the loft space to teach classes in experimental composition. During this time, Ono debuted interactive, conceptual pieces such as Painting to Be Stepped On, a blank canvas that became a finished work of art once viewers walked on it. This work was included in her first solo show, which was held at George Maciunas' AG Gallery in July 1961. That November, Ono performed at the Carnegie Recital Hall, an event that featured a miked-up toilet flushing at various points throughout the show. Following her separation from Ichiyanagi that year, in March 1962 Ono returned to Japan, where the couple divorced. After a brief institutionalization for depression, in November 1962 she married American jazz musician and film producer Anthony Cox.

Once the couple returned to New York, Ono resumed her art career to considerable attention from the avant-garde community. By this time, Maciunas had become the leader of the Fluxus art movement, whose philosophies were compatible with (and influenced by) Ono's, prizing abstraction and audience interaction. Though Maciunas invited her to be a part of the Fluxus group, Ono preferred to remain independent. In 1964, she published Grapefruit, a collection of creative prompts and instructional pieces that was hailed as a landmark in conceptual art. That year, she also debuted Cut Piece, in which Ono invited audience members to cut off pieces of her clothing, at Kyoto, Japan's Yamaichi Concert Hall. She later performed the piece at the Carnegie Recital Hall in early 1965 and again at the following year's Destruction in Art Symposium in London, an event at which she was the only female artist to perform and one of two female speakers.

Cut Piece helped make her a sensation in the London art world, and in November 1966, she staged an exhibition at the famed Indica Gallery, which was ardently patronized by John Lennon. Lennon was impressed by her work, particularly a piece where the viewer was required to climb a ladder and hold up a magnifying glass to read a small inscription on the ceiling that said "Yes!" The two read each other's writings, and Lennon financed an exhibition in which Ono painted various everyday objects white and cut them in half. In the meantime, Ono and Cox had begun making experimental films, usually centered on the repetition of simple movements; their fourth effort, Bottoms, consisted of 365 close-ups of nude buttocks. Ono also sang in concert with pioneering free jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman at the Royal Albert Hall. Ono and Lennon began their relationship early in 1967, and recorded the highly experimental Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins -- which was released in late 1968 -- soon after.

Ono and Cox divorced on February 2, 1969, and she married John Lennon in Gibraltar on March 20, 1969. The couple used the publicity surrounding their honeymoon to hold "Bed-Ins for Peace" in Amsterdam and Montreal (the latter of which produced the single "Give Peace a Chance"). Lennon was also inspired by Ono to make more personal music such as "The Ballad of John and Yoko," and the pair formed the Plastic Ono Band. The group's debut album, Live Peace in Toronto 1969, was recorded at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival and included performances by Eric Clapton and Klaus Voorman on a collection of rock standards and avant-garde pieces featuring Ono's freeform vocalizations. The second Lennon/Ono album, Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions, appeared not long after their wedding; it spotlighted Ono's cathartic vocals and addressed her first of several miscarriages. It was quickly followed by The Wedding Album, one side of which featured more Ono improv, the other of which consisted of couple calling each other's names. Over the next few years, Lennon and Ono continued their peace activism, and entered primal-scream therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov, which influenced both of their individual careers. In 1970, they each recorded an album backed by the Plastic Ono Band; Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band was the more experimental of the two, incorporating free jazz elements as well as performances from Ornette Coleman and Ringo Starr. Ono followed it in 1971 with the double-LP Fly, which mixed boundary-pushing tracks with more conventionally structured songs. The album included the song "Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)," a tribute to her daughter Kyoko, of whom Cox had won custody and disappeared with in 1971 (Ono did not see Kyoko again until 1998). In September 1971, Ono and Lennon moved to New York City. Inspired by their involvement with activists such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the pair released the protest-song album Some Time in New York City in 1972; at the time, it was roasted for the simplicity of its sentiments. Ono returned in 1973 with two of her strongest solo statements, the intense, explicitly feminist Feeling the Space and the more varied Approximately Infinite Universe, both of which featured less musical involvement from Lennon. Exhausted by their constant time together and their battles with U.S. immigration over Lennon's threatened deportation, the couple split up for a year and a half toward the end of 1973. Ono recorded a more accessible album, A Story, in 1974, but it was shelved and remained unavailable for two decades. Ono and Lennon reunited in early 1975, and their son Sean Taro Ono Lennon was born on John's birthday, October 9. Lennon dropped out of show business for several years to raise his son, while Ono took charge of his business affairs.

Although she contributed some of her most accessible songs to Lennon's 1980 comeback album, Double Fantasy, she did not return to solo recording until after his assassination on December 8, 1980. The harrowing, grief-stricken Season of Glass was released the following year to highly complimentary reviews, while the single "Walking on Thin Ice (For John)" became her first charting hit, reaching number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1981. Ono followed it in 1982 with the more hopeful, pop-oriented It's Alright (I See Rainbows), and had some airplay with the single "Never Say Goodbye." In 1984, Milk and Honey, her final album with Lennon, was released, and balanced her more polished studio work with his demos and rehearsal recordings. With 1985's Starpeace, Ono responded to President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system. Working with producer Bill Laswell and other downtown New York scenesters, Ono scored another charting hit with "Hell in Paradise," which peaked at number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100. That year also saw the dedication of the Strawberry Fields memorial to Lennon in Manhattan's Central Park, the construction and maintenance of which Ono funded.

In the '90s, Ono returned to visual art, creating installations and also exploring photography. Meanwhile, interest in her previous work led to several retrospectives over the course of the decade. Her reputation as a musician capable of bridging the pop and experimental worlds also began to grow, thanks to an interview with writer Mark Kemp for the magazine Option as well as the 1992 release of Onobox, a remastered box set of Ono's albums as well as 1974's lost album A Story. In 1994, her off-Broadway musical New York Rock, which was inspired by her life with Lennon and revisited many of her songs, premiered. Ono reworked several of the show's new songs for 1995's Rising, a harsh, experimental album featuring her son Sean and Ima, her band at the time. The following year's Rising Mixes EP included contributions from Cibo Matto, Ween, and Thurston Moore.

In 2001, Blueprint for a Sunrise, which echoed the feminist concepts of Feeling the Space and included other remixes of songs from Rising, arrived. In 2003, Ono began working with dance artists on remixes of her best-known songs, a move that brought her some of her greatest chart success. That April, she scored her first number one with "Walking on Thin Ice (Remixes)," which featured interpretations of the song by Pet Shop Boys, Danny Tenaglia, and Felix da Housecat and reached number one on Billboard's Dance/Club Play chart. She repeated this feat with singles such as 2004's "Everyman ... Everywoman …," 2008's "No No No," and the following year's "I'm Not Getting Enough," racking up five number ones during the decade. Along with reissues of several of her albums courtesy of V2, in 2007 Ono released Yes, I'm a Witch Too, a collection of her songs reimagined by collaborators including Cat Power, the Flaming Lips, DJ Spooky, Jason Pierce, and many others. In 2009, Ono re-formed the Plastic Ono Band with Sean and added collaborators such as Yuka Honda from Cibo Matto and members of Cornelius; she released the album Between My Head and the Sky on Sean's Chimera imprint. That year, she also created the exhibit "John Lennon: The New York City Years," which included music, photographs, and personal items, for the N.Y.C. Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex. During the 2000s, Ono was also involved with founding several Lennon memorials, including the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, Saitama, Japan and the Imagine Peace Tower, which projects a beam of light into the sky from an island outside of Reykjavik, Iceland each year from October 9 to December 8.

In the 2010s, Ono was busier than ever with music and visual arts projects. She continued to chart as a dance artist with 2011's "Move on Fast," 2012's "Hold Me (Featuring Dave Audé) and 2014's "Angel" among her number one hits on Billboard's Dance Club Songs chart. For 2012's improvisatory YOKOKIMTHURSTON, she teamed with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. That year, she also founded the environmental activism group Artists Against Fracking. In 2013 -- the year of Ono's 80th birthday -- she published Acorn, a sequel to Grapefruit's collection of conceptual prompts, and launched Half-a-Wind Show, a career-spanning retrospective, at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. She also released Take Me to the Land of Hell, which featured production by Sean Lennon as well as cameos by tUnE-yArDs, ?uestlove, and the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock and Mike D. Yes, I'm a Witch Too appeared in 2016 and included covers and remixes by Sparks, Ebony Bones, Death Cab for Cutie, and Danny Tenaglia, among others. That year, "Skylanding," Ono's first permanent art installation in the United States, was installed in Chicago's Jackson Park. In 2017, Ono received a songwriting credit for her work on Lennon's "Imagine" from the National Music Publishers Association. She included a new version of "Imagine" on her 2018 album Warzone, a collection of stripped-down reinterpretations of songs from her entire body of work”.

Looking ahead to an important birthday for someone who has helped change music and the world, I hope that people come together and mark her ninetieth on 18th February. For years, she was blamed for breaking up The Beatles – and she received the most hateful abuse. She did no such thing. She was an inspiring and essential presence who actually inspired some iconic songs. I think that the legendary Yoko Ono should get…

ALL the love she deserves.

 

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five: Imagining a 1978 Version of the Icon on the Screen

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five

PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz 

Imagining a 1978 Version of the Icon on the Screen

_________

THIS may be an odd tie-in…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

and it is something I have asked before, but I keep thinking about bringing Kate Bush to the small or big screen. Whilst there will never be a biopic – as I don’t think she would allow it -, I have been thinking about Kate Bush in 1978 and the music scene she entered. In a year when there was Punk sitting alongside Pop and Disco, there was a lot of great stuff around. Her debut album, The Kick Inside, came out on 17th February, 1978. Forty-five years after the album was released, and we do not really know quite what it was like in the studio (AIR, London), and the scenes and sights between the musicians and Bush. I don’t think any photos exist of Bush in the studio or anything where we get to hear or so the creation of The Kick Inside. That is a real shame! What we do have is the interviews and promotion from 1978. Her debut album is a magnificent beauty that reveals new layers every time you hear it. I am curious what it was like for Kate Bush when The Kick Inside came out. Maybe rubbing shoulders with other artists. Traveling around the world and experiencing something hugely moving and exciting. As far as I know, there has never been a representation of Kate Bush on T.V. or film. In my mind, it would be a filmic representation. Not a biopic or anything specifically about Kate Bush, having a 1978-set film where Bush ‘appears’ would be a bit of a dream.

It would be a compromise where Bush would not have her life and story told and be up there for all to see, but it would give people a chance to experience what it was like in 1978. Around the time of the release of The Kick Inside, Kate Bush was a new commodity in music. Her name and music would explode very soon. She performed on shows like Top of the Pops, went to countries such as Japan, and she was promoting her music far and wide. Bush would be hesitant really to have someone play her or having her story told in a false way. As there has really been no filmic interpretation of her brought to life, there is a definite demand. An actress would play her and do the speaking voice but, for live performances, it would be Bush’s original vocal. It need only be a brief ‘cameo’, but I think about bands like Blondie being around at the same time. Whether a true version of events where Bush appears as a small part of a film centered around 1978 or something fictionalised where there is more fantasy and creative license, the possibilities are tantalising. Having such a great sense of humour, Bush would be up for it. So long as it is respectful. We have heard Bush’s music in films, and there has been the odd documentary made about her through the years. In terms of anything that leans towards a biopic, perhaps that has been shot down firmly. I am not sure. I am guessing filmmakers have raised the ideas, but Bush might find it weird to see someone else play her for a full film.

The Kick Inside is the album that started things. It introduced Kate Bush to the world. I feel it would be interesting to have some sort of filmic representation of Bush. I don’t know if we will ever see her on film again, in terms of music videos. Whether we will ever get another documentary has yet to be seen. Given the increase in her fanbase and the fact a younger generation have discovered her music, there is that need to make people aware of Bush’s entire oeuvre. Going back to The Kick Inside is essential. Forty-five on 17th, it will be a moment to celebrate. Such a remarkable and stunning debut, it still has this incredible pull. Like nothing else I have ever heard, I often think about Kate Bush and 1978. It was such a hectic year for her. She was promoting all over the world and barely had a moment to rest. Though we have photographs and T.V. performances, in terms of images and audio from the recording of The Kick Inside, that is something that alludes us. Thinking about her in the studio or back at her family home at East Wickham Farm. Maybe backstage at a T.V. performance or interaction with fellow musicians, there is this world that is fascinating but has yet to be brought to life. As the world prepares to mark forty-five years of Kate Bush’s debut, I hope that there are plans in the future to bring that time…

ONTO the small or big screen.

FEATURE: Recognising the Importance of Women in Music: The BRITs As An Example of How Award Shows and the Industry Need to Change

FEATURE:

 

 

Recognising the Importance of Women in Music

 IN THIS PHOTO: Rina Sawayama/PHOTO CREDIT: Chloe Sheppard for Vanity Fair

The BRITs As An Example of How Award Shows and the Industry Need to Change

_________

THIS is the final time I will mention this…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Beyoncé

as the 2023 BRIT Awards will take place on Saturday, 11th February. With performances from the likes Harry Styles, Wet Leg and Lewis Capaldi, it is going to be a big evening. I know people have talked about inequality at award ceremonies before, but it warrants repeating. It is not necessarily the case that every award show is culpable. Even though there were some oversights and controversial winners at the GRAMMYs recently, artists like Beyoncé triumphed. The Mercury Prize, as I have said, is more balanced than most. It is not just a BRITs issue. One of the problems this year has been that, when they dispended with gender-specific categories, the idea was for more inclusiveness and less division. A single category that included women and non-binary artists, what has happened instead is that the Artist of the Year category has all men in it. One thing about the five artists nominated is that they are all very much keyed to a narrow demographic. I think, in terms of audience, Central Cee, George Ezra, Fred Again.., Stomrzy and Harry Styles probably appeal to the BBC Radio 1 audience. Even if the sounds vary between artists, why do they limit the category to five artists?! Surely making it broader still would avoid clear sexism. I am not picking on the BRITs and shaming them! As the ceremony is on Saturday, it will reveal a problem that is evident in one of the biggest award ceremonies.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine/PHOTO CREDIT: Sergione Infuso/Corbis/Getty Images

The GRAMMYS showed that they are able to instil equality. In terms of eligibility, artists such as Rina Sawayama, Charli XCX, Mabel, RAYE, Florence + The Machine, Little Simz, Self Esteem, and Holly Humberstone are good choices. Definitely Rina Sawayama, Charli XCX and Florence + The Machine released far stronger work last year than Fred Again... or even Stormzy. You have to wonder what the selection criteria is! In a recent interview – which the BBC reported on - All Saints’ Shaznay Lewis questioned the all-male Artist of the Year category at this year’s BRITs:

“Singer Shaznay Lewis has said it "does not feel right that female artists have suffered" as a result of category changes at the Brit Awards.

Best male and best female have been merged into one best artist category to allow non-binary acts to compete.

However, the shortlist for this year's best artist prize is all-male.

Lewis, who won two Brits as a member of All Saints, welcomed the awards body's intentions, but said: "Progressive ideas should benefit everyone."

Writing in the Radio Times, she said: "How can that be the case if we do not acknowledge female artists, who are symbols of empowerment to millions of young aspiring women?"

The singer and songwriter described the category change as a "welcome and wonderful step" for recognising talent regardless of an artist's gender.

However, she continued: "If the Brits are meant to be accolades for all, how can we persist with a category that this year has excluded half of the population, women? I'm hoping it won't be the case in 2024."

IN THIS PHOTO: Shaznay Lewis/PHOTO CREDIT: Olivia Rose

Harry Styles, who won record of the year at Sunday's Grammys, is the favourite to win artist of the year at the Brits

Adele was the first winner of the newly-titled artist of the year category in 2022, following the release of her fourth album 30.

She said in her acceptance speech: "I understand why the name of this award has changed but I really love being a woman and being a female artist. I'm really proud of us."

This year, the best artist nominees are Fred Again, Central Cee, George Ezra, Stormzy and Harry Styles.

Female artists such as Charli XCX and Florence + The Machine missed out, although acts like Wet Leg, Nova Twins and Cat Burns are recognised in other categories.

Lewis said: "Women, predictably, have suffered as a result [of merging the categories]. It does not feel right."

She questioned why women faced being "disregarded and excluded", and asked whether it was because female artists were not seen as "equally bankable" by the music industry”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Harry Styles/PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Pavarotti for DAZED

It is worrying that, even though there is a plethora and embarrassment of riches when it comes to tremendous women across multiple genres, there is this sexism that means they miss out. I don’t think we can call it anything else! Some might say the five male artists vying for Artist of the Year are more commercial and popular. That is not true. Whereas someone like Harry Styles deserves his place in the award shortlist, I question the other four. George Ezra is definitely popular, but in terms of his quality and worth, there are far stronger female artists. Objectively so. Artists such as Charli XCX have won far bigger reviews and are stronger as artists. The same could be said of Florence + The Machine. The Mercury-winning Little Simz is a more spectacular and daring artist than Stormzy. It seems there is no real logic or quality control. I think the argument is complex. Fewer women are signed to labels compared to men. Many high-profile female artists like Dua Lipa have not put out new music recently. That said, more than enough women who have released tremendous music in the past year have been denied! In defence of the BRITs, women are represented in other Brits categories - female duo Wet Leg have four nominations, while Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Lizzo outnumber the men on the Best International Artist shortlist. Before rounding off, the BBC recently examined the BRITs controversy. Music correspondent Mark Savage looked closer at gender imbalance in a very important BRITS category:

“Clearly my fellow voters didn't agree with all those choices. They felt George Ezra's cuddly singalongs were better than Charli XCX's scorching glitch-pop. And maybe they're right. Both artists had a number one album last year, but George's Gold Rush Kid sold about four times as many as Charli's Crash.

The problem, I think, is more complicated than voters simply being sexist.

IN THIS PHOTO: Charli XCX/PHOTO CREDIT: The New York Times

If you look at the nominations as a whole, they've picked brilliant, cutting-edge female acts in several categories. Post-punk duo Nova Twins are up for best group, jungle producer Nia Archives is a rising star nominee and Charli XCX even gets a look-in for best pop act. So it's not like voters are unaware of their music.

What the best artist shortlist reveals is a wider systemic issue. Only 20% of the artists signed to a major UK record label are female, so they're already at a disadvantage.

And, with a few notable exceptions, it still feels like labels don't know how to develop female acts once they reach a certain level. How did Mabel go from best female in 2020 to zero nominations in 2022? Her album was good, but badly promoted. No wonder she quit to work with Dua Lipa's former managers a month after it was released.

The sad fact is that voters have a very small pool of female artists to choose from, and in a year when big stars like Adele and Dua Lipa were busy on tour, they went for male acts instead. (The Brits don't regularly reveal the make-up of the voting academy but in 2017, they said 48% of the 1,200 members were women).

Hopefully, headlines about this shortlist will shake things up, but I suspect they won't. Execs will be sitting back, safe in the knowledge that next year's Brit Awards will encompass new releases from Little Simz, Dua Lipa, Arlo Parks and Flo that will just about disguise the industry's lack of female representation for another 12 months”.

Let’s hope that the attention following Saturday’s ceremony brings about more discussion. I don’t think it is good enough to say women were not included for Best New Artist because bigger artists were not touring or releasing new music. This is patently not true. Plenty of women signed to labels who released music were eligible but were cast aside. The brilliant Self Esteem and Rina Sawayama alone could have been there! In fact, you could have had all women in the category without compromising one bit – though you would have got sexist complaints and outcry, sadly! Disrespecting so many artists who make the industry what it is, let’s hope things start to change right across the board…

WITHOUT any excuses.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Camilla George

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Camilla George

_________

I have not spent much time…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Funkyfeet

spotlighting band leaders, Jazz musicians and saxophonists. Happily, when it comes to the remarkable Camilla George, all three are covered! One of the most inventive and inspiring musicians you will ever hear, I wanted to spend some time delving into her music and career. Mixing together West African grooves with the distinct and multifarious sounds of the London Jazz scene, Camilla George is a musician everyone should tune into. I want to bring in a few features/interviews with her, so that we can learn more about this world-class talent. First, from her website, here is some background and biography:

“Camilla George is a visionary saxophonist, composer, bandleader and innovator. Her strong cultural roots and love of fusing African and Western Music has informed her own unique style, a key reason why she is a firm fixture on the new London Jazz scene, alongside peers such as Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings.

Her music is a hypnotising blend of Afrofuturism, hip hop and jazz, with a politically minded subtext that has a powerful connection to her Nigerian identity, lineage and heritage, reflecting African history, culture and slavery.

Her forthcoming third studio album, ‘Ibio Ibio’, is a tribute to her tribe the Ibibio people of South Eastern Coastal Nigeria. The album features an incredible lineup, including Daniel Casimir, Sarah Tandy, Winton Clifford, Renato Paris, Sheila Maurice-Grey, Rosie Turton, Shirley Tetteh, hip hop drummer, Daru Jones, Birmingham based rapper, Lady Sanity and Sam Jones.

Born in Eket, Nigeria, Camilla has been interested in music from an early age and particularly in the fusion of African and Western music. She grew up listening to Fela Kuti, as well as Jackie McLean and Charlie Parker. She began playing the saxophone aged 11 years old, when she won a music contest where the prize awarded her saxophone lessons.

Camilla went on to study with many jazz greats such as saxophone giant, Jean Toussaint (of Art Blakey fame), Julian Siegal and Martin Speake at Trinity College of Music where she gained a Masters in Jazz Performance, as well as being awarded The Archer Scholarship for Outstanding Performance in 2011.

In 2009, she joined award-winning band Jazz Jamaica and performed with special guest, Ernest Ranglin at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. In 2013 Jazz Jamaica was nominated for a MOBO award for Jazz Performance. They continue to perform extensively all over the world.

In 2014, Camilla formed her own critically acclaimed project showcasing the stars of the new UK Jazz Scene. Dubbed “The Golden Girl of Jazz” by The Evening Standard, Camilla’s debut album, ‘Isang’ (pronounced E-SANG which means ‘journey’ in Ibibio her native language) received huge critical acclaim.

Her follow up album, ‘The People Could Fly’ which was released in September 2018, featuring special guest Omar, as well as in hugely respected guitarist Shirley Tetteh, gained substantial critical acclaim with 4 star reviews from the Financial Times and Jazzwise to name a few. The album and Camilla was featured on several key playlists such as State of Jazz, and Camilla was the poster girl for Tidal’s British Jazz playlist. The album looked at tales that slaves passed onto their children through generations and, whilst full of sorrow, was essentially a story of hope for black people and mankind that we can one day live together in harmony.

Camilla’s band has gigged solidly, being fortunate to support Courtney Pine’s album launch featuring Omar at The Barbican, as well as performing at Love Supreme (where Camilla took part in a panel discussion with Kamasi Washington) and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Camilla’s band also supported Dee Dee Bridgewater at The Cadogan Hall for the 2017 London Jazz festival. Dee Dee was so impressed she remarked, “The world is safe because we have Camilla!”

As part of the EFG London Jazz festival Camilla performed at the Purcell room, which was described by Jazz Journal as “A truly memorable concert…Jazz superstars in the making” with the London Jazz Review speaking of “the mature and imaginative compositions combined with some sublime saxophone solos”.

Also as part of the EFG London Jazz festival, Camilla performed at King’s Place to a very appreciative audience, a show that was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

Camilla has been nominated for an Urban Music Award for Best Jazz artist in 2017 and 2018 and nominated for a Jazz FM award for Best Instrumentalist 2019. She has performed in the Jazz Re:freshed showcase for SXSW, which was filmed at Abbey Road studios in 2021, as well as the Jazzahead showcase in 2021 and reached the final in the DC Jazz Prix in 2021.

Most recently, she was awarded the PRS Foundation Momentum Award which funded the completion of her third studio album, ‘Ibio Ibio’, to be released in September 2022 on Ever Records/!K7 Music”.

Before coming to some more recent press, I want to highlight an interview form Reverb. They spoke with the Jazz sensation in 2021. It seems like music – and particularly Jazz – was part of Camilla George’s household from a very young age. Her family background and growing up is fascinating and rich with vivid sounds, scents and scenes:

“Every Saturday when Camilla George was growing up, she’d sit with her dad and listen to his record collection. "That was jazz time," she says. "He’d be like, ‘This is Cannonball, I went to see him, this is what he played and we’re going to listen to it now. This is Sonny Stitt, I prefer him on alto,’ – I don’t have a preference, I think he’s sick on both, but my dad preferred him on alto. We listened to Jackie McLean, it was such an education."

After her father passed away, George inherited his vinyl collection, which she keeps in pride of place in his original leather record case in her London apartment. Born in Nigeria, George moved to London as an infant and was obsessed with the saxophone from a young age, waiting impatiently for the chance to get her hands on one.

She’s a protégé of the Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz education programme run by Gary Crosby, completed her Masters at Trinity College of Music, has performed with Jazz Jamaica, Courtney Pine’s Venus Warriors, and toured with Pee Wee Ellis. As part of the BBC’s Jazz 625 television special, she shared the stage with Joshua Redman and Jean Toussaint.

"It was fantastic to be involved in that," she says, "because that was really like going back to the old days of how you learn, older players taking you under their wing, giving you advice. Joshua Redman gave me his email address after that, and we corresponded. I just thought, ‘My gosh, this is Joshua Redman!’ So cool."

What’s the inspiration behind Ibio-Ibio?

It’s basically an homage to where I was born and our tribe, the Ibibio people. It explores things, like our creation myth, that are important to the culture of the Ibibio people. I’ve loved doing the research for it, I’ve learned even more about my roots.

They have the gods Abassi and his wife Atai, it’s quite similar to the Bible in that they created a pair of humans in their own image. Those are stories that I was told when I was young.

How is this filtering into your music?

There are some things that are parallel, not similar, to The People Could Fly, with Afrobeat grooves—I’ve been looking into High Life beats. There’s this particular Gahu High Life beat, that’s Ghanaian, it’s got that vibe. There’s one tune that’s quite straight-ahead jazz, I’ve got some stuff that’s more on the hip-hop side.

I have been very lucky to be working with a Birmingham-based rapper called Lady Sanity. We toured together with Pee Wee Ellis, and then we did another thing with Carleen Anderson, and I think she’s amazing. She’s featured on two of the pieces. It’s going to be produced by a drummer who I also met on the Pee Wee Ellis tour, called Daru Jones, who’s done more of the hip-hop stuff.

There’s definitely a hip-hop element, an Afrobeat element, and a jazz vibe, so it’s a mish-mash of styles. But I believe in it, I think it’s going to be an exciting album.

You mentioned you’re a lifelong hip-hop fan, is this melding of styles part of what defines the new London jazz scene right now?

I do think there is a part of that which is true. When you talk about London jazz, our scene was created partly by the Warriors. Most of us came up through the Warriors. The Warriors were so appealing for people who come from different backgrounds. When they talk about the London scene having all of this stuff, it’s because of that—because we were in an environment where it was okay to show our African heritage or our Caribbean heritage, or wherever we happened to come from in the world.

That organisation fostered that and I think that’s why there is this melting pot of different influences in the London jazz scene because it’s all the different people that have come through this loving environment, the family that is Tomorrow’s Warriors. Those people on that scene, Nubya [Garcia], Femi [Koleoso], Shabaka [Hutchings], every single one of them came through the Warriors in some shape or form”.

It is quite a tough time for musicians everywhere. I think, as maybe the Jazz scene is smaller than a lot of other genres, the reality is different for musicians here. In November, The Guardian spoke with six Jazz musicians about making a living out of their passion. They chatted with Camilla George about her experiences as a Jazz artist living in London:

“In many ways, Camilla George exemplifies the diverse musical identity of the London jazz scene. She learned to play the saxophone as an 11-year-old, thanks to subsidised lessons at school, and went on to train in the grassroots jazz workshop Tomorrow’s Warriors, before playing in tutor Gary Crosby’s Jazz Jamaica group and creating improvised music inspired by her Nigerian heritage.

“Tomorrow’s Warriors created a safe space for kids from different backgrounds to learn together for free,” George says. “It brought together an unexpected mix of people, which has resulted in music that draws proudly on our own cultures. Not many people felt comfortable doing that before.”

Contemporaries on the London scene, such as Garcia and drummer Moses Boyd, have also been trained by Tomorrow’s Warriors and George can see the impact today. “When I was at music school at Trinity Laban, I was the only Black person and the only woman on my course,” she says. “Now, when I go to pick the strongest players for my band, often there are more women than men, and that’s testament to the fact that my contemporaries are showing kids that they can pick up an instrument and the Warriors are training them.”

Having just released her third album, the Afrobeat-inflected Ibio-Ibio, and with a forthcoming headline show during the London jazz festival, George’s star as a bandleader is beginning to ascend. “It feels as if there’s a real demand for this music now,” she says. “I was mobbed on my first gig back from Covid at Ronnie Scott’s, people were so excited. I’m really enjoying it, but I’m also finding it hard. We’ve had these two years where we got used to a different pace of life, so it is a bit of a culture shock to be back.”

With her calendar packed, George is looking forward to Christmas and the prospect of writing new material. “I’m going to retreat to my childhood bedroom,” she says. “All I’ll have is my keyboard and time to come up with something!”.

I am going to end with a recent interview from Jazzwise. Ibio-Ibio came out last September, but it is an album that should be played widely now. I worry that a lot of sensational Jazz is restricted to specialist radio stations and broader-minded ones like BBC Radio 6 Music. Such an incredible and long-lasting sound, Camilla George’s music warrants as wide an audience as is possible:

“Her 2022 return, Ibio-Ibio, continues her interest in strong narratives, in an album that celebrates her people, the Ibibio, who hail from the Awka Ibom state of coastal Nigeria (George was born in the town of Eket, before her father, between jobs as a tailor, was deported by the authorities, forcing the family to return to the UK).

But the biggest change, as George sees it, is more practical: discovering the joy (and increasingly, the pain) of international touring. After spending years on the UK circuit, her next goal was to break into Europe. She went even further: her first gig outside the UK was at Blue Note Beijing. “It’s like Pokémon, I wanted to get that one,” she says about the Tokyo branch of the Blue Note franchise, a dream gig vanquished by the pandemic.

As a return to an adjusted normal continues, George is articulate about the issues facing her peer group of working musicians. For starters, she has plans to perform in France in the near future, but hasn’t yet been able get her A1 forms returned from HMRC. With payment conditional on the forms being filled out, and a 20% tax slapped on those earnings, it makes the prospect of a handful of French gigs in the autumn – two dates at Paris’ Le Duc des Lombards in September – more fraught than fun. “There are certain artists I was touring Europe with who aren’t able to call me now, because it’s too much paperwork, and it’s too expensive to have me on the gig,” she adds. “That’s a real shame, because, if you lose a gig for playing reasons? Okay, fair enough, you accept that. But to lose it because of Brexit is quite annoying.”

She sees the problems past her own loss of income, though. George, who describes the UK “notoriously hard” for touring musicians, confirms it’s an even less appealing prospect post-Brexit. “Prominent musicians who were touring just won’t do a London gig. Or if they do, it’s just one, because there’s no money in it. And that’s such a shame, that we’re not getting to see the level of musicianship that [mainland] Europe sees.” Touring Europe brings George into contact with some of her favourite musicians – China Moses, Theo Croker, and even her idol Kenny Garrett – but there are repercussions back home for those not regularly travelling to the continent. “It’s creating a division in terms of access, and being able to hear that standard of playing.”

There’s an irony to such divides in a jazz world which currently seems particularly closely knit, thanks to the increasing presence of social media in the music making process. It’s a leveller for sure, bringing never-before imagined collaborations across continents, but its use is certainly skewed towards the younger generation. And, even as the youth-focused discourse around jazz in the UK slowly loses its energy – every description of the ‘UK jazz scene’ seems wrapped in obligatory scare quotes – George reveals the tensions that still exist between generations and groups.

What’s creating those tensions? George words her response carefully.

“I think when you scratch the surface, actually, it’s a racial thing. I think the people that are doing it don’t realise it. But all the musicians they’re ragging on are generally black. Usually, they’re black and female. Often, the criticisms they’re laying are because they don’t rate the Afrobeat thing that people are doing. But it’s very sad, because the music originated from Africa; it came from enslaved black Americans who were actually Africans. I don’t think [Afrobeat is] as far away from jazz as they think it is.”

Ibio-Ibio is a pleasant-sounding album that sees George bend more into a Roy Hargrove-esque soundworld than her previously bop-adjacent releases. Yet the subject matter behind the sounds is far from Hargrove’s mellifluous earfood. George draws heavily from traumatic stories – the more uncomfortable parts of her community’s history (many of which involve their complex relationship with the slave trade) punctuate the album, with the appearance of Birmingham rapper Sanity providing lyrical focus, just in case you forget track titles like ‘Journey Across The Sea’ or ‘The Long Juju Slave Route of Arochokwu’. How does George find so much hope through traumatic subjects?

“It’s an interesting one, because with my previous album, I remember one person saying ‘oh, it’s too happy’. But the point of the album is that you have to find hope in adversity, because if you don’t, you can’t learn anything, and we don’t grow”.

I have spent a lot of time with Pop artists and TikTok stars the past couple of months. I have not really broadened and looked at artists in other scenes and parts of the music globe. I am glad to have spent time investigating the magnificent music of Camilla George. She is one of the leader lights and players in the London Jazz scene. Go and check out her music and follow George on social media. Someone who has evolved as a composer and musician through the years, this is an exciting time for Camilla George. Do yourself a favour and lose yourself…

IN her world.

___________

Follow Camilla George

Official:

https://www.camillageorge.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/cammyg1/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/camilla_sax

Bandcamp:

https://camillageorge.bandcamp.com/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6gIw9VQPs8SI1XRYhSwYWH?si=7bkuiv9_Q0WlL7CoMsPYzA

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/camillageorgeband/

FEATURE: No Need to Prove Yourself: Radiohead’s Incredible Pablo Honey at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

No Need to Prove Yourself

Radiohead’s Incredible Pablo Honey at Thirty

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ALTHOUGH few…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Bob Berg/Getty Images

would rank it among their favourite Radiohead albums, the band’s debut, Pablo Honey, is a very important one. It introduced the soon-to-be-legendary band to the world. Even if the likes of Creep (the debut single) outweigh and surpass most of the songs on the album, I think Pablo Honey remains underrated. Gaining mostly three-star reviews, most people highlight strengths but point out that there are weaker tracks – and the fact Radiohead would take a massive leap very soon with their 1995 follow-up, The Bends. Released in the U.K. on 22nd February, 1993, I wanted to mark its upcoming thirtieth anniversary. Released in the U.S. on 20th April, Pablo Honey was produced by Sean Slade, Paul Q. Kolderie and Radiohead's co-manager Chris Hufford. It is an album with an interesting background. Rolling Stone compiled a feature in 2018 that listed ten things that you might not know about Pablo Honey. Radiohead formed whilst they were studying at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire. They signed a record deal with EMI in 1991. A year later, they released their Drill EP. Even if that E.P. did not get a lot of attention, things would change soon enough for the band. Despite the fact Radiohead did not have much recording experience, Pablo Honey was recorded in three weeks at Chipping Norton Recording Studios in Oxfordshire. After Creep received big airplay and gained popularity, other singles like Stop Whispering soon became better known. Determined to get their music heard and stand out, they embarked on seriously hefty promotion across the U.S., supporting PJ Harvey, and Belly in the process.

Pablo Honey reached twenty-two on the U.K. album chart, and it was met with some positivity here and in the U.S. I think one of the things a lot of reviewers noted is that it was not as distinct as the material the band would release for The Bends. Maybe a little underdeveloped or light on standouts, Pablo Honey has gained more love and kindness in retrospective examinations. It seems unlikely the band themselves will mark Pablo Honey’s thirtieth, as they have always felt it is not up there with their best work. Regardless, it is an important album in the history of music. Radiohead would come on leaps and bounds from The Bends onwards. One of the most progressive and influential bands of their generation, you can hear and feel promise and that ambition on their 1993 debut. I think the album is a lot stronger than it gets credit for. At a time when Britpop was exploding and there was this change in the music scene, maybe Radiohead stood outside of that. They seemed more influenced by U.S. bands such as Nirvana. Their influence set would change soon after, and the songwriting and performances strengthened and expanded on The Bends.

Although Radiohead are not massive fans of their debut album, Pablo Honey definitely caught the attention of the press. As a fairly unknown quantity, Rolling Stone found some glimmers that were well worth watching out for:

“FLASHING A SONG called “Creep” as a musical ID takes cheek, but then, everything about these Brits is unabashed. On their debut, the swagger affected by every arch-Anglo since the Kinks is already in full effect. Three guitars (and bass) and a singer whose narcissistic angst rivals Morrissey’s (“I will not control myself!” Thom Yorke screams on “Vegetable,” and on “Prove Yourself” he mourns, “I’m better off dead”), these five Oxford lads come on extreme. What elevates them to fab charm is not only the feedback and strumming fury of their guitarwork — and the dynamism of their whisper-to-a-scream song structures — which recall the Who by way of the early Jam, but the way their solid melodies and sing-along choruses resonate pop appeal.

On “Blow Out” they savage a bossa-nova intro with sheer noise; “Thinking About You” is bitter folk with acoustic guitars soundly pummeled; and the rest of “Pablo Honey” is equally surprising. If they don’t implode from attitude overload, Radiohead warrant watching”.

I think about some great British bands who released debuts in the 1990s. Think about Blur and the fact 1991’s Leisure was met with mixed reception. They definitely got more ambitious and improved quickly enough. The debut album is difficult, and it takes a while for bands to establish their identities and get into the groove. Too often ignored or cast aside when it comes to Radiohead’s history and great work, Pablo Honey definitely should be celebrated! It is thirty on 22nd February, and it will be a day when fans can remember where they were when they heard the album for the first time. In their 2021 feature, FAR OUT revisited a lost treasure:

“This brings us to our story today, the strange, debut studio outing by Radiohead — 1993’s Pablo Honey. Just like its successor, it often gets overlooked by fans and critics alike, as there are almost no flecks of the sonic majesty that the band would go on to cultivate throughout their career. However, this is our point exactly. Every artist has to start somewhere. The Beatles didn’t start their career with Sgt. Pepper‘s or Pink Floyd with The Dark Side of the Moon, instead, it was a steady build-up to a period of brilliance (regardless of what Beatles fans may tell you).

Whilst Pablo Honey is certainly dated in retrospect, and it features Radiohead’s most contentious song for both fans and the band as the lead single, it also has moments of sheer brilliance and is a reflection of Radiohead at their rawest, like an ore needing to be refined. For the Hegelian types out there, in the timeline of Radiohead’s existence, it is also important.

Although few and far between, there exist within it sonic indicators of the direction in which the band were travelling and the audio sensibilities that they intended to follow. As if by a smokescreen provided by ‘Creep’, and although unaware of it at the time, the band were able to brilliantly carve out their next massive step towards greatness, The Bends.

Pablo Honey opener ‘You’ is an atmospheric piece of guitar work that was the first example of guitarist Jonny Greenwood‘s virtuosity and penchant for a meaty riff. The song is a meandering piece of music that is highly underrated within the group’s extensive back catalogue. Furthermore, about halfway through when frontman Thom Yorke wails “My”, drenched in melisma, we are provided with the first indication of his incredible vocal range.

‘How Do You?’ is two minutes of ’90s guitar music, there’s not much else to be said about it, apart from the fact that it also contains some of Greenwood’s earworm guitar work. The next track, ‘Stop Whispering’ can be taken as a rudimentary indicator of the ’90s rock balladry that the band would perfect on The Bends with the likes of ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ and ‘High and Dry’. A melodic piece, it could quite easily have fit on the soundtrack for any coming of age movie of the era. ‘Thinking About You’ is more of the same, a take on R.E.M.’s style that is perhaps one of the album’s more forgettable moments.

Then halfway through the album, track six, we get the second single and one of its standouts, ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’. Whilst unbelievably dated, it is a ’90s alt-rock classic, with one of the most catchy choruses Radiohead have ever penned. The chorus line: “I want to be in a band when I get to heaven” couldn’t be more ’90s if it tried. Additionally, Greenwood and Ed O’Brien brilliantly dovetail on their six-strings, providing another taste of what was in store in the not too distant future.

A mixed bag, Pablo Honey is always worth a revisit, only if just for the highlights. If you want to hear the band at their rawest, this is the album for you. Often overlooked, the highlights are brilliant when taken in the context of the era. It is not a groundbreaking album by any stretch of the imagination, but actually, when you compare it to the work of a lot of the guitar bands today, it contains way more forward-thinking ideas and compositional techniques than we get from the majority of the guitar bands who make it on to the main stage at the likes of the Reading and Leeds Festivals”.

I am excited that we will get to mark thirty years of Radiohead’s debut album, Pablo Honey. Containing some incredible songs, it was a definite steppingstone. They put out the My Iron Lung E.P. in 1994. In such a short time, they released something that was closer to the peaks many associate them with. Perhaps a little inexperience means Pablo Honey will always have to fight for attention, but it has no need to prove itself. It is a fine and historically important album. The start of one of music’s greatest careers. As there are whispers that Radiohead are getting back into the studio to record new material, I hope that they take a moment to look back thirty years to…

THE brilliant Pablo Honey.

FEATURE: Put Yourself in Her Shoes: Treating Women in Music with More Respect

FEATURE:

 

 

Put Yourself in Her Shoes

PHOTO CREDIT: Anthony Tran/Unsplash

Treating Women in Music with More Respect

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THIS is not related to any particular event…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ben White/Unsplash

or bit of news, but I am thinking ahead to International Women’s Day. The theme for 2023 is DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality. International Women's Day 2023 will focus on how technology and education in the digital age can help the empowerment of women and girls across the world. That happens on 8th March. It is a very important date in the calendar. I have written about misogyny in music and how there needs to be a #MeToo-style movement. I shall come to that in a minute. The past couple of weeks have really struck me. I have read about some horrifying experiences women have gone through. Whether it is sexism, abuse or misogyny, it is something that is extremely toxic and troubling. There needs to be conversations in the music industry around this. It can take the form of abusive or sexual messages, sexism at festivals and lacking opportunities, or a general lack of respect. Prior to that, I want to widen things out and look at two stories that concern misogyny and abuse outside of music. Michelle Williams recently spoke with The Guardian in promotion of the new film, The Fablemans. The subject of #MeToo arose, as did equal pay:

“Yet in 2017, she had evolved sufficiently to effect real-world change by speaking out. Williams had learned that while she was reportedly paid $1,000 for her reshoot work on Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World (they had to hastily swap Kevin Spacey for Christopher Plummer), her co-star, Mark Wahlberg, received $1.5m. She blew the whistle on the discrepancy and said it had left her “paralysed in feelings of futility”. The case kickstarted Hollywood’s pay parity revolution.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello/Trunk Archive

On Fosse/Verdon, Williams made the same as her co-star, Sam Rockwell. Does it feel good or bad to have money now? For the first time in our conversation, she stalls. “It’s a hard question. It’s something I’d have to reckon with before I really know how to talk about it.”

She also edges around specifics on #MeToo. But when I say I’m surprised more people weren’t brought down, she has the look of someone who knows where the skeletons are buried. “Maybe there’s still hope for that.”

What she will say is that she sees the fruits of the movement all the time. “Boy, oh boy, do I ever!” she says when I ask if the young actors on The Fabelmans were more confident than she used to be. “I did not possess any grace or calm, nor did any of my contemporaries. I was raised in the 80s. Selfhood wasn’t put into young women. And now it is. I get to see it in my own daughter and I can’t take my eyes off her. It is a glorious miracle to behold that I never thought I would witness in my lifetime.”

When Williams talks about Matilda, rather than about being her mother, she speaks slightly differently. She speeds up. Concerns over exact expression are overtaken by enthusiasm. “I thought I would have to teach my daughter how to subvert herself and crawl underneath the system to keep herself safe. And, instead, the system has exploded and these young people act with compassion, integrity and righteousness.

“I have the chills talking about it. These girls aren’t prey. These girls are already victorious. I love to sit back and watch them in the world and know that it is safer and more inclined in their direction than it was for me”.

Hollywood had an awakening and reckoning with #MeToo, and there has been definite progress. Whilst there are still cases of misogyny and sexual assault on sets and in the industry, there does seem to have been development. On issues like equal pay, I still think there is a disparity between men and women. I am not sure why, but the idea that male actors are a bigger pull. Not to deviate too much but, also, I was shocked reading about Emily Atack’s experiences of sexual harassment and abuse online. A new documentary, Asking for It?, sees actress and comedian Atack discuss her experiences of receiving online sexual harassment. She also heard from women in all walks of life who shared their experiences too. It is a upsetting but essential documentary that should, let’s hope, lead to changes in terms of behaviour, attitude and the way social media sites monitor sexual graphic messages and photos. Atack spoke with The Times about how things escalated during lockdown:

“But then came the pandemic lockdown and a surge in the volume of explicit and extreme messaging flooding her DMs. “It made me feel ten times more isolated, vulnerable and alone. Because all of a sudden I was looking around me, thinking, ‘I’ve got no one to protect me here. I’ve got no one to laugh about it with, even.’ I got really down about it.”

The onslaught, she says, made her feel “lonely, disgusting, embarrassed, ashamed, violated. It feels like sexual assault — and I have been sexually assaulted, so I know what that feels like. I feel like I’m being sexually assaulted hundreds of times a day.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Wilson

But, she continues, “There were so many other things going on. People were dying. People were in care homes having to wave at loved ones through windows. I didn’t feel I could come out and say, ‘Can you stop sending me pictures of your dick?’ So I bottled it up.”

The campaign group End Violence Against Women reports that one in five women has experienced online harassment and abuse, while a June 2022 report by the Victims’ Commissioner reported that one in four women has experienced cyberflashing — being sent sexual images, aka dick pics, without consent.

Ask your girlfriend. Ask your sister. Ask — horrifyingly — your teenage daughter. Research by Professor Jessica Ringrose from University College London found that 76 per cent of girls aged 12-18 had been sent unsolicited nude images of boys or men. (And that study was carried out in 2020, before the pandemic intensified online harassment many times over.)

Ask a woman in her teens or twenties or thirties if a man has slid into her DMs and asked her to send him videos. Ask if she’s ever had an image sent to her phone via AirDrop by a stranger sitting nearby on the bus. Ask if she’s ever got chatting to a guy on a dating app, given him her number and suddenly been deluged with pictures of his penis — without even having gone on a date. The answer will almost certainly be yes.

PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Wilson

If you’re over 40, however, you might well be blithely unaware of the extent of the issue. Less because, as members of my fortysomething book club commented the other night when I did a straw poll on the subject, “Nobody wants to AirDrop their dick to a middle-aged woman,” and more, I believe, because our demographic — too old to be digital natives, or even confidently to know how to turn on their AirDrop facility — simply spends far less of their life online. Those female friends over 40 with prominent public and social media profiles — and who are therefore more digitally accessible — are, in fact, bombarded with images and abuse.

Even armed with evidence of how widespread the problem is, Atack admits she was still plagued by feelings of shame and self-blame. “Is it because I posed in a bikini? Is it because I get my cleavage out on Instagram and talk about my sex life on stage? Am I part of the problem?”

This is the starting point for Atack’s upcoming BBC documentary, Emily Atack: Asking for It?, an impressively honest and personal exploration of the harassment and abuse she is subjected to, how it has affected her — and other women who experience similar — and an attempt to understand what motivates the men behind it.

Today, sitting across a table from me, sipping coffee and cradling her teacup cavalier spaniel, Penny, in her lap, she admits to nervousness about how it will be received. Will the public understand the complicated conundrum she is attempting to unpick? Will they grasp the internalised misogyny that makes victims blame themselves?

“I think I will always slightly feel like it’s my fault,” admits Atack. “Always. I’m working on it as hard as I can. But when something is ingrained in you from such a young age, it’s hard to unravel all that”.

These are not isolated incidences outside of music. Whilst most men condemn the actions of the few, there is still this disturbing reality that women all around the world have to go through such horrifying, demeaning and vile days. Ones where they are attacked, threatened and harassed. I cannot tell you how many tweets I have seen that relate to artists receiving sexual messages, being the victim of harassment and sexual assault, misogyny or sexism. Whilst there was a sort of #MeToo movement in music at one point, I don’t think anything as concrete and visible as the one in Hollywood has taken place. Musicians like Catherine Anne Davies (The Anchoress) have been victim of harassing and abusive messages. She is not alone in this. In October, Phoebe Bridgers featured in Teen Vogue. Although women are now at the forefront of Rock and Pop, I still feel there is this struggle of recognition and equality. Women still not being given the same platform, respect and opportunities as their male counterparts:

“Bridgers is part of a legacy of artists — including Sinead O’Connor and Fiona Apple (who became a Bridgers collaborator) in the 1990s, the Chicks in the 2000s, and countless others into the 2010s and today — who joined the music industry, looked around at the world and those running it and thought, This isn’t good enough. Alongside Bridgers, those  speaking out for what they believe in, especially when it comes to abortion access, include Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, and Olivia Rodrigo.

Paramore’s Hayley Williams, another Bridgers collaborator, was one of the few women in rock permitted to succeed in the 2000s; she has since criticized their hit “Misery Business” for contributing to a “‘cool girl’ religion,” “feeding into a lie that I’d bought into, just like so many other teenagers — and many adults — before me.” Like Williams, Bridgers has taken up the mantle in a movement to provide emotionally complicated music that is detached from the misogyny the genre was built on, and to make space to talk about different types of pain. Bridgers’ vulnerability is a key feature of her music and lyrics, earning comparisons to her icon, Elliott Smith.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chloe Horseman

Having been let down by the musicians who came before, many of whom were white, male, and straight — and some of whom took advantage of their younger, female fanbase — she and her peers feel a sense of responsibility to create better industry conditions than the ones they endured. “I’ll bite the hand that feeds me,” Bridgers, Dacus, and Julien Baker harmonize on the 2018 boygenius EP.

Today, rock and alternative are dominated by women-led, genderqueer, and LGBTQ+ artists from a diversity of backgrounds, from Mitski and Pom Pom Squad to Snail Mail and Black Belt Eagle Scout. They represent stories and experiences previously disregarded and ignored in rock music, overtaking tales of men hurting women and blaming them for it.

“It's just sad that we've been forced to identify with white boys…. I think it shows you how desperate we've all been for any f**king representation,” Bridgers says. “I also think, at the heart of it, it's just wanting to be understood.”

The arrival of the #MeToo movement in fall 2017 — and its long horseshoe around to misogynistic backlash — coincided with Bridgers’ arrival in the spotlight. That September, her debut album Stranger in the Alps dropped. The album's best-known song, “Motion Sickness,” is about her relationship with musician Ryan Adams, an indie diss track concealed in a deceptively light, lilting groove. As Bridgers later told The New York Times, she met Adams when she was around 20 years old and Adams was around 40. “You were in a band when I was born,” she sings. (In a statement to the Times via a lawyer, Adams called their relationship “a brief, consensual fling.”).

PHOTO CREDIT: Chloe Horseman

The newspaper spoke to multiple women about Adams and his alleged “pattern of manipulative behavior in which [he] dangled career opportunities while simultaneously pursuing female artists for sex.” Bridgers claims that after she broke it off with Adams, he “became evasive about releasing the music they had recorded together and rescinded the offer to open his upcoming concerts,” according to the Times. (Through his lawyer, Adams denied the allegations in the Times report, calling the accusations “extremely serious and outlandish.” Adams also denied withholding her songs.)

Bridgers and I trade names back and forth of celebrities we’ve long heard murmurs about, then turn to the biggest #MeToo story of 2022: the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard case. Not long after the trial ended, Bridgers liked a tweet that supported Heard, who made accusations of abuse against Depp in a high-profile, polarizing trial. (Ultimately, a jury found that Heard was liable for three counts of defamation, and Depp liable for one of three counts in Heard’s countersuit.) Across the internet, people mocked Heard and her allegations of abuse against Depp, and many celebrities liked Depp’s post-trial “comeback” posts on Instagram.

“I think that there's been this falsehood — and I think queer people are included in this — of having to be the perfect victim, or the perfect survivor, or the perfect representation for your marginalized community," Bridgers says. "If Amber Heard exhibited any neurotic behavior, it was held against her. Then Johnny Depp, out of his mouth, admitted some of the most violent, crazy shit in court, and it's somehow like, people aren't surprised?”

The giddy public consumption of the trial was troubling, Bridgers continues. “That whole situation was so upsetting to me, that it was treated like a fandom war. Laughing at someone crying in court? It was disgusting.”

This is something Bridgers seems stuck on: What does accountability or justice actually look like in a society that continuously diminishes survivor narratives? “It can feel insular, like the rest of the world doesn't care about the same morals as us,” Bridgers says. She notes that, like Depp (who lost a libel case in the UK after the court found that a newspaper’s printed allegations that he was a “wife beater” were substantially true), many powerful men accused of abuse continue their lucrative careers.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chloe Horseman

“I mean, is [cancel culture] real? Who's lost their job politically? One huge offender is in jail for actual sex crimes, and then anything short of that is, maybe, they lose a couple friends or lose a couple jobs,” she says. “Then five years later, they're like, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’ And they come back, but they never apologize — they never go away.”

Bridgers is grateful for the solidarity she’s found with friends and others in the industry, as well as other survivors, but she won’t forget the cost. “It sucks that I trauma-bonded with a lot of my friends first,” Bridgers says. “We didn't get to come from a place of joy; we had to connect on something so dark.”

Like many of her fans, Bridgers came up at a moment of reckoning over who holds power in the music industry — and the culture at large — and how they get to wield it. That’s why Bridgers takes her celebrity so seriously. Yes, she’s a musician who’s pouring her heart out onstage as fans sing (or sob) along. But she’s concerned with making sure everybody is passing the mic — and that it doesn’t stop with her.

“I'm selling me,” she points out. “If I post a link to my friend's GoFundMe, maybe two people will donate to it. But if I'm like, ‘Hey, I will trade you this piece of myself for this’ — I do it all the time with songs…. It’s a lighthearted way to draw attention to something that's dire. As a musician, I have no power to draw anybody's attention to something in any other way”.

Sorry if it does seem like a random assortment of interviews and information, but I was affected by recent cases of women in the public eye who have been recipients of misogyny and sexual harassment. Emily Atack’s words and what she has gone through. I have been thinking about that, but also ahead to International Women’s Day. The fact that, even now, there is still so much work to do. Yes, the fact that so many incredible women have broken through and created incredible music that has inspired change and this need for recognition and evolution. Those who speak up when it comes to harassment and abuse. Those who fight against sexism at labels, festivals, at award shows, and every other corner of the industry. We are seeing small steps in terms of representation and parity, but there is a disparity and gulf still. I think women are leading music and deserve a lot more than they get. Every day, I read about an artist who has received aa disturbing or patronising email. Someone who has not been paid as much as a male artist for a similar gig. Festivals not balancing their line-ups. Women revealing upsetting messages they have received. Others who don’t feel seen or heard. I think it all comes down to respect. The fact is that women in music (and throughout society) have to have endure things that men do not. Whether that is them being overlooked or inundated with sexual messages, it has to change. The damage this does is devastating, and it means that the industry will suffer! Even though there is a wave of terrific new female artists, so many are leaving music or finding that they will struggle in so many different ways. I hope that there is change very soon. When it comes to women throughout music, they should be shown…

NOTHING but respect.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Great Songs of Love and Passion from 2022

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Rihanna/PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Polk/NBC via Getty Images 

Great Songs of Love and Passion from 2022

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I am doing a few …

 PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Gold/Unsplash

Valentine’s Day-themed playlists ahead of the big day on the 14th. The power of a romantic song remains strong to this day. Whether new examples can match the classics is yet to be seen, but I have put together songs from last year that are either romantic in nature or have a slightly steamier edge to them. A contemporary mix of Valentine’s Day-appropriate cuts, I hope there is something in the mix that takes your fancy. I know there will be a lot o celebration on Valentine’s Day, but there are many who do not mark it or, like me, are single. Regardless, I think that there were some great songs from last year where the feelings of the heart are definitely at the front. Whatever you are doing on 14th February, I hope that you…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jonathan Borba/Unsplash

HAVE a good day.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five: On the Promotional Trail

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside at Forty-Five

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in a London hotel room in October 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Emberton

On the Promotional Trail

_________

AS 17th February marks…

the forty-fifth anniversary of Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside, I am dedicating quite a few features to the album. It is my favourite of all-time, so it has that very special place in my heart. As I have said many times before, 1978 was a manic year for Bush. She released Wuthering Heights, her debut single, on 20th January. There was pretty much no let-up when it came to the work Bush put in to promote her first album. I can understand how excited she was to release a debut album, though she must have been exhausted come Christmas! That relief at being home with the family to rest and reflect on 1978. Even so, Bush managed to achieve so much that year. Not only did she release a debut album that was a huge chart success, gained a lot of positive reviews and put her firmly on the map. She performed live around the world in promotion of the album (some T.V. performances for the most part), and there was a lot of mystery around who Bush really was. From the start, Kate Bush got labelled as someone who was quite witch-like and strange. Too many people got caught up with Wuthering Heights and assuming that was who Kate Bush was. I don’t think too many understood her music or really got to know the real her. Even though Bush had these different musical personas and voices, a lot of interviews with her were quite samey and predictable. I might have covered these before but, as I am very interested in the vast promotional trail of 1978, I want to bring in a few interview from the year.

Going from country to country to talk about The Kick Inside, the magnificent Kate Bush hardly let her foot off of the gas! There are some interesting interviews that are worth sourcing. First, in March, Bush was featured in Sounds. Donna McAllister spoke with an artist who was taking people by surprise. With Wuthering Heights delivering this debut single smash, it was an exciting time to know more about a hugely talented artist:

“SOULFUL, SENSITIVE, salubrious. So why all the fuss about Kate Bush's age? Is it the fact that you don't usually get such cohesive intelligence from 19 year old females? Is it that 'child' prodigies are out of our mode? Or is it simply the fact that the journalists are getting older? It wasn't that long ago that the charts were brimmed from 1 to 10 with teen-aged stars. It may seem that only yesterday she was your average unknown person, but in fact, Kate has been developing her unique talents on rinky-dink second hand pianos since she was the ripe old age of 14. Recently she moved into a three storey flat in Lewisham, which is owned by her general practioner daddy-o, and whose other two storeys are occupied by her two older brothers.

The story is not at all as overnight as it seems to be, it was in fact two years ago that Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour bopped around to Kates' flat with a Revox -- goal in mind to get some of Kates tunes published. She wasn't, at the time, considered a singer but Gilmour, who is genuinely interested in giving undiscovered talent a shot-in-the-arm (with his Unicorn organization) felt that the bubbling under songs should have the opportunity to be heard. They recorded about 15 songs per tape, and took them around to various record companies. The unanimous opinion, then, was 'non-commerical', and after all . . . it's not creative unless it sells, 'eh?

How Kate and Gilmour hooked up is rather a vague 'girlfriends'- boyfriends'- girlfriends friend' sort of rigamaroll, but the fact is that he never did lose interest in her er . . . talents, and decided that the only way to reach a record company's goldlined pocket was to produce finished product. Which is exactly what they did. Gilmour put up the money, and Kate went into Air studios complete with a band, and laid down the three tracks she and Dave both felt were best. This is the tape which eventually landed Kate her contract with EMI Records.

Despite the fact that she has been already wrongly built (no pun intended) in the media to be a mere child, she is surprisingly aware of what is going on around her, and is accepting the entire shindig with a pleased air of disbelief.

"They keep telling me the chart numbers, and I just kind of say 'Wow' (she sweeps her arms) . . . it's not really like it's happening. I've always been on the outside, watching albums I like go up the charts, and feeling pleased that they are doing well, but it's hard to relate to the fact that it's now happening to me..."

'WUTHERING Heights', Kate's self-penned song, inspired by the book of the same title, is literally catapaulting up the UK charts, and looks as though it will be one of those classic world-wide smasheroonies, though it has yet to be released in most other countries. She recently took her first air-bourne flight to Germany for a television appearance, as the single, apparently, has been chosen as whatever the German equivalent of 'pick-of-the-week' might be.

"It was mind blowing," she said euphorically, in reference to flying, "I really want to do more of that . . ." Wonder how she'll feel about in in two years time.

She writes songs about love, people, relationships and life . . . sincerely and emotionally, but without prostituting her talents by whining about broken hearts.

"If you're writing a song, assuming people are going to listen, then you have a responsibility to those people. It's important to give them a positive message, something that can advise or help is far more effective than having a wank and being self-pitiful. That's really negative. My friends and brothers have been really helpful to me, providing me with stimulating conversation and ideas I can really sink my teeth into."

For as long as she can remember she has been toying around with the piano, much, I reckoned, to her parent's chargrin. Can you imagine living with a nine-year-old who insisted on battering away on said instrument, wailing away at the top of her lungs in accompaniment?

"Well, they weren't very encouraging in the beginning, they thought it was a lot of noise. When I first started, my voice was terrible, but the voice is an instrument to a singer, and the only way to improve it is to practice. I have had no formal vocal training, though there was a guy that I used to see for half-an-hour once a week, and he would advise me on things like breathing properly, which is very important to voice control. He'd say things like 'Does that hurt? Well, then sing more from here (motions to diaphram) than from your throat.' I don't like the idea of 'formal' training, it has far too many rules and conventions that are later hard to break out of . . ."

IT IS QUITE obvious from the cover of 'The Kick Inside', her debut album, that Ms. Bush is Orientally influenced, but apparently it was not meant to take on such an oriental feel.

"I think it went a bit over the top, actually. We had the kite, and as there is a song on the album by that name, and as the kite is traditionally oriental, we painted the dragon on. But I think the lettering was just a bit too much. No matter. On the whole I was surprised at the amount of control I actually had with the album production. Though I didn't choose the musicians," (Andrew Powell, producer and arranger did). "I thought they were terrific.

"I was lucky to be able to express myself as much as I did, especially with this being a debut album. Andrew was really into working together, rather than pushing everyone around. I basically chose which tracks went on, put harmonies where I wanted them . . . I was there throughout the entire mix. I feel that's very important. Ideally, I would like to learn enough of the technical side of things to be able to produce my own stuff eventually."

Kate has a habit of gesturing constantly with her hands, and often expressing herself with unspellable sounds and grimaces. Though this make tape transcriptions difficult, it does accentuate something which is very much a part of her, 'movement expression'. She has studied under the inimitable Lindsay Kemp, mime artiste, an experience shared with Kate's favourite musician, David Bowie.

"I admire actresses and actors terribly and think it's an amazing craft. But singing and performing your songs should be the same thing. At this point I would rather develop my music and expressing it physically, as opposed to having a script. I think I'm much better off as a wailer. . ."

She is, indeed a beautiful woman. Carved ivory, with nary a nick. So obviously there is no way she can avoid becoming the target for sexist minds. Although she does not advocate this reaction, she's not flustered by it. After all, it is a compliment.

"As long as it does not interfere with my progress as a singer/songwriter, it doesn't matter. I just wish people would think of that first, I would be foolish to think that people don't look. I suppose in some ways it helps to get more people to listen . . .”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in a London hotel room in October 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Emberton

I want to take it to October 1978. Bush sat down with Tim Lott of Record Mirror. Right at the top of the article, it is highlighted how human and grounded Bush is. Rather than being a prima donna and someone who is all about stardom, Bush is a proper musician who is here for the music – rather than making money and seeking fame. It is refreshing how grounded Kate Bush has been. Since the start, she has differed and distinguished herself from so many other artists:

“The rock and roll business usually brings up its fair share of prima donnas, ready to grab what they can and cast off their friends and roots. The hit singles and fame happened very quickly for KATE BUSH but she remains a human being.

Enough of her flesh, her bones, her erogenous zones. Physical obsession has become redundant. Kate Bush is, as she never tires of emphasising, a member of the human race, not a musical hybrid of the girlie mag fantasy woman. She's clinging onto that humanity with obsessional determination despite her circumstances sliding further and further away from that "normality" she holds desperately and dearly.

Her abnormality has never been more apparent than in this setting: a L100 at night, two floor leather-and-flowers suite at the Montcalm Hotel, Marble Arch.

She has just been interviewed by "Ritz" and "Vogue". Attended by two press officers, she is, despite her protestations, a star, a true star, by virtue of her immense success, her pink skin and her Page 3 curves.

A number one single (an international hit) a number one album and immense publicity: Kate Bush is a phenomenon. The fate that befalls such animals - arrogance, self-indulgence, mania - has yet to manifest its symptoms, partially because this particular phenomenon is dedicated to the preservation of her personal reality.

Nervous

"I'm not really aware of being subjected to any starmaking machine."

She tap her fingers on the chrome and glass table in the only nervous gesture she possesses.

"I know that might sound odd, but I've really no idea about it. The record company thought this hotel would be practical. I thought it would be nice. It's quite a trip for me to be here.

"I didn't walk in here and say 'where are the flowers? Where is my champagne?'

"I hope I haven't become a prima donna yet. I really mean that. I really, really resent that a lot.

"It's nice if you're on the road that you should have somewhere nice to sleep. But I'm not into the 'Oh, Dahling!' bit, and everybody having a Rolls Royce."

It sounds almost defensive, but one subject that Bush is totally convincing about is how critical she considers her grasp on her own situation.

She has reached a point already of being such a valuable property to EMI Records that she is at the point of being able to control her immediate destiny.

The interviews she does are her own choice - "I want to get into as many areas as I can. So I did the fashion magazines and "Vegetarian" and "The Sun". I'm testing the water.

She says that she is, quote, into people. People, of course, reciprocate, and therein lies the danger. A surfeit of attention killed Janis Joplin and, more lately, put Ply Styrene into a mental home.

"I have some person principles I stick by, though they are pretty free. They don't just apply to the press. They are my way of living.

"I have tried to avoid an 'image'. If you have an image you intend to maintain, it's going to be very difficult, because you're going to get holes in your image. I may be that animal 'Kate Bush' a bit when I'm offstage, but mostly, I'm me."

Kate spends most of her time with a smile on her face that look straight at you, but she looks away and almost shutters for a moment.

"The things I don't like doing is... is... going to these sort of parties that you hear about. I don't go to parties. I find that sort of thing very unhealthy. In fact I find them disgusting."

She pronounces the word 'parties' like you or I might pronounce some vile disease or weird sin.

"It's not me. I'm basically a quiet person. When I get the time, I like to go home. I clean up the flat - which is a mess, because I'm never there. And I get some friends around that maybe I haven't seen for a long time.

"It's not a question of insulating myself. This is something that is extremely important to me - I'm very much a human being, and I don't want to lose that.

"You don't have to believe all the sycophants. I am aware that in my position I am both vulnerable and very powerful. People are always trying to grab a piece of your pie. But it can only be down to you to get yourself out of... er... a vulnerability situation."

This tiny vision is both unusual and predictable; the first because she is so damn scientific, the second because she is so blatantly optimistic.

She takes a relentlessly practical approach to her career - "I have to look at it in a realistic way" - and admits that she trusts no-one at all. On the other hand she believes like many before her, that she can have her cake and eat it, that she can be a star and not a star, that she can somehow escape the pre-requisite of her job - to give, and give, and still give, at the expense of, at the very least, a part of her personality.

"People might call me it, but I'm not a star," she says, and I think she almost believes it. "I'm just a person who writes songs that, at the moment, people happen to like.

"They might not like anything on the next album: in which case I'll still be the same."

Except that she'll be a failed star. Kate has yet to reach the point of acceptance that things will never be the same. Her family, her friends will inevitably take second place and some will disappear. The blue-print is there, and inescapable.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and Kate has more strength of mind than I dare hope. Maybe. She is certainly convinced, and that's half the battle.

"You don't have to make yourself an island. In your head, you know what you are”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot the U.S. cover of The Kick Inside/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

There is one more interview I want to get to. The Music Journal’s Robert Henschen interviewed Bush in December. A U.S. publication, maybe the audience was not as large or aware of Bush as in other countries. Even though The Kick Inside was not a success in America, it is wonderful that she was being discussed there! Concluding an itinerant and hectic year, I wonder how she feels about that time now:

“Released in the U.S. several months ago, Kate's album The Kick In-side has not achieved overwhelming success in the States as of yet, but that may soon change. The album has been reissued with a new album cover, and impressive AOR radio support has been building for Kate's remarkable music. Almost every cut on the debut record is equal to, or even better than, Wuthering Heights . There's an impish quality to Kate's singing on the quasi-reggae Room For the Life, she almost sounds like a munchkin on Oh To Be in Love, her voice soaring above the wicked witch's guardsman...And she reveals more dramatic profiles on the near-jazz Saxophone Song or the serious, moving Man With the Child in His Eyes .

This latter piece, about the relationship developed between a young girl and an older man, is a showcase for the singer's subtle and sensitive imagery. "She sees this man as an all-consuming figure," explains Kate. "He's wise, yet he retains a certain innocent quality. The song tells how his eyes give away his 'inner light'. He's a very real character to the girl, but nobody else knows whether he really exists."

Appearances on European television programs like Top of the Pops, Saturday Night at the Mill and Tonight helped launch Bush, still new to performing, into a sudden spotlight...and more than a little controversy. Her act is a sensual combination of dance and dramatic vocal presentations, her body not exactly hidden in a flesh-colored body stocking, and some viewers apparently found Kate to be erotically shocking or in bad taste. Even Kate cringes at the thought of those first, unpracticed attempts at visual communication. She has since learned to handle live performing more effectively, touring England to widespread acclaim. <This is not a reference to her Tour of Life, but to earlier promotional tours abroad.> Ms. Bush is something stunningly different to see...as well as hear.

With or without the sensationalism surrounding her good looks and offbeat performing style, Kate writes music of incredible depth. Just as her dawning public image comes up displaying the physical woman, so do her amazing lyrics bespeak 100% twentieth-century female. Seldom, if ever, has the feminine standpoint been more boldly and beautifully stated, and songs like Room For the Life, Strange Phenomena or Feel It penetrate directly to new depths of corporeal and spiritual realization.

Some of the poetry herein is unexpurgated and erotic; other portions take an inanimate pose to evoke new feelings from the listener.

For instance, Kate creates a flying feeling for Kite, a song that exhibits her songwriting knack for approaching a subject in some refreshingly original way: "In the song the character starts to feel that he is rooted to the ground, but there is a force pulling him up to the sky. A voice calls out, 'Come up and be a kite,' and he is drawn up to the sky and takes the form and texture of a kite. Suddenly he's flying 'like a feather on the wind,' and for a while he enjoys it, but the longing for home and the security of the ground overtake these feelings." Just as Kate becomes Cathy Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights she assumes the role of a young sister in The Kick Inside (inspired by the traditional folk song Lucy Wan ) who, after a tragically incestuous relationship with her own brother, leaves this incredibly sad and hopeful farewell note. Intriguing song-poem ideas.

How did Kate Bush learn to write brilliant songs of such unnerving emotionalism and intelligence at such an early age? "I just grew up with music all around me. When I was about eleven I just started poking around at the piano and started making up little songs. I never played Beatle songs or anything like that. I was always just exploring the instrument. Then, when I was fourteen, I started taking it seriously and I began to treat the words to the songs as poetry. I'd always been keen on poetry at school and it was lovely to put the poems together with the music.

"I have two older brothers and they were very keen on musical instruments. One day, along comes this friend of my brother's <Ricky Hopper>. He worked in the record business himself, and thought he might be able to make contacts. Well, he knew Pink Floyd from Cambridge, and he asked Dave Gilmour down to hear me. Since then, I've been singing, playing and writing until we made the album." Originally the album was to be released in late 1977, but it kept getting delayed, and finally appeared on Harvest in early '78. Now The Kick Inside has come out a second time on EMI-America, distributed by Capitol, and Kate Bush is finally available throughout North America.

Shortly after her phenomenal success with Wuthering Heights, Kate celebrated her financial windfall by picking up a $13,000 Steinway baby grand. "I feel as though I've built up a real relationship with the piano. It's almost like a person. If I haven't got a particular idea I just sit down and play chords, and then the chords almost dictate what the song should be about because they have their own moods." Kate may be working on new songs for another album, but she seems content to let her career evolve without outside interference or commercial pressures: "I'm really not sure how I'm going to develop from now...what direction my music will take. I just want to carry on exploring”.

I will leave it there. I am always excited to re-read Kate Bush interviews, and 1978 has a fair few of them. In terms of the places she visited and the promotion undertaken, few artists had such a busy start to their careers! Testament to her passion and stamina, Bush was always professional and interesting in interviews. A truly magical debut album, The Kick Inside certainly garnered world-wide interest. People wanted to know more about Kate Bush. Nobody like her had come into music. No wonder there were some perplexed, awed and dumbstruck interviewers! There are many other great 1978 interviews. I have selected a few of my favourite to mark the upcoming forty-fifth anniversary…

OF the spectacular The Kick Inside.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Samara Joy

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 PHOTO CREDIT: Meredith Truax

Samara Joy

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AS she won the GRAMMY…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Meredith Truax

for Best New Artist on Sunday, I could not ignore the truly phenomenal and wonderful Samara Joy (Samara McLendon). I have known about her music for a while but, as I have been pretty busy, I have not got around to featuring her yet. I am glad I get to spend time with an amazing musician. The Bronx-born twenty-three-year-old Jazz artist won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition in 2019, and she was named Best New Artist by Jazz Times for 2021. Samara Joy, her debut, album came out in 2021. She followed that with last year’s Linger Awhile. Samara Joy also won the Best Jazz Vocal Album GRAMMY for Linger Awhile. It is definitely one of the most remarkable and powerful albums of last year. The incredible and soul-shaking vocals are truly unforgettable! It is a shame that, like many Jazz artists, Samara Joy’s music has only been reviewed by Jazz publications. Maybe there are one or two more mainstream publications that have reviewed it, but Linger Awhile did not get a spread of reviews from outside of the Jazz community. I will come to one of the reviews at the end, as it is clear that Samara Joy double GRAMMY win will change things! Not only will it open more eyes to her brilliant music. I hope that it will mean more people explore Jazz. As a New Artist winner at the GRAMMYs, more and more people will explore her music.

I want to bring in a few interviews with Samara Joy. Even though she has not been singing Jazz for that long, she really has established herself as one of the most important and remarkable voices in the genre. It was a real achievement winning Best New Artist at the GRAMMYs. Nominated alongside Anitta, Domi & JD Beck, Latto, Måneskin, Molly Tuttle, Muni Long, Omar Apollo, Tobe Nwigwe, and Wet Leg, the competition weas diverse and fierce! I’ll start with an interview from W Magazine from January, who wrote about Samara Joy being nominated for GRAMMYs. I love how the news was broken to her:

“When the nominations were first announced, Joy says she was on an Amtrak train returning to New York from D.C. “My family and the label team texted me around 12:30 p.m.: ‘You got nominated.’ I totally forgot,” the musician recalls with a laugh. “It’s not like I wasn’t watching it on purpose—I just wasn’t thinking about it.” Despite her nonstop touring, recording, and releasing Linger Awhile in the same year, Joy evokes a calm kind of composure, which she attributes to her close-knit family.

“Making sure that I’m always talking to [my family] keeps me grounded—FaceTiming with them all the time and keeping them in front of me. Because with everything that’s happening, it is easy to lose track of that,” she says. “The days keep going by, and my time with them—in person, at least—is lost.”

Her bond with her relatives is far more than just familial, as her lineage closely aligns with her chosen career path. Joy’s paternal grandparents, Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, founded the Philadelphia gospel group The Savettes. And her father, Antonio McLendon, is a bassist and singer who toured with the late gospel singer Andraé Crouch, plus has worked with Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, and Donna Summer, among others (Joy’s last name is McLendon). She learned from her father that her grandmother started the mobile church ministry in Philadelphia. “They rented a van, and my grandparents, my dad, and his siblings would ride around, pick a corner, and just have church. My aunts and uncles would sing, and my grandmother or grandfather would preach.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Meredith Truax

Surprisingly, Joy didn’t start out singing right away. “My mom said I was very quiet when I was young—I only [ever] talked or was loud when I cried,” she recalls. Being surrounded by music, however, Joy soon realized the church, music, it was all a part of her. She decided it was time to sing, and began participating in choirs during middle school and musical theater in high school. During that time, Joy became a worship leader at her church for the next two years, which she says was crucial to her development as an artist and musician.

“All of a sudden to be put in the position of [having] to lead a song and lead a set of music—it was new to me,” she says. “People were coming up to me, like, ‘You sound good, but don’t blink when you’re up there; we can tell [that] you’re nervous.’ I was forced to get out of my comfort zone. It’s like, ‘You accepted this opportunity, and now you have to work at it. You have to develop this confidence and get away from the shyness.’”

While taking home a Grammy at the upcoming 65th ceremony would undoubtedly be a feather in her cap, for Joy, accolades are not the endgame. “This will be a long journey that, hopefully, lasts for a while,” she says. “Thinking about all this stuff now is overwhelming. I’m not going to get a big head about it because I’m aware of all the things I want to improve. And I always want to be like that. I want to celebrate the wins, but also think about what I can do to move forward, elevate, get better, learn, and just be a better artist and a better person. I’m not necessarily reaching for one mountaintop moment”.

NPR profiled the incredible Samara Joy earlier this month. An artist who, with Linger Awhile, has created one of the most soulfully beautiful and engrossing albums I have heard in years, she is primed for superstardom:

“Awards-season campaigning is more of an Oscars thing, but Joy's cheerful ubiquity, and the unforced glow of her ability, have conspired to make her perhaps the closest thing to a frontrunner in this year's best new artist race. Which is remarkable, given that Samara Joy sings jazz and songbook standards in a straight-ahead style that was last broadly popular in the 1950s and early '60s. Unlike late 20th-century platinum torchbearers Harry Connick Jr. and Diana Krall, she's finding mainstream success at a moment of extreme atomization in the music business, let alone pop culture at large. So her breakout moment comes with an inevitable burden of accountability for the art form.

"I feel it, and I understand it," Joy says about that weight on her shoulders, speaking recently from her apartment in Upper Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood. Name-checking some influences, starting with Betty Carter and Sarah Vaughan, she points out that those affinities come with a natural point of departure. "I couldn't do this without that foundation that they've laid," she says. "But I am 23, and I'm singing jazz in 2023, and I come from a different background than all of those artists. So I think that carrying on the tradition is progressing as you grow, and not being in a singular box."

So it's worth restating one of the more startling talking points around Samara Joy: She's only been singing jazz for the last five years. After dipping a toe into the tradition at Fordham High School for the Arts, she received a full baptism at Purchase College, whose Jazz Studies faculty includes noted players like trumpeter Jon Faddis and drummer Kenny Washington. "Everybody was really supportive, but I still had this feeling like, 'I don't know if I belong,' " Joy now recalls. "Because I didn't have this preconceived notion of what it's supposed to sound like. But as it turns out, that allowed me to be a sponge and just soak everything in."

Her father, Antonio McLendon, is a singer and bassist who toured for years with gospel star Andraé Crouch, extending the legacy of his parents — Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, who sang in the lauded Philadelphia group The Savettes. (A highlight of the Ardmore Music Hall show was a cameo by Elder Goldwire McLendon, who is 92.) While this was the tradition into which Samara was born, Antonio didn't balk at her musical pivot. "When she came into contact with jazz, she immediately developed a respect for it," he says. "I've watched her study for hours, puzzling over things: 'How does Ella Fitzgerald scat like that?' I would hear her in the middle of the night practicing horn lines, because she learned that's something Ella would do."

Considering Joy's familial foundation in gospel, soul and R&B, it's striking that her Grammy-nominated album, Linger Awhile, hews so faithfully to straight-ahead acoustic jazz. Even within those parameters, there's no cover of, say, a Lauryn Hill or Stevie Wonder song. This speaks to Joy's relationship with the jazz canon, which is still in the act of formation. But it also capitalizes on what you might call a market opportunity. Jazz hasn't been hurting for exceptional vocal talent lately, but all of the artists who broke through to a mainstream audience within the last dozen years — Gregory Porter, esperanza spalding, Cécile McLorin Salvant, José James, Jazzmeia Horn — have moved on from a traditional mode, delving into other forms and approaches. Joy has stepped all the way in to fill the void.

Joy could go that route if she so chooses, just as she's begun to alter the public dimensions of her style. This week, as part of a best new artist tie-in with Spotify, she released a luxuriously intimate cover of Adele's blockbuster ballad "Someone Like You" — backed only by Shedrick Mitchell on organ, just as she'd been at the outset of "O Holy Night" in Ardmore. Joy's performance on the track is a study in gradual build and unguarded emotional connection, and it's a testament to her supreme self-confidence that she had the nerve to tackle the song.

She's scheduled to perform at the Grammy Premiere Ceremony on Sunday, and what happens beyond that is a matter of conjecture. For the whole spectrum of her fan base, which is probably about to get bigger and broader, this feels like a pivotal moment. Joy sees it, purely and simply, as a blessing. "The goal is to be as true to myself as I can be," she says, "while continuing to grow and stretch the boundaries of what I think I can do”.

Before getting to a review for Linger Awhile, I want to finish with an interview from Forbes. It is a fascinating and deep read. Here, Sage Bava (she is a nomadic artist with unique music that falls into the R&B and dark Folk categories) – talks with Samara Joy about her start and songs that influenced her:

“Sage Bava: I can't believe that you said you only started singing jazz when you were 18. I saw that in an NPR interview. And I know that you were probably singing since you were born with all of these different genres. What was that like to find jazz at 18?

Joy: Towards the end of high school, I was a part of a jazz band. It was an elective more than it was a part of the curriculum and everything. The teacher over the band program asked me if I wanted to sing a couple of songs for the jazz band. So I agreed. I was like, "I don't really know anything about this, but I love to sing." Like you said, I've been surrounded by singers and musicians all my life through my family and through their influences. But it was time to go to college, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I wasn't sure if music would have been a stable choice for me to pursue. And I love gospel, I love R&B, I love soul, maybe I could see myself in those genres. But still I hadn't found something that I felt like I could do, where I could tell my story in a unique way. We all have our own voices, and so I can't copy anybody or imitate anybody as much as I would like. So I auditioned. I was in this program, and we were required to apply at the end of our high school career for six state schools. SUNY Purchase was one of the schools that I chose, and I auditioned, I saw they had a wonderful jazz voice program, I knew two jazz songs and I used that one to audition and get in. And the head of the Conservatory at the time, his name is Pete Malinverni, he was really kind to me during the audition and the whole process. He emailed me later on saying, "Thank you so much for your audition, we would love for you to be a part of this program." And I was like, "I don't know. The next four years determine the rest of my life, and I have to make the right choice, or else everything's doomed from here." At least that's the way that it felt. It turned out to be the best decision for me. So that's how it happened.

Baltin: Was there that one song early on for you where you realized that it had relevance and that you could make it speak to you in 2021, 2020?

Joy: That's a good question. One of the songs from that assignment that we ended up choosing was Nancy Wilson, singing "Save Your Love For Me," with Cannonball Adderley. And I remember listening to her and of course it's a beautiful song on its own. But when you hear the original recording versus hers, which are years apart, you're like, "Yeah, it really depends on who the interpreter is. It brings the song off paper and brings it to life." And so that's why it's fun with jazz. Of course we sing the melody, but then the second or third chorus of us singing it, we experiment with it and we add changes or we change the phrasing up. So it's not exactly as written. Because if we sing it exactly as written, there's nothing more being done about it to make it contemporary at all. So you take the good foundation of a song, but then you put it in the hands of a Nancy Wilson or Sarah Vaughan and it comes to life. It's the same song, but they bring it to life in different ways and add their own emotional fuel to connect with the audience and make it real.

Bava: I'd love to know what artists right now, in the contemporary space, that you love, whether they be singer/songwriters or in jazz.

Joy: Well, I definitely have a lot of love for Cécile McLorin Salvant and Jazzmeia Horn, who I both have the pleasure of knowing personally or at least getting to know personally. But I admire both of their approaches to jazz and approaches to expressing themselves through their own music, through standards, but also through their original compositions and their arrangements. They're the whole package as far as artists go. I admire their artistry, their musicianship, their performance style, the way that they are, the way that they present themselves, everything”.

I will end with a review for the stunning Linger Awhile. I think that it is one of the best albums from last year. It is clear that, after a double GRAMMY win, Samara Joy is going to be a major festival name. Her music will be picked up by people who may not have heard it until now. Jazz Wise were full of praise for Samara Joy’s spectacular second studio album:

“Released last year on Whirlwind, Samara Joy McLendon's debut album announced the arrival of a remarkable new talent, a vocalist who possessed timing, timbral richness and emotional power in abundance.

On this follow-up album, released on the iconic Verve label, the winner of the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition pays homage to one of her most important touchstones on opener ‘Can’t Get Out Of This Mood’, which Vaughan recorded in 1950 with George Treadwell and his All Stars. Containing echoes of the version recorded by the great Carmen McRae on her 1957 album After Glow, ‘Guess Who I Saw Today’ is a standout. In addition to dusting down ‘Social Call’, written by Gigi Gryce with lyrics by vocalese legend Jon Hendricks, the singer presents two stunning additions to the genre in the shape of Fats Navarro's ‘Nostalgia (The Day I Knew)’ plus ‘I'm Confessin’ (That I Love You)’, the latter based on Lester Young's solo from the album Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio recorded in NYC exactly 70 years earlier in 1952. With outstanding support from guitarist Pasquale Grasso, pianist Ben Paterson, bassist David Wong and drummer Kenny Washington, the title track – first recorded almost 100 years ago in 1923 by Bailey's Lucky Seven – blazes like an exploding star. Augmented by horns (trumpeter Terell Stafford, trombonist Donavan Austin, tenorist Kendrick McCallister), there's a wondrous take on Monk's ‘Round Midnight’ (in the version with lyrics by Hendricks) while, accompanied solely by Grasso, the singer's incredibly beautiful timbre is heard to best effect in the Gershwins’ ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’, which brings this staggeringly fine album to a close”.

With one of the most unforgettable voices in music, everyone needs to hear and experience the music of Samara Joy! It is going to be exciting seeing where she goes next and how she follows Linger Awhile. Although her style is rooted in Jazz of the 1950s and before, there is this contemporary edge and diversity that will appeal to a wide audience. This wonderful musician will have such…

A busy year!

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Follow Samara Joy

PHOTO CREDIT: Scott Rossi for The New York Times

Official:

https://www.samarajoy.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/samarajoysings/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/SamaraJoy99

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5LkbTSqXfMBjFSGi9LOGjq

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUe1VdaF0Nfz1Gho3SWWb8A

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/samarajoymclendon

INTERVIEW: Collette Cooper

INTERVIEW:

PHOTO CREDIT: Blake Ezra

Collette Cooper

_________

FOR this interview…

PHOTO CREDIT: Rankin

I have been speaking with the amazing Collette Cooper. Cooper is multi-talented singer, writer, performer and critically acclaimed artist who has been championed by BBC Introducing, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 6 Music, Soho Radio, and Jazz FM. Her inspirations go back as far as Bessie Smith, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Nina Simone, Kurt Weill, Billie Holiday and Mozart. Cooper discusses her stunning recent album, Darkside of Christmas, and her starring role in Tomorrow May Be My Last: The Janis Joplin Story. The hugely acclaimed show channels the true essence of the 1960s legend. It soon starts a residency at the Old Red Lion Theatre in Angel, London (between 14th February and 6th May). I would urge people to grab a ticket, as it is an experience you will not want to miss out on! The brilliant and mesmeric artist also reveals whether we will get new material this year. It has been a huge pleasure know more about…

THE fantastic Collette Cooper.

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Hi Collette. How are you? What has your 2023 been like so far?

Literally, on another-level busy (laughs). We started rehearsals for the show again (Tomorrow May Be My Last: The Janis Joplin Story), which opens on the 14th of February in the Old Red Lion Theatre in Angel. Then we plan to take it to the West End later in the year, so it is very much about the play this year. So, yeah, pretty full-on, but great at the same time.

You had quite a busy 2022. What were your personal highlights?

My favourite things to do are to walk on the heath with my lovely dog, Billy, and my partner, Mike. But highlights? I guess. I’ve got so many highlights. Personal highlights. We won our netball league finals (laughs). However, I’ve got a dodgy knee, so I sat on the bench a lot. I have to mention too Matthews Dukes’ Jukes Cordialities, who sponsored our netball team. I had quite a good year actually. I loved doing the Christmas album (Darkside of Christmas). That was great. Working with such amazing musicians. Ray Winstone being the star of the album, really. That was brilliant. I voiced a great children’s book called The Heavy Bag, which is a beautiful story by Sarah Surgey. It’s about children coming to terms with death, and how to teach them about that. It's a really beautiful book. I loved voicing that. Recording the book for Amazon, and the money going to the children of Ukraine.

Also, performing at the Roundhouse alongside Chrissie Hynde, Bob Geldof and other amazing musician to raise money for Ukraine. That was a real highlight, definitely, to be asked to do that. Such a huge audience. And, again, the play and winning that great award, which was brilliant. And the album and recording at Abbey Road. Working with Rankin, the photographer, who did the album cover. I was on the front cover of Darkus Magazine as well, which and I’d never been on the front cover of a magazine before, so that was really special. And they had their own little award ceremony, and the awarded me Best Musician of the Year. It’s really kind of them to give me an award, so that was really lovely. Performing our Christmas concert in the most beautiful chapel with thirteen incredible musicians.

I really loved your Darkside of Christmas album from December! Do you have a favourite song from the album at all? What was it like recording it?

A lot of blood, sweat tears….and snow went into that album! (Laughs). Do I have a favourite song from the album? (Pondering). I like them all for different reasons. I loved Silent Night, because I loved our version on there, and Rochard Harwood is an amazing, amazing cellist. He’s the principal cellist for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and so it was a real honour to work with him on that because it was just me and him. And the most amazing gospel choir, Kings Voices. For all different reasons I love Santa Baby; it’s a fun song, really fun to perform. Quite poignant…and kind of done in an ironic way, I guess. Ain’t Necessarily So. I love how we mix that with Carol of the Bells (a popular Christmas carol which is based on the Ukrainian song called Shchedryk (Ukrainian: Щедрик). The song uses the original melody from Shchedryk, written by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in 1914). I came up with that idea a couple of years ago. I wanted to record that, but I wanted to do it so differently, and I thought that this was a perfect way to do this as different as possible.

I loved performing It’s a Wonderful World with Liam Stevens, who’s an incredible pianist and great fun to work with. I loved that for so many reasons, because it was literally an old out of tune piano, you know? And we were in the studio and, anyway, and I just said “Oooh, shall we just ‘ave a go?”. And we literally, in one take, recorded it. And that’s how it sounds. With all its flaws. We just did it there and then. Very spontaneous. I love it for those reasons, and because me and Liam always crack up laughing.

“I never say that I am a ‘Jazz singer’ or a ’Blues singer’. I don’t put myself into any box. I don’t think I like to define my vocals by any genre“

Yeah, and I guess when you’ve heard the songs over and over a million times (chuckles) it’s nice to maybe leave it until this year, this Christmas, when you can have a fresh listen to it with fresh ears. I think definitely Ray Winston’s voice was the highlight for me. Him reciting the poem that I had written. And I just think…he made it really magical. So I guess, you know, the songs that he performed on like Silent Night and Darkside of Christmas. I think they’re the standout ones for me as well.

Before we look ahead, take me to the start. When did music come into your life? Which artists and albums inspired you when you were growing up?

Well, I’m a really huge fan of Bessie Smith. I my dad introduced me to her when I was really, really little. And she just blew me away. I loved her rawness. I loved her rawness and her ballsiness. And her truth. And her power. And…her distinctive vocals. And she just really had an affect on me. And I loved all the greats, you know: Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Big Mama Thornton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I really love those guys. You know, the Bluesy guys. I think I’m really influenced by Blues and Jazz, so I’ve never classed myself. I never say that I am a ‘Jazz singer’ or a ’Blues singer’. I don’t put myself into any box. I don’t think I like to define my vocals by any genre. So I like to sing what I like to sing, but I’m definitely influenced by Blues ands Jazz, that’s for sure.

I loved Johnny Cash, David Bowie, Kate Bush when I was all little. I have a really eclectic taste. I’m a huge fan of Mozart. I LOVE Mozart. Yeah, I’d say I’m influenced by many, many great artists, and I admire all those guys.

Obviously, Janis Joplin is a huge inspiration. You have starred as her in the play, Tomorrow May Be My Last: The Janis Joplin Story. What is it about Joplin and her life that speaks to you?

It’s funny you say that about Janis Joplin, because I didn’t know much about her before I started the play. It was mentioned in a couple of reviews that I was like Janis Joplin-meets-Edith Piaf. And really weirdly, neither of those amazing artists were my influences. I knew a lot more about Edith Piaf, in the sense that my dad played a lot more Edith Piaf around the house. So maybe my subconscious…maybe she got into my DNA somehow somewhere. But Janis Joplin. I knew (Me and) Bobby McGee, Piece of My Heart. But I really didn’t know much about her. So I was always surprised when they said, you know, “You’re like Janis Joplin-meets-Edith Piaf”.

“And, so what attracted me to her life when I started doing the research is because she was just such an open, honest, lovely, beautiful soul. A real pioneer for women in music. And politically. You know, she was a pioneer”

Anyway, to cut a long story short, a West End producer came to see my show at the 100 Club back in 2018, and he said to me that you’d be great doing a one-woman show. Maybe of Edith Piaf. Or of Janis Joplin. And I thought, well I’m not going to do Edith Piaf with all that French I’ve got to learn. Forget that (laughs). So I thought, Janis Joplin, okay. I did research on her and I realised we had more in common than I ever realised. There were a lot of parallels between us and the fact that she absolutely adored Bessie Smith. Which was like a sign.

I read every book. I watched every documentary. I grew my hair. I wanted to be a bit more voluptuous like her. She had a beautiful, voluptuous figure. I was this skinny little thing. So, I was able to put on some weight and kind of mould myself into her whilst doing the play. Because the play. It is a play, first of all, driven by music. She tells a story backstage in her dressing room. It’s set in a Woodstock-style festival. And, so what attracted me to her life when I started doing the research is because she was just such an open, honest, lovely, beautiful soul. A real pioneer for women in music. And politically. You know, she was a pioneer  She came from a very backward kind of town, and she had to fight to get out of there. She was ahead of her time, and she was an old soul. She was deeply bullied growing up, and she, you know, felt very unloved. She was just a misfit, and felt very…like she didn’t fit in. I felt like that growing up at times. So I related, you know, quite a lot. I felt that we had a lot of similarities. So, I’m really enjoying playing her. But it’s like a marathon every night. I say this: Janis Joplin could not play Janis Joplin every night. It’s full-on (laughs), so I’m going to be knackered at the end of it. But it’s enjoyable and it’s going to worth it.

PHOTO CREDIT: Robin Pope

I understand the play is restarting, and it has been nominated for an Offie Award! What was your reaction when you heard the news? What has the reception been like from the audiences that have watched the play?

Yeah, it’s starting up again for three months. We start on February the 14th until May the 6th. And then we have a break; and then we aim to go into the West End, finding a suitable theatre. Yeah, we were thrilled. You know, when you work so hard on  something and you literally put blood, sweat and tears into it, which we did. And it’s gone through a lot of changes. I wrote the treatment in 2018. Started developing it, started doing all the research in 2019. Did the first read-through in March 2020 before we went into lockdown. And then we performed it for as small audience just as we were coming out of the first lockdown. When we could perform it with an audience of the third of its capacity with masks. So we used that to develop it. It went through a lot of changes, and developing it to a point where I wanted. I got the script to where I wanted it, and performed it. Premiered at the Old Red Lion Theatre in Angel, which is a legendary theatre! It’s an amazing theatre. It’s one of the oldest theatres in London. You know, it’s an incredible theatre. Perfect space for it to grow. The band have been with us from day one. Incredible musicians. I mean, they make me sound good, let’s put it that way (laughs).

“ It is a sad story, but there’s a lot of hope in there”

They are absolutely brilliant. So when we heard the news we’d been nominated for five Off West End Awards (Offies), and we won the Standing Ovation Award, it was just brilliant. It’s just nice to be recognised for your hard work. But you know, more than ever what was so important was the audience reaction. And how it moved them. And it was really nice that we touched so many people on so many levels and they really enjoyed it. It’s a really uplifting play. It’s a sad story, you know. It is a sad story, but there’s a lot of hope in there. There’s a lot of messages in there. So, yes, we’re very, very, very, very pleased about that.

I know climate change is a cause dear to your heart. You performed for the late Vivienne Westwood’s Cool Earth charity. A few high-profile musicians and actors are becoming involved in this fight and talking about climate change. How important do you think this is with regards engaging people and affecting action?

It couldn’t be more important, relevant than today. We’ve just got to try and do our bit. It’s beyond recycling. It’s our carbon footprint. Trying our best to become a vegan. I’m a vegan. I have been because I’m a huge animal lover. Another thing that is close to my heart is animal rights. And we’ve got to try and do our best. Do anything we can do to help save the planet. Less clothes. Less washing. Less buying. Don’t need to collect a lot of things. We need to downsize. We need to get rid of stuff. Recycle, recycle, recycle. It’s really important. Just little things you can be aware of. Just turning off the lights even (laughs). Using less water. Just trying to use less.

This year is shaping up to be a remarkable and fascinating one for emerging artists. Are there are any particular artists you would recommend we check out?

Luca Manning. They are amazing.

Might we get a Collette Cooper E.P. or album this year? Is there any new music in the works?

Yes, there’s definitely going to be new music this year once I finish my play in May. I’m actually releasing the title song of the play, Tomorrow May Be My Last, in March, which we recorded last year but didn’t officially release it. 2nd March that will come out.

Finally, you can pick any song you like to finish. It can be an old favourite or a new song. What should we play?

Me and Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin.

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Follow Collette Cooper

PHOTO CREDIT: Blake Ezra

Official:

https://www.collettecooper.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/collettecooper/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/collettecooper

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/65g0WFB1tb25Y3BzvES5eq

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@collettecoopervevo3118

Bandcamp:

https://collettecooper.bandcamp.com/

FEATURE: Revisiting… Harry Styles – Harry’s House

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

Harry Styles – Harry’s House

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WHETHER a great album overlooked…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lillie Eiger

or a terrific album that people might not know about now – or it is not played widely -, I wanted to use at least the next couple of Revisiting… features to explore some of the best of last year. As I say, there were albums overlooked that are worthy of praise. Some that were not given their dues but are definitely stronger than that. The third group is strong albums that were acclaimed but maybe not everyone has heard of. Maybe some people feel Harry Styles is a niche taste or a Pop artist that is reserved for a certain demographic. That is definitely true with a lot of boyband alumni. Styles was a member of One Direction and, unlike many who have been part of a boyband (who were mainly aimed at younger listeners), Styles is a very mature and eclectic artists whose debut album, Harry Styles, only hinted at what potential he had. 2019’s Fine Line was a real step up. An award-winning and acclaimed album, this was followed by his third. Nominated for, among other things, the Mercury Prize, it is by far the most revered and fine example of Styles’ Pop craft and huge diversity. Taking in a range of styles and influences, Harry’s House was released on 20th May, 2022. With, again, songs co-written by Styles, Harry’s House was named as one of the best albums of last year. It won the GRAMMY for Album of the Year last night (6th February).

I do get the feeling that, as his music is still not as widely played as it should be, many may have missed out. He gets love here from heavyweights such as BBC Radio 1 and 2 but, perhaps, some of the more alternative stations still do not play music they consider too commercial. Harry Styles’ music is much broader and more appealing than you got with One Direction (even though they were stronger than many of their peers). Developing as a very strong and distinct solo artist, Harry’s House was worthy of its positive reviews and award nods. I am going to finish with a couple of the positive reviews for this incredible work. First, I want to quote parts of a very deep and fascinating interview from Better Homes and Garden, where we get background to Harry’s House, and an insight into the fact that, although he is a huge name, he is very grounded and ego-free:

“Two years on, Styles and I are meeting because that album, titled Harry's House, is about to be announced to the world. (Styles actually finished it before he finally held his much-delayed Fine Line tour in September 2021, the first full indoor arena concert run in the U.S. since COVID hit.) The day before we meet, I listened to the album in a room at Sony's London headquarters under the watchful eye of a company executive. Only a handful of people knew then about its existence, and, overwhelmed by the pressure of secrecy, I briefly freaked out when I found myself audibly humming one of the songs on the train home. Harry's House is, as you can probably guess, about home. Not just home in the sense of a physical space—though there are plenty of references to kitchens and "sitting in the garden" and "maple syrup, coffee, pancakes for two"—but also to home "in terms of a headspace or mental well-being," as Styles put it. "It sounds like the biggest, and the most fun, but it's by far the most intimate," he said of the album.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Walker

At this point, Styles and I were sitting with a coffee on a patch of grass outside the pool, and I had begun to realize that I had kept him in the cold water way, way too long. He was visibly shaking. "Two lengths was too much," he agreed. I think we were both trying to show off—me, nonchalance to a popular heartthrob, and him, hardiness to another committed cold water swimmer. I became worried I had incapacitated him, something that would get me into great trouble, as a member of his team reminded me by text later, as he was due to perform at Coachella in a few weeks. "If you killed me, it would make for a good story," Styles said, eager to see the sunny side. We set off in search of heat.

Almost anyone who meets Styles will tell you how polite, breezy he is. Few interviews go by without mentioning his charm. Indeed, it is hard not to describe his boyish enthusiasm in the same campy, knowing cheesiness that enlivens his songs ("strawberries on a summer evenin'" or the exquisitely saccharine, "If I was a bluebird, I would fly to you; you be the spoon, dip you in honey so I can be sticking to you," from "Daylight" on Harry's House). Styles is teddy bears on your teenage bed, perfect handwriting on thank you cards, picked flowers on Sunday morning, puppies running on fresh-cut grass, Grandma's favorite homemade cake. At points, he is almost daffily nice, too attentive, as if held in the throes of a decade-long bout of imposter syndrome (he confirmed that he does, sometimes, expect that someone will tap him on the shoulder and say, "The jig is up. You're done now"). Surely a mask, you are thinking. No one that fancied can be that sweet. I asked Styles this myself: Is he actually pleasant, normal, sane? "My producer keeps asking me when I'm going to have my big breakdown," he said, laughing. "The most honest version I can think of is, I didn't grow up in poverty by any means, but we didn't have much money, and I had an expectation of what I could achieve in life. I feel like everything else has been a bonus, and I am so lucky."

Styles told me that he sees Harry's House as a similar watershed. "Finally, it doesn't feel like my life is over if this album isn't a commercial success," he said. "You've never felt that way before?" I asked. He said, "Honestly, I don't think I have." With his first album, he explained, he was terrified to make fun music, "because I'd come out of the band, and it was like, if I want to be taken seriously as a musician, then I can't make fun music." He called it "bowling with the bumpers up, playing it safe." While the second album was "freer," he became concerned with making "really big songs," an objective he now questions. Now his goals are, on the surface, smaller but, to him, far greater: "I just want to make stuff that is right, that is fun, in terms of the process, that I can be proud of for a long time, that my friends can be proud of, that my family can be proud of, that my kids will be proud of one day," he said. We hugged goodbye, and he set off through North London on foot—a sex symbol, a fashion darling, a very modern rock star, weaving his way back home”.

I want to end up with reviews for Harry’s House. AllMusic had some interesting things to say about one of the best albums of last year. Styles’ most complex and memorable album to date, it is the real first peak of his solo career. I think that the songs from Styles’ third studio album should be played more widely now. It is a hugely rewarding body of work:  

“Welcome to Harry's House, where host Harry Styles will join you for a drink (or more), lend a comforting ear, and make you breakfast the next day. His third full-length, the smooth set is his most consistent and immediately accessible to date, a craveable experience that comforts with warmth, familiarity, and just enough emotion to make his enviable lifestyle relatable. Once again helmed by Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, the '70s-inspired pop production is a pure Los Angeles vibe, touching down everywhere from hip Hollywood haunts to contemplative Laurel Canyon overlooks. That throwback spirit echoes the work of similarly nostalgic contemporaries like Mark Ronson, Tame Impala, and Bruno Mars, especially on tracks like "Music for a Sushi Restaurant," where joyous horns, thumping bass, and explosive energy are matched by skibbity-boop-bap scat playfulness, and the slowly unfolding "Daylight," which bursts to life with clashing drums, buzzing guitars, and swirling harmonies. "Late Night Talking" is a massive hit-in-waiting, a breezy, synth-heavy dose of fresh love and big promises, while the surprising "Satellite" puts a beautifully evocative spin on getting high with one of the best payoffs on the entire album.

Throughout, Styles' charisma is matched by equally alluring production, whether he's charming pants off to the bedroom digi-funk of the horny "Cinema," a John Mayer-featuring highlight that channels Random Access Memories; getting drunk on the good stuff while paying homage to McCartney/Wings on "Grapejuice"; or ramping up the energy on the funky "Daydreaming," which pairs a perfectly executed sample of the "padiya pa pa pa pa pa" from the Brothers Johnson's "Ain't We Funkin' Now" with rousing horns and Pino Palladino's elastic bass. Even on the chart-topping single "As It Was," Styles' bittersweet ruminations on change and growth are masked by driving synths and a propulsive beat. In the softer wing of Harry's House, a trio of tender, guitar-plucked tracks connects the artist to the listener, as if Harry was having a chat with a fan on the sofa. The hazy "Little Freak" drips with bittersweet longing, while the Blood Orange-backed "Matilda" reveals a deeply personal tale of a hard-knock youth, and "Boyfriends" finds Ben Harper on guitar as Styles offers a shoulder to cry on for anyone wronged by a lackluster partner. Beyond the catchy melodies, lines of white powder, and sweaty sheets, he subtly reveals himself in these vulnerable moments, continuing his maturation from boy band survivor to one of the biggest stars of his class. While predecessor Fine Line was all belting dramatics and showmanship fit for the grand stage, Harry's House is what happens when Styles steps out of the spotlight to live his life. And despite the fact that there's nothing as immortal as "Watermelon Sugar" to be found, this album, as a whole, has solid bones and is sturdy enough to last”.

The final thing I will source is DIY’s take on the excellent Harry’s House. I think I heard singles like As It Was when they came out. It is only fairly recently that I have sat down with the whole album. Harry’s House got to number one both here and in the U.S. Rolling Stone placed Harry’s House fifth in their list of the best albums of 2022:

“Please come inside my most intimate space,” invited an early teaser for ‘Harry’s House’, as if to hint that Harry Styles’ third solo album might be the one in which the global superstar gives a little more of his day-to-day existence into song. For while we know a lot of facts about Harry the human - he’s grown from boy to man in the public eye, after all - we don’t actually really know very much about him either. Even the most cursory questions are often answered with a shrug; his much-referenced 2014 “not that important” response [brushed off in answer to whether he’d like a potential partner to be female] applied to just about everything. Harry Styles is Mr. Ambiguity.

And, at first glance, maybe on ‘Harry’s House’ we are learning something. We’re surely not supposed to take giant leaps with ‘Cinema’ and its refrain “I bring the pop / You got, you got the cinema”. Similarly, all at HSHQ knew precisely whose Wikipedia entry was about to be checked on once the couplet “Leave America / Two kids follow her” was deciphered in single ‘As It Was’. Moreover, we also hear of sneaking away in hotel rooms with “the one that got away” (‘Love Of My Life’), a regrettable hookup (‘Little Freak’) and, in ‘Keep Driving’, a long list of oddly-specific scenarios, from an amorous breakfast (“Maple syrup / Coffee / Pancakes for two / Hash brown / Egg yolk / I will always love you”) to whatever “Cocaine / Side boob / Choke her with a sea view” happens to be.

Yet, as ever, while with one hand he’s exploring vivid lyrical micro-vignettes (‘Matilda’ is a gorgeous, bittersweet third-person tale and, perhaps, where the theme of ‘Harry’s House’ could have begun), he’s still obfuscating with the other. From the off, Harry switches the narrative enough to question all that follows: “I don’t want you to get lost / I don’t want you to go broke”, for example, becomes “I’m not going to get lost / I’m not going to go broke” on opener ‘Music For A Sushi Restaurant’. ‘Grapejuice’ could just as easily be a tale of falling in love with a person as with a bottle of vino (“There’s just no getting through / Without you / A bottle of rouge / Just me and you”), and in context, ‘Boyfriends’ - of which much was made following its Coachella debut - could merely be Harry throwing mud at himself. In essence, he’s probably begging never to be a lyricist who’s deciphered forensically.

Where his 2017 self-titled debut saw Harry begin to carve out his solo voice, and ‘Fine Line’ two years later showcased him flexing his big studio wings, in ‘Harry’s House’ lives a songwriter confident enough in both to start playing with convention. Hooks are frequently courtesy of instrumentals (see ‘Daylight’, or the clanging, near-industrial guitar loop of ‘Grapejuice’) or barely-there vocals (‘Daydreaming’). Samples are used as percussion (‘Satellite’, which also echoes its thematic ‘spiralling out’ with a cacophonous mid-point climax) or, in the case of closer ‘Love Of My Life’, looped to smartly echo the pulse of a dancefloor and contradict the song’s otherwise soft acoustic guitar and piano. And it’s only when ‘As It Was’ - itself one of the most straightforward numbers on the record - kicks in that he gets close to belting anything out. He might be a natural born pop performer of the highest order, but Harry Styles is also not scared of being secondary to the song; a lesson it’s taken many others far longer to learn”.

If you have not heard Harry’s House or not investigated Harry Styles’ solo work, then I would encourage you to spend time doing so. Even though he is a major artist who could be considered mainstream, his latest album has that depth and inventiveness that stands it out from pack. It got a lot of love last year, but I do feel that some missed out on a terrific album. If you have not heard it yet – or not spun it for a while -, then go and investigated Harry’s House…

AS soon as possible.