FEATURE: The Greatest Cloudbuster: The Goddess That Is Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

The Greatest Cloudbuster

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

 

The Goddess That Is Kate Bush

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AS 30th July…

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

is Kate Bush’s birthday, I wanted to write a general feature. Just expressing the ongoing love and fascination I have for her. This is an artist I have tirelessly written about, simply because she is a goddess. Continuing to influence artists and bring comfort, strength and joy to so many people, rather than talk about her legacy and modern impact – which is among my go-to Kate Bush bits -, I just wanted to show my affection for her. Actually, I do want to drop in an article from The Line of Best Fit. Nerina Pallot spoke with them for Nine Songs and picked a Kate Bush track. Another example among an ongoing wave of artists mentioning Bush and how her music has transformed their lives. As this genius producer, songwriter and artist turns sixty-eight, I do think that there should be something universal. There was, on 26th June, a Global Beatles Day. It is quite right that the most significant band in music history have their own day. I guess Kate Bush has The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever in July. 26th July. Though this is something specific. In terms of recognising her music and cultural impact, there is nothing on the scale of Global Beatles Day. As I have written before, people might balk at the suggestion there are comparables. In terms of their influence and importance, how can Kate Bush compete?! I do feel like she remains hugely underrated. She might actually feel uncomfortable with such a celebration. Could we not start a 30th July International Kate Bush Day?! I think we should. I am going to end with a Kate Bush playlist containing songs from each of her studio albums, plus some selections from Best of the Other Sides. For me, she remains so crucial and life-affirming. Recently struggling from work stress, depression and anxiety, her music has been a pillar of strength. Writing about her has allowed me to channel some of my stress and unhappiness into something genuinely restorative.

Not that Kate Bush or any other artist has the power to cure or even reduce depression significantly. However, there is a link between music and mood. How it can be this incredible tool. What we have seen and heard from Kate Bush over the last decade or so has been incredible. No new music, really, unless you count Little Shrew (Snowflake) from 2024. Not a whiff of a collaboration or any glimmer of a studio album. What we have heard is a woman discussing the reaction to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) being used On Stranger Things and catapulting her into the consciousness of a new generation of fans. She updates her official website with news, and there has been the odd audio interview. A couple with Emma Barnett. One in 2022 around Stranger Things. In 2024, it was about Little Shrew (Snowflake) and, amazingly, Bush revealed she was eager to start with on a new album! The video for Little Shrew (Snowflake) was directed by Bush. It has received awards. Bush posting messages of gratitude and humbleness. She is always there and connecting, despite the fact she has not released a new album in almost fifteen years. How this little light keeps burning and touching people. Of course, when a new album is announced, people will go completely nuts! Though we must allow her time to work and bring us that heavenly news when she is good and ready! As we celebrate Kate Bush’s sixty-eighth birthday, I wanted to offer my sincerest thanks and congratulations. I know social media will be awash with messages and posts about her. Queen. Mother. Kate Bush as this vessel of communal unity and global affection. Her music has reached parts of the world she could not conceive of. From the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community to major artists through to those struggling with illness and mental health issues, and far far beyond, we all have in common this love for Kate Bush. Her music has this global reach, yet every one of her fans has different reasons for loving it. Why certain songs and albums mean so much to them.

I do feel that Kate Bush is one of the greatest artists who has ever lived. In terms of talent, consistency, endurance and influence, there are few that can match her. When I see some other modern greats producing these extraordinary live sets, releasing brilliant albums and generally being awesome, I cannot help but think of Kate Bush. You can feel and see elements of her impact across music today. And yet, there is very little said about this iconic artist. Articles here and there, but not nearly as much as you would like. I hope that occasions like her birthday, and all the words of love she will receive, does something to ignite greater conversation and consideration. I am going to wrap up soon. As I could not make this alone into a whole feature, I will drop in that part of Nerina Pallot’s interview with The Line of Best Fit. She selected The Man with the Child in His Eyes as a Kate Bush song that means a lot. She has beautifully covered Kate Bush’s Moments of Pleasure (from 1993’s The Red Shoes). I would love to hear Pallot provide a take on The Man with the Child in His Eyes now. Recorded when Kate Bush was a teenager, having a more mature voice sing these incredibly evocative words would provide new depth and insight. I always say how there should be a tribute album. So many modern artists new and established acknowledge and cite Kate Bush as an influence. Go into the studio, cover a track of hers, release that album to vinyl, and have a percentage of the profits go to War Child. That would be something truly phenomenal!

IN THIS PHOTO: Nerina Pallot

The amazing interview from The Line of Best Fit saw Nerina Pallot chose songs from Elton John, Jill Scott, Tori Amos, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, ABBA and Elaine Stritch and Stephen Sondheim. There are connections to Kate Bush. She was a fan of The Beatles and Steely Dan. She covered songs by both bands. There were those comparisons to Joni Mitchell. Similar artists in some ways. Elton John was an idol of hers and the two worked together on 50 Words for Snow’s Snowed in at Wheeler Street. Tori Amos someone clearly inspired by Kate Bush. The Man with the Child in His Eyes is the Kate Bush song that speaks to Nerina Pallot hardest:

“NERINA PALLOT: My mum used to get these Reader's Digest's or some kind of record club she signed up to, and every month or two there'd be a ‘best of’, or what was in the charts. There was a ‘70s compendium, and this song was nestled between Captain Hook, whatever that terrible pop song was, and some other horrible pop song, probably Gary Glitter.

It's such an odd song, and I think it was long after Kate had had a hit with it, because I’d seen her on the telly doing “Wuthering Heights”, and had been a bit scared of her at this point. I was probably about 9 or 10 when this song came on, and I thought it was like no other song I'd heard in pop music.

I loved the oxymoron of the title, even though I didn't really know what an oxymoron was at that point. I just loved the world she created, because she's the original world builder, right? No one builds these magical lands of song like she does.

Then I connected the dots, and I asked my mum to get me another record of hers. I then learned to play this song, I picked it up by ear, and I loved the idea that it's very much about somebody not being able to tell anybody about it's a secret, isn't it? The idea that this love is secret, there's something very furtive about it, and it really played on my childhood imagination, of feeling a bit different from people I was around, and I thought it was a magical secret song. It was a dialogue between Kate and me, she was telling me all her secrets, and I loved it.

BEST FIT: So it was the lyrical level that entranced you?

Well, the music's really interesting. It's very English pastoral, probably Irish folk influenced, but that makes sense to what I was listening to as a kid, because I was classically trained, and I don't think I'd understood how I could take playing classical music to pop yet. I needed a bridge right at that point. There's something in the orchestration that is very classical with this pop song over it, but it's not really a pop song – it's just Kate Bush. She's doing Kate Bush.

I can see how someone like Kate Bush would be the perfect gateway for you. I love that. You can't write that connection. It's just going to happen.

He may not thank me for saying this, but my husband is left cold by Kate Bush. When I got tickets to see her, it was literally like winning the fucking EuroMillions. The other day I was talking about it to my lighting designer, because he's also a Kate Bush fan, and we're constantly obsessed with that show, and my husband said, 'I was so bored halfway through that show', so I said, 'I can't believe I married you' [laughs]”.

I will wrap things up now. Unofficially, I feel 30th July is International Kate Bush Day. If The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever is people coming together to recreate the red dress version of the Wuthering Heights video from 1978, we need to globally and non-specifically recognise Kate Bush. I feel she deserves that! A way for her fans around the world to celebrate…

THIS wonderful human being.

INTERVIEW: Maisy Kay

INTERVIEW:

  

Maisy Kay

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YESTERDAY was a big day…

for the extraordinary Maisy Kay. She played London’s OVO Arena Wembley. One of her biggest dates so far, I asked her about this gig and how she was feeling in the lead-up. Having released the new single, Bitter, I was keen to know more about that and her future plans. Born in Shropshire but located in L.A., I ask the tremendous Maisy Kay about her experiences in Los Angeles and whether she has settled in. She suggests some new artists we should check out, what music she was introduced to as a child, what it is like having this adoring fanbase behind her, whether there are any tour dates coming up, and, if she hosted a dinner party and could only invite three musical guests, who they would be. It has been a real pleasure interviewing…

THE wonderful Maisy Kay.

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Hi Maisy. You play Wembley Arena on 6th June. How are you feeling about the gig? What is it like performing such a huge show in the U.K.?

I am absolutely ecstatic!! It’s going to be my first ever arena, and I can’t honestly comprehend what it’s going to be like. It’s extra special it’s in the U.K., and I have thirteen of my friends and family coming to support me. I will probably cry!

I am interested in how your childhood musical discoveries shaped your ambitions. Did bands like Queen and The Beatles, who were played in your household, speak to something in you? What other sounds were you raised on?

Absolutely. I am so grateful my parents raised me on such legendary artists. Freddie Mercury has always been my idol. I even named my cat after him! My mom would play Barbra Streisand, Céline Dion, and ABBA, so I also got to listen to so many wonderful women vocalists. We were also a big musical theatre household, so there was a LOT of Phantom of the Opera!

Of course, there are also modern artists like Lana Del Rey and Gracie Abrams who you surely connect with. Though your music is hugely original. Has it been difficult blending influences whilst retaining a personal and unique voice?

I think it’s definitely challenging to find a unique sound, because there’s so many artists now and so much has been done before. I think what works best for me is when I don’t focus on trying to sound or be like anyone, and I just write from the heart. I think my fans really value that authenticity, so I tend to lead from there, and then the sound of the record will follow.

“I’m honestly so impressed with younger me fully uprooting her life like that though. I think I’d struggle to do it now”

You were born in Shropshire, though you moved to L.A. aged fourteen. What was it about the city that called to you, and was it quite a difficult transition period?

I moved to L.A. because I got a record deal offer over there! I was over the moon, because being a singer has always been my dream, so it was a no-brainer. I think the most difficult part was missing out on those key social skills that come from being around kids your own age, and it could be quite lonely at times. I’m honestly so impressed with younger me fully uprooting her life like that though. I think I’d struggle to do it now.

Since moving to L.A., you have worked with some incredible collaborators and garnered huge following and streaming figures. What have been your standout moments so far?

One of my proudest moments was definitely when Technicolor Honeymoon reached #1 on the iTunes Pop charts. That was my first-ever time charting anywhere, and I couldn’t believe it! I’m also so proud of the song I did with TheFatRat, The Storm, as I sing in Na’vi on it. I learnt Na’vi as a kid, and was very bullied in school for doing so, so to see millions of people loving that song, and even loving it BECAUSE it was in Na’vi, that was incredibly healing for me.

Your music pairs honest and confessional lyrics with something warmer and cinematic. You have said “the production sounds like summer, but if you listen to the lyrics, it’s something entirely different”. What was the thinking behind that juxtaposition? Do you feel it adds new depths and emotional reactions and makes the lyrics more potent and striking?

I think emotionally I’ve always been a somewhat melancholy person, but we don’t always want to listen to sad music. That’s something I learnt in my personal life too: people don’t always have the capacity for heavier stuff. So rather than writing about things that weren’t true to me, and trying to force myself into a version of myself I don’t relate to, I found this really fun way of making happy and fun-sounding songs that people want to listen to - and it’s only when you look into the lyrical content that you realize there’s a certain heaviness to it. I love the ability to dance and have fun to an ultimately sad song.

After some big tour dates, what does the summer ahead hold? Will you be playing shows in the U.S., or are there some U.K. summer dates planned?

I am really hoping for more U.S shows, as I’ve gained so many incredible fans this year from playing the States, and I want to see them again!! For now, my summer will be spent prepping for an exciting announcement in the autumn. Stay tuned!!

I love your new single, Bitter. It has whetted an appetite and curiosity. Might there be an album or E.P. arriving down the line?

I would say definitely. I’ve had a project in mind for almost two years now, and there’s so much I want to say and explore. We’ve really been taking time to sit with the music and figure out how to make it the best we can, but I am so proud of this new music and I’m itching to put it out!

This does seem like a genuinely big moment. One where you are on the verge of being an international sensation! Do you get a sense of that tremor, or do you try not to think of that? If you do, how does it genuinely feel?

I try not to get my hopes up too much, as I never want to disappoint myself. I try to take each moment as it comes and just enjoy the present. That being said, this year specifically I’ve been so lucky to meet and connect with so many incredible new fans, and I feel a level of support I’ve never had before. That is an amazing and honestly very emotional feeling for me. I truly feel so grateful to be where I’m at now, and I can’t wait to see where the future takes me.

Your fans have been a dedicated and loyal core. How is your relationship with them? Do you get messages from people who have heard your music and it has affected or spoken to them in a healing way?

I will never understand artists who say they don’t love their fans. I love mine so much. They’ve changed my life, and it’s because of them I get to be here. I read all my messages and respond as much as I can, and the fact that they connect with my music is what motivates me to keep going and try even harder. I feel this year especially we’ve really built such a wonderful supportive community, and I’m honoured to be a part of it and to get to connect through music with them.

“I love what Taylor does with her world building and how involved she makes her fans feel. I’d love to ask how she comes up with her creative concepts”

You are an artist everyone should know about, but are there any fellow artists you feel we should also seek out?

I have to shout-out my guy, Jamie Miller. I think he’s incredible and deserves all the flowers. In the Night by Fly by Midnight is one of my favorite songs, especially for summer nights. I also love what Bella Kay is doing right now, and I don’t say that because she also has Kay in her name, haha!

Penultimately, if you hosted your own dinner party and could only invite three musicians, who would they be, and what would be your first questions to each?

Taylor Swift, Céline Dion, and Lewis Capaldi.

I love what Taylor does with her world building and how involved she makes her fans feel. I’d love to ask how she comes up with her creative concepts. For Céline, I’d want to ask what gave her the strength to push through her vocal challenges and how she kept her spirits up through an incredibly difficult period of her life. And a similar question for Lewis, who has been vocal about his mental health struggles. How do you juggle that without letting it overtake your life and the career you love.

Finally, and for being a good sport, you can name a song and I will end the interview with it. What shall we go with?

Let’s do Vantablack. It’s a fan favorite, and it’s the song I finish with on tour. I think it puts everyone in a good mood live, so hopefully it’ll do that here too! Thank you so much!

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Follow Maisy Kay

FEATURE: Recognising a Queen and Global Icon: Will There Be Greater Recognition of Beyoncé This Year?

FEATURE:

 

 

Recognising a Queen and Global Icon

PHOTO CREDIT: Bryce Anderson for GQ

 

Will There Be Greater Recognition of Beyoncé This Year?

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I am writing this…

PHOTO CREDIT: Edward Berthelot/Getty Images

on 6th June. There has been rumour that a Beyoncé album is coming. Following 2024’s COWBOY CARTER, it will be interesting to see what comes next for her. On 4th September, Beyoncé turns forty-five. It will be a huge celebration. It also makes me think it is a milestone in some ways. A chance to recognise her incredible legacy and brilliance. In terms of the literature about her, there have not really been comprehensive books that look inside her albums. A detailed and updated biography. No career-spanning documentaries or anything like that. I do think that Beyoncé has been a little under-represented or underserved. As someone who is this extraordinary businesswoman and idol. One of the most successful and greatest artists ever, there does seem to be this gap. Perhaps she wouldn’t want this huge amount of fuss. Though it is not really about that. A way of not only acknowledging her incredible contribution to music and beyond. I will come to her legacy. Before that, this interview from GQ Beyoncé talked about family, art, business and legacy:

“What has your experience been like, as a Black woman, in business spaces that some might have assumed you wouldn’t thrive in?

There’s a huge contrast between the business journeys of men and women. Men often have the luxury of being perceived as the strategists, the brains behind their ventures. They’re given the space to focus on the product, the team, the business plan. Women, on the other hand, especially those in the limelight, are frequently pigeonholed into being the face of the brand or the marketing tool. It’s important to me to continue to take the same approach I have taken with my music and apply my learnings to my businesses.

I am here to change that old narrative. I’m here to focus on the quality. We took our time, and we did our research, and we have earned respect for our brand. I try to choose integrity over shortcuts. I’ve learned that true success isn’t about leaning on a name; it’s about crafting something genuine, something that can hold its own. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being revolutionary.

Cowboy Carter was the second album in a planned trilogy that you started two years ago with Renaissance. What sparked this grand idea to do a trilogy of records, each exploring different genres?

I started Cowboy Carter almost five years ago. Pay close attention to my age in the lyrics of “16 Carriages.”

From the start of my career and on every album, I have always mixed genres. Whether it is R&B, dance, country, rap, zydeco, blues, opera, gospel, they have all influenced me in some way. I have favourite artists from every genre you could think about. I believe genres are traps that box us in and separate us. I’ve experienced this for 25 years in the music industry. Black artists, and other artists of colour, have been creating and mastering multiple genres, since forever.

This is why it was so important for me to sample the composer Joseph Bologne, known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges, in the song “Daughter” on Cowboy Carter. Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 3, No. 1: II. Adagio was created in the 1700s. This is a testament to Chevalier’s vision. I hope it inspires artists, as well as fans, to dig deeper and learn more about the Black musical innovators who came before us. Some of the most talented artists never achieve the mainstream praise they deserve, especially when they defy the norm.

I was so hyped to see a song like “Texas Hold ’Em” gain worldwide acceptance. Even more exciting was how it helped reinvigorate the country genre across music, fashion, art, and culture, and introduced the world to so much great talent like Shaboozey, Tanner Adell, Willie Jones, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts.

Earlier this year, you also launched a haircare line, Cécred. In ramping up these business interests, do you find that entrepreneurialism scratches a different kind of itch than your other creative pursuits?

I am a musician first. It has always been my priority. I didn’t get into anything that could take away from my artistry until I felt I was solidified as a master at my first love, music.

When I started my hair care brand, Cécred, I wanted it to be recognised for what it does for real people and their hair. When it launched, I made a conscious decision not to appear in the ads. The brand’s first impression needed to stand on its own merit, not be swayed by my influence. I’ve been using these products for years, so I know firsthand how magical they are.

Your reputation as a perfectionist precedes you – we see and hear it in the finished version of everything you release, and you lean into this narrative in documentaries like Homecoming and Renaissance. But is there a point where that reputation is a burden, or even a prison? Do you ever feel personally overwhelmed by the weight of expectations set by the highs of your previous work?

I create at my own pace, on things that I hope will touch other people. I hope my work encourages people to look within themselves and come to terms with their own creativity, strength, and resilience. I focus on storytelling, growth, and quality. I’m not focused on perfectionism. I focus on evolution, innovation, and shifting perception. Working on the music for Cowboy Carter and launching this exciting new project feel nothing like prison, nor a burden. In fact, I only work on what liberates me. It is fame that can at times feel like prison. So, when you don’t see me on red carpets, and when I disappear until I have art to share, that’s why.

Increasingly, your work seems a little bit like a family business. For instance, recently your 12-year-old daughter, Blue, has evolved from a curious onlooker of your creative process to fully being a part of it, with her own dance routine in your last tour beside you. Were you ever hesitant to include her in your public life and work, with all the scrutiny and, sometimes, criticism that that entails? How has it felt to watch her blossom as a creative force in her own right?

I build my work schedule around my family. I try to only tour when my kids are out of school. I always dreamt of a life where I could see the world with my family and expose them to different languages, architecture, and lifestyles.

Raising three kids isn’t easy. The older they get, the more they become their own individuals with unique needs, hobbies, and social lives. My twins are God-sent. Parenting constantly teaches you about yourself. It takes a lot of prayer and patience. I love it. It’s grounding and fulfilling.

My kids come with me everywhere I go. They come to my office after school, and they are in the studio with me. They are in dance rehearsals. It’s natural that they would learn my choreography.

Having just released your eighth album, when you step back and look at the breadth of your discography, what do you see? What do you hope to see when it’s all said and done?

I am proud of what I have been able to do, but I also recognise the sacrifices – mine and my family’s. There was a time when I was pushing myself to meet unrealistic deadlines, while not taking the time to enjoy the benefits of why I was working so hard. There aren’t many of us from the late ’90s who were taught to focus on mental health. Back then, I had little boundaries, and said yes to everything. But I’ve paid my dues a hundred times over. I have worked harder than anyone I know. And now I work smarter. In the end, the biggest reward is personal joy. Has what I created pushed others to think freely and believe in the impossible? If the answer to that question is yes, then that is the gift”.

There is so much to explore and recognise. In 2011, GRAMMY included Beyoncé in a new series. “Black Sounds Beautiful series, learn about the many ways in which Beyoncé's words, music and initiatives have celebrated and elevated the Black community”. This is a living global colossus who I feel does deserve something major made about her:

“Beyoncé doesn't only loom large in American culture just because of her hits. Although her musical accomplishments are staggering—at 28 GRAMMY wins, she holds the record for most GRAMMYs won by a woman—Beyoncé's ongoing commitment to uplifting and celebrating the Black community has become a key part of her legacy.

This goes beyond her empowering songs—it's in her public statements and art, too.

In the debut episode of GRAMMY.com's Black Sounds Beautiful series, a special series honoring Black music and culture in all its forms, learn about the many ways in which Beyoncé's words, music and initiatives have celebrated and elevated the Black community and how she remains a steadfast fighter for the accomplishments of Black people everywhere.

"It's important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty, so they can grow up in a world where they look in the mirror—first through their own families as well as the news, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House, and the GRAMMYs—and see themselves and have no doubt that they're beautiful, intelligent and capable," Beyoncé said in an acceptance speech at the 59th GRAMMY Awards in 2017.

She doubled-down on the sentiment at the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show when she won the GRAMMY for Best R&B Performance for "BLACK PARADE," which she originally released on Juneteenth last year.

"As an artist, I believe it's my job, and all of our jobs, to reflect the times," she said in her GRAMMY acceptance speech this past March. "... So, I wanted to uplift, encourage and celebrate all of the beautiful Black queens and kings that continue to inspire me and inspire the whole world."

She's continued to do exactly that throughout her entire career.

In 2018, Beyoncé headlined Coachella, becoming the first-ever Black woman artist to headline the festival. She used the history-making moment as a platform to celebrate Black culture, inviting performers from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to the Coachella stage and mixing in vocal snippets of Black icons like Malcolm X and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her 2020 GRAMMY-nominated music film, Black Is King, is a "love letter" to Black men. The film is the visual counterpart to The Lion King: The Gift, a 2019 soundtrack album curated by Beyoncé that spotlights African and Afrobeats artists like Wizkid, Burna Boy, Mr Eazi and many others.

Check out the strengthening clip above and watch out for more episodes of Black Sounds Beautiful as GRAMMY.com's Black Music Month celebrations proceed throughout June”.

I am going to leave it there. Beyoncé turns forty-five on 4th September. I do think it is a moment to consider her immense legacy and importance. From her earliest days as a member of Destiny’s Child to where she is now, she is one of the most culturally significant figures who has ever lived. I will finish with this from Wikipedia and the cultural impact of Beyoncé:

“Beyoncé has revolutionized the music industry, transforming the production, distribution, promotion, and consumption of music. She has been credited with reviving both the album and the music video as art forms, popularizing surprise albums and visual albums, and changing the Global Release Day to Friday. Her artistic innovations, such as staccato rap-singing and vocal manipulation techniques, including chopping and re-pitching, have become defining features of popular music within the 21st century. With her work frequently transcending traditional genre boundaries, Beyoncé has created new artistic standards that have shaped contemporary music, helped to renew subgenres of R&B, hip-hop, country, dance, and house, and brought Afrobeats to a global audience. Beyoncé has been recognized as setting the playbook for music artists in the modern era, with musicians from across genres, generations and countries citing her as a major influence on their career. Beyond entertainment, Beyoncé has had a significant impact on socio-political matters. Her work celebrates women's empowerment and Black culture, while highlighting systemic inequalities and advocating for social justice. Through her music, public statements, and philanthropy, she has become a prominent voice in political conversations, with cultural critics crediting her with influencing political elections and mainstreaming sociocultural movements such as fourth-wave feminism and Black Lives Matter. Beyoncé's work and career is the subject of numerous university courses, cultural analyses and museum exhibitions around the world. Through the "Beyoncé Effect", she has ignited market trends and boosted the economies of various countries”.

I do genuinely believe that more needs to happen regarding Beyoncé and her legacy. All that she has done and how her music continues to change lives. The success she has earned and the ways she has transformed and revolutionise culture. Talking about that through books, documentaries and beyond, we need to properly salute…

QUEEN Bey.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Jazzy

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

  

Jazzy

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THIS is an artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Fiona Garden for NME

who has done quite a fair bit since I originally included her in my Spotlight feature. That is Jazzy. Dublin-born Yasmine Byrne has released some incredible singles and E.P.s but, to this date, no debut album. That is something a lot of her fans are waiting for. This Dance/Synth-Pop wonder has a growing number of admirers. She has a lot of fans behind her. No wonder when you consider the brilliance of her music. I cannot find interviews many interviews from this year, so I am going back to last year for the most part. I will start with PRINCIPLE and their conversation with Jazzy last year. Someone who became the most-streamed Irish female artist in the world on Spotify and is award-nominated, she is definitely hitting a new peak:

“Breaking out in 2022 with “Make Me Feel Good,” a collaboration with Belters Only that shot to number one in the Irish charts, Jazzy landed her second Irish number one with “Giving Me” just a year later, making history as the first Irish woman to top the charts in over 14 years. The track didn’t just resonate at home – it soared to number three in the UK and was crowned The Official Charts’ biggest debut release that year. Now certified platinum in the UK and diamond in Ireland, Jazzy has cemented her place as a dance music powerhouse.

With a clear knack for crafting addictive, feel-good bangers, Jazzy’s momentum has been unstoppable. She’s earned Ivor Novello and BRIT Award nominations, secured a coveted spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30, and surpassed legends like Enya and Sinéad O’Connor to become the most-streamed Irish female artist in the world on Spotify.

Last year, Jazzy kept the hits coming with “Somedays,” a link-up with dance music heavyweights Sonny Fodera and D.O.D. The night before Principle sat down with Jazzy for this interview, it was revealed that the track had just been nominated for a BRIT Award – yet another milestone in Jazzy’s meteoric rise…

Congratulations on your BRITs Song of the Year nomination! How are you feeling?

I’m absolutely buzzing. I can’t believe I’m going back so soon.

This is your second BRITs Song of the Year nomination, after “Giving Me” was nominated two years ago.

Absolutely. I mean, it’s only things I could dream of, you know, just to go once. I thought it would at least be another couple of years till I get to go again.

The nominated single, “Somedays,” is particularly special to you. What significance does it hold?

I think the message in the track is really important for everyone, in life, in general, especially in this world we’re living in right now. And when we put the track out, I loved it, obviously, and it really resonated with me, but when we put it out, so many people were getting the lyrics tattooed on them, and so many lovely messages of how it helps certain people. And I won’t get into stories, but really, really hard times, you know. So it’s just really lovely to hear.

You’ve been described as “the new face of dance music” and a “key figure in the Irish dance scene.” How do you feel about carrying these titles?

It feels lovely. I mean, obviously, some people would feel pressure, but kind of from the start, when I put on out my debut single, that went to number one in Ireland, and people always have high expectations when things like that happen. I said to myself, just keep doing your thing as you’re doing it. Don’t put pressure on yourself. Don’t try too hard, and that’s really helped me along the way.

Has your approach to writing and production changed as your career has grown and your music continues to be heard by and resonate with more and more people? Or have you stayed pretty aligned with how you’ve always done things?

I think I have. The only thing I would say is that I’ve grown a lot, and I listen back to some of the stuff I’ve done before, I can definitely hear a baby Jazzy in there. I feel like I’ve grown a lot over the last few years, and I’m much more confident in myself”.

NME included Jazzy in their list of one-hundred artists to watch. Jazzy enjoying this incredible year in 2025. It is amazing how far she came in such a short time. This is definitely someone that you should know about. A lot of Jazzy’s songs have been collaborations. It would be nice to see her out front for many songs. A singular talent who is great working with others, but she has this incredible artist that does not need support from others:

“Jazzy may be remarkably grounded for someone with 10.7million monthly Spotify listeners – more than any other Irish female solo artist, including Enya and Sinéad O’Connor – but her drive is formidable. In primary school, she committed so fully to her free violin lessons, provided by a scheme called The Music Project, that her Crumlin neighbours dubbed her “the girl with the violin”.

She completed her grades and could have become a violin teacher. “When I finished secondary school, I actually went back to the [primary] school where I learned and did a whole year as the assistant violin teacher,” she says. As a teenager, Jazzy also loved singing in the school choir, where her first solo was a serious vocal test: ‘Killing Me Softly’, as covered by the Fugees. “I loved Lauryn Hill – I used to sing that song for the four walls at home, so I probably asked for it,” she says.

While teaching the violin, Jazzy reached a musical fork in the road that she hadn’t been anticipating. “I was actually a very well-behaved child, so I never went out [to clubs] before I was supposed to,” she says with a laugh. “But for my 18th birthday, my friend took me to my first DJ gig, which was Amine Edge & Dance at [Dublin club] Sin.” She notes approvingly that the French duo were “really big in G-house”, a bass-heavy blend of dance and hip-hop.

“I remember absolutely loving it and thinking, ‘What is this scene?’” she recalls, still sounding rapt. “And after that, I just dived in and started finding all the records that I loved [from the club].” On subsequent nights out, Jazzy found herself focusing on the DJs. “I would think to myself, I really want to learn how to do that.”

Still, she admits, “it took a while to take that leap and actually ask for lessons”. When she finally plucked up the courage, her choice of tutor proved fortuitous. “He was a local DJ who was a friend of a friend, but I only met him when I asked him to teach me,” she remembers. “He started giving me lessons about seven years ago, and then he became my partner. We’re engaged now.”

At first, Jazzy didn’t devote herself solely to dance music. For several years, she was a member of Dublin hip-hop collective Powerful Creative Minds, who released their debut EP ‘#39’ in 2020. Because of her distinctive singing style, her bandmates gave her the stage name “Jazzy Yaz”, which she later shortened to Jazzy. “We did pretty well. Anytime we’d do a small concert or competition, we’d get local support. And the boys taught me a lot about writing songs,” she notes.

In 2021, Jazzy branched out by booking studio time with Belters Only, a local dance duo consisting of DJ-producers Conor Bissett and Robbie Griffiths. They’d known each other for a while, but Bisset has admitted he “never really knew [Jazzy] had a great voice” until they worked together. Their very first session yielded ‘Makes Me Feel Good’, a reworked version of Timmy Regisford and Lynn Lockamy’s house deep cut ‘At The Club’, which Belters Only initially put out themselves.

After the song popped off on TikTok, it was picked up by British record label Polydor [Sam Fender, Ellie Goulding] and given a major push. At the time, Jazzy was still working in her local branch of Tesco. “We made a music video pretty sharpish, so people would come in and say: ‘You’re the girl from that song,’” she recalls. When a label exec called her to say that ‘Make Me Feel Good’ had hit Number One in Ireland, Jazzy was busy making croissants in the Tesco bakery.

At this point, Polydor offered her a solo deal, an opportunity she seized in a characteristically level-headed way. “I remember talking it through with my mum,” she says. “And she was like, ‘The opportunity is there, you can’t let it pass. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.’”

Although Jazzy was raised by her Irish mother and her father wasn’t present when she was growing up, she believes his Jamaican heritage is firmly infused in her music. “You can hear it when I sing, I sound quite soulful, and I think that comes quite naturally from that side of me,” she says. Her Irish side, she says, is represented by the warm organ house sound that underpins ‘Giving Me’. “All the local producers here love the organ. I think that song sounds very Dublin.”

After ‘Giving Me’ exploded, climbing to Number One in Ireland and Number Three in the UK, Jazzy’s life changed forever. Dublin is still home, but she now spends more time in London, where most of her recording sessions take place. Initially, navigating the sprawling British capital was a culture shock. “I remember walking into the tube and not knowing what to do,” she says with a slight cringe. “I was trying to ask for help, but everyone was too busy to stop. It just felt like a far cry from home.”

Though Jazzy was “quite shy” in the studio to begin with, she now feels more confident and often arrives with song ideas. She’s already been prolific, releasing three EPs, including February’s ‘High In The Moment’, a three-song reunion with Belters Only. Then in May, she scored her ninth UK chart hit with ‘Closer To The Floor’, a sultry team-up with French electronic musician Ankhoï.

Her new single ‘High On Me’ is the first taster from an upcoming DJ mix project due later this summer. After that, she’ll focus on making a debut album that she hopes will tell “a bigger story”. She’s also manifesting a collab with fellow female house maven Peggy Gou – “I just think we’re on the same page” – and learning to be a producer. “When you’re in the DJ world playing great house music, you’ve got to make it as well, don’t you?” she says with a glint of ambition”.

Before ending with a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK, Music Week highlighted an incredible achievement. I would urge anyone new to the stunning Jazzy to follow her on social media and check out her music. One of the world’s best artists and producers, I feel the rest of this year is going to be very busy for her:

“SoundCloud has revealed that Jazzy is 2025's most listened to female electronic artist worldwide on the platform.

The announcement from the global streaming platform coincides with the release of the DJ and vocalist’s Gewah Selects project via Polydor’s Chaos imprint. Gewah has become known as Jazzy’s brand as a DJ, with mixes broadcast across her SoundCloud and YouTube channel from London, New York, Toronto and Dublin

The 12-track DJ mix features two original Jazzy tracks: Hypnotic and lead single Moth To A Flame with Luuk Van Dijk, as well as her recent Top 20 UK single High On Me with Rossi. Other artists and producers featured include Dart, Kolter, MK, Kayleigh Glynn, Paige Tomlinson, Confidence Man and more.

Denys Wilcox, SoundCloud’s senior label relations UK, said: “Since being named one of our Ascending artists in 2023, the consistency of her hit releases and fan engagement has only amplified that growth. Including collaborative tracks, Jazzy is now the most listened to female electronic artist worldwide on SoundCloud in 2025. It's a perfect example of how prioritising community-building can lead to sustained global success."

Jazzy said: “Hand on heart, these last three years have been the wildest ride. I try not to dwell on it all too much because I think I’d spiral, but achievements like this make my head spin for sure. I feel so loved and so lucky - thank you SoundCloud for the support, and to my team of course. What an honour!”.

We do get tease that a Jazzy debut album is coming. Rolling Sone UK catching up with a global Dance queen. They name her “UK dance’s future star” but, as an Irish artist, I would say she is a European star. Though she may be perfectly fine to be thought of as a U.K. talent. However you define Jazzy, she is a worldwide sensation. It will be great hearing what a debut album offers:

“It’s safe to say that Jazzy – real name Yasmine Byrne – has come a very long way since working in her local Tesco’s bakery. She’s now the most streamed female DJ/vocalist globally, her infectious house groover ‘Giving Me’ was nominated for a BRIT Award, and she was also tipped for an Ivor Novello. 

Not only did ‘Giving Me’ peak at number three on the UK Official Singles Chart and earn a place in the Top 40 biggest songs of 2023, but it also topped the Official Irish Singles Chart, making Jazzy the first Irish female solo artist to achieve that feat in over a decade.

She’s not slowed down since: 2025 saw her playing at Glastonbury, touring America and DJing at Pacha Ibiza each Monday for seven weeks during the summer, as well as releasing ‘High on Me’, a collab with Rossi. Before that, 2024 saw dancefloor-dominating collaborations with KILIMANJARO (‘No Bad Vibes’) and Sonny Fodera (‘Somedays’).

Her biggest team-up to date, though, is undoubtedly ‘Satisfy’, this year’s summer anthem she made in the studio with Calvin Harris. “It still feels crazy that we’ve released a song together,” she says, adding that he had previously topped her bucket list of collaborators.

Up next is a debut album, which Jazzy teases is almost finished. “There are a lot of stories about my experiences and things I’ve gone through, good and bad, from when I started doing this to now,” she says of its themes. Alongside club-ready hits, she hints at “some darker vibes”, adding: “I always like to have a message in my songs, and I feel like people know me for that, so there’ll be plenty on there, but all still under my umbrella.” 

At its heart, the collection with Harris is both an ode to home as well as her friends and family. “They are so supportive and I’d be lost without them,” she says. The local outpouring of love whenever she’s able to return – rarely, due to her busy touring schedule – is equally influential for Jazzy, who recently learned she’s a young Irish girl’s favourite artist. 

“I was having a bit of a rough day, and it really cheered me up,” she says of receiving the “really sweet” fanmail. “She had some questions to ask me, and I sent her a letter back, along with a vinyl.” 

In an industry that can often feel non-stop, such moments of personal connection mean a lot to Jazzy. “It warms my heart,” she says. “The kids keep me going.” To this end, her main hope for the record is that people love it as much as she does. “I have very high hopes, and I’m being really picky with it,” she continues. “I want it to be perfect, before anyone gets to hear the finished version.” 

Perhaps expectedly, then, she’s not going to start rushing things anytime soon. “Getting to do this as a job is a dream come true,” she enthuses. “I’m having a great time on the journey”.

I waned to revisit Jazzy, as she has accomplished so much in the past few years. One of the greatest voices in modern Dance, this artist, D.J. and producer is set for an incredible future. I really love her music. Although a lot of them are collaborations, you feel a debut album will see more Jazzy solo cuts. This is a woman who receives so much love from…

AROUND the world.

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Follow Jazzy

FEATURE: For We All Live Underground: Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

For We All Live Underground

 

Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity at Thirty

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I am keen to come…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Jay Kay of Jamiroquai in 1996

to some features about one of the standout tracks of the 1990s. The second single from Jamiroquai’s Travelling Without Moving album, it was released on 19th August, 1996. I am looking to the thirtieth anniversary of a song that is a dystopian critique of society's over-reliance on technology, environmental destruction, and mass consumerism. It sounds fresh and prescient in 1996. Thirty years later, things have become more extreme in many respects. Virtual Insanity spreading into social media and other areas. A timely song in 1996, we can learn a lot from this successful single. One that went to number three in the U.K. and a top forty in the U.S., the single did reach number one on a few charts – including UK Hip Hop/R&B (OCC). A lot of the acclaim ad conversation is around the Jonathan Glazer-directed video where the band’s lead, Jay Kay, is dancing on a floor that is moving. Like a huge travelator, it is not a one-take video, though it does look like one. It is captivating and very cool. One that perfectly blends with the song. A great performance and an extraordinary concept. In terms of its success, Virtual Insanity has been remixed, used on shows and soundtracks, parodied and copied time and time again. At the 1997 MTV Video Music Award, Virtual Insanity won four awards, including Video of the Year. Here is the first article that I want to feature. Giving you some insight into the video and the song’s lyrics. A great read from Retropunk:

“Virtual Insanity released on August 19, 1996 about a week before Traveling without Moving — the third studio album by the English funk/acid jazz band Jamiroquai.

The video utilized a series of conveyor belts to create some really cool visuals that were very unique at the time.

It’s music video was released the following month and a year later would be nominated for 10 awards at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. It went on to win four of them:

  1. Video of the Year

  2. Breakthrough Video

  3. Best Visual Effects

  4. Best Cinematography

What Makes it so Great?

When you think back to the 90’s as a whole, or 1996 in particular, I’m sure you can find more notable singles. It was a decade of hits and the advent of a new generation where we saw the rise of icons like Dave Matthews, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, and the like. Jamiroquai, while a fairly prolific band in their own right, are often thought of as a one-hit-wonder here in the US — that is until people realize the dance song at the end of Napoleon Dynamite is Canned Heat from them as well. So why do I think Virtual Insanity is the best song of the 90’s? A few reasons.

A Unique Sound

First and foremost, it sounds really good. A lot of songs from decades past have the sound of that time period. I mean, when you hear something like I Ran by A Flock of Seagulls, or Sunglasses at Night by Corey Hart it sounds like the 1980’s. When you hear You Get What You Give by the New Radicals or Bye, Bye, Bye by Nsync, it sounds like the late 90’s. Because of the band’s unique blend of sounds, it doesn’t come off feeling old. Sure it’s a different sound than the hip-hop heavy beats our culture is steeped in today, but it’s not that out of place.

A Unique Message with Increasing Relevance

The lyrics of this song almost seem prophetic looking back. In a world transitioning from the grit of grunge to the manufactured sounds of bubblegum pop, Virtual Insanity painted a landscape of a world more akin to a sci-fi thriller. A world with — as Charlie Chaplin would have described as — machine men, with machine minds, and machine hearts. A world of selfishness where “we can always take, but never give”. A world of virtual insanities in which we find ourselves consumed with “these useless, twisting, of our new technology.” Where “there is no sound, for we all live underground.”

With the recent circulation a video explaining the yet-to-be-instituted concept of facilities where we would utilize artificial intelligence and other new technologies to grow babies in facilities with 30,000 growth pods — or artificial wombs — the lyric “and now every mother can choose the color of her child, that’s not nature’s way” seems more timely than ever.

Final Thoughts

Is it a perfect song? Well I’m not sure there is a “perfect” song, but it’s a darn good one. It holds up even 26 years later, and it’s lyrics paint a portrait of a world that is looking and feeling more and more like our own by the day. Off all the classics from that era of music, few stand the test of time (in my humble opinion) the way Virtual Insanity does”.

I was already aware of Jamiroquai in 1996. I loved their 1993 debut album, Emergency on Planet Earth and 1994’s Return of the Space Cowboy. I still think I have the original C.D. I bought of 1999’s Synkronized. This was a band who released their debut a year before I started high school. Synkronized arrived the year I left. There was something about Virtual Insanity that really hit me. Instantly catchy. Perhaps I was not aware of its relevance and deeper message. I was won by its funkiness and how singalong-worthy it was. In terms of technology, I was noy really immersed in it aged thirteen. Adults around me perhaps more so. Listening to the song now, and are the lyrics more relevant than ever, or are they are a little dated? In that things are so much bigger and worse. A song that goes to greater extremes in getting these points across. Rock Cellar Magazine wrote about Virtual Insanity on its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2021:

“The track, a delectably danceable tune with pointed lyrics from front man/figurehead Jay Kay that cast a critical eye on our communal reliance on technology, was topical at the time it was released, the internet still building its stranglehold on everything, a few years away from becoming an all-encompassing aspect of daily life.

Future’s made of virtual insanity
Now always seem to, be governed by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound
For we all live underground

(It’s worth noting the coincidence of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook choosing today — the anniversary of this particular song — to launch a virtual reality remote work app called Horizon Workrooms, featuring digital work meetings).

The track’s music video, premiered a month after the song’s debut, was a phenomenon on MTV, which at the time was still a significant force in the music world, and in this case it helped make Jamiroquai a global sensation.

The visually impressive video featured Kay dancing alone in a room in which the floor appears to move, while the rest of the room remains stationary. To this day, it’s an iconic snapshot of the time, and one of the ’90s most memorable music videos:

Director Jonathan Glazer broke down the behind-the-scenes magic of the “Virtual Insanity” video:

“Virtual Insanity” was the second single featured on Travelling Without Moving, Jamiroquai’s third studio album. Led by the track, the record was a hit around the world, selling eight million copies and helping Jamiroquai clean up at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1997 (again, a huge deal at the time), where it was named Video of the Year.

The song also earned the group Best Performance by a Duo or Group Grammy Award, one of two nominations it picked up (Travelling Without Moving was up for Best Pop Album).

Synkronized, the 1999 follow-up record to Travelling Without Moving, was unable to capitalize on the previous record’s breakthrough success on a commercial level, though the inclusion of lead single “Canned Heat” a few years later in the 2001 comedy Napoleon Dynamite further helped Jamiroquai remain a relevant force in pop culture:

Though the mid ’90s breakthrough marked the commercial peak of Jamiroquai in the United States, at least, the band rode the momentum of “Virtual Insanity” to five more albums, the most recent coming in 2017 (Automaton), Jay Kay and his colleagues remaining a force around the world — and one whose most well-known mission statement remains relevant today”.

I want to come to an article from Dercoded Magazine from 2022. Transcribing an interview between Jay Kay and Zane Lowe on “Apple Music 1 for a deep dive into the UK acid-jazz collective. They discuss the early days of his career and the massive breakout success of “Virtual Insanity”:

“Jamiroquai Tells Apple Music About The Iconic Video For “Virtual Insanity”…

It was a funny day doing that video. Not only, as you well know, Zane, videos were vastly expensive in those days. This is an example of when you really are working with somebody and you are clicking on the same level. Anyway, and there a couple of sofas in the room and I’m like, right. And it was straight into action, whatever it was, seven in the morning, eight in the morning, a bit of makeup, off you go. I remember standing in the middle of the room and the song played back and I got into a regular slink about, like I do. Cat in the hat it. Anyway, I’d said, “Let me look behind the camera and see what on earth you’re talking about.” As soon as I look behind the camera, I went, “Oh, I get it. I see what’s going on here.” And from then on, the magic happened. Apart from, I might add, it was only four shots that video. I never quite understood the crow. What the f**k is the crow doing here? Anyway, nevermind”.

I wonder if there will be anything special done for the thirtieth anniversary of Virtual Insanity on 19th August or for Travelling Without Moving on 28th August? It is not only one of the defining tracks of the 1990s. I feel it is up here with the best songs ever. That pairing of the incredible track (written by Jay Kay and Toby Smith) and that video from the masterful Jonathan Glazer. This feature was published in 2018. Just over twenty years from the release of Virtual Insanity, it still held some modern relevance and power:

“Who among us wouldn’t settle for some 1990s-strength insanity when faced with daily bouts of extreme insanity from some of the world’s most important political leaders 20 years later?

Back in the mid-1990s, the biggest driver of your insanity was the seemingly interminable delay every time your dial-up connection tried to download a tiny text file from something we’d only recently started calling “the internet”.

Nowadays you can go straight from a state of serene calm to “steam coming out the ears” rage just by catching the headlines on the 10 o’clock news…

Maybe it’s because we didn’t listen closely enough 20 years ago…

And nothing’s going to change the way we live
‘Cos we can always take but never give
And now that things are changing for the worse
See it’s a crazy world we’re living in
And I just can’t see that half of us immersed in sin
Is all we have to give

Winston Churchill said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Mark Twain said that, while history doesn’t often repeat itself, it does rhyme.

Maybe back in 1996 Jamiroquai was giving us a warning for the future which, whilst it may not have happened exactly as they thought it would, has certainly rhymed with their warnings against living a virtual life instead of a real one. Perhaps we should have paid “Virtual Insanity” more attention.

I mentioned earlier the truly amazing video for “Virtual Insanity”. When you consider this was actually made as a low-tech video without green screens and camera trickery, it’s even more brilliant than you might think it is.

I remember seeing an interview with JK where he explained that off-screen there were basically a group of hefty blokes moving stuff around on rollers to create the room’s ever-changing shape. It’s a really clever video, though, made by people who really knew what they were doing when it came to realising an idea in the days you couldn’t just “paint it in later” on a green screen.

But there’s one other element that makes “Virtual Insanity” such a great song. That’s the staccato jazzy chords on the keyboard that carry the theme of the song right through.

A long time ago I played the piano…not brilliantly, but well enough to know that playing a chord like that is much harder than you might think. There’s a real skill in “attacking” the keys to make the sound nice and crisp, but then lifting your fingers off again quickly to end the note as abruptly as it began.

I can’t find a definitive reference online to who played the keyboard on this track, but whoever it was showed some real musical skill… another aspect of the 1990s that was arguably better than today.

However if you want to go back to the 1990s…

Back to when records were made with real instruments, rather than laptops…

Back to when we had to struggle with dial-up internet but at least we didn’t have our iPhones pinging every few minutes with another vacuous social media update…

Back to when insanity amongst the global ruling classes looked like merely a bit of harmless eccentricity compared to today’s nonsense…

Then there’s no better company for your journey back in time than Jamiroquai, with their excellent song, “Virtual Insanity”…”.

In terms of those songs from a decade that really take me back and have real significance, I feel Virtual Insanity is right in there. At that age when I was really digesting all this different music, Jamiroquai really were among my favourite groups. Familiar with their work before Virtual Insanity, this single totally blew my mind. I still does in a way. Turning thirty on 19th August, I feel that we have not really listened heard enough to the lyrics and their relevance. Virtual Insanity’s final words are these: “Virtual insanity is what we're livin' in, yeah, yeah/Well, it's alright”. Is that Jay Kay giving in or just going with the tide? An important question…

THIRTY years on.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Far from the Madding Crowd: Inside a New UNCUT Feature

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for the cover for The Sensual World single in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Far from the Madding Crowd: Inside a New UNCUT Feature

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FOR this Kate Bush feature…

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

I am looking at the recent UNCUT edition and their spread. They talk about her career and life post-Hounds of Love (1985) as she recorded The Sensual World and then The Red Shoes (1993). I wanted to include some sections and observations from that. It is interesting how the article starts. Written by  Nick Hasted, there are some new interviews collated. The articles starts out by saying how Bush was gardening in 1989. Many might be surprised by that. However, Kate Bush was gardening even before that. Before recording Hounds of Love, she did take some time to be with friends, family, her boyfriend; go to films and drive around. I think gardening was in the mix. As recently as 2022, Bush spoke with Emma Barnett for Woman’s Hour and revealed that she is quite into gardening. By 1989, Kate Bush was one of the most successful and acclaimed Pop artists in the world. Even though she was not on the same level as Madonna, say, she was definitely considered to be a genius and innovator. Gardening was a form of decompression. Rather than being immersed in the dizzy rush of recording an album and that demand, gardening perhaps provided some form of relief and focus. It would not be long until the studio called. Bush released Hounds of Love in 1985 and the greatest hits album, The Whole Story, came out in 1986. Singles from Hounds of Love still resonating in 1986. Some of the heat had died away by 1987, though the fact Bush had these massive-selling albums out and there was this sense of adoration, a lot of expectation on the next album. It would be four years between Hounds of Love and The Sensual World. I wonder what would have appeared if she had released an album right after Hounds of Love. Could she have had a necessary revolution and evolution?

Think of an artist like Charli xcx. I think of her as a modern embodiment of Kate Bush. She wrote music for the “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack, and that came out earlier this year. Now, Music, Fashion, Film is out next month. Someone who is always moving and innovating, perhaps Kate Bush could have done something similar in the mid-1980s. In the article, it is mentioned how Madonna’s celebrity in 1986 was greater than Bush’s because of Like a Prayer. I think they mean 1989, as that is when the single and album came out. Though it is interesting to compare the two. In 1985, Kate Bush took Madonna’s Like a Virgin off the top of the album chart in the U.K. In 1989, they were in very different places. Madonna continuing to push the envelope and growing to new heights of brilliance and celebrity. There were offers from America to tour and do a lot of promotion there, but this was never seriously considered. “I suppose I always thought I’d tour again one day someday and it just didn’t happen. I just went off along the path which led me much more into the studio environment, where I became involved in the production” That is what she told UNCUT’s Andy Gill. Expectations differed when it came to major queens of the U.S. and U.K.. Bush was never going to follow the same path as Madonna. The release of The Sensual World not only saw Bush enter her thirties. There was personal losses and relationships ending. Her mother died in 1992. She lost friends and her relationship with Del Palmer broke down. She quietly married Dan McIntosh in 1992 and they relocated to Berkshire. Bertie, her son, was born in July 1998. I think about The Red Shoes and what Bush was dealing with. Still recovering after the death of her mother, it would have been an impossible time for her. Friend and collaborator Roy Harper said this: “It’s Kate doing what she does, which is running away from the really maddening crowd. She has to protect herself from that. Being in the public eye is like having a grand party going on for 40 years. But how long can that carry on for,  how long can you by giddy in other people’s presence?”. Bush had learned, in the words of a standout track from 2005’s Aerial, how to be invisible.

I do like how Bush threw herself into work after the success of Hounds of Love. Even though it was not an instant reveal and it would take until 1989, there was a lot of working happening behind the scenes. Moving to East Wickham Farm and upgrading the studio that was built in 1983. Upgrading the specifications. Not that Hounds of Love was an album completely made up of Western music. Hello Earth from Hounds of Love an example of Kate Bush influenced by music from Eastern Europe. Part of the song was inspired by a beautiful Georgian folk song called Tsintskaro. I do love how the influence of her brothers was still there. The Trio Bulgarka came via Paddy. Kate Bush first heard them in 1985. They were to provide key to The Sensual World and adding a new magic. In October 1988, Bush made her move and called Joe Boyd. He signed the trio to Hannibal Records. In her mind, the trio would travel to London and do a normal session. It didn’t work that way. She would need to go to them. The Trio Bulgarka did not speak English, and it was so remote where they were. Bush was not a great fan of flying, so there were nerves about travelling out there. I think Del Palmer was more nervous and flight-adverse. The Balkans Airlines plane rattled and it as a very tense flight! The image of Kate Bush arriving in Sofia (Bulgaria’s capital) and at one point having to get out and help push the Bulgarians’ car. Quite basic, eventful and rustic. It would have suited a perhaps-reluctant Kate Bush. She brought a ghetto-blaster into an intense two-day preparation. They were in a suburban schoolroom. Joe Boyd recalled how everyone was say at key-shaped desks that they slid into. “Kate’s favourite moment in the whole weekend was when they needed a drone note in this very ancient tradition, and they took it from the telephone dialtone. Kate loved it!”. Bush flew the trio to Angel Studios in London for overdubs. I did not know about the atmosphere when they were recording. Bush and the Trio Bulgarka exchanged gifts. They brought “clothing, dolls and potteries”. Boyd goes on to say that “in the studio, as sweet as she was, she was fierce. It was hot, and the ladies had headdresses and costumes on because they were being filmed”. This was for Rhythms of the World for the BBC. Bush went over and over this one passage. Boyd said “’I don’t think you’re going to get better’. Kate is always smiling. But there was a look: ‘Don’t fuck with me. I’m the producer. Get the fuck out!’.”

There were doubts about the melding of ancient Balkan tradition and 1980s British technology. Bush bringing in synthesisers and the Fairlight CMI. Joe Boyd struggled to get on with her electronic style. He did not see it as a warm or particularly connective. More distant than she hoped, it may have been a reason she revisited The Sensual World for Director’s Cut in 2011. Joe Boyd highlights Rocket’s Tail as an exception. An occasion of the vocals bending magnificently and this power and intensity coming from the song. The way she worked with her musicians changed between albums. A combination of this live sound and overdubs for the first three albums – The Kick Inside (1978), Lionheart (1978) and Never for Ever (1980) -; The Dreaming (1982) found Bush laying down her parts to click or sync tracks before the drummers got there. Bush would then go into the studio and the drummers and players go in one by one. That lack of communication between the musicians. For Rocket’s Tail, as long-time collaborators Stuart Elliott recalls: “On ‘Rocket’s Tail’, though, she came into the studio and played the keyboard while I pretended I was Phil Collins for the day”. Bush had this open house policy. The Sensual World saw a variety of eclectic musicians work together. Her studio was top-of-the-range and world-class. However, there were a lot of trial-and-error situations. Some musicians did not make a mark. She worked from early morning to late at night. That routine and regime. Though musicians were not booted out. Alan Stivell was invited to play on The Sensual World. His Renaissance of the Celtic Harp album of 1971 has revived the instrument. He travelled from Brittany to East Wickham Farm. Bush offered to collaborate with Stivell, as she really loved Stivell playing Kimiad with his band on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Bush sings and plays keyboard on the track which she produced. That was a 1993 new version. In 2005, for The Independent, she picked her ten favourite World music tracks. She said this of Kimiad: “I first heard this song through my brother correct John, who is a big fan of Alan Stivell. I love the anthemic quality of this piece and I also love the delicacy of his harp playing with his stirring voice”. The Trio Bulgarka came back for The Red Shoes. Bush held a party at her home and they did a concert in her living room! Even if some musicians did not play a major part in some of her albums, they became part of a wider family. Rather than it being calculated, it was musicians being part of this club. There are tremors and worries about age. The Fog “faced ageing and departure heads on”. Bush told Andy Gill that “I have a theory that in a lot of ways there are still parts of our mental worlds that are based around the age of between five and eight and we just kind of pretend to be grown up. I think our essence is there in a much more powerful way when we’re children, and if we’re lucky enough to be treated reasonably well, and can hang on to who we are, you have that at your core for the rest of your life”. Quite powerful, profound and revealing words from an artist barely in her thirties. The Fog mentions “This love of yours is big enough to be frightened of, it’s deep and dark like the water”. Her father Robert (Dr. Bush) is on that track. On Reaching Out: “See how the child reaches out”. There was doubt, heartbreak, change and growing up. Doomed love and broken relationships on Love and Anger and Never Be Mine. This Woman’s Work about a pregnancy where the baby could die and the father having to step up. All, as UNCUT write, foreshadowing the tale of loss and remembrance, Moments of Pleasure, on The Red Shoes.

I think the period between The Sensual World coming out and her working on The Red Shoes dealt her blows and tragedy. Gary Hurst and Alan Murphy dying. Her mother too. All within a few years of one another. It was the end of an era. A more innocent and protected one. A hole had been blown into her world. However, Bush was not going to be taken down. Her cover of Rocket Man for the 1991 tribute to Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Two Rooms, was released in late-1991 and reached twelve in the U.K. This Reggae-cum-sea-shanty reworking of the song gave it this buoyance and merriment. Not taking away from the emotional impact of the lyrics, there was levity, experimentation and some playfulness. All these people working on the track and it being a success. All racing to Pinewood Studios to record the video which Bush directed. Bush balancing the palette. Northumbrian Folk musician Alistair Anderson added to the repertoire. The concertina and pipes came from her love of Bert Lloyd and East European Folk music. Bush saw a parallel between someone going to Mars and this lonely planet being talked about in the 1972 Elton John original. Instead, how about someone going off to Australia 130 years earlier and it being a sea song? That is what Anderson notes. A lightness of the recording, in spite of the fact this person is leaving so many people behind. Anderson was another musician retained in her thoughts and circle. He attended a significant birthday of Kate Bush’s, and he got send Christmas cards for ages. On The Red Shoes, Bush was still throwing herself into everything. Colin Lloyd-Tucker provided backing vocals for The Red Shoes and Constellation of the Heart. He met her first when the KT Bush Band demoed in a Soho studio in 1976. Lloyd-Tucker was working there.

Kate Bush used to live next door to Paddy, and he and Lloyd-Tucker were demoing tracks. She then popped her head in and commented on how their voices melded well. That is how Colin Lloyd-Tucker came to work on The Red Shoes! Sessions at East Wickham Farm would start at 11:30 in the morning and run late into the night. “She already pictured the whole thing in her head”, Lloyd-Tucker remembers. “There’s nothing worse than someone that’s fishing. With Kate, she knew what she was trying to get, and then everybody was working for the same thing. She was very good at expressing….She was a good organiser of people, which is unusual for a musician, and a good motivator”. I will end with recollections from Colin Lloyd-Tucker about some of the anxieties for the sessions on The Red Shoes. “There’s a definite welling of anxiety”. He keenly noted hwo they would be more impactful and powerful of the songs were stripped down. Again, something Bush did for some tracks from that album for 2011’s Director’s Cut. How Lloyd-Tucker met her at Abbey Road Studios, and she was not happy with one of the brass arrangements for a song and that had not gone how she wanted. The struggles and personal strains and troubles affecting her music and mindset. Even though there was a lot of trouble around The Red Shoes, it is a brilliant album with some great moment. The UNCUT feature optimistically looks to 2005’s Aerial and how The Red Shoes was the last Pop album from Bush. Her son was born in 1998, and there was this new happiness and purpose. If things needed to change after Hounds of Love for The Sensual World, it was apparent and more urgent after The Red Shoes. Aerial, perhaps he greatest masterpiece. Full of space, light and air, compared to a more compressed and unnatural The Red Shoes. How Bush released some of her best and most enduring work when she made Aerial, Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow (both 2011). Roy Harper gets the final words: “It’s an object lesson in how to live. I always think of Kate in a good situation. I can’t ever think of her with too much sadness around”. A beautiful way to end a wonderful UNCUT feature. Go and buy a copy if you can so that you can read…

THE whole story.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Two Old Flames (Snowed in at Wheeler Street)/Eddie (The Gay Farewell)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 50 Words for Snow in 2011/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Two Old Flames (Snowed in at Wheeler Street)/Eddie (The Gay Farewell)

__________

ANOTHER occasion…

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

where I am pairing Kate Bush’s most recent work with her very earliest. Characters from each. This series is where I highlight characters in her songs and talk around them. Themes that are connected. I will come to Eddie from The Gay Farewell. This is an early Kate Bush song that had more than one title. I am fascinated to examine the track and who Eddie might be. I am starting out with two characters from Snowed in at Wheeler Street. From 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, it was Kate Bush duetting with Elton John. Perhaps the only time that Bush has duetted with another artist for her album. She duetted with Peter Gabriel for his extraordinary song, Don’t Give Up (from 1986’s So). I can’t recall another Kate Bush song where the vocals are divided almost evenly. The characters in the song are actually meant to be lovers. Two old flames. This line reveals that: “Snowed in at Wheeler street/just two old flames keeping the fire going/We look so good together”. This idea that they are two lovers that get separated through time. In Ancient Rome, in the U.S. on 9/11. Switching through periods. The sense that they maybe were lovers and have been in love forever, though they get separated and there is this sense of mystery, what-if, missed connection and memories that stretch through time. I will discuss Elton John and the significance of Bush’s music, and how she considers him to be an idol. I also want to come on to talk about Bush’s voice in 2011 and why the longer and more expansive and explorative tracks on 50 Words for Snow are among her most compelling and underrated.

I want to look inside the song and the inspiration behind it. The lyrics are really interesting. Perhaps in situations of destruction and chaos, they died and then got reincarnated. Taking that photo in New York on 9/11. So close. Was that just before they got caught in the terrorist attack? These lines suggest warfare divided them: “I just let you walk away. I've never forgiven myself/I saw you on the steps in Paris, you were with someone else/Couldn't you see that should've been me? I just walked on by/Then we met in '42 but we were on different sides/I hid you under my bed but they took you away/I lost you in a London smog as you crossed the lane/I never know where you're gonna be next but I know that you'll surprise me/Come with me, I'll find some rope and I'll tie us together”. There is romance, history and mystery all in these lines. Bush writing cinematically and novelistically in a sense. Painting a picture and creating something that is almost a short film. This is what Kate Bush said of a song where she got to share the microphone with a musical hero: “The idea is that there are two lovers, two souls who keep on meeting up in different periods of time. So they meet in Ancient Rome and then they meet again walking through time. But each time something happens to tear them apart. (…) It’s like two old souls that keep on meeting up. (John Doran, ‘A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed’. The Quietus, 2011)”. The two old flames divided lovers through time. Although 50 Words for Snow is a wintery album, Snowed in at Wheeler Street seems to be the least wintery. Its title suggests this barricade of snow trapping people. However, it is only a small part of the story. Fire is more present and important. Bush wanted a unifying wintery theme for her most recent album. You do get that, but it is not a concept album or something with a single narrative arc. As Graeme Thomson notes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, he observes how there was an intent to “write long, involved pieces, unhurried and full of room”. Bush wanted “the listener to “go on a journey” Bush pushing away from conventional Pop songs. The first album where there was nothing in the way of a clear and short single.

Aside from Among Angels (the final track on 50 Words for Snow), everything was written after the release of Director’s Cut. That was released in May 2011. In a relatively short period of time, Bush composed six long songs for this amazing album. She was elated to work from scratch again after spending so long rearranging and re-recording older songs for Director’s Cut. In a way, this was Bush returning to her earliest days. Writing on the piano and working through the music and finding the right notes and melodies. “The organic, old school ethos was caried through the recording process. The journey between the song as written and the song as recorded was shorter and less torturous than at any time since the late Seventies. She put the piano pieces to tape in long, live single perforemncnes, tracking the instrumental part then adding her vocals”. I feel this was in part a way of going back to basics and getting a more organic sound. Connecting to Elton John, she loved his live album, 17-11-70. That incredible live album that she fell in love with. Closing her eyes and imagining she was there. Released in 1971, the recording was taken from a live WABC-FM radio broadcast on 17th November, 1970. Kate Bush specifically wrote the track with Elton John in mind, so she would been a bit lost if he turned her down. He plays one of the two old flames. She loved his vocal on the song. It is very powerful. John did not want to hear the track before he arrived, and he just went straight into Kate Bush’s home studio and nailed it. A song with so much space and atmosphere, it was Kate Bush truly severing herself from conventional Pop. Snowed in at Wheeler Street was also Bush looking against reincarnation and déjà vu. Subjects she tackled on earlier songs like Strange Phenomena (from 1978’s The Kick Inside) and Symphony in Blue (from 1978’s Lionheart). Graeme Thomson feels Snowed in at Wheeler Street is less graceful and accomplished as other songs on the album. Taking a bit too long to get where its going. Elton John and Kate Bush’s vocals not as well-suited and compatible as you’d think. I would disagree. The song, clocking in at 8:05, is quite epic. I feel that it is a suitable length. I always see this as a short film or piece that should have been animated. How we get to see these two old flames in these historical settings. We get to pan over Wheeler Street (wherever that may be) and an image of this frame or heart-shaped locket with the two lovers in it. I do think there is a natural and instant bond and chemistry between Bush and John. How it is great that the two are cast as lovers. Something that would have seemed so far-fetched to a very young Kate Bush (then Cathy/Catherine) when she first heard his music.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 50 Words for Snow in 2011

Kate Bush first heard Elton John in 1972 when she was thirteen. She became a massive fan after hearing his hit single, Rocket Man, which she played on repeat and credits with inspiring her own piano-driven style. Bush would later cover the song for a 1991 tribute album to Elton John and Bernie Taupin. I imagine this teenager listening to Rocket Man and being hooked on this artist. Throughout her career, Elton John plated a big role. The two became friends long before he turned up on Snowed in at Wheel Street. Bush was invited to his wedding to David Furnish in 2014. The significance of Bush’s music on John is interesting. He appeared on the 2014 BBC documentary, Kate Bush: Running Up That Hill, and said hearing her on Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up saved his life. How he was in the grip of addiction and something in her performance spoke to him. The power of that song and its importance. The mutual love between them. Bush idolising John in a way. How he was this piano player in the 1970s who was popular and was not your conventional Rock musician. Few artists of the time synonymous with that instrument. Unusual and also very relatable to someone who herself bonded with the piano very young. I do especially love Kate Bush’s voice in 2011. That deeper sound. There is that real sense of depth, both sonically and emotionally. I like how we get these longer and more expansive songs together with this richer and deeper voice. Whilst there is a weariness and sense of loss on Snowed in at Wheeler Street, there is also passion and desire. You do envisage these two old flames across time. Bush jokes in an interview how she did not want the whole thing to be about Ancient Rome! It is a good setting. I have written before how a short film should be made around 50 Words for Snow. Animated versions of the songs. I would love to see Kate Bush bring the visuals to life. As 50 Words for Snow turns fifteen in November, it would be amazing to see videos made for some of the songs. Snowed in at Wheeler Street is one of those underrated songs from an underrated album. Two of my favourite characters from the album, there is sadness that they are so close and have these memories. From Ancient Rome to 2001, they get pulled apart. It shows how Bush, in her fifties, as imaginative and original as ever. How many other artists were writing songs like Snowed in at Wheeler Street in 2011? I think their vocals are wonderful. There is a sense of ageism with some of the criticism.

I will now move on and flip back to the 1970s, and a very early Kate Bush demo. A remarkably interesting song from a young prodigy. I want to bring in more of the 2011 interview from The Quietus and what Kate Bush says about Snowed in at Wheeler Street and Elton John:

“Now, ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ features the vocal talents of Sir Elton John and I was wondering, was the track written with him in mind?

KB: Yes. Absolutely.

How long have you known him?

KB: Oooh. I’ve known him for a long time. He used to be one of my greatest musical heroes. He was such an inspiration to me when I was starting to write songs. I just adored him. I suppose at that time a lot of the well-known performers and writers were quite guitar based but he could play really hot piano. And I’ve always loved his stuff. I’ve always been a fan so I kind of wrote the song with him in mind. And I’m just blown away by his performance on it. Don’t you think it’s great?

Yeah, he really gives it his all.

KB: He sings with pure emotion.

It’s good to hear him belting it out. Back when you were 13 years old and practicing playing the organ in your parents’ house and just starting to write your own songs and lyrics, what was the Elton John album that inspired you?

KB: Well, I love them all and I worked my way through them but my absolute favourite was Madman Across The Water. I just loved that record. I loved the songs on it and the production. It’s a really beautiful album.

Now please correct me if I’m wrong but this song, in my mind at least, seems to hark back to ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ because it’s about a fantasy – almost idealised – lover.

KB: No it isn’t. It’s nothing to do with that at all. The idea is that there are two lovers, two souls who keep on meeting up in different periods of time. So they meet in Ancient Rome and then they meet again walking through time. But each time something happens to tear them apart”.

In a sense, Kate Bush’s experience of hearing his music when she was a young teen and being blown away by him inspired her decades later. Even though her piano is less hot than what we hear on Madman Across the Water, I do feel that Elton John was in her mind when she approached her 2011 album. Writing a song with him in mind. The one and only time these friends performed on record together. She loved Elton John as a child, and continued to follow his work. He was captivated by her and one particular song helped save his life and keep him going. These two old flames and separated souls beautifully duetting on an underrated jewel from 50 Words for Snow.

IN THIS PHOTO: Elton John sat at his piano in an outtake from his Greatest Hits cover-shoot, 1974/PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O’Neill

Let’s flip to a song called The Gay Farewell. A character called Eddie. These lines from the song: “I've never seen/Such a sad queen/As Eddie./I've seen him raving/Maybe even in pain/But never/Weeping like a baby”. There is a lot to unpack there. Last month was Pride Month. It gets me thinking about Kate Bush’s association with the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. How she explores sexuality through her music. Whilst a lot of her peers were heteronormative and it was unusual for straight artists to discuss gay relationships through their music, Kate Bush did. Kashka from Baghdad (Lionheart, 1978) an early example. I love her wordplay here. Who is the person that influenced this song? I think it was also called Eddie/Queen Eddie. There are demos older than The Gay Farewell. Most likely recorded in 1976 (originally recorded in 1973; it was re-recorded in '76), this demo appears on the bootleg 7″ single, Cathy Demos Volume Three. I first wanted to discuss the breadth of those demos. With a fair few song written in 1973, that would put Bush at thirteen. Maybe even twelve. Rather than these being lyrically simplistic and similar, she traverses quite a lot of ground. Quite poetic in nature, I think that The Gay Farewell is one of the standouts. In terms of her engaging with the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. In 1973, tying back to Elton John, he was one of a few L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists who were in the mainstream. Others included Patrick Haggerty (Lavender Country), and Jobriath. It was quite rare or unusual to find a huge artist that was trailblazing. So it makes it more impressive that Kate Bush was identifying with the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community (though it might have been LGBTQ+ in 1973). Was that as a result of the poetry that she was exposed to through her brother, John? Some of the culture that was in the Bush household? The Gay Farewell is a remarkably bold and advanced song from someone so young. Dreams of Orgonon not only highlighted that aspect and how Bush was pioneering in a way. Or at least she was channelling some of her record collection and stuff her brothers were digging:

“Queen Eddie” is a surprisingly sharp and melancholy song. It’s multifaceted in its thematic concerns and has a grasp of rhythm and melody that “Something Like a Song” doesn’t quite. In “Something,” we had a singer who admired someone from a distance, who they didn’t quite understand. “Queen Eddie” is more mature: it’s about the singer finding out that someone they already know is more complex than they previously realized. In short, it’s a song about learning to empathize.

And Eddie in dire need of empathy. “I’ve never seen/such a sad queen as Eddie,” ponders the singer. “I’ve seen him raving/maybe even in pain/but never weeping like a baby.” Eddie isn’t some macho hero to sweep the damsel off her feet (indeed, he may not even swing that way). He’s a frightened young person whose life is falling apart for reasons not specified in the song. He’s a person who’s noticeably pretty, and on Saturday evening transforms into a drag queen. Bush’s music often displays a strong interest in the feminine side of men, and this is the earliest musical manifestation of her concern. Eddie is someone with no time for masculinity. Everything from the effeminate adjective of “pretty” to the fact he’s saying goodbye to “his boy” points to that (who’s his boy? Is he breaking up with a boyfriend, or is he transitioning?) Even the song’s varying titles, in all probability not penned by Bush, point to a queer reading of the song (“The Gay Farewell” is a pretty wretched pun even by my standards). There’s an element of fetishization here — Eddie is denied an identity outside of his gender and sexuality in a way that’s genuinely harmful. For all that the empathy on display is genuine, so is the singer’s privilege.

Yet for this song’s flaws, it feels like something that needed to be written in 1973, even if it wasn’t heard outside 11 East Wickham. An LGBT rights movement was booming in the UK at the time — The Gay Liberation Front was new and alive, and the First British Gay Pride Rally had been held in London, not too far from the Bushes, a year previously. But these movements were responded to by things like the Nationwide Festival of Light, a puritanical attempt by notorious professional bigot Mary Whitehouse and others to suppress the existence of gay people, as well as any expression of sexuality that didn’t pertain entirely to procreation. The LGBT community needed some allies, and Kate was willing to step into the ring early on. Kate’s complex championing of the queer community has begun. Thus we get “Queen Eddie,” her first camp song.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Ah yes, camp. We may as well define it now, as this won’t be the last instance of discussing camp on this blog. Turning to Susan Sontag’s classic but controversial essay “Notes on Camp,” we discover that camp is the ultimate reification of style over substance. It’s not so much a coherent style as a sensibility; one that revels in the debasement of established tradition. Sontag rightfully comes under fire for her backwards idea that describes camp as something gay people were drawn to, rather than something they shaped from the beginning and used as an engine for sociopolitical change. Still, for flaws, the essay is a good starting point for discussing the camp aesthetic.

So how did Cathy, an ostensibly well-behaved young person bred by a respectable middle-class family and educated at a nun-administrated Catholic school, discover camp? She was unlikely to be hitting London’s gay clubs where camp culture flourished. It’s possible there was some gay literature sprinkled around the house (she was always an Oscar Wilde fan), but it’s far more likely Cathy got in tune with the gay world via her brothers’ record collections. Jay and Paddy were Cathy’s first dealers, bringing home a variety of records — everything from prog rock like King Crimson to contemporary folk music by A. L. Lloyd. Cathy was always by captivated the music, and eventually started independently developing her own taste (the first album she ever bought was Bridge Over Troubled Water).  But what really seemed to stick with her was the glam rock she heard, particularly the more baroque artists — David Bowie, Roxy Music, Elton John (some of you might dispute how glam John is, but come on, “Philadelphia Freedom” is unquestionably draped in glam trappings). Their often melancholy but always glamorous sound clearly caught her ear, and made their way into her songwriting.

So “Queen Eddie” ends up as a mellow glam rock song, closer to “In Every Home a Heartache” than “Get It On.” It’s a song about a glamorous man whose life is falling apart (arguably a Goth rock song in that sense), and thus is mid-tempo and quiet, as such collapses often are (the vocal livens it up though —young Cathy’s vocal model is Elton John. That swinging pop voice is reminiscent of “Tiny Dancer,” which this song is arguably a spiritual successor to). The 1976 re-recording is a bit livelier and more urgent; it sounds like a halfway point between the Cathy demos and The Kick Inside. Cathy can’t be entirely sad — if Eddie is sad, she must dance with him. Thankfully, the song does little to explain just what’s happening to Eddie. The singer is quick to listen to his story but not to speak for him. Instead, they’re Eddie’s friend and ally. In the intervening years, Kate has become a guiding light for queer people. There are plenty of reasons for this. There’s a Guardian article in which singer Rufus Wainwright calls Kate “the older sister that every gay man wants,” and points out that she “connects so well with a gay audience because she is so removed from the real world.” Being removed from material reality in this sense is a product of privilege. The song doesn’t refrain from tokenizing Eddie. Its approach to the reality of queer people is flawed, but the fact that a 15-year-old is already attempting to empathize with minorities and being at least partially successful is impressive. Already, this is an impressive body of work. Let’s keep exploring it”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander Grey/Pexels

There are a couple of things to pick up on. How there was this anti-gay movement. In the early-1970s, this attempt to supress gay people. Bigotry that Kate Bush would have heard about and been affected by. Even though she was not directly affected and it is unlikely any school friends were openly gay or were being bullied because of their sexuality – though I cannot say for sure -, that is not to say that she was detached from the real world. Even if Bush does not explore homophobia and some of her camp songs have flaws and there is some tokenism, she at least was making attempts to counteract or protest what was happening. A show of love and understanding against this strain and stain of hatred. Bush often got accused of being apolitical and not a serious artist. These critics clearly did not hear her demos and songs like The Gay Farewell. It is interesting looking at The Gay Farewell in 1973. This article look at “lesbian, gay, bi and trans history in terms of social, political and legislative change, representation and visibility”. Let’s look two years either side of the recording of The Gay Farewell:

“1971

The Committee for Homosexual Equality, keeping the same initials, becomes the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE).

The Nullity of Marriage Act was passed, explicitly banning same-sex marriages between same-sex couples in England and Wales.

1972

The first Pride is held in London, attracting approximately 2,000 participants.

Gay News, Britain’s first gay newspaper is founded.

1973

The Campaign for Homosexual Equality holds the first British gay rights conference in Morecambe, Lancashire.

Brighton's first Pride takes place, organised by the Sussex Gay Liberation Front.

1974

London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, a London-based information and support helpline, is established.

Jan Morris, Welsh historian, author and travel writer, releases Conundrum, a personal account of her transition.

Maureen Colquhoun came out as the first lesbian Labour MP.

Stephen Whittle, trans man and prominent activist, co-founds a Manchester based "TV/TS" group; a group for trans people.

The First National TV/TS (Transvestite/Transsexual Conference) is held in Leeds.

1975

British journal, Gay Left, begins publication.

The Liberal Party (now the Liberal Democrats) became the first UK political party to support LGBT rights, passing a motion at conference to support ‘full equality for homosexuals’, including equalising the age of consent”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Maureen Colquhoun in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

A young Kate Bush would no doubt have been influenced by the first Pride march that happened in London in 1972. Seeing scenes on the news. It is all well and good seeing this and wanting to do something. For an aspiring artist, how to turn this desire and passion into a song? Quite a hard task for someone so young. I love the lyrics of the song. Quite playful, characterful and funny/sad, there is this standout verse: “On Saturday afternoon/He was really fine to him/But on Saturday evening/Oh, well Eddie was so pretty/But now his boy is leaving/But now his boy is leaving/But now his boy is leaving him”. Also, Dreams of Orgonon writing how Bush is seen as a big sister to many in the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. It is difficult to say who exactly Bush had in mind with the song. Eddie Buczynski (1947–1989) was an  American gay rights activist and a pioneer in the queer neo-pagan/Wiccan movement. In 1972, Buczynski and his partner Herman Slater opened The Warlock Shop in Greenwich Village, which became a vital underground hub for the local gay community. He later founded the Minoan Brotherhood in 1977 specifically for gay and bisexual men. That is an A.I.-generated search, but is is truth. Perhaps not the ‘Eddie’ in The Gay Farewell, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think Bush had him in mind. I am going to end by talking about the early demos and why they deserve to be as heralded and discussed as Kate Bush’s albums. Kate Bush being a queer ally and icon was something that was ingrained in her. Not something that she built up to become. In 2018, Attitude celebrated Kate Bush as a queer icon, forty years after the release of her debut single, Wuthering Heights:

“Kate’s deep and thoughtful understanding of men in her songs is an underrated value in her arsenal; there are the men sent to war in ‘Army Dreamers’, or the kindly but increasingly distant father figure in ‘The Fog’, the misunderstood mathematician in “Pi,” and, most of all, the exquisite ‘This Woman’s Work’, where she sings about parenthood and birth from the male perspective. And no one could inhabit Peter Gabriel’s lyric as the voice of reason and comfort in ‘Don’t Give Up’ better than Kate Bush.

Perhaps most poignant of all, the father-son narrative of ‘Cloudbusting’ climaxes with the Shakespearean pun “your son’s coming out.” The rush of hearing Bush equate positivity, happiness, open-mindedness, and the promise of good things with the emergence – sexually or otherwise – into the world at large remains a profound thrill.

Kate made hits of these songs, and they remain enduring in the public consciousness. She brought the joys and sorrows of hidden human life to the forefront through normalising phrases and ideas, and streamlined all elements of her craft into a unique musical and visual style.

She studied movement with the choreographer and mime artist Lindsay Kemp at his dance studios in Covent Garden; Kemp had worked with Bowie and had a small but memorable role in 1973’s The Wicker Man as a sinister pub landlord. Bush had seen Kemp’s production of Flowers and was rapt.

Her theatricality didn’t just extend to her music, be it the cabaret Weimar camp of ‘Coffee Homeground’ or the flamboyant ‘Hammer Horror’: Her wide-eyed facial expressions, interpolation of mime, and her swooping, balletic movements made not just ‘Wuthering Heights’ but all of her early performance films iconic.

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

Today, the Kate Bush of ‘Wuthering Heights’ is a continuing beacon of pop culture. Take ‘The Ultimate Kate Bush Experience’ in Brighton in 2013, where hundreds of Kate Bush lookalikes donned wigs and red dresses to stage a warm-hearted recreation of the ‘Wuthering Heights’ video; further such events took place in London’s Brockwell Park and at Dublin’s St. Anne’s Park in the ensuing years.

And who could forget Noel Fielding’s good-natured parody on Let’s Dance for Comic Relief in 2011, a performance that garnered the attention of the lady herself, who sent a good luck message.

The fact that the Kate of ‘Wuthering Heights’ – a figure of incredible talent but, at the time (and to a lesser degree to this day), somewhat roundly mocked – blossomed into the art-pop auteur of 1982’s The Dreaming and 1985’s Hounds of Love, a woman of universally-acknowledged originality, creative excellence, and innovation, indeed an artist who changed the landscape of pop music forever, chimes with the gay audience too.

What at first the public may mistake for novelty, or frivolity, reveals itself over time to be intelligent, compassionate, and wise.

Kate Bush is an LGBT icon for several reasons, not least because she built a successful career, without compromise, on her own terms, with thorough originality, ingenuity, and, crucially, trueness to herself. She did, and continues to do, things her own way, and is undaunted in her distinctiveness and navigation of the peculiarities of life.

Who else could make a song about intercourse with a snowman (‘Misty’) seem plausible? Who else would find both eroticism and melancholy in the humdrum as Kate does in ‘Mrs. Bartolozzi’?

Anohni Hegarty told The Guardian in 2005 that her first glimpse of Kate, singing ‘Wuthering Heights’ now forty years ago, was a seminal experience.

“She was so magical: the world she inhabited was, especially poetically, a sort of fairyland. It was very sensuous and very pagan, and she sang so high – it was madcap,” she said.

And it is that sensuality, magic, and poeticism, that otherness and courageousness, that has carried Kate Bush, for forty years, through the choppy, murky waters of pop music and carved a firm place in our hearts.

She is, and always has been, herself, with no apologies. And for that, we salute you Kate Bush”.

I am going to wrap up soon. There have been various release, bootlegs and such that have collated the demos. Nothing in the way of an extensive official release, Kate Bush now would not perhaps want these songs remastered and widely heard. Just because it was such a long time ago. Even so, these recordings are available on YouTube. Despite some basicness in terms of the piano playing – compared to the leaps she would take by the time The Kick Inside arrived in 1977 -, and the vocals not being that different, songs like The Gay Farewell are classics. Incredible words and a fantastic performance. I cast my mind to East Wickham Farm in 1973. This girl growing up at a time when there was this divide between gay rights pioneers and legislation. Those trying to tear them down. Divide and homophobia alongside this desire for equality, representation and acceptance. Tense and strange for someone so young. Rather than write in an angry way or get ‘political’, Eddie is a character that seems so real. You can picture him. The way Bush paints him. I am going to finish here. Three very different characters. Two divided lovers (old flames) in a 2011 song that evokes so many different settings and times in history. Another is a simpler song dating back to 1973. This character called Eddie. I still have ammunition for this feature series, so you will have to wait to see which characters…

COME next.

FEATURE: Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow: Claret: Chasing the Shot…

FEATURE:

 

 

Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow

ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush

 

Claret: Chasing the Shot…

__________

THIS is a limited series…

where I go inside John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow. The first instalment looked at the earliest memories. It was an introduction and preface, really. Setting the scene and sharing his memories. Why photographing his sister is so meaningful. Some great anecdotes and recollections. For this second part, I am looking at part of a chapter called Chasing the Shot. The next couple of chapters will see me look at his shots for Never for Ever. I am going to use some photos from the Never for Ever chapter, as there are very few in the Chasing the Shot one, so I am casting a little way ahead, which I hope people do not mind. I will finish off this chapter in the next part. In terms of the rainbow colour spectrum, this and the next edition will focus on red. Shades of reds and words associated with them. I will then move to purple. This one sort of bridges between that early experience photographing Kate Bush and the extraordinary shots for Never for Ever. Stills from video shoots and some great photographs people might not have seen. I will get as far as page fifty-seven. John Carder Bush recalls how he photographed his sister “during her early and teenage years, when she was experiencing changes and the usual confusion that teenagers go through. She hated having a camera appointed at her; there was none of the willingness of the little girl from Cathy”. That is a bit of a revelation for me. I through that there was always this ease! I guess, when you are a teenager, you become more self-conscious and aware of your privacy. She might not have wanted to be photographed. The Victorian warehouse where a lot of those Cathy shots were taken became a dojo with a weighty kicking bag suspended on a wire across the room. This area was a “very intense place smelling of feet and sprayed sweat”. Not a spot for a teenage girl “to find a corner for dreaming in”. Some of that reservation and reluctance to be photographed stemmed from her once-idyllic spaces between transformed and losing some of their romance and purity.

That original aura was gone. The grain loft from the Cathy shoots was still unclaimed. It was somewhere that was a safe space for “Catherine’s imagination to leap and gambol while her brothers screamed and clashed below her and doves nested in the roof beams above”. When Never for Ever came out in 1980, Kate Bush was twenty-two. The years between saw transition and change. John Carder Bush not really that involved with images and shoots for 1978’s The Kick Incise and Lionheart. Even though he was looking after his sister and dealt with a lot of the business side, there were other photographers snapping his sister. I am looking forward to the Never for Ever chapter(s) and his memories. John Carder Bush notes how he photographed his sister professionally in almost an accidental way. Once the success of The Kick Inside was realised and exceeded expectation, the record label organised photoshoots with photographers of their choice. John Carder Bush thought there would be a rehearsal with a session of their own. There was, however, a chance for John Carder Bush to photograph his sister. The environment of the session was nothing special. A wash-house with karate instructions scrawled on the walls. A velvet curtain ion the background supplied by their mother. The shots “seemed as though they came from a play or film, a real moment caught, that stood out”. John Carder Bush observes how these photos were taken just before Kate Bush understood how “glamour, the casting of a spell, could be translated from reality onto flat paper”. The photos were taken in October 1977, in the same place he took the Cathy photos a decade before. The relaxation was back. The photographer realising how much he missed that trust and bond. Family around. Hannah Bush (mother Bush) singing as she swept the yard; Robert Bush (father Bush) playing Schubert in the front room. The dog popping in every now and then to see what was happening. John Carder Bush was not a professional at that point, so EMI did not encourage him. He didn’t have a high-end studio and this massive portfolio.

What is glaring is how John Carder Bush notes how those sessions were sometimes silly and ill-advised. His sister not having approval over the final shots. Though photographers like Guido Harari and Gered Mankowitz had this connection and they took some wonderful photographs, Kate Bush learned she could not trust “her image to be dictated by other people”. Control was the answer. It was decided that he would photograph his sister again. There was a new responsibility. This ascending star was now a commercial success, so there was this pressure. This task demanded a “different standard of acceptance”. John Carder Bush was not exploiting Kate Bush for his career. There was that trust between them. He was used to working with black-and-white. He felt that medium as powerful as a poem. Shooting in colour was a shift for him. Skipping a few paragraphs, John Carder Bush writes how photographing his sister meant that he became “a hunter of that look”. That follows his recollection of falling for an America actress, Jean Seberg, and her as Saint Joan in a 1957 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play of the same name. He also saw Siobhán McKenna – whose iconic Molly Bloom soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses would inspire Kate Bush to write The Sensual World (she could not get permission from James Joyce to use original text in 1989, but she got permission in 2011 when she rewrote The Sensual World and it became Flower of the Mountain) -in a theatrical performance of Saint Joan. He wanted that same reaction and magnetism from his sister. Whilst he was attracted to those two actresses, the dynamic was different here. Her innate beauty and unique allure, it was a case of chasing that shot and that same sort of photo would come. That same ‘wow factor’. “When I look at her though a lens, it is like looking at the flow of a person, personality, projection, physical presence, gesture, posture, pose, animation, fascial expression, thoughts, all moving like streams and rivers, brooks and waterfalls”. Seeing photos of his sister in the same iconic setting as Seberg and McKenna, he wondered if they were doing to the owners what those treasured photos had done to him. “Like an arms dealer, the photographer seldom takes responsibility for who gets shot in the heart”.

John Carder Bush recalls how he bought an L.P. of Siobhán McKenna reading poetry. Among which was that Molly Bloom soliloquy. He played it to death, whilst his six-year-old sister hummed along to it. The seeds already planted! I do love how a photo of an actress playing this iconic role indirectly led to one of Kate Bush’s most treasured songs. People told John Carder Bush how they could tell a photo was his. That brother-sister bond. For him, it was the setting that was most important. Although portraits did not need a lot of space, there needed to be a distance between the photographer and subject. A connection between generations. You can imagine how some of the Cathy photos distributed some of the family routine and space at East Wickham Farm. How these spaces would be transformed and almost been cut off. It was not long until John Carder Bush’s children would race into rooms and stop dead and turn around because the rooms they are used to playing in were now for photography. The privacy was important. Not using professional studios was important. No need to commute and spend loads of money. A small team (hair stylists, make-up artists and clothes stylists) would come to his flat. Kate Bush was at home there and could wander in wearing jeans and a jumper. The challenges of Victorian flats – which I know about as I live in one! – is the high ceiling and lack of heating.  Heat rises, and so it was an issue keeping warm. That said, the space and height could be advantageous. Canvases and  background rolls could be hung. Though, as he remembers, there was one incident when he was up a ladder and photographic equipment and a camera came crashing down. He fell off the ladder and avoided hitting them and being cut by broken glass. Modifications were made! A typical studio day with his sister started with collection of shopping for lunch and tea breaks for half a dozen people. Lights and backdrop were put up. The dining room became the focus for hair and make-up. The importance of the kitchen: a “bolt hole where a constant stream of cups of tea would be prepared throughout the day”. Finishing this two-parter on that Chasing the Shot chapter, John Carder Bush  talked of his memories. The hair and make-up taking a while to perfect. That odd low hum and morning mood. One of his children a stand-in for his sister. Taking these Polaroids. He would stand on a ladder and shoot down so that Kate Bush, hair and make-up and the clothes stylists could see where he was heading.

 

Escaping the kitchen, he would wave the Polaroid  and “watched the image coming through, then back into the ‘studio’, back into the warm hazy smell of celluloid from the film, chemicals from the Polaroids and that ever-fizzy, cheerful smell of hairspray, to pass the Polaroid around”. There would be adjustment as Kate Bush made suggestions. More Polaroids before the actual shots were taken. A lot of going up and down the ladder,  changing magazines, going from colour to black-and-white, and seeing what worked. The shots were artistically demanding but also physical. Especially, as he notes “with the weight of the Hasselbad with a long lens”. That dilemma of being in the creative and technical zones at the same time. John Carder Bush’s martial arts training helped him as he was “able to assume postures and positions that allowed me to get a more favourable angle on a shot. I would always go for a sequence using a tripod, but most of the time the camera was hand-held and I moved my angle of view, which meant constantly firing off  the lights to check  the meter readings and adjust the aperture”. That take us to the end of the first half of that Chasing the Shot section. The final ‘red’ part of the rainbow (as we are going deep with Kate: Inside the Rainbow) gets us to the point of Never for Ever. It is fascinating reading John Carder Bush’s words about shooting his sister and the realities. Whilst quite involved and like balancing a lot of things at once, it was also homely and charming. Insights into his world and those early-career moments with a women who would very soon be exposed to the wider world. I think that John Carder Bush’s photographs are so remarkable and distinct1 For that reason, I would urge everyone to buy…

HIS wonderful 2015 photobook.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Fiona-Lee

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Fiona-Lee

__________

THIS is the second…

of a few artist I am grabbing from a recent Rolling Stone UK feature. It is one where they list the artists who are going to define future music. Among them is the fabulous Fiona-Lee. Before coming to some interviews, here is a bit of information about a wonderful musician who is a major talent:

“I’ve been very influenced by the storytelling of folk music, but I have always wanted it to sound really big,” Fiona-Lee tells Rolling Stone UK, explaining the emotional charge that runs through her work. “I don’t want it to be background music; this is something you’re gonna fucking listen to!”

Like her heroes Sam Fender and Bruce Springsteen, the Yorkshire native’s songs read like intimate thoughts but are delivered with the gusto of someone who wants the whole world to hear. In common with the singers she reveres, Lee makes the personal universal, telling vital stories through the most intimate lens. “It’s all too common how every woman has been in a similar position with a man,” she spits on the title track from new EP Every Woman, over a menacing guitar line that reflects her anger. Later on in the song comes a ripping guitar solo, showing that she wants these messages to be delivered to arenas and stadiums.

“Are you threatened by me? / Cause I’ll knock you over when I get the chance, honey,” she sings to her own self-doubt on the song ‘Imposter’, sounding ironically like a singer with the world at her feet”.

I am coming now to an interview from last year from Clunk Magazine. Fiona-Lee was discussing, among other things, her debut E.P., Nothing Compares to Nineteen. It is shocking reading about the challenges and traumas Fiona-Lee faced when she moved to London as a teenager. Rather than it instantly being this great move where she had all these opportunities, there were some events that dealt her a huge blow:

“Eight years is a long time to spend on a debut release, but for emerging artist Fiona-Lee, the journey to her first EP has been as significant as the destination. She joined me to discuss the winding path to finding her sound, the raw vulnerability of her songwriting, and the power of taking one’s time. Though not from a musical family, Fiona grew up surrounded by her dad’s classic rock collection, with Genesis, Led Zeppelin, and U2 forming the soundtrack of her early years. It was at the age of fourteen, years after abandoned childhood piano lessons, that she finally picked up a guitar — and she never put it back down. “I just got really obsessed with playing the guitar, and then started singing and writing,” she explains, recalling how she honed her craft through countless gigs in Hull, “cutting [her] teeth” on live performances near home.

Fiona was eighteen when she made the big move to London — into her manager’s office basement. Whilst the opportunity felt like her big break into the music industry, it quickly turned sour. The nineteenth year of Fiona’s life was filled with profound personal challenges, including an increasingly abusive management relationship and the loss of a friend to suicide. Her new EP’s title ‘Nothing Compares To Nineteen’ denotes the gravity of this year of her life.

The EP is a culmination of five years of songwriting, a collection Fiona describes as “a really good representation of the past, like, all my life up until this point.” She really wanted to capture the critical transition from adolescence to adulthood. “It’s about that big period of change, where you go from being a kid to being an adult,” she reflects. “It’s about a lot of the really uncomfortable growing pains that everyone goes through in some way or another.” Her tracks explore themes of loss — be it fractured friendships, first heartbreaks or the grief of losing a friend.

These past five years have also led to changes in Fiona’s songwriting process and sound. In the past, she wrote all her songs by herself, starting with lyrics jotted in her phone (formerly in notebooks), followed by guitar exploration. “You have to kind of just let the song write itself,” she explains, acknowledging how “hippy dippy” that might sound. Recently, she’s really been enjoying experimenting with co-writing. Working with other musicians also led Fiona to move away from her solo acoustic beginnings, instead landing on her vision for something “really big and exciting and almost euphoric, uplifting.” She says that getting “into a room together and just play[ing] these songs” with former Catfish And The Bottlemen drummer Rob Hall, was particularly formative, allowing everything to fall into place. Looking ahead to 2025, assembling a full band for live performances is one of her key aspirations. “I want to be able to bring the feeling that I’ve created in the EP to people live in a room,” she explains, noting the limitations of a solo guitar performance for capturing her evolved sound”.

Despite more collaboration in her music, Fiona is keen to stay involved in the production side of things as much as the songwriting itself. This hands-on involvement evolved naturally over time, and she finds it really important. “I think, especially as a woman, it can be really hard to say what you want and put your ideas out there because it’s so male dominated,” she reflects. Beyond making one’s voice heard, she keenly emphasises the importance of patience for other young musicians. “Don’t stress about time. Take your time to get to know who you are as a person,” she advises, adding that she’s “a really big believer in manifesting.” Whilst she knows it’s cheesy, she insists that she really does believe she’s manifested this life, and that believing in oneself is of utmost importance.

Throughout our discussion, one thing becomes abundantly clear: this is an artist who values authentic expression above all else, hoping her music allows listeners to “feel empowered in being vulnerable.” As she poignantly observes, “We’re all just humans trying to fucking get through life… You can have such a horrible experience but then make it into something so beautiful,” and this EP is just that”.

I am coming to an interview from Rolling Stone UK from last year. Early supporters of Fiona-Lee, we discover more about her past into music. Though I have not included the question here, she was asked about tackling the subject of suicide in her music. Nothing Compares to Nineteen is an extraordinary E.P. in so many ways. In terms of what it addresses. Rather than it being a bleak or heavy listen, there is an energy and momentum to the tracks:

“What’s your journey in music been like so far to this point?

I’m not really from a very musical family but I’ve always been surrounded by music – my dad always has music on in the house. When I turned 14 or 15 I started playing guitar and went from there, but it does feel like I’ve had a couple of false starts. I moved to London when I was 18 and had a really weird manager and I was like living in his office basement. I talk about that on my debut single ‘Mother’ and it wasn’t the best situation, a really weird one to be honest. But I’ve always been obsessed with guitar music.

Who were your formative influences?

Kings of Leon, early on, and Bruce Springsteen has been a big one too. I remember discovering PJ Harvey and Jeff Buckley when I was 17 or 18 too and got really into them. Sam Fender has always been a big influence too, certainly in the way he writes about things and manages to deliver what it is essentially pop music with a really important message.

There’s a common theme among those of artists who are strong, defined storytellers. Has this shaped your work?

Yeah and I’m a big fan of Alanis Morissette. Jagged Little Pill was a massive influence for me, in terms of storytelling but also a sense of anger and not taking any shit. I found that really inspirational and empowering.

I first discovered Sam when I was 17 and it was just really inspiring to see the things he talks about. Because I think there have maybe been some similar experiences we’ve shared and I think it sounds like we use writing in the same way, where it becomes a cathartic and therapeutic thing to do.

How does it feel to know your debut EP is out in a couple of weeks?

I never really think about upcoming things, but it is exciting because I’ve honestly been writing these songs since I was 20 and I’m 25 the day after the EP comes out. It’s been a five year period of writing these songs and it feels like an achievement that I’ve finally done it”.

I think I might finish off with an interview from this year. Every Woman is the latest E.P. from Fiona-Lee. That came out in April. I wonder if she has plans for an album this year or next. I feel she grows stronger and more compelling with each release. Hotpress spoke with Fiona-Lee back in March, ahead of the release of her second E.P. The Yorkshire-raised artist “discusses Glastonbury, touring with CMAT, and finding confidence in subtlety”:

“Much of 2025 was spent building momentum, with the singer earning increasing acclaim for her brand of introspective indie. It’s a sound that combines driving reverbed guitars (Sam Fender meets Chastity Belt) with themes like toxic masculinity and mental health, delivered with sobering maturity.

Fiona-Lee has been hard at work too, finishing her second EP Every Woman (out April 17). The follow-up to September’s Nothing Compares To Nineteen, the upcoming project keeps the vulnerable stuff, but feels more assured. Imposter syndrome and narcissists posing as friends are some of the subjects under the microscope.

“The EP is about being a young woman today, and learning how to back yourself in difficult situations,” Fiona-Lee explains. “As a woman, and especially when you’re younger, it’s easy to doubt yourself in certain confrontations with other people.

“It’s about learning how to really back yourself, and how to sit with uncomfortable feelings, to get to that other side of clarity and peace. That’s how I felt throughout the whole process of making the EP. Before I wrote the songs, I had a lot of self-doubt and questioned myself a lot. On the other side of it, I’m a lot more confident and self-assured.”

She also made a point of recording all the guitar parts herself.

“Women are not encouraged in the same way that young men or boys are to play lead guitar and shred or whatever, you know?” Fiona-Lee says. “I’ve grown a lot more confident with all of that, writing those kind of parts. I feel like I’ve not cut any corners and I’ve given it everything.

“There’s some more folky influences and vulnerable, softer moments. When I was younger, I always thought that, as a woman, you had to be really loud to be heard – that’s how you got people’s attention. I’ve realised there’s a lot of confidence in being subtle, gentle and quiet.”

Go and follow Fiona-Lee. She is a remarkable artist that you definitely need to know. She has some tour dates in July and August. Can and see her if you can. I do want to quickly include a review of Every Woman from DORK. They heralded the power in vulnerability that comes through on the E.P. I have heard the E.P. and it instantly affected me:

“Fiona Lee makes the kind of music designed to stop you in your tracks, every word she sings carrying enough weight to make you really think about the point she's making. Across her second EP, 'Every Woman', she tackles a variety of difficult subject matter without sugarcoating the reality that lies behind it, and each of the six tracks feels more vital than the last.

Much like Sam Fender or even CMAT, she spares not a single second nor anyone's feelings when writing about the things we should all be paying attention to. The title-track is built on erratic guitar that intensifies the urgency of Lee's lyrics as she sings about the all too common instances of sexual assault being brushed under the rug and the importance of holding men to account for both their actions and that of those around them.

She slides between energy-filled outpourings and moments of much more stripped-back candidness with the ease of an artist many years into their career. Funnily enough, 'Imposter Syndrome' comes across as her most self-assured track to date. Starting off quite subdued and simple, the lyrics focus on trying to focus on fighting the internal voice that tells you that you aren't good enough, while the melody builds before eventually erupting into something much bigger that feels like a real moment of catharsis. The EP is built on these huge guitar parts that allow Lee to showcase what can happen when women in music are given the same encouragement as their male counterparts.

'Not My Friends' is perhaps the most anthemic of the tracks on offer here; it's catchy but remains intimate and is where Lee's introspective way of writing is at its best. Closer 'Victim' is a world away from the frenetic rock sound of the rest of the EP; her vocals are softer and lighter, combining with a simple acoustic guitar that adds to the melancholy that lies within her words.

Ultimately, 'Every Woman' shows that there is power in vulnerability, while pushing Fiona-Lee that little bit further into the spotlight she is so deserving of”.

I think Fiona-Lee is going to have a very long future in music. Rolling Stone UK have named her as an artist who will define future music. With some great E.P.s under her belt and this growing fanbase, I do think that the next few years will see her play bigger and bigger venues and gain a lot more momentum. There is something about her music that is connecting with people. For those unaware, you really do need to…

SEEK her out.

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FEATURE: Spotlight: XO

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

XO

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ALTHOUGH their mini album…

Need to Know, is not out until 16th October, there is a lot of excitement and buzz around a great British girl group. On 26th June, Spice Girls’ Wannabe turns thirty. It was first released in Japan. It has got me thinking about the girl groups of the 1990s and how there was this great scene. Perhaps less common now, there are a few terrific British girl groups reviving the scene. FLO and Say Now among the frontrunners. I feel XO – though I am not 100% keen on their name, or FLO and Say Now’s -, are going to be around for many years. I want to come to some interviews with Summer Askew, Shali Bordoni, Zoe Miller, Emmy Statham and Reanna Sujeewon. The quintet released their debut single, Lovesick, last September. Their members hail from Liverpool, Hong Kong, Essex, Derby and London, so you have this blend of local cultures, accents and stories. They bring this into their music. Their different personalities and energies mix beautifully and harmoniously. Not to compare them with Spice Girls – though I hope they don’t mind me doing so -, I do hear a tint of that in their music. Also, U.S. heavyweights like Destiny’s Child. Though some would say they have more in common with more modern girl groups like Little Mix. I am being guided by Rolling Stone UK for a few features, as they provided their recommendations for the future of music in 2026. This is what they said about XO:

“XO – the group formed of Summer Askew, Shali Bordoni, Zoe Miller, Emmy Statham and Reanna Sujeewon – are the latest British girl group eyeing up world domination. And from what we’ve heard, we wouldn’t put it past them. ‘Real Friends’, which arrived last year, is a Charli XCX-penned paean to female friendships, while their latest release ‘Hotline’ is an all-out banger.

There are big tunes, but also a sense of empowerment too. “What we really want to get across is that idea of being very confident within yourself,” says Reanna to Rolling Stone UK. “We’re all very different people but we’ve come together so easily and we have space for everyone.” An all-embracing mantra, then, which will no doubt come in handy when world domination beckons…”.

I do wonder what XO planned for the summer. They have their album out in the autumn and some live dates to promote it. Before that, there will be this huge desire to see them perform. Perhaps some more singles from the album. I would love to read more interviews, as they are a fascinating group. However, there is an interview form last year I am starting out with. There are a couple of chats from last year, in fact. The first is one I referenced for a recent feature about girl groups and the likes of XO. Whilst not as intense and busy a scene as the 1990s and 2000s, there is this growing girl group market. XO very much among the very best. Rolling Stone UK spoke with XO last year around the release of their debut E.P., Fashionably Late:

“What’s the story behind your formation and how did you land on your sound?

Shali: Do you know what’s really weird, with the music, we never had a conversation about what it was exactly that we wanted. We all come from performing backgrounds and we’e all danced a lot, so whenever we heard a track it was case of wondering can we groove to it? That was a question before we even assessed genres.

Zoe: That’s it with the EP as a whole, it’s so important to us that the music is just fun and we’re trying our best not to overthink anything because we grew up with the 2000s era, people like Fergie. They just did what they wanted, they had a good time and it was all the vibes in the world. We want to bring that back and just have fun. Make people feel good, let loose and let your hair down.

The Fergie comparison is interesting. Was there any other girlbands you liked growing up?

Zoe: We’ve got to give a nod to the Spice Girls, because they’re iconic.

Shali: Girls Aloud, the Sugababes, Pussycat Dolls. like they’re so iconic.

What’s the things you’ve bonded over aside from music?

All: Food!

Zoe: Horrible taste in men!

Summer: It’s funny because we were lucky enough to go on a schools tour which we were quite sceptical of to begin with, because we had no fan base and we were starting from the ground up with no idea of how these songs were gonna sound. But that was so important, because we built our bonds that way and that was really important for us, going from London to Glasgow for 8 hours. You’ve got to get along and then on stage as well, it was such a great opportunity and something happened. The first time we got on stage was in a school in the middle of Birmingham and to see the journey from that first performance is mad. We’re interacting with each other, we’re a team on stage.

What’s the role of a girlband in 2025 when groups like Blackpink and Katseye have shown that the whole sound and image of such a thing has changed?

Shali: There’s space for everyone. We all bring something different to the table, whether that’s the size of the group or the genre of music. Because we can never do what they do like them, but we did see them in London and it gave us a little kick up the ass.

Reanna: What we really want to get across is that idea of being very confident within yourself. We’re all very different people but we’ve come together so easily and we have space for everyone.

And finally, Zoe you’ve talked about world domination in 2026. Tell us more…

Zoe: We’ll have a cozy Christmas, go into hibernation and hit the ground. At New Year you’ll see the fireworks and then just start hearing our song ‘Ponytail’ everywhere. We’ve got more music, bigger tours and 2026 will be the year of XO!”.

This is a girl group that built their fanbase performing at schools. Now they are playing big venues and will play some amazing venues in November. Included is Manchester’s Academy 3. NME spent time with XO last year. Even though they are their own groups, I would like to see collaboration and interaction between FLO, Say Now and XO. A chat about the current scene and the music and girl groups they admire:

“They’re certainly hungry to deliver it.  XO’s five-member line-up was pieced together in a single day in September 2024 by Colin Barlow, a record exec who worked closely with Girls Aloud, and London-based Massive Management, whose roster includes All Saints singer Shaznay Lewis. Like hundreds of other hopefuls, the five talented young women talking to NME today answered a “very vague” ad in showbiz newspaper The Stage – “Can you sing and dance? Do you like the Pussycat Dolls?” – and turned up not knowing what to expect.

On the day, prospective band members were whittled down relentlessly as their auditions were filmed on Steadicam. “It was like, bang bang bang. Dance, cut! Sing, cut! Dance, cut!” Miller says. “And then it got to about 8pm,” Bordoni continues, “and [our managers] pulled up five chairs and were like: ‘Congratulations, you’re in the band!'”

The new members of XO were so in the zone that they didn’t realise until later that they already had connections: Askew and Statham used to compete against each other at talent shows. “Literally, as I was about to run off to get my train back to Liverpool, I was like, ‘Can you all just give me your name and number so I can make a group chat?'” Askew recalls.

Four members of XO grew up in different parts of the UK, while Bordoni spent her formative years in Hong Kong. A week after their audition, they reconvened in London for their first official band meeting, where their managers played them a selection of demos. “The very first song they played was ‘Ponytail’,” Sujeewon says, name-checking a rhythmic earworm from the EP, “and we loved it immediately. It’s become a real fan favourite.”

XO say they had no problem finding a unified musical vision because of their dance backgrounds. “When we get the choreo done for a song, it’s like boom, it’s ours,” Statham says. But once they bonded over a shared love of beat-driven 2000s bangers by Timbaland and Black Eyed Peas, they began to put a stamp on their sound. ‘Silly Boy’, a strutting highlight from ‘Fashionably Late’, was co-written by the band after a familiar experience of everyday sexism.

“We’ve learned so much from each other. We’re a team now” – Emmy Statham

“We were in an Uber because TfL wasn’t working – classic! – and we drove past this pub full of football men going ‘wahey!’ at us,” Miller recalls. “And I was like, what if we wrote a song about being catcalled on the street, with a whistle as its motif?” Bordoni adds. Five months later, they brought the idea into a songwriting session with artist-producer Upsahl (Dua Lipa, Madison Beer), who helped them to flesh it out. “That song was a big moment for us,” Statham says. “We love seeing fans sing it back because it came from our hearts.”

They won’t have to wait long before this happens again. XO have just announced a second UK headline tour for May 2026, including a show at iconic Glasgow venue King Tut’s, and promise more new music “early next year”. They’re not touring schools anymore, but given that grounding, do they think of themselves as role models? “I’m not gonna act any certain type of way just for someone to look up to me,” Miller says. “But I’m not going to act like a dickhead either.” Bordoni chips in: “We’ll never act differently, we’ll always be ourselves. That’s our biggest thing as a band: we want everyone to feel confident in being themselves”.

I am going to end with an interview from this year. Official Charts featured XO around the release of the incredible single, Hotline. This chaotic, fun and deeply connected group are definitely going to be play major festivals. I feel they might make it to Glastonbury next year. Headline slots await them. They have the talent to be around for many years to come:

“Hey girls! Happy Hotline release week. How are you feeling?

Reanna: We're obsessed, we can't stop smiling!

Emmy: I'm so glad it's out while the sun's shining!

Zoe: The EP was only out in October, but it feels like we haven't released music in years.

Shali: There's been so much anticipation between the five of us, we've been buzzing waiting for this to come out.

Emmy: Because we're all performers, to be behind-the-scenes is hard for us - we're just dying to get XO back out there again. We're so excited!

How did you know Hotline was the song to come back with?

Shali: When we first hear a song, we visualise the video immediately. In the video, we come out of the lift one girl at a time. Last year we wanted to establish our friendships and relationships between each other as a group, and this time we wanted to focus on each girl's individual characteristics. It's a bit of a reintroduction.

Reanna: It's completely different to when we first heard it. We rewrote parts of it, Zoe put in the middle eight, and engulfed it into the XO universe.

And this single leads into your debut mini-album, Need To Know...

Reanna: We're so excited! We've been sitting on a lot of these tracks for a really long time, even since the first EP, because we knew the journey that we wanted to take. We've come into this year with a 'boom!'; we know what we're releasing, we're just excited to get it all out. Last year was a lot of research and development in real life, we were learning as we went. Now, we've figured out the plan. We've got such sick things to come!

On the title Need To Know, what's one thing you think we need to know about XO?

Reanna: We're always laughing, nothing's ever that deep. To laugh through life is the best way to do it.

Shali: Absolutely, I'd say our humour. Between the five of us, we have really silly humour. Part of the reason why we prefer in-person experiences with our fanbase is because you're able to have that personal connection. We've got really exciting things planned this year that'll allow us to focus on that more.

Summer: It's all about the vibes, it's all about having fun. Nothing's that deep.

Zoe: We've got a lot of music coming out that isn't what people are expecting from us. That's really exciting. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say, but we're switching the vibes a little bit. Our job is creative, and it's so important to us to make people feel something new through what we're creating.

Emmy: We also want to learn from the artists that came before us and the team around us. We never want to lose the source of our creativity. When we go into a session, we don't deep it - it's vibe on vibe only. That carries through everything we do together. Ultimately it's a brand, it's a business and it can get quote confusing. But ultimately, we don't want to lose sight of why we find this so fun.

Shali: We really want people to get to know our individual styles, too. We have a shared passion and similarities, but each of us have different hobbies we enjoy.

It's always important to embrace that individuality, even when united by one vision...

Emmy: It's super rare. You couldn't get five girls who are, on paper so different, from how we dress to the music we listen to and what we do in our spare time. You'd think 'we'd never put them together' but, from our audition day, we just clicked straight away. That's something so special.

Zoe: If you imagine we were all still at school, it's like you've taken one person from each table in the school hall and put them together. That's be beauty of music. You might not be doing the same things, but you can be one. You don't have to look or sound like your best friends, you can be yourself and so loved and important”.

One of the leading lights of modern British girl groups and Pop in general, the extraordinary XO marry elements of U.S. groups and U.K. ones of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Above all of that is their individuality. They are not a group led by committees and happy to sing any words and dance any way. They definitely have that determination to be true to themselves and have that sense of personality and authenticity shine through. If you have not yet connected with this fabulous fivesome, then spend time with…

THE astonishing XO.

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FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential July Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Charli xcx/PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Pavarotti for British Vogue

 

Essential July Releases

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JULY is a pretty…

IN THIS PHOTO: FLO

exciting month for album releases. I am recommending from the list here. Historically, a lot of the very best albums are released between June and September. It is always a busy time for great albums. This July is no different. I am starting out with one album from 3rd July. It may well be the most anticipated album of the year. It is Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II. The follow-up to her 2005 album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, the single releases from it so far show that she is still very much at the top of her game. An artist who has been so consistently brilliant sin e her 1983 debut. It is an album that every music fan should pre-order. There are multiple options in terms of vinyl choices and having it on C.D. or cassette. Whichever one you go for, this is going to be album that I am sure will sit alongside the best from this year:

“The new album is the continuation of the iconic counterpart Confessions on a Dance Floor. Madonna sums up her new record best by quoting the first few lines of her song, One Step Away, “People think that dance music is superficial, but they’ve got it all wrong. The dance floor is not just a place, it’s a threshold: A ritualistic space where movement replaces language.” Madonna adds “When Stuart Price and I first started working on this record, this was our manifesto”: We must dance, celebrate, and pray with our bodies. These are things that we've been doing for thousands of years — they really are spiritual practices. After all, the dance floor is a ritualistic space. It’s a place where you connect — with your wounds, with your fragility. To rave is an art. It's about pushing your limits and connecting to a community of like-minded people. Sound, light, and vibration Reshape our perceptions Pulling us into a trance-like state. The repetition of the bass, we don’t just hear it but we feel it. Altering our consciousness and dissolving ego and time”.

Four great albums from 10th July that you need to pre-order. One is from another iconic act. I shall come to them soon. I want to start out with Holy Wave’s i’m DADA. I would advise people to pre-order this album, as it is one that will stay in your head long after you have heard it. If you are not familiar with Holy Wave, they are a Austin, Texas-formed Psych-Pop band who started out in 2008. Although I am fairly new to the band, hearing their recent material confirms that i’m DADA is going to be a tremendous listen:

“Working alongside experimental duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete at their studio El Derrumbe in Ensenada, Mexico, the sessions folded community into the album, though its emotional core had already formed over months of pre-production. Joo Joo Ashworth, mixing engineer and longtime friend, also provided a pivotal presence helping crystallize the album’s rhythmic language and subtly expanding the band’s sound. The songs began reflecting conversations about fatherhood and partnership, breakups and estrangement, the queasy acceleration of AI, and what it means to remain present and principled while the world lurches unpredictably forward.

This tension is not announced but absorbed into the music. Holy Wave stretches their familiar sense of woozy atmosphere into something leaner and more direct. There are more loops and samples woven throughout than before, grooves that feel constructed, cyclical, hypnotic. Some tracks drift toward dub’s elastic spaciousness; others pulse with cinematic downtempo gravity. There is a fresh sense of momentum throughout the record, rhythms that pull forward, dream-saturated textures, sheets of fuzz, and softly suspended vocals.

If earlier Holy Wave records often felt defined by their sense of drift, i’m DADA feels newly grounded. The album doesn’t abandon immersion; it disciplines it. Grooves settle, repetitions accrue weight, and the music is composed and unshaken amongst its heavier themes. What emerges is not reinvention but a sharpening, with Holy Wave sounding less like a band drifting through atmosphere and more like one deliberately shaping it amongst the chaos”.

An album I am really excited to hear is Kelela’s New Avatar. I really love Kelela, so it is going to be a thrill hearing her new album. Go and pre-order the album here. If you need a bit of background and personal insight into New Avatar, then Rough Trade have you covered. This also is going to be among the best albums of the year in my view. Kelela is a truly wonderful artist:

“My origin story as a songwriter and artist set the context for the catharsis I experienced while making new avatar. I wrote my very first songs in a punk house. The indie scene I was part of provided me with an outlet for genre-defying experiments that illuminated intersections I was hearing in my head. We didn’t spend tons of time  on songs cuz the kids in that scene didn’t care about nailing it. It was (lowkey) about messing up, giving 0 fucks and dismantling the need to be perfect in the first place. It took the pressure off and allowed my first vision of myself to blossom. I used a similar approach with this body of work - moving through with a lot of intention while capturing the freedom and spontaneity that inspired my inception as an artist.

What you’re getting with this album is another facet of my world expressed with a new level of conviction, sometimes in the form of love+devotion and other times in the form of rage.” – Kelela”.

I am a big fan of Suki Waterhouse. Her upcoming album, Loveland, arrives on 10th July. The British-born, U.S.-based artist follows up 2024’s Memoir of a Sparklemuffin. That was an incredible album. The singles she has released from Loveland finds Waterhouse in incredible form. Someone whose music instantly makes its way into your heart, do go and pre-order Loveland. Speaking with Variety recently, we get to learn more about what Loveland will offer:

“Balancing family life with her burgeoning career is one of the main topics of “Loveland,” Waterhouse’s third album, which comes out on July 10. It’s her first release after signing with Island Records, the label that’s home to reigning pop girlies like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Olivia Dean.

When her contract with Sub Pop ended, Waterhouse says there was “a fascination for me of, what’s it like to be signed to a major label? I wanted to go on that ride and see for myself.”

So far, so good. Waterhouse’s collaborators on “Loveland” include “Espresso” hitmaker Amy Allen, Taylor Swift go-to Aaron Dessner and Lorde producer Joel Little, in addition to the musical partners who have been there from the start, Natalie Findlay and Jules Apollinaire. “For the first time, I had the option to work with some of the biggest people in the industry, and it’s kind of crazy,” she says. “I’m like, really?”

The 14-track “Loveland” — for which Waterhouse cites the Stone Roses, PJ Harvey and the Replacements as sonic inspiration — thematically swings between nostalgia for the wild days and nights of her youth and longing to be settled with her family. “There’s this kind of recklessness and abandon, which is always the feeling that I want to chase,” she admits. “And then there’s also this part of me that’s very much missing and yearning for the intimate, cozy moments in my life. They’re all very equally true to me.”

There’s even a track named for Notting Hill — a groovy piano-led love letter to “running around with a hangover in my early 20s” and wondering when you’ll meet your own Hugh Grant, just like in the Richard Curtis classic. Turns out, her apartment across the street is also “really where I fell in love with Rob,” she says, blushing.

“The music that I was making when I first started was very much in reaction to toxic relationships and heartbreak and that painful rollercoaster of girlhood,” Waterhouse adds. “And it’s been interesting this time around to have my heart cracked open in a different way.”

It’s not hard to tell that on “Loveland,” Pattinson is Waterhouse’s muse. The album’s opening song and lead single, “Back in Love,” is a joyous trumpet-backed ode to getting her own spark back postpartum, as well as in their relationship.

“I felt like my identity had been cut open in becoming a mother and also having a lot of expectations on myself. Internally, there’s been quite a lot of turmoil and just wondering if I’m doing the right thing. And especially, oh my God, the hormones right after you have a baby are so intense,” she says. “It’s like [I got] belief back in myself, and then also being … I don’t want to say back in love with my partner, because it sounds like I was out of it, which I was never. But it’s also a new relationship. Your old relationship has been wiped out, and so it’s building that new one and kind of celebrating the beauty in that, like, we’ve survived this”.

There are another eight or nine albums I want to cover. The next is The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues. This is going to be another massive album. Madonna and The Rolling Stones releasing albums within a week or each other. Two legendary acts putting out tremendous work! This might be the final album from The Rolling Stones. Make sure you pre-order Foreign Tongues:

“Foreign Tongues, the incredibly vibrant 14-track new album from the Rolling Stones, follows less than three years after the band’s universally acclaimed, Grammy Award-winning Hackney Diamonds, which topped charts worldwide and achieved multi-platinum success. Preceded by the upbeat and infectious lead single ‘In The Stars’, Foreign Tongues was brought to life in under a month at Metropolis Studios in West London, with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood reuniting with Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt. The result is a dynamic and forward-looking record that captures the band’s unmistakable sound while pushing into new sonic and lyrical territory, further cementing their unparalleled legacy.

The album features standout performances from Jagger, Richards and Wood, alongside their core collaborators including Darryl Jones, Matt Clifford and Steve Jordan. It also includes a special appearance from Charlie Watts, captured during one of his final recording sessions before his passing in 2021. Additional contributions come from an impressive line-up of guest artists, including Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney, Robert Smith (The Cure) and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers”.

Moving to 17th July, there are a few albums I am keen to spotlight. The first of the trio is Gracie Abrams’s Daughter from Hell. The Californian artist is very prolific. Her most recent album was The Secret of Us from 2024. Her debut, Good Riddance, came out in 2023. Her third album in three years, go and pre-order Daughter from Hell here. Rough Trade have provided no information on the album. However, this article quotes Gracie Abrams. She reveals more about Daughter from Hell and what inspired its title:

“Gracie Abrams opened up about the inspiration behind her upcoming album and the meaning behind its title, Daughter From Hell.

In an interview on TikTok Radio, the singer shared that the album explores the uncertainty and transition that often come with being in one’s 20s.

"This album as a whole is about this in-between decade, sort of our 20s, where one foot is in your post-adolescence and the other is in your future," she said.

The “That’s So True” hitmaker revealed that turning 26 led her to reflect more deeply on her life and relationships.

"I think that being 26, for whatever reason at this point I felt like I've been reflecting in more meaningful ways than I have in the past. I think I credit my relationships with my family for everything, especially when it comes to feeling super alone or like you're floating away from your body or something, like all of that kind of scary existential stuff," she remarked.

The singer went on to discuss her close bond with her mother, which also influenced parts of the album.

"I feel so rooted in conversations with my mom, like I Facetime her six times a day. And I think when I was like in the studio that day I had no intention on making a song that kind of referenced our relationship but I feel like we've earned the relationship that we have and kind of thank you note adjacent writing on this album," she said”.

The second of three albums from 17th July that you should pre-order is Tricky’s Different When It's Silent. Another long-running artist who is still putting out incredible work, you do need to check out Different When It’s Silent. Here is some important detail. I have been a fan of Tricky since he was part of Massive Attack and worked on their earliest albums in the 1990s:

“The legendary artist and producer Tricky announces his new album, Different When It’s Silent, via False Idols.

His 15th studio album and first full-length release under his own name in six years, Different When It’s Silent is a direct, focused record that reconnects with the distinctive sonic language that has defined Tricky’s work since his groundbreaking 1995 debut, Maxinquaye.

The album’s first single, “Out Of Place” arrives as a powerful closing moment for the record. Featuring longtime collaborator Marta, the track pairs Marta’s restrained vocal with Tricky’s urgent, almost punk-like delivery. The contrast between the two creates a dynamic finale that captures the album’s stripped back intensity. Originally written for Marta’s own album, Tricky ultimately reclaimed “Out Of Place” for Different When It’s Silent.

Different When It’s Silent follows a prolific period of activity. Since 2020’s Fall to Pieces, Tricky has released music under several different guises, including the collaborative project Lonely Guest, the Fifteen Days project with producer Mike Theis under the name Theis Thaws, and last year’s joint record Out The Way with Marta, al via his own label, False Idols. Yet returning to an album under his own name took on a different shape.

“In my mind it was another side project” he explains. But after hearing the material, his manager Alan McGee felt the songs clearly belonged to a Tricky record.

Recorded between Tricky’s home in France and sessions in Bristol, the album draws strongly on the musical community that shaped him. Central to its sound is the voice of Bristol singer Mitch Sanders, whose soulful falsetto runs through much of the record. Their connection reflects a shared musical background and an instinctive chemistry that carries through the performances.

Across fourteen tracks, Tricky blends skeletal blues, brooding electronics, distorted guitars and stark hip-hop rhythms into a sound that feels both stripped-back and expansive. The album moves fluidly across styles while maintaining the restless experimentation that has defined his work for more than three decades.

“I just love making music” Tricky says. “I’m grateful I’ve had the chance to live this life and keep creating.”

With Different When It’s Silent, Tricky delivers one of the most focused and powerful records of his career - a reminder that artists who build their own language never fall out of time”.

Five albums to recommend from 24th July. Before them, there is Yard Act’s You’re Gonna Need a Little Music. A great album due on 17th July, go and pre-order it. In terms of what you need to know, NME announced the arrival of an album from one of our best young bands. If you have not heard Yard Act, then this is a perfect moment to connect. I have never seem them live, though this is a band that I really do need to see one day:

“The Leeds band will soon return with their third album, set for release on July 17 via Island Records (pre-order/pre-save here). It’s their first new record since 2024’s ‘Where’s My Utopia?‘.

Now, they’ve shared the first taste of ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’ with ‘Redeemer’, which takes Yard Act down a much darker sonic path than previously. Over a stooping bassline and skeezy guitars, frontman James Smith proclaims: “Redeemer / You stole the sun / Now you orbit is the bullshit of the damage done”.

The band worked with Nine Inch Nails bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen on the album, and recorded it between LA and Leeds. It also marks the first time the band made an album live in the same room.

“The first two records were both laptop records essentially,” Smith said in a press statement, adding that ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’ was written in an “uninterrupted five month period” of creativity. The band went on to produce “40 or 50 songs” from this time period, with Smith adding: “It felt like freedom. It felt like everything I’d wanted from being in a band”.

Announced on 1st June, Charli xcx’s forthcoming album, Music, Fashion, Film, comes out on 24th July. You can pre-order it here. There is not a lot of detail about the album at that point, so I am bringing in parts of Laura Snapes’s interview with Charli xcx for British Vogue. For the May 2026 edition, we get some insight into her current direction and music plans:

“At this point, a good number of Charli fans may be screaming: “Guitar? Guitar???” It’s a shock: of all her albums, the one Charli likes least is 2014’s punky Sucker. Her idea of hell is watching a band (apologies to George). Real Music Bores who think guitars are authentic and synthesisers are fake had a field day when Charli headlined Glastonbury 2025, laying into her processed vocals and lack of live band. (She enjoyed the discourse, writing on X: “The best art is divisive and confrontational.”) With his label PC Music, Cook pioneered what became known as hyperpop: proudly synthetic, extreme and famously divisive. Charli started working with Cook’s crew a decade ago, when the futurist haute bubblegum of her 2016 EP Vroom Vroom neutered Sucker’s child’s-play rebellion and catalysed Charli’s bond with her ride-or-die LGBTQ+ fanbase.

The new album’s creators are all well aware of the tension that comes with going guitar-centric. Charli sees humour in it, a quality she needs in art. “For me, it’s fun to flip the form. We know there’s gonna be people who are bothered by it, but that’s fine.” The song about the dance floor being dead is going to spark some really boring thinkpieces, though, I tell her. “I know,” she says, grimacing.

Last year, accepting the Ivor Novello songwriter of the year award for Brat, Charli said: “I’m sure you all agree, I am hardly Bob Dylan, but one thing I certainly do is commit to the bit.” Her brusque observations mean any reinvention is never a whole-cloth pop star rebirth, but remains intrinsically her. “I’d always rather have a style than be vague,” she says now. “Which is the biggest crime, in my opinion.” The album’s existence embodies that commitment. “It’s looking for this intensity,” Cook says. “It’s not just this flex of, ‘Oh, I did this other album.’ She’s really responding to a feeling that a lot of people have in 2026 of there being so much, almost too much. What do you hold onto? I’m inspired by seeing how she’s so ready to do that rather than take it easy.”

Even with a new album due, she talks about film with noticeably more wonder during our evening in the studio. In late 2024, fans busted her secret account on film ratings site Letterboxd, her taste running from French surrealism to Hollywood satire. The projects she’s working on fit that bill: arty, independent, made with auteurs including Gregg Araki and Romain Gavras. But she had never thought about starring in movies until director Daniel Goldhaber suggested she take a small role in his just-released remake of 1978 horror Faces of Death. “I went feeling so like, ‘What the fuck am I doing here?’” says Charli. “I was like, ‘OK, let me just see how this makes me feel.’ And it made me feel really amazing.”

Surrendering to Goldhaber’s vision re-juiced Charli’s creative adrenaline. “It can be scary to leave something behind that you’re known for, then risk it all trying to do something else.” The thrill of acting wasn’t that she was instantly great; more that she wasn’t. “I mean, it’s like, so embarrassing,” she says of acting, in a self-aware whisper. “I feel so lucky to be on set with so many actors and directors I admire. I have a hunger to learn and understand how other people do it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like, ‘Wow, I killed that.’ I feel ready to do it 1,000 times if necessary.”

When Lady Gaga acts, the credits say “Lady Gaga”, not Stefani Germanotta. For now, Charli’s film work is as “Charli xcx”. “I spoke to a couple of people about whether I should change that,” she says. “I’m on the fence about it. Charli Aitchison is not super-popping though…” It’s hard to think of her as Charlotte. “Oh, I’m never gonna be Charlotte. Come on,” she says, laughing.

Whatever she goes with, she hopes pop star Charli disappears for directors and viewers: “I want to work with people who aren’t afraid of me because I’m a musician,” she says. The first time she felt like she dissolved into character came when shooting Pete Ohs’s new film Erupcja in Warsaw in between summer festivals and the Brat tour. Her character, Bethany, is dreading her boring boyfriend’s looming proposal, so she gives him the slip to chase oblivion with an old friend. Charli is great, twitching with pity for her drippy partner. “There were definitely moments where I was like, ‘God, I’m not this girl’ and that was really cool,” she says.

She is still stunned she gets to do all this. Working with Araki, she says, “freaks me out, almost, as I grew up watching his stuff”. A week after we meet, she’s flying to Kyoto to start pre-production with Japanese horror director Takashi Miike on a film that she’s again starring in and producing. First, she’s going back to Los Angeles for a few days. “I’m gonna start prepping for Japan, but I’m gonna be in my home,” she says, stressing the word like it’s a slightly foreign concept. “I wanna step outside to breathe fresh air, but other than that I don’t wanna go anywhere.”

It takes two weeks to track Charli down again. In between, she wipes her Instagram. The only sign of life is her ultra-active Letterboxd profile. “I’m not as into film as Charli,” says George. “She can watch three films in a night. She might do one or two for research, then we watch one together.” Their rescue dog, Nico, sits with them. “And I’m eating awful sweets,” says George. “Charli isn’t into those.”

In early March, Charli finally appears on Zoom one LA morning, unmade-up in a hoodie. She didn’t make it to Japan in the end. “I missed my flight, so I go on Sunday,” she says, her voice gravelly. “It’s been a bit of a nightmare, to be honest.” We talk for a moment about the stress of prepping the Miike film while finishing xcx8. She starts to cry and ends the call. Ten minutes later, she’s back on. “I’m sorry about that,” she says. “I’m overwhelmed and emotional, but I’m ready to go.” She describes herself as “absolutely at capacity”. She isn’t a self-care person, but knows she needs to learn how to be. “My body isn’t handling it very well,” she says, mushing her eyes. “As long as I’m making something, I feel OK,” though her relationship with her work seems as much the beast that feeds as takes away: the perennial Charli paradox.

She stresses that the next album – with its insular focus and tight-knit creation – is the reset she needed after the hype around Brat strayed so far beyond the music. “It made me crave something opposite. Getting back to something more internal is really nice,” she says softly, “and really sort of quiet”.

On 24th July, Body Type’s Tally is released. A group I have been following for a while now, I am looking forward to Tally. You can pre-order the album. One that you will want to add to your collection. Not a great deal of information around the album. However, there are recent interview like this that do give a bit more insight and explanation. A deeper look at a group that everyone should follow. They are a quartet that formed in Sydney just over a decade ago. They consist of Sophie McComish, Annabel Blackman, Georgia Wilkinson-Derums, and Cecil Coleman:

“Body Type third record Tally, via p(doom) records. Here, the everyday bits of life—taking a lift up to a boyfriend’s apartment, divvying up a bill—are transformed into sublime and surreal thrills. This is a luminous rock record, chronicling mundanity’s mystical implications, the deformations of romance and love’s confounding elasticity. Combining big, jagged riffs, moody post-punk and 60s pop, this is Body Type’s most self-assured and expansive record to date, which coincides with their 10th anniversary as a collective. It’s the sound of a band maturing and taking stock, but where wit and playfulness still reigns supreme”.

A terrific British girl group, FLO released their debut, Access All Areas, in 2024. Their second album, Therapy at the Club is going to be extraordinary. Pre-order it now. They are a London trio formed of Jorja Douglas, Stella Quaresma, and Renée Downer. A huge summer release that surely will see them play a load of festival, they are helping to revitalise the girl group market in the U.K. Alongside others like Say Now and XO, there is this new wave coming through:

“With their next chapter, Therapy At The Club, FLO expand their emotional honesty into a fully realised creative universe. The concept reimagines the club not just as a place of nightlife, but as a site of release, confession and self-possession — encompassing the moments before, during and after the night out. From mirror affirmations and pre-game chaos, to late-night Uber conversations, dance-floor catharsis and the clarity of the morning after, Therapy At The Club captures how women process desire, heartbreak, confidence and healing in real time, together. It is both fantasy and reality: cinematic, fashion-led and emotionally raw, grounded in sisterhood as a form of survival.

Sonically, the new music leans into dark, euphoric R&B and pop with sharper edges, built on vocal mastery and diaristic storytelling. Lead single “Leak It” sets the tone for the era — playful, charged and unapologetically self-aware — exploring what happens when desire spills over, secrets surface and control is reclaimed. Across the new songs, FLO move fluidly between intimacy and euphoria, turning the club into a space where vulnerability is power and feeling everything is the point.

As a trio built on discipline, joy and deep creative trust, FLO represent a new model for the British girl group: one rooted in authorship, harmony and cultural impact. Balancing softness with strength and ambition with authenticity, they are shaping the future of R&B and pop on their own terms. FLO are not looking backwards — they are setting the standard for what comes next”.

Shania Twain’s Little Miss Twain arrives on 24th July. You can pre-order it here. Last month, CountryLiving published an interview with Twain ahead of appearance at the ACM Awards. The Country genre is one that has been flourishing in recent years. Artists such as Ringo Starr and Beyoncé putting their stamp on the genre:

“I feel that the new generation coming up has a more free-spirited approach to songwriting, and to their musicality,” she tells Country Living. “I feel like country music is expanding. And I feel like the windows have been opened and the air is getting refreshed.

“So we have a nice influx of fresh air, new artists, and the joy is not bringing in the new and get rid of the old, because that would not suit me very well,” she says, laughing. “I think it's all about being together.”

“Part of my excitement is always to see my old pals that have been around for years in the country music industry, but also to meet the new artists coming up,” she says. “And watch the performances, and just get a feel for where we're going. This is the excitement for me.”

To Shania, the future is bright. “Where are we going? I get inspired by seeing what's possibly to come,” she explains. “Certainly there are more females now. And that just broadens the horizons in general, also, for the audience. The audience wants to see a little bit of everything. They want to be inspired—especially the global audience. They demand it”.

There is one album from 31st July I am ending with. Before that, 24th July promises a treat in the form of Tyla’s A*POP. This is a modern great. Pre-order her second studio album here. Another album that could well make its way into the best-of-the-year lists. Tyla is a modern phenomenon. I am keeping my eyes peeled and will listen to its album when it is released, as I have admired her music for some time now:

“A*POP — is the sophomore masterpiece from two-time Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum global superstar Tyla. A bold evolution from her debut, this 14-track album mesmerizes with Tyla’s signature sultry vocals, seamlessly blending amapiano, pop, and R&B. A*POP is both a statement and a movement — a declaration that African music is pop music, with Tyla leading the charge at the forefront of a global shift. Featuring standout hits like “IS IT,” “CHANEL” and “SHE DID IT AGAIN (feat. Zara Larsson), A*POP invites you into Tyla’s immersive, vibrant world — a defining second album that cements her as a true global icon”.

Do make sure you pre-order Ariana Grande’s petal. July is offering up an embarrassment of riches regarding quality! It is clear petal is going to win a slew of huge reviews. Grande is one of the biggest Pop artists in the world. Go and pre-order petal here. The new single, hate that i made you love me, is a tantalising window into the album. Even if you are not a fan of Ariana Grande, I would still advise you to buy the album. Such an amazing songwriter and singer, all of her albums are such an incredible experience:

“Ariana Grande returns with a new studio album Petal, the follow-up to Eternal Sunshine, is executive produced and co-written by Grande and Ilya, reuniting her with the “Problem” hitmaker.

Grande describes Petal as “something that is full of life and growing through the cracks of something cold and hard and challenging.” The album marks her return to music after a period of blockbuster screen success, notably in the Wicked franchise”.

I am going to wrap up now. There are so many great albums out next month. From Ariana Grande through to The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Suki Waterhouse, and FLO, there is so much in there. Something to suit so many tastes, I hope my recommendations have provided some guidance. July providing to be a very…

HOT one for new albums.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Whitney Houston

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Avedon

 

Whitney Houston

__________

BORN in California…

PHOTO CREDIT: David LaChapelle

in 1963, we sadly lost the great Whitney Houston in 2012. She is more than worthy of appreciation in tis feature, as she is one of the most influential artists ever. Houston is one of the most awarded and acclaimed artists ever. One of the best-selling music artists of all time - with sales of more than 220 million records worldwide - this icon helped break down gender and racial barriers through her artistic achievements and music videos. Prior to coming to a mixtape containing twenty prime Whitney Houston cuts, AllMusic provide a detailed biography of a much-missed legend:

“Whitney Houston was inarguably one of the biggest pop stars of all time. Her accomplishments as a hitmaker were extraordinary. Just to scratch the surface, the mezzo-soprano powerhouse became the first artist to have seven consecutive singles hit number one, from "Saving All My Love for You" (1985) through "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" (1988). Her version of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" (1992) became nothing less than the biggest hit single in rock history. Whitney Houston and Whitney, her first two albums, each went diamond platinum, followed by a string of additional multi-platinum LPs including the likewise diamond-earning soundtrack for The Bodyguard. Houston was able to handle big adult contemporary ballads, effervescent, stylish dance-pop, and slick contemporary R&B with equal dexterity. The result was an across-the-board appeal that was matched by few artists of her era, and helped her become one of the first Black artists to find success on MTV in Michael Jackson's wake. Like many of the original soul singers, Houston was trained in gospel before moving into secular music. Over time, she developed a virtuosic singing style given over to swooping, flashy melodic embellishments. The shadow of Houston's prodigious technique still looms large over nearly every pop and R&B diva who has followed. A six-time Grammy winner, Houston was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, eight years after her tragic death.

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 9, 1963. Her mother was gospel/R&B singer Cissy Houston, and her cousin was Dionne Warwick. By age 11, Houston was performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at her Baptist church; as a teenager, she began accompanying her mother in concert (as well as on the 1978 album Think It Over), and went on to back artists like Lou Rawls and Chaka Khan. Houston also pursued modeling and acting, appearing on the sitcoms Gimme a Break and Silver Spoons. Somewhat bizarrely, Houston's first recording as a featured vocalist was with Bill Laswell's experimental jazz-funk ensemble Material; the ballad "Memories," from the group's 1982 album One Down, placed Houston alongside Archie Shepp. The following year, Arista president Clive Davis heard Houston singing at a nightclub and offered her a recording contract. Her first single appearance was a duet with Teddy Pendergrass, "Hold Me," which reached number five on the R&B chart in 1984.

Houston's debut album, Whitney Houston, was released in February 1985. "You Give Good Love," its second single, became Houston's first hit, topping the R&B chart and hitting number three on the Hot 100. Houston's next three singles -- the Grammy-winning romantic ballad "Saving All My Love for You," the brightly danceable "How Will I Know," and the inspirational "The Greatest Love of All" -- all topped the Hot 100, and a year to the month after its release, Whitney Houston hit number one on the Billboard 200. It eventually sold over 13 million copies in the U.S., making it the best-selling debut ever by a female artist. Houston cemented her superstar status on her next album, Whitney. It became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one, and sold over ten million copies in the U.S. Its first four singles -- "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" (another Grammy winner), "Didn't We Almost Have It All," "So Emotional," and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" -- all hit number one, an amazing, record-setting run of seven straight. In late 1988, Houston scored a Top Five hit with the non-LP single "One Moment in Time," recorded for an Olympics-themed compilation album.

Houston returned with her third album, I'm Your Baby Tonight, in 1990. A more R&B-oriented record, it immediately spun off two number one hits in the title track and "All the Man That I Need" and sold over four million copies. Houston remained so popular that she could even take a recording of "The Star Spangled Banner" (performed at the Super Bowl) into the Top 20 -- though, of course, the Gulf War patriotism had something to do with that. Appeal across mediums fueled Houston as she began focus on an acting career, which she hadn't pursued since her teenage years. Her first feature film, a romance with Kevin Costner called The Bodyguard, was released in late 1992, just after she married singer Bobby Brown. It performed well at the box office, helped by an ad campaign that seemingly centered around the climactic key change in Houston's soundtrack recording of the Dolly Parton-penned "I Will Always Love You." In fact, the ad campaign undoubtedly helped "I Will Always Love You" become one the biggest singles in pop music history. It set new records for sales (nearly five million copies) and spent weeks at number one (14), later broken by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997" and Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day," respectively. Meanwhile, the soundtrack eventually sold an astounding 18 million copies, and also won a Grammy for Album of the Year. "I Will Always Love You" itself won Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female.

Once Houston had stopped raking in awards and touring the world, she prepared her next theatrical release, the ensemble drama Waiting to Exhale. A few months before its release at the end of 1995, it was announced that she and Brown had split up; however, they called off the split just a couple months later, and rumors about their tempestuous relationship filled the tabloids for years to come. Waiting to Exhale was released toward the end of the year, and the first single from the soundtrack, "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)," topped the charts. The album sold over seven million copies. For her next project, Houston decided to return to her gospel roots. The soundtrack to the 1996 film The Preacher's Wife, which naturally featured Houston in the title role, was loaded with traditional and contemporary gospel songs, plus guest appearances by Houston's mother, as well as Shirley Caesar and the Georgia Mass Choir.

In 1998, Houston finally issued a new full-length album, My Love Is Your Love, her first in eight years. Houston worked with pop/smooth soul mainstays like Babyface and David Foster, but also recruited hip-hop stars like Missy Elliott, Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, and Q-Tip. The album went quadruple platinum and received Houston's most enthusiastic reviews in quite some time. Moreover, it produced one of her biggest R&B chart hits (seven weeks at number one) in the trio number "Heartbreak Hotel," done with Faith Evans and Kelly Price. Additionally, it yielded the Grammy-winning "It's Not Right But It's Okay." She also duetted with Mariah Carey on "When You Believe," a song from the animated film The Prince of Egypt.

Arista released the two-disc compilation Greatest Hits, a multi-platinum anthology that featured one disc of hits and one of remixes and included new duets with Enrique Iglesias, George Michael, and Deborah Cox, in 2000. It was also announced that year that Houston had signed a new deal with Arista worth $100 million, requiring six albums from the singer. The self-styled comeback album Just Whitney arrived in 2002, followed by One Wish: The Holiday Album in November of the following year. Two years later, her private life became more public through the 2005 reality television series Being Bobby Brown. She eventually divorced her husband and went into intense rehabilitation for drug addiction.

An album of new material was initially set for release by the end of 2007, but delays pushed it -- titled I Look to You, featuring collaborations with Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz, R. Kelly, Akon, and Diane Warren -- back to September 2009. It became Houston's first number one album since the Bodyguard soundtrack. She toured the world in 2010, and talked about beginning recording for her next album, but entered outpatient rehab in the summer of 2011 for continuing drug and alcohol problems. That fall, Houston filmed a role in a remake of the 1976 musical film Sparkle, starring alongside Jordin Sparks. In early 2012, rumors swirled that Simon Cowell was courting Houston for a mentor spot on The X Factor, but before anything came of it, tragedy occurred. On February 11, the day before the 2012 Grammys, Houston was found dead in her bathroom at the Beverly Hills Hilton. The cause of death was found to be accidental drowning caused by heart disease and cocaine intoxication. The Grammy ceremony paid tribute to her life with a Jennifer Hudson performance of "I Will Always Love You." Houston was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020”.

I will end there. I am keen to get to a mix of some of the best Whitney Houston songs. Showcasing her huge consistency, range, brilliance and power, these songs come from an artist who I feel has few equals. In terms of who she has influenced, you can include Mariah Carey and Rihanna. This is an artist whose influence and wonder will…

LIVE forever.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Victoria Monét

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

  

Victoria Monét

__________

BECAUSE the supreme…

PHOTO CREDIT: Dalvin Adams

Victoria Monét is playing some U.K. dates next month, I wanted to include her in this Modern-Day Queens. The Atlanta-born artist released the single, Let Me, last month. JAGUAR II was the debut studio album from Monét. It followed the 2020 E.P., JAGUAR. There was an expanded edition of JAGUAR II. However, there is a new album coming along soon. I did want to highlight this incredible artist, as she has a sound that is like nothing else. I feel she possesses one of the best voices in modern music. I will get to a recent interview from NME. However, before getting there, there are a couple of other interviews and features worth highlighting. Earlier in the year, at the Black Music Action Coalition Grammy Event, Victoria Monét discussed mentorship and nepotism in the music industry:

“The Black Music Action Coalition’s Grammy Week parties are always stylish events for a good cause, bringing out major stars and up-and-coming artists and many of the top executives in the music business. Wednesday night’s event at Sun Rose in Hollywood.

The evening, honoring the influence of hitmakers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis on contemporary music, was hosted by the pair in associated with Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Victoria Monet, and also featured the presentation of the first-ever BMAC Music Maker Impact Award to Culture Collective founder Jonathan Azu, recognizing his leadership and commitment to advancing long-term music careers.

The ace house band, led by Adam Blackstone, set the soundtrack for the evening, and a highlight was multiple Grammy winner Jon Batiste sitting in with some dazzling jazzy piano soloing.

However, a highlight was a measured but provocative speech from Monet about mentorship, nepotism and gatekeeping in the music industry. It follows below in full.

“Good evening. It is such an honor to be in a room with people who believe in the power of music, not just as entertainment, but as a force of connection, healing, culture, and opportunity.

As a musician, I’ve learned that talent alone is not what carries you through the music industry. Talent is everywhere. What truly makes a difference is access, and more specifically, mentorship. Having that someone who sees you, who believes in you, who’s willing to share not just their wisdom, but their pathways to success.

But I also want to talk about two other layers of this industry. Those two things are gatekeeping and nepotism. So let me define both clearly. Gatekeeping is when individuals or groups control access to opportunities, information, or resources, deciding who gets in, who gets heard, and who gets supported.

Nepotism is a practice of favoring relatives or close personal connections, especially in hiring, promotions, or opportunities, and sometimes regardless of merit. The truth is, the music industry exercises both.

But I feel like instead of asking, how do we eliminate gatekeeping and nepotism, because realistically power structures will always exist, I would want to ask, how do we use them responsibly?

Gatekeeping is not necessarily negative. Nepotism is not inherently negative either. It depends on who and how they are used. They become harmful when they are exercised selfishly or to preserve comfort instead of cultivating excellence.

Put yourself in positions of influence, creative, financial, cultural, not just to advance your own career, but to become a bridge for others. Be discerning, yes, have standards, absolutely. But when you see someone who is talented, aligned, hardworking, and deserving, open the door.

I want to encourage everyone in this room to do something that we all have the power to do, and that is to use our access intentionally. Be the person who says, “I’ll make the introduction, I’ll pass your name, I’ll advocate for you when you’re not in the room, I’ll give you a shot because I recognize your potential and your hard work.”

The goal is ethical gatekeeping and purpose-driven nepotism. That is mentorship in action, and BMAC is a perfect conduit to exercise this type of Black excellence.

Because one of the most powerful things we can do in this industry is to remember that we didn’t get here alone. Someone answered a call, someone took a meeting, someone shared information that they didn’t have to share anymore. And the legacy we leave will not be defined solely on our accolades, our streams, or our credits, but by who we helped rise alongside us.

Let the frequency of music resonate. My hope is that we don’t just chase success, but we circulate it.

I also want to take this time to acknowledge a duo that proves this concept seamlessly, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, whose legacy goes far beyond iconic records. Their commitment to excellence, integrity, and lifting others as they climb sets the standard for what true leadership in music looks like. Welcome to the stage, Jimmy Jam”.

I do want to go back to last year before bringing things up to date. Not only is Victoria Monét one of the best artists in the world. She is this incredibly stylish and fashionable figure for many. Individual and distinct, she is ever-evolving. There is careful craft behind it. I do want to drop in a bit of the interview with InStyle, as it is quite illuminating. Revealing new sides to the brilliant Victoria Monét:

“Victoria Monét may have taken home the Grammy for Best New Artist in 2024, but she has a long history in the music business. Over the past decade, the 35-year-old R&B singer has been releasing music while writing for singers like Ariana Grande, Jhené Aiko, and Brandy. But the release of her 2023 single On My Mama and the subsequent album JAGUAR II catapulted Monét to stardom—an achievement she had spent her whole life working toward.

Beyond her music, Monét has always been mindful of her image and how it shapes her public persona. As a little girl, watching movies and musicals sparked Monét's love for the glamour of celebrity. She takes a lot of inspiration from her favorite movie stars—like Halle Berry in Introducing Dorthy Dandridge (1999). "Her beauty just enamored me," Monét tells InStyle. "It always seemed like she didn't need to do too much to seem very elegant and timeless but also somewhat natural." She took these early lessons to heart, carefully crafting her image to match each stage of her career. Currently, she's in her JAGUAR era. Bombshell waves, sleek updos, and soft-glam makeup are go-to's as part of her highly-curated presentation.

"When I think of myself, even though it's kind of an unnatural thought, I think of a product—it's about consistency," says Monét. "Every time you pick up a Coke, you want it to taste the same. You want to make sure the packaging is recognizable, and the taste is consistent. That's what I've tried to do in each micro era of the rollout of JAGUAR, just making sure that people understand when they come to my brand, they know what to expect."

In the new Hulu x Sephora three-part docuseries Faces of Music, Monét delves further into her relationship with beauty and its deep connection to music. Along with Chappell Roan and Becky G, she explores the inspiration behind some of their most iconic beauty looks. Here, InStyle chatted with Monét to learn more about her beauty influences and the ins and outs of her routine.

On Her Mama

"While Monét was drawn to Hollywood glamour, she also observed how beauty impacted the women around her. 'Watching my mom, I saw how transformative beauty can be — how she walks differently and holds her head higher when she feels beautiful,' Monét reflects. Her mom also instilled in her the importance of a nighttime beauty routine. 'She’d put rollers in her hair, brush her teeth, and apply Pond's Beauty Cream,' Monét recalls. 'It was all about those old-school remedies, the way you should sleep to wake up beautiful.'"

On Hairstyling

Monét is a big fan of experimenting with her hair, constantly changing the color, texture, and length. She typically gravitates toward lighter shades. "I've always wanted lighter hair, so I’ve gone through a bunch of phases of lightening it a little bit," she says. She used to get sew-ins and lighten her leave-out to match, but recently, she’s turned to wigs. "Using wigs has allowed me to experiment more without having to dye my own hair," she says.

Colors that deliver "sun-kissed drama," like honey blondes and caramels, are her go-to shades. However, she’s not afraid to mix it up with other colors. "For this past Fashion Week in Milan, my hair went from black to a gingery red and back to ombré blondes," she says”.

I will wrap up with a new chat from NME. As she has an album coming soon, Victoria Monét spoke with NME about her music and her approaching stadium tour with Bruno Mars. A lodestar to her, they have this history. Labelmates back in 2013, he was a guiding light to her. A prolific and acclaimed songwriter, Monét worked on multiple Ariana Grande albums. With new music coming later this year, it is a perfect time to catch up with a stunning artist:

“Today, Monét describes her awards success as a “paradigm shift” that gave her a cruel taste of tall poppy syndrome. “Something interesting happened,” she says, “where my social media [comments] went from ‘we love you, you’re the underdog’, to, like, ‘Why does she get the Grammy? She’s too old, she’s not even a new artist.'” Monét was only 34 at the time, but her 15 years of climbing the industry ladder gave her perspective. “I was like, ‘Of course this happened to you, because you worked really hard and just didn’t stop,'” she recalls.

“People think I’m seated with my legs crossed, holding a cocktail. But I’ve been working really, really hard”

Gripes from ageist haters also galvanised her long-term ambition. “Even though I showed why I deserved the Grammy before, I also have to show why I deserve it after – for the people who didn’t think it should be mine,” she says. She made a conscious decision to put some clear water between ‘Jaguar II’, which she expanded in 2024 with a deluxe edition and the festive spin-off ‘A Jaguar II Christmas: The Orchestral Arrangements’, and her currently untitled second album era.

“There’s something nice about going against the grain and not putting something out so fast,” she explains, “because you may be doing it out of spite, or putting something out that feels unnatural to you, just based on what the world is expecting of you as an artist. I feel completely like this is a new chapter. I’ve untethered myself from that [‘Jaguar II’] frequency.”

When the new record eventually drops, fans will be given more insight into Monét’s personal life via an as-yet-untitled song she describes as “very anthemic”. “It’s about my relationship status, pretty much, [having] the freedom to explore and meet new people guilt-free,” she says. Though Monét’s decision not to rush her new album rollout is an artistic one, she admits she did sometimes feel “a bit guilty for quote-unquote ‘going away'”.

I am going to end there. It will be exciting hearing a new album from Victoria Monét. I really loved JAGUAR II, so I will definitely check out her next album. Monét is also a trained chef. Last month, she graduated from the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). That has launched the careers of 20,000 hospitality professionals since 1975. This multifaceted queen, we do need to treasure Victoria Monét. If you are slightly new to her music or do not know much, then I would strongly encourage you to do some digging and find out more about…

A true great.

___________

Follow Victoria Monét

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Whole Story: Inside a Fascinating KBC Article, Issue 7 (Sept 1980)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Whole Story

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Phillips

 

Inside a Fascinating KBC Article, Issue 7 (Sept 1980)

__________

THIS will be one of the last…

visits to The Complete Kate Bush Club Newsletter Writings of Kate Bush. There are some more that I want to cover. However, for this series, I will move in other directions and focus on other things. I did want to reference something she wrote for Issue 7 of the Kate Bush Club. Published the same month as her third studio album, Never for Ever, was released, she discussed some of the songs. What it was like getting the album out. What she wrote for the seventh issue of Kate Bush Club was a window into the creative process. There was a big leap between 1978’s Lionheart (her second album) and Never for Ever. The first album in her twenties, and now acting in the role of producer – alongside Jon Kelly -, this was an artist more in control of her sound and direction. Because of that, you felt something was released in terms of her creativity, ambition, breadth and depth. Never for Ever arguably her fullest and most unshackled album. Truer to her own visions. She would take a further leap two years later with 1982’s The Dreaming. I wanted to bring in the entire article, as there is a lot to note and discuss:

“Now, after all this waiting it is here. It's strange when I think back to the first album. I thought it would never feel as new or as special again. This one has proved me wrong. It's been the most exciting. Its name is Never For Ever, and I've called it this because I've tried to make it reflective of all that happens to you and me.

Life, love, hate, we, are all transient. All things pass, neither good or evil lasts. So we must tell our hearts that it is "never for ever," and be happy that it's like that!

The album cover has been beautifully created by Nick Price (you may remember that he designed the front of the Tour programme). On the cover of Never For Ever Nick takes us on an intricate journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people and things with our desires and problems. These black and white thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it's for you to bring them to life.

The first stage of making Never For Ever happened last summer, when I actually decided to be brave enough to go ahead and "produce" with Jon Kelly, trusting him as a friend and an extremely talented engineer.

So, with that settled, we "produced" our first master tapes. We put down Blow Away, Egypt, Violin and The Wedding List at Air Studios, with the bright and bubbly Jon Jacobs as assistant. As you will see besides communication, "Jons" are also a theme of the album. Never a day passed without at least two or three Jons popping in to say hello, and as the album grew, so did the number of Jons, reaching a total of fifteen turning up on the last day, all in the same room. A fatal move to say, "John?"

Having been rehearsed with the band for two days, the tracks went down, and our first "productions", with the help of ideal musicians, were a success. All the tracks full of "Air" and "space", Jons and tea!

Early this year we moved into Studio number 2, Abbey Road--the land of beatles, tea, smiles and sticky buns--where we met another bright and bubbly John, John Barrett. John became an important part of the album and completed a threesome, like Teddy with Andy Pandy and Loopy Loo (Jon Kelly and myself).

Kate Bush talking about the air and space in the songs. Allowed to breathe more life into her work. Expand her horizons. With the help of technology, her chosen musicians and her production instincts, Never for Ever did release something. Also, that excitement and grandeur of being at Abbey Road Studios. Plenty of tea and marvellous hospitality. Jon Kelly a perfect and inspiring partner as producer. It is interesting too hearing Bush discuss the title of the album. How it is ‘for Ever’ and not ‘Forever’. Even so, that idea that everything will pass. Getting some personal explanation about why that title was chosen. Bush did record a title track during the Lionheart sessions I think. Producer Andrew Powell saying how beautiful it was. Bush did not like her vocal on it, so the song was never released. A gem that fans would love to hear. Those two Johns/Jons beside her. Those adorable nicknames! This child-like trio! The space The Beatles recorded in, it clearly meant a lot to Kate Bush:

I would always use a notepad with each page designated to a song, each song needing various instruments, effects, harmonies, etc., which I would list and tick off appropriately. This helps my memory, and keeps some kind of logical working order. Thanks to dear Andrew Powell, where I learnt the necessity for a "prod.'s pad"!

The basic process is to put down all the backing tracks first. Then all overdubs, including vocals, and then to mix. The responsibility as a producer was something I felt a great deal--you have to keep on top of everything, and sometimes it can be difficult. It's hard to push people you love; talking and drinking are easy to give in to. But the trouble, sometimes, was we we’re having too much fun.

We always work until the early hours in the studio. It's a very creative time, and with Roy Harper and Sky working at Abbey Road, too, we were rarely alone, and felt very at home. However, discipline did exist, so all was completed with care and tender hearts. I really deeply appreciated the understanding and respect from all the musicians, and after all I am only little, a female, and an unlikely producer! But as I squirmed and contorted my way through explanations of visuals and audials, they stood patient, calm and open, and not one uttered "You weirdo!", unless in jest.

Without everyone (and the Fairlight) it would never have been the same. You move me, thank you, you are inspiration.

There are ten tracks, and if there is a main theme, it's about human communication and its difficulties.

Babooshka is about futile situations: the way in which we often ruin things for ourselves.

Delius is a tribute to an extraordinary man both in body and spirit.

Blow Away is a comfort for the fear of dying, and for those of us who believe that music is perhaps an exception to the Never For Ever rule.

All We Ever Look For is about how we seek something, but in the wrong way, or at wrong times, so it is never found.

Egypt is an attempted audial animation of the romantic and realistic visions of a country.

Wedding List is about the powerful force of revenge, an unhealthy energy which in this song proves to be a "killer".

Violin is for all the mad fiddlers, from "Paganini" to "Old Nick" himself.

That kind nod to Andrew Powell. How Bush was taking notes and that advice regarding the producer’s pad. Whilst it seems mechanical or formulaic writing lists and ticking things off, it meant she was organised and had this focus. Bush learning from her first two albums and the production process. Knowing how hard it is to producer. Everything is on her shoulders. What she says about having too much fun. Maybe it got too relaxed or it was a little unfocused. A chance to unwind. Bush conscious of having to be strict or at least keep that balance between letting her musicians chill and talk and making sure each song is as brilliant as it can be. Those brief notes about the tracks. Each song’s inspiration and theme so different. It gives to an idea of how extraordinarily imaginative and varied Kate Bush is as a writer:

The Infant Kiss is about a governess. She is torn between the love of an adult man and a child, who are within the same body.

Army Dreamers is about a grieving mother who, through the death of her soldier boy, questions her motherhood.

Breathing is a warning and plea from a future spirit to try and save mankind and his planet from irretrievable destruction.

Each song has a very different personality, and so much of the production was allowing the songs to speak with their own voices--not for them to be used purely as objects to decorate with "buttons and bows".

Choosing sounds is so like trying to be psychic, seeing into the future, looking in the "crystal ball of arrangements," "scattering a little bit of stardust," to quote the immortal words of the Troggs.

Every time a musical vision comes true, it's like having my feet tickled. When it works, it helps me to feel a bit braver. Of course, it doesn't always work, but experiments and ideas in a studio are never wasted; they will always find a place sometime.

I never really felt like a producer, I just felt closer to my loves--felt good, free, although a little raw, and sometimes paranoia would pop up. But when working with emotion, which is what music is, really, it can be so unpredictable--the human element, that fire.

But all my friends, the Jons, and now you will make all the pieces of the Never For Ever jigsaw slot together, and It will be born and It will begin Breathing”.

That impossible conundrum. Putting songs together and choosing the right sound for each song. How there must have been so much trial-and-error and stressful nights. That lovely nod to The Troggs. You do get a real glimpse inside her mind and music loves. How honest and pure her words are. That unpredictable fire of human emotions. How production was this opportunity for Kate Bush to connect with her loves. Despite some drawbacks and challenges, it was her most moving and astonishing experience to date. With some trusty friends and this masterplan completed, or at least coming to a close, there must have been this great energy, excitement and curiosity from fans. As it was, Never for Ever went to number one in the U.K. It was the first studio album by any female solo artist to reach number one in the U.K. Extraordinary that it took until 1980 for that to happen, though it tells of the barriers women faced and that it was harder for women to get exposure and to compete. Bush breaking boundaries and setting a record. She was unaware of this whilst in the weeds at times. Those tough times when songs were not coming together. It was all worth it. Nearly forty-six years after its, release, Never for Ever remains…

A glorious album.

FEATURE: Can’t Make Up My Mind: Why There Needs to Be Greater Industry Support, Outcry and Allyship Regarding the Backlash Women Face Concerning Their Appearance

FEATURE:

 

 

Can’t Make Up My Mind

IN THIS PHOTO: CMAT performing at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in May/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

 

Why There Needs to Be Greater Industry Support, Outcry and Allyship Regarding the Backlash Women Face Concerning Their Appearance

__________

THERE seems to be…

IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Rodrigo performs in Barcelona for Spotify’s Billions Club Live, on 8th May, 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: Xavi Torrent/Getty Images for Spotify

no winning when it comes to women in music. Always seemingly there to satisfy the male gaze, no matter how they dress themselves and what they look like, there will be criticism and attack. Body-shaming, sadly, is nothing new in music. Artists like Lizzo and Jorja Smith have experienced it in recent years. Women who are independent and confident subjected to abuse and seen as terrible role models. Those who are distinctly there to go against the male gaze seen as unattractive and also abused. A recent example of two incredible women in music both being put under the lens for different reason, it makes me wonder why there is relative silence from the industry and men. CMAT is a brilliant Irish artist who released her latest album, EURO-COUNTRY, last August. It was an award-nominated and critically-acclaimed work from one of our greatest living songwriters. A woman who is so funny, honest and open. An idol and inspiration for so many women and girls, she has been subjected to recent body-shaming. I shall come to Olivia Rodrigo. Her album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, is released on 12th June. Both modern-day queens and geniuses. They should be afforded nothing but respect and enormous opportunities. In terms of criticism and the public, there is a lot of love and respect. Though one cannot ignore the toxic and damaging dialogue around how they dress. It affects so many women in music. Spectrum-opposite in terms of the nature of backlash and how each dress; CMAT being body-shamed and criticised because she is seemingly an affront to the male gaze. Olivia Rodrigo more indulging it. Each under the microscope recent. It seems women are constantly being shrunk and limited in terms of how they dress. Though that may be the point. How women have always and, tragically, currently are there to be controlled and diminished. Control taken from them.

How are women supposed to dress? This is the question Laura Snapes asked in her fascinating and illuminating article for The Guardian. I shall come to that. This article includes reaction from CMAT. This ideal body size and look seems to remain. If women do not conform, they have to face vile abuse and misogyny:

“The Irish singer-songwriter says her rise has been increasingly ‘tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin’

The Irish singer-songwriter CMAT has responded to ongoing abuse she has received about her body and her weight following an appearance last week at BBC’s Radio 1 Big Weekend.

The musician, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, wrote on Instagram on Thursday that she had felt “compelled to wade in and speak for myself” after learning of the abuse being directed at photos taken of her on stage at the Sunderland festival on 24 May.

“It is literally so boring for me, a gorgeous genius, to keep having to yap on about how horribly I am treated because of my body,” she wrote. “I would love to stop but I cannot because it keeps happening, at an accelerating and worsening pace as I become more famous.”

CMAT shared screengrabs of a Substack essay by a music fan going by Front Row Feels, which “summed up a lot of what is causing my deep sadness,” she wrote.

The essay compared the treatment of CMAT with fellow Big Weekend acts Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean, who didn’t appear to be subjected to the same level of abuse online.

“What struck me most while scrolling through those toxic comment sections was the glaring disparity in how different women on that same lineup were treated,” Front Row Feels wrote, adding that Larsson and Dean “were granted a level of grace and basic humanity that was completely denied to CMAT”.

CMAT pointed out to “well-meaning” commenters that her body size was not a choice: “I am not being defiant. I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk rock act of liberty. I simply have a body, one that I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but I have had extreme difficulty in doing so. I don’t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it.”

She said that though she was grateful for her success, it is “increasingly becoming tarnished by the fact that I would be allowed to enjoy it so much more if I was thin”.

“There is no relief from this – nobody can protect me or save me from this, and all that is demanded of me is more and more work as every environment I am placed in becomes more hostile,” she wrote.

Last year the singer-songwriter released Take a Sexy Picture of Me, which criticised the scrutiny women face on their bodies and appearance”.

 

I want to highlight sections of that Laura Snapes article. It is an article that raises a lot of questions and makes me wonder why there is not backlash and condemnation from more in the industry. Especially men. That sense of pacifism or ignorance is troubling. How “backlash over their appearances that came from the scummy bottom of the internet” is rampant. The scuzzy and scummy bottom of the barrel of the Internet:

“Even subverting the male gaze won’t stop you from being accused of pandering to it. In the styling for Rodrigo’s new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, the 23-year-old pop star is wearing babydoll dresses in tribute to the 90s female punks – Kathleen Hanna, Courtney Love, Kat Bjelland – who revamped the cropped nightgowns into the “kinderwhore” look, shredding and smearing them with makeup to confront men with the discomfort of their unwanted objectification. A concert in Barcelona during which Rodrigo wore a puffy floral number prompted mass online commentary calling her “pedo bait” and “Lolita”. “That’s been making me so upset,” Rodrigo told the New York Times’ Popcast, published yesterday. She pointed out how illogical these comments were: in the past, she has performed in a bra and shorts, to no outcry, “but me fully covered up in a dress that people deem to be childlike was inappropriate”.

Rodrigo continued: “I think it shows how we really normalise paedophilia in our culture. And also it’s just this rhetoric that we’re fed as girls since we’re so little, which is like, ‘Don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualise your body and it’s your fault.’”

If CMAT is supposedly an affront to the male gaze, but Rodrigo is indulging it, what sliver of ground is left? Even the inverse empowerment narrative is a trap. As CMAT pointed out, many “well-meaning” people have tried to claim her as a figurehead of the body positivity movement, but, she wrote, “I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk-rock act of liberty. I simply have a body, one that I would of course like to change in order to fit in and avoid all of this abuse, but I have had extreme difficulty in doing so. I don’t get a say in whether or not I want to be brave, I simply have to sit here and take it.” Every possibility for how a woman in the public eye might look has been co-opted by an agenda that would rather tell her who she is rather than listen to who she is saying she is.

We are in the midst of a massive conservative retrenchment around femininity that is also being manipulated by bad actors. To me, the groundswell of comments such as these towards CMAT and Rodrigo comes with a distinct tang of bot farming, a coordinated attack boosted by figures or movements with a vested interest in shrinking the ways that women can exist in public. It’s misogyny’s latest pathetic costume: a bunch of losers stacked up in a grubby trenchcoat, fooling everyone”.

Whereas a lot of this backlash and misogyny is from bots and a select group of desperately pathetic people, it is still hugely damaging and systematic of a growing and poisonous masculinity. Women almost forced to be someone else to avoid being attacked or face abuse. That not only affects them. It affects and resonates with all women across the industry. What does seem galling is how there is very little in the way of condemnation from the industry and particular men. Allyship, when we do hear about it, quite selective. Male artists maybe supporting women and talking of their brilliance. Booking them as support acts on tours, or hyping queens coming through. When it comes to issues around gender discrimination, divides, misogyny and abuse right across the industry, why is there a near unanimous silence? It is not a controversial subject facing up to those who attack and marginalise women. There does need to be more activation and words from men in the industry. Whilst it does not fix the problem and stem the relentless sewage of the Internet, it does seem more and more than women are alone in trying to tackle and speak out against the male gaze and misogyny. I think back to Sophie Gilbert’s Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves “Cosmetic surgeries are at an all-time high, Ozempic is bringing back 'heroin chic' and the manosphere on the rise - after four waves of feminism, what went wrong? Despite decades of progress, modern womanhood feels more challenging than ever. Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert reveals how today's misogyny emerged from another turbulent era: the late 90s and early 2000s. Spanning the past thirty years of pop culture - from Madonna to Taylor Swift, #GirlBoss to OnlyFans, Real Housewives to trad-wives - Girl on Girl shows how every form of media, heavily influenced by the rise of porn, has warped women's relationships with themselves and others”. It is so horrifying and disheartening having to read of constant misogyny and objectification. How body-positivity is such a risky thing. If you do not fit into the male gaze then you are condemned and abused. Artists like Olivia Rodrigo accused of sexualising child-like imagery when her babydoll dress look is a statement of power and defiance. Inspired by icons like Courtney Love and Kathleen Hana. This misogyny. If women are confident and show their body and are sexy then they are seen as bad role models and inappropriate. If they cover up and comfortable and themselves, then they are also exposed to weird, disturbing and misogynistic comments. Where is the outrage from the industry?! Where are the male voices speaking out?! They do not have to go through the same thing to emphasise and call out the misogyny. I feel that the silence is deafening. Body-shaming, misogyny and this impossible dilemma for women regarding how they should dress. There seems to be no end in sight for the sludge and slurry of misogyny. Having to have these same conversations…

TIME and time again.

FEATURE: Stay Forever… Looking Ahead to Twenty-Five Years of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

FEATURE:

 

 

Stay Forever…

PHOTO CREDIT: Parlophone

 

Looking Ahead to Twenty-Five Years of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

__________

EVEN though the…

twenty-fifth anniversary of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head is not until 8th September, I will be posting anniversary features of Fever around that time. The album was released on 1st October, 2001. It was a strange and turbulent time in world politics. Three days after Can’t Get You Out of My Head was released, the terrorist attacks in the U.S. shocked the world. Not that the two are related, obviously, but this joyous and incredible single came out days before one of the worst tragedies in world history. What does endure is how this single is now seen as one of Kylie Minogue’s very best. Perhaps her ultimate lead single, it was an extraordinary and tantalising taste of Fever. Many argue it is her finest album. It is hard to disagree! Even though there are a lot of producers credited and the album was recorded at multiple studios, there is this cohesiveness and consistency that means Fever remains intriguing and fresh to this day. I know there will be something special to mark twenty-five years of Fever. Whether it is a reissue of the album or an event where Minogue performs the album in full, it is among the most impactful and important albums of the 2000s in my opinion. Ahead of its twenty-fifth anniversary, I want to explore an infectious Pop classic. Despite a scarcity of lyrics – repeated lines and a chorus made up of ‘lahs’ and ‘lah’ –, it is the perfect combination of Minogue vocal blends (sultry, playful and hypnotic) and incredible songwriting. Written and produced by Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis, I remember when the single came out. I only just started university, and I had been a fan of Minogue since childhood. I was stunned and struck by Can’t Get You Out of My Head.

Before getting to reviews and features around Can’t Get You Out of My Head, I want to bring in sections of an interview from The Guardian published in September 2001. It was a pivotal evolution. In terms of how Kylie Minogue was perceived. Now in her thirties, this was not the artist that shot through in the 1980s and had this string of great Pop songs. Although they were very much of their time, they still were hugely popular. Can’t Get You Out of My Head and Fever was a more mature and nuanced sound. An artist who was absolutely at the top of her game. One of the greatest artist who has ever lived:

“She's here today to promote her eighth album, Fever, and what will be her thirty-fourth consecutive UK hit single, the hypnotic 'Can't Get You Out of My Head'.

Kylie knows it's good. With the previous album - her first for her new label, Parlophone - she was struggling to re-establish herself as a pop princess after a relatively disastrous period working with credible rock names such as The Manic Street Preachers. When the first Parlophone single, 'Spinning Around', went to number one last year, she cried with relief. But this time, there's just a quiet confidence.

'I feel like I'm on a wave and I actually know how to stand on the board at this point,' she says. 'I feel quite solid. I don't know where it's taking me, but everything feels really good.'

She's 33, and she's been famous for half her life. We talk about the way she'll turn on and 'become' Kylie. 'You have to,' she says. 'There's no way you could maintain that all the time. If you get up and do a Saturday morning kids show, you don't wake up and be that person. You go, you get ready, and 20 minutes beforehand, you start to become... It's no different to anyone else. I go to work as well.'

Her close friends don't call her Kylie. They call her Min. She says she sometimes feels guilty about those friends - how others get smiley Kylie, and they have to settle for grumpy Min. When you're always performing, she explains, 'home is the only place you can have a long face and really mope about'.

I point out that stroppy pop stars are the norm, that we like our celebrities to have attitude and angst. But Kylie is a trouper, an old-fashioned professional who believes that the show must go on: 'Perhaps I'm more old-school than my years in that respect. It's just where I came from, working in TV, where it's not about you, where you don't get anything done without everyone else.'

Kylie was 11 when she appeared in her first TV soap, 17 when she left school and entered our living rooms as the feisty mechanic Charlene in Neighbours . We've watched her grow up - making shiny, infectious production-line pop for Stock, Aitken and Waterman's south London Hit Factory, ditching the froufrou frocks for sleeker, sexier clothes, and finally taking control of her music as well as her image by leaving the SAW stable and signing to hip dance label DeConstruction.

Frequently derided in her early career, she has now become something of a national treasure, sitting next to Prince Charles at a charity dinner one night, hanging out in cool clubs the next, equally at home on the covers of Vogue and Smash Hits. We've seen her change her looks, change her music, change her boyfriends, change her record label (three times), reinvent herself. But through it all, Kylie has been careful to keep a little mystery back. Part of her appeal is that she has always been something of a blank canvas, a screen on which we can all project our Kylie fantasies.

This is why so many big-name artists and photographers agreed to contribute to her 1999 art-book, Kylie. Why designer Patrick Cox recently told Vogue: 'She's a living Barbie doll. All gay men want to play with her, dress her up, comb her hair.' Why there barely seems to be a band, songwriter or producer in Britain who hasn't clamoured to work with her at some point.

If you ask her about them, she will tell you about her relationships with Michael Hutchence and later with the photographer/director Stephane Sedanoui, but she tends to tell the same anecdotes each time. She has decided exactly how much to reveal. 'I'm aware that you have to give so much, because if you make yourself unavailable, people want it so much more. It's a very fine line. You have to hand over some of your private life, but pretty much the same stories get rehashed. People want to know if you've got a boyfriend, who he is, what he does.'

Her current relationship is with James Gooding, a 26-year-old model who has no interest in being part of any Kylie media circus. Which is why she is unwilling to talk too much about him, beyond saying that they are happy together. 'As far as being able to keep a lot of my private life private, I don't use any of that to exploit my career, and in a very subtle way, I think, the media understands that,' she says.

What she does enjoy talking about is the technicalities of her job. About how, in her last tour, she descended from the roof on a dazzling silver anchor that was actually 'a bit of MDF with shiny sticky-backed plastic on it'. After one of the London shows, the fashion designer Matthew Williamson came backstage wanting to know how she'd managed the frequent fast costume changes. They happily discussed press-studs and poppers and how she'd walk calmly to the side of the stage, then be enveloped by frantic dressers trying to strip off her outfit and fit the next one, like mechanics in a Grand Prix pit stop. 'I could have talked for ages about it,' she says, 'because here was someone who understood”.

Recorded in Surrey, England and with amazing B-sides in the shape of Boy, and Rendezvous at Sunset, there are few singles that have made such an impression. A multi-platinum-selling smash that charted at number one in multiple nations (including the U.K.), I will bring in some reviews of a genius Pop track. It is amazing that both S Club 7 and Sophie Ellis-Bextor turned down Can’t Get You Out of My Head. Both acts were on a high and in a great period, though neither could afford to turn the song down. I think it was a big mistake. It sound perfect for Kylie Minogue, though. In 2020, The Guardian voted for the best U.K. number one singles ever. Can’t Get You Out of My Head charted at a respectable seventeen. “This perfect fusion of hypnotic dance pulses with melodic majesty and is a global smash that even the anti-pop brigade can enjoy” is how they define this song. Though maybe not ideal for S Club 7, you wonder why Sophie Ellis-Bextor refused this gem:

“Written by then semi-retired pop star Cathy Dennis and the former Mud guitarist Rob Davis, it was initially offered to S Club 7. Quite rightly, their manager Simon Fuller rejected it, before it was rejected again, more surprisingly, by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. It took Kylie 20 seconds of listening to the demo for her to realise the track was special. And what an opening 20 seconds it is: straight out of the gate there is that pulsating, unnervingly timeless bass line, instantly recalling electronic pioneers such as Kraftwerk and New Order (Kylie performed the song’s bootleg mashup with Blue Monday at the Brits in 2002, arriving on a giant CD) before the chorus arrives earlier than expected on a hypnotic flurry of “la, la, las”. (Also of note: the oft-ignored meandering organ flurries that lurk behind the verses, subtly massaging the song’s forward momentum.)

Preferring constant shape-shifting and delayed gratification (the title line and the “la, la, la” chorus only coalesce, brilliantly, in the song’s final 30 seconds) over traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is the perfect fusion of dance music’s hypnotic pulse and the melodic majesty of pop. It’s also surprisingly mid-tempo, giving it the eerie sensation of always being slightly slower than you remember it, almost as if the memories she sings about are fading.

Despite the song’s near fatal brush with S Club 7, this was always a Kylie classic in the making. Blessed with the perfect pop voice, she delivers each line with just enough blank space for the listener’s own interpretations. Is it about a crush? A recent heartbreak? Does the person Minogue is singing about know about the obsession? What is the dark secret she is harbouring? Even those infamous “la, la, las” take on several functions, catalysing an irresistible earworm, a delirious, dancefloor-ready singalong moment and a distraction mechanism for the recently brokenhearted.

If 2000’s more straightforward Spinning Around rightfully brought Kylie back to pop’s top table after a few years lost in indie, then Can’t Get You Out of My Head – complete with its sleek, retro-futuristic video of robotic dance moves and fashion-forward hoodies – elevated her to a new level of pop-culture ubiquity”.

In another feature, The Independent crowned Can’t Get You Out of My Head the best Pop song of this century. Quite a high claim considering it was released a year into the century. That said, twenty-five years after its release, few songs have challenged this masterpiece. The Independent write that the “pop queen’s artistic zenith is just as thrilling as it was two decades ago, while the album it launched, ‘Fever’, is her ‘Thriller’, ‘Nevermind’ and ‘Back to Black’ rolled into one”:

“Fever, Kylie’s eighth studio album and the record that gave the world “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, turns 20 on 1 October. With six million copies sold, it is by some distance Minogue’s most commercially successful LP. And, by consensus, her artistic zenith.

The record’s stand-out moment is, of course, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”. The Sistine Chapel of chart bangers was written in just an afternoon by first-time collaborators Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis (of Seventies glamrockers Mud). And yet it feels like the eternal pop song. It’s hard to imagine a time when it didn’t exist. And it’s just the start of Fever’s hit parade.

There is also “Come Into My World”, another Dennis-Davis composition added at the 11th hour (Kylie recorded it the night before flying to Germany for a photoshoot). Also jostling for prominence are “In Your Eyes”, one of the five Fever cuts for which Kylie receives a co-writer credit, and the heartfelt title track, which thrillingly burnishes Kylie’s credentials as Queen of the Dancefloor. “I feel like I’m on a wave and I actually know how to stand on the board at this point,” is how Kylie characterised this period of her career in an interview with The Observer in 2001. “I feel quite solid. I don’t know where it’s taking me, but everything feels really good.”

If she didn’t have a firm idea where she was going, she of course knew exactly where she was coming from. Minogue may be the timeless pop star – as beloved today as in the 1980s when “I Should Be So Lucky” made Charlene from Neighbours the face of the Stock Aitken Waterman hit factory. Yet, in a way, Kylie’s career more closely resembles that of a classic rock act, with early success followed by a wilderness period and then a glorious comeback.

Kylie’s lost years were in the late Nineties. Signing to dance label Deconstruction, she alarmed fans by pursuing an “indie” direction with her sixth album, Impossible Princess – hastily renamed Kylie Minogue in the UK following the death of Princess Diana two months before its release. Whatever its name, the record wore its indie disco influences on its sleeve. “Too Far” was Kylie doing Garbage. “Some Kind of Bliss”, the first single, opens with a barrage of Britrock guitars. It sounds like Menswear smuggled on to a Kylie tune.

Impossible Princess/Kylie Minogue was a modest success, shifting nearly 70,000 units in the UK and peaking at 10 in the charts. But because it was not a stone-cold smash, open season was declared on Kylie, who’d had the nerve to look beyond pop music by working with the Manic Street Preachers and Soft Cell/Virgin Prunes producer David Ball.

“A total fraud,” sneered the NME. Virgin Radio put out an ad campaign proclaiming, “We’ve done something to improve Kylie’s records: we’ve banned them”. The pop industry relishes nothing so much as a female artist on the back foot and Kylie copped the full force of a backlash.

She didn’t let the jeers affect her, however. And, having quietly signed to Parlophone, in June 2000 Minogue delivered a steamroller comeback with “Spinning Around” (written by Paula Abdul) and the follow-up album Light Years. In a sense, Kylie was starting over. Which is why Light Years resembles, to some degree, a scrappy debut from a new artist with something to prove. And why Fever, released just 13 months later, feels like one of those classic second LPs that takes everything great about its predecessor and doubles down on it. It’s Kylie’s Thriller, Nevermind, Paul’s Boutique and Back to Black rolled into one.

“Can’t Get You Out of My Head” was written with Simon Fuller’s S Club 7 in mind. It was he who had suggested Dennis and Davis work together. But he passed and the track was instead offered to Sophie Ellis-Bextor. She demurred too, which is how it found its way to Kylie’s A&R team of Miles Leonard and Jamie Nelson.

Kylie was played a cassette demo with lead vocals by Dennis. Before the first chorus had kicked in, she told her people to tie down the rights to the song. Such was her enthusiasm that she performed “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” on stage at Hammersmith Apollo in March 2001, months before she recorded it. “We did it in the back of the garage of my house in Epsom,” recalls Davis of his time working with Kylie. “She was very sweet. She brought food for everyone in the house. She’d learnt the song. A lot of singers who have been actors or actresses, it makes them a little more professional. Your average vocalist will probably turn up on the wrong day or they’re hours late. But she was very conscientious.”

“Can’t Get You Out of My Head” had come as a bolt from the beyond to Davis and Dennis (who would go on to write “Toxic” for Britney Spears). During the recording with Kylie, Davis had a specific sensibility in mind. “When it was produced, I was listening to Daft Punk,” he says. “They were very futuristic at the time. But they used samples. We didn’t use any. And Kylie just brought her sound – it’s one of the things that worked. We did work on the vocal production to get the right sound for her. It’s basically copied from Cathy’s first vocals. It’s pretty identical to that.”

Fever came together quickly. Kylie bounced between 11 producers – among them Britney Spears collaborator Steve Anderson and Dido/Natalie Imbruglia producer Pascal Gabriel – and recorded it in Olympic Studios in London, Hutch Studios in Chicago and Windmill Lane in Dublin.

While it’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” that continues to drive listeners to hyperbole and beyond, the entirety of Fever deserves to be feted. From the funk shimmer of “More More More”, to the Daft Punk-esque “Love at First Sight” via the sci-fi disco of “Give It to Me”, this is a record brimming with cybernetic cool.

The album sold and sold. It debuted at No 1 in the UK and peaked at three in the US. And the reviewers were ecstatic. Rolling Stone identified the contradictions that made it so compelling – noting it was “full of old-fashioned hooks and newfangled techno hiccups, campy as a tent full of Boy Scouts and yet easy on the cheese”. “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”, in particular, would quickly transcend music to become a cultural artefact. It launched the career of designer Fee Doran, of the Mrs Jones label, who created the future-shock hoodie that Kylie wears in the video. And it has inspired tributes from the strangest of places. Adam Curtis took inspiration from the song when making his recent through-the-looking-glass documentary about the invisible forces that shaped social change through the 20th century – which he, of course, named Can’t Get You Out of My Head.

Curtis was, if anything, late to the party. Paul Morley, the purple-prosed bard of rock intellectualism, had in 2003 used “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” as an inspiration for an entire book, Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City. Typically for Morley, the tome is a dense and digressive exploration of the history of pop music. It starts, however, with the author in an unusually clear-eyed frame of mind and listening to Kylie. The book correctly identifies “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” as a feat of true art. “Something happened during the production of the song, during the processes that built the song up from an idea into a thing, that made it something more, a piece of music that is much more than the sum of its parts,” he gushes. “In fact, its clear abstract likeability outstripped the momentary hopes for its commercial likeability because somehow it became not a calculated representation of a great pop song but actually a great pop song full stop.”

That’s just a rather overwrought way of the author saying that he really, really liked the tune. And, of course, Kylie does not need the approval of middle-aged music critics. Her validation is in her millions of fans and of her ability to continue creating fantastic music. “People love to hear ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’… just as much as they love hearing Kylie’s Eighties songs,” says Kylie covers artist Jade Chamberlain”.

There is no denying the legacy of Can’t Get You Out of My Head. It is an immortal Pop song that could only have been performed by Kylie Minogue. In terms of turning a wonderful song into something timeless. That is her talent! I want to end with part of the Wikipedia entry for this track. In terms of how we see its legacy:

“According to author Lee Barron, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" "further established Minogue's cultural and commercial relevance in the new millennium". He said the song "with its hypnotic 'la la la' refrain and the deceptively uncomplicated, catchily repetitive beats and synth-sound, marked yet another clearly defined image transformation from the camp-infused Light Years to an emphasis upon a cool, machine-like sexuality". Everett True of The Guardian wrote the song continued Kylie's transition from the girl-next-door to "flirtatious, sophisticated persona" that started with the release of "Spinning Around" in 2000. True said the success of "Can't Get You Out of My Head" was one of the motivating factors behind "manufactured" pop music gaining "new postmodern respectability" and marked a "clear shift in attitude towards pop music among the 'serious' rock critic fraternity".

Publications such as The Guardian and Rolling Stone recognise "Can't Get You Out of My Head" as Minogue's signature song. In 2012, the UK agency PRS for Music, which collects royalties on behalf of songwriters and composers, named "Can't Get You Out of My Head" as the most popular song of the decade, receiving the most airplay and live covers in the 2000s decade. In 2025, the song placed 27 in the Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs”.

I wonder what Kylie Minogue will say on the twenty-fifth anniversary on 8th September. This simply staggering moment in music definitely took her career to new heights. Although some critics were sniffy and sexist, there were those who saw the brilliance of Can’t Get You Out of My Head. Twenty-five years later and it remains this era-defining song. The early-2000s was a golden time for Pop, though I feel it gets defined by a slightly dirtier and more provocative type of Pop. Though Kylie Minogue’s 2001 smash is definitely sexy and bold, it is not the same as the Pop around her at that time. That sound is influential today and you can see that torch being carried, but people do not talk about Kylie Minogue’s 2000s work and how important that is. How many artists today are clearly indebted to her genius? Twenty-five years after Can’t Get You Out of My Head, few other songs have come along in Pop that are as instantly memorable. Kylie Minogue very much still a Pop queen in 2026. Can’t Get You Out of My Head is one of the greatest songs…

EVER recorded.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Static Dress

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Olli Appleyard

 

Static Dress

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THIS is a brilliant band…

IN THIS PHOTO: Olli Appleyard of Static Dress/PHOTO CREDIT: Olli Appleyard for NME

that you need to listen to. Static Dress released their album, injury episode, late last month. I will end with a review of that album. However, I will come to some chats first. In May, NME spoke with Static Dress’ lead, Olli Appleyard. NME note how “the Leeds quartet fight the fast fashion of the music industry with multimedia escapism and unflinching dedication to the art form”:

“The Leeds four-piece laid the first bricks upon their formation in 2019 and have since been called everything from art-hardcore to emo. As people tried to decode them, tracks like 2019’s hazy, Deftones-coded ‘Clean.’ and the throwback 2000s metalcore of ‘Courtney, Just Relax’, which appeared on their 2022 debut album ‘Rouge Carpet Disaster’, helped put them on the British heavy map. Soon, they were opening for Bring Me The Horizon and headlining tours in the USA, a nation whose cities currently dominate their streaming stats.

Such accolades are insignificant to Static Dress. Visionary-in-chief Appleyard is a purist, determined to solely make art for art’s sake. His considered yet dogged approach, where ideas often stew for years, enables the band to flesh out their concepts for maximum impact. Take March’s ‘A Live Death Display’ event: a secret, phone-free gathering in an untouched London cinema, where fans could play the band’s self-made Rouge Carpet Disaster: The Video Game upon arrival. A film was then screened, announcing their second album, ‘Injury Episode’, before the group hit the stage for a surprise gig.

“Creativity stems from limitations, struggle, and honestly, from working-class people” – Olli Appleyard

Moments before showtime, Appleyard turned to his bandmates – George Holding (bass), Sam Ogden (drums) and Vincent Weight (guitar) – as the four took stock of the fantasy they brought to life that night. He recalls the occasion not with cockiness, but a sense of conviction: “You can be bigger than my band, but you’re never going to do the things that my band’s capable of doing.” Behind the scenes, his desire to make moves of this calibre has been regularly shot down by risk-averse industry figures. But “when it pays off,” he tells NME, “there’s people patting you on the back who told you it was a stupid idea.

“People who work in music will be like, ‘Well, you didn’t hit this metric,’” he fumes, still livid about past experiences. “Measurements which people used to rely on so heavily for value, worth or position of a band now don’t mean anything anymore. The minute the [dominant] app – a creation that someone else controls – changes, the music industry loses all scope, meaning or understanding. It’s crazy how you can have absolutely no grasp on anything and have a job in this.”

ame terrifies Appleyard. It can breed toxic echo chambers – he cites Kanye West’s recent comeback attempt – and parasocial fan relationships. He praises Lewis Capaldi for “authentically” handling his fame, and empathises with Chappell Roan, who’s been torn apart for setting basic boundaries. “Someone will ask something of me, I’ll say, ‘I can’t right now,’ and they’ll scorch you online for not giving them what you wanted,” he says. Exercising his right to a guarded life should not undermine his genuine appreciation for Static Dress’ fanbase. “This isn’t transactional,” he stresses.

“I don’t want to be walked over. We’ve had people in the industry actively try to ruin us before” – Olli Appleyard

Appleyard vents these frustrations in ‘Injury Episode’. The storyline, he tells us, follows two sisters. Representing the perfect form of celebrity, they are objectified, driven over the edge and killed by “greedy” and “obsessive” townspeople. “The people cannot live without them, so they bring them back to life and create this amalgamation of both of them; they go, ‘Oh, that’s not what I want,’ and discard them.” The pair appear circled by paparazzi vultures on the album artwork, all signs of life drained from them.

Appleyard admits he “can’t keep up with the pace of the modern day” on the slow-burning alt-rock of ‘…Hospice’, the preceding lyric “engrave each moment / into a memory” resonating with him even more since his head injury. While many songs explore the wider points we’ve discussed, they also offer deeply personal snapshots of his own life. The ear-splitting ‘Nostalgia Kills’ tackles emotional addiction, the dichotomy of “the used and the user”, and the release he found in letting life take the wheel: “Close your eyes and enjoy the ride”.

The production on ‘Injury Episode’ is human and ugly, often soaking vocals in harsh distortion and capturing the erratic frenzy of four musicians in the room. It reclaims the studio in Static Dress’ fight against the rapid-fire “conveyor belt” of formulaic, polished music. “It makes no sense,” Appleyard mutters under his breath, refusing to name any specific culprits on the grounds that online spats only make problems worse. (He once experienced that first-hand with Machine Gun Kelly.) He’d rather lead by example, proving why the dedication, space and time to wholly serve the art form should be the only end goal.

“Creativity stems from limitations, struggle, and honestly, from working-class people,” he declares. “I can only resonate with people who try really hard to push the boat [out]. When it’s something built with time, nurture and passion put into it, I’m like, ‘Thank god.’” The album’s closing track nails this mindset, exploring why items made with the care of your own hands trump anything that could be purchased. “It’s finding the value in people’s time, rather than cost, money, or status”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Olli Appleyard for NME

Static Dress want to be the ultimate escapist band. In a world exclusive first interview, Kerrang! spoke with Olli Appleyard “for a passionate and brutally honest deep dive into the importance of staying true to yourself, never compromising on your vision, and keeping the magic of music alive…”:

“In a way, Static Dress can be understood as the antidote to disposable music culture. Their artistry transcends songs and albums; they’ve created an entire universe across lore-strewn, meticulously detailed music videos and a multitude of notably analogue formats from comic books (to accompany their 2021 EP Prologue) to a video game extending the world-building of 2022 debut Rouge Carpet Disaster.

Nothing is ever done the simple way. Instead of sharing a festival line-up on the grid, a task that could take seconds, Olli will print the poster out, tape it to the wall, photograph it, edit it and only then upload it. The band often tease announcements through cryptic puzzles; before telling the world of their album launch event, A Live Death Display (in which phones were banned, and saw fans queuing down the street), they sent fans to a mini-game in which they had to figure out how to walk over to a stack of CRT TVs – a signature of the Static Dress aesthetic – and push a big red button. Indicating that more was afoot, an updated version directed players from that same stack of TVs warning them ‘Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s there’ to another TV and the limousine from the recent human props video. Next to it was a safe with a four-digit code to crack.

In all of this, Olli is creating with pure intentions. When people invent ways to sully art with cheap, prescriptive routes to making money, it feels personal. He wants to lead by example and be the change he wants to see, even though he knows his intentions can be misread.

“In the past, my confidence in what I was doing got confused with arrogance to a lot of people, and I get it,” he says. “That wasn’t what I intended to do.”

Self-importance, this is not – it comes from a place of deep care. This is someone for whom music is everything, for whom it gave sanctuary and community. You’d be hard pressed to find a figure in all of the alternative world who cares as deeply as Olli does.

“For me, music should be about two things,” he suggests. “You’re either spreading awareness for something, talking about real topics – a band like Speed is a great example, raising money for shit, always helping people, and with the Download boycott [in 2024, against Barclays sponsoring the festival and their alleged links to arms companies that trade with Israel], they created real change.

“Or you've got bands who provide escapism. I think about younger me who just wanted to get away from everything all the time. I had a really, really, really horrible time just being myself – somewhere there is the 16-year-old me who absolutely doesn't fit anywhere, hates everything and was scared to go outside – and anything to take me away is awesome.

“The four of us, we all like very different things,” Olli says of his bandmates – guitarist Vin Weight, bassist George Holding and drummer Sam Ogden – “but the one thing we can all agree is the term ‘real band’. When there’s shit happening onstage, you can hear mistakes, you can hear things going wrong, I’m like, ‘Thank fucking god.’ When I turn up now and I see more laptops than members in your band [I think], ‘Oh no, this is just not good anymore.’”

Injury Episode is the antithesis of that. While it represents a refinement of Static Dress’ ideas, it relishes the unvarnished and imperfect, with the same rigorous attention to detail they’ve always had. They spent days just working on guitar tones. Sam – who attracts an enormous level of respect among his peers in the drum world – bulldozed through most of these songs in one take. There was no over-manicured editing on computers and all four members worked as a unit, under the gaze of producer Erik Bickerstaffe from Loathe, who also produced their debut. At some point, we also hear all of them sing”.

“I want to keep the magic of the music alive,” he says, not wishing to override it with his own dirty laundry. “I don’t feel like it’s the done thing anymore because social media [expects you] to lay all your cards out on the table, and it’s like, ‘Oh, are you depressed? You’ve got to tell the internet about it!’ I want to be my own person. I don't want to ever look holier than thou, because, unfortunately, I'm just human and so are rest of the guys.”

He’s spent enough time in the hardcore scene for the idea of band and fan being on an equal level to seep deep into his bones, and as such, it seems anathema to him to make anything about himself. When he suffered a head injury on tour in the U.S. while opening for Dying Wish in November, and had to miss a string of shows, sharing a video explaining his absence was a step outside his usual boundaries, even though he understood it was necessary when people had paid to see them. “That destroyed me inside.”

One-on-one, he’s often startlingly open. He’s strong-willed and unfiltered, resolute in his opinions, frank at all times. He’s funny and kind, even offering to carry K!’s heavy bags halfway across the café. He talks to people on the counters in coffee shops like this one, something he learned from Sam – “Just talk to anyone and life’s pretty good.” He wants to be generous with his time when fans approach and politely say hello. If you’ve ever wondered who the ‘real’ Olli Appleyard is, he’s right in front of you”.

Before ending with NME and their review of injury episode, The Line of Best Fit chatted with Olli Appleyard. It is amazing how Static Dress created this buzz and intrigue ahead of the release of their second album. The Line of Best Fit write how “some lucky fans managed to sneak a peek at injury episode by solving a cryptic mini-game. Winners were invited to an abandoned theatre, somewhere in central London, for a private screening of a self-directed short film. According to reports, the line to get in was a maze in itself”:

“After Static Dress first broke news feeds in 2019, all anyone could talk about were memories from 20 years ago. With a black-and-white wardrobe and dye jobs that deserved the cover of Hot Topic’s mailorder catalogue, the band was widely associated with Gen Z’s Myspace revival. However, press are still splitting hairs over where they belonged in the scene. During the rollout for injury episode, they’ve been called post-hardcore, metalcore, screamo, alt rock, alt-pop, and simply alt. So which is it?

“I disagree with the revival tag,” Appleyard says, settling the debate. “The only thing we are is an emo band. We want to make music that’s emotional, intense, and as dramatic as it can possibly be.”

While intended for more mature audiences, injury episode doesn’t skimp on drama. Like a classic noir, the album opens mid-downpour, replaying the famous last words from Static Dress’ major label debut, “So close to being free, why would I stop now?” Just don't go in expecting a shot-for-shot remake. “It’s a lot darker,” Appleyard says in reference to its visual cues. “I wanted to bring in the sepia tone of a film like Batman Begins. It gives off this horrible dynamic that really shines through.” Once a permanent fixture, the band’s lime green wallpapering has been replaced by granite columns and marble tile. Even their trademark handcam is toned down. In the video for “human props”, flash bulbs pop against soft oppressive lighting, an effect that contrasts nicely with the seamless transition between Story of the Year at their absolute fieriest and the drowning despair of Portishead.

“I don’t want to lose our identity,” Appleyard clarifies. “Using CRT and handcam footage made us stand out. But I don’t want that to be our brand forever. I want everything to keep moving forward.”

“To be honest, at times, it’s pretty hellish,” Appleyard answers when questioned about working within the industry at-large. Before anyone twists his words, let’s be clear: Static Dress don’t take their success for granted. Signing with Roadrunner and now Sumerian presents plenty of perks (like, say, a tour with Poppy?). But given how fast their font size has grown on festival posters, the band are wise to exercise caution. “We’ve seen how fame and celebrity affects and destroys the lives of people we now consider our peers. As much as it’s great, there is a really ugly side to it as well.” Dishonest journos, piggish execs, and other shady inside men are brought to light during injury episode. “There are a lot of callouts on this record,” he says. Funnily enough, Appleyard has the copycats to thank for inspiring “the best song we’ve ever written.” Crafted with equal parts grace and guile, “dull blade disguise” rips away the veneer of artists who’ve followed them too closely.

“We’ve constantly had our style bitten,” Appleyard vents. “I create for myself because I enjoy it, but there are people who take from us to survive because they’re inauthentic. They act like friends, but the second they’re not taking from us anymore, they’re no longer hitting us up. We’ve dealt with a lot of people in the music industry who’ve used us.”

Bad actors behind the scenes aren’t the only ones at fault on injury episode. Static Dress raise issue with today’s assembly-line production. “We’re making robot music,” Appleyard says. “No one is coming up with anything new or original. Everyone’s just getting lower and lower in tuning. It’s gotten to the point where guitars sound like machines.” In splitting with this trend, Static Dress refused to entertain any studio trickery. The album wasn’t played to a grid or overdubbed to death, making it impossible to recreate live without backing tracks. Often, songs were recorded in single takes. “When people refer to us as nostalgic, I think they’re just remembering when alternative music sounded like it was made by real people.” For some older millennials, featuring Underoath recalls the raging hormones of Christian summer camp (okay, maybe that’s just me talking), but “Nostalgia Kills” severs all ties to the past. Riding the rails between math rock, mallcore, and nu-metal, it’s a thrilling ride that ends with the biggest breakdown of either band’s career”.

Reviewing an album that is “deliberately more intense listening experience than their breakout debut”, Static Dress have delivered one of this year’s best albums with injury episode. NME provided a glowing four-star review. The absolutely brilliant Static Dress have some U.K. dates coming in July. They then head to the U.S. for a run of incredible dates. Go and see them live if you can:

“Static Dress are easily one of the most ambitious rock bands around today. They introduced fans to second album ‘Injury Episode’ via an interactive art exhibit at a vintage London cinema and have put on a series of pop-up, phone free gigs that go against almost every rule in creating hype. Last week, they shared a terrifying survival horror game that ties the lore of the new record to 2022’s ‘Rogue Carpet Disaster’. “You can be bigger than my band, but you’re never going to do the things that my band’s capable of doing,” vocalist Olli Appleyard told NME recently during their appearence on The Cover.

That unwavering self-belief and creative vision can be felt across ‘Injury Episode’, a frantic 15-track album that drags the scrappy fury of ‘00s post-hardcore into 2026. For newcomers, the genre is a stylistic mix of brutal aggression, melody and tender emotion that inspired early My Chemical Romance, Bring Me The Horizon and Taking Back Sunday records, before they all moved onto something more arena friendly.

Static Dress glance at a similar path with ‘…hospice’. The searing grief-stricken track might pack an emotional gut-punch as Appleyard reflects on loss, but it’s also impossibly catchy and made for cathartic singalongs in festival fields. For the most part though, ‘Injury Episode’ is an unapologetic collection of screamed vocals, crushing riffs and chaotic energy that couldn’t care less about daytime radio playlists or TikTok virality. The album starts with a janky computer keyboard and the whispered mantra “so close to being free, why would I stop now?” that opens the door to the emotional purge and soaring escapism that follows.

‘Nostalgia Kills’ is an unrelenting assault of post-hardcore that features influential scene legends Underoath while ‘Dull Blade Disguise’ echoes Welsh emo titans Funeral For A Friend at their most cutting, with the repeated ask of “Are you satisfied?”. The rugged mosh pit anthem of ‘Questioning’, the playful rage of ‘Classic. Death. Pose.’ and the aching heartache of ‘Adult Diamond’ are undeniably Static Dress.

The band are tighter across ‘Injury Episode’. It’s the first record all four members of the band (Appleyard, bassist George Holding, drummer Sam Ogden and guitarist Vincent Weight) have written on after spending the past few years touring the world together. Appleyard pushes his vocals beyond the expected clean and screamed vocals too. Hushed warnings, distorted yells and guttural roads give the knotted record a theatrical edge.

This is a deliberately more intense, more complex record than ‘Rogue Carpet Disaster’, one that feels like Static Dress are trying to connect more deeply with whoever’s listening. It’s a fearless approach to guitar music that’s more interested in storytelling than mass appeal”.

I shall end things there. If you are unaware of Static Dress, this is a Leeds band that you really do need to know. The phenomenal injury episode is “music made not to be just heard but felt. It’s unvarnished, conceptual, bleeding emotion from every vein. Surely, this has to be a cult classic in waiting”. Those are words from Kerrang! in their review. It is evident that this band are going to…

CONQUER the globe.

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Follow Static Dress

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: The Shirelles

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

IN THIS PHOTO: The Shirelles’ Beverley Lee, Doris Kenner-Jackson, Shirley Alston and Addie 'Micki' Harris/PHOTO CREDIT: Gilles Petard/Redferns 

 

The Shirelles

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ONE major reason for…

IN THIS PHOTO: Shirley Owens, Beverly Lee, Addie Harris, and Doris Coley, of the Shirelles, circa 1968.PHOTO CREDIT: CSU Archives /Everett/Alamy

including The Shirelles in this The Great American Songbook is that they were an influence on The Beatles. The legendary Liverpool band were fans of girl groups of the 1950s and 1960s. Alongside The Ronettes and The Marvelttes, they were not only impactful on The Beatles and other groups who came through in the early-1960s. The Shirelles’ impact on girl groups who followed is immeasurable: “The influence and impact of The Shirelles was massive – not only did they lay the blueprint for future female stars to follow, but their crossing of racial demographics in both the US and UK, before that of other Motown acts, has been noted as reflecting the early success of the Civil Rights Movement. They have since been awarded multiple honours for their contributions to music, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and named one of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time by Rolling Stone in 2004”. Before ending with a playing of their essential tracks, here is some biography about the iconic girl group:

“How They Started Off

All of the band members went to the same high school, Passaic High School New Jersey, which is where they met each other. They formed the band in 1957 and during one of their rehearsals in the school gym, one of their teachers suggested that they should enter the school talent show. They were interested in the idea and decided to write their own song for the show. That was how their first single I Met Him on a Sunday was created. Their performance in the talent show was dazzling and they became instant sensations.

One of their ardent fans at the time was Mary Greenberg, daughter of Florence Greenberg. She insisted that the girls should meet her mother who owned her owned music record at the time. At first the group was reluctant, but eventually they agreed to do so. They auditioned in the Greenbergs’ living room and managed to capture the heart of Florence Greenberg who went on to sign them to Tiara Records. This marked the beginning of their journey to fame.

Studio Records

The Shirelles kicked off their career at Tiara Records. Their first single was released by Tiara but licensed by Decca Records. However, The Shirelles were not able to command the fame that they had hoped for with Decca Records. Florence Greenberg was also dissatisfied with the performance of Tiara and Decca Records. As a result, she decided to start up another record studio, Scepter Records.

At Scepter Records, Florence Greenberg approached experienced songwriter Luther Dixon to help out with the girls’ music careers. They released hit after hit. The first song that they released with Scepter was Tonight’s the Night, that was co-written by Shirley Owens, the group’s leader. It went on to reach number 39 in the charts in 1960 and ultimately propelled them to fame. Will You Love Me Tomorrow was their first song to hit the top of the charts and among the seven top 20 hits that The Shirelles managed to produce. These two songs were recently selected by Rolling Stone in its list of the greatest songs of all time.

Legal Problems

The Shirelles were famous in the United States and even started to tour internationally.

In 1964, The Shirelles were told that there was no money left in the Greenberg trust fund.

The Shirelles were famous throughout the United States and even started to tour internationally. In 1963, Dixon left to work at Capitol and his position was taken over by Stan Green. The first song that he produced with the girls was Foolish Little Girl which debuted at number four in the pop charts. However, subsequent recordings were a lot weaker.

In 1964, The Shirelles were told that there was no money left in the Greenberg trust fund. This fund was created to protect the band’s earnings. Given their surge in popularity and sudden lack of money, The Shirelles decided to leave Scepter. However, a court injunction prevented them from doing so. On the other hand, Scepter Records continued to release material from the band’s back catalogue, with no commercial success. When the legal problems concluded, The Shirelles decided to remain at Scepter for another four years.

The Beginning Of The End

By 1968, The Shirelles had not produced any song that had made it into the top 20. In 1968, one of the group’s members, Doris, left to raise a family. This left The Shirelles as a trio. The group then signed with United Artists Records in 1970 and later RCA in 1971 – their last record label.

Doris later returned to the group and they continued performing together until June 10, 1982 when Mickey Harris died of a heart attack while they were performing a show at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta.

This incident broke the band for good and the girls went their own way. In 1989, the original Shirelles group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Throughout the 1990s, there were at least three ex-Shirelle bands, each with one of the original members”.

I absolutely love The Shirelles, and their influence on girl groups and music in general is staggering. They do not get talked about enough. The New Jersey quartet definitely deserve a salute. I have compiled a twenty-song playlist of their best songs to end. To show just how incredible they were. One of their finest songs is their rendition (they recorded it first in 1960. Gerry Goffin wrote the lyrics and Carole King composed the song. She included the track in her 1971 masterpiece, Tapestry) of Will You Love Me Tomorrow. When it comes to the answer to that question, it is clear thar there is…

NO doubt about that.

FEATURE: Flower of the Mountain: What Should Be the Next Kate Bush Book?

FEATURE:

 

 

Flower of the Mountain

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

What Should Be the Next Kate Bush Book?

__________

IT may well already be…

in publication or about to be released. There may have been some self-published Kate Bush books but, in terms of books this year, I have not seen anything announced. Perhaps there will be some later in the year. It has been quiet on the articles front. Normally, you would get something about her. Last year did see three of her studio albums celebrate big birthdays. Never for Ever turned forty-five. Hounds of Love turned forty. Aerial turned twenty. There was a bit more activity and necessity last year. It has been unusually quiet, so I wonder if there is not a call for a Kate Bush book now. Or people suspect that she might announce a new album very soon, in which case there would be spreads, articles and books to coincide with that. That is fair enough. Even so, artists get books written about them all the time, and most of them are not provoked by an anniversary or anything specific. An author takes a particular angle or focuses on a particular part of an artist’s career. With Kate Bush, we had Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book on Hounds of Love. Max Cookney’s Kate Bush: On Location is a brilliant book. I think a Netflix Kate Bush documentary is in the works. There have been a couple of smaller documentaries released fairly recently. It is a period where Kate Bush is still very much active and relevant. Kate Bush’s video/short film Little Shrew (Snowflake) recently picked up an award:

“The animated short film, Little Shrew, that Kate directed, inspired by the war in Ukraine, is now a prize-winner! The four-minute film, which was released in late 2024, picked up the Animation prize at this year’s Carmarthen Bay Film Festival in Wales.

Kate has expressed her delight on the win in a short statement: “How wonderful! Little Shrew is incredibly excited that she’s been awarded such a huge honour. Thank you so very much from her, myself and all the team. We are over the moon!”.

I think I misgendered Little Shrew when writing a feature about the song, but I love how that incredible and powerful character is a she! Also, the fact Kate Bush is delighted to get awards after all these decades. It always means so much to her. It also shows that her work and music is very much highly regarded and important.

I have not seen any announcements of new Kate Bush books. Is she an artist harder to write about, or is there another reason? The Beatles have had thousands of books written about them, and we get a few a year. Or more. I do feel like there is scope and potential for more Kate Bush coverage. In terms of her modern influence, perhaps that will be covered in a documentary. Though a book that gets interviews from artists influenced by Kate Bush and their experiences of her music would be amazing. I have said before how very few of her albums have made it into books. The Dreaming and The Kick Inside were covered by Laura Shenton, though both could well fit into the 33 1/3 series. And Aerial. I also feel that Never for Ever gets overlooked. I feel that there is a lot to write about Bush’s third studio album. Despite there being some great biographies written about Kate Bush, there are ways we can be forensic. Max Cookney’s Kate Bush: On Location is brilliant at highlighting the spaces and places Kate Bush was in and how they connect with her music and legacy. So many different musicians have played with her. How they added to her work. Writing about them. I am still doing a series where I explore characters in Kate Bush’s work and discuss themes connected to them. I feel something similar to that in a book would be awesome. There are superfans, tribute acts and those who have been with Kate Bush since the start. It is wonderful we have documentaries and podcasts where they can get together, but rarely do they make it into a book. I have also said how it has been a long time since a photobook came out. In terms of filling gaps without going too far or producing a book with no merit or purpose, I think that there are many ideas. It would be a shame if 2026 saw no new Kate Bush book. Or very few.

I am not sure whether Kate Bush needs to grant permission. I don’t think so. Such an important and genius artist should have more written about her. You can’t force a moment or a book. Writing one has to be earned and justified, I think. An interesting and original idea. I don’t think any new biographies will be written, though this is not to say that everything about her career and life has been covered. A book could cover a specific period. Perhaps pre-The Kick Inside and that time before 1978. The road to the debut. I do feel that we will get a Kate Bush album this or next year. It is a prediction, as you can never truly know when things will arrive when it comes to Kate Bush. That is one of the great pleasures! It gives impetus to new works. I feel the past four or so years have been among the most exciting and important of her career, and yet only articles written about it. Icons like David Bowie have had books published about them this year. A couple of Madonna books coming. The summer marks fifty years since Kate Bush finalised her record deal with EMI and it sort of began her career. It would be another catalyst, if any were needed, for authors to get writing. By the time you read this, something might well be announced. There are so many ideas I have, though I don’t think I am a good enough writer and have the time to commit to a book. Will a new Kate Bush fanzine or a one-off fanzine edition be published at any point? I am sort of itching for some new text. Having a Kate Bush book on the shelf later this year (or next) would be something all fans…

WOULD love to see.

FEATURE: Reasons to Be Hopeful: Why a Recent Event at The Trouble Club Put Things Into Focus for Me

FEATURE:

 

 

Reasons to Be Hopeful

IN THIS PHOTO: The phenomenal author, journalist and broadcaster Caitlin Moran joined fellow queen, the journalist, author, broadcaster and podcaster Bryony Gordon onstage for The Trouble Club on Wednesday, 20th May, 2026. Her upcoming book, How to Be Hopeful, is released on 17th September, 2026/PHOTO CREDIT: Caitlin Moran

 

Why a Recent Event at The Trouble Club Put Things Into Focus for Me

__________

I am not hopeful…

PHOTO CREDIT: ClickerHappy/Pexels

at the moment. Not by a long shot! Though I think I will be…soon. On a personal level, I am living with a spike in a mental health downturn and, coupled with that, huge job dissatisfaction and depression, which has created a feeling that I have not had since I was a child and dreaded the Sunday night theme of Antiques Roadshow. A jaunty theme that played on Sunday evenings let me know – with brutal and tweed-blazered glee – that school was tomorrow. Not that I hated school, but it was a deep knot in the pit of my stomach. That is how I feel now. A cocktail of insomnia, depression and a real unhappiness in a current role. Whereas a decades-running antiques show on the BBC was the catalyst for a Sunday evening crisis and churn in the stomach, in 2026, it is un-soundtracked. A solemn silence that gives way to a near-tears numbness. That I almost need to brace myself for. Though I can do something about that. On a local level, the streets where I live and walked today (25th May) are festooned and engulfed with cans, broken glass and assorted litter. A result of Arsenal lifting the Premier League trophy for the first time in over two decades – and the only time they will for the next twenty-or-so, let’s be honest!-, the response to a moment of collective joy manifested itself in a disrespectful and drunken show of idiocy and inconsideration that means on the hottest day of this year, local refuge collectors have their work cut out! Or, as it is a bank holiday, it will probably be worked on tomorrow. Which means the streets where I live and beyond – Finsbury Park to Highbury – look absolutely awful! Football fans are bloody awful when it comes to littering, fighting, causing mayhem and generally being loud and obnoxious. Especially men. Not too tarnish them all, but why does competitive sport do this to people?! On a national level, as I type this on a day when temperatures in the capital have well exceeded thirty degrees centigrade, there is no urgency or alarm. Some may say it is a heatwave and it is normal. There is nothing normal about the temperature being this high in late-May! It is a sign of climate crisis that should alarm us and spur us into action. And yet, when I hear the news and the forecast being read, there is talk of this being a record day in terms of heat for May. Almost like it is an achievement, rather than something that should chill every one of us to the core (there is a little bit of information from the BBC about the climate crisis, though it is buried away).

IN THIS PHOTO: Cate Blanchett/PHOTO CREDIT: Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker

Beyond that, there have been news stories and things happening that has also provided a body-blow to any sense of hope. On a less serious and appealing way, actress Cate Blanchett said this regarding her experience on film sets: “I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning,” said Cate Blanchett at the Cannes film festival, criticising the pervasive sexism of the film industry, almost a decade after the #MeToo movement. “It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting” she said, referencing #MeToo, the campaign that aimed to raise awareness of sexual abuse against women after the bombshell allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein. “There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me,” Blanchett said. “And the so-called average woman on the street, person on the street, is saying ‘me too’. Why does that get shut down?” In 2018, when she was president of the jury in Cannes, Blanchett took part in a red-carpet protest. She and 81 other women appeared on the steps of the Palais des Festivals, representing the total number of female directors who had been selected for the Cannes competition lineup, compared with the 1,866 male directors who had been selected over the same period. “I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same,” she said. “You just have to brace yourself slightly, and I’m used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace. I think it has an effect on the work,” she added”. In this article from The Guardian , the headline ran: “Films more likely to star an actor called Chris or a talking animal than a woman over 60, study finds”. They write how the brilliant “Emma Thompson (is) among voices supporting anti-ageism campaign, which has uncovered striking findings in top-grossing UK films over past three years”. From this, we can see that Hollywood is still massively ageist. Especially against women. Older men might not helm many films, especially bigger box office draws, though the reality for women is far bleaker. They are not deemed bankable, desirable, important, worthy. A sense that they will tank a film or put cinema-goers off if they are the stars. I have great admiration for the brilliant younger actresses who are among the most talented we have seen in generations. However, this idea that it is only young women who can star. If you are a woman over sixty then you are seen as past-it or somehow overage. These brilliant women over sixty have that experience and talent. Yet so much of the focus is on appearance, sexual desirability, a ‘cool factor’, or this ageist bias that is misogynistic and insulting. How there needs to be a new #MeToo movement in Hollywood – though Cate Blanchett also observed how the movement got killed very quickly.

IN THIS PHOTO: Emma Thompson/PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Marsland/WireImage

It is the same in music. Not as extreme as in Hollywood, but ageism still very much rife. One of music’s greatest voices and humans, Kylie Minogue, bravely revealed that she had a second cancer diagnosis in 2021, after receiving treatment for breast cancer in 2005. She is planning ahead to a new tour and there will be celebrations later in the year when Fever – one of her masterpiece – turns twenty-five. Can’t Get You Out of My Head turns twenty-five. The fifty-seven-year-old arguably at her peak. Or this new era that shows she is as vital and extraordinary as ever! And yet, her name has not popped up when it comes to major festivals and their headline acts. I often rant about massive gender equality on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage. Where as Minogue last year? Why no headline slot at Reading & Leeds this year? Only one (again: one) woman over the age of forty has headlined Glastonbury in its history. I don’t know how many have at Reading & Leeds, though ageism still hugely affects women in music. Also, briefly, go and watch the Kylie documentary on Netflix. as it has won a slew of hugely positive reviews because of Minogue’s openness and honesty. A portrait of one of the all-time greats in music. In terms of the stations they can be played on and how the media – and I am culpable to an extent – focuses on new, young female voices and there is far less time and effort spotlighting the brilliance of women over forty. Misogyny and sexism rife and blooming through the music industry. From a lack of women in professional studios to incidents of sexual abuse and assault, an industry I love so much is also in need of a revolution or reaction. And it is always women who have to shout and lead the initiative. Bar a very small percentage of men who will ally themselves, it is always, always women. The ones who are victimised, abused, rejected, overlooked and marginalised are the ones who have to fight for justice and change! And women are dominating music. It has been the case for years, yet, say, from 2019 to now, most of the best and most important albums and tours are created by women. That was the case last year; it will be the case this year. Most of the finest and most exciting new artists are women. However, what should be reflected in playlist dominance, festival glory and this affect where the whole industry changes – whether from a patriarchy to a matriarchy, or basically treating women with respect! – and women throughout are giving their flowers, rights and respect, it is not happening at all. Artists like Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor) talking about it and her ongoing experiences. The misogyny through the industry. Award ceremonies like the Ivor Novellos male-heavy. Most major award ceremonies struggling to affect gender equality or, in some cases, taking a step back. Most big radio stations still have male-heavy playlists.

There might not be an easy answer or quick change. Though there needs to be greater urgency from men. So so few talking about these issues on stage or in interviews. A one-sided fight almost. Why should issues created by men be tackled by women?! This current situation leaves me feeling lost and without much hope. Though I am hopeful that, in years to come, things will drastically improve. We are seeing small steps at the moment, though far too major problems and barriers remain. Women over forty very much face an uphill struggle regarding playlisting, bookings and getting column inches. Not to mention the lack of options for women who have children and want to continue their career and tour!  These are words  that we should never have to read: “The attorney general is to review the sentencing of three teenage boys who raped two girls in separate attacks, after criticism their sentences were too lenient. The boys, two aged 15 and one 14, were not given custodial sentences for the attacks in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in 2024 and 2025. They "brazenly filmed" the rapes on their phones and later shared some of the footage online. The teenagers were given youth rehabilitation orders (YRO) and walked out of court with 10 rape convictions between them”. In the sense that boys who filmed a rape and bragged about it should not be let off with what is essential a mild slap on the wrist! The traumatised girl who was raped said the sentence and outcome was like a rock smashing into her face. It goes to show that the justice systems is set up and run by men. It is there to benefit men! Women and girls have fewer legal rights. This recent article is well worth a read. It is horrifying that we live in a world where we have to campaign for women and girls’ basic human rights. That they get justice. Rape cases should never ever be almost trivialised with such insanely lenient repercussions for the perpetrators. This makes me lose all hope too. Again, there will be change and improvement, though it mostly women again who will have to do the work and battle to make things better.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Trouble Club’s CEO and owner, Ellie Newton/PHOTO CREDIT: Ioana Marinca

From personal stress to global mess, what reason is there to be hopeful?! A recent highlight was attending The Trouble Club. Run by CEO and owner, Ellie Newton, she has just made the Forbes 30 Under 30 List for 2026, “The Trouble Club is a women's community dedicated to meaningful conversation, connection, and curiosity. Its current leader took over at 23 during the COVID-19 pandemic, inheriting $80,000 in debt, 70 members, and just $10,500 in annual revenue. Since then, the club has grown to more than 2,300 members and has brought in $1.7 million, including $670,000 in 2025. The Trouble Club has facilitated hundreds of thousands of conversations across politics, culture, and society as it seeks to grow its two locations to a larger global network”. You can follow The Trouble Club on Instagram. I have been a member over three years, and I cannot recommend it highly enough! They hold dinners, breakfasts, book clubs, social events and, above all, their brilliant talks and events. Where women across the media, politics, the arts and beyond speak (my current wish-list for speakers includes Michaela Coel, Kathy Burke, Miriam Margolyes, Dr. Myriam François, Angela Rayner, Lauren Laverne, Gillian Anderson, Tracey Emin, and Florence Welch). Last Wednesday - 20th May -, the most memorable event I have been to was a conversation with Bryony Gordon and Caitlin Moran. Hosted by Ellie Newton, she was her usual phenomenal best (not that she ever needs an executive assistant, but that would be a dream job as she is someone whose stock will continue to rise. Such an inspiration). And how this event made such an impact is that I (and everyone else) left with a real and true feeling of hope. I always love being at Trouble Club events and being surrounded by the amazing members. There are a few men at the events, but it is largely women who attend.

A couple of the questions at the Q&A (held at the end of the interview) were brilliant! I can’t remember their names, but one of the few men at St Marylebone Parish Church, London for the event, was very funny and asked a great question. A woman threw a question back as Caitlin Moran that she had asked Paul McCartney years ago. Stunning the former Beatle, Moran asked whose face he would replace his own with if he were ever in a car crash and that was an option. Or would he keep his own? To note: McCartney weas horrified and left the interview but later felt bad and invited Moran to his house to do sleeve notes for his then-new album. She felt bad, or that she would offend him/make things worse, and declined his kind offer. Cheekily posing that question to Moran was genius! It was a joyful evening, not least because of the friendship and love between Bryony Gordon and Caitlin Moran. How frank and open they were. Gordon’s new book, People Pleaser, is one you should buy. On 17th September, I will be racing down to Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus to buy a copy of Caitlin Moran’s How to Be Hopeful: “Not getting enough sleep, doomscrolling on your phone, and feeling acid anxiety every time you watch the news? You’re not alone. One morning, Caitlin Moran lay in bed and realised: she had finally reached Peak Despair. The point where, in books and movies, the heroine decides to move to a remote farmhouse, walk an ancient, 600-mile pathway, or adopt a baby hare. The moment where someone goes on a quest to find … hope. But this - this is not that kind of book. Caitlin tried - but it turns out remote Welsh farmhouses are really expensive. No-one with a job can walk 600 miles. And it’s incredibly hard to get access to baby hares in Crouch End. And so, Caitlin decides instead to go on a domestic quest. To see if you can stay in the same house, in the same neighbourhood, but feel better about the frantic modern world by trying to make better days. Leaving social media, eschewing 24/7 news for local newspapers, sitting on buses without headphones, and listening to what people are really saying. Picking litter, donating blood, rewilding a garden, and the hardest thing of all - learning to fall back in love with the world again. Over the course of a year, Caitlin finds that life can be radically transformed when you rebel against the news cycle and algorithms that want to keep us angry, adrenalied, and anxious. You can’t change the world - but you can change your days. And, once you’ve changed your days, maybe you could change the world. Just a little bit. Being hopeful is a decision. How To Be Hopeful is the diary of how one person made that change”. It is almost like a blur taking in everything that was discussed at the event but, in such a gorgeous venue and surrounded by incredible women – and a few men too -, I came away very much feeling truly hopeful. Bryony Gordon was absolutely brilliant, and something Caitlin Moran said put everything into perspective. About keeping your side of the street tidy and clean. How there are big issues and horrible things happening. And we shouldn’t ignore them. But just take care of you and those close to you. A year where you live hopefully and do little things that are productive and positive. The issues of the world will still be there, but by changing your own days, it will make you more hopeful about things in general.

Apologies if I am butchering that – luckily, Caitlin Moran will more than likely not see this! -, but I have booked a ticket to see her at St Mary's Church Marylebone. I would consider myself to be a pretty ardent (is that the right word?!) feminist, though not one that is vocal and as proactive as I should be. As Caitlin Moran said, introverts and those who might be neurodivergent for instance, want to sit at the laptop with a cup of tea and might not want to do a podcast or be extroverted. It is harder for me in that sense. One reason why I do not do regular Kate Bush podcasts (though I will in January 2028 for fiftieth anniversary celebrations and, as Caitlin Moran briefly sung a bit of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights – and rudely had her microphone cut! -, she is someone who would provide real depth into the song’s brilliance and legacy) is because I am quite introverted. So I write as much as I can and I try to make a difference that way. Though I am committed and compelled to do more. Whether signing a petition, writing to my M.P., joining a protest or doing whatever I can to make a difference, it is often hindered by a lack of hope. That lethargy. I was revitalised by that brilliant conversation between Caitlin Moran and Bryony Gordon (and Ellie Newton). Though I am still very much fearing turning up to work tomorrow and I am appalled by the news and ageism/misogyny blighting the film and music industries, I do need to find a way through. Or a way or living more hopefully! It is amazing how something as minor as attending a Trouble Club event can shift things so drastically. This is very much a feature to promote them and become a member, but it was also a way for me to exorcise something. Or try to get stuff off of my chest. Exciting events ahead. Emma-Louise Boynton on Thursday (28th May) at The Ministry. That will be spectacular, as I have seen her speak for The Trouble Club before, and she is so engaging, thought-provoking, articulate, compelling and phenomenal. I wanted to finish by saluting Caitlin Moran, Bryony Gordon, Ellie Newton and The Trouble Club, as they have impacted me at a time when I did need a reason to be hopeful. And I have! I am confident that things for me will (slowly, mind) improve, I also have my fingers crossed that, in the wider world, things turn…

A lot more hopeful.