FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Texas Hits and Deeper Cuts

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Texas Hits and Deeper Cuts

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NOT tied to any anniversary at all…

IN THIS PHOTO: Sharleen Spiteri

I wanted to put out a mixtape with a selection of Texas songs. Starting life in 1986, we celebrate forty years of their formation next year. The current line-up consists of Sharleen Spiteri, Johnny McElhone, Eddie Campbell, Tony McGovern and Cat Myers. The band were formed in Glasgow and the original line-up consisted  of by Johnny McElhone, Ally McErlaine, and Sharleen Spiteri. Their most popular album, 1997’s White on Blonde, is one that I remember fondly. Say What You Want, Halo and Black Eyed Boy are classics from that time that I was completely hooked on. I will get to some detailed biography in a minute. I have always been a fan of Texas and think that Sharleen Spiteri is one of the great leads. She was also a big musical crush when I was in high school! An amazing voice whose is backed by an incredible band, I was keen to combine many of their best-known songs with some deeper cuts. First, let’s get to some biography from AllMusic:

“Texas cultivates a specific niche by splicing a deep love of American R&B with a sense of popcraft and rock muscle endemic to their homeland of Scotland. Initially, Texas operated on a grand scale reminiscent of such fellow 1980s rockers as U2, but the group's 1997 album White on Blonde pulled their strengths into focus, emphasizing smooth soul grooves and the intensity of lead singer Sharleen Spiteri's vocals. From that point forward, Texas concentrated on variations of blue-eyed soul, sometimes veering into slick adult contemporary territory but remaining flexible and stylish enough to make collaborations with hip-hop mavericks the Wu-Tang Clan feel logical. The first of these Wu-Tang duets, a remix of "Say What You Want" dubbed "Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day)," arrived in 1998, near the start of nearly a decade's worth of U.K. Top Ten hits, a streak that included "Black Eyed Boy," "In Our Lifetime," "Summer Son," "Inner Smile," and "Getaway." The second Wu-Tang collaboration, "Hi," was the title track of their 2021 album, a reunion that helped emphasize how Texas continued to find fresh inspiration within their signature blend of soul, pop, and rock, while their 2024 album The Muscle Shoals Sessions -- cut at Alabama's FAME Recording Studio with Spooner Oldham -- underscored their debt to classic soul.

Taking the group's name from the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas, bass player Johnny McElhone organized the band in Glasgow in 1986. McElhone, a veteran of the bands Altered Images and Hipsway, brought in singer and rhythm guitarist Sharleen Spiteri, lead guitarist Ally McErlaine, and drummer Stuart Kerr. Paris, Texas boasted a score by Ry Cooder, whose slide guitar playing heavily influenced McErlaine, and Spiteri sang without any discernible Scottish accent, giving the band a distinctly American sound. Texas made their concert debut in March 1988 at Dundee University in Scotland. McElhone's previous connection with Mercury Records through Hipsway led to the label's signing the band, which initially tried to record with Bernard Edwards of Chic as producer before settling on Tim Palmer instead. The first result of this association was the single "I Don't Want a Lover," the initial effort of the writing team of Spiteri and McElhone, which Mercury released in the U.K. in January 1989. In March, it peaked at number eight. Southside (the title referring to a neighborhood of Glasgow), their debut album, was released in March and peaked at number three at the end of the month. As Texas toured the U.K. and Europe, three more singles were released from the album but failed to reach the Top 40; nevertheless, Southside eventually sold more than two million copies worldwide. Meanwhile, Mercury released "I Don't Want a Lover," and Southside was released in the U.S. in July. The single broke into Billboard's Album Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks radio charts before finally entering the Hot 100, where it peaked at number 77 on September 30; the album peaked at number 88 a week later.

Texas continued to tour Europe in 1990 before beginning work on their second album. Kerr left and was replaced on the drums by Richard Hynd, and keyboard player Eddie Campbell, who had been playing with them live, became an official member of the band. Mothers Heaven was released in September 1991 and proved to be a commercial disappointment, peaking at number 32 in the U.K. on October 5. In the U.S., the track "In My Heart" reached the Modern Rock Tracks chart as Texas made their first visit to the U.S. in November, but the album failed to chart. "Alone with You," the album's third single, returned them to the British Top 40, reaching number 32 on February 15, 1992, but their first substantial hit single since "I Don't Want a Lover" was a one-off cover of Al Green's "Tired of Being Alone," which peaked at number 19 on May 9.

After touring primarily in Europe, Texas retired to write and record another album, this time turning to Paul Fox as producer and recording at Bearsville Studio in Woodstock, New York, which gave them their title, Ricks Road, the name of the dirt road leading to the studio. "So Called Friend," released in advance of the album in August 1993, peaked at number 30 in the U.K. on September 11. (It was later used as the theme song for the U.S. television series Ellen, starring Ellen DeGeneres [1994 to 1998], and in the 1996 feature film Last Dance, starring Sharon Stone.) A second single, "You Owe It All to Me," reached number 39 on October 30, before Ricks Road finally appeared in November, hitting number 18 on November 13. The album was not initially released in the U.S., but it eventually came out in 1994 as the band made several trips to tour in North America. Despite this effort, like Mothers Heaven, Ricks Road failed to chart in the U.S., selling a meager 38,000 copies. The band wrote off the American market thereafter, concentrating primarily on Europe.

One more single from Ricks Road, "So in Love with You," made the British Top 40, peaking at number 28 in February 1994. But by the time Texas ended their tour in support of the album in December, they were ready for an extended break, and little was heard from the band over the next two years, while they worked on their fourth album with producer Mike Hedges. They re-emerged with a hometown concert in Glasgow on December 5, 1996, and in January 1997 came the advance single "Say What You Want," which became their biggest hit yet, peaking at number three on January 25. That surprising comeback was followed by the album White on Blonde, which entered the British charts at number one on February 15, 1997. It remained on the charts for nearly two years, selling 1.7 million copies in the U.K. alone and throwing off three more Top Ten hits: "Halo," "Black Eyed Boy," and "Put Your Arms Around Me." The band spent the year touring extensively in Europe and made their first trip to Australia in May. (They did not tour the U.S., where White on Blonde was finally released on August 5, 1997, as "Say What You Want" appeared in the comedy Picture Perfect, starring Jennifer Aniston, although they did find time for a promotional trip in October. The album did not chart, but Hollywood continued to favor the group, with "Put Your Arms Around Me" appearing in the 1998 film Ever After, starring Drew Barrymore.)

On February 9, 1998, Texas appeared at the BRIT Awards, performing "Say What You Want" in the company of rapper Method Man of Wu-Tang Clan. The seemingly unlikely pairing led to a new recording of the song, and the single "Say What You Want (All Day and Every Day)" by Texas featuring Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man and RZA entered the U.K. charts at number four on March 21. The band played shows periodically in 1998 while working on their next effort. That fifth album was prefaced by the leadoff single "In Our Lifetime," which entered the British charts at number four on May 1, 1999. For The Hush, which followed within weeks, the band comprised Spiteri, McElhone, Campbell, and McErlaine; soon after, it was announced that Mikey Wilson was the new drummer. The album entered the charts at number one on May 22, 1999. Second single "Summer Son" reached number five in August, but "When We Are Together" stopped at number 12 in November, capping Texas' run of consecutive Top Ten British hits at seven. Touring continued throughout 1999.

Texas' next single was "In Demand," a Top Ten hit released in October 2000 that prefaced The Greatest Hits, which hit number one in Britain in November and spawned a second new track, "Inner Smile," that reached the Top Ten in January 2001, and the band launched an extensive European tour. (By this time, Mercury wasn't even bothering to release Texas' records in the U.S.) In July, they issued a remixed version of their first hit, "I Don't Want a Lover," which made the Top 20. Spiteri then took time off to have a baby, giving birth to a daughter on September 9, 2002. More than two more years passed before the October 2003 release of their sixth album, Careful What You Wish For, which was prefaced by the single "Carnival Girl," featuring Kardinal Offishall, a Top Ten hit. (The credits announced that Neil Payne was the new drummer, replacing Wilson, and that a new guitarist, Tony McGovern, had joined the band.) The album peaked at number five and also featured the Top 40 hit "I'll See It Through." By November 2005, when their seventh album, Red Book, was released, Texas' commercial fortunes had declined, but the disc was still able to debut in the Top Ten in France, the band's most reliable market. (The album marked the addition of keyboard player Michael Bannister.) "Sleep," a duet between Spiteri and Paul Buchanan of the Blue Nile, was excerpted as the album's third single in January 2006 and made the U.K. Top Ten.

In 2008, the release of Sharleen Spiteri's first solo album, Melody, marked the beginning of a hiatus for the band; she released another, The Movie Songbook, in 2010. Reunion plans were put on hold after McErlaine suffered a brain aneurysm in late 2009, but less than two years later, Texas were on the road again. A record contract followed, and in 2013 the band released The Conversation via PIAS. Featuring contributions from Richard Hawley and Bernard Butler, it reached number four on the British charts and would later be certified silver. In February 2015, Texas celebrated their quarter-century anniversary with Texas 25, where the group reworked selected hits with the assistance of the production outfit Truth & Soul. Two years later, their ninth studio album, the self-produced Jump on Board, was released, preceded by the single "Let's Work It Out," a retro '70s disco throwback. Texas' tenth studio album, Hi, arrived in 2021; on the title-track single, the band once more teamed up with the Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah and RZA.

Texas entered a reflective period in the early 2020s, releasing the compilation The Very Best of 1989-2023 in June 2023, then revisiting highlights from their catalog for The Muscle Shoals Sessions, a 2024 album recorded at Alabama's FAME Recording Studio with seminal soul keyboardist Spooner Oldham”.

I am keen to get to this mixtape. The essential Texas songs, together with a blend of deeper cuts. Showing what a strong and consistent band they are. Having been a fan of their since the 1990s, I didn’t need a special occasion to feature them! Merely a chance, ahead of their fortieth anniversary next year, to show my affection for…

THE legendary Scottish band.

FEATURE: Celebration Day: Led Zeppelin III at Fifty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Celebration Day

Led Zeppelin III at Fifty-Five

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THOUGH perhaps not as lauded…

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

as Untitled (1971) or Physical Graffiti (1975), there is no denying how transformative Led Zeppelin III was. In terms of broadening the sound palette of the band. Having released two albums to that point – 1968’s Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II of 1969 -, you could feel them growing as a band. However, Led Zeppelin III was where there was a mix of acoustic, epic and the harder and more Rock-based sound of the first two albums. I think Led Zeppelin III is a perfect introduction for new fans, as it shows where the group came from and indicates where they would head. On 5th October (that is its U.S. release date), we mark fifty-five years of this extraordinary album. Much of the recording was done at Headley Grange, with additional sessions at Island Studios and Olympic Studios in London. Hard Rock influences on Immigrant Song fusing with more Folk-based sounds on Gallows Pole. That latter song is based on a traditional English Folk song. Hats Off to (Roy) Harper is a reworking of a Blue song. On this album, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham and John Paul Jones were at the top of their game. Even though they are perhaps more ambitious and spectacular on Untitled and Physical Graffiti, I think Led Zeppelin III is incredibly rich, accomplished and varied. The songwriting from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page so exceptional. The two working beautifully with one another. I am not sure how much people will mark fifty-five years of this album. Maybe an awkward anniversary to mark – we celebrate fifty and sixty years, but do we bother with fifty-five?! -, I wanted to spend time with Led Zeppelin III here. Opening with the classic, Immigrant Song, you are instantly hooked and intrigued! I want to get to some features about this album. Why it is so important and affecting.

Led Zeppelin III remains misunderstood. Maybe fans expecting something similar to the first two albums or not connecting with the acoustic and Folk touches. Perhaps not as many natural standout songs as you get on Led Zeppelin II and definitely would a year later for Untitled. Led Zeppelin III is integral to the band’s development. I will end with a couple of reviews for the 1970 album. Before that, there are two features to bring together. I am going to start out with a 2021 feature from Far Out Magazine. They argue how Led Zeppelin III is a misunderstood masterpiece. Hard to argue with that:

“On Led Zeppelin III, however, they split their audience and it remains to this day their most divisive record. The album is a gentle and cultured reimagining of their traditional sound and sees Zeppelin at perhaps their most daring.

Released on this day in 1970, the album ranks as one of the most controversial in the band’s canon. While much of what Led Zeppelin did is rightly revered to this day, the band’s third album has always had both its admirers and detractors within their fanbase. Some have simplified the album to simply “an acoustic record” while others see it as an inevitable fading of the band’s creative buzz following three intense years of making music. We, however, would argue it is one of the band’s best records for precisely this reason.

After Led Zeppelin had released their first two records, the hype surrounding the band’s third was almost impossible to withstand. Zeppelin had become the biggest band in the world and the decision to change direction musically would not land well.

It was to be expected, too, look at Bob Dylan’s decision to go electric and the heinous response that received. The group had just gone a long way to defining a brand new genre of heavy rock and just as they have got the whole world wanting more, they switch the delivery of their sound and move away from blues and rock and toward folk.

The previous albums had been flecked with elements of folk but now it had become the main priority and the whimsical potency was there for all to see. It may well have had something to do with the location in Bron-Yr-Aur. Much of the record was written in a remote cottage in Snowdonia with both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant needing time to recuperate from their extensive touring and excessive behaviours. They found respite in the hills but also a brand new sound along with it.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting Snowdonia, you will know that the idea of picking up a lute and letting rip a folk song of the highest order is never too far from your mind when traversing the many different medieval sites that surround it. It played on Led Zeppelin’s sound too. It led the band to introduce almost every track with an inspirational folk line that always lands heavily on those track-skippers out there.

To do so would be to miss the point too. This album is Led Zeppelin showing their musical chops. They had already blasted away the cobwebs of the sixties while they were still in them and now they were ready to ditch being just a band and become icons. To do that, you need depth and to gain depth you need variances and it means the switch to folk wasn’t just warranted but wanted. It was a clear signifier to the world around them that Zeppelin wasn’t just ‘the biggest band on the planet’, a title they had only just stolen from The Beatles, they were artists too.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have some big thumping songs on there. In fact, it may well contain Led Zeppelin’s most deliberately heavy rock track in ‘Immigrant Song’. It also welcomes ‘Celebration Day’ and ‘Out on the Tiles’ as some rockier moments on the record. But it is safe to say, that the majority of the album turns its back on rock music”.

In 2020, Classic Rock wrote how Led Zeppelin III is their most misunderstood album. This note of apology and explanation! If critics were confounded in 1970, this album arguably brokered their legend. This is what Classic Rock write. Again, hard to disagree with that opinion! We need to give more represent to an album that took Led Zeppelin to the next level. If some felt it was them watered down or going soft, it was a band not sticking rigidly with one sound:

“Nineteen sixty-nine was one helluva year for Led Zeppelin. In the short span of 12 months they played close to 150 shows, recorded two best-selling albums, toured the US five times, and established themselves as one rock’s top box-office draws. In the harsh winter of ’68 they had been lucky to get $1,500 (around £883) for a club gig, but by the time 1970 rolled around, they were demanding as much as six figures a show.

The band’s meteoric rise had been breathless. While the music press weren’t particularly kind to them, their dramatic, sexually explicit hard rock was almost irresistible to a new generation of kids searching for something new and exciting that wasn’t “the same old Beatles and Stones”. But after a year of non-stop touring, recording and shagging, the band were ready to take a break.

It was singer Robert Plant’s idea to head for the hills – the Cambrian Mountains in Wales, to be exact. The 22-year-old remembered an 18th-century cottage called Bron-Yr-Aur he had visited in his youth, and felt it would be great place to temporarily escape life in the fast lane and commune with nature. Plant extended an invitation to his co-writer, guitarist and producer Jimmy Page, and in the spring, the two men took their women, instruments and supplies to the bucolic retreat to recharge their batteries and “get back to the garden”.

“It was time to take stock, and not get lost in it all,” Plant said later. And what better way to keep it real than at a place with no electricity, candles for light, water from a stream and an outside toilet?

The story of Plant and Page’s regenerative trek to Wales looms large in Zeppelin folklore, with many assuming that most of the acoustic-based songs that eventually appeared on Led Zeppelin III were written there. Page disputes that notion, but doesn’t dismiss the significance of the journey.

“When Robert and I went to Bron-Yr-Aur we weren’t thinking: ‘Let’s go to Wales and write,’” says Page. “The original plan was to just go there, hang out and appreciate the countryside. The only song we really finished while we were there was That’s The Way, but being in the country established a standard of travelling for inspiration and set a tone for Led Zeppelin III.”

While it might not have been conceived as a writing trip, the singer and guitarist’s stay in the Welsh mountains was deemed important and influential enough to be acknowledged on the album’s sleeve, stating: ‘Credit must be given to Bron Y Aur a small derelict cottage in South Snowdonia for painting a somewhat forgotten picture of true completeness which acted as an incentive to some of these music statements.’

Little did the band know that this ‘incentive’ and subsequent ‘tone’ would end up sending massive shockwaves throughout the rock world. Led Zeppelin’s pastoral third album was recorded at Olympic Studios in London and released in October 1970. It seemed almost self-destructively perverse – a 360-degree retreat from the testosterone-infused hard rock that had made them international superstars.

John Bonham teased the press about the band’s intended direction when Zeppelin regrouped for the first studio sessions of III in late May. ‘’We’ll be recording for the next two weeks and we are doing a lot of acoustic stuff as well as the heavier side,” he told the Melody Maker. “There will be better quality songs than on the first two albums.’’

The drummer wasn’t wrong. Six of the 10 tracks on the third album were built around the sweet ’n’ bitter strains of Page’s acoustic Harmony guitar as the band touched on everything from traditional bluegrass (Gallows Pole) to country blues (Hats Off To (Roy) Harper), to a folk song so upbeat you could square-dance to it (Bron-Y-Aur Stomp). To emphasise the rustic nature of the album, Zeppelin even changed their appearance, growing facial hair to Hobbit-like proportions and wearing clothes that made them look more like hippie farmers than sex gods. Fans and critics were dazed and confused, but the band stood their ground.

“We were so far ahead that it was difficult for people to know what the hell we were doing,” Page told journalist Brad Tolinski in the 2012 book Light & Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page. “Critics especially couldn’t relate to it. Led Zeppelin was growing. Where many of our contemporaries were narrowing their perspective, we were really being expansive. I was maturing as a composer and player, and there were many kinds of music that I found stimulating, and with this wonderful group I had the chance to be really adventurous.”

Soon after the album’s release, Page was keen to emphasise Zeppelin’s evolution. “There is another side to us’’ he said. “Everyone in the band is going through changes. There are changes in the playing and the lyrics. Robert is really getting involved in his lyric writing. This album was to get across more versatility and use combinations of instruments. I haven’t read any reviews yet, but people have got to give the LP a reasonable hearing.’’

Page would go on to read the reviews. Some writers went so far as to accuse the band of jumping on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young acoustic-rock bandwagon, which Page called “pathetic”, noting that acoustic guitars were all over the first two albums and arguing that they were at the core of everything the band did. The reviews so incensed the guitarist that he refused to grant any press interviews for the next 18 months after the album’s release.

Plant, at the time Led Zeppelin III came out, was more direct: “You can just see the headlines, can’t you? ‘Led Zeppelin go soft on their fans’ or some crap like that. But now that we’ve done [this album] the sky’s the limit. It shows we can change. It means there are endless possibilities for us to go in. We won’t go stale, and this proves it.”

The truth is, the third album should have come as no surprise to anyone paying full attention to the band. The radical seeds that sprouted onIII had been planted years earlier. Throughout the 60s, as Page toiled as London’s top session guitarist, very little escaped his attention. Like a musical sponge, he absorbed every lick the Chicago blues boom had to offer, took copious notes on contemporary folk-guitar virtuosos like John Fahey and Bert Jansch, and even purchased a sitar years before world music caught the attention of Beatle George Harrison”.

I am going to end with a couple of positive reviews for a titan of an album. Returning to Classic Rock for a review published in 2019, they got some words from fans. How this album has impacted them. Even though Led Zeppelin III is less bombastic than what came before (from the band) and maybe less so than what would follow for the rest of their career, that does not make their third studio album any less impactful and incredible:

“Some critics accused the band of jumping on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young acoustic-rock bandwagon. Page called them “pathetic”, noting that acoustic guitars were all over the first two albums and arguing that they were at the core of everything the band did. The reviews so incensed the guitarist that he refused to grant any press interviews for the next 18 months after the album’s release.

It was singer Robert Plant’s idea to head for the hills – the Cambrian Mountains in Wales, to be exact. The 22-year-old remembered an 18th-century cottage called Bron-Yr-Aur he had visited in his youth, and felt it would be great place to temporarily escape life in the fast lane and commune with nature.

Plant extended an invitation to his co-writer, guitarist and producer Jimmy Page, and in the spring, the two men took their women, instruments and supplies to the bucolic retreat to recharge their batteries and “get back to the garden”.

“It was time to take stock, and not get lost in it all,” Plant said later. And what better way to keep it real than at a place with no electricity, candles for light, water from a stream and an outside toilet?"

“We were so far ahead that it was difficult for people to know what the hell we were doing,” Page told journalist Brad Tolinski in the 2012 book Light & Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page. “Critics especially couldn’t relate to it. Led Zeppelin was growing. Where many of our contemporaries were narrowing their perspective, we were really being expansive.

"I was maturing as a composer and player, and there were many kinds of music that I found stimulating, and with this wonderful group I had the chance to be really adventurous."

What they said...

"What’s great about it, though, the Zep’s special genius, is that the whole effect is so utterly two-dimensional and unreal. You could play it, as I did, while watching a pagan priestess performing the ritual dance of Ka before the flaming sacrificial altar in Fire Maidens of Outer Space with the TV sound turned off. And believe me, the Zep made my blood throb to those jungle rhythms even more frenziedly." (Rolling Stone)

"While there are still a handful of metallic rockers, III is built on a folky, acoustic foundation that gives the music extra depth. And even the rockers aren't as straightforward as before: the galloping Immigrant Song is powered by Robert Plant's banshee wail, Celebration Day turns blues-rock inside out with a warped slide guitar riff, and Out On The Tiles lumbers along with a tricky, multi-part riff." (AllMusic)

"If the great blues guitarists can make their instruments cry out like human voices, it's only fitting that Robert Plant should make his voice galvanize like an electric guitar... Plant is overpowering even when Page goes to his acoustic, as he does to great effect on several surprisingly folky (not to mention folk bluesy) cuts. No drum solos, either. Heavy." (Robert Christgau)

What you said...

Warren Bubb: What an album. It just gets better with time like a fine wine. Immigrant Song is a great opening track in the vein of previous albums, then a change with Friends, Celebration Day and Tangerine. Still hate Hats Off To Harper though.

Damian Keen: Of course, it’s Led Zeppelin, and it’s one of the first six albums, so it’s one of the best albums of all time. Except for Hats Off To Harper. That’s terrible.

Philip Qvist: Not their greatest album but I still think it is a fantastic album in its own right. Immigrant Song is a great rocker that gets the pulse going, while Since I've Been Loving You is my favourite Led Zep song - and I still maintain this is Jimmy Page's best solo.

As for the rest - well who cares if the bulk of it is acoustic; with one exception they are mainly fine songs. Easily their most underrated album - a solid 8.5/10.

Dave Ferris: This album is like a never-ending treasure chest. I believe my first copy that I owned was a used cassette. I loved the intensity of the Immigrant Song as the opening track. I would settle into the album. I remember that I loved Gallows Pole from first listen, and how Bonham made a simple acoustic tune into a rocker by the end of the song.

Since I've been Loving You has always been a signature Zeppelin blues song. When the reunion album called Celebration Day was released I went back to the original track and came to love that. When Cameron Crowe made his movie Almost Famous, he wanted to include Tangerine in the soundtrack. Lastly, for me, I have come to love the harmony vocals on Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.

I started my journey as a Zeppelin fan in college in the 80's. But, with every listen, a new appreciation for a different track catches my attention. Pretty damn awesome for an "Acoustic" album.

Adrian Bolster: Not my favourite Led Zep album, but it does contain my favourite track, Since I've Been Loving You. What an astonishing track, squeaky pedal and all. When Tangerine is played in Almost Famous it makes the film almost perfect!”.

I will finish with a review from BBC. This word ‘underrated’ seems to be used in so many features and reviews. As Led Zeppelin III turns fifty-five on 5th October, maybe we need to reassess it and see it for the phenomenal album it is. One of the best of the 1970s:

“Although Led Zeppelin’s much-maligned third album remains divisive to this day, it’s now widely accepted that it was not, after all, the product of some collective brain fade or bizarre schizophrenic episode within the band. The persistent perception of it as an acoustic album is also an inaccurate and oversimplified view. But it’s easy to understand how misconceptions could arise, especially when it was first released.

The sense of anticipation surrounding Led Zeppelin III was simply enormous. The success of their first two albums (I, II) had transformed Zep into the biggest band in the world. It’s hardly surprising, then, that their decision to radically change tack would cause confusion and consternation. Where I and II were blues-rock workouts with acoustic and folk embellishments, III was essentially the opposite. The embellishments and embroidery became the central focus.

Much of the album was written at a remote cottage in Snowdonia called Bron-Yr-Aur while guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant recuperated following an extensive US tour. The cottage had no electricity which encouraged the pair to explore the band’s mellower, pastoral side. That the results originally met with such a lukewarm critical response was unfair, if predictable. The acoustic introductions to so many of the songs continue to fool those casually skipping through the album just to make sure they dislike it as much as other people say they should. The reality is a little different.

Ironically, given the album’s generally laid-back feel, III features one of the band’s most blatantly overt big-trouser moments. Opener Immigrant Song, with its strident riff and macho subject matter, is proto-heavy metal at its best. It’s true that the bulk of the material doesn’t favour rock, with even Celebration Day and Out on the Tiles lacking the sledgehammer weight of previous efforts, but this is no lightweight fluff. The slow blues of Since I've Been Loving You and the touching That's the Way are other clear highlights which have earned their place on any genuine best-of collection. Elsewhere, the wistful folk rock of Tangerine and Gallows Pole – another Zep arrangement of a traditional folk song – bolster what is by any reckoning an underrated work”.

Turning fifty-five on 5th October, I do hope that someone writes about the album. Led Zeppelin III probably came with the weight of expectation following Led Zeppelin II in 1969. Maybe Untitled was a response to those who felt that there was too much acoustic and Folk on Led Zeppelin III. However, there are moments like this on Untitled (Going to California for one). We need to salute and give affection to…

AN album that deserves more respect.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: Seventeen: Two Reviews…and Ranking the Tracks

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: United Archives/Hutton Archives/Getty Images

Seventeen: Two Reviews…and Ranking the Tracks

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I will talk about the legacy…

of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love in another feature. For this one, I will end with my ranking of the twelve tracks. My opinions have changed since I last published a track ranking feature for Hounds of Love. Before I get there, I want to drop in two critical reviews. An album that has gained almost unanimous praise, it is worth noting why critics love this album so much. Released on 16th September, 1985, there will be a lot of new attention around the album. It will be interesting what features arise that celebrate forty years of a true classic. I am going to start out with the first of two reviews. This one is from AllMusic:

“Kate Bush's strongest album to date also marked her breakthrough into the American charts, and yielded a set of dazzling videos as well as an enviable body of hits, spearheaded by "Running Up That Hill," her biggest single since "Wuthering Heights." Strangely enough, Hounds of Love was no less complicated in its structure, imagery, and extra-musical references (even lifting a line of dialogue from Jacques Tourneur's Curse of the Demon for the intro of the title song) than The Dreaming, which had been roundly criticized for being too ambitious and complex. But Hounds of Love was more carefully crafted as a pop record, and it abounded in memorable melodies and arrangements, the latter reflecting idioms ranging from orchestrated progressive pop to high-wattage traditional folk; and at the center of it all was Bush in the best album-length vocal performance of her career, extending her range and also drawing expressiveness from deep inside of herself, so much so that one almost feels as though he's eavesdropping at moments during "Running Up That Hill." Hounds of Love is actually a two-part album (the two sides of the original LP release being the now-lost natural dividing line), consisting of the suites "Hounds of Love" and "The Ninth Wave." The former is steeped in lyrical and sonic sensuality that tends to wash over the listener, while the latter is about the experiences of birth and rebirth. If this sounds like heady stuff, it could be, but Bush never lets the material get too far from its pop trappings and purpose. In some respects, this was also Bush's first fully realized album, done completely on her own terms, made entirely at her own 48-track home studio, to her schedule and preferences, and delivered whole to EMI as a finished work; that history is important, helping to explain the sheer presence of the album's most striking element -- the spirit of experimentation at every turn, in the little details of the sound. That vastly divergent grasp, from the minutiae of each song to the broad sweeping arc of the two suites, all heavily ornamented with layered instrumentation, makes this record wonderfully overpowering as a piece of pop music. Indeed, this reviewer hadn't had so much fun and such a challenge listening to a new album from the U.K. since Abbey Road, and it's pretty plain that Bush listened to (and learned from) a lot of the Beatles' output in her youth”.

Awarding Hounds of Love a perfect ten in 2016, Pitchfork stated how Kate Bush’s fifth studio album was  perfect marriage of technology/technique and exploration. It is interesting how each critics approaches the album and its context. It is clear that there was no limit to Kate Bush’s ambitions when producing Hounds of Love:

“This was a striking achievement for a quintessentially femme star: Among her gender-bending UK generation, Bush had the highest chirp, the most flowing locks, and the tightest leotards; when she shed the latter for the fantasy segments of her “Babooshka” video, she transformed into a scintillating windblown warrior with disco levels of exposed flesh and shameless camp. Both “Breathing” and its video is set in a uterus; “In the Warm Room” exalts vaginas the same way Led Zeppelin sang about dicks.

Hounds of Love proved there were no compositional mountains Bush couldn’t climb. While the second side asserted her vanguard bent, the first side yielded four UK Top 40 hits. Neither synth-pop nor prog-rock, Hounds of Love nevertheless drew from both with double-platinum rewards on her home turf, and yielded her first U.S. hits, even without a tour. And its idiosyncrasies have only fueled Hounds’ lingering influence: Florence and the Machine cribs its Gothic angst. Anohni mirrors its animal divinity. St. Vincent draws from its sexual politics and sonic precision. Utah Saints sampled it and the Futureheads covered it, both with UK Top 10 results. Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound” goes so far as to paraphrase “Running”’s rhythm, chords, climax, and highland imagery. It’s the Sgt. Pepper of the digital age’s dawn; a milestone in penetratingly fanciful pop.

Bush’s talent was so undeniable that she could sneak into contemporary music’s center while curbing none of her eccentricities. The album’s second single “Cloudbusting” celebrates Wilhelm Reich, a brilliant Austrian psychoanalyst but crackpot American inventor. Full of details gleaned from his son Peter Reich’s A Book of Dreams, it’s specific to their teacher/pupil relationship, which is played out further in its video featuring Donald Sutherland. But “Cloudbusting” also deals with a much more universal situation: Children long to protect their parents, despite having no adult power to do so. Accordingly, Bush resorts to the one thing all children possess in abundance—imagination. “I just know that something good is gonna happen,” she sings, a string sextet sawing insistently as martial drums beat a battle cry that morphs from helplessness to victory, however imaginary. The son she portrays wills himself into thoughts nearly delusional as his dad’s, and the result is optimistic yet poignant, as he ultimately believes, “Just saying it could even make it happen.”

Imagination’s pull is the subtext to Bush’s entire oeuvre, but that theme dominates Hounds of Love, and not least in the title track. Whereas her piercing upper register once defined her output, here she’s roaring from her gut, then pulling back, and the song shifts between panic and empathy. “Hounds of Love” boasts the big gated ’80s drum blasts Bush discovered while singing background on Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers,” and yet its cello just as percussive: It builds to suggest both her pulse and the heartbeat of the captured fox she comforts and identifies with. She fears love: “It’s coming for me through the trees,” she wails. Yet she craves it, so desire and terror escalate in a breathless Hitchcockian climax.

On Hounds of Love, the singer who started directing her own videos at this point becomes total auteur, and takes such a firm grasp on every aspect of the recording process that she often replaces Del Palmer, her own lover, on bass. On “Mother Stands for Comfort,” an all-knowing maternal contrast to the delusional papa of “Cloudbusting,” she duets with German jazz bassist Eberhard Weber, who plays yielding mother to Bush’s wayward daughter. Her Fairlight clatters with the crash of broken dishes while her piano gently wanders, but Weber’s fretless bass maintains its compassion, even when Bush lets loose some freaky primal-scream scatting toward the end.

Skies, clouds, hills, trees, lakes—along with everything else, Hounds of Love is also a heated paean to nature. On the cover, Bush reclines between two canines with a knowing familiarity that almost suggests cross-species congress. She honors the sensual world's benign blessings on “The Big Sky” even while Youth’s raucous bass suggests earthquakes. Bush references its elements with childlike awe: “That cloud looks like Ireland,” she squeals. “You’re here in my head like the sun coming out,” she sighs in “Cloudbusting,” and her stormy emotions are reflected by the music’s turbulence. But nature’s destruction can also inspire us to seek solace in spirituality, and that’s what happens on Side Two’s singular suite, “The Ninth Wave.”

Bush plays a sailor who finds herself shipwrecked and alone. She slips into a hypothermia-induced limbo between wakefulness and sleep (“And Dream of Sheep”), where nightmares, memories and visions distort her consciousness to the point where she cannot distinguish between reality and illusion. Is she skating, or trapped “Under Ice”? During her hallucinations, she sees herself in a prior life as a necromancer on trial; instead of freezing, she visualizes herself burning (“Waking the Witch”). Her spirit leaves her body and visits her beloved (“Watching You Without Me”). Then her future self confronts her present being and begs her to stay alive (“Jig of Life”). A rescue team reaches her just as her life force drifts heavenward (“Hello Earth”), but in the concluding track, “The Morning Fog,” flesh and spirit reunite, and she vows to tell her family how much she loves them.

As her sailor drifts in and out of consciousness, Bush floats between abstract composition and precise songcraft. Her character’s nebulous condition gives her melodies permission to unmoor from pop’s constrictions; her verses don’t necessarily return to catchy choruses, not until the relative normality of “The Morning Fog,” one of her sweetest songs. Instead, she’s free to exploit her Fairlight’s capacity for musique concrete. Spoken voices, Gregorian chant, Irish jigs, oceanic waves of digitized droning, and the culminating twittering of birds all collide in Bush’s synth-folk symphony. Like most of her lyrics, “The Ninth Wave” isn’t autobiographical, although its sink-or-swim scenario can be read as an extended metaphor for Hounds of Love’s protracted creation: Will she rise to deliver the masterstroke that guaranteed artistic autonomy for the rest of her long career and enabled her to live a happy home life with zero participation in the outside world for years on end, or will she drown under the weight of her colossal ambition?

By the time I became one of the few American journalists to have interviewed her in person in 1985, Bush had clinched her victory. She’d flown to New York to plug Hounds of Love, engaging in the kind of promotion she’d rarely do again. Because she thoroughly rejected the pop treadmill, the media had already begun to marginalize her as a space case, and have since painted her as a tragic, reclusive figure. Yet despite her mystical persona, she was disarmingly down-to-earth: That hammy public Kate was clearly this soft-spoken individual’s invention; an ever-changing role she played like Bowie in an era when even icons like Stevie Nicks and Donna Summer had a Lindsey Buckingham or a Giorgio Moroder calling many of the shots.

It was a response, perhaps, to the age-old quandary of commanding respect as a woman in an overwhelmingly masculine field. Bush's navigation of this minefield was as natural as it was ingenious: She became the most musically serious and yet outwardly whimsical star of her time. She held onto her bucolic childhood and sustained her family’s support, feeding the wonder that’s never left her. Her subsequent records couldn’t surpass Hounds of Love’s perfect marriage of technique and exploration, but never has she made a false one. She’s like the glissando of “Hello Earth” that rises up and plummets down almost simultaneously: Bush retained the strength to ride fame’s waves because she’s always known exactly what she was—simply, and quite complicatedly, herself”.

In the next part of this feature, I am going to rank the twelve tracks from Hounds of Love. It has been a tough decision! I know each fan will have their own interpretations. Maybe the top four or five tracks will surprise some. However, it goes to show how strong all the songs are that the more underrated or under-played hit me hardest! Let’s get down to the ranking:

TWELVE: Under Ice

“It was very much the idea of going from very cold water, it’s getting dark, you’re alone, the only way out is to go to sleep, no responsibilities, and forget about everything; but if you go to sleep, the chances are you could rool over in the water and drown. So you’re trying to fight sleep, but you can’t help it, and you hit the dream. The idea of the dream being really cold, and really the visual expectancy of total loneliness, and for me that was a completely frozen river, no-one around, everything completely covered with snow and icicles, and it’s that person all alone in this absolute cold wilderness of white, and seeing themselves under the ice, drowning, to which they wake up and find themselves under the water

Kate Bush in an Interview by Tony Myatt at the 1985 Kate Bush Convention

This was all kinda coming together by itself, I didn’t have much to do with this, I just sat down and wrote this little tune on the Fairlight with the cello sound. And it sounded very operatic and I thought “well, great” because it, you know, it conjured up the image of ice and was really simple to record. I mean we did the whole thing in a day, I guess. (…) Again it’s very lonely, it’s terribly lonely, they’re all alone on like this frozen lake. And at the end of it, it’s the idea of seeing themselves under the ice in the river, so I mean we’re talking real nightmare stuff here. And at this point, when they say, you know, “my god, it’s me,” you know, “it’s me under the ice. Ahhhh” [laughs]

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992“ – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

ELEVEN: The Morning Fog

“Well, that’s really meant to be the rescue of the whole situation, where now suddenly out of all this darkness and weight comes light. You know, the weightiness is gone and here’s the morning, and it’s meant to feel very positive and bright and uplifting from the rest of dense, darkness of the previous track. And although it doesn’t say so, in my mind this was the song where they were rescued, where they get pulled out of the water. And it’s very much a song of seeing perspective, of really, you know, of being so grateful for everything that you have, that you’re never grateful of in ordinary life because you just abuse it totally. And it was also meant to be one of those kind of “thank you and goodnight” songs. You know, the little finale where everyone does a little dance and then the bow and then they leave the stage. [laughs]

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

TEN: Mother Stands for Comfort

“Well, the personality that sings this track is very unfeeling in a way. And the cold qualities of synths and machines were appropriate here. There are many different kinds of love and the track’s really talking about the love of a mother, and in this case she’s the mother of a murderer, in that she’s basically prepared to protect her son against anything. ‘Cause in a way it’s also suggesting that the son is using the mother, as much as the mother is protecting him. It’s a bit of a strange matter, isn’t it really? [laughs] (Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums Interview: Hounds Of Love’. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

NINE: Watching You Without Me

“Now, this poor sod [laughs], has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they’re kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home. And, you know, watching the clock, and obviously very worried about where they are, maybe making phone calls and things. But there’s no way that you can actually communicate, because they can’t see you, they can’t you. And I find this really horrific, [laughs] these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song. And when we started putting the track together, I had the idea for these backing vocals, you know, [sings] “you can’t hear me”. And I thought that maybe to disguise them so that, you know, you couldn’t actually hear what the backing vocals were saying.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

EIGHT: Cloudbusting

“This was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It’s about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child’s point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a ‘cloudbuster’; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy – as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then – and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn’t allowed to keep it. But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden, so that he would placate his father but could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It’s a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo – how special it was – and yet how dangerous it was considered to be. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people); and he loved how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve it whenever he wanted to play with it. But there’s nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it’s very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child’s eyes, but told by a sad adult.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

SEVEN: And Dream of Sheep

“An engineer we were working with picked out the line in ‘And Dream Of Sheep’ that says ‘Come here with me now’. I asked him why he liked it so much. He said, ‘I don’t know, I just love it. It’s so moving and comforting.’ I don’t think he even knew what was being said exactly, but the song is about someone going to sleep in the water, where they’re alone and frightened. And they want to go to sleep, to get away from the situation. But at the same time it’s dangerous to go to sleep in water, you could drown. When I was little, and I’d had a bad dream, I’d go into my parents’ bedroom round to my mother’s side of the bed. She’d be asleep, and I wouldn’t want to wake her, so I’d stand there and wait for her to sense my presence and wake up. She always did, within minutes; and sometimes I’d frighten her – standing there still, in the darkness in my nightdress. I’d say, ‘I’ve had a bad dream,’ and she’d lift bedclothes and say something like ‘Come here with me now.’ It’s my mother saying this line in the track, and I briefed her on the ideas behind it before she said it. And I think it’s the motherly comfort that this engineer picked up on. In fact, he said this was his favourite part of the album. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 21, 1987)” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

SIX: Waking the Witch

“These sort of visitors come to wake them up, to bring them out of this dream so that they don’t drown. My mother’s in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench – the guy that mixed the album with us – is in there, Del is in there, Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices. It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says “Wake up child, pay attention!”. (…) I couldn’t get a helicopter anywhere and in the end I asked permission to use the helicopter from The Wall from The Floyd, it was the best helicopter I’d heard for years for years [laughs].

I think it’s very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women’s power. In a way it’s very sexist behavior, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she’s committed no crime, and they’re trying to push her under the water to see if she’ll sink or float.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

FIVE: Hounds of Love

“[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985

The ideas for ‘Hounds Of Love’, the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it’s very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive.

Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985

When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought ‘Hounds Of Love’ and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna… when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of… being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love’. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

FOUR: Hello Earth

“‘Hello Earth’ was a very difficult track to write, as well, because it was… in some ways it was too big for me. [Laughs] And I ended up with this song that had two huge great holes in the choruses, where the drums stopped, and everything stopped, and people would say to me, “what’s going to happen in these choruses,” and I hadn’t got a clue.
We had the whole song, it was all there, but these huge, great holes in the choruses. And I knew I wanted to put something in there, and I’d had this idea to put a vocal piece in there, that was like this traditional tune I’d heard used in the film Nosferatu. And really everything I came up with, it with was rubbish really compared to what this piece was saying. So we did some research to find out if it was possible to use it. And it was, so that’s what we did, we re-recorded the piece and I kind of made up words that sounded like what I could hear was happening on the original. And suddenly there was these beautiful voices in these chorus that had just been like two black holes.

In some ways I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth. And it was the idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from completely above. You know, that image of if you were lying in water at night and you were looking up at the sky all the time, I wonder if you wouldn’t get the sense of as the stars were reflected in the water, you know, a sense of like, you could be looking up at water that’s reflecting the stars from the sky that you’re in. And the idea of them looking down at the earth and seeing these storms forming over America and moving around the globe, and they have this like huge fantasticly overseeing view of everything, everything is in total perspective. And way, way down there somewhere there’s this little dot in the ocean that is them.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

THREE: Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)

“It is very much about the power of love, and the strength that is created between two people when they’re very much in love, but the strength can also be threatening, violent, dangerous as well as gentle, soothing, loving. And it’s saying that if these two people could swap places – if the man could become the woman and the woman the man, that perhaps they could understand the feelings of that other person in a truer way, understanding them from that gender’s point of view, and that perhaps there are very subtle differences between the sexes that can cause problems in a relationship, especially when people really do care about each other. (The Tony Myatt Interview, November 1985)

‘Running Up That Hill’ was one of the first songs that I wrote for the album. It was very nice for me that it was the first single released, I’d always hoped that would be the way. It’s very much about a relationship between a man and a woman who are deeply in love and they’re so concerned that things could go wrong – they have great insecurity, great fear of the relationship itself. It’s really saying if there’s a possibility of being able to swap places with each other that they’d understand how the other one felt, that when they were saying things that weren’t meant to hurt, that they weren’t meant sincerely, that they were just misunderstood. In some ways, I suppose the basic difference between men and women, where if we could swap places in a relationship, we’d understand each other better, but this, of course, is all theoretical anyway. (Open Interview, 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

TWO: Jig of Life

“At this point in the story, it’s the future self of this person coming to visit them to give them a bit of help here. I mean, it’s about time they have a bit of help. So it’s their future self saying, “look, don’t give up, you’ve got to stay alive, ’cause if you don’t stay alive, that means I don’t.” You know, “and I’m alive, I’ve had kids [laughs]. I’ve been through years and years of life, so you have to survive, you mustn’t give up.”
This was written in Ireland. At one point I did quite a lot of writing, you know, I mean lyrically, particularly. And again it was a tremendous sort of elemental dose I was getting, you know, all this beautiful countryside. Spending a lot of time outside and walking, so it had this tremendous sort of stimulus from the outside. And this was one of the tracks that the Irish musicians that we worked with was featured on.
There was a tune that my brother Paddy found which… he said “you’ve got to hear this, you’ll love it.” And he was right [laughs], he played it to me and I just thought, you know, “this would be fantastic somehow to incorporate here.”

Was just sort of, pull this person up out of despair.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

ONE: The Big Sky

“Someone sitting looking at the sky, watching the clouds change. I used to do this a lot as a child, just watching the clouds go into different shapes. I think we forget these pleasures as adults. We don’t get as much time to enjoy those kinds of things, or think about them; we feel silly about what we used to do naturally. The song is also suggesting the coming of the next flood – how perhaps the “fools on the hills” will be the wise ones. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)

‘The Big Sky’ was a song that changed a lot between the first version of it on the demo and the end product on the master tapes. As I mentioned in the earlier magazine, the demos are the masters, in that we now work straight in the 24-track studio when I’m writing the songs; but the structure of this song changed quite a lot. I wanted to steam along, and with the help of musicians such as Alan Murphy on guitar and Youth on bass, we accomplished quite a rock-and-roll feel for the track. Although this song did undergo two different drafts and the aforementioned players changed their arrangements dramatically, this is unusual in the case of most of the songs. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)” – Kate Bush Encyclopedia

FEATURE: Spotlight: Debbii Dawson

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Debbii Dawson

__________

WITH one of the best…

PHOTO CREIT: isstudio

official websites I have seen from any artist, it is clear that Debbii Dawson takes care when it comes to every aspect. She is a Minnesota-born artist whose most recent E.P., How to Be Human, was released last year. Next month, she has a string of U.S. dates that will see her take her incredible music to new places. There are not that many interviews from this year. However, I want to include a couple of particularly interesting ones. First, I am heading back to last year and Pop Dust. They spoke with Debbii Dawson around the release of the How to Be Human E.P. This is an artist I feel everyone should listen to:

“For her second EP, Debbie Dawson set herself a just about impossible task: figure out how to be human. Yet, the result, How To Be Human, doesn’t purport to have all the answers. Instead, it offers scenes and sentiments of a person simply trying to live in the world — torn between the comfort of solitude and the call of the unpredictable outside world.

One of her major inspirations for the album is Emily Dickinson, she tells me. After grappling with her own reclusive tendencies, Dawson dug into Dickinson’s life and work. In the end, she has resolved not to end up like Dickinson. So she leaned away from her desire to isolate and into her need to create. And we, the audience. are so lucky to reap the benefits.

How To Be Human follows her 2023 debut EP, Learning, a folk-tinged proclamation of her utterly unique singer-songwriter voice. The songs convey the stumbling first-steps of establishing one’s own personhood, filled with musings that are raw and never pedantic. Although the title was exploratory the songs hold clear truths about lessons learned. Dawson’s wisdom is inherited from legendary country songwriters like Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline while her ear for melody was honed by hymns and sharpened by classical music. The result is 70s-inspired folk-pop with songs fit for a cinescape. They’re songs of yearning, but also songs for dancing around your bedroom just to remind you that you’re alive.

Her eclectic influences get even more surprising as she tells me about her writing process — sometimes humming over dishes, sometimes inspired by art she’s consuming. Yes, the Dickinson, but also movies like Shrek. You’ve heard of a wall of sound? Dawson combines her unique musical background, diverse influences, and personal identities to create a tapestry of sound that cocoons its listener and welcomes them into her world”.

“POPDUST: The sound really shifts from the first EP to this one. Learning was more folk-inspired, but How To Be Human sounds like ABBA meets Kasey Musgraves. Can you talk through the choices that you were making on both and why you gravitated to this new sound?

Debbii Dawson: When I was trying to find my sound when I first started doing music, I thought I had to pick one lane so as not to confuse people. A lot of that was me actually trying to come to terms with my own identity. And until I did that, the sound didn’t come. So I had to be comfortable being a person in multiple worlds — being a first generation American, being a person of color, growing up in a white town. I had a lot of things to deal with internally. Once I accepted that, the sound came and I realized I didn’t have to pick parts of myself. I could do more than one thing at a time and people would be fine with it.

POPDUST: How did those different parts of your identity impact you as a musician?

Debbii Dawson: Being South Asian, I had a different cultural upbringing and realities than my peers, so my version of what it means to be an American looks different from someone else. Even with other South Asians, it varies so much between us. Musically, I also had so many influences. I grew up with old country music like Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline because that’s the western music my parents, who are immigrants, had access to. And then I grew up listening to a lot of hymns and classical music. And I think you can hear all of those present in the stuff I make. And, of course, older songs like ABBA and later, QUEEN, and really amazing musicians really resonated with me.

POPDUST: When did you start picking out the music that you were listening to, and what were you gravitating to?

Debbii Dawson: I had more of a religious upbringing, so I wasn’t exposed to music a lot of other kids my age were. So I started listening to music for myself probably in middle school. I listened to Coldplay for the first time, and John Lennon, and a lot of Muse. And because I loved classical music too, it was really cool how these people could take from their influences, like blues influences — and I know Coldplay had a lot of influence from hymns as well — and see them make something palatable for people.

POPDUST: Connecting to people and connecting to fans is so special. How do you keep that alive on stage?

Debbii Dawson: It’s a different connection. I was super shy. I didn’t know if I could perform live. I wanted to throw up thinking about it, but I remember doing my first show last year and realizing that I really loved it, and it was different when people are connecting with the music. It’s not about me standing and having people look at me — it’s about what I’m bringing to them. It’s like, here look at this thing. So it’s been nice to connect with people in that way. It’s not me and listeners connecting, but me, the listeners, and the music. So it’s less scary”.

There are a couple of 2025 interviews I really need to get to. I am starting off with Atwood Magazine and their chat from July. Highlighting the track, You Killed the Music - which Debbii Dawson kicked the year off with -, we get to know this incredible artist a bit better. One that has such clear passion and focus. I am really interested to see where she heads now and what her future holds:

“For 29-year-old Dawson – who signed to legendary major RCA Records last year, and subsequently released the EP How to Be Human to critical acclaim – “You Killed the Music” is a story of both pain and perseverance. “Like a lot of breakup songs, the story explains how someone hurt me and I got through it,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “In this particular situation, an individual tainted something so pure for me, my love for music. It got to the point where I couldn’t listen to the radio anymore, let alone write or sing, without feeling sad or angry.”

That hurt cuts deep, but it’s the act of rising up and reclaiming her love that gives this song its power. “You killed the music / Left me in ruins / Wrapped up in quiet / Poison with silence,” Dawson sings, her voice trembling with both grief and fire. And yet, what begins in silence doesn’t end there. “I closed the door / And changed all the chords / Then my feet start to move…”

Atwood Magazine: You kicked off the year with the song “You Killed the Music,” an incredibly cinematic anthem full of liberation and an empowering spirit. What's the story behind this song, for you?

Debbii Dawson: Like a lot of breakup songs, the story explains how someone hurt me and I got through it. In this particular situation an individual tainted something so pure for me, my love for music. It got to the point where I couldn’t listen to the radio anymore, let alone write or sing, without feeling sad or angry.

I'm really struck by how freeing this song feels – it's like we're watching a phoenix's rebirth in real-time. What was it about this theme, of renewal and perseverance, that inspired you – in other words, why this topic, why so much passion and emotion behind it?

Debbii Dawson: Every single word in this song is a direct reference to what I was going through, I was having a really hard time so the emotions are very real. I’m singing about music but on a deeper level this song is about any person or circumstance that sucks the life out of you, breaks your spirit, and steals your spark. And then the triumph felt when it doesn’t get the better of you.

I also really love your refrain, “Now all these brand-new melodies keep falling off the tip of my tongue.” It's such a powerful visual, and it brings so much energy to the moment. What do you hope listeners take away from this song, and what have you taken away from creating it and now putting it out?

Debbii Dawson: Thank you! I hope listeners feel empowered and discover resilience they didn’t know they had. For anyone going through something that is leaving you feeling broken, you’re going to be ok. You will be the person you were before again, but whoever or whatever is making you feel that way has got to go!

Making this song was a cathartic experience for me. My heart was so heavy when I went into the studio to write this track, and I left that night floating in the air with a smile on my face.

Now with “Gut Feelings,” you've once again delivered this striking song about self-trust, belief in yourself and your instincts, etc. – it honestly feels like the next step after that initial release in “you killed the music.” What is this song about, for you, and how does it fit into the wider world of Debbii Dawson in 2025?

Debbii Dawson: You’re right! “You Killed The Music” was a song of victory, but “Gut Feelings” is me wishing I never got into that bad situation in the first place. This track is definitely building on the tone of what’s to come both visually and sonically. You can also probably expect more keytar solos in the future.

Just my cornball question over here, but what does trusting your gut feelings look like, for you?

Debbii Dawson: The lyric “trust your gut feeling” is a mantra, a reminder not to doubt myself. I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt before I give it to myself. I think for me, it looks like not second-guessing first instincts and being kinder to myself.

You have such an incredible way of harnessing 1980s disco elements and electropop inspired sounds, and bringing them to life in a way that feels fresh and new. Can you talk about your own musical inspirations, and what you hope to convey through these songs?

Debbii Dawson: I grew up listening to a lot of old music, oldies across various genres – country, disco, classical, religious hymns, gospel, jazz… and from several countries/languages as well. Although the range of influences is broad and I don’t always understand the lyrics I’m listening to, I know how a song makes me feel. I’m chasing that magic and I hope listeners can feel it.

For those who are just discovering you today through this writeup, what do you want them to know about you and your music?

Debbii Dawson: I’m a weird girl who makes weird music for weird people. I’ve lived my whole life looking for a place to belong, and music has given that to me. I hope the songs I make can provide that to the world as well”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Carianne Older for NME

I will end things with NME’s interview from earlier this month. An artist that is “embracing life outside her comfort zone, trading hushed confessionals for glittering pop fused with retro grooves”, I do hope that we get more interviews with Debbii Dawson soon. For anyone who has not discovered her music, do make sure you check her out as soon as possible:

“Dawson’s sound is rooted in the eclectic soundtrack of her upbringing: a mix of retro sensibilities and contemporary storytelling that resists easy categorisation. One weeknight might have been spent around the table with her family singing old bluegrass songs in three-part harmony, instruments in every hand. The next, they would be belting gospel standards she learned growing up in the church, or performing for tight-knit congregations at Congolese, Nigerian, Korean, Indian, and Mexican churches.

Those experiences weren’t just musical; they were cultural immersions, each one deepening her understanding of how community and sound intertwine. “It’s a really good way to experience a culture,” she says. “You get to be part of their traditions, and the music is so tied to that.”

Her influences stretch beyond those church halls. She grew up listening to American, Spanish and Italian oldies, classical compositions, religious hymns and old country music. These days, she’s been diving into Japanese city pop and Italian disco, sometimes through hours-long YouTube deep dives. She doesn’t track the Billboard charts obsessively – in fact, she admits she rarely listens to much current pop, which may be why her songs avoid the trappings of trends.

Instead, she treats every element, from chords to production, as part of the storytelling process. “Even if the lyrics are gone, I want the song to still portray the emotion I’m trying to get across,” she says. The studio, she adds, is her playground, a place to be meticulous and experimental, where a track might be stripped back to its essentials or layered until it shimmers.

For Dawson, the true measure of a song has nothing to do with genre or trends. She judges music by a transcendent quality that’s hard to put into words. “The magic is that feeling when something reaches through the speakers and touches you,” she says. “Or makes you smile. I’m always chasing that.” It’s what drew her to the aching ballad ‘Back At Your Door’, her 2024 collaboration with Orville Peck, whose own brand of cinematic country felt like a natural extension of her storytelling instincts.

Her touchstones are as varied as her influences: Whitney Houston for her undeniable, unreplicable presence; the sweeping drama of Hans Zimmer’s Lion King score; James Horner’s romantic swashbuckling in The Mask of Zorro. Film scores were an early lesson for her in how to evoke emotion without words, a skill she now brings into her own songwriting.

PHOTO CREDIT: Carianne Older for NME

When she talks about music, it’s with a mix of spirituality and playfulness. She describes it as something elemental, “like electricity” – a force that existed before humans and was discovered rather than invented. Writing a song, then, is about “tuning into the station” with like-minded collaborators, catching the wavelength that already exists. That process, she says, works best when approached with a childlike spirit: curious, open and always willing to play.

“There’s horrible stuff going on, but I hope what I’m making contributes some light,” she adds. “If someone can listen and feel like they’re not alone, that would feel magical.”

She knows that for her, growth isn’t about abandoning the quiet; it’s about finding ways to carry it into the crowd, then back home again. Sometimes that means company in unexpected forms – like the blue-eyed mannequin head she spotted on the street on her way to a concert. Her best friend named him Fernando, and now he travels with her, tucked neatly into a road case. “He’s usually hanging out during rehearsal,” she says, holding him up to the camera. “He has a secret Instagram page. The fans found out about it. They think it’s me running it, but it’s really Fernando”.

Go and spend some time with Debbii Dawson. Even if I am new to her work, I can identify the fact that she is going to be a huge name. Making music that is irresistible and highly memorable, everyone needs to get behind her. I do hope there are plans to come to the U.K. in the future. People here would love to see her. It is only right that we get to salute…

THE stunning Debbii Dawson!

__________

Follow Debbii Dawson

PHOTO CREDIT: Jennifer Juniper Stratford

Official:

https://www.debbiidawson.com/

Twitter:

https://x.com/debbiidawson

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/debbiidawson/

TikTok:

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

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGo69Zb7Cdsnh2Dig08AkPg

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/21YCHE0ZFflbHVTsyrCpgh?si=YJSnglp7RoqCpCjbRCNqIg

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/debbiidawson

FEATURE: Spotlight: Fcukers

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Lowry

Fcukers

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I have heard them…

PHOTO CREDIT: Sacha Lecca

being championed by BBC Radio 6 Music. I am going to get to some biography that, whilst a little out of date, gives us some background and detail about Fcukers. They are an Electronic duo formed in New York City in 2022. It consists of Shannon Wise and Jackson Walker Lewis. Before moving on, Ninja Tune provide some detail about a duo who are getting a lot of attention and buzz right now:

“If the protagonist of Daft Punks ‘Da Funk’ was walking around the streets of New York City today there’d be one thing playing on his boombox and it’d be three piece Fcukers. Whilst on his journey throughout the Lower East Side he’d probably end up running into members of the band working nightlife jobs as DJs, throwing parties in local bars and restaurants or simply finding the frequency of Manhattan’s beat and locking in.

Fronted by the energetic and enigmatic Shanny Wise (previously of The Shacks) and backed by producer/night life DJ Jackson Walker Lewis. Fcukers have discovered their own new frequency where a history of playing together and in other projects has led them to syncing on a singular vision built around 90s/00s house music, tasteful trip hop, big beat, indie rock and everything in between.

Having played only a handful of shows in their short existence Fcukers have managed to unite New York and now London’s night life scenes for exhilarating parties with sold out shows at Baby’s All Right, Drom, Sebright Arms and The Market Hotel… where music fans consisting of it girls and boys, skaters, models, culture seekers and more congregate to tap into the Fcukers frequency and dance the night away. Their recent performance at Market Hotel proving the hype is building around the three piece with the likes of Beck, Julian Casablancas, Clairo and Yves Tumor in attendance, joining the crowd of NYC’s coolest kids to catch an early glimpse of Fcukers.

Their debut tracks Mothers and Devils Cut are homages to parties gone before them but moreso to the maestros who such parties were built around such as Saint Etienne, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Coldcut, Todd Terry and so many more. Early reception included NYC house legend Junior Sanchez DM’ing the band to remix both tracks… a perfect nod to the forbearers of house music who so carefully built their own frequencies, and ignited a flame for Fcukers to carry onto dancefloors across the globe. They’ve since been tapped on the shoulder by music legends Lol Tolhurst, Budgie, Jacknife and James Murphy to remix their track Los Angeles with the result being an instant dance floor classic reminiscent of DFA’s golden years.

With only two songs released and a handful of shows under their belt, Fcukers have already garnered plenty of attention from tastemaker artists such as Dom Dolla, Avalon Emerson and Jockstrap performing alongside them across the US. Fashion icon and cultural influencer Hedi Slimane of Celine jumped on Fcukers early, flying the group out to Paris Fashion Week to DJ their closing party. The attention didn’t stop there with the Vans team flying Fcukers out to perform at the House Of Vans and St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival Stages at SXSW Sydney in October. With a stopover to performing in Tokyo they would achieve the feat of having performed their first ten shows across four continents…unheard of in the modern era of music…maybe ever.

Early praise and radio spins have come from the likes of Apple Music’s Wilko along with BBC 1’s Jack Saunders and Ariel Free with the latter lauding “...really really new this band but getting lots of people very very excited…This one has a real vibe and beat to it, gonna get you dancing”.

With a handful of performances across the globe on the cards for Fcukers to close out 2023 they’ll be busy digging deeper into their crates as they work on new music to be released in 2024 with the stage set for the rest of the world to tune in”.

Like many artists I include in this feature, I have to say that I hate their name. Fcukers is objectively a terrible name and one that is hard to say. Also, if you say it like f*ckers, then you won’t be able to on radio. Luckily, the music compensates for a poor choice of group name! Their Baggy$$ E.P. was released last September. Fcukers are playing a run of amazing dates. They have some U.K. gigs coming soon, starting with Gorilla, Manchester on 25th November. There are some 2024 interviews I am going to include before bringing things up to date. NOTION spoke with Fcukers about their debut E.P., Baggy$$. We also learn about the duo’s inspirations and “making music for the rave and late-night introspection”:

“There wasn’t much of a creative process, Baggy$$ was more of a gut instinct: “We were working at Jackson’s house, then we were like, ‘Should we put out a song? Hmm, maybe soon,’” explains a blasé Shanny. “Then we were like, ‘Oh shit, what if we booked a show? That’ll force us to finish it.’” Engineered by their friend Ivan, who reached out on Instagram and said he’d do it for “60 bucks”, and often written after rolling in from bars and clubs in the early hours of the morning, the project has the chaotic carefreeness of someone spilling a vodka Red Bull on your trainers in a rave.

In terms of inspiration, Jackson and Shanny have pulled from a rich tapestry of dance music. The clink-clanking drums on ‘UMPA’ sounds straight off an early M.I.A record while ‘Heart Dub’ belongs in the second room of your favourite underground club. ‘Tommy’ on the other hand feels inherently New York. After their show in LA, Fcukers found themselves at Los Angeles State Historic Park DJing with Armand Van Helden, the NYC house legend famous for singles like ‘You Don’t Know Me’ and releasing on iconic house labels Strictly Rhythm and Nervous Recordings. “Armand is like my Kobe Bryant,” says Jackson, but before settling on dance music, they were individually slogging around in mildly successful indie outfits. Tired of the typical band format, they started working separately on solo material, Jackson was taking cues from The Chemical Brothers while Shanny had been getting into reggae and dubstep.

“I had been working on stuff for a while, recording on my own and fucking around,” says Shanny before pausing for a drag of her cigarette: “When I first met Jackson, I didn’t know he was on the same page but I wanted to try electronic music, so it kind of just worked out.” Luckily, he had an early demo of the growling ‘Homies Don’t Shake’, which Shanny agreed to sing on, bringing surrealistic lines like “Silks real, leathers fake, say you’ll DJ at my wake / Blacked out, show up late ‘cause homie don’t shake” to the raw instrumental. They found themselves in the less formulaic and more spontaneous aspects of electronica but haven’t disregarded guitar music entirely. “I still like indie rock; I still listen to rock bands. I play a couple of different instruments, guitar mainly, but I started to feel slightly restricted. We wanted to try something else, just for fun,” says Jackson.

PHOTO CREDIT: 91 Rules

Over the years, the cross-pollination between indie bands and DJs has been palpable. Back home in the UK, inspired by heady nights at the infamous Haçienda and the northern free party scene, bands like Happy Mondays were colliding indie and rave to make something entirely their own. An explosion of pills, thrills and collaborative possibility infiltrated British music: DJs like the late, great Andrew Weatherall started working with Primal Scream and Paul Oakenfold remixed hits from bands like The Cure, The Stone Roses and Massive Attack.

It’s part of the reason for the connection between New York and the UK’s music scene. Until New Order visited The Big Apple in the early ‘80s, their releases were overshadowed by the post-punk of Joy Division. A trip to the iconic discotheque Paradise Garage inspired the disco and electro elements of their subsequent music and convinced them to invest in a new venture, opening the Haçienda with their label Factory Records. “Even The Chemical Brothers used to be called The Dust Brothers because they were so heavily influenced by the US duo of the same name,” acknowledges Jackson. “There has always been an artistic dialogue between us. That’s what I love so much about dance music, it’s about the exchanging of ideas, theft and doing your version of someone else’s thing. In other genres, it’s like, ‘Oh, you ripped us off’, but in dance music, the whole idea of ‘ripping off’ is the pretence, you know?”

Although New York continues to change, Fcukers are constantly finding new ways of using its spaces. From playing in unfinished swimming pools to throwing their EP launch party in an empty dim sum hall, the band prefer venues that are, well, not strictly venues at all. This is part of a blueprint that has undoubtedly made them one of the city’s most exciting and unpredictable acts. As Jackson explains, they don’t announce their shows until days before and rarely adhere to a traditional gig format. “When I used to throw parties as a DJ, you couldn’t announce it a week in advance because people would forget. When we started the band and wanted our gigs to operate like parties, people were like, ‘What are you guys doing?”, but the spontaneity has played into their hands, and as an act looking to challenge what a band can be, it means they have a greater connection with their audience.

“I think there’s this preconceived notion that if you’re a band, you have to play at somewhere like the Shacklewell Arms, the Sebright Arms or wherever: the curfew’s at 11 pm, you have a pint and then everyone goes home. But because we have these dual backgrounds between indie and dance music, we realised that the rules don’t need to be so strict. No one is stopping you from starting a show at 10 pm and performing at midnight, having DJs play before and afterwards. From the very first show, we’ve made sure all of them feel like parties”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Eimar Lynch

I love reading about their origins. How Fcukers have grown from this humble and promising duo – well, actually a trio at one point – and transcended beyond New York. Now a global act with demand around the world, you wonder just how far they can go. FACE spoke with Shannon Wise and Jackson Walker Lewis in December last year. Going back to the earliest days of Fcukers:

“In March 2023, Fcukers played their first show at Williamsburg venue Baby’s All Right. Their live set-up – with ex-Spud Cannon drummer Ben Scharf behind the kit, Jackson playing bass and keys and Shanny raving onstage with the mic – appealed to indie kids and clubbers alike. Shanny loved the feeling of fronting a dance act. ​“Having gone from playing every show singing really soft and it’s really chill, to jumping around and everyone’s dancing and cheering and stuff… I was just like: ​‘Oh, interesting! Maybe we should play another show.’”

Then, looking to NYC’s wild post-pandemic party scene, they realised they didn’t want to just stick to the traditional indie rock circuit. ​“You could book a dim sum hall and play at midnight,” Jackson says. ​“People are like: ​‘Oh the shows are so interesting.’ Well, yeah. But in the party sphere, it’s a more common thing to do.”

One month after the Baby’s show, the band got a DM from a scout for Celine. Hedi Slimane, then the French fashion house’s creative director, wanted to shoot them in New York for his legendary Rock Diary, a long-running series of black and white photo collections on super cool indie kids. ​“I was like, this is really surprising, because we are so not his vibe – we wear baggy pants,” says Jackson. Hedi Slimane cancelled the day before, but Shanny, who didn’t get the memo, turned up for the shoot anyway. (“I think I was, like, drunk when you texted me,” she says to Jackson). But a month later, all was forgiven when Celine flew Fcukers to Paris to DJ the label’s closing party for fashion week.

Keen to capitalise on the impromptu Europe trip, they DM’d everyone they knew in London hoping to put on a show, eventually playing the basement of East London pub the Sebright Arms. ​“I didn’t have a place to stay,” Shanny remembers of that July 2023 gig. ​“We played the show the first night, I left my shit at the venue, went out partying and woke up on the couch somewhere the next day.” The London trip was unglamorous, but memorable. They played bongos while tripping on mushrooms at an afters hosted by a member of Black Country, New Road. At the beginning of 2024, Fcukers joined BC, NR on the roster of the Ninja Tune label, which released their debut EP Baggy$$ in September.

Except, wait. Isn’t there something missing from this? Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that Fcukers used to be a trio. As well as playing drums live and doing press with the band until very recently, Ben has a writing credit on Homie Don’t Shake. Now, all of a sudden, Fcukers are a duo. Jackson tells me that Ben quit the band to go back to school: ​“He always wanted to be a doctor”. With Fcukers, he says that Ben was ​“kind of along for the ride”, and that ​“those six months when we were meeting up in the studio, [it was] always [Shanny] and I. He was never a studio member.”

Jackson groans when I mention a quote from the band’s NME cover story (Ben said that Spud Cannon was ​“some nimby kimby indie rock bullshit” that he and Jackson ​“grew out of”). ​“I wish [Ben] hadn’t said that, because I don’t feel that way – I like indie rock. I don’t feel that way at all.” Shanny, who said in the NME interview that she was ​“over indie shit” when she joined Fcukers, clarifies her stance: ​“I don’t really want to hang [shit] on anyone’s music. It’s all just music and expression”.

There are a couple of other interviews I am including before finishing this feature. It is no surprise that many were hyping Fcukers last year. As DORK write in their introduction for Fcukers, “New York’s wildest electronic duo turned spontaneous chaos and couch-surfing into their ticket to stardom”. Their story and rise is pretty amazing. If you do not know much about the duo, then make sure you follow them and check out their music:

“Of course, playing shows around the world is one thing, but you also need the tunes to pack in the suitcase. On the back of their early handful of singles, including remix-fodder ‘Mothers’, this year saw the release of their debut EP ‘Baggy$$’. Made up of a handful of tracks that neatly introduce the pair’s house-loaded inspirations and influences, if the raw-eyed, certain-look artwork didn’t give it away, then the immediate wall-trembling, dust-off-the-shelves rapture-inducing, sing-along igniting ‘Bon Bon’ should give a swift indicator that Fcukers are here to wake you up.

But there’s more than a rabble-rousing round of one styling.

“We felt like it was a fun sampler of our range, where we don’t just make house music,” Shanny explains. “We like a bunch of different kinds of music, and we like to fuck around with a bunch of different styles. So, here you go, here’s some different styles.” For instance, ‘I Don’t Wanna’ smokily oozes a reggae dub heart, while ‘Tommy’ follows this thread to a darker end as it radiates bass with the ferocity of an atom bomb. But there still exists an ease at which Fcukers can electrify with their infectious hooks throughout the head-rush-inducing run of ‘Bon Bon’, ‘Heart Dub’, and ‘Homie Don’t Shake’.

While there are no concerns about being pigeonholed, or at least avoidance of, they are keen to prove that they have a lot more going on. “Stuff that I listen to isn’t always house,” Shanny explains. “It’s a lot of dance hall and reggae and trip-hop, so it was a fun opportunity to showcase that.” It’s helped Shanny’s confidence, too. “Fcukers just feels different, and it’s another side of myself as an artist that I haven’t tapped into as much before,” she smiles. “It’s made me encourage myself to keep trying new things with music and making all different kinds of stuff.”

Having made tremendous strides, there’s no stopping this vibrant wave of energy. Even with all of the opportunities they’ve hungrily gobbled up, it still doesn’t change anything. Fcukers’ only agenda is to have a good time. Currently working on their debut album and other live shows that Shanny remains tight-lipped on (“Jackson will kill me,” she laughs), 2025 looks set to be even stronger. “We’ve been continuously working on music this whole time,” says Shanny. “We have about maybe fifteen to twenty demos and some of them will probably be on there, and then we’re still writing a bunch too.”

But even that seems like a bit too much of a plan. For Fcukers, it’s still most important, above all, to get lost in the noise – their own and in the night ahead. Let’s see where it takes them”.

I am going to end with this feature that was published in May. It collated artists who are getting Gen Z off of their backsides and into the crowds. These musicians who are making music so compelling. I have given Fcukers a hard time for their name. However, when you consider their music and what they are doing right now, you can forgive them that!

“That kind of physical release is in demand. The New York–based duo Fcukers, who make guitar-tinged dance music, have grown a fan base through live shows and word-of-mouth hype. Vocalist Shanny Wise and guitarist-producer Jackson Walker Lewis played in separate indie rock bands for years; then Lewis recruited Wise to add vocals to his ’90s dance tracks. In 2023, they played their first live show at Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right. It sold out. “It was at midnight, we were all fucked up, and everyone was just partying,” says Wise. “A&R people were like, ‘How does this band get all these people to their first show?’ ” says Lewis. Their rise has been propulsive. They were handpicked by Hedi Slimane to DJ a Celine party and have collaborated with LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden. Their debut album is in the works”.

There is a debut album coming pretty soon. For the moment, try and catch Fcukers if you can. I am fairly new to their music but, after hearing them played a lot on BBC Radio 6 Music, I have become invested. This year has been a busy one for Fcukers. I think that next year will be more eventful and successful. The duo of Shannon Wise and Jackson Walker Lewis are bringing joy to people…

AROUND the world.

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Follow Fcukers

PHOTO CREDIT: Eimar Lynch

Official:

https://www.fcukers.net/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/fcukers__/

TikTok:

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

Bandcamp:

https://fcukers.bandcamp.com/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3LrEJlr7JKuaxoVkfzwf2g

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3UtzOHYm3lQALkKzVD4wyO?si=hmBSCi84Rv-_Tylf6JQo0w

FEATURE: Back to Black? The Downsides and Complicated Legacy of Indie Sleaze

FEATURE:

 

 

Back to Black?

IN THIS PHOTO: Blake Fielder-Civil with Amy Winehouse/PHOTO CREDIT: Denise Truscello/Getty Images

The Downsides and Complicated Legacy of Indie Sleaze

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THERE is a lot of…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Nash hosts the new eight-part BBC podcast, The Rise and Fall of … Indie Sleaze

romanticising a period of music and culture called Indie Sleaze. It was fashionable and in vogue between 2006 and 2012. Not necessarily only happening in London, the capital was a hub for this party-focused and messy aesthetic. Though its roots can be traced back to the New York in the late-1990s/early-2000s. Although we can reminisce about the vintage clothing and grungy/glamorous look, do we look at that times through rose-tinted glasses?! Artists such as Charli xcx are probably the modern-day epitome of a time in music and entertainment that is over twenty years old. That idea of care-free recklessness and a sense of freedom without much consequence. If that idea of going back to that time or recalling it with fondness seems attractive and escapist against a modern world that is brutal and relentless bleak, it is worth remembering the realities of that time and how difficult it was – especially for women. TikTok particularly is fuelling this narrative and feeling that the Indie Sleaze years were a wonderful and easy time to be around. Maybe it was for some. However, as Emily Maddick recently wrote for Glamour, Gen Z need to stop glamourising and romanticising this time:

“There’s a lot of hype around the ‘indie sleaze’ era of the mid to late noughties right now. According to the internet, the media and Tiktok, Gen Z are currently obsessed with the period from around 2006 - 2012; its fashion, its music, its icons. “‘Such a cool time to be alive’: why Gen Z is so nostalgic about ‘indie sleaze’” ran one BBC headline last month. There are thousands of videos on TikTok mythologising this period and heralding its revival, mimicking its makeup, looks, style and trends, with many posts having views in their millions.

Britain was very much the centre of this moment. The fashion was hipster subculture, performativley vintage, mixing 70s, 80s and grunge. Think Kate Moss and Alexa Chung at Glastonbury with their bum-cheek-grazing denim cut-offs; skinny scarves, skinny jeans, scruffy hair, band t-shirts, lashings of gold jewellery; Amy Winehouse with her winged eyeliner, tattoos and tennis dresses holding court at The Hawley Arms in Camden. Topshop Oxford Circus was the fashion mecca - and this month’s revival of the hallowed Brit high street brand, which closed its doors in 2021, has only intensified the indie sleaze revival. Last week, musician Kate Nash, who rose to fame at this time, released a BBC Sounds podcast, The Rise and Fall of Indie Sleaze. The 6-part podcast features interviews with many of the musicians from the British bands that defined this era: The Libertines, The Arctic Monkeys, Razorlight, The Kooks. And while it was these male Brit musicians who provided the soundtrack to this scene, it was their love lives and the party kids surrounding them that provided the scandal. As Kate Nash points out on the podcast:

“By 2007 - the UK music scene had jumped from the pages of music magazines to The Sun, The Mirror and The Daily Mail and the girlfriends who played a big part in this” she says on the podcast.

On her podcast, Kate Nash describes how while it was definitely a liberating, fun and unique moment, it also, “contained a lot of darkness and chaos” adding, “I feel lucky that I grew up in it and lucky that I survived it too.”

And while I really don’t want to be a buzzkill, here are some key points that I believe might prompt the younger generation to reconsider romanticising this unique moment in pop culture history.

Sleaze. The clue’s in the name. Although this moniker has been bestowed on the era posthumously, there’s no getting away from it - it was a sleazy, seedy, grubby, druggy and dangerous time. It was also a horrendous time to be a woman in the public eye.

Yes, I’m talking about the very real, very pervasive and very shitty attitude to women’s bodies that was very much the norm. This was peak toxic diet culture, a time pre the Body Positivity movement (although RIP to that in 2025, thanks Ozempic). The notion that we could actually love our bodies and celebrate them whatever size they were and have women in the public eye extolling exactly that, was completely alien. Skeletal thin was the aspiration. And yes, I know that it was perpetrated by the magazines of the time (who can forget Heat magazine’s circle of shame?) and working in that culture is not something I am proud of. In fact, I remember Amy Winehouse giving an interview to Grazia, published around the end of 2007 and shockingly saying that she believed she only got really famous when she got really skinny. And we now know that eating disorders were just some of the many demons she battled with in her short life.

Also, the very real and pervasive shitty attitude to female celebrities at that time in general - not just their bodies. Nineties ‘ladette’ culture was still hanging around and famous women were held to toxic and damaging double standards. No one spoke about mental health ( and I mean, no one) and the abusive behaviour and predatory power dynamics in the entertainment industry that eventually led to the #MeToo movement of 2017 was standard”.

A new podcast, The Rise and Fall … of Indie Sleaze is available on BBC Sounds. No doubt its influence on today’s artists is huge. A lot of the acts who were popular during the Indie Sleaze years – such as The Libertines, Amy Winehouse, Razorlight, Arctic Monkeys – are influencing today. Noy only in terms of their sound and fashion. Their attitude and how they conducted their careers. It is always amazing when artists look back at genres and times in music and utilise aspects but update them. Make them unique. I will drop in some of the tracks that could be defined as Indie Sleaze bangers or anthems. Songs that takes many of us back to a time that did seem less foreboding and liberated. Living in areas like Camden must have been fascinating at this time. The artists playing there and the buzz of the street! We should look fondly at the music because some terrific artists started during the Indie Sleaze era. It must have been energising for them to see like-minded artists around them. Some classic albums from that time. Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black (2006) and The Libertines’ eponymous album of 2004. Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights of 2002. Even though many see Indie Sleaze as a scene that started or exploded around 2006, its origins can be dated and traced back over half a decade before then. This 2024 article from Rough Trade captures the spirit of the time with the album recommendations. Those that were soundtracking the lives of so many people. In terms of what defined the time and where its roots formed, it does sound quite idealistic and evocative:

“Sweaty floors, skinny jeans and angular indie rock. The term ‘indie sleaze’ was coined in 2021 to encapsulate the grimy, energetic, carefree sound and aesthetic of a scene which emerged in the early noughties. The music of indie sleaze all shared a distinctive 'hedonistic' aesthetic, one which prevailed in the music videos and the fashion of its artists, in their low-maintenance sometimes kooky clothing, a 'partying chic'. The Instagram account @indiesleaze, run by a Toronto-born creator, has further defined the era, curating a totally engrossing profile dedicated to some of the most iconic and representative pictures and figures of the period - from early 2000s Kate Moss at Glastonbury to BTS photos of the Skins cast.

With its primary origins tracing back to a wave of New York City indie rock bands with a post-grunge attitude (The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol), indie sleaze broadened over time to become an umbrella for various styles of indie music. The era gave us many albums characterised by their fusion of dance and punk (Digitalism, CSS, Mason, Daft Punk, Justice, LCD Soundsystem and more) whilst at the same time, many indie sleaze artists were better defined by their pure rock and roll energy, with the likes of Arctic Monkeys, The Kills and The Libertines and later Vampire Weekend prominent in an unforgettable stretch in music's history”.

Those who are using TikTok to shine new light onto Indie Sleaze are probably not aware of how bad and dark it was for so many people. Of course, the music is fantastic and it was an amazing time for many. However, for many others – especially women -, the reality was quite grim. And those who might not have even been alive at the time and are learning about Indie Sleaze through modern acts who are reviving the genre – such as The Dare, as DAZED wrote in 2024 – need to understanding true context and the downsides. Returning to that Glamour article, life for many high-profile women was awful and defined by harassment and abuse. When we think about the music and the ‘good time’, we also need to think about those for whom the Indie Sleaze period was a living nightmare:

“Speaking to GLAMOUR, drag queen, DJ and music producer, Jodie Harsh, whose memoir on the noughties, You Had To Be There is published this September, says: “[back then] everything was a little darker, a little later, a little more smudged and ripped-up…" Jodie, who was a staple on the London party circuit - and who was once famously pictured handing out cups of tea to paparazzi with Amy Winehouse outside her Camden home - also recalls how misogynistic it was. “The noughties were a really strange time to be famous and female. The paparazzi were up-skirting eighteen year old girls and hurling abuse outside people’s front doors to rile up a reaction, and images of broken dreams seemed to be what sold the most. It was of course misogynistic, and famous girls were almost expected to put up with the behaviour, as if it was part of the fame contract - a trade-off for making lots of money. We know what happened to Amy, and I don’t know that we’ve learned from it yet”.

I would advise people to listen to the eight-part The Rise and Fall … of Indie Sleaze podcast. We will get a real sense of that period and the incredible music and artists who made so many feel loved, happy and understood. It was quite a free and hedonistic time, though that is not what we should solely remember. It was a hugely important time in music. You can feel the effects and reverberations to this day. However, for so many women in the public eye and out, it was a truly frightening and unrelenting time. If so many right now are romanticising Indie Sleaze and there is this new wave of affection for the cool and party lifestyle, we cannot ignore the grim and sleaze. It is good to remember the music and artists but, in terms of its legacy regarding how so many women were viewed and treated, we really do not want to go…

BACK to black.

FEATURE: Shining a Light on a New Kate Moss-Hosted Podcast: David Bowie: 1970-1975

FEATURE:

 

 

Shining a Light on a New Kate Moss-Hosted Podcast

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Schapiro

David Bowie: 1970-1975

__________

ALTHOUGH it has been…

IN THIS PHOTO: Two icons: David Bowie and Kate Moss/PHOTO CREDIT: Ellen von Unwerth

nine years since we lost David Bowie, there is still this massive interest. It was a huge shock to learn of his death in January 2016. Almost a decade after that terrible blow, there has been plenty of retrospection and some posthumous released. The archive is still pretty packed I think and I would imagine more albums and songs coming through. Documentaries and David Bowie books. Even though there are few artists around now you can directly link to Bowie, his influence is spreading right through music and so many other industries. In terms of his fashion and reinventions. So many aspects of his career and life. Such a fascinating artist who released seminal albums. With a career spanning fifty years, there are so many amazing eras and periods where he moved between looks, styles and sounds. Every fan will have their own favourite David Bowie album, period or character. In terms of his most important time in music, one could argue it occurred between 1970 and 1975. From 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World to 1975’s Young Americans, there was this evolution and shift. This artist growing in confidence. Aladdin Sane of 1973 was a huge album. 1975 ended a very productive and successful period for David Bowie. In 1976, Bowie released Station to Station and then, in 1977, Low and “Heroes”. It is startling to see how much he grew between 1970 and 1975. How that five-year period enforced his work for the next few years.

I mention this, because there is going to be a new eight-part series broadcast on BBC Radio 6 Music next month (it is available from 10th September). Music Uncovered, David Bowie: Changeling will be fronted and hosted by Kate Moss. She and David Bowie were friends. No doubt, Bowie’s style and fashion genius influenced Kate Moss. Also, his music was hugely important. Part of a series of shows on the station this autumn, I am excited to learn more about David Bowie’s 1970-1975. This is what Rolling Stone UK said in their feature:

“A new podcast series hosted by Kate Moss which explores the life and music of David Bowie is among the new programmes being offered by BBC Radio 6 Music this Autumn.

Music Uncovered, David Bowie: Changeling will see the supermodel, a close friend of Bowie, exploring how the music icon transformed into Ziggy Stardust in the early 1970s and the path he forged to becoming a rock legend.

“David Bowie was a very special person. Someone who was much more than a friend – he was an enigma. So, when the chance came to dive into this extraordinary five-year chapter of Bowie’s life for 6 Music and BBC Sounds, hearing from those who joined him on his creative journey and those he continues to inspire, I was excited to help share the story of such an incredible transformation. This podcast is a real celebration of my friend, a true British icon,” Kate Moss said.

The new eight part podcast will explore Bowie between 1970-75 and features rare and unheard interviews with him, including audio from the BBC Archive and a 2001 chat with Des Shaw, the creator of the podcast.

Other notable names lending their thoughts to the new series include Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, Boy George, Edward Enninful, Chrissie Hynde, Elton John, Goldie, Robbie Williams and Twiggy. It will also feature archival interviews from the likes of Lady Gaga, the late Sinéad O’Connor and Lou Reed, and Tracey Emin”.

I am going to end this feature with a playlist collating the best tracks and deep cuts from David Bowie’s albums between 1970 and 1975. I want to look at each end of that half-decade. Starting out with this feature from last year that documents and dissects the making of 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World. This was a moment of real growth and creative breakthrough. A moment that set him on course to stardom. I think David Bowie defined music in the 1970s. This album was the first statement from an artist who would soon be seen as an icon and true innovator:

“By March 1970, Major Tom was becoming something of an albatross to his 23-year old earthly counterpart David Bowie. The success of his single Space Oddity, which reached No.5 in the UK and sold nearly 150,000 copies, had pushed up fees for Bowie’s live shows and made him flush for the first time in his six-year career. But the song’s connection to the Apollo Moon landing had coloured it with a novelty status that he was finding it difficult to get past. His latest single, The Prettiest Star, written for his new bride Angie and featuring Marc Bolan on lead guitar, sold only 800 copies and didn’t even make the charts.

Bowie had other troubles on his mind too. He was grieving for his father, who had died a few months earlier at the age of 56. His management contract with Ken Pitt had soured to the point where he wanted out. There was also the delicate matter of his schizophrenic half-brother Terry, who’d been living with his parents. After Bowie’s dad passed away, his mother, unable to cope with Terry, committed him to Cane Hill Asylum. Bowie visited him regularly, but felt increasingly guilty over not being able to do more to help.

Looking back in a 1971 Phonograph interview, Bowie summed up his state of mind at that time: “I really felt so depressed, so aimless, and this torrential feeling of: ‘What’s it all for anyway?’ A lot of it went through that period.”

So it made sense to stay cocooned with Angie in their flat at Haddon Hall, a shambling old Victorian house in Beckenham. Sharing the rent was Bowie’s producer pal Tony Visconti, and his girlfriend. The record that became The Man Who Sold The World began with their late-night conversations about the idea of moving away from singles toward albums.

“We wanted to make an art-rock album,” Visconti said in Dylan Jones’s book David Bowie: A Life. “On the Space Oddity album we had no idea what we were doing. It was all over the map. So we tried something different, something harder. We just threw caution to the wind. It had to be seen by our peers as a work of art rather than just a pop album, as David and I were into the idea of a concept album. The single went out of favour for a while because the likes of Led Zeppelin and Yes were making albums that were outselling singles for the first time We wanted to be seen as a great album group.”

The Man Who Sold The World was released on November 4, 1970 in the US, and April 10 the following year in the UK. Rolling Stone described it “intriguing and chilling”. Phonograph Record praised it for “trying to define some new province of modern music”.

In support of the album, Bowie did a brief tour of US college radio stations, showing up in his Mr. Fish dress, confounding and charming DJs. But since Olav Wyper, his champion at the label, had departed, Mercury did little to promote the record. By early 1971, Tony Defries was already busy engineering Bowie’s move to RCA Victor.

The pushy manager’s increasingly hands-on presence in Bowie’s life ended up forcing Visconti out of the picture and on towards his fruitful partnership with Marc Bolan and T.Rex.

“David was assigning his power to other people,” Visconti said in The Golden Years. “When he meets someone, and he falls in love, forget it. The person’s the one until he’s severely hurt. I said to David: ‘If you go with Tony Defries, I’m not going to go with you.’”

The album enjoyed a brief resurgence in 1974 after Lulu had a UK No.3 hit with her cover of the title track. Produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson, and featuring the Spiders From Mars as a backing band, it veered even further towards the Berlin cabaret feel that was hinted at in the original.

“I didn’t think The Man Who Sold The World was the best song for my voice, but it was such a strong song in itself,” Lulu told author Marc Spitz. “Bowie kept telling me to smoke more cigarettes, to give my voice a certain quality”.

I want to bring in a feature that Dig! published in 2020 that took us inside the making of David Bowie’s Young Americans. That 1975 was another music shift. Not one that thrilled all fans and critics. However, if you look at where he was in 1970 and where he ended in 1975, he had undergone so many changes and was constantly shifting and discovering. Young Americans is one of his most exceptional and underrated albums:

“Young Americans was the first Bowie album to offer a truly startling musical about-face. A shift from the doomy glam of 1974’s Diamond Dogs, it featured his take on the soul and funk music he’d loved as a youth, and then fallen back in love with on that album’s US tour, the final leg of which was variously known as The Soul Tour and The Philly Dogs tour, after the sound Philadelphia International Records had minted on their rise to becoming the Motown of the 70s.

Remarkably, Bowie pulled off his transition from red-haired alien to blue-eyed soul boy. Released on 7 March 1975, Young Americans was a Top 10 hit in the US, and its second single, the irresistible sparse funk of Fame, became his first US No.1. Not only that, but in November 1975 Bowie received the ultimate nod of approval when he was invited to be one of the first white artists to perform on the hugely influential US TV show Soul Train. The success of Young Americans gave him the artistic freedom to follow his muse wherever it took him.

“Young Americans, the album Fame is from, is, I would say, the definitive plastic soul record,” Bowie told Playboy in 1976. “It’s the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey.” Despite what he said after the fact, Bowie went out of his way to make his take on R&B and soul as authentic as possible.

While on the first leg of his Diamond Dogs tour, Bowie connected with the soul music ruling the US airwaves at the time, reawakening a deep musical love and providing inspiration for his next move. Over the course of the first leg of the tour (captured on the 1974 album David Live, which had been recorded from 10 to 13 July 1974 at the Tower Theater, Pennsylvania), Bowie began rearranging his own songs and covering classic soul tracks like Eddie Floyd’s Stax hit Knock On Wood, to reflect his new musical crush. When it came to demoing material for his new studio album, he was keen to go to the source of the “Philly sound” – Sigma Studios’ house band, MFSB, a loose group of more than 30 crack studio musicians who’d backed The O’Jays, Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes and The Spinners, while finding huge success of their own with 1973’s Love Is The Message”.

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie is seen with a large barking dog while working on the artwork for his album, Diamond Dogs, in London in 1974/PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O'Neill/Getty Images

I will end with this feature from TIME. It was excerpted from TIME’s David Bowie: His Life on Earth, an eighty-page, fully illustrated commemorative edition. Available at retailers and at Amazon.com. It is clear that the first half of the 1970s was a hugely important period for David Bowie. It will be interesting to hear the eight-part BBC Radio 6 Music series about this period. How David Bowie’s 1970-1975 was this fascinating time. One that not only changed his career but the music landscape around him:

“Call him clairvoyant: Way back in the 1970s, David Bowie envisioned key parts of our culture today. During the most crucial decade in Bowie’s career, his forward-thinking approach to sexual identity, celebrity image and musical presentation tipped off many of the hot-button issues that currently obsess us. Think about it: the way social media allows us to create alternate selves at will, the manner in which society increasingly views gender as fluid, as well as the theatrical identities of modern stars from Daft Punk to the hip-hop collective Odd Future all have seeds in Bowie’s quick-change run of characters in the ’70s. Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke and the Man Who Fell to Earth, taken together, made a statement that rejected the very notion of a fixed self. At the same time, they gave rock a wholly new theatrical flourish.

Just as prime-time Bowie tried on and discarded characters as blithely as one would clothes, so he ran mad through a dizzying range of musical styles. He made innovations in art pop, glam rock, German industrial music and more, along the way minting a dense discography of classics. During that pivotal decade, he didn’t release a single less than defining work, creating a dozen successive touchstones.

While Bowie’s lithe figure and pretty face gave him an androgynous aura from the start, he didn’t use that role in so focused, and shocking, a way until the U.K. cover of his 1970 album The Man Who Sold the World. It found him draped over a chaise longue wearing a dress and sporting long tresses that seemed less like the hippie casual norm of the day than like something out of old Hollywood. When he appeared in a similar fashion for an interview with Rolling Stone, its writer described him as “ravishing” and “almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall.” Even so, Bowie’s U.S. label of the era, RCA, reissued the album in a less provocative cover, depicting Bowie in a more common rockstar pose: a macho kick. The music inside led Bowie in a harder-rocking direction than its folk and pop-leaning predecessors. The title track proved enduring enough to inspire an aching cover version by Nirvana on their 1994 concert album, MTV Unplugged in New York.

It was Bowie’s next work, Hunky Dory, that kicked off his classic run. On one level, that 1971 album seemed to boldface the star’s influences, with one track titled “Song for Bob Dylan” and another “Andy Warhol.” A third cut, “Queen Bitch,” nodded to the decadent rock flash of the Velvet Underground. At the same time, Bowie transformed those references into a sound very much his own, marked by high-drama vocals and a deep melodic command. “Life on Mars?” had such a theatrical flair, it later provided a suitable cover for Barbra Streisand. Bowie advertised his ability to move swiftly between all these styles with the album’s opening proclamation, “Changes,” a song that doubled as a mantra.

To that end, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars found him performing in an entirely new guise, as the title character backed by his raging Spiders rock band. “Offstage, I’m a robot; onstage, I achieve emotion,” Bowie said back then of his love of assuming characters. “It’s probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David.”

Bowie could have tarried longer on the glam-rock bandwagon he had helped create, but he changed yet again on 1975’s Young Americans. Enlisting a talented but then little known singer, Luther Vandross, who co-wrote a track and helped with arrangements, Bowie offered what he called “plastic soul,” a cheeky label for his co-opting of African-American R&B and funk, heard in hits like the title track and the No. 1 dance standard “Fame.”

Bowie’s description of the music may have advertised its inauthenticity, but that only enhanced his consistent outsider stance”.

The interview archives and unheard audio will be a treat for David Bowie fans. It will provide new context and insight into David Bowie and his 1970s. Contributions from Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, Boy George, Edward Enninful, Chrissie Hynde, Elton John, Goldie, Robbie Williams and Twiggy. Those sharing their memories and reasons why David Bowie is so important. His 1970-1975 saw this shift from him becoming this properly established artist at the start of the decade, to this icon by the mid-1970s. Hearing Kate Moss talk about David Bowie and fronting this incredible podcast series. It goes to show that David Bowie is still enormously relevant today. So much to explore and discuss. His legacy and brilliance will…

BURN bright forever.

FEATURE: The Life of a Showgirl: What Impact and Effects Will Taylor Swift’s Twelfth Studio Album Create?

FEATURE:

 

 

The Life of a Showgirl

PHOTO CREDIT: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/Taylor Swift
 

What Impact and Effects Will Taylor Swift’s Twelfth Studio Album Create?

__________

SIX days ago…

 IMAGE CREDIT: TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management/Guardian Design

Taylor Swift announced the release of her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. You can pre-order the album here. This TIME article writes how the release and announcement is essentially Swiftynomics. This term is the title of an upcoming book,, Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy, that is expected on 27th January, 2026. “Swiftynomics assesses the complex economic lives of American women. Drawing insights from pathbreakers like Taylor Swift, Misty Heggeness digs into the data revealing women’s hidden contributions and aspirations—the unexamined value they create by following their own ambitions. She confronts misconceptions about the roles women play in today’s economy by highlighting the abundance of productive activity occurring in their daily lives and acknowledging the barriers they still face”. There are positives and negatives associated with this album announcement. In terms of what it will do for the music and gig economy. It is a moment of positivity in a very bleak moment of history:

“On Aug. 12, Taylor Swift announced her 12th original studio album, The Life of a Showgirl and a sparkly orange era on her website.

This news spread like a ray of golden sunshine, cutting through some bleak headlines for women. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lost its female leader because President Donald Trump did not like the published jobs numbers. And as TIME reported, this labor market data also revealed that women are leaving the labor market in droves

The next day on New Heights, Jason and Travis Kelce’s podcast, Taylor complimented Travis’ sweatshirt. “Thanks, sweetie, it’s the color of your eyes,” responded Travis, sending Swifties into a tailspin.

Finally, Swift revealed more details. Her album will be released on Oct. 3 and she shared its artwork and tracklist. The announcement is not just a reflection of modern American gender dynamics, but a masterclass in modern advertising.

In less than 24 hours, everything turned orange. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was in on it. The Empire State Building, New York Times Square, and the Kansas City Union Station lit up in orange lights Tuesday evening. M&Ms, Playdoh, and Sesame Street came out to play, flouting orange and the number 12 in honor of Taylor Swift’s twelfth album. The Olive Garden flashed a garlic bread turned showgirl in honor of the era’s new album title. Petco brought out Meredith, Taylor’s cat, in an orange haze. Even Aquaphor hand lotion showed up in sparkle. The list of brands getting in on the mania went on and on.

Orange became the new social marketing technique. Business classes in universities across the nation will ponder Taylor’s successful grip on our psyche. With the economy-moving Eras Tour behind us, companies had caught on to Swift’s success even if they could not understand how she had done it. They were grasping for the attention of Taylor’s fans, riding the coattails of her brand.

But what is Taylor’s brand? “I am in the business of human emotion,” said Swift while discussing her decision to buy back her music catalog from the private equity firm Shamrock Capital with Jason and Travis. “I would so much rather lead heart-first in something like this.” Not music, not entertainment, not writing, but human emotion.

And though Swift maintains she has not made such business decisions because of the projected returns or dividends, her emotion-focused approach has still been key to her success. Throughout her career, Swift has remained true to herself and invested in getting to know and understand her audience. She builds her product around human emotions—hers and ours.

The day before the announcement, I had been working with a librarian discussing how to build research muscle among a new class of incoming freshmen who would be taking my new class, The Academic Lore of Taylor Swift. The librarian began telling me she came to the fandom late, that the romance between Taylor and Travis really drew her in because it gave her so much joy to watch.

More than a million listeners tuned in to the New Heights podcasts the night of Swift’s announcement. The emotional tug of a new announcement or any crumb of new information into the life of the artist had a magnetic pull far and wide. Human emotion sells.

In critical, historical moments like the one we are in now, where immigrants are being unfairly targeted by the federal government, inequality is ever increasing, and moms cannot catch a break in the labor market, it sells even more. As advertisers continue paying attention to who’s controlling the market today, they’ll look to megastar influencers like Taylor Swift and latch themselves to her sparkly orange belt.

She will, in turn, look to her fans who are more than happy to dig deep into their pockets for a chance to experience the human emotions she’s selling, whether via CD, vinyl, cassette, and any other form. Maybe all of her fans won’t buy the orange Playdoh, but they will buy the music that she ever-so-delicately, perfectly, and precisely laid out to a sound track—and they will devour it. She’ll make them happy in what might be seen as otherwise depressing times.

This is what I call “Swiftynomics.” It is women’s ability to dominate consumption and marketing patterns by harnessing their human experiences for economic benefit. It is women investing in one another, and it thrives today, even in these challenging times”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/Taylor Swift

There are a lot of positives in what TIME write. How her fans will get an opportunity to purchase this new album on a variety of formats. That is will boost physical music sales. Also, the excitement over an album release. In the modern age, can artists generate the same kind of fervour and anticipation as decades ago? Ass we can stream albums and so much music is out there, the fact Taylor Swift can get people buying physical music in such huge quantities is to be applauded. In spite of her enormous wealth, it is inspiring that she is this successful businesswoman. Someone who took bac control of her music and has re-recorded studio albums. Someone who deals in human emotions and felt like, at a point in her career, she was being taken advantage of and her rights and control was being taken away. Now, as the biggest artist in the world, she is inspirational to other women in music. Someone who will give a leg up to other artists. If the recent Eras Tour was a record-breaking phenonium, when she tours this album, what impact will that have?! Something even bigger! They could have hugely positive impact on the towns and cities she plays. Also, a new Taylor Swift album is going to be quality thing. She is not an artist who sells and is successful because of hype. The songwriting is always incredible. At thirty-five, Taylor Swift is recognised as one of the finest songwriters in the world. You feel she could be releasing music for decades.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/Taylor Swift

Seeing this powerful and accomplished woman at the forefront of the music industry is incredible. Someone who has all this success but is very much not someone who does it for money. She gives money to charity and helps others. With each album comes a new persona and a sense of reinvention. Like Madonna in the 1980s and 1990s, here is a huge global superstar who is growing bigger and bigger. I am very pleased that there is going to be this whole campaign and aesthetic. The visuals of the album and photoshoots. What the songs will be about and whether the album will be conceptual. Is it charting a fictional showgirl and her life or discussing Swift’s own experiences of being a modern showgirl in a sense. Her life on the stage and being under the lens all of the time? According to the Wikipedia page for the album: “Swift described the project as a vibrant and lively album about her life as an entertainer. The Life of a Showgirl contains 12 songs, with Sabrina Carpenter featured on the title track. Photographed by Mert and Marcus, Swift adopted a provocative, showgirl-inspired, orange theme for the album; journalists described it as the most glamorous and flamboyant visual aesthetic of her career. She announced the album on the August 13, 2025, episode of New Heights, the sports podcast by Jason and Travis Kelce, which became the most-watched podcast premiere ever”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/Taylor Swift

There are mixed blessings regarding the potential explosion that will come with The Life of a Showgirl. The song titles are already out there. The Fate of Ophelia and Elizabeth Taylor. Actually Romantic. Maybe a mix of personal insights and nods to historic and contemporary women. Swift has created this new aesthetic and colour scheme for The Life of a Showgirl. However, as The Times write, has a more girl-next-door and ‘innocent’ look and appeal been replaced by something more provocative, unwholesome or risqué?!

“Clad in a silver bejewelled bralet and fishnet tights, Swift has leant into the traditional showgirl aesthetic for the album’s artwork, complete with bedazzled corsetry, ostrich feathers, and of course, her trademark red lipstick. In various snaps, taken by the legendary fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, she pouts and looks suggestively down the camera lens, all vampish insouciance. Like a sad, sexy siren.

Is it all a touch … male gaze? Unlike some of her industry counterparts, including Sabrina Carpenter, with whom she collaborated on the album’s title track, Swift has never been one to sexualise her public image. At least not quite so explicitly, anyway. Of course, regardless of what she wears and does, Swift has always been subjected to just as much (if not more) objectification as any other woman in the public eye. But sex hasn’t been something she’s centralised, or even discussed.

That looks set to change with this album, which could be her most illicit yet. There’s even some erotic melancholy too. The album’s first track, The Fate of Ophelia, aligns with artwork featuring a recreation of John Everett Millais’ painting depicting the tragic Shakespearean character drowning after she has been driven to madness.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott/Taylor Swift

While I’m all for women celebrating their sexuality, particularly if they’ve been relentlessly slut-shamed for most of their adult and teenage lives, I can’t help but feel that this sultry new era is out of sync with everything Swift has told us about who she is: the one we can relate to rather than look up to, the goofy best friend rather than the unapproachable hot girl, the one in the bleachers rather than the cheer captain. She’s someone you’d spend hours trying to decode a man’s texts with; the woman you’d recruit for a mission to make your ex jealous. Part of her popularity is rooted in the fact that she’s always felt like one of us.

That’s not to say Swift can’t or shouldn’t reinvent herself — if anything, that’s what her record-breaking Eras tour was all about. But if The Life of a Showgirl is all coquettish glances, flirty poses and fluttering eyelashes, it’s going to inevitably feel less like an album that’s for the girls, and more like one for the boys.

Suffice to say, this diehard Swiftie is a little wary of the Showgirl era. Like most businesses, music moves where money goes, and given Carpenter’s success, this new album could well be the result of industry juggernauts trying to cash in on what’s doing well right now. I’d like to give Swift a little more credit than that; she’s never been one to bend to trends”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna/PHOTO CREDIT: Madonna

Artists like Madonna broke down barriers and blazed a trail for women who followed. She received so much criticism and misogyny when her work became more expressive, revealing and sexual. Have we taken a step back when it comes to how huge female Pop artists are judged when they are independent, confident and push boundaries?! In terms of the images, others have said how Swift is sparkly and fabulous. A classic showgirl. Others noting how Swift has taken back control of her image and body. Some have noted how the cover for The Life of a Showgirl could be Taylor Swift’s reference to John Everett Millais's Hamlet-inspired painting, Ophelia. Not the first time a women in Pop references this. Kate Bush, in promotional images for Hounds of Love’s second side, The Ninth Wave, embodies images of Ophelia. I think, like Sabrina Carpenter and her upcoming album, Man’s Best Friend, too much attention could be on sex. People judging Taylor Swift and her image rather than focusing on the music. I wonder about potential negative impacts on Taylor Swift’s mental and physical health. Her Eras Tour, running from May to December 2024, became the highest-grossing concert tour of all time. Is there pressure to top that?! What impact will that have on her life? Someone whose privacy and personal life are exposed and discussed constantly, has she reached a point where the hysteria and adulation means people are expecting bigger and bigger?!

IN THIS PHOTO: Sabrina Carpenter, seen here at the GRAMMYs earlier this year, will feature on The Life of a Showgirl’s title track (Taylor Swift’s twelfth studio album is released on 3rd October)/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Also, many artists feel like Taylor Swift is taking too much focus away from others. Her albums stream in the billions and the money she generates is immense. Is the industry being too dominated by one person? Is that a good thing? The Life of a Showgirl could well create records and lead to massive things. Taylor Swift going down in history as the most important artist ever. However, her relationship with Travis Kelche could also be impacted. How much time and privacy will they have when this new album is released?! You do wonder whether they can ever be an ordinary couple. Instead, there is a danger that their every move will be scrutinised! Laura Snapes, writing for The Guardian, asked if The Life of a Showgirl will propel Taylor Swift to almost unseen levels of fame and success. Is this more of a bad than good thing?! What impact will that have on Swift and the music industry as a whole? Something that will make her and Travis Kelche famous beyond words, is this their plan all along? In some ways, the multi-format campaign for her previous album, The Tortured Poet’s Department (2024) and its excess has led Taylor Swift to rethink a bit and revise her promotional angle. Despite a demand which will exceed all her other albums, some lessons have been learned:

“Swift’s new album does not arrive until 3 October, but this week’s edition of the industry newsletter Record of the Day led with a tongue-in-cheek congratulations to “everyone at EMI and Taylor Swift on her latest No 1 album The Life of a Showgirl”. Supernova success is a foregone conclusion: last year’s introspective The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) was the first album to pass a billion streams in its first week, reaching 1.76bn.

IN THIS PHOTO: Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift after Kansas won the AFC Championship in January/PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Landis/AP

Swift is beloved on an unfathomable scale. She is one of the last monocultural pop stars. You suspect she could have toured Eras for five years and still sold out every night. Her devout Swifties, casual pop fans and curious rubberneckers will likely propel Showgirl past TTPD’s record, such is the critical mass behind her, no matter what it sounds like. Her reign, says Annie Zaleski, the author of Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind the Songs, is unprecedented because “she’s so consistent and continuing to evolve”.

But on the podcast, Swift sounded surprisingly aware of the limitations of TTPD – too wordy, too long, too downbeat – and keen to course-correct. That project, she said, had been about “catharsis”, “mess” and “rawness” following an apparently humiliating fling with the 1975’s Matty Healy. TTPD comprised 16 songs; and on release day, Swift dropped a previously unannounced 15-track sister album, The Anthology. For Showgirl, she said she craved “focus and discipline”: just 12 songs going behind the scenes of her Eras life, with “melodies that were so infectious you’re almost angry”. She made a surprising admission about her recent quality control: “Keeping the bar really high is something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time.”

Swift’s monitoring also cannot have failed to note that her brand of hermetically sealed, grown-up pop has been ceding ground to Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli xcx, who have seized culture’s centre with less inhibited and far rowdier hits than the exacting Swift has ever made. Or perhaps ever could: one insurmountable difference is that Roan and xcx are unlikely to ever monitor fan desire or cater to it. And Martin, despite being second only to John Lennon and Paul McCartney for having the most US No 1 singles, has waned as a hitmaker. “I don’t think she can get ahead of those artists because she’s such a millennial pop star,” said a publicist for comparably superstar acts who asked to remain nameless. “She can’t create trends like those younger artists because they have a lot less to lose.”

There is a sense that Swift is catching up: that she’s clocked criticisms, read the room. She released 19 physical variants for TTPD, and was accused of exploiting fans and damaging the environment with excess vinyl production, a practice Billie Eilish has called “wasteful”. Showgirl appears to have a fairly industry-standard four. She is also competing with herself: if there is a tour, says the music business expert Eamonn Forde, it will have to take a significantly different form to Eras – residency-style, perhaps Vegas or in a bespoke venue, as recently done by Adele – to avoid unfavourable comparisons to the biggest tour of all time”.

A new Taylor Swift album can not simply be an album. It is a campaign, an era. A new invention. A chapter! It is a potential globe-straddling, billion-dollar industry that could be released on multiple formats, have reissues and a new album of extras and then lead to a gigantic tour that breaks records and sees Swift pushing the limits of what a live show could be. Will she be able to sustain a string of sets that last three hours or more?! At what point does she have to strip back and slow down? And will Swifites (the name for her fanbase), the industry, critics and everyone allow that?! I like to think of the positives. The excitement fans are feeling. The quality of the songs and seeing a Pop artist take back control of her music and, with it, releasing new albums that are influencing women and girls around the world. Artists coming through that cite Swift as an idol. I want to end with exerts from an article from Rose Gallagher for Stylist. She explains that fans are excited about The Life of a Showgirl because Taylor Swift fandom and admiration is an antidote to loneliness:

“The Eras tour changed the way I saw live music. Since then, talking to fans has become a real passion project of mine. Meeting Chappell Roan’s fans at her concerts and making videos of their outfits has been one of my favourite ever projects. I also got a real-life lesson that you can’t judge a book by its cover when I covered the final Ozzy Osbourne gig. Those heavy metal fans were some of the nicest people I’d ever met – I’ve never been in a friendlier fandom.

The reason the internet is in a meltdown about Swift’s next album, The Life Of A Showgirl, is that we can get excited about it together. It’s a shared joy. We won’t just listen to it in the comfort of our homes – we’ll savour it as a collective. TikTok will be awash with fan theories. YouTube tutorials will emerge recreating Swift’s make-up from her music videos. We’re all invited to bask in the digital footprint, and it connects us.

So, just why do we crave these connections with other people? The truth is, when we get older, we can love our friends and be in different life cycles – and this can sometimes feel exceptionally lonely. Some of my friends are raising young children. I can’t relate and I never will, as I have decided I want to be child-free. Many are trying to conceive, and the road isn’t smooth; I’m thinking of three different friends right now. It’s a heartbreak like no other for them and there are no words of comfort for a sadness like that. Then there’s me, caring for elderly parents and knowing that one day our shared responsibility for my brother with special needs will be mine. Every day feels like I’m growing apart from my friends, even though they’re some of the people I love the most in my life. They can’t relate to me and I can’t relate to them. We support one another, for sure, but without a connection to someone who really gets it, you can feel very alone.

Being in a fandom like Taylor Swift’s, you find an antidote to the loneliness. For a moment, someone truly understands your excitement. Something as simple as looking at memes on Instagram is a moment of total bliss. You understand the jokes. You know the lore. You get the references. You finally have people who truly get what you’re excited about, and they feel it too. It’s a nice feeling”.

On 3rd October, we will see what Taylor Swift’s twelfth studio album has to offer. The Life of a Showgirl seems to beckon in a new phase. The album cover is colourful, bright and poetic at the same time. Compared to black-and-white images for the covers of The Tortured Poets Department, folklore (2020) and reputation (2017), this is an update of a cover like 2019’s Lover. The twelve tracks of her twelfth studio album are intriguing. With only one collaboration (the title track will feature Sabrina Carpenter) and maybe not the same excessiveness of The Tortured Poet’s Department (multiple formats ands repacking did seem a bit too much!). Above all else, The Life of a Showgirl is the latest scene and chapter from…

A modern-day cultural phenomenon.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: Sixteen: The Album's Promotion, Launch Party, and Bringing It to the Stage

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the Hounds of Love launch party at the London Planetarium on 9th September, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

Sixteen: The Album's Promotion, Launch Party, and Bringing It to the Stage

__________

I am going to bring in…

a couple of promotional interviews for Hounds of Love. Talk about its launch party – that took place on 9th September, 1985 -, and conclude with some words about Kate Bush bringing this album, and especially The Ninth Wave, to the stage in 2014. However, as Hounds of Love was released on 16th September, 1985, it is almost forty. It is wroth going back four decades and the promotion Bush was doing. This was an album that did not break her in America, though it did get her a lot of positive reviews. It reached thirty in the US Billboard 200.  An album that has been reissued, remastered and performed almost in its entirety on the stage, you wonder what else you can do with it. I shall end with that. I would love to see the album’s songs covered, reworked and remixed for its fortieth anniversary. Artists and producers taking a song and making them their own. However, let’s start with a couple of interviews. In 1985, many thought that Kate Bush was done. That her career was over. Consider the sound of 1982’s The Dreaming and how experimental it was. Many were not expecting another album, let alone one that was both commercial and ambitious. Her most acclaimed work. Journalists having to interview Kate Bush without realising (in some cases) how good the album was. That this masterpiece would be unleashed. I am going to start out with this interview from Keyboard/Totally Wired/Songwriter that was published in early 1985. Bush not only discussing the new album and having her own studio. We learned about some of the technology and keyboards that she had to work with:

“Your vocal arrangements are often complex enough to suggest that a keyboard instrument was involved in coming up with the parts. Is this the case?

"Sometimes the backing vocals just come in automatically as part of a song when I'm writing it. Other times, maybe it won't be until I've recorded the main voice and a few events in the song. And then I'll think it needs something there. Those are really the two extremes: I either come up with the backing vocals in the initial writing, or I hear a hole that needs filling. Whether I build up a really thick, grand vocal depends on the song. If the song needs that, then I'll just overdub the voice and build the vocals up. If it's a very intimate song between the singer and the subject matter, then you'd write it with just one voice."

You process your voice quite a bit.

"I'm sure there are quite a few people like me who really prefer the sound of their own voice when it's affected a bit. To hear your own voice absolutely straight with nothing on it can be very painful. Again, it depends on what the songs are about."

Where do you work your songs out?

"I've had a home studio for the last few years. For this album, we put together a master home studio. The difference it makes is fantastic. The obvious difference is that we're not paying a phenomenal amount of money every hour for a London studio. That makes you feel so much more relaxed. The amount of pressure that the studio situation puts on you is quite surprising. You also feel a lot freer to experiment."

We understand that before, you'd do the demos and often not be able to duplicate the same feeling in the studio.

"I think that's one of the most impossible things to do, and everyone in the business must have it happen to them. You do a demo and it's the song, the spontaneity of how you put it down, that little inflection in the voice there, or something in the demo says it all. Even though the vocals are rough and the drums are out of time, it's got the feel of the song. Them you come to master it and it's not there. It's too fast or too clean. It's just not the same. Trying to recreate the moods of something you did so spontaneously can be so impossible. What we've done on this album is make the demos the masters. We demoed in the studio so that there were no demos anymore. They've transformed into the masters."

When you started working with electronic instruments, did you start listening to what other people were doing?

"Yes, you can't help but hear other people's electronic music. music is an inspiring thing to hear. But unfortunately, 99% of my time is eaten up listening to my own and nothing else. And then, it's only listening to what I'm working on at that moment. When I'm finished, I go through these big phases of listening to other people's stuff. It's so exciting."

Who do you listen to at those times?

"I'm particularly into a label called Windham Hill. That's beautiful music--absolutely gorgeous. And there's a German label called ECM that has a lot of jazz-rock music. One of my favorite artists there is (bassist) Eberhard Weber. He's fantastic [Weber appears on The Dreaming]. I find that the most enjoyable thing for me to do when I get in from the studio, other than listen to music, is to watch videos. My ears are so tired. You get such a form of concentrated listening--you've got to listen for clicks and drums and the voice...So when you get back, you want to rest your ears and let your eyes watch rubbish for half an hour."

Why do you sometimes use other musicians to play certain keyboard parts on your records? Listening to your piano playing, you wouldn't have any trouble covering the parts that they play.

"Well, I don't play the Synclavier. I play the Fairlight, but I didn't have a Fairlight of my own until the last album, and that was only towards the end of it. In fact, that's why I had to get people in. I had to hire their Fairlight and Synclavier and I had to have them play it as well-- until I had my own."

What do you have in your studio?

"We have a Soundcraft mixing deck, a Studer A-80 tape machine, lots of outboard gear, and Q-lock. We normally use 48 tracks now, even if it's for a vocal idea or something. 24 tracks doesn't seem to go anywhere with me. And the Fairlight, of course. We have a room simulator called a Quantec, which is my favorite. It would be lovely to be able to draw the sort of room you wanted your voice to be in. I think that's the next step”.

I want to highlight one more interview before moving on because, sadly, it was pretty typical. In terms of the language used and some of the patronising and condescending language! Maybe not reserved to male journalists, there was this somewhat sneering and belittling tone. However, whilst there is plenty of that here from Melody Maker’s Ted Nico, we do get some typically professional and interesting answers from Kate Bush. Someone who had to encounter so many inept and insulting interviews.

“Over the past two years the name Kate Bush has once more receded to the back of the common consciousness, joining the smoldering ember of The Buzzcocks, et al - set for the scrapyard. Yet once more she has confounded the rumour-mongers who had already pronounced her the Lady Lucan of pop, missing presumed dead. Once more she has created an album to besot and bewitch the coldest of hearts. Once more she has come out of her isolated refuge with the charm of a siren, and the innocence of a child. Ms. Bush is incapable of growing old, she has merely grown up.

But what, you ask, has sister Kate been doing during this hiatus, this self-imposed exile? As usual Kate explains much, but reveals precious little, slamming the doors of privacy with a single coy look.

"After the last album, I had to promote it, and that took me to the end of '82, so it hasn't really been that long. My life is quite extreme really; I go from a very isolated working situation, to going out and promoting my work and being very much a public creature. After you've ben through months of that kind of over-exposure, you're left feeling a bit shell-shocked. I need to take some time off and go somewhere quite different to write this new album. I didn't want to produce it in the wake of The Dreaming."

A wise move. Music vogues move with such alacrity, that two years off can finish off a career. In fact, such a time-span is the beginning and the end of most groups lifespan!

"I didn't really bother thinking about that sort of thing. I spent the time seeing films, seeing friends, building my own studio, and doing things I hadn't had a chance to do for ages."

Things? You couldn't elaborate on what these strange and wondrous things would be. Trout fishing? Hang-gliding? Hamster hunting?

"I found an inspirational new dance teacher," Kate replies with growing enthusiasm. "The teacher's energy made me really enthusiastic about writing again."

And once again the conversation turns back to the studio. Kate talks about her beloved studio a great deal - a great deal more than she's willing to chat about herself. She really doesn't have any hobbies, mainly because they wouldn't be beneficial to her work - the subject around which her entire universe evolves. The one exception is an avid interest in archery. And even this she has turned toward work, with the cover shot of the new single, believing it to be symbolic of Cupid's bow - an image which ties the threads of the single together.

And so, naturally, we turn to Kate's new album, Hounds Of Love, and the current success of the new single. Another new departure? Another rebirth? Another quest for new pastures?

"Yes, I wanted something new, and to begin with it was extremely difficult. All the songs I seemed to write sounded too much like the last album. I've never seen any point in repeating things you've already done before. I think it's a dangerous thing not to search for new ways of approaching songs. Too many people sit and think 'it'll just come to me', instead of getting off their arses and going for it."

Kate, of course, is far too polite to name names...

"If you get out and go for things then those things will come to you. I think it's too easy to wait and expect things just to come to you."

A certain Mr. M. Thatcher said similar words, but this time they ring with verity. Must be her smile. Kate's new studio, hidden away in the overgrown wilds of Kent, enable her to exorcise the ghosts of The Dreaming without sending EMI executives into prolonged thromboses over the expense of the operation.

"The pressure of knowing the astronomical amount studio time cost used to make me really nervous about being too creative. You can't experiment forever, and I work very, very slowly. I feel a lot more relaxed emotionally now that I have my own place to work and a home to go to."

Sitting on floor cushions, drinking cups of tea, I can't help thinking if things got any more relaxed they'd be sound asleep. Speak more of the new material Kate. Speak words of love...

"This time I wrote a lot of songs and just chose the best ones to put on the A side of the album. I like to think there's not a song there that's been put there for padding. Sometimes people get the impression that if you take a long time over something that you're literally going over the same piece again and again, and instead of making it better, you're making it worse. I hate to think I've ever done that.

This striving for perfection might well be cause by fears about disappointing her audience or her pet cats. The longer the wait, the greater the expectation.

"There are always so many voices telling me what to do that you can't listen to them. All I ever do is listen to the little voices inside me. I don't want to disappoint the little voices that have been so good to me."

Of course not. The finely-tuned songs that made the final selection on the album differ greatly from the diversions of previous albums. They are all love songs (sigh) using elemental imagery that form a cogent and cohesive panoply of emotion. A search and struggle to secure some sort of meaning. The discovery that although you can strip away everything form a person, there will always be a residue of love awaiting resurrection. Sounds mawkish doesn't it? Jane Austin world have loved it. All those over expressive vocals and delicate orchestrations channelled into such pathos. Sounds risible, doesn't it?

Yet the songs' style and eloquence rise above bathos through their haunting overtones. Phantasmagorical voices tilt the rose-coloured world off its trite axis with jagged eerie phrases. Outside observations are slanted metaphors revealing states of mind. No longer are we presented with the eclectic collage of The Dreaming whose continual shifts and spirals allowed an escape with diversity. No longer is the entire story of Houdini crammed into three minutes, until a new fable takes up the torch. Now the texture is more subtle, the production more adroit, and the mesmerism unrelenting.

"The last album contained a lot of different energies. It did take people to lots of different places very quickly and some people found that difficult to take. I think this album has more of a positive energy. It's a great deal more optimistic.

"I rather think of the album as two separate sides." How astute. "The A side is really called Hounds of Love, and the B side is called The Ninth Wave. The B side is a story, and that took a lot more work - it couldn't be longer than half an hour, and it had to flow. This time when you get to the end of one track, what happens after it is very affect by what's come before. It's really difficult to work out the dynamics within seven tracks. The concept took a long time."

Whoops! There goes that word again. Concept - a word mauled by the memory of Floyd, flares, baked lentils and chronic boredom. It took some time to extract my nails from the ceiling and climb back down to earth. It took even longer to summon up the courage to ask what this concept might entail. Kate looks upset that I'm not jumping up and down with ecstasy.

"It's about someone who comes off a ship and they've been in the water all night by themselves, and it's about that person re-evaluating their life from a point which they've never been before. It's about waking up from things and being reborn - going through something and coming out the other side very different."

Sounds suspiciously like The Ancient Mariner revisited...

"Oh no! It's completely different. It ends really positively - as things always should if you have control."

And Kate certainly has that. From the writing, recording, performing, production of her tunes to the choreography on the accompanying video. As usual the visual imagery is gleaned from a wide variety of sources: from the films of Godard, Herzog and Coppola, to The Book Of Dreams, yet their accretion with Kate's own personal fears and desires is shrouded in mystery.

"There are many films that you don't think much of at the time, but weeks afterwards you get flashbacks of images. Sometimes films like Don't Look Now and Kagemusha have really haunted me. You don't necessarily steal images from films, but they are very potent and take you somewhere else - somewhere impossible to get to without that spark."

At this moment it is difficult to see how such a placid, genteel, and downright normal musician could ever produce songs like "Get Out Of My House" and "Sat In Your Lap". Perhaps some strange transformation takes place over when she is asleep!

"Yes, I have very strange dreams you know. Over the years I've collected the most incredible star cast of them. Very famous people come and visit me."

Curiouser and curiouser...

"Peter O'Toole came round to dinner last week and my mum met him and thought he was wonderful. Keith Moon often comes round for tea as well. I have a lot of vivid dreams, most of which I can't mention. The images I get from them sometimes bleed into my songs”.

Navigating a plethora of interviews and having finished this enjoyable but hard production, Hounds of Love was ready for the world. I do think that the choice was ideal. Even though it is not there anymore, on 9th September, 1985, Kate Bush launched Hounds of Love at the London Planetarium on Marylebone Road. She looked fantastic dressed in purple! Matching the album cover’s colours and accompanied by her then-boyfriend Del Palmer. He engineered the album and played on it. A perfect location to launch this dazzling album that is very much about nature, the natural world and the wider universe. Songs like Hello Earth take us above the clouds and have us look down from space. I think that, technically, the Hounds of Love launch party was in the Laserium. There was a lot of press focus on Kate Bush and the fact that arrived arm in arm with Del Palmer. It was not known by all that they were an item. Rather than celebrate this wonderful album, there was a lot of chatter about her love life! However, it was an eventful and successful night. A drunk Youth (who played bass on the album’s track, The Big Sky) called Palmer a “wally”. Youth (Martin Glover) was jealous and was probably acting out of anger and envy when he called Palmer that. Some of the press coverage for that launch was not kind. Many feeling Bush was this air-headed ingénue. Focusing on her looks and sexuality. The jealous Youth. It was not just him. Others who worked with Kate Bush definitely had to hide feelings of attraction. One musician stopped working with her entirely because he was besotted. However, what comes out of that launch party is how confident Bush looked. Knowing what she was about to release into the world. The Laserium witnessed this wonderful event where one of the greatest albums ever was unveiled. I wonder whether the entire album was played or they got snippets.  Not a lot has been written about it. It was a huge moment in her career. One where she almost had to bounce back from some of the disappointment that surrounded The Dreaming. That it did not have this major success story and some felt Kate Bush was past her best.

THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Del Palmer at the London Planetarium on 9th September, 1985 during the launch party for Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

I do think that there is further potential for The Ninth Wave especially. Never filmed and put on the small or big screen, it was finally mounted for Before the Dawn in 2014. Kate Bush always saw that suite as a cinematic piece, but it was never realised. Almost thirty years later, she finally brought it to the stage. However, I do feel that it can go beyond the stage and onto a cinema screen. However, what was realised in 2014 in front of adoring fans over twenty-two nights was a huge accomplishment. When reviewing the live album of Before the Dawn in 2016, this is what Pitchfork wrote about Hounds of Love and how it translated to the stage:

“In Act Two, Bush realized her long-held desire to dramatize “The Ninth Wave,” the conceptual B-side of 1985’s Hounds of Love, which documents a woman’s dark night of the soul as she fights for life while lost at sea. While her “husband” and real-life son Bertie McIntosh blithely carried on with domestic life inside a tiny, sloping living room set, a video depicted Bush stranded in dark, choppy waters (now released as the “And Dream of Sheep” video). Moments later, the real Bush reappeared on stage to fight sinister “fish people” who carried her body off through the aisles. The whirring blades and desperate search lights of a rescue helicopter descended from the Hammersmith Apollo’s ceiling, illuminating and buffeting the crowd. Despite some hammy dialogue, it was staggering, and in sharp contrast to Act Three, which focused on Aerial’s second side, “A Sky of Honey.”

It’s a shame that the terror of “Hounds of Love” gets swapped for sentimental optimism, but the band recreate that album’s second half to sound as avant-garde and bracing as any current young outsider.

“Jig of Life” is the midpoint of Before the Dawn, and its crux. It forms the part in “The Ninth Wave” where Bush’s character is exhausted of fighting against drowning, and decides to succumb to death. A vision of her future self appears, and convinces her to stay alive. “Now is the place where the crossroads meet,” she chants, just as her (then) 56-year-old voice channels her 27-year-old one. Despite her alleged taste for burning one, Bush’s voice has gained in power rather than faded with age. It’s deeper now, and some of the songs’ keys shift to match, but it’s alive and incalculably moving, still capable of agile whoops and tender eroticism, and possesses a newfound authority.

Both Acts Two and Three take place in transcendent thresholds: “The Ninth Wave”’s drowning woman is beset by anxiety and untold pressures, with no idea of where to turn, mirroring the limbo that Bush experienced after 1982’s The Dreaming. That suite’s last song, the cheery “The Morning Fog,” transitions into Aerial’s “Prelude,” all beatific bird call and dawn-light piano. The euphoric, tender “A Sky of Honey” is meant to represent a perfect day from start to finish, filled with family and beautiful imperfections. “Somewhere in Between” finds them atop “the highest hill,” looking out onto a stilling view, and Bush’s eerie jazz ensemble anticipates the liminal peace of Bowie’s Blackstar. “Not one of us would dare to break the silence,” she sings. “Oh how we have longed for something that would make us feel so… somewhere in between.”

Purgatory has become heaven, and in the narrative Bush constructs through her setlist, “A Sky of Honey” represents the grown-up, domestic happiness that staves off the youthful fears explored on Hounds of Love. For her final song, she closes with a rendition of “Cloudbusting,” a song about living with the memory of a forbidden love, which is even more glorious for all the hope that it’s accumulated in the past 30-odd years”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in a moment during Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave that she performed during her Before the Dawn residency in 2014/PHOTO CREDIT: Gavin Bush/Rex

Hounds of Love’s translation to the stage was a success. Not sticking rigidly with the album sounds and being entirely faithful to the 1985 version, there was this opportunity to give the songs new life and an older voice. Hounds of Love’s title track was not as exhilarating and electric as on the album. However, it still enraptured audiences.  Bush adapted the melody line and threw in a new line (“Tie me to the mast”). The visual representation of the songs was a true highlight. If songs on The Ninth Wave could only be imagined, on stage, there was this whole new life. On Watching You Without Me, there was this mini-set on the stage. “Lamps flickered and a television slide from one end of the building to the other”, as Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. Jig of Life was this tour de force. On Hello Earth, “a huge buoy, bathed in red light of the emergency flares, ascended from the waves”. Whilst Bush is struggling against the waves and fighting for survival, “a couple of stagehands assembled a short ramp that led up from the floor of thew auditorium to the right hand side of the stage. As the song’s stunningly sombre choral passage rang out, an inert Bush was lifted from the waves, carried slowly down the ramp and into the audience”. The Morning Fog, as Graeme Thomson notes, was a gesture of gratitude. One which transcend The Ninth Wave and reflected Bush’s feeling to the audiences. She smiled and gestured to them when singing the line on The Morning Fog, “I love you better now”. I am skimming through what Graeme Thomson writes but, as that was only the end of Act I – and we still had the entirety of Aerial’s A Sky of Honey to come –, Bush had staged “one of the most extraordinary  pieces of imaginative theatre  ever staged by a popular musician”. I would read the entirety of what he says about Before the Dawn and Hounds of Love. Bush also performing the singles, Cloudbusting, Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). A staggering achievement and dazzling theatrical spectacled. I will leave things there. In a future feature, I am going to talk about the legacy and impact of Hounds of Love as we celebrate this masterpiece’s fortieth anniversary…

ON 16th September.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Bryan Ferry at Eighty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Bryan Ferry at Eighty

__________

ONE of music’s…

true greats turns eighty on 26th September. Bryan Ferry is the frontperson of Roxy Music. The band’s eponymous debut album was released in 1972. Ferry’s most recent album was released earlier this year. Loose Talk is a collaboration with Amelia Barratt. These are essential Roxy Music demos reimagined as duets. Barratt, a spoken word artist, narrating the songs. Ferry’s role is primarily as musician rather than singer. I do wonder where Ferry will head next. To honour his upcoming eightieth birthday, I have compiled a mixtape of his best solo and Roxy Music songs. Demonstrating what a remarkable songwriter and singer he is. Someone who has had this amazing legacy and inspired so many artists. Before I get to that playlist, I want to bring in some biography. AllMusic provide a comprehensive look at the career of one of the music world’s giants:

“As both the frontman for Roxy Music and as a solo artist, Bryan Ferry offers a glamorous blueprint for art rock, brilliantly updating the parameters of the pop songbook. Although Ferry's solo career has included several excellent self-penned tracks, most notably the synthy, romantic ballad "Slave to Love" off 1985's Boys and Girls, he's equally well-known for his adventurous interpretations of songs from the rock and pop canon. Combining a studied, wry, lounge-singer persona with a genuine passion for everything from Motown and Bob Dylan to the Great American Songbook of the 1920s and '30s, Ferry's albums, beginning with 1973's These Foolish Things, find him adding a post-modern gloss to pop standards. He has continued to move between sleek sophisti-pop originals and distinctive covers, releasing albums like 1987's Bete Noire, 1994's Mamouna, 2010's Olympia, and 2014's Avonmore. He has even reworked his hits in an instrumental 1920's fashion with his big band the Bryan Ferry Orchestra. Along with Roxy Music reunion tours, Ferry has remained busy, releasing concert albums like Royal Albert Hall 2020 and archival sets like Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023. Loose Talk, an artful collaboration with writer Amelia Barratt, arrived in 2025.

Born September 26, 1945, in Washington, England, Ferry, the son of a coal miner, began his musical career as a singer with the rock outfit the Banshees while studying art at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne under pop conceptualist Richard Hamilton. He later joined the Gas Board, a soul group featuring bassist Graham Simpson; in 1970, Ferry and Simpson formed Roxy Music.

Within a few years, Roxy Music had become phenomenally successful, affording Ferry the opportunity to cut his first solo LP in 1973. Far removed from the group's arty glam rock, These Foolish Things established the path that all of Ferry's solo work -- as well as the final Roxy Music records -- would take, focusing on elegant synth pop interpretations of '60s hits like Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," and the Beatles' "You Won't See Me," all rendered in the singer's distinct, coolly dramatic manner.

Roxy Music remained Ferry's primary focus, but in 1974 he returned with a second solo effort, Another Time, Another Place, another collection of covers ranging from "You Are My Sunshine" to "It Ain't Me, Babe" to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." His third venture, 1976's Let's Stick Together, featured remixed, remade, and remodeled versions of Roxy Music hits as well as the usual assortment of covers. Released in 1977, In Your Mind was Ferry's first collection of completely original material; the following year's The Bride Stripped Bare, a work inspired by his broken romance with model Jerry Hall, was split evenly between new songs and covers.

Ferry did not record another solo album until 1985's Boys and Girls, a sleek, seamless effort that was his first "official" solo release following the Roxy breakup. For 1987's Bete Noire, he was joined by former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr on the shimmering "The Right Stuff," and notched his only U.S. Top 40 hit with "Kiss and Tell." Another covers collection, Taxi, followed in 1993; Mamouna, an LP of originals, appeared a year later, and in 1999 Ferry returned with a collection of standards, As Time Goes By. After a brief tour in support of As Time Goes By, there were rumors of a Roxy Music reunion. The next summer, the practically unimaginable came true when Ferry joined Andy Mackay and Phil Manzanera for a tour of Europe and the U.S. It was a celebration of hits, and the band's first jaunt out in more than a decade.

In summer 2002, Ferry returned to his solo career for the electrifying Frantic. Dylanesque, a set of Bob Dylan covers, followed in 2007, featuring assistance from several longtime associates (including Brian Eno, Chris Spedding, Paul Carrack, and Robin Trower). Ferry signed with the Astralwerks imprint for the release of 2010's Olympia. In 2012, he assembled the Bryan Ferry Orchestra and recorded The Jazz Age. This completely instrumental album featured his band re-recording some of his biggest hits in a 1920s jazz style.

Ferry returned to the studio with longtime collaborator Rhett Davies in 2014 to record his 14th studio album. The resulting Avonmore -- which included guest spots from Johnny Marr, Nile Rodgers, and Marcus Miller and revived Ferry's mid-'80s sound -- appeared in November. In the spring of 2017, after embarking on a major world tour, Ferry made his debut at the legendary Hollywood Bowl amphitheater, performing nearly the entire set backed by a full orchestra. That same year, he also appeared as a cabaret singer in the 1930s set drama Babylon Berlin, for which he also contributed several songs. Those tracks were then included on a full-length album recorded by Ferry and his jazz orchestra, 2018's Bitter-Sweet.

Ferry continued to tour into the last years of the 2010s, a period highlighted by Roxy Music's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. The archival set Live at the Royal Albert Hall, 1974 appeared early in 2020. That same year, he again appeared at the storied London venue for a concert that was recorded and released in 2021 as Royal Albert Hall 2020 with proceeds helping to support his touring band and crew during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, he reunited with fellow Roxy Music bandmates Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera, and Paul Thompson for a 50th anniversary tour. He also released the solo EP Love Letters. Along with other archival reissues, 2024's Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023 offered a sweeping overview of the singer's solo output. In 2025, he released Loose Talk, a collaboration with performance artist, writer, and painter Amelia Barratt”.

To properly honour the eightieth birthday of Bryan Ferry on 26th September, I thought it only right to bring together all his terrific songs from throughout the years. From the first Roxy Music album to his latest album, Loose Talk, this is a celebration of a legend who is still going strong. Let’s hope that we hear more Bryan Ferry music soon. He is surely one of the most important artists who…

HAS ever lived.

FEATURE: Our Arrows of Desire Rewrite the Speech: Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Six

FEATURE:

 

 

Our Arrows of Desire Rewrite the Speech

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Six

__________

I will celebrate…

the album of the same name on 16th October. The Sensual World is the sixth studio album from Kate Bush. Coming four years after Hounds of Love, there was this expectation and anticipation. The lead single from it was the incredible title track. Released on 18th September, 1989, it reached number twelve in the U.K. I have covered the song quite a bit in the past, so I shall try to not repeat too much of what came before. People might not commemorate the single this year as its anniversary comes two days after the fortieth anniversary of Hounds of Love. I am going to spend some time with The Sensual World. As I have mentioned before, there is a long history to The Sensual World’s title track. Originally, Kate Bush wanted to take words from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Molly Bloom’s impassioned soliloquy. However, she weas refused permission. It was not until 2011, when she released Director’s Cut and renamed the song Flower of the Mountain, that these classic words finally appeared. I think that the original is best. Bush’s own words. The Sensual World was a hugely important single. She had released Experiment IV (in 1986) from her greatest hits album, The Whole Story. However, this was from a new studio album. Fans not sure what direction Kate Bush would take after Hounds of Love. There is a fair bit written about The Sensual World. It is amazing song that is so seductive and beautiful. Kate Bush spoke about this gorgeous song in 1989:

“The song is about someone from a book who steps out from this very black and white 2-D world into the real world. The immediate impressions was the sensuality of this world – the fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual – you know… the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand – the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that’s an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. But I’m sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing. (…) I love the sound of church bells. I think they are extraordinary – such a sound of celebration. The bells were put there because originally the lyrics of the song were taken from the bookUlyssesby James Joyce, the words at the end of the book by Molly Bloom, but we couldn’t get permission to use the words. I tried for a long time – probably about a year – and they wouldn’t let me use them, so I had to create something that sounded like those original word, had the same rhythm, the same kind of feel but obviously not being able to use them. It all kind of turned in to a pastiche of it and that’s why the book character, Molly Bloom, then steps out into the real world and becomes one of us.

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

Kerrang! were positive towards The Sensual World. This is what they noted: “She sings of a deep sensuality that ensures that I have to wear baggy trousers when I dance. Beautiful, warm, and ever-lasting”. Because The Sensual World was updated in 2011 and given a new title, there is this evolution. I am glad that Kate Bush got permission to use text from Ulysses. However, her own poetry stands out more. With Charlie Morgan on drums, Del Palmer on bass, Davy Spillane on uillean pipes, Dónal Lunny on bouzouki, John Shehan on fiddle and Paddy Bush on whips, there is this phenomenal sound. Irish instruments connecting to Ulysses. Irish instrumentation appeared on Hounds of Love. I think The Sensual World is the last song that it featured prominently. I am going to move on in a bit. However, I want to revisit an interview that appeared in NME. Len Brown spoke with Bush about her new album. Bush provided a guide to the tracks and her insightrs. It is interesting what she says about the stuinningly beautiful and sensual title track. One that still sends shivers nearly thirty-six years after its release:

"Because I couldn’t get permission to use a piece of Joyce it gradually turned into the songs about Molly Bloom the character stepping out of the book, into the real world and the impressions of sensuality," says Kate, softly, almost childlike. "Rather than being in this two dimensional world, she’s free, let loose to touch things, feel the ground under her feet, the sunsets, just how incredibly sensual a world it is.

"I originally heard the piece read by Siobhan McKenna years ago and I thought ‘My God! This is extraordinary, what a piece of writing!’ it’s a very unusual train of thought, very attractive. First I got the "mmh yes" and that made me think of Molly Bloom’s speech, and we had this piece of music in the studio already so it came together really quickly. Then, because I couldn’t get permission to use Joyce, it took another year changing it to what it is now. Typical innit!"

The result is extraordinarily sensual mouth music, far removed from the cod-pieced crassness that usually passes from physical love songs: "And at first with the charm around him, mmh yes / he loosened it so if it slipped between my breasts / He’d rescue it, mmh yes".

"In the original piece it’s just ‘Yes!" – a very interesting way of leading you in, it pulls you into the piece by the continual acceptance of all these sensual things. ‘Ooh wonderful!’ I was thinking I’d never write anything as obviously sensual as the original piece but when I had to rewrite the words I was trapped.

"How could you recreate that mood without going into that level of sensuality? So there I was writing stuff that months before I’d said I’d never write," she laughs. "I have to think of it in terms of pastiche and not that it’s me so much."

Having begun her career on The Kick Insider singing lines like, "Oh I need it oh oh feel it feel it my love" and "feeling of sticky love inside", and then gone on inLionheart to write a lyric like "the more I think of sex the better it gets", her reluctance to get too sensual, too fruity a decade later may seem a little strange.

But as Bush has increasingly gained control over the presentation of her music and her image during this period, stepping back from early marketing attempts to titillate (God, how they worked!) these reservations are understandable.

She claims The Sensual World contains the most "positive female energy" in her work to date and compositions like ‘This Woman’s Work’ tend to enforce that idea.

"I think it’s to do with me coming to terms with myself on different levels. In some ways, like on Hounds of Love, it was important for me to get across the sense of power in the songs that I’d associated with male energy and music. But I didn’t feel that this time and I was very much wanting to express myself as a woman in my music rather than as a woman wanting to sound as powerful as a man.

"And definitely ‘The Sensual World’, the track, was very much a female track for me. I felt it was a really new expression, feeling good about being a woman musically."

But isn’t it odd that this feminist or feminine perspective should have been inspired by a man, Joyce?

"Yes, in some ways but it’s also the idea of Molly escaping from the author, out into the real world, being this real human rather than the character, stepping out of the page into the sensual world."

So is this concept of sensuality the most important thing to you at the moment, is it one of the life forces?

"Yes, it’s about contact with humans, it could all come down to the sensual level. Touch? Yes, even if it’s not physical touch, reaching out and touching people by moving them. I think it’s a very striking part of this planet, the fact there is so much for us to enjoy. The whole of nature is really designed for everything to have a good time doing what they should be doing…

"Fancy being a bee, leading an incredible existence, all these flowers designed just for you, flying into the runway, incredible colours, some trip…"

Mmh, buzz.

Many mumbles have breathed their last since Kate Bush first arrived on our screens, flouncing about in dry ice and funeral shroud, oddly crowing ‘Wuthering Heights’; obviously different and apart from any musical movement before or since. But whereas the all-conquering, universally acclaimed Hounds Of Love affair at least slotted into the-then pop world, The Sensual World is clearly even more out of step with the current piss poor post-SAW scene.

Probably because it’s got a slightly ethnic feel, founded on Kate’s use of Irish and Bulgarian musics and musicians in the creative process. Perhaps because she’s been free from pop for so long. Maybe because she’s crossed the threshold of 30?

"God! Yes, I’m sure it’s all tied in with it," she laughs. "I think it’s a very important time from 28 to 32-ish, where there’s some kind of turning point. Someone said in your teens you get the physical puberty and between 28 and 32 mental puberty. Let’s fact it, you’ve got to start growing up when you’re 30, it does make you feel differently, I feel very positive having gone through the last couple of years”.

I will wrap up soon. One reason why I want to highlight this piece from Kate Bush News from 2016 (actually, it was them re-publishing a piece they wrote years earlier) is because I learn new things about The Sensual World. Including how Paddy Bush was incorrectly credited as playing ‘whips’ on the song. Also, learning how Bush felt about being denied permission by the James Joyce estate to use text from Ulysses. She discussed that quite a bit and, with each answer, you can hear the frustration:

“The music was recorded at Windmill Lane studios in Dublin, arranged by Bill Whelan. The featured players were Davey Spillane on uilleann pipes, Donal Lunny on bouzuki, John Sheahan on fiddle, Charlie Morgan on drums and Del Palmer on bass. Kate’s brother Paddy would be credited on the sleeve-notes with playing ‘whips’ on the record, an error he quickly rectified. “I’m actually playing a pair of fishing rods. I wanted to get the impression of a beautiful Irish lakeland and the swishing sound of the rods should conjure the atmosphere of fly-fishing, tweed hats and long Wellingtons.”

Kate’s good cheer at this progress was short-lived however. The Joyce estate would not grant her permission to use the words directly from the book. Attempts to change their minds continued for about a year. “We approached the relevant people and they just would not let me use them. No way. I tried everything. Obviously, I was very disappointed. It was completely their prerogative, but it was very difficult for me, then, to re-approach the song. In some ways I wanted to just leave it off the album. But we’d put a lot of work into it. The Irish musicians had worked so hard.”

Despite this frustration Kate set about completely transforming her song. “I gradually rewrote it, keeping the same rhythm of the words and the same sounds but turning it into its own story.” The piece, now titled The Sensual World, became about Molly Bloom the character stepping out of the book world, a black and white two-dimensional world, into the real world. “The immediate impression was the sensuality of this world. The fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual – the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand, the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that is an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. I’m sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing.” Later in her career Kate returned to this theme, a euphoric appreciation of everyday experience, on her ‘Aerial’ album in 2005 to huge critical acclaim.

The song opens with the sound of church bells, perhaps echoing Leopold’s proposal to Molly on Howth Head. “I’ve got a thing about the sound of bells. It’s one of those fantastic sounds: a sound of celebration. They’re used to mark points in life; births, weddings, deaths, but they give this tremendous feeling of celebration. In the original speech Molly’s talking of the time when Leopold proposed to her, and I just had the image of bells, this image of them sitting on the hillside with the sound of bells in the distance. In hindsight I also think it’s a lovely way to start an album. A feeling of celebration that puts me on a hillside somewhere on a sunny afternoon.”

A piece of traditional Macedonian music (called ‘Antice’) was re-worked to fit the ‘stepping out…’ chorus in the song’s new structure. The song would become the lead single for her new album, also titled ‘The Sensual World’. The accompanying promotional video had Kate, swathed in a velvet gown, dancing hypnotically through woodland as the sunlight turns to dusk, moonlight and back to sunrise again. In interviews in the autumn of 1989 Kate explained that the song and album contained the most positive female energy of her work to date.

“In some ways, like on Hounds Of Love, it was important for me to get across the sense of power in the songs that I’d associated with male energy and music. I didn’t feel that this time. I wanted to express myself as a woman in my music, rather than as a woman wanting to sound as powerful as a man. And definitely the song The Sensual World was very much a female track for me. I felt it was a really new expression, feeling good about being a woman musically”.

Even if Hounds of Love’s fortieth anniversary on 16th September will capture a lot of people’s attention, two days later, The Sensual World turns thirty-six. It is important to mark the anniversary of this song. Such a bewitching song that you immerse yourself in, I love everything about it. The B-side, Walk Straight Down the Middle. The video, which Bush co-directed with The Comic Strip co-creator Peter Richardson, and the fact it did get reworked in 2011 for Director’s Cut. However, to me, the 1989 original version is…

IMPOSSIBLE to better.

FEATURE: John Lennon at Eighty-Five: Double Fantasy: The Final Chapter

FEATURE:

 

 

John Lennon at Eighty-Five

Double Fantasy: The Final Chapter

__________

THERE have been posthumous releases…

 IN THIS PHOTO: John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Hit Factory in Manhattan on 7th August, 1980, the first day of recording for Double Fantasy/PHOTO CREDIT: Roger Farrington

but, just a month before John Lennon as murdered in December 1980, Double Fantasy was released. A John Lennon and Yoko Ono album, I think there was a feeling that, five years after the underwhelming Rock ‘n’ Roll, a new John Lennon album would be just him. Even though it is not as esteemed and highly regarded as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) and Imagine (1971), I think that Double Fantasy is hugely important. Seeing as it was John Lennon’s only album of the 1980s. Where he was heading creatively. His eighty-fifth birthday is on 9th October. My second feature to mark that is about an album that divides people. I think it includes some of his best solo tracks. Including Mother, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), (Just Like) Starting Over and Watching the Wheels. I want to start out by highlighting some sections of Rolling Stone’s January 1981 edition. The month before (just days before John Lennon’s death), they published this incredible interview. Jonathan Colt spoke with Lennon about his art and the new album, Double Fantasy:

"In 'Beautiful Boys,'" I add, "Yoko sings: 'Please never be afraid to cry... / Don't ever be afraid to fly... / Don't be afraid to be afraid.' "

"Yes, it's beautiful. I'm often afraid, and I'm not afraid to be afraid, though it's always scary. But it's more painful to try not to be yourself. People spend a lot of time trying to be somebody else, and I think it leads to terrible diseases. Maybe you get cancer or something. A lot of tough guys die of cancer, have you noticed? Wayne, McQueen. I think it has something to do -- I don't know, I'm not an expert -- with constantly living or getting trapped in an image or an illusion of themselves, suppressing some part of themselves, whether it's the feminine side or the fearful side.

"I'm well aware of that, because I come from the macho school of pretense. I was never really a street kid or a tough guy. I used to dress like a Teddy boy and identify with Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley, but I was never really in any street fights or down-home gangs. I was just a suburban kid, imitating the rockers. But it was a big part of one's life to look tough. I spent the whole of my childhood with shoulders up around the top of me head and me glasses off because glasses were sissy, and walking in complete fear, but with the toughest-looking little face you've ever seen. I'd get into trouble just because of the way I looked; I wanted to be this tough James Dean all the time. It took a lot of wrestling to stop doing that. I still fall into it when I get insecure. I still drop into that I'm-a-street-kid stance, but I have to keep remembering that I never really was one."

"Carl Jung once suggested that people are made up of a thinking side, a feeling side, an intuitive side and a sensual side," I mention. "Most people never really develop their weaker sides and concentrate on the stronger ones, but you seem to have done the former."

"I think that's what feminism is all about," John replies. "That's what Yoko has taught me. I couldn't have done it alone; it had to be a female to teach me. That's it. Yoko has been telling me all the time, 'It's all right, it's all right.' I look at early pictures of meself, and I was torn between being Marlon Brando and being the sensitive poet -- the Oscar Wilde part of me with the velvet, feminine side. I was always torn between the two, mainly opting for the macho side, because if you showed the other side, you were dead."

"On Double Fantasy," I say, "your song 'Woman' sounds a bit like a troubadour poem written to a medieval lady."

"'Woman' came about because, one sunny afternoon in Bermuda, it suddenly hit me. I saw what women do for us. Not just what my Yoko does for me, although I was thinking in those personal terms. Any truth is universal. If we'd made our album in the third person and called it Freda and Ada or Tommy and had dressed up in clown suits with lipstick and created characters other than us, maybe a Ziggy Stardust, would it be more acceptable? It's not our style of art; our life is our art.... Anyway, in Bermuda, what suddenly dawned on me was everything I was taking for granted. Women really are the other half of the sky, as I whisper at the beginning of the song. And it just sort of hit me like a flood, and it came out like that. The song reminds me of a Beatles track, but I wasn't trying to make it sound like that. I did it as I did 'Girl' many years ago. So this is the grown-up version of 'Girl.'

"People are always judging you, or criticizing what you're trying to say on one little album, on one little song, but to me it's a lifetime's work. From the boyhood paintings and poetry to when I die -- it's all part of one big production. And I don't have to announce that this album is part of a larger work; if it isn't obvious, then forget it. But I did put a little clue on the beginning of the record -- the bells... the bells on 'Starting Over.' The head of the album, if anybody is interested, is a wishing bell of Yoko's. And it's like the beginning of 'Mother' on the Plastic Ono album, which had a very slow death bell. So it's taken a long time to get from a slow church death bell to this sweet little wishing bell. And that's the connection. To me, my work is one piece."

"All the way through your work, John, there's this incredibly strong notion about inspiring people to be themselves and to come together and try to change things. I'm thinking here, obviously, of songs like 'Give Peace a Chance,' 'Power to the People' and 'Happy Xmas (War Is Over).'"

"It's still there," John replies. "If you look on the vinyl around the new album's (the twelve-inch single 'Just Like Starting Over') logo -- which all the kids have done already all over the world from Brazil to Australia to Poland, anywhere that gets the record -- inside is written: ONE WORLD, ONE PEOPLE. So we continue.

"The last album I did before Double Fantasy was Rock 'n' Roll, with a cover picture of me in Hamburg in a leather jacket. At the end of making that record, I was finishing up a track that Phil Spector had made me sing called 'Just Because,' which I really didn't know -- all the rest I'd done as a teenager, so I knew them backward -- and I couldn't get the hang of it. At the end of that record -- I was mixing it just next door to this very studio -- I started spieling and saying, 'And so we say farewell from the Record Plant,' and a little thing in the back of my mind said, 'Are you really saying farewell?' I hadn't thought of it then. I was still separated from Yoko and still hadn't had the baby, but somewhere in the back was a voice that was saying, 'Are you saying farewell to the whole game?'

"It just flashed by like that -- like a premonition. I didn't think of it until a few years later, when I realized that I had actually stopped recording. I came across the cover photo -- the original picture of me in my leather jacket, leaning against the wall in Hamburg in 1962 -- and I thought, 'Is this it? Do I start where I came in, with 'Be-Bop-A-Lula'?' The day I met Paul I was singing that song for the first time onstage. There's a photo in all the Beatles books -- a picture of me with a checked shirt on, holding a little acoustic guitar -- and I am singing 'Be-Bop-A-Lula,' just as I did on that album, and there's a picture in Hamburg and I'm saying goodbye from the Record Plant.

"Sometimes you wonder, I mean really wonder. I know we make our own reality and we always have a choice, but how much is preordained? Is there always a fork in the road and are there two preordained paths that are equally preordained? There could be hundreds of paths where one could go this way or that way -- there's a choice and it's very strange sometimes... And that's a good ending for our interview."

Jack Douglas, coproducer of Double Fantasy, has arrived and is overseeing the mix of Yoko's songs. It's 2:30 in the morning, but John and I continue to talk until four as Yoko naps on a studio couch. John speaks of his plans for touring with Yoko and the band that plays on Double Fantasy; of his enthusiasm for making more albums; of his happiness about living in New York City, where, unlike England or Japan, he can raise his son without racial prejudice; of his memory of the first rock & roll song he ever wrote (a takeoff on the Dell Vikings 'Come Go with Me,' in which he changed the lines to: "Come come come come / Come and go with me / To the peni-tentiary"), of the things he has learned on his many trips around the world during the past five years. As he walks me to the elevator, I tell him how exhilarating it is to see Yoko and him looking and sounding so well. "I love her, and we're together," he says. "Goodbye, till next time."

"After all is really said and done / The two of us are really one," John Lennon sings in 'Dear Yoko,' a song inspired by Buddy Holly, who himself knew something about true love's ways." People asking questions lost in confusion / Well I tell them there's no problem, only solutions," sings John in 'Watching the Wheels,' a song about getting off the merry-go-round, about letting it go.

In the tarot, the Fool is distinguished from other cards because it is not numbered, suggesting that the Fool is outside movement and change. And as it has been written, the Fool and the clown play the part of scapegoats in the ritual sacrifice of humans. John and Yoko have never given up being Holy Fools. In a recent Playboy interview, Yoko, responding to a reference to other notables who had been interviewed in that magazine, said: "People like Carter represent only their country. John and I represent the world." I am sure many readers must have snickered. But three nights after our conversation, the death of John Lennon revealed Yoko's statement to be astonishingly true. "Come together over me," John had sung, and people everywhere in the world came together”.

I am moving to some features about Double Fantasy. An album I heard a lot as a child, I do think that it is worthy of a lot more love and inspection. I think that John Lennon’s death recontextualised Double Fantasy. If some critics felt the songs were quite syrupy and Lennon moving towards the middle of the road and away from his best, I do think this is someone just in their forties reflecting on his life, family and love. I think it was not going to be the start of a new phase where subsequent albums sounded like this. I do feel Lennon would have become more experimental and followed Yoko Ono’s lead and influence. Double Fantasy is fascinating. In 2015, Ultimate Classic Rock write why Double Fantasy did not connect with many people at first:

“Charles Shaar, writing for NME, memorably said Double Fantasy "sounds like a great life, but it makes for a lousy record. ... I wish Lennon had kept his big happy trap shut until he had something to say that was even vaguely relevant to those of us not married to Yoko." Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, at least at first, weren't much kinder – and the record-buying public greeted the project with notable diffidence.

Double Fantasy, with its comfy domesticity and too-slick, of-its-moment production, never felt dangerous enough to be a top-tier John Lennon record. Well, at least half of the time. Yoko Ono, who was co-featured in an every-other-song format, took far more chances than he did.

It seemed, as much as anything else, like a record lost in time. Even the best of Lennon’s solo material after 1970’s Plastic Ono Band suffered from similarly dated, shag-carpet production. He loved a big sound, when sometimes a smaller one would have been more effective. Earlier in Lennon’s final decade, that meant pasting on herds of fiddles, a thudding drum clomp, gaggles of girl singers and bawdy, burlesque saxophones – something that must have brought him back to the '50s pop radio of his youth.

When Lennon returned to music after a five-year hiatus, he was still steadfastly double-tracking his vocals too. It afforded him a deeper, multi-layered sound but also needlessly softened the edges on one of rock music’s best sneers. Couple that with the compression typically employed back then, and Double Fantasy — considered apart from his death — often ended up more gossamer than necessarily great.

No matter. After Dec. 8, 1980, those earlier negative notices were forgotten as a funereal fervor pushed Double Fantasy to multi-platinum sales and a Grammy award for Album of the Year.

Seemingly forgotten was that Lennon, at his zenith, had been a scratched-and-dented treasure, laconic and all edge. Here, he seemed to have settled into a middle-aged tameness — both figuratively and, by employing the prevailing pop veneer, literally. That ultimately gave surprising gravitas to 1983’s Milk and Honey and 1986’s Menlove Ave., a pair of loose, unfinished posthumous follow-ups. (Yoko Ono added another edition to that collection when a stripped-down version of Double Fantasy was released in 2010.)

Only on the muscular “I’m Losing You” do you get the sense of Lennon's old sinewy grit. It's the most kinetic moment on Double Fantasy, and it points to the long-hoped-for return of Lennon’s muse — the vibrant, angry yang to the bread-making househusband yin of recent years. Unfortunately, little else rises so completely out of the project's cozy, contemplative vibe.

Of course, "Starting Over" and "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" resonate in entirely new ways now. There's no getting away from the awful headlines that followed – no separating this album, even decades later, from Lennon’s fate. He’ll always be 40. So, when he whispers “Good night, Sean, see you in the morning” on the latter, it’s like a cold hand closing around any fan's heart.

Meanwhile, interspersing moments like "Woman," the record's most obviously Beatlesque ballad, with a series of nervy, New Wave-influenced Ono cuts certainly helps Double Fantasy live up to its subtitle: "A Heart Play." But it also underscores something about Lennon that his devastated followers weren't willing, or maybe even able, to admit.

While Lennon was making his way back into the business, Ono was far more in sync with the prevailing post-punk zeitgeist. Lennon was only just beginning to come to terms with things as they were — with middle age, with a settled life, with love and work and parenthood. How long could it have been before he was ready to push back, and hard? Unfortunately, we never got to hear his next great rock record”.

In November 2020, The Independent published a feature about Double Fantasy. Whilst it was not considered John Lennon’s best album, they are how it is his most personal. That is why it so meaningful to me. Jack Douglas produced Double Fantasy with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. At a time when Lennon was committing to a more domestic life and settling with family, Douglas did not expect to get the opportunity work with him. The start of the feature, where we learn how Jack Douglas got involved with Double Fantasy, is fascinating. I am starting with a passage further down. Selections from the feature that are especially relevant and interesting:

“Double Fantasy, released 40 years ago on 17 November, is not Lennon’s best album. But it may be his most revealing, for reasons that stretch beyond the music. For an artist who always wrote songs about his life, this record in particular - highlighted by “(Just Like) Starting Over”, “Woman” and “I'm Losing You” – is the most autobiographical of all. It also serves as an important, heartbreaking coda to a singular life. Lennon wanted Double Fantasy to restart his career. Instead, his tragic death, coming three weeks after its release, turned the music he made for the album into his final artistic statement.

Double Fantasy is the best way to tell the story of Lennon’s last years, from his retreat to house-husbandhood to his return to the top 10. It opens a window into the intense and often private relationship between Lennon and Ono.

“It's like a movie, though, and the script is constantly changing” is how Lennon explained it to Playboy’s David Sheff in an interview on the eve of the album’s release.

“We have some songs on the album that can be considered negative,” Ono added in the same interview, “but at the same time the fact that we can honestly state those feelings is very positive and we get a certain atonement for that.”

Double Fantasy is also, of course, not purely a John Lennon record. The decision to split it with Ono so completely – they would alternate songs – is the boldest play on an album that’s otherwise the slickest and most commercially focused of his career. In sharing the release, Ono and Lennon meant to create a kind of pop music diary of a relationship, or “heart play” as they called it. There was also a greater goal: to give Yoko access to the wider public.

Double Fantasy was meant to not just reinvent Lennon, the abrasive agitator turned doting dad, but also to recast Ono, who had been unfairly villainised as the woman who broke up the world’s biggest rock band. Her dissonant music was an acquired taste that had been widely mocked.

This is before digital playlists allowed us to self-edit. You could pick up the needle or fast-forward the cassette, but if you wanted your favourite Beatle’s latest release, you had to also take his wife as part of the purchase.

The dynamic with Ono did not go unnoticed. He seemed intent on using their relationship as a vehicle to reshape the traditional gender roles he had grown up with. When it came to Double Fantasy, she was an equal partner.

Which is why the “heart play”, as they called it, was both a concept and a reintroduction. Lennon and Ono’s relationship had always been shared, played out for the public.

In 1970, when the Beatles came apart, Lennon railed in Rolling Stone that they had “despised” Ono from the start and described Paul, George and Ringo as “the most bigheaded, uptight people on earth.” He also had little patience for fans who nostalgically longed for the mop tops of “She Loves You”.

In “God”, released on Lennon’s solo debut in 1970, he declared that “the dream is over” and detached himself from, among other things, magic, Buddha, Kennedy, Elvis, Jesus, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. “I just believe in me,” he sang. “Yoko and me.”

They wanted Double Fantasy to sell – they would tape the weekly Billboard chart to their bedroom door – but Lennon also wanted to deliver a message. The album had to update his sound and his image.

“This isn’t an album we want to sell to kids,” he told Douglas. “I’m going to be 40. This is an album we’re going to sell to the people who have been through the wringer of the ’60s and the ’70s. It's about a guy who’s married, whose life has changed. He’s cleaned up his act. And that’s what I want to say.”

Double Fantasy came out the third Monday in November. The reviews were mixed and sales were decent, if sluggish. At one point, Ono called Geffen with a plan to move more copies.

“She said, ‘I want you to go out and buy records at every record store,’” says Geffen. “She thought it could be operated, which it really can’t.”

On 9th October, we will mark John Lennon’s eighty-fifth birthday. I will publish another feature. However, for this one, I wanted to look at his final studio album. A very personal and revealing one that, despite some mixed critical reviews, I feel is thoroughly deserving of retrospection. When John Lennon was killed weeks after the album came out, Double Fantasy took on new perspective and meaning. Forty-five years after its release, I think Double Fantasy stands up. A sign of where, briefly, Lennon might have headed. Or maybe a stepping stone to other sounds. In my opinion, this 1980 release is a…

BEAUTIFUL album.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: Fifteen: The Morning Fog

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

Fifteen: The Morning Fog

__________

PERHAPS there is…

less to be said about this track than the rest of Hounds of Love’s. Kate Bush’s fifth studio album turns forty on 16th September and, to mark that, I am writing a series of twenty features that take us inside the album and around it. The promotion, legacy and success. The final feature about its songs takes us to the uplifting finale, The Morning Fog. The second-shortest track on the album (behind Under Ice), it clocks in at 2:37. In terms of streaming on Spotify, it is the ‘least popular’. Maybe because it is the final track, or others fancying the singles rather than other songs. It is a track that is not played much or has been talked about much. It did appear in an episode of the U.S. series, The Bear. There are a couple of things I want to cover off. I will come to Leah Kardos once more and her book, Hounds of Love for 33/1. Maybe not surprising that she does not expend as many words on this song as most of the remainder of the album. It is a short track but perhaps the most important. Because it is the end, but also the end of this struggle. A woman lost at sea is rescued and taken to land. That is what we hope and assume. This sense of relief and making it through the night. The chance for her to tell family what they mean to her. A rebirth and rescue. Even if it is a fairly brief song, it packs so much in! I want to start out with the Kate Bush Encyclopedia and their article on the song. Specifically, a section of an archive interview from 1992 where Kate Bush shared some words on The Morning Fog:

“Well, that’s really meant to be the rescue of the whole situation, where now suddenly out of all this darkness and weight comes light. You know, the weightiness is gone and here’s the morning, and it’s meant to feel very positive and bright and uplifting from the rest of dense, darkness of the previous track. And although it doesn’t say so, in my mind this was the song where they were rescued, where they get pulled out of the water. And it’s very much a song of seeing perspective, of really, you know, of being so grateful for everything that you have, that you’re never grateful of in ordinary life because you just abuse it totally. And it was also meant to be one of those kind of “thank you and goodnight” songs. You know, the little finale where everyone does a little dance and then the bow and then they leave the stage. [laughs]

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”.

There has not been much written about this song. A tiny bit here and there. You cannot talk about Hounds of Love and ignore the importance of The Morning Fog. It the end of the ordeal that Kate Bush’s heroine faces during The Ninth Wave. This 2023 article is a review of Hounds of Love. Here is what was written about The Morning Fog: “It’s warm acoustics and comforting tone allows us to breathe again after facing such a taxing psychological journey. It is through her near-death experience that she has gathered a new respect for her loved ones and life itself, “I’m falling/ And I’d love to hold you now/ I’ll kiss the ground/ I’ll tell my mother/ I’ll tell my father/ I’ll tell my loved ones/ I’ll tell my brothers/ How much I love them.” Some fans have argued that this song is her spirit looking back at her life and taking the lessons from this life to the next”. I am going to include pretty everything Leah Kardos says about The Morning Fog because, amazingly, I don’t think anyone has ever written this much about the track (apart from me). “As the world comes back into focus in the morning light, the final track of The Ninth Wave concludes the suite with lightness”. After the haunting and epic Hello Earth, we get this real shift with The Morning Fog. It is a moment where there is either this salvation or chance to return home. Or else, this is the afterlife. I like to think that the woman was rescued and everything worked out okay. Leah Kardos mentions how the lyrics are ambiguous regarding the fate of the woman. I shall end by looking at some of them. In terms of the music. It is “reassuringly bright in B major, bobbing down from, B to Asus2 and E/G# and back up again without a hint of darkness or danger. John Williams’s double-tracked nylon string guitar decorates the gently pulsing LinnDrum sequence with delicate picked rhythms and improvised melody  overflowing in sunlit sweetness”.

<

I do wonder why few have gone inside the songs. Looked beyond the singles. Even though The Ninth Wave should be seen as a suite, each of the seven songs deserves more words and examination. I am not sure whether that will happen as we head towards the fortieth anniversary of Hounds of Love on 16th September. Del Palmer’s upbeat and bouncy bass is one of the standout elements of The Morning Fog. “Bush sings about falling ‘like a stone, like a storm’, which could suggest to some that she is being pulled down into the water’s depths one last time, or alternatively that she is falling to earth with gravity, back to safety”. I have mentioned this when I last covered The Morning Fog. However, there is this mystery about the song. No clear outcome. That ambiguity is what makes the track and The Ninth Wave so intriguing and nuanced. That being “born again  into the sweet morning fog” is either literal or it could be Bush/the heroine on the other side. Whichever it is, you can feel this real sense of safety. After the hours of being stranded at sea, this is a moment she thought she would never experience. Following the communication struggles and issues that we have heard through Hounds of Love and The Ninth Wave, this is clarity. Bush able to tell her family exactly how she feels. Themes of love and how to appreciate and understand people. The greatest and most sincere declaration of love left to the very end. Kate Bush’s ecstasy at being back on land. Bush said how she wanted The Morning Fog to be this bowing to the audience. This “thank you and goodnight” track. Where the performer thanks those watching. Seeing Hounds of Love as this concept album or production, this is the glorious curtain call. I always wonder whether a filmed version of Hounds of Love and The Ninth Wave could come about. Bush did perform most of the album during her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. However, I think there is more life to come from this classic album!

At the end of The Morning Fog, Bush takes a minute to namecheck her family. She thanks “her mother, father, partner and brothers. And with that, the song takes a small bow, resolving with a dainty falling 5th on Williams’s classical guitar”. In terms of the lyrics, I love the mix of the poetic and personal. The vivid images of the opening few lines: “The light/Begin to bleed/Begin to breathe/Begin to speak/D’you know what?/I love you better now”. It is heartfelt and passionate but there is also this connection to nature and the world around. Something that runs right through Hounds of Love. In almost every single song. The line, “I love you better now” is perhaps the standout of the album. The meaning behind it. The choice of ‘better’ rather than ‘more’. Not just the quantity of her love but the quality. More appreciative than before, perhaps. The composition is fascinating too. Her brother Paddy Bush on violins and fujare. This instrument originated in central Slovakia as a large sophisticated folk shepherd's overtone fipple flute of unique design. Kevin McAlea on synthesiser alongside John Williams on guitar and Del Palmer on bass. Coming together to create this sumptuous, evocative and delightful sound. I am going to end now. In the final five features of my twenty-feature run, I am going to look at the legacy of Hounds of Love, Bush as a producer, and its meaning and significance forty years later. Saying goodbye to the songs themselves, it has been great revisiting The Morning Fog. Though not as popular as the other cuts on Hounds of Love, I have a lot of affection for it. Such a brilliant song that has this importance. In terms of the narrative of The Ninth Wave but also the concept and narrative of Hounds of Love. The title track is anxious and fearful. Bush running away from these hounds of love. Scared to commit. On The Morning Fog, it is like when people find God after trauma. Discovering this type of faith after a harrowing event. After the darkness, turbulence and fear that came before, The Morning Fog is the moment we see this transition through the cold and chill. Past the foggy morning and…

INTO the light.

FEATURE: Oasis’ (What's the Story) Morning Glory? at Thirty: Inside the U.K. Singles

FEATURE:

 

 

Oasis’ (What's the Story) Morning Glory? at Thirty

Inside the U.K. Singles

__________

ONE of the biggest albums…

of the 1990s turns thirty on 2nd October. There will be a lot of attention around Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? The second album from the band, they are currently on tour. Having played many dates in the U.K., they will soon be heading overseas. In fact, by the time you read this, they will be. Reunited and playing on a global stage, no doubt their 1995 album is getting a lot of love for new and decades-old fans alike. For this second anniversary feature, I am focusing on the U.K. singles. In total, four singles were released in the U.K. They were released elsewhere too, but these are ones U.K. audiences could buy. Two more were released, though they were not U.K. releases. Morning Glory was a U.S./Australia single, whilst Champagne Supernova was released in Australia. The latter would have been a huge hit here! I think Morning Glory should have been released in the U.K. instead of Roll with It. Going up against Blur’s Country House in the summer of 1995, I think it would have won the race to the top of the U.K. chart. That said, Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back in Anger were huge. I am going to tackle the single chronologically. In each case, bringing in some background and reviews for each song. Giving my rating on each of them. From the lead-off single, Some Might Say, to the final U.K. release, Don’t Look Back in Anger, this was a wild ride for a band that achieved world domination! Let’s get down to these distinct and amazing singles. Ones that live to this day and still sound new and thrilling…

Some Might Say (8/10)

U.K. release date: 24th April, 1995

The Backstory:

“Noel has never been shy about his influences, or the fact that he would happily “repurpose” songs he loved in his own work. The Beatles, Bowie and Pink Floyd were obvious touchstones in Oasis songs but the inspiration behind Some Might Say is one of Noel’s more curious lifts, taking its cue from a song by long-forgotten US rockers Grant Lee Buffalo.

“They were an American indie band who had this tune called Fuzzy,” Noel explained in an interview to mark …Morning Glory’s 25th anniversary a few years ago. “You can see it’s a big influence on Some Might Say. I’ll obsess about a song for years and I’ll rip it off 12 times and get 12 different tunes out of it.”

“Everything I do is a nod to something or other,” he continued. “I’m not a genius, I’m a fan of music. Paul McCartney is a genius and Morrissey and Bob Dylan. I’m not, I’m just fans of theirs. I’ve got a good knack of putting shit together but I’m not a snob about where it comes from – I’ll tell you. Nothing is original, there’s only 12 notes anyway.”

The similarities are clear as soon as Fuzzy begins, not so much in anything about the songs themselves – one is a delicate acoustic number and the other is a chugging rocker but both are rooted in a swinging, bluesy riff.

Some Might Say, as Noel explained to Fran Healy in an interview for the Travis frontman’s radio show a few years ago, was written almost a year its release. “When I wrote it, I was living opposite a studio in Chiswick called Eden Studios,” he recalled. “Across the road, they had a house where if you were working at Eden Studios, you could rent one of the rooms. But I wasn’t working there and for some reason I was living there, on the top floor, above Mike Oldfield’s ex-wife, not that that has anything to do with anything. I wrote it over a couple of days in the top flat. I’d just moved to London and was sampling the nightlife of London and I remember coming home at all hours of the morning and writing, which is why the lyrics are quite nonsensical… dogs itching in the kitchen and all that, I was quite hammered when I wrote it. Everybody would read different things into the lyrics and I’d just agree with all of them, going, ‘Yeah, that’s what it is!’.”

Returning from a bout of touring a few months later, Noel was determined to get a demo on tape, not a regular occurrence at the time, he said. “I was so excited about it I wanted to do a demo. At that point, I wasn’t big on doing demos. It was the only demo I did for Morning Glory.”

He contacted Owen Morris, the producer who had rescued Definitely Maybe when sessions weren’t going to plan and who was away working with The Verve on what would become their second record A Northern Soul. “He said, ‘I’m in Wales with The Verve but I think they’re having the weekend off, so why don’t you come down for the weekend?’,” Noel remembered. “I jumped on the train and went to Loco Studios and the demo is actually recorded with all of The Verve’s equipment, it’s me playing the drums and the bass and all that but it’s Nick McCabe’s rig and Simon Jones’ bass.”

It proved to be a journey worth taking – on the way back Noel’s train broke down in the Severn Tunnel and whilst sitting there, he wrote the classic Oasis B-side Acquiesce. “It turned out to be one of the best weekends ever,” he beamed.

The band recorded a new take of Some Might Say for the single release but Noel says he prefers the demo version. “It was a tiny bit slower and a bit more 70s,” he explained. “The way we did it with Oasis was a bit more Britpop. The demo was a bit dirtier and sleazier. The demo was slow and a bit more boozy.”

Released in April 1995, Some Might Say went to Number One and also marked the end of Oasis Mk 1 – original drummer Tony McCarroll plays on the track but by the time it was top of the charts, he had been replaced by Alan White behind the kit.

“It’s a funny song in the Oasis catalogue cos we gave up playing it pretty quickly because Liam struggled with it,” Noel reflected. “It’s probably my favourite Oasis song, I think the chorus is brilliant. I’ve always got fond memories of it” – LOUDER

A Critical Review:

“Who out there’s one of the lucky people going to the Oasis reunion gigs in the summer? If you are and reading this, I hope you have a good time. I could say I was jealous, but I feel all right knowing that the Gallagher brothers are way past their ’20s and probably won’t be as great live as they were 30 years ago. But it’s nice knowing that Noel and Liam seem to be getting along now, or so it seems. I guess everyone will have to wait and see until that big tour starts in July. It’ll be a spectacle, I’m sure. I like a bunch of Oasis songs. Most of them happen to be singles. I got the Stop the Clocks compilation a long time ago, which is an ideal package if you want to start getting into the band. For any artist, the singles are picked ’cause they’re considered to be the best songs. But that’s something that truly applies to Oasis. ‘Some Might Say’ was the first single from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, released in April 1995 – six months in advance of the album. Oasis were already a name in the UK ’cause of Definitely Maybe, and people liked ‘Some Might Say’ so much that it shot straight to number 1 in the charts after its first week.

It’s up there as one of my favourite Oasis songs too. Just like its music video shows, the chugging guitar introduction feels like a rocket ship launching and when the band enters you’re just taken into the stratosphere and never come down from that point on. The song sees Noel Gallagher on some kind of quasi-philosophical line of thinking. “Some might say they don’t believe in heaven/Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell.” “Some might say that we should never ponder on our thoughts today ’cause they hold sway over time.” Some good, good lines. The main line to focus on is the one that precedes the chorus, “Some might say we will find a brighter day.” We all hope for that, don’t we? And then there’s lines about standing at a station in need of education and sinks full of fishes and dirty dishes. The chorus is a bunch of nonsense, but alongside the music, it sounds out of this world.

And like the songs that were listed on Definitely Maybe, ‘Some Might Say’ is designed to be played loud. Guitars levels are boosted to the max, tracks and tracks of overdubs are existing on there. Noel Gallagher’s said before that he doesn’t like the sound of …Morning Glory, but at least to me, this song is where the way it’s loudly mixed works massively to its advantage. Liam Gallagher sings the track very, very well, and I thoroughly enjoy the back and forth between he and Noel during the song’s final moments amidst the feedback and uplifting chord progression. Those guitars that go on and on for the gradual fade-out outro, I could listen to for at least two more minutes, and the story goes that the band kept on playing that outro for a long while after the album’s fade because they were enjoying it so much and didn’t want to stop. I read that somewhere, I’m sure. Or watched Noel say that in a video, I wish I could find it. He does consider it to be one of the band’s finest moments, I have the evidence for that. And as a listener, I wouldn’t argue” – The Music in My Ears

Roll with It (7/10)

U.K. release date: 14th August, 1995

The Backstory:

“Coming out in the autumn of 1995, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? was the soundtrack to a pair of different life-changing events. The first one was my job at a company in San Francisco called Art & Science, an agency that built websites for other companies.

In late 1994, I’d discovered the World Wide Web, so in early 1995 I taught myself HTML, built my own personal web page (which still exists!), and that summer, responding to an ad on Usenet, got myself a temporary gig with Art & Science building the first website for The American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

It was supposed to be a three month gig, but the day after I got it, I walked into the weird, small, libertarian ad agency I’d been working for — the job that allowed me to move from Fresno in the first place — and quit, because I had every confidence in the world that if I worked my ass off, it would become a permanent gig. And that’s what ended up happening, and while I was at Art & Science, I worked on early websites for Joe Boxer and SoCal Gas before I left for the greener pastures of Organic Online.

And throughout that fall I tortured my co-workers with repeated playings of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? which was both a bit popular and a bit rock ‘n’ roll for the cool younger kids I was working with. But I didn’t care, cos I loved it so much.

You gotta roll with it
You gotta take your time
You gotta say what you say
Don’t let anybody get in your way
‘Cause it’s all too much for me to take

The other major thing that happened was that Rox & I decided to move in together, so the days of flying back-and-forth just to be with each other ended and the days of just being with each other began. And she loved this album as much if not more than I did, so it was a soundtrack to the weekends of apartment hunting in Oakland even more than Definitely Maybe had been the soundtrack of driving around L.A.

Don’t ever stand aside
Don’t ever be denied
You wanna be who you’d be
If you’re coming with me

“Roll With It” has more hooks that a wharf full of bait shops, kicking off with a big echoing guitar, and even bigger before Liam Gallagher slams in, sneer and confidence fully intact leading off with the chorus. Or if it’s not the chorus, it would be the chorus of a lesser song. Given Noel Gallagher’s penchant for writing songs with a shitton of repetition, it’s nearly impossible to know for sure exactly what the chorus is. So it could be this.

I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
I think I’m gonna take me away and hide
I’m thinking of things that I just can’t abide

Or maybe it’s this, with Noel’s backing vocals echoing around Liam’s lead.

I know the roads down which your life will drive
(Drive life will drive life will drive)
I find the key that lets you slip inside
(Slip inside slip inside)
Kiss the girl, she’s not behind the door
(Behind the door, behind the door)
But you know I think I recognize your face
But I’ve never seen you before

There’s a really nice drum part here were Alan White double times at the end of the verse (or chorus or bridge). Yeah. It’s a bridge, because it sets up a repeat of the chorus, only this time Noel is doing a totally boss falsetto harmony, and then it goes directly into the guitar solo.

You gotta roll with it
You gotta take your time
You gotta say what you say
Don’t let anybody get in your way
‘Cause it’s all too much for me to take

And’s its a great guitar solo, too, taking its fucking time, because Oasis never cared how long their songs were, especially the catchy ones, and so Noel plays long arcing lines against the echo chamber he’s created, though, if listen carefully, you can hear a cowbell buried in the plethora of percussion they layered on.

There’s a bit more static and noise and echo on (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? than there was on Definitely Maybe, like they were trying to get rockier while at the same time writing poppier tunes. And “Roll With It” pulls off that trick with aplomb, gliding into the coda with squealing guitars and one last Noel / Liam counterpoint vocal.

I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaay)
I think I’ve got a feeling I’ve lost inside
(So take me awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay)

Noel’s final vocals fade into the ether as the guitars rise up and take “Roll With It” to its ending, a whole entire universe in a little under four minutes. Say whatever you want about their public personae as complete and utter yobs, they sure as shit knew how to craft a great pop song.

And while “Roll With It” was totally ignored here in the United States, where it was clear that nobody gave a rats ass about Britpop, it was their fifth straight top ten single in the U.K. making it all the way to #2, and they were just getting going” – Medialoper

Critical Reviews:

“The AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine described 'Roll with It' as "an assured stadium rocker that unabashedly steals the crown from Status Quo". David Stubbs from Melody Maker wrote, "This isn't the mounting cascade of manna and adrenalin that was 'Some Might Say' or 'Acquiesce'. It's subdued by comparison, a light shower after that musical thunderstorm, something for us to kick through the puddles to until their next mighty moment of precipitous pop. Rolling along, marking time, fair enough." A reviewer from Music & Media said, "When was it that dance fans predicted the end of rock? By going two steps back to the '60s Oasis takes it six steps forward. So roll over you sceptics, "my my, hey hey, rock 'n' roll is to stay."" Mark Sutherland from NME wrote, "Have no fear, you will la-la-la-like it. It is, after all, a pretty good record." Andrew Harrison from Select named it "Oasis' weakest single, but still far from the Quo travesty of legend, even if the song might conjure visions of flying wetlook perms." Leesa Daniels from Smash Hits gave it two out of five and named it "the weakest track" of the album, "and Liam sounds like he's got a sore throat” - Wikipedia

Wonderwall (10/10)

U.K. release date: 30th October, 1995

The Backstory:

“Liam Gallagher is rarely at a loss for words, snide or otherwise. But during a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the singer was left momentarily speechless after being informed that “Wonderwall,” the monster 1995 ballad he sang with his old band, Oasis, is on its way to approaching 1 billion streams on Spotify.

“That’s pretty big, man,” Gallagher says, finally, as if it took a few seconds for the enormity of that figure to sink in. Then the old Liam, the one who loves to bash his songwriting brother, Noel, returns. “You know who that is — that’s Noel, probably. He sat there for an hour and a half, constantly on that finger, click click, click. That’s why he’s always pointing at people.”

Jokes (and typical Gallagher-brother shtick) aside, “Wonderwall” has become the song that will not die — a Nineties hit that has transcended its era and become a new standard. Released 25 years ago next month on Oasis’ second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, “Wonderwall” regularly streams about 500,000 times a week (or 750,000, if audio and video streams are combined), according to Alpha Data, the data-analytics provider that powers the Rolling Stone Charts. Last year, Rolling Stone’s Tim Ingham estimated that “Wonderwall” was generating about $2,650 in recorded-music royalties on Spotify every 24 hours, or $1 million a year. In recent years, as Ingham notes, it’s been one of the few songs from the previous century to appear in the Spotify Top 200, a chart dominated by new pop, hip-hop, and Latin tracks.

“Wonderwall” stood out the moment it was released, not simply because it didn’t adhere to the hopped-up new-British-Invasion blare Oasis had become known for. A declaration of love and support for someone who was struggling, it didn’t swagger the way the band’s previous songs had; it was openhearted and earnest, with a melody and busker-simple arrangement that made both Oasis and Liam sound vulnerable. From the start, the song felt timeless — a feeling born out by the fact that it’s been covered roughly 100 times. One Direction harmonized to it on a beach; Ryan Adams and Cat Power each turned it into skeletal mood pieces; Paul Anka recast it as big-band lounge tune; LeAnn Rimes made it a pop-country ballad; and pianist Brad Mehldau transformed it into jazz. “Something about ‘Wonderwall’ has always moved me,” says Rimes. “In the Nineties, I was enveloped in full-blown teenage angst, and it was the perfect soundtrack for it” – Rolling Stone

A Critical Review:

“Despite Robson & Jerome denying it the UK top spot, this song went on to become Oasis’s best-selling single in the UK, and it’s not hard to find reasons. Liam’s instantly recognisable vocal tone, of course, must rank high on the list, balancing super-focused midrange, cutting nasality, and (on higher-register lines such as “I don’t believe that anybody” at 0:33) a hint of tastefully grainy break-up.

However, I really rate the drums here too. The choice of brushes is a great production move, as this instinctively feels like it better matches the arrangement’s prominent acoustic guitar and solo cello. Delaying the drummer’s second-verse entry by three beats is also inspired, not only because it’s so unexpected, but because it prevents the drums obscuring the cello’s first entry and also adds stress to Liam’s vocal rhythms on “street that the” — wisely resisting the temptation to plant a snare under the word “backbeat”, which I don’t think would have been nearly as attention-grabbing. And that fill after the first chorus is also a classic!

The harmonies are impressive as well, because of the way Noel manages to puzzle out a satisfying progression using five different chords ( A, B7sus4, D9, Esus4, and F#m7) which all share two notes ( A and E). This means that those notes can be sustained as upper pedal tones pretty much throughout — no wonder U2’s guitarist Edge has apparently said he wishes he’d written ‘Wonderwall’, because those pedal tones would have been ideally suited to his trademark long-tail echo effects.

What mystifies me a little with this song, though, are the disparities between the original album and the version on the band’s Stop The Clocks (2006) and Time Flies (2010) greatest hits collections. Now I can understand why the drum fill after the first chorus appears to have been drastically EQ’d, because the kit was clearly mixed to leave plenty of room for the harmonic and melodic parts, which means it does sound rather thin in isolation at that moment. But why has the entire mix apparently been polarity-inverted for the compilation? I accept that some people feel this makes a sonic difference, but if the improvement were so cut and dried, then it’s curious that the very same mastering engineer didn’t repeat the polarity-inversion move for his 2014 album remaster.

Then there’s the fact that the left and right channels appear to have been swapped for the compilation. Compare the positioning of the clean guitar counterpoint under “all the lights that lead us there are blinding” (1:11), for instance, or the electric guitar’s sustain at the end of chorus one. But what’s weirder is that this doesn’t remain consistent, since the verse sections don’t seem to have been channel-swapped — the opening acoustic guitar is noticeably brighter and pickier on the left side in both cases, for instance. What could possibly have been gained by doing this? It makes no sense to me at all. Yet if it’s a simple goof, then isn’t it actually the kind of thing you’d expect a top-flight mastering house to be quality-controlling for, especially with their highest-profile artists?” – The Mix Review

Don’t Look Back in Anger (9.5/10)

U.K. release date: 19th February, 1996

The Backstory:

“Saturday, April 22, 1995, Sheffield Arena: a momentous Oasis date for two reasons. Sadly for Tony McCarroll, it was his last ever gig drumming for the band. But when one thing ends another begins, and it was in Noel Gallagher’s acoustic set that night that he played ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ for the first time, sandwiched between ‘take Me Away’ and ‘Talk Tonight. “I only wrote this on Tuesday,” he told the crowd, before sort-of dedicating it to The La’s frontman Lee Mavers: “You’ve not heard this one before, mate.” The original inspiration for the song came from Noel Gallagher visiting Paul Weller at The Manor studios in Oxford to play on the track ‘I Walk On Gilded Splinters’. While there, Weller played his song ‘Wings Of Speed’, and that was that.

Things were less simple in the recording studio. It began when Noel played both ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ to Liam, and asked him which one he wanted to sing. Liam chose ‘Wonderwall’, which was committed to tape without a hitch. When the time came to do ‘…Anger’, Liam wasn’t needed so went to the pub. Friendly man that he is, he proceeded to invite around 30 pissed Monmouth locals back to the studio from local boozers The Old Nag’s Head and The Bull. Noel turned up a few hours to find, according to Alan McGee, “half of fucking Monmouth” in his room, and “complete strangers playing with £30,000 worth of guitars”. He adds: “one of them asks him for the number of a cab and Noel kicks them out. A punch-up ensues, and Noel chases Liam out with a cricket bat.”

As Owen Morris tells it: “The next morning, Noel had left. The band was over. The album dead. No one knew if he was coming back. We were all gutted.”

A couple weeks later Noel did come back, and the band got back to business. But the question remains: do any versions of Liam singing ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ exist? Opinions differ. When quizzed by David Huggins of the Oasis Recording Info website, Rockfields Studios engineer Nick Brine said in an email: “My understanding is that Liam did record a vocal on the album version, but I think it was just one run-through for a bit of fun really.” Owen Morris refutes this claim: “Liam absolutely did not sing ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ at any point. Nick Brine’s memory is incorrect”.

But, intriguingly, Noel Gallagher said this to MOJO in 1997: “When I gave [Liam] ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ he’s singing ‘But don’t back in anger, not today’. I’m saying, It’s ‘don’t look back in anger’. ‘He’s saying, ‘Well, that’s not what’s fuckin’ written ‘ere, Chief.’” Whether anything was recorded, and whether it will ever be released, Noel only knows” – NME

A Critical Review:

“Their title-belt rhetoric, Liam’s snarl, and the brick-wall loudness of Oasis’ radio sound made it easy not to notice how thoughtful Noel Gallagher’s lyrics could be. They weren’t especially clever lyrics, or meaningful, or even coherent, but “Whatever” and “Some Might Say” and “Roll With It” and “Wonderwall” and this one all have a reflective streak – bits and bobs of beermat philosophy giving the lie to the idea that Oasis were only a gang of sneering blusterers. Of course, this is more evidence that Oasis weren’t ever really a Britpop band – that scene had an art-pop appreciation for smart, satirical or formally dense lyrics, and even the unworked songs are very knowing about it (“Woo-hoo!”, indeed)

Noel seemed to prefer offhand sincerity, collages of lines that sound good sung, their emotional payoffs poking through puns, rhymes and boilerplate. According to both brothers, the “So, Sally can wait…” line that rouses “Don’t Look Back In Anger” from its slumberous verses was a happy collaborative accident, Liam pouncing on a phrase Noel had pulled from the air and ordering him to keep it. But the whole song feels like a similar patchwork, really good lines – “Please don’t put your life in the hands / Of a rock and roll band” side by side with fumbling about slipping inside the eye of your mind. The magpie phrase-lifting of the title sets the tone for the whole thing.

It might seem perverse to focus on “Don’t Look Back In Anger”’s lyrics, which are a tiny part of why it got to Number One and why it’s one of the band’s milestone tracks. But the rest of it leaves me almost completely cold, even when I can see what it’s up to. The opening piano, a lift from “Imagine”, is one of the group’s least subtle bits of behavioural priming – this is going to be a Big Song, Noel shooting for the Hall of Fame with a pained, ponderous rock ballad. I rarely like that kind of thing, and no surprise, I don’t really like this. It’s a treacly, high-gravity listen – guitars and drums and strings all jostling for space, dragging each other down. And while Liam’s singing wouldn’t have fitted this song’s rueful tone, Noel’s delivery veers between heartfelt and maudlin – particularly when he lets the song fizzle out at the end. Comparisons to “Wonderwall” – with Liam in total, electrifying command of a much tighter arrangement – are inevitable, and don’t flatter this song.

But something I do appreciate about it is that, in the context of rock tear-jerkers and lighter-wavers, the scrappy lyrics are an asset. There’s a sort of story here* – bye, Sal! – but no message or particular claim of wisdom, nothing you’re expected to agree with. Instead, the song flails about in a sump of self-justification and sentimentality, and is all the better for it. I have been drunk, and I have put big, sentimental rock music on when drunk, and felt the beery swell of nameless emotion just out of reach of my befuddled mind, and while I’d never use this track for it, I can recognise that use in it. That just-out-of-reachness – that catalyst for messy, dredged-up, inchoate feels – is the one way “Don’t Look Back In Anger” does stand comparison with “Wonderwall”.

*Though one particular coherent reading did jump out at me – what if that opening steal isn’t just a signal of the type of song this is going to be, but is an explicit admission: this song is Lennon fanfic, and Lennon is its “you”. It’s a fantasy where Noel gets to be John’s buddy – a Mary Stu. “Take me to the place that you go…” – and there’s Noel hanging out in Strawberry Fields, being there at the bed-in, helping him out – saving him, maybe – with some down-to-Earth Gallagher wisdom, vibing off his presence as “Sally” is left behind – no wonder Liam didn’t get to sing this – and kissed off with a snide cultural reference because that’s the kind of thing John Lennon does for Noel, his best friend forever. And there, walking on by, we shall leave them.

Score: 4” – Popular-numer1s

FEATURE: Spotlight: ADÉLA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Savanna Ruedy

ADÉLA

__________

I am going to come to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Patricia Garate

some recent features and interviews with the incredible ADÉLA. Adéla Jergová is a Slovak singer-songwriter and dancer. She took part in Hybe and Geffen Records' 2023 survival show, Dream Academy, a competition to form a global girl group. As a solo artist, she has released some amazing singles. This year, Machine Girl and DeathByDevotion have thrilled critics and fans. Her new E.P., The Provocateur, is out on 22nd August. I am writing this before that date but, by the time this is shared, that E.P. will be out. I think that there will be a call and demand from her fans to release a debut album. I starting out with a 2024 interview from Out. She talked about, among other things, her single, Homewrecked, and her biggest musical influences:

“Earlier this summer, streaming giant Netflix casually released Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE and sent international pop stans from all over the world into a frenzy.

The eight-part docuseries chronicled dozens of teenage girls traveling to LA to begin a training and development program produced by K-Pop record label HYBE to form their first "global girl group." This is how we meet Adéla, a girl from Slovakia whose big dreams outgrew her small town and country. And the dream was just within reach until the production revealed, after over a year of training, that the Top 20 girls would actually be competing against each other for just 6 spots.

Thus began Dream Academy, a global show that concluded last fall and produced the girl group KATSEYE. Though Dream Academy waded into some unethical waters, Pop Star Academy shows the highs and the lows of the participating contestants and what it takes to put together a group that can capture the entire world's attention.

Out: You're releasing your debut song tomorrow. How does it feel?

Adéla: I feel so f--king excited. Ever since the show came out, I've been getting so much attention, and when the show ended and during the last couple of months of the show, I knew that that wasn't the place for me. And I just felt like I needed to find my own path and my own artistry. And that's what I've done ever since the Dream Academy social media part of the show ended. I've been here and I've been working with producers and writers and trying to find a sound that feels like me and that I really can hone in on.

I feel like when you're training for something like a girl group, it's a lot of adapting to each other, feeling each other out, also trying to give a certain fantasy and vision that's put on you because it has to be. After I came out of that, I was like, 'Wait, what the f--k? Who am I?'

But this song, I wrote it with me and [Liam Benayon] and produced it with Dylan Harrison and Riley Aki, and it just feels exactly like me. The story is super personal and I'm so excited. It's so campy and weird and dramatic and way too much. And honestly, that's a lot of what I've always been told. Even down to my face. They used to tell me, you have a Jim Carrey face. And I was like, wait, work? Yeah, I do. But now I get to do that, and it feels really fun, and the people haven't responding to it really well, and I just really appreciate it. So I was super excited. This is the first one, and it's only going to get better and bigger.

Can you tell me about the lyrics of "Homewrecked." Is it about your experience on the show? A man?

I kind of like people not really knowing. If you put whatever meaning you want to it, I leave it up to you. Just know that it is rooted in real experience, and whether you take it literally or you go the more abstract route, I kind of enjoy seeing everybody's take on it.

When I wrote it though, in my head, it was about infidelity and it was about dealing with the worst feelings that you have of somebody close hurting you in such a way. And it's basically about killing the mistress that they cheated on somebody with. So it's about killing the person that they hurt you with. And it's not in the sense of let's put all the blame on the girl, but it's about, I want to hurt you so bad that this person that makes you happy, I want to kill them because you hurt me. Which didn't that happen in real life? And if it did, I wouldn't be telling you.

Who are your biggest musical influences? Who do you grew up listening to?

I am the biggest Beyoncé stan there is. I'm the biggest BeyHive you've ever f--king met. I've watched Homecoming, no joke, 17 times. I've watched it so much. And I made everybody in my closest circle watch it too. And I actually dragged Emily and Megan to the Renaissance world tour and to the movies too. I was like, if we want to do this. Let's f--king learn from the best. Yes, the tickets are expensive as f--k. We're going. We have a shoot tomorrow. I don't care. We're going.

Lady Gaga is a huge inspiration. I think seeing her artistry and seeing how absolutely unhinged she's been in her career. But how it's so intentional though, to me, that's so interesting and beautiful. And seeing all the different parts of her. You have the Fame monster, and they have Joanne, and then it's like, now we're in her jazz era with Tony Bennett. What an artist. And I think that's a huge inspiration. I obviously love Chappell Roan. I think she's so amazing. I think she's doing something that hasn't been done before, and it's just so fresh and amazing to see vocally. I grew up listening to Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston. And Mariah and Ariana. I was the biggest Ariana Grande stan. The pop girl is Britney. I really grew up just immersed in pop through and through, and I used to get ridiculed a lot growing up. People love to make fun of pop. It's like, girl, pop stands for popular, and it's popular for a reason. Oh, also Troye Sivan and Charlie xcx.

As someone who quite literally studies this industry and what it does to pop stars, just keep uplifting each other up because people will try and try to tear y'all down. This is all just entertainment and fake for them.

And everybody has been. KATSEYE members, non-KATSEYE members, everybody. We've all been very just drilling it in, like, are you okay? Are you good? I'm seeing what's being said. It's so actually loving, and it's actually what was so surprising about, honestly, the whole experience is the entire time, the whole class of the girls, or the cast of the show, it was just such an example of what people paint out girls to be. You would think that it would be so catty and mean, but there was none of that. Seriously none. Our project managers, they would say, 'F--k, we were so scared. But honestly, we got so lucky with all of you.' There was so much maturity and love with everything. The way that we handled each other. Everybody was so aware that it's such a tough thing to go through. We're all in such a weird position, and nobody intentionally tried to hurt anybody. And if there were issues, we talked them out, whether they showed it on camera or not, there's so many conversations honestly, that we also chose to have off camera. We we're real people, and you're seeing real things, but some things you don't want to show. You know what I mean? So it was definitely interesting. But I think for me and for all of us, where it was very authentic and it showed us actually going through what we were going through, and we're all just glad that we have each other and that we know what happened and that we're all good. Everybody wishes everybody the best. Seriously. That's how we feel”.

In this interview with The Line of Best Fit, ADÉLA talked about being raised in a conservative household and her early obsession with American Pop music and culture. The Slovakian artist has her own blueprint for Pop. Now residing in Los Angeles, this is someone who is primed for long-term success and endurance:

“Jergová was quite the determined pre-teen. Raised on the homogenised Internet, she had a "deep, guttural knowing" that she could attain fame — she saw bloggers like Bethany Mota go from a regular girl to a superstar influencer, along with countless others liker her gaining a following by sharing their talent. Performing "was the only thing that I ever wanted to do," she tells me, and the rigorous demands of becoming a professional ballerina — eight hours of practice, followed by more after hours — gave her a hardened sense of discipline, as well as a competitive, sly mindset. "I got off on the fact that I was working when everybody else was sleeping," she says.

"I was so narrow-mindedly, like, how do I get from Point A to Point fucking Z?" she asked herself. It’s not easy to go from a child in a small, foreign country to one of the most exciting Gen-Z pop stars of the moment — or even have the guts to think about such a feat in the first place. "In a childlike, stupid way," Jergová says with a smile, "and it really worked for me."

Her approach — working very very hard — has resulted in some spectacular results. Her latest single, February’s "MACHINE GIRL", is a succinct and sharp send-up to entertainment television where reality is distorted, people are treated like pawns, and extremity triumphs over nuance. "Why you comin’ at me, baby? Yell at the machine, girl!" she taunts. The video, choreographed by Jergová and Miguel Zárate, is angular and violent; a line of six women battle each other while playing to the camera, swinging at heads and threatening ankles. Grimes, who co-produced the track after DMing Jergová out of the blue, cameos at the end to advise the catfighters to turn up the rage.

It’s a not-so-subtle jab at her time in Pop Star Academy, the Netflix competition show where contestants audition to join the meticulously-created global girl group that would become KATSEYE. Jergová was one of the first to be eliminated and is not shy about the fact that it hit her hard: "It was the worst year of my life," she says, calling it "identity-stripping."

Most girls went home after being kicked off, to reprogram or destress, but it wasn’t an option for her: "I just knew that if I went home in that moment and I wallowed in that rejection and sadness that comes with such a life altering thing, I would not be back."

A trip back to Slovakia would mean starting over, back to a childlike blankness, which didn’t fit with the curated life plan she set out for herself. "Do you think I'm gonna go to college after I spent two years doing this every single day?" she asks. "For years, doing singing and dance lessons? I didn't have a childhood, and you want me to go to college? What are you talking about?"

Jergová knew she had to stay in LA and undergo the artist’s rite of passage — to find "a really shitty apartment and move out here and figure it out." After a quick trip home to renew her visa, it was a year of exploration and trial and error — before she arrived at her now-cemented electronic, explosive pop, she went through an indie rock phase she knew didn’t suit her ("The only music that I've ever listened to is pop music. Like, what am I doing?" she says). On her vision board are the typical influences of Britney, Madonna, Lady Gaga, as well as more esoteric picks like Imogen Heap and M.I.A. Her songs are brash, cutting, unafraid to show Jergová's vision for ADÉLA first and foremost.

"My whole ethos as a human is that I'm extremely imperfect, and so is everybody else, and I find that so beautiful," she says. "I find both sides of me interesting. Obviously, my first song was about me wanting to kill my dad's mistress. I mean, probably not the right emotion to have. But it's real! You would be mad too!" She’s talking about “HOMEWRECKED”, her revenge hit-and-run fantasy that unfurls with a "rotten, ugly rage inside of me." After she makes her mark, she flees to America. "I'm not very interested in keeping it very PC or down the middle of the line, nice girl, because I don't think I'm that at all. If you've seen the show, and if you've watched any of my content or consumed any of my music, I think one can tell I'm just interested in expressing myself to the fullest."

Not having full control of her vision would be incompatible with how Jergová operates. Maybe getting eliminated from Pop Star Academy was a blessing in disguise — now she has the full opportunity to progress independently. "If there’s six people in a group, you can’t let everyone have creative freedom, it’s never gonna work. That’s what K-pop is. But now being a solo artist at an American label, I get to completely be myself." Do you think she’d come all this way just to acquiesce to someone else’s ideas? In fact, when she auditioned, being in a group was never really a part of her plan. The executives on the show agreed, saying she’d work more as a solo artist, which she learned retroactively. "That would have been nice to hear," she says.

Her music videos are filled with comments from fans relieved she went solo, but she’s been receiving somewhat misguided pushback, too. I bring up her post I saw a while ago, with a pouty Jergová sitting atop a Capitol Records contract. "I sold out fr," she says in the caption. In our conversation, she has no qualms about reaping the benefits of a team behind you – "Being a pop artist is hard. You need budget, time, effort, people to be passionate about it" – but some may see a label backing not as a career boost but as autonomy regression.

Jergová’s plan is assertive and bold, uncompromising and commanding (when people hear it, she hopes that they’ll have a thought – whether it’s admiration or irritation). Two songs that complete her upcoming EP are gritty, sublime, perfect for the club’s flashing lights, like if Tate McRae fused with Charli xcx with the help of Grimes. There was a lot of "speed dating," Jergová says, to make the perfect team, which is now made up of Alex Chapman, Leland, Dylan Brady, Blake Slatkin, among others. It’s a conceptual project that centers an exaggerated version of ADÉLA — sort of a character anyway — growing up, moving to Los Angeles, making it as a pop star. There’s some truth to the mistress-killing — or at least, she certainly felt the visceral rage at the time. "I saw this Greta Thunberg quote the other day, where she says, 'I think we need more angry women.' I agree. I am quite the young angry woman”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jason Omar Al-Taan

I am finishing off with an interview from NME around the release of The Provocateur. That title very much describes her role in Pop. Someone pushing boundaries and staking her claim as a future legend. For anyone who has not heard her music, do go and check out the stunning ADÉLA:

“Dropping on August 22, her debut EP ‘The Provocateur’ has plenty of depth. As it pivots from MARINA-esque electro (‘Homewrecked’) to Britney-style robopop (‘Superscar’) and industrial club thumpers, ADÉLA documents the thrills and pitfalls of navigating the music industry as a self-aware and very ambitious young woman. “Maybe I should count myself so lucky, so lucky,” she sings on ‘Superscar’. “All these dirty hands, they wanna touch me, so touch me.”

The project is smart, sharp and savagely catchy, but “not musically very cohesive” in ADÉLA’s eyes – something she’s perfectly happy with. “It’s got the first song I ever made and the last song, which was finished literally last week,” she says. “So to me, it’s meta in a way, because it’s this snapshot of, like, ‘How does this girl feel about what she’s trying to achieve, and how is she finding all the things she has to do to get there?'”

One such thing is dealing with the way “the public is suddenly perceiving her”, which she believes is “so different from who I am as a person, really”. But ultimately, she “doesn’t give a fuck” about it all. On the hyperpop stomper ‘Machine Girl’, which was co-produced by Grimes, ADÉLA sings about being a “pinned up poster of pop perfection” who’s “d-d-drippin’ in drama”, but also tells us: “Past her lips, you will find her brain.” She’s committing to the role of high-maintenance pop starlet with a knowing wink.

When she moved to Los Angeles three years ago to pursue a music career, she felt immediately at home. “Whereas in Slovakia,” she adds, “I stick out like a sore thumb.” Did she try to soften her natural bluntness? After all, LA’s entertainment enclaves practically run on tactful euphemisms. “No, I refuse!” ADÉLA replies gleefully. “I think it’s kind of funny, and people actually like it because they’re just not used to it.”

In 2023, she landed a place on The Debut: Dream Academy, a YouTube reality series that created the K-pop-inspired girl group KATSEYE. ADÉLA was the first of 20 hopefuls to be eliminated, but again, she was undeterred. When it was followed a year later by the Netflix docuseries Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, she was ready with an attention-grabbing debut single. “I’ll catch you with that dirty little whore,” she sings on ‘Homewrecked’, chastising her father for his extramarital affair.

“I was very logical about it,” she says. “Because no matter if I was a background character or more prominent, I knew I’d have the most eyes on me ever. But I ended up being quite the provocateur on the show.” ADÉLA isn’t exaggerating: after the series premiered, the first comment she read was from a troll calling her an “ugly, stupid ass bitch”.

ADÉLA wrestles with her post-reality show reputation across the EP: her way of telling trolls that “I’m not gonna be submissive just to win over public perception, because that’s not reality, it’s bullshit”. Besides, bullshit would get in the way of her purpose as a pop star. “I’m here to make people more comfortable with being uncomfortable,” ADÉLA says. “Being human – truly human – in pop music, I like to talk about my imperfections. To me, the negative sides of myself are just as interesting as the positive sides”

One of the most promising and talented artists coming through right now, there is going to be a lot of new fans discovering the music of ADÉLA. A new E.P. is due and there will be a string of live dates. She plays London’s Basing House on 19th September. There will be global dates and some huge moments ahead. For anyone new to the magic of this amazing artist, do go and make sure that you…

CHECK her out.

____________

Follow ADÉLA

PHOTO CREDIT: Jason Omar Al-Taan

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/adelajergova/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://x.com/adelajergova

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2qanRMyA5bNuTvz1dK45OP?si=0whPNP3ZR5yffb4kr6VR0A

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@AD%C3%89LAJERGOV%C3%81

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left

__________

BEFORE discussing…

IN THIS PHOTO: Nick Drake in 1969/PHOTO CREDIT: Keith Morris

the album and giving a bit more detail about its brilliance and legacy, it is worth noting that there is an expansion on Five Leaves Left. Nick Drake’s debut studio album was originally released on 3rd July, 1969. It has recently had this reissued and expanded edition. The making of edition gives us demos, alternative versions and outtakes. Giving us greater insight into this classic album. One that still sounds remarkably engrossing and beautiful fifty-six years after its release. This feature gives more details about Nick Drake’s 1969 debut:

“Between 1969 and 1972, Nick Drake recorded three stunning studio albums of detached yet vivid Blake-ian lyricism ripe with images of the elements and an autumnal brand of chamber folk rolling behind his handsomely burnished baritone. If you can imagine David Sylvian, only sadder and still somehow more alive, you can picture Drake’s glass-spun wonder and doomed romanticism. Produced by legendary aficionado of all things rural Joe Boyd and featuring Fairport Conventioneer Richard Thompson along with a small string section, Five Leaves Left was Drakes’s first album, one filled to the brim with his delicate and bluesy bounty, yet somehow leaving the listener with something incomplete about the process. Where did he come from and how did he find his way to the UK’s king of all things dulcet and rustic, Boyd? Why was this guy so moody and sullen? Could he, perhaps, speak up a bit?

To answer these questions, Island/UMe has just released a dissection of the debut across four vinyl albums—a collection that starts not with the singer-guitarist’s 4-track demo recorded in his college dorm room in January 1968, but rather mere months later when Boyd got wowed by the composer-vocalist and pushed him immediately into Sound Techniques studio that March. Meant to tell a story of Five Leaves Left’s construction, each demo, outtake, and previously unheard version on The Making Of radiates the piecemeal feel of a novice grasping his way through a new endeavor (didn’t all of Drake’s music sound randomly unvarnished despite their ornate orchestration?) and one’s personally burgeoning art form. That this box’s final disc is the original album—lustrously remastered, but not over-mastered, by its original engineer, John Wood—gives the new collection a sense of history to go with its mystery.

Not that its third album of sessions toward the end of 1968 isn’t musically valuable, lending new ears to the fresh, previously unrecorded “River Man” as it does—but it’s albums one and two of The Making Of that show off, in great detail, how something so unassuming got assumed. Here, the never-before-heard tapes of Drake’s Cambridge buddy Paul de Rivaz and fellow student and string arranger Robert Kirby from October 1968 unfurl with Drake doing his assuredly skeletal thing on warm, weird moments such as “Blossom” and “Made to Love Magic” while preparing for an upcoming live performance. The intimacy and unhampered realness of “Day Is Done” and “Time Has Told Me” are weighed starkly against Drake’s surprisingly talky bits of conversation where he’s very clear on what he wants: sounds that should be “as expansive as possible” and “celestial.” Lest anyone think that Nick Drake wasn’t career-minded, stop here. “I’m afraid this is proving to be an unprofessional tape altogether partly due to intoxication,” he says, quietly, before moving into a spirited take on “Mickey’s Tune.”

Album one is the logical starting point for this box—one where you hear Boyd in March of 1968 announcing, “OK, here we go, whatever it is, take one,” before Drake leapt into the small, pretty storm of “Mayfair,” run roughshod into “Time Has Told Me.” Oddly enough, Drake’s spare, rustic takes of “Fruit Tree,” “Man in a Shed,” and “Saturday Sun” are the same three songs that close out the windswept, fall-weather luster of Five Leaves Left and its silvery sophistication in its finished version. Not only is this box set a gorgeous addition to the recent dissection of Nick Drake’s valued work, it’s also a schematic on how his other two studio albums should tell their stories in full”.

I will explore this new box-set very soon. It is not only important for existing Nick Drake fans. The Making of Five Leaves Left is a perfect introduction for new listeners. Those who might not know anything about Nick Drake. In 2019, The Student Playlist provided a detailed and interesting examination of Five Leaves Left and Nick Drake’s career. There are some sections from the feature that I want to use here, but do go and read the whole thing:

“A keen student of literature, having read English Literature at Cambridge University, Drake’s lyrics are evocative yet cryptic enough to withstand almost endless analysis. Inspired chiefly by a childhood of English Romantic poets, the likes of Blake, Yeats and Vaughan in particular, the lyrical and musical themes on his 1969 debut album Five Leaves Left are instantly timeless and transportive. Fascination with human behaviour and interaction is one core theme, but his observations haven’t yet been steeped in the hopeless alienation that would characterise Drake’s later work.

Quite aside from the breathtaking and consistently excellent quality of Drake’s songwriting at the age of just 20, on top of Joe Boyd’s generous production and the virtuoso musicianship from the aforementioned Thompsons as his backing, what’s most striking about Five Leaves Left is how clear and visionary it is. Although every single note is almost obsessively arranged and rehearsed, it never feels like a museum piece – instead, it’s a living, breathing musical document, as relevant today as it was back then, and one that just as accurately reflects the late Sixties as Sgt. Pepper’s or Tommy. Instead of the sunshine and love of the California hippy vision, Five Leaves Left was something more debonair and English. Although Boyd’s production was warm, Drake’s songs and delivery were pastoral and melancholic, like the cool shade of a tree on a blazing summer afternoon. His carefully picked and strummed acoustic guitar rings out with crystalline beauty, tying together the album’s (slightly) more upbeat moments with its baleful ones.

The clean, stern string arrangements on the stunning ‘Way To Blue’, its bittersweet atmosphere underscored by the shifting minor-major key shifts, were the result of Nick Drake’s insistence on getting his schoolfriend Robert Kirby to score the strings for it, against the advice of Boyd and the label. It’s minor, but it does show that Nick Drake wasn’t always an introverted, self-questioning soul, and in artistic terms was capable of getting his vision across with assurance.

“So I’ll leave the ways that are making me be / What I really don’t want to be,” he sings in his floaty, peculiarly English baritone on the lush opening track ‘Time Has Told Me’, a gorgeous moment that speaks to a quiet optimism, a mood that ended up being all too rare in Drake’s writing. The fantasia of ‘The Thoughts Of Mary Jane’, with its (incredibly) uncredited flute-playing adorning a wistful melody. and evaporates like a daydream. The spectral ‘Fruit Tree’ could almost pass for a McCartney-esque rumination on existence (“Life is but a memory / Happened long ago / Theatre full of sadness / For a long forgotten show”), and the galloping piano of ‘Man In A Shed’ chases Drake’s guitar around the mix in an upbeat moment that breaks the pace.

These moments are all brilliantly reflective of the British folk scene at the time, but Five Leaves Left also drifts in to darker and less musically conventional territory for the genre. Take the weary, questioning lyrics of ‘River Man’, for instance, Drake making allusions to concepts about actions and consequences. That mood is ruminative and mysterious, but tracks like the bare-boned ‘Day Is Done’ are much starker, reading like a heartbreaking essay on negativity and the futility of effort (“When the game’s been fought / You sped the ball across the court / Lost much sooner than you would have thought”). On the beguiling ‘Three Hours’ and the hidden gem of ‘Cello Song’, Drake and his musicians explore quasi-Eastern sounds that pitch his music halfway between folk and psychedelia.

Although it failed to register any kind of commercial impact, Drake’s backers at Island felt it logical to carry on in the same vein as Five Leaves Left. He and Boyd went all-out for his second album Bryter Layter, released in 1971 and festooned with a much more generous backing of organs, bass guitars, and choir and strings in places”.

I have heard some recent interviews where Gabrielle Drake, Nick’s sister, talks about Five Leaves Left and her brother. I am going to move to a feature from Rolling Stone about The Making of Five Leaves Left. I think we learn more about Nick Drake as a songwriter with these outtakes and demos. This peerless talent working out these songs that have endured for decades and inspired so many other artists:

“Sound Technique’s control room overlooked the recording floor, and Boyd often sat there while Wood and Drake worked below. The engineer spent a lot of time with Drake, even sometimes driving the songwriter back to Cambridge on his own way home to Suffolk. “I always had a very easy relationship with Nick, and we’d talk about anything,” Wood says. “He had a sense of humor. He wasn’t dour at all, but he was quiet.”

You can get a sense of Drake’s personality on the second tape, cut on a Grundig reel-to-reel recorder in the fall of 1968 by fellow Cambridge student Paul de Rivaz, whom Drake met the previous year. “I will never forget his rendition of ‘House of the Rising Sun,’” de Rivaz tells Rolling Stone. “The guitar riff at the beginning was absolutely made for him.”

Drake was working with arranger Robert Kirby, who was also attending Cambridge at the time. It’s fascinating and intimate, as though you’re sitting in the room with these university students. Fans will likely lose their minds here as they hear Drake actually speaking before each track, appearing chatty and joyful, a stark contrast to how the public perceives him. “As you can tell from some of the comments in the tape, he was jolly about a number of things, and quite jokey,” says de Rivaz. “I’m so glad we can reveal the true Nick,” adds Gabrielle.

Before the crisp, delightful “Mickey’s Tune” — completely unheard until now — Drake admits the tape is proving to be “unprofessional,” and jokes that he’s intoxicated, though de Rivaz says he was probably just hungover. (When I mention this moment to Wood, he said, “Nick certainly smoked weed, but he never, ever worked when he was anything other than absolutely stone-cold sober.”)

The direction that Drake gives Kirby on the tape — possibly some flute here, a string quartet there — demonstrates that even before his debut was recorded, Drake knew how he wanted his music to sound. (The liner notes reveal he was a fan of the Beach Boys’ 1966 classic Pet Sounds.) “At that very young age, he knew exactly what he wanted, and this recording showed it,” Gabrielle says. This proved to be especially true when musician Richard Hewson first contributed arrangements to the album, and an unsatisfied Drake used Kirby instead. “I think it’s a bit of a sore subject, to be honest,” Storey says of Hewson’s early involvement.

De Rivaz ended up keeping the tape, and never forgot about it in the ensuing decades. “I knew it was worth keeping,” he says. “I thought, ‘Well, a little bit of history, I’ll keep it.’” Though de Rivaz traveled the world for his job with British Petroleum, he kept the tape safe in his London home, refusing to fly abroad with it in fear of magnetic scanners at airports. A lifelong horse rider, he connected with Chandler in April 2017 through his fellow polo player Kenney Jones (drummer for the Faces and the Who). “I was sitting at home,” de Rivaz remembers. “The phone rang, and somebody said, ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Chandler from Island Records, and I think you might have an interesting tape.'”

De Rivaz then met with Callomon and Gabrielle at Abbey Road. “I duly appeared and said, ‘This is the tape, which you’re not going to play, and this is the CD, which has a copy of what’s on it,’” he said. “When it finished, there was this sort of silence, and poor Gabrielle was physically a bit upset, hearing her brother after so many years.”

Asked about this moment, Gabrielle tells Rolling Stone, “It was a sudden light thrown onto the Nick of my youth and his — a Nick too often hidden behind the cloud of his final sad years”.

I am going to end with a review for The Making of Five Leaves Left. However, it is worth thinking about the legacy of the album. Even though it was not really a commercial success, that does not really matter. The fact that we are still talking about the album and it has been so talked about. That is much more important than sales. Classic Album Sundays wrote about how Five Leaves Left sold low. However, it went on to inspire other musicians and now is this timeless album:

“Although Boyd was sure that Drake’s first album would follow in the footsteps of Leonard Cohen’s debut that sold 100,000 copies despite the singer/songwriters refusal to tour, the response to the release of ‘Five Leaves Left’ was underwhelming. The only British radio DJ to give the album airtime was John Peel but even this behemoth’s support did little to spark sales which totalled about 6,000 (a lot by today’s standard’s but depressing by those of the late sixties).

However, with time yet sadly decades after Drake’s early death, ‘Five Leaves Left’ and Drake’s following two albums ‘Bryter Layter’ and ‘Pink Moon’ have grown in popularity inspiring musicians such as R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, Dream Academy (who penned a song in tribute to the late musician) and Paul Weller (who helped champion Drake’s music), amongst countless others. Perhaps the fact that Drake did not neatly fit into a popular sound and genre at the time of his debut’s release in 1969 prompted his posthumous cult status as ‘Five Leaves Left’ does not sound like a reflection of the times but in effect, timeless”.

I will end with a review from The Line of Best Fit for The Making of Five Leaves Left. You can buy that album here, though you can obviously stick with the original. It is a gorgeous and rich album that I first heard when I was a teenager and I have loved it ever since. Even though I have not revealed much about the making of the album, I hope I have taken you a little deeper into Five Leaves Left and its brilliance:

“Earlier issuings of material not included on the original three albums have necessarily been rather fragmentary in nature, and although it is good to have both Time of No Reply that has unreleased songs, in addition to more familiar ones in different arrangements, from the years 1968 and 1974, and Made to Love Magic that similarly provides unreleased recordings from those years, this new issue is, in so many respects, by far the finest of all, including so much in an appropriately-presented way that allows a remarkable insight into the work and the decision-making behind that first record within the more concentrated 1968-69 timeframe.

For instance, the de Rivaz-tape version of “Made to Love Magic” is beautiful and, wonderfully, has Nick carefully explaining how a flute would accompany his guitar at certain points. The version orchestrated by Richard Hewson and included on Time of No Reply, though manifestly better recorded, seems a little over-lush, lacking the elemental quality of the college room rendering. On the Made to Love Magic album, a composite version, simply called “Magic” (from Sound Techniques [1968] and Landsdowne Studios [2003]) that has some creative orchestration and re-mixing by Robert Kirby and John Wood, is undoubtedly better than Hewson’s, not least because it has the flute part prominent, but it has not the extraordinary combination of delicacy and starkness that makes the student account so compelling.

The choice and sequencing of material from various dates and sessions show both intelligence and sensitivity. Of course, as the Preface, written by Cally Callomon (who, with Gabrielle Drake, manages Nick’s Estate) in the accompanying book acknowledges, some would like to have everything on the record, as it were. However, what is presented has been judiciously selected and respectful of the artist, and shows both development and, in places, roads that could have been, but were not, taken. A fine illustration is provided by a comparison of “Strange Face” from the Beverley Martyn reel (a spare rendition, with just vocal and guitar) with the rough mix of a very different version (vocal, guitar, congas, shaker and various other unspecified instruments) from six months on; the composition later became “Cello Song”. Similarly, the accounts of “Day Is Done” include some imaginative instructive reconstruction to highlight the thought processes over the period April ‘68 / November ‘68 / April ‘69.

Neil Storey’s extensive research in locating all surviving tapes and takes is worthy of the highest praise. The physical quality of the book is uniformly excellent (textured covers and thick glossy pages, with finely reproduced images), and the extensive essay covering the recording processes is especially good on the discussions concerning the arrangements, with valuable detailed recollections from Joe Boyd and double bassist Danny Thompson, as well as from Robert Kirby, a music student friend who not only recorded Nick doing an exquisite one-off piano and vocal version of “Way To Blue” in Cambridge, but also carefully worked out some fine orchestration features: “He’s done a rather beautiful string quartet arrangement for “Day Is Done” … Naturally, it’s rather a lengthy process” noted one letter home.

The narrative of Five Leaves Left is long and complex. Now that it has been told, in words and music, the record’s greatness is surely only enhanced. This release is the culmination of a remarkable project for which we should all be grateful to Gabrielle Drake and the archival team”.

One of the all-time best debut albums, Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left should be heard by everyone. I would recommend it to everyone. Despite the fact Nick Drake’s recording career was quite short, his influence is huge. His songwriting genius clear. His 1969 debut is sublime. If you have not heard  Five Leaves Left yet, then make sure you do. It is a listening experience…

YOU will not forget.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: Fourteen: Hello Earth

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Marius Herbert (from the book, Finding Kate, written by Michael Byrne) 

Fourteen: Hello Earth

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THE penultimate song…

on Hounds of Love, I am now at the incredible and epic Hello Earth. After I have focused on the tracks and have come to the end of the album, there are a few other features that I want to cover. For now, I am going deep with one of the standout moments from Kate Bush’s fifth studio album. A track that shows her true skill as a producer. I am going to refer to Leah Kardos and her book, 33 1/3 Hounds of Love. She goes into detail about this track. Before then, there is some interview archive from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, where Kate Bush talks about the song. It sounded like it was a real challenge realising this amazing song. One that comes at a crucial moment in The Ninth Wave. Following Jig of Life and this spirited number where the heroine is urged to stay awake and survive, here we have this vision of the woman floating above Earth. Or someone looking down on her. It is atmospheric and cinematic:

“‘Hello Earth’ was a very difficult track to write, as well, because it was… in some ways it was too big for me. [Laughs] And I ended up with this song that had two huge great holes in the choruses, where the drums stopped, and everything stopped, and people would say to me, “what’s going to happen in these choruses,” and I hadn’t got a clue.

We had the whole song, it was all there, but these huge, great holes in the choruses. And I knew I wanted to put something in there, and I’d had this idea to put a vocal piece in there, that was like this traditional tune I’d heard used in the film Nosferatu. And really everything I came up with, it with was rubbish really compared to what this piece was saying. So we did some research to find out if it was possible to use it. And it was, so that’s what we did, we re-recorded the piece and I kind of made up words that sounded like what I could hear was happening on the original. And suddenly there was these beautiful voices in these chorus that had just been like two black holes.

In some ways I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth. And it was the idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from completely above. You know, that image of if you were lying in water at night and you were looking up at the sky all the time, I wonder if you wouldn’t get the sense of as the stars were reflected in the water, you know, a sense of like, you could be looking up at water that’s reflecting the stars from the sky that you’re in. And the idea of them looking down at the earth and seeing these storms forming over America and moving around the globe, and they have this like huge fantasticly overseeing view of everything, everything is in total perspective. And way, way down there somewhere there’s this little dot in the ocean that is them.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”

I am going to come to what Leah Kardos notes about Hello Earth. She notes how the song draws together all the music, sonic and lyrical themes ad layers of the album. At over six minutes, it is the longest song on Hounds of Love. It also has the most players on it. If some feel that Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is the most epic song, it really is Hello Earth. Almost like a climax. The biggest moment in the film where the action reaches its peak. We have “drummer Stuart Elliott, guitarist Brian Bath, bassist Eberhard Weber, pipes by O’Flynn and bouzouki by Lunny, in addition to a choir (by Richard Hickox Singers), orchestral strings, horns and percussion, arranged again by Kamen”. Michael Kamen and his orchestral arrangements is crucial to the swell and epic nature of Hello Earth. As Bush’s heroine looks down on the seas from way above, she is “helpless to stop a destructive storm she sees forming over America and moving out to sea (‘Can’t do anything…’)”. Leah Kardos observes how “Bush calls back to ‘Hounds of Love’ (the declarative ‘Here I go, don’t let me go! becomes a regretful ‘Why did I go?’), ‘Waking the Witch’ (‘Get out of the waves, get out of the water’), with keyword nods to ‘Mother Stands for Comfort’ (‘Murderer!’) and ‘Cloudbusting (‘Out of the cloudburst’)”. It is, as Kardos writes, like a Broadway musical. Bringing all the themes that have gone before into this big number. All coming to the surface of the narrative. All the pieces fit together. The only problem is the gaps. Where the chorus should be, there was the decision as to what would be there.  Composer Michael Berkley transcribed and arranged a Georgian folk song, Zinzkaro – for the Richard Hickox Singers –, which needed to be similar to the Werner Herzog/Nosferatu piece that Bush had heard and wanted to use. Michael Berkley “characterized Bush’s creative approach as ‘zany (and) ambitious’, later recalling how he was sent a cassette with copious colourful notes, adding ‘she talked of the sound quality in the most graphic terms … indeed, she was thrilled when I suggested we create our own new language for this chorus of the spheres”. “With the lowest strings oozing down from F to C# and the highest strings inching upwards from high C to C#, is a spine-tingling musical manoeuvre, a panoramic aspect radio shift”.

There is a slow-motion portamento that slides to this widescreen drone. There are moments of whale song and sonic blips. Suggestions that the heroine could be sinking. Bush whispers in German “Tiefer, Tiefer, irgendwo in der tiefe gibt es ein licht”. This translates to “Deeper, deeper, somewhere in the depths there is a light”. Maybe this is the moment of death where Bush’s stranded woman – whether she truly casts herself in this role or someone else – or a psychological awakening. It almost comes full circle. And Dream of Sheep was when she wanted to sleep and drift to rest after being lost at sea. Kardos notes how Hello Earth “fulfils the promise of ‘And Dream of Sheep’, with Bush finally  soothing the ‘little earth’ to sleep after the long struggle to stay alert”. Whatever your interpretation regarding the fae of the heroine, one cannot deny what a pivotal and huge moment Hello Earth is. You can also hear why it would have taken so long to put together. Bush, as producer and songwriter, having to realise her vision and provide this suitably epic song that also keeps the narrative moving and stands alone in its own right. Completely different to the songs either side of it (Jig of Life and The Morning Fog). The Morning Fog could be the death-dream of the heroine as she envisions a happy rescue, or it could actually be the rescue after so long struggling to stay alive. The realisation of that hope and bravery. Hello Earth truly showcases Bush’s gifts as a producer and composer. Few other artists in Pop in 1985 were writing songs like this. I am looking forward to moving to The Morning Fog. This conclusion of a wonderful album. You never really know what occurred at sea. If ush/the heroine escaped and was rescued. I think it is left in the minds of the listeners as to….

WHAT really happened.

FEATURE: A Fresh Focus: Anton Corbijn’s Icon Award and the Importance of Music Photography

FEATURE:

 

 

A Fresh Focus

IN THIS PHOTO: PJ Harvey in 1998/PHOTO CREDIT: Anton Corbijn

Anton Corbijn’s Icon Award and the Importance of Music Photography

__________

THIS was announced…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Anton Corbijn

a little while ago, but I want to come to it now. Music photography is hugely important. I think that it is underrated and not talked about a lot. I can see why artists get coverage and attention. However, we cannot really overlook the importance and role of music photographers. There are so many great music photographers working today. Award shows celebrating them should very much be highlighted more. I grew up reading music magazines and seeing artists of the day shot. Wonderful poses and terrific compositions. Images that will endure forever. I guess all big music fans have their favourite music photographer. There are these icons that have worked with some of the all-time best artists. One of those legends who is being honoured very shortly is Anton Corbijn. I think I mentioned him recently in a Kate Bush feature. He took some shots of her in 1982. He photographed her for an NME interview around the release of her fourth studio album, The Dreaming. I am going to come to a feature about Corbijn soon. However, Rolling Stone wrote how this wonderful and decades-successful photographer is being awarded at the forthcoming Abbey Road Music Photography Awards:

“Dutch photographer, filmmaker, and music video director Anton Corbijn will be presented with the Icon Award at the annual Abbey Road Music Photography Awards.

Corbijn has photographed numerous notable subjects over the course of his 40-plus-year photography career, including Tom Waits, David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, Clint Eastwood, Bryan Adams, Cameron Diaz, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Joni Mitchell, Robert De Niro, Gerhard Richter, Ai Weiwei, and Lucian Freud. He is considered to be the house photographer for U2 and Depeche Mode, and has shot both artists for several decades. He has directed music videos for artists like U2, Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Metallica, Nick Cave, Johnny Cash, Arcade Fire, Coldplay, and The Killers.

“Photographing musicians was a love that became a full-on mission in the early ‘70s,” Corbijn said in a statement. “From hanging around the front of the stage to being 100 percent in charge, it’s been an exciting place to be. I like to think I evolved over the years, but I am still excited by music and photographing musicians now and then. To receive recognition from a body that contains the name of Abbey Road and with some of my peers as judges, I can only be grateful! Thank you!”

Abbey Road’s Director of Marketing & Creative, Mark Robertson, added, “Anton Corbijn’s work has been part of the cultural fabric of modern music for over five decades. His photography doesn’t just document — it defines, it innovates, and it inspires artists, fans and photographers alike. At Abbey Road, we’re thrilled to celebrate a true icon whose artistry continues to influence.”

Previous winners of the Icon Award, selected by the Music Photography Awards’ judging panel, include Jill Furmanovsky in 2024, Henry Diltz in 2023, and Eric Johnson in 2022. This year’s judging panel include Rankin, Nile Rodgers, Eric Burton, Joe Keery, Scarlet Page, Dimitri From Paris, Julia Cumming, and Simon Wheatley.

Abbey Road Music Photography Awards will be held at Abbey Road Studios in London on Oct. 2. The awards were founded in 2022 and span numerous categories, most of which are open for public entry. Last year, the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards attracted more than 22,000 entries from 30 different countries. This year’s awards will feature two new categories: Portrait and Festivals. Nominees for the remaining categories will be announced in September”.

It is well timed that Anton Corbijn is being honoured. As this DAZED feature from last month outlines, the esteemed and hugely respected photographer is being honoured with a new show at Fotografiska in Stockholm. With a career spanning over fifty years, this is someone that is going to be inspiring photographers coming through:

“The oldest son of a preacher, Anton Corbijn grew up in a religious island community in the Netherlands – far from the revolutionary cultural scenes where he’d later make his name as a photographer. “Across the border from the island was the ‘promised land,’” he says. “That’s where music was made. It was a different, freer life. I elevated the idea of a liberal lifestyle, as opposed to the lifestyle I had.”

For Corbijn, the camera was a route out of the place where he grew up, to get closer to the musicians and their liberated way of living. 50 years later, he’s worked with many of the most important artists of our age, from Björk to Joy Division, Nirvana to Depeche Mode, Kate Bush to Captain Beefheart and David Bowie. But in 2001 he briefly returned to his hometown, taking time to reflect on its place in his life and career to that date. The resulting photo series, titled Staged, sees the photographer himself dress up as dead music idols, including Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, and John Lennon.

“I combined the obsession I had with music [and] my parents’ obsession with life after death,” he explains. The intent was “playful” and never actually meant to deceive, but it helped shape a new mythology for the village nevertheless. “We had an exhibition in the town hall,” he adds, “and I heard people saying, ‘Gee, I didn’t realise Bob Marley was in our village!’”

There are some photographers who can show us our favourite celebrities (musicians, actors, artists, models, and so on) in a totally new light. Then, there are photographers who shape how we see those icons to begin with, who help write their foundational myths. Anton Corbijn is among the latter. Picture many of the famous faces he’s worked with over the last 50 years, and there’s a good chance you’ll see them as imagined through his lens: Nick Cave frowning in a raw black-and-white portrait, a moonlit Courtney Love in the shadowy Atlantic ocean, Patti Smith turning her own camera on the viewer.

“For five decades, Anton Corbijn’s visual language has found expressions through photography, feature films, graphic design, music videos, stage design, books, and more,” says Pauline Benthede, global vice president of exhibitions at Fotografiska, opening a career-spanning retrospective of Corbijn’s work at the Stockholm gallery to celebrate its 15th anniversary. “He is an artist who has changed popular culture as we know it.”

Since its opening in 2010, Stockholm’s Fotografiska has hosted exhibitions of Corbijn’s work on three occasions – the photographer himself says the gallery feels like a “second home” by now. On the flipside, Corbijn’s work has had a ripple effect on the culture of the city itself. Born and raised in Stockholm, the 32-year-old photographer Noah Agemo used to skip school to visit Fotografiska. “I’ve never really been good at school,” he tells Dazed in his studio. “So I got a year’s [Fotografiska] membership, and I just went there like every day... That’s when I saw Anton’s first exhibition.” He was particularly affected by a photo of the trip-hop musician, and early member of Massive Attack, Tricky, with a butterfly on his chest. “I was like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know you could do that with musicians,’” he says. “I was like, ‘Maybe I can do that as well”.

PHOTO CREDIT: ATC Comm Photo/Pexels

I hope that the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards not only honours and spotlights modern greats, but gets people discussing music photography. Those working for music magazines and independently. You can read more about Abbey Road’s Music Photography Awards here. An article that showcases some of his best shots. In an age where everyone is a photographer and we see countless images on Instagram and social media every day, is it harder to stand out as a photographer? I follow a few music photographers online, including Phoebe Fox, and I always marvel at their work! I use quite a few photographers for my features. Maybe with fewer prominent print magazines as there were decades ago, we discuss music photography less. However, I think that the Internet and music journalism online does allow plenty of opportunities and exposure. These amazing interviews where photographers’ work can be seen. I recently wrote about music photography and how I love long-form interviews where an artist is captured in a number of different settings. There are a lot of ambitious and passionate young photographers whose work deserves more attention. There is a lot to be discussed regarding music photography in the modern age. I would love to see more music photography award ceremonies.

IN THIS PHOTO: FLETCHER/PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox

More exhibitions that collect the work of modern photographers and established icons. I also think photos are more than individual snaps and moments. They shape our understanding of music and can inspire not only other photographers and fans. The artists themselves can be inspired.  I shall end with some words from the Managing Director at Abbey Road, Sally Davies: "Music photography doesn’t just document culture — it plays a vital role in shaping it. With the Music Photography Awards we're proud to champion the image-makers capturing music’s most powerful moments and pushing the boundaries of visual creativity. And as the awards evolve into the cornerstone of our Music Photography Accelerator, it's exciting to not only spotlight talent, but continue to nurture it, helping it connect and thrive. It's about opening doors for the next generation of music photographers, and we can’t wait to see the incredible work they will submit this year”. Music photography and the print media that I grew up with is perhaps less common now. I think the artists rightly get a lot of love and exposure, but those who photograph them and take these amazing live shots do not get discussed in the same breath. It is hard to ignore just how important music photography. For artists, it can craft and build their identity and connect with their audiences. Live shots capture these very special moments. I think, with so many photos shared online, the form can be disposable and a little overwhelming. Music photography is about the quality and precision. These very special moments that we can cherish for years. It is crucial that music photographers are given more light and love and really put…

BACK in focus.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Something Like a Song: Rubberband Girl

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Something Like a Song

Rubberband Girl

__________

I have written about this track…

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

a few times through the years. Rubberband Girl is a song that is on Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes. Released as a single, it had two videos made. Not that many people have spoken about Rubberband Girl. I might revisit some of what I have written before. However, as it is coming up to its anniversary, I am featuring it again. I am going to be grabbing some information from Kate Bush Encyclopedia and what they have said about this song. Released in the U.K. on 6th September, 1993 and 7th December, 1993 in the U.S., it is one of the most underrated Kate Bush singles. The single release schedule was a bit odd for The Red Shoes. The first single release was an obvious one. Rubberband Girl is a natural lead single. However, a day after this song was released as a single, Eat the Music was released in the U.S. That decision to bring out one song in the U.K. (and other countries) and another in the U.S., three further singles were released. The final one, And So Is Love, was released on 31st October, 1994. Maybe an odd choice for a Hallowe’en single in a year when Britpop was ruling! However, I think the album as a whole is incredible. Maybe the production does suffer some of the worst traits of 1990s music. A bit compressed and lacking in depth and soul. Bush addressed this for 2011’s Director’s Cut. That was an album where Bush reworked and re-recorded songs from The Red Shoes and 1989’s The Sensual World. Rubberband Girl was one of the songs included for re-examination. I don’t think Bush had any strong attachment to the song or was overly-keen to include it. Maybe she felt the first single from that album was too important to leave it as it was. However, I love the original.

This fantastic single came out in the U.K. as a 7” single, a 12” single picture disc, a cassette single and a C.D.-single. The U.S. only had the C.D. version. The B-side to Rubberband Girl was Big Stripey Lie. This is a great deep cut where Bush played electric guitar for the first time on record. A reasonable chart success, Rubberband Girl did get to number twelve in the U.K. I am going to go into a bit more detail. Kate Bush merely thinks of Rubberband Girl as a bit of a fun. A pop confection, I think that it is better and deeper than this. The Red Shoes has some truly wonderful moments. Moments of Pleasure, Eat the Music and Lily. Maybe there are a few slightly weaker tracks, though the album as a whole is a lot stronger than it is given credit for. Also from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, this is what Bush said in 2011 about the superb Rubberband Girl:

“I thought the original ‘Rubberband’ was… Well, it’s a fun track. I was quite happy with the original, but I just wanted to do something really different. It is my least favourite track. I had considered taking it off to be honest. Because it didn’t feel quite as interesting as the other tracks. But I thought, at the same time, it was just a bit of fun and it felt like a good thing to go out with. It’s just a silly pop song really, I loved Danny Thompson’s bass on that, and of course Danny (McIntosh)’s guitar.

Mojo (UK), 2011”.

In the November 1993 edition of Future Music, we get some perspectives from Del Palmer. He was responsible for engineering and mixing on The Red Shoes. He and Bush used to be in a relationship. By the end of 1993, that relationship had ended. However, he continued to work alongside her up to and including her latest studio album, 50 Words for Snow. He sadly died last year. He was an essential and enormous part of her career. Here is what he had to say about Rubberband Girl: the exciting and catchy lead track from Kate Bush’s seventh studio album:

“Chosen as first single from the album, Rubberband Girl is up-tempo and infectiously melodic. Originally, the first single was intended to be Eat The Music. but during the production of the film to accompany the album, Rubberband Girl seemed to be catching everyone's imagination, and has proved to be a substantial chart success.

Although the song has a relatively straightforward pop/rock feel, the vocals are multi-tracked and some of them seem incredibly low-pitched. "This song and And So Is Love are typical of the live band feel," explains Del. "We were trying to create a very accessible, live sound and the fastest way to record was to have at least two or three people playing together initially.

"On Rubberband Girl the bass, drums and basic keyboards were all done together, but we did change the whole track afterwards in the sense of editing it digitally rather than re-doing tracks. The bass and drum sound was important because we wanted to have them consistent throughout the album."

Although Stuart Elliot and John Giblin's performances tended to go on to tape 'live' at an early stage, this didn't avoid the need for subsequent changes. "When you put later tracks down, the earlier ones sometimes have to change because the whole feel of the piece changes. Sometimes we had to do the bass and drums three or four times, not because we were unhappy with the original performances, but because the feel of the song had altered as new tracks were added. Rubberband Girl is one of the few that worked first time - it just has a basic rock feel with a riffing guitar, the backing vocals went down first and then we tried various lyrics and lead vocal ideas.

"In most songs the lyrics change a lot during the recording process, although a basic seed remains solid. It often gets to the point of struggling over just one word which has to be returned to many times -there's never any pressure to write a song to fill a particular function, like acting as a single or being a very slow ballad, so the whole feel can often change”.

There has been a bit of a mixed reception to Rubberband Girl. I last wrote about it late last year. I don’t think that it has aged badly. It is coming up for its thirty-second anniversary. I want to collate some of what has been said already. In 2022, Classic Rock History placed Rubberband Girl in their top ten Kate Bush songs: “The Kate Bush song “Rubberband Girl” was a bit of a departure for Kate Bush, but it was still so brilliant. Anything Kate Bush composed, recorded, and performed was simply stunning. She was that rare of an artist. We should have done a top 100 Kate Bush songs list instead. The song “Rubberband Girl” was released on the album The Red Shoes. The record was issued in 1993. The album featured an incredible lineup of guest musicians, including Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Prince”. This blog provided a very generous review of Rubberband Girl: “Rubberband Girl 9.5/10. This is Kate Bush's most dance-poppy track. "Running Up That Hill" was a big hit on the club scene, but this one seems even more danceable. However, this is far from a cheap track. The groove is fairly off-kilter but still danceable --- in that way it's comparable to a Roxy Music song…

She has enough taste to have a nice rhythmic saxophone, xylophones, awesome guitar solos, her brand of freaky singing (including a bit of 'play acting' ... dialog and even some goofy "rubber band" vocals) ... All of this PLUS a melody that's catchier than anything... There's really quite a lot in this song, and you'll have fun hearing it multiple times I'm sure”. Although Bush wrote the song quite quickly in the studio (not something she did often), I feel there is something personal about Rubberband Girl. Maybe personal circumstances and a slight downturn in critical praise after the massive success and 1985’s Hounds of Love might have made her feel like she needed to bounce back. Some critics writing her off. Entering the 1990s and trying to adapt to a very different music scene with a lot of ‘new Kate Bushes’ being spotlighted, it was a moment for strength and resurgence: “A rubberband bouncing back to life/A rubberband bend the beat/If I could learn to give like a Rubberband/I’d be back on my feet/A rubberband hold me trousers up/A rubberband ponytails/If I could learn to twang like a Rubberband/I’d be a rubberband girl”. On 6th September, Rubberband Girl turns thirty-two. The first taste of a new album following 1989’s The Sensual World, the public did respond to it. However, I think critics were muted in their praise. People need to reassess. It is a fantastic elastic track from one of music’s…    

ABSOLUTE best and strongest.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Sasha Keable

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Hahn

Sasha Keable

__________

THIS is an artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Becca Wheeler

who has been around for a very long time. Over a decade. However, like so many artists I feature in this series, I spotlight those who I feel are either not as known as they should be or are hitting a new stride. It is definitely an exciting moment for Sasha Keable. Her latest E.P., act right, was released earlier this month. This is someone that should be known to everyone. I am bringing together a few different interviews so that we get to know better this incredible talent. I want to start out with this article from The Outlook. I am a little late to Sasha Keable. It is evident that this artist is primed for massive things:

“Sasha Keable, a singer-songwriter hailing from South London, has been making waves in the music scene since 2013. That year marked her first significant recognition as she featured in several singles, including DJ Zinc’s “Only for Tonight” and Disclosure’s “Voices.” Her unique style, combined with her Colombian heritage, adds a rich authenticity to her artistry, allowing her to express her identity. With a dynamic voice, emotionally raw lyrics, and a musical range that spans trip-hop, classic R&B, and soul, she has captivated listeners around the globe.

Keable began to gain momentum with the release of “That’s the Shit,” one of her breakout tracks in 2018. Her reputation furthered in 2021 when she collaborated with renowned London R&B artist Jorja Smith on “Killing Me.”

Throughout her life, Keable has drawn inspiration from various experiences that have shaped her both as an artist and an individual. In a 2021 interview with “Coeval Magazine,” she reflected on how growing up without a television fueled her passion for music. “I was drawn into music when my parents split up, we didn’t have much money, so we didn’t have a TV. He [Dad] would print off tabs of songs and to entertain ourselves when he got back from work, he would play guitar, and I would sing along.”

The connection provided comfort during her parents’ divorce and solidified her deep bond with music. As she discovered her singing ability, her musical journey took off. She recounted that at 10 or 11, she fell in love with writing music long before her passion for singing fully blossomed. This pivotal moment encouraged her to explore her potential rather than simply absorb the artistic expressions of others.

Around the same time, she uncovered her musical preferences. Keable grew up listening to R&B, rock, and Colombian music while delving into works by 1970s Motown legends. The passion and heartbreak found in these classics resonated deeply with her and played a significant role in shaping her as a musician. Her work frequently revolves around themes of love and heartbreak.

These elements prominently feature in her hit song “Hold Up,” the first track she released in three years, which garnered attention when released in April 2024. The song’s impact was amplified by a live performance on BBC Radio and a music video that amassed over 723,000 views.

With raw emotion, she confronts heartache from infidelity, expressing feelings of betrayal: “What’s the point in feeling? Yeah/ Been kicked, I been bruised/ And it’s me I turn to/So if you think I need you get that out your head.” In an interview with “New Wave Magazine,” she shared that the song emerged from a desire to reclaim her power: “The new music came from a place of feeling powerless in everything else in life, the only place I felt safe and like I had control over the outcome was in the studio.”

Keable continued to build on her momentum with consecutive releases and collaborations. In June 2024, she released “Auction,” featuring the R&B singer Destin Conrad, known for his sultry sound. In September, she unveiled another collaborative track with American singer and rapper 6LACK titled “Take Your Time.” The momentum from these singles paved the way for her own single “Why,” which delves deeper into love: “Who gave you permission to be this perfect?/ I think you should go ahead and thank your mama for me/ Lord knows what I did to deserve this.” This track captured considerable attention, leading her to perform it on the popular YouTube show “A COLORS SHOW,” where artists perform in a one-color room with only a microphone.

With her rising popularity, the video has garnered over 793,000 views. Her most recent release in December 2024, “NIGHT OFF,” a collaboration with fellow R&B artist Isaiah Falls, has become her most streamed song on Spotify, amassing over 6.6 million streams. Keable’s dedication and hard work are yielding impressive accolades.

In January 2025, she was featured on Spotify’s “Artists to Watch 2025” list, as well as Amazon Music UK’s “Artists to Watch 2025.” Her extraordinary achievements in 2024 have set a strong foundation for her continued success in 2025. In February, she received a nomination for Best R&B/Soul Act at the annual Music of Black Origin (MOBO) Awards.

Sasha Keable’s journey, driven by a lifelong passion for music, has shaped her into the remarkable artist she is today. As she continues to evolve and grow, fans eagerly anticipate what she will create next”.

There are two recent interviews that I need to get to. The first is from NOTION. For the Amazon Music Breakthrough UK: Artists To Watch 2025 list, they spoke with an artist who was on the rise. Even though she has been performing and releasing music for years, 2025 is a year when so many new people are looking her way. Such a distinct and stunning name. The minute you hear her music, you will be captivated and under her spell:

“Bursting onto the scene thanks to collaborations with the likes of Disclosure and DJ Zinc, Sasha Keable’s chameleonic voice has been captivating listeners for over a decade. Sasha has since found her own lane: a soulful force, she weaves together R&B, pop, and jersey with emotive storytelling to create an intimate and electrifying sonic experience.

The release of her EP Intermission, which includes ‘Killing Me’ featuring Jorja Smith, was followed by a three-year hiatus before she returned with the gospel-tinged ‘Hold Up’. Quickly becoming a beloved track in the industry and beyond, with co-signs from the likes of John Legend, Wu Tang Clan, and Maya Jama, Sasha Keable has dropped banger after banger since.

As she continues to evolve and collaborate with some of the world’s most exciting artists like 6LACK and DESTIN CONRAD, we sit down with Sasha Keable, to talk falling in love with music and where her most unexpected inspiration comes from…

Do you remember the moment you fell in love with music?

Music has always been my world. My dad would print off tabs of songs and after work, he would play guitar and I would sing along. My older sister was the person that got me into R&B and my mum and Abuelita played a lot of Cumbia & Vallenatos. I guess I fell in love with music because it allowed me to connect deeply with who I am and tell my story in a way nothing else could.

What are you manifesting for 2025?

I’m manifesting growth, freedom, and fearless creativity. Moving to Miami is something I’ve been dreaming about—it feels like a place where I could thrive both personally and musically. It’s strange coming to a place that’s not in South America and hearing so many people speak Spanish, but I love that connection to my heritage. I’m also manifesting Grammy nominations, sold-out shows, and creating music that resonates globally while staying true to myself.

What’s the proudest moment of your career so far?

Definitely when Beyoncé mentioned me as one of the next-generation artists to watch. That kind of recognition is insane. But also, hearing fans sing back my lyrics at a EU sold out tour, that’s a feeling I’ll never get used to, and it makes me so proud.

What do you hope people take away from your music?

I want my music to feel like a safe space. Whether you’re celebrating, healing, or just figuring things out, I want people to feel like my songs are there for them. It’s all about connection and making people feel seen and saying things people can’t find the words for themselves”.

I will end up with a review for act right. No doubt one of the best E.P.s of this year. You can sense that next year will be the biggest one for Sasha Keable. DAZED spoke with Keable in June. After a decade of working hard, she is now getting her flowers and finding her feet:

“There isn’t one recipe for success in the music industry. For some artists, the ascent can be quick (too quick even), with TikTok unlocking the power to make someone a star overnight. For others, success is an uphill battle that takes decades of hard work, determination and resilience. Even the ones who do get boosted by social media streams have, more often than not, been grinding behind the scenes for years prior – take Doechii, Raye or Charli xcx, for example.

Towards the end of last year, Sasha Keable made her Colours Show debut – the music platform and YouTube channel that showcases emerging talent from around the world. She’s also been drip feeding us new music (her first in over two years), while over on TikTok, a quick scroll through any R&B lover’s feed and you’ll likely be told that Sasha Keable is one of the hottest new artists coming out of South London. By definition, she is an emerging artist. But Sasha has been releasing music and laying the groundwork for her career for well over a decade now.

Blending R&B with gospel and soul, the British-Colombian artist is known for her emotionally-charged lyricism and smoky, winding vocals. Since graduating from The Brit School in the early 2010s and being whisked off on tour with Disclosure and Katy B at the height of their fame, Sasha’s career has felt like two steps forward and one step back. In an interview from last year, she confessed that this would be her final attempt at making it as a musician – if it doesn’t work this time, she’ll change her focus to writing for other artists instead.

So far, at least, it seems like her patience is paying off. All six of the singles that she’s released in the past 12 months have garnered multi-millions of streams (each). She’s playing Glastonbury, Jools Holland, Little Simz’ Meltdown festival and she doesn’t plan on slowing down with the new music either. Even Beyoncé is a fan – she listed Sasha as one of the best artists she’d heard in 2024 in an interview with GQ.

Hey Sasha! How’s life at the moment?

Sasha Keable: Life is good! Life is busy. It’s pretty insane, actually, but it’s good.

How did it feel to release your latest single, ‘Act Right’?

Sasha Keable: It felt really good to put that out. I’d been going through a heartbreak, and it felt good to say my piece in a clear and concise way. The response has been great. I’m always shocked at how engaged everyone is with every release that I’ve put out.

People online are desperate for more music from you…

Sasha Keable: I honestly get harassed online. I’ll tease something, and after an hour, they’re like ‘Release it already!’ I'm like, let’s build up some excitement and mystery. But I think people really want a project from me, which is why I’m really excited to put out a body of music and let that tide people over for a second.

You once said that if it didn’t work this time, you would give up trying to make it as an artist and write for other people instead. Do you feel like it is working this time?

Sasha Keable: Yeah, absolutely. I’m not about to give up. It’s a really difficult industry and when you’ve been working at it for as long as I have, you have so many moments of doubt. It can be really lonely and a lot of stress from a lot of different angles. It’s a really hard industry to crack. But I’m definitely nowhere near the space that I was when I was feeling those feelings, because it’s actually working now and I’m doing the right things.

I’ve never cared if I’m famous, I’ve never cared about any of that. I’ve always just wanted to do music because I enjoy it so much

What kept you going when you thought you might give up?

Sasha Keable: For me, it’s being in the studio and making music. When I’m not creating, I lose sight of my purpose. I’ve never cared if I’m famous, I’ve never cared about any of that. I’ve always just wanted to do music because I enjoy it so much. It’s my number one love in life. But even me saying that if I don’t make it then I’ll write for other people – that’s still a win for me, being able to create will always be a win”.

NME awarded act right a five-star review. Grit, grace and heart infuses the E.P. NME noted how act right is a “rich, honey-voiced collection with sapphic desire, Motown soul and the bite of contemporary UK R&B”. It is hard to argue with that assessment. If that does not convince you to follow Sasha Keable then nothing will! She is a music treasure:

“Sasha Keable has long been propped up as the future of R&B. At first, she was seen as a dance-floor powerhouse – her breakthrough with Disclosure on ‘Voices’ marked her as a voice that could command a club in one note. Her first two EPs, 2013’s ‘Black Book’ and 2014’s ‘Lemongrass and Limeleaves’, were released to great fanfare.

After a three-year hiatus, she came back in 2024 bigger and badder than ever with ‘Hold Up’, showcasing her emotionally rich and unfiltered perspective on life and love that truly cemented her artistry. With Adele comparisons and a blessing from Beyoncé earlier this year, the British-Colombian star could easily have buckled under the pressure on her fifth EP, ‘Act Right’. Instead, Keable shrugs it off and delivers seven tracks that feel like the gold standard for modern R&B.

We’ve already tasted much of this feast. Singles like ‘Why’ and the titular track are conversational and gut-wrenching. The former is rooted in the purest and happiest form of love, yet there’s a pang of self-doubt in the mournful question: “Why is it me… you give all this love to?” It’s the sort of line that could have been penned by Aretha Franklin or Lauryn Hill when they redefined pain as power. ‘Act Right’ carries the raw frustration and emotional depth of Donny Hathaway, wrapped in the warm, confessional soul of Amy Winehouse. That emotive nuance is what makes this project such a stunning reintroduction to the world.

There are earworms at every turn, especially on the deeper cuts. The Leon Thomas-assisted ‘Move It Along’ wraps you in a warm sonic blanket with heavenly stacked ad-libs and a churchy, whining guitar, and when Keable’s opening guttural “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeaaaah” hits, you soon realise you’ve just downloaded your newest vocal stim for the week.

‘Work’ – featuring Jamaican-born rapper BEAM – is a steamy slow-burner, too. The whiplash between Sasha’s silken croon and BEAM’s slackness might feel jarring at first, but listen closely. Hidden in her velvet phrasing, she’s a temptress, seductively commanding her lover to “lift up my skirt, grab my neck and say you care for nothing” – her sapphic desires a match for the rapper’s crassness.

The new cuts prove just as irresistible. ‘Can’t Stop’ finds Keable dropping into a just-between-us coolness, almost bragging about her toxic potential before roaring through the chorus about her addiction to the chaos. Her effortless runs beg to be mimicked (badly), while the post-chorus swirls with echoed, muffled layers that pull you deeper in”.

I will wrap up here. One of our brightest and best artists, here is someone who has been working tirelessly for over a decade. However, it seems like now is her time. A moment where Sasha Keable is releasing her best music and seems primed for many more years in the industry. Who knows how far she can go?! The superb act right is a truly brilliant work. It is going to be fascinating to see where Sasha Keable goes…

FROM here.

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PHOTO CREDIT: Yana Van Nuffel

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