FEATURE: expectations: Does Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love Stand Among the Best Albums of the Century?

FEATURE:

 

 

expectations

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan McGinley for DAZED

 

Does Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love Stand Among the Best Albums of the Century?

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WE are…

twenty-six years into this century. In terms of the best albums of the century, thee are sites who have selected their choices. Rolling Stone chose their best albums of the century last year. 250 in their feature. The Guardian produced their list in 2019. Paste published a list last year. There are some differences between them and, of course, it is subjective. However, I do think that there are some repeats. Those albums that are definitely the greatest of this century. In my list, Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters will be up there with Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Perhaps Radiohead would be in there too. There has been a lot of competition the past decade. So many tremendous albums released. Not only is Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love the best album of this year. It is also strong enough to compete for the best album of this century. I shall come to some reviews of the astonishing third album from the California-born artist. I don’t think that it would be an exaggeration to say that you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love could sit alongside the very best of this century. A work that not only has stunned and blown people away now. It will endure for years to come. You do wonder just how far Olivia Rodrigo can go. All three of her studio albums have been enormously acclaimed. There is something about you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love that surpasses 2021’s SOUR and 2023’s GUTS. Those two albums are tremendous. Not only is you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love the sound of an artist at the top of her game and at her most confident. In terms of its sheer quality, Olivia Rodrigo’s third studio album is absolutely among the best albums we have heard this century. Some will argue against my assertion. Critical reaction to you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love has been phenomenal. The test of time will be if people are talking about the album years from now. I do think that we are going to be heralding the album as a masterpiece in years to come.

I want to move to a recent interview with Olivia Rodrigo. This is an artist who is highly beloved. Very grounded and an idol for so many people, there is so much rightful admiration for this incredible artist. DAZED chatted with Olivia Rodrigo. They say how she “embraces her ‘big girl’ era on her new record, an exuberant account of the promise and pitfalls of falling in love”:

“Olivia Rodrigo is growing up. While she’s still the same young woman with big feelings and a penchant for babydoll dresses, the 23-year-old appears much more self-assured than the anxious adolescent of SOUR and GUTS when we meet to discuss her new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. (Ironically, she seems happier too.) She’s speaking to me from her native Los Angeles, her cherubic face beaming as she tells me about her morning: mainly interviews and signing vinyls ahead of the much-anticipated release. The record is about her first “adult relationship” – likely her romance with English actor Louis Partridge, rumoured to have ended in late 2025. She tells me she finished making the record in March. “I’m still so close to it,” she says, adding that she’s ready to put it out into the world now. “I’m excited for it to not be ‘mine’ any more.”

Are there any new experiences you’ve had since GUTS that you’ve written about on you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love?

Olivia Rodrigo: This album is about my first time being in an adult relationship; it’s me discovering what romantic love looks like in real time. I’ve been in relationships before that were really exciting and tumultuous in a teenage way, but this was my first time being in a real, “big girl” relationship. And when you’re in an intimate relationship, it holds up a mirror and shows you parts of yourself that you would never normally see. That was an endless source of inspiration – something that I’m still mining.

Was it challenging to write about love from a more joyful place?

Olivia Rodrigo: For sure. That was the initial challenge of the album. Fiona Apple once said, ‘When I’m happy, why would I want to stop what I’m doing and sit down at the piano?’ which I think is funny and very true. But all of the best love songs or poems have an element of sadness or longing or fear in them. There’s even an element of anxiety in “drop dead” – like, ‘Oh God, I hope this person likes me.’ Even in our most joyous moments, there’s always this thought in the back of your head: ‘Is this gonna last forever?’ That’s the dichotomy of life. The scale is always balancing itself out.

You seem pretty well-adjusted for a girl so famous. What do you do to stay grounded?

Olivia Rodrigo: The people you hang around with are important. My friends are really honest with me sometimes – they’ll just be like, ‘No, that’s not good, don’t do that.’ And I have really awesome parents, too. I think I lucked out on the parent lottery. They have always been a really safe, stable resource for me. I also just really love what I do. I think that, as long as it comes from a place of passion and excitement and not from a place of ‘I need to do this so people like me’, that’s the recipe for success and happiness. I try to remember that that’s what it’s really all about”.

I do want to get to a few of the reviews for you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. You can get some perspective as to why this album has made such a huge impact. Definitely the best album of 2026, it is also equal to the best of the century. Rolling Stone UK provided their take on the new Olivia Rodrigo album. We are seeing this icon in the making. People hate the ‘icon’ word, but in terms of artists who are going to endure for decades and are growing stronger with every album, Rodrigo is a modern-day great. She has released an album I feel will resonate for so long because people can identify with it. It will not age or seem like a product of its time. The songwriting so strong that it can challenge the strongest albums we have seen in the twenty-first century:

“Proust called love reciprocal torture, Bukowski said it was stranger than grass on fire, and Olivia Rodrigo admitted it was fucking embarrassing. Yet on ‘Drop Dead’, the opening cut from her new album, here she is in free fall, heart on her sleeve, ready to risk everything as hope and possibility flicker over a magical night — poets, philosophers, and past lessons be damned. The song is a pure dopamine rush, built on heart-thudding percussion and glowing synths, the thrill of romance and anticipation ramping up with each euphoric line: “Kiss me, and I might drop dead.”

This could well be the giddiest we’ve ever heard Rodrigo, who wasn’t afraid to pack her blockbuster albums Sour and Guts with punky, pissed-off energy and wildly relatable, angst-filled anthems. For her third release, it might have seemed like she was ready for a simpler, googly-eyed lover-girl era — except, come on, we all know she’s too witty, too self-aware, and just too talented a songwriter to go with rose-colored confessions about a new relationship.

The title was one clue: You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love makes it clear that this project is a complex emotional ride, one that’ll turn platitudes and presumptions about love on their head. There were sonic Easter eggs dotting “Drop Dead,” which was also the first single, like a reference to the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” and the hazy fuzz of guitars that she and longtime producer Dan Nigro went for, conjuring New Wave gods and the image of a lonely-hearted Robert Smith (more on him in a bit). All of it sets up something closer to real life as Rodrigo moves through the full arc of a relationship — the dreamy honeymoon phase, the first hints of conflict, the crushing goodbye — to achieve her most complete, musically adventurous album yet.

First, though, fireworks. The initial songs capture that feeling of falling in real time (Rodrigo has said the album is about her first “adult” relationship; many fans think she’s referring to actor Louis ­Partridge, whom she dated for more than a year). She’s still on a high on ‘Stupid Song’, a track that seems like a blissful ballad before saturated Eighties chords pipe in. ‘Honeybee’ is a sleepier cut that dips the energy that’s been rising, but it does serve as a tender moment that establishes the deep extent of her emotions. But then anxieties start build — and if there’s something Rodrigo does well, it’s dive into her insecurities with a mix of humour and honesty. There’s a mopey synth party on ‘Maggots 4 Brains’, a snapshot of the yearning and neediness that takes over when there’s distance from the person she loves: “Everything feels mouldy like the fruit that’s in my fridge / And everything that’s funny I wish I could tell to him.” The seams come apart a little more with each track, a testament to how perfectly she and Nigro sequenced the project, capturing the downward spiral of the relationship.

She’s blindly hopeful on ‘U + Me = <3’ and fully territorial on ‘My Way’. But the breaking point might be the stunning ‘Purple’, where she realises the love she’s found also means she’s losing herself. The balladry of ‘The Cure” and ‘Begged’ keep her turning the lens inward, though they threaten the momentum of the album. And if she needed to clarify her feelings more, help arrives on ‘What’s Wrong With Me’, when she’s joined by the Cure frontman himself. It’s a brilliant cameo; he’s been lurking everywhere on the album — nodded to constantly in the production and the lyrics — and finally he floats in, no longer an apparition but a guiding force. “I think you’re what’s wrong with me,” they sing in a line that suits both their discographies.

Rodrigo has always proudly displayed her references, drawing from Nineties rock and riot grrrl bands like Hole and Babes in Toyland on past collections, but here, she’s doing more than paying homage; she’s woven a sonic tapestry that any of her icons can fit into. Fans craving more aggressive, pop-punk energy might have trouble getting into the new sound at first, but Smith’s appearance is a testament to just how well it works. The electro-funhouse twitchiness of ‘Expectations’, which feels like it sprouted from a seed planted by the B-52s, adds another layer, keeping the listener on their toes.

A major strength of the album is how much Rodrigo’s storytelling has matured. For a girl who went stratospheric belting about teenage heartbreak on ‘Drivers License’ at 17, there’s new wisdom as she comes to the brutal realisation that you can adore someone more than anything and still have to let them go. She lands so many gutting lines: “If loving me means letting go and wishing me the best, then I guess I wish, I wish, I wish you loved me less,” she sings on ‘Less’. By the last track, ‘Cigarette Smoke’, she’s found a kind of peace — if not a full resolution quite yet — as she tries to move on. “The memories turn dark,” she repeats, over and over. Maybe they eventually fade, but the songs stay with you”.

Olivia Rodrigo is one of the defining voices of her generation. That is why you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love might have been such a hard album to realise. Expectations on her shoulders after two phenomenal albums. We are seeing a modern-day legend blossoming. No doubt you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love will be nominated for GRAMMYs. It is definitely going to top the albums of the year lists. It is far bigger and more glorious than that. An album that is as astonishing as some of the very best of this century. DIY delivered a five-star review of you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. An album that ushers Olivia Rodrigo “ into her rightful position as one of her generation’s best artists”:

“Be it her response to inane internet discourse around her recent penchant for babydoll dresses (a homage to the juxtaposing cute-and-combat-boots look of ‘90s riot grrrl), or her unlikely friendship with Robert Smith (having brought him out onstage at both last year’s Glasto headline and last week’s Primavera ‘secret’ set), one thing is for sure - Olivia Rodrigo knows her references. But she also knows exactly who she is as an artist, too; that is, a supremely canny pop-rock songwriter who’s equally adept penning sad girl ballads as she is rageful, storming revenge bangers, expressing the emotional tumult of warts’n’all young womanhood with remarkable astuteness. Which makes it all the more exciting - indeed, is precisely why - that on third album ‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’, she steps fully out of her former Disney star skin and into new territory so convincingly.

Thematically, admittedly, we’re hardly breaking new ground here - like predecessors ‘SOUR’ (2021) and ‘GUTS’ (2023), this latest record is still squarely centred around Olivia’s romantic encounters with the unfairer sex (namely, the world presumes, her ex-boyfriend, British actor Louis Partridge). Indeed, ‘yspsfagsil’ [catchy, we know - Ed] is made up exclusively of (anti)love songs, a 13-track narrative arc spanning the giddy beginnings of a burgeoning relationship to its bitter end. Opener ‘drop dead’ positively fizzes with the stomach-flipping thrill of early days butterflies; centrepiece ‘purple’, undercut by a skittish beat that bubbles like not-quite-boiling water, speaks of both kismet union and as-yet-unseen red flags (“Our paths intersect ‘til the two lines form a circle”; “It’s crazy, I had big dreams ‘til I tied myself to you”); and bruised break-up ballad ‘less’ lands like a modern Old Hollywood number to be played as the plane takes off from the Casablanca tarmac.

A tale as old as time, yes, but colouring in this story’s outline are referential, repertoire-widening brushstrokes that cast its painter in a whole new light. Showcasing Olivia’s knack for a swelling anthemic build (see also: ‘vampire’ and ‘traitor’), ‘stupid song’ then descends into a beat-driven bridge that begs to be screamed out loud, while ‘my way’ sees her kicking down jealousy’s door to claim possession of what’s hers via siren-esque squalls and gloriously bratty vocals that do their job of invoking queen of the babydoll, Kathleen Hanna, to make for one of the LP’s most thrilling moments. It’s a high point that is, perhaps, only surpassed by its should-be-closer ‘expectations’; the whiplash-inducing contrast between the closing bars of ‘less’ and this bolshy, Gary Numan-like paean to moving on is enough to elicit an audible whoop, while its smart structural echoes of ‘drop dead’ illustrate the benefit of hindsight better than words ever could. (Why the album doesn’t finish on this emphatic high, though, is a mystery).

Elsewhere, ‘maggots for brains’ moves the Paramore-esque pop-punk of ‘GUTS’ back a few decades, swapping anthemic chorus chants for for drum-pad stabs and twangy new wave guitars - a decidedly ‘80s palette that’s carried into ‘u + me = <3’ to imbue the doe-eyed ditty with the same jangly propulsion and youthful optimism of ‘Friday I’m In Love’. Because, of course, ‘yspsfagsil’ doesn’t just invoke the goth-rock legends in guitar tone, track title (‘the cure’), or lyric (‘drop dead’ namechecks ‘Just Like Heaven’); no, here, Olivia cements her reverence - and gives credence to it all - by having Robert Smith as her first ever on-record feature, on their spine-tingling duet ‘what’s wrong with me’.

Just as The Cure have become renowned as masters of emotional depth, marrying introspective poetry with earworm melody to create evergreen songs far greater than the sum of their parts, so Olivia Rodrigo has managed to mine the complicated, confusing, messy business of falling in and out of love to create an accessible yet hugely intelligent album that ushers her into her rightful position as one of her generation’s best artists”.

Go and get this album on vinyl. The divine and astonishing you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is a modern masterpiece. No matter which albums you feel are the best of this century, I feel you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love can challenge them. There has been immediate impact and adulation. I don’t think it will end there. We will see you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love endure and picked up by a new generation years from now. Nobody knows what her next album will be, though you feel Olivia Rodrigo will top you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. Signs that she is…

A world-class talent.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Bebe Rexha

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Nate Guenther

 

Bebe Rexha

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AS  the sensational…

DIRTY BLONDE is one of the best Pop albums of this year, I was keen to shine a light on Bebe Rexha. It is the fourth studio album from the New York City-born artist. Arguably her best work to date. I will come to a review of DIRTY BLONDE, but I am more eager to get to some interviews with the wonderful Bebe Rexha. She is such an amazing artist I have been following for years. There is something about her music and videos that sets her apart from her peers. I will start of Forbes and their interview and spotlight of Bebe Rexha. The sound of becoming DIRTY BLONDE. An album that seems her most direct but extraordinary to date:

“Dirty Blonde arrives less like a rollout and more like a transmission: part diary, part dance-floor  confession, part signal of what happens when an artist stops asking permission. It’s glossy in places, bruised in others, and carries the energy of someone who has stopped waiting for the next chorus and started writing it herself.

Bebe Rexha And The Intuition Of Pop

Bebe Rexha isn’t reintroducing herself so much as circling back to the instincts that existed before chart positions, label systems, and industry narratives ever shaped the frame around her.

That instinct, she says, stretches back to her earliest recognition as a songwriter. Even now, there’s a nostalgia in the way she recalls it: “That feels like it was yesterday.” At 15, she won the Best Teen Songwriter Award at the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences’ annual Grammy Day event, where she was selected from hundreds of young writers—an early milestone that now feels less like a breakthrough and more like a preview of what was already there.

She returns to what she was beginning to understand at the time: “Something that I learned about songwriting—structure,” she says, noting that melody always came naturally. “I think when I look back now, melody always came very easy for me.”

Bebe Rexha Shares The Moment The Floor Moved

There’s a version of this story that begins with charts and certifications. The more interesting one starts with a phone call that didn’t feel like business at all. What followed was the end of her long-term label partnership with Warner Records after more than a decade.

“It almost felt like a breakup,” she says. “When you first get the news, you feel like you’ve been hit by a train.” The experience wasn’t strategic or abstract—it was physical. “My whole body was aching,” she recalls. “I just couldn’t believe it because it was 12 years of trying to build with my label.”

Looking back, the moment still lands with the same force. “I remember walking into my room, and I literally couldn’t hold myself up,” she says. “I was so devastated. I fell to my knees. My dad helped me get onto the bed.”

The Sound Of Not Stopping For Bebe Rexha

What followed was not a pause, but acceleration. Bebe continued writing across cities and sessions, refusing to let the disruption interrupt her creative output. “I was like, ‘I need to not stop writing… this is what keeps me going.’”

That decision became the foundation of Dirty Blonde. Instead of rebuilding from scratch in a controlled environment, she built the album in motion—writing in Sweden, London, and Los Angeles while navigating uncertainty around structure and support. At a pivotal point, she also turned to her publishing team at BMG, who stepped in to help her continue shaping and finishing the project as it took form in real time.

What emerges isn’t a tightly packaged sonic concept, but something more instinctive. It holds together because it was made in flux, not mapped out in advance.

Bebe Rexha, photographed in sunglasses and blonde hair worn down as she stares directly into the camera with an effortless, composed expression.

Bebe Rexha In Her Own Little Galaxy

For Bebe, independence is not framed as freedom in a romantic sense. It’s described as a shift in how creative energy is organized and supported.

She contrasts it with the major-label system she left behind. In early 2026, it was announced that she had gone fully independent, entering a new partnership with powerhouse label and distributor EMPIRE. “It’s like a galaxy and they’re kind of all revolving around each other… when you’re independent, you're kind of like your own little galaxy… these wins are so much more, amazing.” The distinction is not scale, but control of orbit. Success no longer arrives through centralized validation. It arrives through direct execution”.

A couple of other interviews to get to before a review for DIRTY BLONDE. I am snipping a transcript of an NPR interview earlier this month. They were speaking with the captivating Bebe Rexha and getting some insight into the album and her sound. I have had to edit some chunks out, so I hope what is left makes sense and is not too random! We do get an idea of where Bebe Rexha is now:

“SUMMERS: Earlier this year, you split with Warner Records and partnered with Empire. I wonder what that's meant for your creative process and whether there are things that you can do now with Empire that you couldn't before.

REXHA: Well, being with Empire now, I finally feel like I'm understood, I'm celebrated. And that does something too. Like, as a person, you - I finally feel understood, you know, not misunderstood. And when you have somebody that believes in you like that and such a transparent team, you feel more confident. It's been really fun just, like, all the visuals and stuff.

SUMMERS: Yeah.

REXHA: And, like, it's nice because, like, I'm working on my tour now, and, like, I just feel like I can try different things and have more fun.

SUMMERS: Can we talk about the visuals? - because "Dirty Blonde" is a visual album. What goes into that choice? What kind of aesthetic are you going for?

REXHA: My thing is, like, I felt - started feeling very inspired by, like, classic beauties, like Marilyn, the way Madonna did it. But then, like, mixing it with edge. And I was like, what would Marilyn Monroe be like if she was born in Brooklyn, like me, raised in Staten Island around all the Italian girls, was Albanian.

I always feel like I didn't fit the mold in terms of, like, both my parents are from Albania. My dad's an immigrant. Like, my dad was like - when I was growing up in New York, everybody had these nice backyards, and my dad was growing 'cause he grew up as a - with a farmer dad growing tomatoes in the backyard in New York City. And I'm like, oh, my God, we had, like, you know - it was just - so for me, I think, being able to incorporate that Albanian was really important for me.

SUMMERS: I can't talk to you without asking you about the song "Sad Girls," which you've described as an anthem for anyone who's ever been on a dance floor with a broken heart and refused to let it win.

REXHA: (Singing) And it kills me watching you taking her home. But sad girls don't leave till the last song.

SUMMERS: Very relatable, first of all. Tell us about the song. Was there an experience that sparked it?

REXHA: Yeah. A lot of these songs were about my heartbreak. It's about getting broken up with, you know? Yeah, I was never, like, a party girl. And then I started - like, to be honest with you - partying, like, in my 30s now 'cause I wanted that experience. I want to go where the people go. I want to feel the energy. I want to get sweaty. I want to get sticky. I want to hear...

SUMMERS: Yeah.

REXHA: ...What you're listening to. I want to be in the culture. And what - I think what I liked about it was I felt like I could express myself. And then I felt like I could spend 4 hours just, like, shutting my brain off, listening to music, dancing with strangers. Like, I...

SUMMERS: It's the best, it's the best.

REXHA: Like, I remember meeting a couple 'cause I like - there was a guy, and I was like, oh my God, you're so cute, and he was like, sorry, babes, I'm gay. And I was like, oh, this makes sense. Let's dance. So, like, I would make all these friends on the dance floor that I never have seen before and then never spoke to again after we were - we had the best night of our lives, you know?

And I think for "Sad Girls," it was kind of like, I was still going through my breakup internally. And going out in these places and just being in the mix, I feel like I was in the culture, and it was a - it's a very different environment. I guess "Sad Girls" is like, you don't want the night to end. You're feeling good. The music shuts your brain off. And you don't want to go back to reality, as sad as that sounds, but I think it's also very human.

SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Bebe Rexha. Her new album is "Dirty Blonde." Thank you so much.

REXHA: Thank you”.

EUPHORIA. caught Bebe Rexha when she was in Paris during a hectic period of promotion. However, she was not complaining. It is an album that a lot of people want to know about. DIRTY BLONDE among the best Pop albums of 2026 and a perfect one for the summer. Many of its more high-energy tracks beckon people to come to the dancefloor. Bringing them together:

“The biggest hit from the campaign so far has been “New Religion.” Has that come as a surprise to you?

No [laughs]. When I write a song, I don’t always know if it’s going to be a hit, but I do know when something feels special. I can tell when a song has something about it that’s really special. I write a lot of songs — tons and tons of songs. Not all of them are going to be your favourite. Honestly, I don’t even love everything I write. My PR team are laughing at me right now, but it’s true. You know what I mean? Whatever your job is, you’re not going to think everything you do is perfect. I’m sure you’ve written a piece before and thought, “Ah, that could’ve been better.” It’s the same thing. But when something feels special, you know it. I can usually tell when something feels really special. I just get excited about it. I want to call everyone in my phone and play it to them over FaceTime.

All your albums take listeners on a rollercoaster of emotions, and this one is no different. Which was the most challenging song to write this time around?

I would say “The Way I Want You” was the hardest song for me. Writing it was difficult because it was based on a real story. I’d gone through a breakup, and that was tough. It was also challenging from a musical perspective. When I first started the project, it was very upbeat. It was originally a dance album because I didn’t really want to feel anything. I’d come out of a difficult period — parting ways with a major label and going through a messy breakup — so I didn’t want to write about anything too deep because it all felt like too much. Then, when I was probably more than 70% of the way through making the album, I thought, “Ah, fuck. I feel like I can write about some real stuff now.” I felt ready to be more vulnerable. That’s when we wrote “The Way I Want You,” which I really loved. But the song itself was difficult to figure out. It started off slow, then sped up, then became more dance-driven. It took forever to get the structure right because I wanted to incorporate acoustic guitars, a rhythmic drum pattern, and those big guitar moments before moving into a dance section that felt really energetic and emotional. Trying to make all those elements work together was really, really hard. But we figured it out in the end.

Does owning yourself on songs come naturally to you or is it a lot easier to be vulnerable?

Ooh, I don’t know. I think it depends on where your mental state is at. I wasn’t really feeling like writing songs like that for a long time, and then I started to feel my oats, so I just started writing. It depends. Sometimes vulnerable songs are actually easier for me because I can feel it building up inside of me — it’ll just keep bothering me, bothering me, bothering me. Then I’ll start writing things in my phone, and when I get to the studio, it just kind of pours out of me.

What song on this album are you most proud of?

I love “The Way I Want You.” It’s my favorite song. I’m obsessed with it.

In January, you announced you had parted ways with your label. How is your relationship with them today?

I mean, I’m friends with a lot of people. A lot of my friends are still on my label — they text me, we hang out. I have a pretty good relationship with a lot of my best friends.

Can fans expect a tour announcement soon?

Yeah, I’m working on that right now, so fingers crossed. But it takes a lot of work — all the logistics. I’m trying to focus on the creative side, while we figure out the logistical part. For me, the most fun part is things like: what does the show start with? What am I bringing in from the past? How am I tweaking older songs? Can I make medleys? Am I going to remake the whole production? What do I end the show with? How am I doing the new songs? It’s really fun because you get to reimagine a lot of the older songs.

Some say you have finally left the Khia Asylum. How do you feel about that?

I’m not sure whether I’m out, in, above it, underneath, in the basement. I don’t know where I am. All I know is I’m just trying to put out good music. I think it’s actually fun for people to have something to entertain them with — it’s the entertainment business. But I’m in a really lucky position. I’m in Paris right now. Look where I am. And I’m going to party with the fans tonight — we’re all going to take over the streets. I’m feeling really good, Fabio. It’s a good energy, good vibes”.

I am ending with a review of DIRTY BLONDE from Shatter the Standards. They delivered a four-star review of an album from a great artist who is enjoying this imperial phase. A real gold standard. You wonder how Bebe Rexha will follow DIRTY BLONDE. It is such a great album that instantly grabs you. I think that we need to give more respect and love to Rexha, as she is one of her generation’s most important artists:

“Everything here is post-midnight. Somewhere in a club, someone’s telling the bouncer not to turn on the lights. The dark’s got work to do. As long as the morning can’t get in, the night has to wait; whatever’s on the other side gets pushed one more song back. Mostly, the tracks are what they say they are. Glossy, high-end pop pitched at a floor full of bodies. Bebe Rexha has had ten years to build hooks like these—earworms that should lodge in place and never leave. Rexha stuffs her tracks with material they were never made to contain. A prayer finds itself amid the bounce. A fear of not making it home snakes its way beneath a chorus. The hook stays intact, the confession travels on the inside of the record.

“Lord, forgive me,” Rexha asks on the open of “Hysteria,” “If I don’t make it home tonight.” Two lines later, the track’s all crowd-work—“Turn it up, make it bounce/Hysteria in the crowd/Got the world in a trance”—and the prayer is never answered or acknowledged. It lingers at the doorway as the drums shove it into “bang your head, don’t kill the vibe.” The same trick holds, with a higher lift, through “Çike Çike.” Its chanted, Albanian hook (“Çike, çike, luje belin, çike”) goes round the waiting-for-an-Uber, a phone number pressed into a hand with a 347 area code, and a bouncer brushed away; almost tossed into the side, in the bridge, is the real admission—“I just came here to clear my mind.” “Tokyo” has a one-night stand with someone who was told that she was a fan. Rexha ditched the boyfriend she came with in a single aside, “Left my boyfriend in Nantucket,” and talked herself into the assignation, “I’m out in Tokyo, so my attitude is ‘Fuck it.’”

On “$.H.I.T.” and “Nobody’s There,” she’s picked a bit and followed it to the very end. The “S.H.I.T.” bit is a pun that she will not let go of: “I’m the sugar-honey iced tea,” spelled out for anyone who hasn’t followed yet, “I’m the S-H-I-T.” If that’s the line, the verse has to fill it in with a week’s worth of personality, Monday having fun, Tuesday blowing someone off, Wednesday being loved, Thursday being single, Friday a freak, Saturday a creep, and then, “Sunday, I’m asleep like a sweet little angel.” “Nobody’s There” turns that swagger into the third person; into a “she” who’s got “fire in her eyes” and “can make the room go loud,” and wants to “dance like nobody’s watching, like nobody’s there.” That “she” is Rexha from an arm’s length away; that restless urgency is handed over to someone who she can watch over the room.

When she reaches for something bigger than a bit, the writing thins like “New Religion,” Built on interpolating Faithless’ 1995 single “Insomnia,” she wants the floor to feel like salvation and states it explicitly: “I feel the beat, I feel the beat/It’s like a new religion.” The bridge reaches for a real before and after: “I used to believe there was nothing for me/That nowhere was where I belonged,” and then the song just keeps widening that one hook. ‘Drink and a Little Love’ has a better, smaller idea, exhaustion as its own ache. “Stressin’ all day,” she sings, “I’ve been cryin’ my heart out,” and all she wants is “a drink and a little love.” ‘Life has been lifin’, she admits, and the song settles for pleasant when the words under it are tired enough to be sad.

Light acts like a switch; she keeps flipping it the wrong way. ‘Lights off, what just happened?” is how the chaos begins on ‘Hysteria.” “Don’t turn the lights on,” she pleads on “Nobody’s There,” “don’t let the morning come,” and the logic is clear. A dark room means the night can’t end, and the reckoning can’t begin. “Sad Girls,” the David Guetta collaboration, makes that bargain its whole theme. She watches someone leave with another and dances anyway, “tears dipped in glitter and Molly,” stating “I’m alright for the hundredth time,” and then, flatly, “That’s a lie.” Then she’s begging to keep the room dark: ‘I’m not ready for the lights back on.”

Two songs let the dance lift go almost entirely and are the better for it. “i like you better than me” runs on comparison and self-hatred, a hook that fixates on wanting to “fit in those size-two jeans” and a verse that fully embraces the ugly machinery: “I get off on being insecure,” “there’s something wrong with me for sure.” When a friend’s positivity makes it worse, she names that, too, “your toxic positivity... You know you’re only making it worse.” “Night Falls” takes a slower, darker turn, loneliness setting in “when the night falls,” thoughts of an ex that “makes my skin crawl,” her mind reported from the inside as “way too dark,” waiting for “a glimpse of light,” while the chorus repeats its message that ‘never gets better.” Bluntly, in her own words, the dread carries more weight than any chant about bouncing.

The best of these shifts that blame outward and become really ugly. Rexha speeds past the house of an old flame in “Time” and flat-lines her position (“I wasted all my best years on you,” “I’m fucking bitter, but I’m not a victim,”“I had to lose and let you win, to love myself again”), and you know, that’s the line, that’s the end of the story. The chorus circles round one plain statement of truth—“So many good times/But I never had a good time,” and that tells me more than all of “New Religion” does of a successful one. Similarly, “One Day” is a curse, with Rexha promising her ex he’ll be “haunted by the ghost of me.” The really great parts are quieter than all of that and, at least, less earnest. Halfway through “The Way I Want You,” having just admitted to still calling him up at 4AM, and admitting that “the pills don’t work the same anymore,” Rexha hits the joke—“I talk to my therapist like a billion times/And that bitch is overpaid.” It follows with the real reason we’re all still depressed (“my anxiety won’t go away”) and a perfect sentence for any bad relationship (“sick and tired of being sick and tired of loving you”). All that uncomplicated meanness is the greatest thing to come out of Bebe Rexha’s DIRTY BLONDE”.

I am going to leave things here. I wanted to include Bebe Rexha in this Modern-Day Queens, as she is an astonishing talent. In a music industry where women are ruling and Pop is still on top, Bebe Rexha is right up there with the very best. DIRTY BLONDE is a magnificent album that everyone should check out. Even if she is at a peak right now, you feel this New York queen…

WILL get better and better.

_____________

Follow Bebe Rexha

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Bill Duffield... (Blow Away (For Bill)/Sweet and Gentle Sensitive Man (Pi)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Lichfield

 

Bill Duffield… (Blow Away (For Bill)/Sweet and Gentle Sensitive Man (Pi)

__________

THERE  are quite a few…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

characters to cover off in this feature. So many so that I have had to put an ellipsis in the title of the feature, as Squarespace only allow two-hundred characters (letters)! The first song names a few real-life people. Well, technically, they are all departed, though they were real people. Subjects I want to connect with Blow Away (For Bill) is whether this song is the weakest on Never for Ever (1980). The ‘Bill’ of the song is Bill Duffield. His death was hugely tragic, and I think that it affected Kate Bush a lot. She names Minnie, Moony, Vicious, Bolan, Billie, Buddy Holly and Sandy Denny. That is Minnie Riperton, Keith Moon and Sid Vicious. This idea that this young man who was in the music industry and worked (briefly) on Kate Bush’s The Tour of Life – not that it was called that until after 1979 – is joining high-profile musicians in Heaven. I have always thought it random whether Bush was a fan of the artists that she named. No doubt, she would have heard The Who and Keith Moon’s drumming as a child. That would have spoken to her. People comparing her to Minnie Riperton. You can’t really hear their influence in her own music. She could have mentioned other artists who were closer in tone to her. I feel, if the song had been released on The Dreaming, she would have included John Lennon. He was murdered in December 1980, which was after Blow Away (For Bill) was released. I need to start off with words from Kate Bush about this gem of a track:

“‘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.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980”.

That is a brief interview snipper, but the mention of the album title is amazing! What does that quote mean? Did Bush mean music is eternal? Even though Bill Duffield and music greats like Buddy Holly have died, we can feel their spirit and their influence. Although Bush did not base the album title on this one song, you can connect the two. I guess it should be Never Forever, so putting that space leaves some mystery. Never For Ever would suggest nothing lasts and love, regret and anything negative will pass. Like a storm. Music is that exception.

I feel Bush was a lot deeper on Blow Away (For Bill) than it was given credit for. People writing it off as this silly song where she name-checks musicians and it is lightweight. I have seen people call the song banal and bad. It is not the weakest song on Never for Ever. Though it cannot compete with the best of her 1980 album – Babooshka, Delius (Song of Summer), The Wedding List, Breathing and Army Dreamers -, there is a lot to recommend. I love Kate Bush’s vocal. It is ethereal and heavenly. She provides this backing chorus. Great fretless bass from Del Palmer and spine-tingling strings from the Martin Ford Orchestra. Sid Vicious is mentioned more than once. Bush did mention Billie Holiday, whom she was a fan of. Bush has said how much she admired Billie Holiday. These artists all died quite far apart. Billie Holiday in 1959, Buddy Holly in 1959, Marc Bolan in 1977, Keith Moon in 1978, Sid Vicious in 1979, Minnie Riperton in 1979, and Sandy Denny in 1978. It is horrible to think how many great artists died between 1978 and 1979. This is a period between Kate Bush releasing her debut album, The Kick Inside, and performing on The Tour of Life. Even after that had ended, she would have heard news of another loss. Those deaths in 1959 were when she was barely a one-year-old, so they would have been tragedies for her parents. Yet, it was a bleak period that extended in 1980. Seeing peers die young would have impacted Bush. These were not older people. Bill Duffield was twenty-one when he died after the warm-up gig of The Tour of Life. Bush thinking of her own mortality. She was twenty-two when Never for Ever was released, so writing about these artists and trying to detach herself would have been helpful. As Bush explained in another interview, there was almost a positive. Rather than being scared of death, these artists are not fearful. They are prepared. We are living to die, so that is our ultimate purpose:

“So I thought this thing about the death-fear. I like to think I’m coming to terms with it, and other people are too. The song was really written after someone very special died.
Although the song had been formulating before and had to be written as a comfort to those people who are afraid of dying, there was also this idea of the music, energies in us that aren’t physical: art, the love in people. It can’t die, because where does it go? It seems really that music could carry on in radio form, radio waves… There are people who swear they can pick up symphonies from Chopin, Schubert. We’re really transient, everything to do with us is transient, except for these non-physical things that we don’t even control…

Kris Needs, ‘Lassie’. Zigzag (UK), November 1985”.

Bill Duffield joins this supergroup in Heaven. These artists who nearly died but survived were “Feeling no fear of leaving their bodies here/And went to a room that was soon full of visitors”. The lines “Don’t bump me/Don’t dump me back there/Please don’t thump me”. Is that Bill Duffield asking them not to send him back to Earth? Bill Duffield was the lighting director for The Tour of Life. These lines seem to relate to him and he is lighting up Heaven: “Put out the light, then, put out the light/Vibes in the sky invite you to dine”. Those lines are actually from William Shakespeare’s Othello, in the scene just before Othello kills Desdemona. Though Bush adapted it or applied them to this much-missed lighting director.  The song was not performed during The Tour of Life, as it would have been bleak. She would have amended an older song after Duffield died in April 1979. Likely it would have been completed early in 1980, given the artists named and when they died. However, Bush debuted the song on 18th November, 1979 during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, celebrating seventy-five  years of the London Symphony Orchestra. This was the first and only performance of the song. I think the opening lines are the most revealing and thought-provoking. “One of the band told me last night/That music is all that he’s got in his life/So where does it go?/Surely not with his soul/Will all of his licks and his R’n’B/Blow away?/Blow away/Blow away”. I like how there is conversation and it is almost like Bush was speaking with The Tour of Life’s crew about their departed colleague. Blow Away (For Bill) gets dismissed as a runt of Never for Ever’s litter. However, it does deal with life and death. Philosophical and theological arguments and possibilities. How a body can depart but music remains. Always we mourn and miss artists, that music does not blow away. It remains here with us. Bill Duffield still very much with us.

Bush recorded Blow Away (For Bill) very close to some artists dying. Recorded in September 1979, she maturely dealt with their passing. Her positive and uplifting belief in the afterlife. I often source Dreams of Orgonon for these features. I do want to bring in some thoughts from them as they ask about the afterlife and Kate Bush’s approach and attitude towards it.

“The Martin Ford Orchestra’s strings gives the song space, and Bush’s piano playing often has moments of silence which let the song breathe. The actual rhythm of the song is minimal, lacking the urgency of more rock-inflected music. It’s almost New Age, but in a genuinely spiritual way.

So what does “Blow Away” think of the afterlife? Well, it clearly thinks there is one. The dead have souls in Bush’s music. Her universe is populated by spectres — “The Kick Inside” and “Hammer Horror” demonstrate that. “Blow Away” fills their slot on Never for Ever — the song for those beyond the grave. Yet “Blow Away” is more optimistic about their chances of a happy eternity. Consciousness may thrive after death, but Bush has finally liberated her deceased characters of their mortal woes. Part of this is a matter of taste: everyone knows Keith Moon is in hell, but in 1980 it wouldn’t have been politic to say it in a song. Yes, there’s reverence for these musicians in this song, but the nostalgia is alleviated by the thoughtful weirdness of the song. It’s not the most radical song on the album, but it’s assuring that Bush’s optimism for the power of artistic imagination extends beyond the grave”.

Kate Bush wanted to keep alive Bill Duffield, as the idea of someone her age dying so young and not being around would be too much to take. Though her debut single was about the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw. She often brought spirits and the dead back into the world. Though titans like Minnie Ripperton and Billie Holiday are not back on here in spirit form, they are up above the clouds hanging out.

The choice of artists in Blow Away (For Bill) is interesting. Kate Bush only knew Bill Duffield a short period of time, but he is immortalised in a song. He also comes back for Moments of Pleasure, which appeared on her 1993 album, The Red Shoes. That generosity of spirit. On 12th May, 1979, in the final days of her tour, Bush performed a memorial concert for Bill Duffield at the Hammersmith Odeon. On the bill was Peter Gabriel and Steve Harley, who had each worked with Duffield in the past. Even if he was a small part of a large crew, she loved everyone and his death really shook her. The attachment to the artists she includes might not have been as personal. Elvis Presley would have been eligible (as he died in 1977). He is named in her 2005 single, King of the Mountain (from the double album, Aerial). You can see why she spotlighted Billie Holiday. The controversy around Sid Vicious, an alleged killer, would have raised a few eyebrows. Dreams of Orgonon reacted to the inclusion of Buddy Holly. Someone immortalised in Don McLean’s American Pie:

“The use of Buddy Holly as a poster child for rock tragedy harkens back to another Seventies songs featuring his death, Don McLean’s “American Pie.” That paean to the fifties which has caused many boomers to explode phallic blood vessels is more grossly nostalgic than “Blow Away.” Tom Ewing has a great write-up of Madonna’s “American Pie” cover on Popular (which you frankly should read instead of wasting time on this blog), so I won’t discuss it in too much depth here, but suffice it to say that the song is a veritable tome of song references by a songwriter who can’t get over the music of his youth (Ewing hilariously mocks McLean’s unsubstle “Eight Miles High” namedrop). Ewing describes “American Pie” as “a theological dispute between Buddy Holly and Mick Jagger.” Holly is an ideological ploy for McLean’s rockist sectarianism. Little insight is offered into the workings of Fifties music. What McLean gives the listener is a nostalgia package: memory is what he trades on. In McLean’s mind, Altamont didn’t strike the killing blow to the Sixties dream: it was dead when it started. Mick Jagger ever getting on stage was the cardinal sin for “American Pie.” McLean’s use of “The Day the Music Died” isn’t a simple metaphor for the deaths of a few rock ‘n’ roll singers. In McLean’s view, it’s the point an entire tradition is co-opted and desecrated by these Lennon-McCartney whippersnappers”.

A review of Never for Ever from Record Mirror was not that kind to Blow Away (For Bill): “'Blow Away' again meanders, it being the story of how musicians have something to look forward to in death as they can get together with "Minnie, Moony, Vicious, Vicious, Buddy Holly, Sandy Denny." Dubious my dear, dubious”. What we do get is a positivity from a young artist. Seeing peers die so young and remembering a couple of music legends who died too young, she could have been morbid. Bill Duffield’s passing no doubt impacted her whole career. Part of her decision never to tour again came from that loss. Not the only reason, it is a tragedy that no doubt is still in her mind. I will come back to Bill Duffield when I write about Moments of Pleasure. From the well-known and heavy-hitting musicians from this song, we then shift to an unnamed man from a song on Aerial that is also seen as one of the weakest.

I wanted to pair these songs, as they are seen as the weaker ones on the respective albums. Blow Away (For Bill) from Never for Ever. Pi on Aerial. This song is one where Bush recites this mathematical constant. It is quirky and whimsical and features this sweet and gentle and sensitive man. We do not know who he is. Bush having this character who recites pi romantically. This man has a complete infatuation with the calculation of pi. Bush actually sings the number to its 78th decimal place. There was an error which means she did not get it entirely right. A rare occasion of Bush slipping up. Though I like how pi is incomplete and has this mistake. In terms of a jumping off point, let’s look at what Bush said about a track not as revered as others on Aerial:

“I really like the challenge of singing numbers, as opposed to words because numbers are so unemotional as a lyric to sing and it was really fascinating singing that. Trying to sort of, put an emotional element into singing about…a seven…you know and you really care about that nine. I find numbers fascinating, the idea that nearly everything can be broken down into numbers, it is a fascinating thing; and i think also that we are completely surrounded by numbers now, in a way that we weren’t you know even 20, 30 years ago we’re all walking around with mobile phones and numbers on our foreheads almost; and it’s like you know computers…”

Ken Bruce show, BBC Radio 2, 31 October 2005

It is clear that Bush was revering those departed artists. Here, she shows passion for this man who is obsessed by pi. Even if the subject matter and lyrics appear silly or weird, Kate Bush commits. Few other artists would take this approach. There is something very special about pi. Has any other artist ever done this in a song? Bush would challenge listeners for 50 Words for Snow in 2011. Rather than reciting pi, she did give fifty words to snow. It is a myth that the Yupik people have fifty words for snow. Though Bush wanted to take on that myth and think of fifty names.

I think that Bush had a definite person in mind when she wrote Pi. The listener could imagine who it is. What I like is how she can take a potentially boring subject and area and make it magical. When speaking of the afterlife on Blow Away (For Bill), I feel that sense of whimsy and wandering adds something. A conventional and real dynamic. Like she is dreaming or trying to put her thoughts into words. With Pi, it could have been very dry. She could simply have reciting numbers, but the listener would have nodded. We get this character that has this obsession. Bush, twenty-five years after Never for Ever, in silly and fun mode. Her music marked by this sense of playfulness: “Oh he love, he love, he love/He does love his numbers/And they run, they run, they run him/In a great big circle/In a circle of infinity”. There are a lot of characters through Aerial. Some of them are personal. I do like how she mixes in the historical (Joan of Arc, Joanni), her mother (A Coral Room) and an imaginary architect (An Architect's Dream). The ordinary and extraordinary sitting alongside one another. Like Never for Ever and Blow Away (For Bill). A regular but special man alongside these great artists. Pi elevates the mathematical constant to rarefied heights. Almost like this event. I like how the man who is obsessed by Pi is sweet, gentle and sensitive. You get an essence of who he is. A disposition that is very gentle and positive. Not a lot to distinguish him, expect he has this affection for Pi. One of the standout elements of the song is Bush slips up a bit. As Far Out Magazine wrote last year, there is a small mistake: “She messes up on the 54th decimal, which I think can be forgiven given how much of a feat it is to remember that far. But then later, she skips forward a whole 22 decimals, seemingly fast forwarding to a part of the number that simply fit the song better”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

Using this gentle, sweet and sensitive man as a route into the song, it shows that nothing was off limits for Kate Bush. Innovative and original in 2005 as she was in 1978. Even though so many artists came after her, few were as bold and inventive when it came to subject matter. You could select a few here and there, but in terms of sheer breadth and variety, there is a book to be written! In terms of the bookshelf, film library and palette Bush has, they are as multifarious, busy and broad as any other artist in history. Bush writing about love and relationships but doing so in such an interesting way. Going beyond the cliches. I think some of her best moments are when she tackles pi and subjects that nobody else does. You could argue that some of the greats have managed to balance a certain eccentricity and unusualness with a grounded and realistic aspect. They can be human and odd at the same time. I don’t think there is anyone like Kate Bush in that respect. The cast of characters I have covered for this series so far is proof of that. But explore her albums and work and you can see just how wide her world is. This fascination with humans and beyond. From someone humble and sweet in Pi, through to great historical figures, demons, mythical beings and religious icons, there is seemingly nothing off limits for Kate Bush. It makes her music so compelling and refreshing. Bush has occasionally strayed towards something pedestrian. It is rare. People might not be that engaged with a song like Pi, but you cannot argue against its originality. I think it is a brilliant song. I do think about the man in this song and whether Bush considered bringing in a guest to recite the numbers. I don’t think they could have matched her when it comes to making a series of number this magical quest. This wonderful thing that you are arrested by!

I do think there is some of Kate Bush in Pi. In terms of this sweet, gentle, generous and sensitive person who has her own infatuation. Maybe not with numbers, for Kate Bush, there does seem to be this quest. If a series of numbers could go forever without end and people try and pin it down, music is the same. In terms of where you can go and what you can write about. Kate Bush, this musical mathematician. Or an artist always curious. Listen to the tracks on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, and you can hear this artist still going beyond the realms of the ordinary and earthbound. So much imagination and brilliance in terms of what and who she sings about. Going back to the 2005 interview with Ken Bruce, and these words stick in my mind: “in a way is possibly something that will go on to infinity and yet people are trying to pin it down and put their mark on and make it theirs in a way I guess also I think you know you get a bit a lot of connection with mathematism and music because of patterns and shapes… in a way is possibly something that will go on to infinity and yet people are trying to pin it down and put their mark on and make it theirs in a way I guess also I think you know you get a bit a lot of connection with mathematism and music because of patterns and shapes…”. That idea of music having shapes and patterns. Maths and music not disconnected. There is a relation between them. Though there is so much emotion and soul in her music, it would not be cold to say that she has a mathematical approach. When it comes to song structures and the shape of a song. Pi has more levels than people would assume. That is why I wanted to include it here and look at the sweet and gentle and sensitive man, whomever he might be! From the gallery of sadly-departed musicians who Bill Duffield joins in Blow Away (For Bill), we then lead to a sweet man reciting pi. These are songs that are seen as among the less essential on their respective albums – Never for Ever and Aerial -, but they have this depth and layers that are not appreciated. The divine Kate Bush has…

THAT rarest of gifts.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Bellah Mae

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Randy Shaffer

 

Bellah Mae

__________

THIS  is an artist…

that I hope to interview soon. Bellah Mae is someone that is getting a lot of love in the U.S. and U.K. She was raised in the U.K. but now resides in Nashville. An incredible artist who fuses Country and Pop, her recent E.P., Keep It Peachy, is one of the very and most strikingly finest of the year. I love the aesthetic and the colour scheme. The cover puts me in mind of something from the 1950s or '60s. In terms of those old adverts. Maybe an America print or magazine piece. There is something utterly engrossing about Bellah Mae. Watching her in her videos and she has this pull and talent that would transfer to the small or big screen. I do think that she has a possible acting career ahead. Though she will want to concentrate on music. I am not sure whether she is coming to the U.K. at some point. She is a magnificent artist that everyone should know about. Keep It Peachy a perfect six-track release where every track lands. It is a big moment where Bellah Mae has released an E.P. and there is a lot of attention coming her way. Where does she head next? I want to start with some biography about an artist that I would love to hear more on mainstream U.K. radio, as she is a wonderful songwriter:

“Growing up in the UK, Bellah began writing songs at the tender age of eight, inspired by her father teaching her how to play guitar and her grandfather, a rock and roll session musician, introducing her to the rock classics and country music. Bellah also honed her skills as a vocalist, with 11 years of training as a classical soprano following shortly after. She later started traveling to and from Nashville at age 18 through mentorship by Dolly Parton's manager, feeling immediately at home in Music City.

However, the 2020 pandemic then shook up her career path, prompting Bellah to remain in London. Pouring her heart into her music, Bellah got to work writing songs, combining infectious melodies and razor-sharp songwriting with the vivid storytelling that defines country music. Fans took notice of Bellah’s unique sound and her willingness to be vulnerable about her love life, with track “Boyfriend Of The Year,” in particular, igniting a fire for the budding songstress, with her catalogue of songs quickly reaching over 100 million streams”.

There are some interviews with Bellah Mae that I want to include here. We get to learn more about a British artist making big waves in the U.S. This Entertainment Focus interview is interesting. Quite a few artists in the U.K. dream of relocating to Nashville, but sometimes it does not work out. I think fellow Brit Country-Pop artist Twinnie is based out there. It can be difficult to adapt. However, it seems that Bellah Mae has settled. Whether she has plans to put roots down and spend her life there, or whether she will move around to other parts of the U.S. Perhaps New York or L.A. will call one day. Though Nashville is perfectly set up regarding inspiration and venues that can house and showcase her:

“At what point did Nashville start to become part of that dream? Because I know you first went out there around 18, and that’s quite a big leap from the UK. What sparked that connection, and what made you feel like, “This is where I need to be”?

Yeah, it’s quite a funny story because it wasn’t this calculated career move at first, it really came from something quite personal and, honestly, a bit unexpected. I was completely obsessed with Hannah Montana growing up, like, properly obsessed. That whole world of music, performance and living in Tennessee just got into my head really early, and I became convinced that was where I needed to be. It sounds almost silly now, but at the time it felt very real to me.

The actual trip happened when I was about 18, and it came about because my mum emailed Dolly Parton’s manager out of the blue. Somehow that led to us getting the opportunity to come out, and we flew to Nashville together. I remember landing and just having this immediate, almost overwhelming feeling of familiarity, like I already knew the place. It wasn’t even a question in my mind, it was just, “This is where I’m supposed to be.” And I think what struck me most was how alive everything felt creatively. Everywhere you went, there was music happening, people playing, writing, collaborating and it just felt like the kind of environment I’d always needed without quite realising it.

At that point, I didn’t move straight away, but something had definitely shifted in me. I went back home with this very clear sense of direction that I hadn’t had before. It was like, “Okay, now I know where I’m heading.” Over the next few years, I kept coming back, building relationships, learning how the songwriting culture worked and gradually figuring out how I could fit into that world. So when I eventually made the move properly, it didn’t feel like a leap anymore, it felt like the natural next step in something that had already started the moment I stepped off that plane at 18.

I’ve always wondered how British artists adapt to that environment, because culturally we’re not always the most emotionally open, whereas Nashville songwriting really thrives on that kind of vulnerability. Did you find that challenging at all, or did it actually suit you?

Yeah, I love that question because it’s so real and it’s something I became aware of almost immediately when I started spending proper time in Nashville. There’s definitely a cultural difference. As Brits, we tend to be a bit more reserved, a bit more guarded with our emotions. We don’t always say exactly what we’re feeling straight away and there’s often a layer of humour or understatement over things. Whereas in Nashville, especially in songwriting rooms, it’s the complete opposite. People are very open, very direct and very willing to go straight to the deepest, most personal parts of their lives without hesitation.

But interestingly, for me, that didn’t feel uncomfortable: it actually felt like I’d found the right environment. I’ve always been quite an emotional person, even as a kid. I used to get called ‘intense; a lot because I had all these big thoughts and feelings and didn’t really know where to put them. Songwriting became the place where I could process all of that, and then when I got to Nashville, it was like walking into rooms where that kind of emotional depth wasn’t just accepted, it was encouraged. People were like, “Yes, let’s go there, let’s talk about that properly,” and that was really freeing for me.

I do think there’s still a part of me that’s very British in how I approach things. I love our dry humour, I love that slightly stubborn, understated way we communicate, and I think that actually brings something different into the room as well. Sometimes I might phrase something in a more subtle or indirect way, and that can spark a different kind of idea creatively. So I don’t feel like I had to lose that part of myself to fit in. If anything, it’s about balancing the two: bringing that British perspective into a space that’s very emotionally open. I think that combination has actually helped shape me as a writer, because I can tap into both sides: the deep honesty that Nashville thrives on, and the slightly more nuanced, observational way that I think comes from being British.

Let’s talk about ‘Keep It Peachy.' The title feels really sunny and optimistic, but there’s also a suggestion of something deeper beneath that. What does that phrase mean to you in the context of this project?

Yeah, ‘Keep It Peachy' as a title really sums up where I am right now, both as an artist and just as a person. On the surface, it does feel very bright and optimistic: it’s colourful, it’s fun, it’s a bit playful, and that’s definitely a big part of me. I think people often see me as quite smiley, quite upbeat, quite positive. But what I love about that phrase and about the imagery of a peach itself, is that there’s more going on underneath.

A peach is sweet and soft on the outside, but at the centre there’s that stone, that core, which is a lot tougher, a bit more grounded, a bit more real. And that’s how I see myself as a songwriter. A lot of the songs on the EP might sound fun, catchy or light at first listen, but when you really sit with them, there’s usually something a bit more honest, a bit more vulnerable, or even a bit gritty underneath. So the title felt like the perfect way of capturing that duality: who I am on the surface versus what’s really going on at the core.

I also love the phrase “keep it peachy” in terms of what it represents emotionally. To me, it’s not about pretending everything is perfect or ignoring difficult things, it’s more about resilience. It’s about going through life, through relationships, through all the ups and downs, and choosing to keep moving forward with a sense of optimism. Like, things might be messy, things might hurt, but you’re still saying, “I’ve got this, I’m going to keep going.” That mindset is something I’ve really leaned into while making this project.

And I think that’s why the EP feels quite cohesive to me. Even the sadder songs or the more vulnerable moments are still presented in a way that feels accessible and, in some way, hopeful. I never want to make music that leaves people feeling stuck, I want it to feel like something you can take with you and come out the other side of whatever you’re going through. So ‘Keep It Peachy' became this kind of guiding idea for the whole project: feel everything, be honest about it, but keep your head up and keep moving forward.

Finally, in today’s industry, how do you balance being a songwriter first with the realities of social media, which has become such a huge part of breaking an artist?

Yeah, I think it depends on which side of me you’re asking, the songwriter or the artist, because I do see it slightly differently from both perspectives. If you’re asking me purely as a songwriter, then no, social media isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing will always be the song itself: how honest it is, how it makes people feel, whether it connects. That’s the foundation of everything I do and I don’t think that should ever change.

But if you’re asking me as an artist trying to build a career in today’s industry, then social media is undeniably important. It’s just part of the landscape now. I don’t really view it as this negative thing or something that takes away from the music, I see it as a tool. The reality is, the industry has always required you to find ways to get your music in front of people. Years ago, that might have meant spending 250 days a year on the road, playing small venues and gradually building an audience face-to-face. That’s still a valid and amazing way to do it but now you also have the option to reach thousands, even millions of people, in a matter of minutes through something like TikTok”.

The penultimate interview I am including is from The Honey Pop. You might be new to her music and reading this is your first exposure to her. I would encourage everyone to listen to her music and watch the videos. This is a complete artist who has made big steps since her earliest tracks. Someone who I would love to see on a major festival stage in the U.K. A spot at Glastonbury or Reading and Leeds one day? She is worthy of taking to some of the most prestigious stages in the country:

“You began writing songs at eight and then picked up guitar at 11, with your dad as your first teacher—does playing still bring him to mind?

I think playing guitar will always remind me of my dad. He taught me every chord that I know how to play, and he bought me the guitar that I use the most. When I’m touring or playing live shows, I’m using my guitar he bought me. It brings me a lot of happy memories of him!

‘Kiss My Levi’s’ is such a fun subversion of the classic phrase. If we were drafting the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants reboot, what’s your ultimate stance on the standing-on-business jean—skinny, wide-leg, or flare?

I’m just a big fan of denim in general. I love lots of different types—very unpopular opinion, I still do love a skinny jean from time to time. But I do like all jeans I don’t think there is a style of jean I’m not into—maybe culottes I don’t wear that much. But I will say my favorite at the moment is like a little bootcut—just a little, nothing too crazy. They’re tight at the top and a little bit loose at the bottom, and they’re kind of doing just everything I need them to do at the moment.

‘Love Me Less’ sits in that really vulnerable space of fearing that letting someone see the real you will make them love you less rather than more. What’s fascinating is that in the first verse, you set him up as someone who loves your no-makeup face—he wants the real version of you—and then immediately you drop a very specific bra size he’s after, which completely reframes the picture. What was behind that contrast?

So the opening verse of ‘Love Me Less’ is just very specific lyricism. It opens with, “You say that you like me no makeup / Say you love a 34b cup / But I’ve got mascara and push-up on.” So that basically means at the start of a relationship—when even if that person is trying to tell you they love you the way that you are—you actually don’t fully know. So you say that you like me without makeup on, but I still have mascara on, so it’s not actually makeup-free, and you say that you like my bra size, and I have a push-up bra on, so it’s like—do you actually love me or do you love the version I’m showing you? I don’t know whether you would love me in the ways that you say that you do because I’m not showing you myself fully. And I just love how so, so vulnerable it is straight from the get-go of the opening verse because it just sets the tone of me taking off every layer and unmasking the whole idea of letting someone know you more.

You’ve been teasing songs that aren’t even on this EP yet, including one with a lyric about microdosing—how fun is it to drop a little lyrical spoiler and watch the internet react in real time?

One thing I will never change is teasing when I’m not supposed to—there is nothing like just loving a song of yours at that exact moment in time and not waiting until it’s agreed upon to be a single and just popping it online. That’s really how I started my career: I was just writing little songs a lot of the time just in my bedroom. I would just take a little video and put them online because, realistically, that’s what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis: I’m creating a lot of  music. And so I just love to keep people involved in what I’m making at the time, even if it has no plans to come out right there and then. Also, nothing is off limits. If I were to want to put it out, we could do that. But I do love a cheeky tease! 
And yes, that’s one of my favorite lyrics I’ve written in a while, “you’re always taking little mushrooms, it opens up your mind / Maybe this time you can microdose yourself into a better guy”.

I will end off with Fame Magazine and their conversation with Bellah Mae. This is an artist who puts so much care and attention into her work. Putting Keep It Peachy together. I mentioned the cover and how striking it is. There is this unity and thread. Maybe not a concept to the E.P., though it does have its own world and colour scheme. Will a future E.P. deal with darker reds and blacks or bright pink? A whole mood and emotional blend that matches the palette. The songs balancing sharp and sweet. Lots of humour and personality bursts through every song. Such a nuanced and enriching experiencing travelling through Keep It Peachy:

“Co-written across the full project and produced by Brett Truitt, JANEVA, and Steven Solomon, the EP blends banjo, pedal steel, polished pop detail, and Mae’s dry, quick-cut lyricism without losing its emotional centre.

The Solihull-raised artist sits between UK roots, Nashville craft, pop instinct, and punk-edged character. On Keep It Peachy, that mix clicks into place, with Salt and Sugar, Kiss My Levi’s, Boring Me Baby, and Fast Lane turning real-life stories into sharp, funny, emotionally loaded country-pop.

With over 100 million career streams, a growing US presence, and her CMA Festival debut ahead, Mae is moving into a bigger frame without sanding down the personality.

Keep It Peachy opens a new chapter with Sony Nashville. What did you want this EP to show about where you are now?

I’m super settled in the music that I’m making and the sound that I have and I think it’s finally feels exactly where I want it to be. It’s fun and a little flirty but still sensitive and soft.

The title plays with sweetness and resilience. How did that contrast shape the songs?

I truly love everything about the sentiment and imagery of a peach, I love how it’s sweet and soft on the outside but gritty and a strong pit in the middle and I believe that I convey that symbolism through all the songs by writing about real emotions and stories but often dressing them up in a witty or fun way.

You move between UK roots and country storytelling. When did that mix start feeling like your own lane?

I think ever since I started writing and creating so much in Nashville I feel very much understood and at home with the songs that I’m making, I think the people I collaborate with bring the best out of me and really get who I am and what I’m trying to make.

With the US tour and CMA Festival debut ahead, what side of Bellah Mae do you want this EP to bring to the stage?

I think the EP is fun and flirty and sensitive all at the same time. I’m just excited to feel like I’m exactly where I want to be, being super myself, with music out that I love and to keep doing exactly that”.

If Keep It Peachy is the closing of one chapter, what does the rest of 2026 and 2027 hold for Bellah Mae? I guess she is going to be kept busy with gigs. She has played the CMA Fest and had the time of her life. Looking at her Instagram, and you get a sense that Bellah Mae is very happy and is loving playing and recording in the U.S. Even though she no longer lives in the U.K., I hope she pops back here and plays some dates soon, as there are so many people who would love to see her perform. The mighty Bellah Mae is an exceptional artist who will soon…

CONQUER the globe.

__________

Follow Bellah Mae

FEATURE: Only Me Skating Fast: The Incredible Evolution and Emotional Expanse Kate Bush Achieved By the Time of 1985’s Hounds of Love

FEATURE:

 

 

Only Me Skating Fast

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

 

The Incredible Evolution and Emotional Expanse Kate Bush Achieved By the Time of 1985’s Hounds of Love

__________

I was re-reading…

Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book on Hounds of Love. You can order a copy here. There is a lot of great background regarding Hounds of Love. There are many things about this album that marked a peak for Kate Bush. Leah Kardos notes how, “If one were to put Kate Bush’s first twenty singles in a line-up, from ‘Wuthering Heights’ all the way to ‘Cloudbusting’, one might notice the songs becoming incredibly idiosyncratic and emotive. Simon Reynolds described this evolution as being ‘almost unrivalled for sustained brilliance and escalating oddness,’ adding that he considered ‘only the Beatles, from start to finish, and Bowie, from “Space Oddity” to “Fashion”, (to) surpass it”. That is an interesting through. I do think that Kate Bush was remarkable on her first few albums. In terms of being unconventional and revealing. One cannot say that she was not personal or emotive on 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart. Or 1980’s Never for Ever. She was a young artist who, for a period, was produced by someone else and did not have as much reign and control as she might have desired. Even so, there is truth in how Bush leap to new peaks on Hounds of Love. In an interview with Peter Swales for Musician in 1985, Kate Bush was joined by Del Palmer. This question stands out:

“Once an album finally exists, can you enjoy it or will you have nothing more to do with it?

Kate: "I couldn't with the first two albums as they didn't turn out the way I wanted them to, so obviously when I listened to them it was quite disappointing for me because I kept thinking of all the things I'd have liked to have done. But the third and fourth albums, yes, I could listen to those and be quite critical about them and yet feel quite pleased about some of the things on them. Artistically, I was especially pleased with The Dreaming. I achieved lots more on it than on the earlier ones. But then the songs were, in a way, more accepting of that kind of emotional style because they were so intense and demanding. The new album, which is the one I'm most happy with, was a very different energy.

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It was summer last year and I felt I wanted to write songs that had a very positive energy rather than staying in all that intensity of emotion that was so strong with the last album. I think it's important that each album should be different, otherwise you're not going anywhere and exploring but staying in a rut. But then it takes time to carry yourself over from one energy to another because you tend to get into little riffs and phrases and so on that perhaps you've got as some kind of theme on the last album, even if that's not obvious. And it's important, I think, to start writing in a slightly new style. Now that it's all done, I can sit here and enjoy it, especially here in the studio because this is the optimal way to hear it, because this is where it was all done. As soon as it gets onto vinyl, onto disc, sounds different. And now I can just sit here and relax instead of taking notes, you know, like to remind me I've got to study that bit and so on..."

Del: "Yeah, you should see the notes! There's two files, this thick! Full of notes, you'd never believe it."

Kate: "Yes, they're little memos and scribbles and charts on takes that are good”.

There was definitely this new confidence and ambition. Maybe it is a natural evolution for a songwriter. Though you can see how quickly she had gone from The Kick Inside to Hounds of Love. Bush might have been a bit less personal and revealing for her first few albums. More characters and not putting herself centre of the picture. Hounds of Love is one where she is very bearing her soul.

The Ninth Wave, I always think, is Kate Bush in the water. Realising a nightmare of being lost at sea and how she would cope and what would happen when she is out there, not knowing if she would be rescued. The first side of Hounds of Love is always so emotive and powerful. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Cloudbusting and Hounds of Love. Kate Bush at her peak as a producer and writer. At her most realised and mature. Her songs still have characters in them and there is some emotional separation. Though many of the songs find Bush pouring her heart out. People might disagree with me. What we can’t argue against is how Hounds of Love is Bush tackling with some very grown-up fears and truths. Think about what we find on this album: “images of heroines in peril, tales of terror, witches on trial, spirits in limbo, bodies trapped under ice, little lights and dark depths, mothers, fathers, life, death and rebirth. Discovering who you are, where you belong, how to love better. Finally growing up”. That is what Leah Kardos notes in her Hounds of Love book. There is an observation Kardos makes I had not thought about. Considering earrings, oddly! In promotional videos around The Kick Inside, Bush wore dove earrings. In the ‘white dress’ version of Wuthering Heights we see them. Cut from mother of pearl. The Kick Inside’s Kite has the lines “I’m like a feather on the wind/I’m not sure if I want to be up here at all”. Predicting her sudden rise to fame, Bush had no choice but to be on this wild and exhaustion ride. Those dove-shaped earrings sit well, as Kardos writes, with the kite imagery. Were these earrings a form of calm and protection? Did they symbolise something in Kate Bush? This idea of peace or someone being peaceful and passive? By 1985, her earring choice had shifted. Heavy metal, they can be seen in the final photo of the Hounds of Love cover shoot by her brother, John. She wore them on photoshoots and promotion around the album’s release. You can see Bush wearing them on Top of the Pops in 1986 when she performed Hounds of Love. “Dragons are mythic creatures linked to forces of chaos, wisdom and magic. Compared to the wide-eyed child with dangling doves, the woman with the gleaming dragons seems far more confident, knowing… and powerful”.

I think that is it, essentially: Kate Bush was where she wanted to be and had that control. Her bespoke home studio was completed by the start of 1984. Bush would produce Hounds of Love alone, against the desires of EMI. She proved them wrong when the album reached number one and gained huge critical applause. The production on Hounds of Love is miles away from her earliest work. It is, as Kardos writes, “strikingly original for its time: poised, element, ethereal”. Unique and unusual for its time, as very few female artists had access to hi-tech recording equipment. When Hounds of Love became this phenomenon, Bush had very few female peers doing it like she was. Her 48-track studio was back at her family home. I do think that is one major reason why the album seems so powerful, open and emotionally revealing. She was surrounded by family and no doubt the memories of her childhood and home infused the songs. Feeling less guarded than she would be at a studio in London and on the clock, Hounds of Love benefits from that space and freedom. Some of the album written in Ireland, the country her mother was born in.  The progress Bush made as an artist and producer in such a short time was hard-earned. It was not like it came easy. She battled exhaustion, record label doubts, critical backlash and challenges. It was her determination and faith in her own vision and path that led to Hounds of Love. I don’t think it is the first album where we truly hear what is inside of Kate Bush’s heart and mind. You can pick songs from her four albums before then. Examples on each album. All the Love from The Dreaming (1982), arguably her most revealing or personal to that point. Yet Hounds of Love is popular, partly as we connect with Kate Bush more as a person. Less guarded and hidden behind others. I do think the woman in the sea on The Ninth Wave is her. So many insights into her throughout that suite. Waking the Witch dealing with, among other subjects, sexism and misogyny. How a woman’s power is doubted and seen as evil. The Morning Fog is where she embraces life and family after being rescued. I have theorised that this moment is her struggle in the industry to prove herself and do things on her own terms. By building a studio next to her family home and having her family alongside her, she was able to achieve perfection and release a masterpiece.

Perhaps I am over-reaching, but I was flicking through Leah Kardos’s book on Hounds of Love. You can see this is her best album and her best as a producer. But I am thinking about the emotional impact of the album. Whether one of the secrets of its success is because Kate Bush is more at the centre. The cover for The Kick Inside sees her pinned to a kite and this small figure, seemingly flying high and unsure of where she would land. A degree of uncertainty and unpredictability. Lionheart is Bush in a lion costume on a toy chest. This idea of playfulness but also childhood. Never for Ever is a sketch of Bush with her skirt lifted and all these figures flying from it. Like ideas coming from her, it is busy and chaotic too. The Dreaming, where she has a key on her tongue to pass it to Houdini (depicted by Del Palmer on the cover) so he can escape a death-defying trap. All of these symbolise elements of risk, a lack of security or a semblance of disorder and wildness. Those dove earrings that might be interpreted as passive and about someone in flight. A softness. Hounds of Love brought dragon earrings and a cover where Bush was front and centre. Flanked by sleeping dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, she looks calm, happy, in control and fierce. The sign of a masterful songwriter and producer who was at her absolute peak. I feel every song says something about her. Even Mother Stands for Comfort. You get Bush expressing fears and doubts and not running away. Even on Hounds of Love’s title track, she eventually turns to face the chasing hounds. The heroine in the water who bravely battles and gets rescued. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) about swapping places with someone. If we could do that we could run up that hill, that road, that building…with no problems. Defiance and strength. After overcoming an exhausting process of recording The Dreaming, something was unlocked in Bush. Building her own studio and being surrounded by nature and home. Inspired to write in a different way and more comfortable putting more of herself in tracks. Thinking larger and wider. It is true that, alongside The Beatles and David Bowie, Kate Bush enjoyed this continued brilliance and oddness. Hounds of Love is undeniable one of the greatest albums…

EVER committed to tape.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Whole Story: A KBC Short Story, Issue 11 (Christmas 1981): ‘Tansa's Guitar’

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Whole Story

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Arrowsmith

 

A KBC Short Story, Issue 11 (Christmas 1981): ‘Tansa's Guitar’

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THIS  may be the final time…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Lyn Spencer for Razzmatazz at ITV’s Tyne Tees studios in 1981

I take from this resource when it comes to guidance and inspiration for Kate Bush: The Whole Story. I am travelling back to Christmas 1981. I have spent a lot of time in 1980 and 1981 for features lately. I want to move around a bit for future ones. However, as this caught my eye, I am compelled to include it here. For the Kate Bush Club, she did contribute articles. Like diary entries. Kate Bush discussing her career and what she was up to. There were also interviews. Occasionally there would be short stories and something fictional, which gave us a new insight into Kate Bush. For a Christmas edition of the Kate Bush Club, Issue 11, she provided fans with an interesting short story. I want to comment on it, but here is her tale: Tansa’s Guitar:

“Weston was going on his winter tour and needed some focal point to make the tour more complete and relevant. He had recently bought a guitar at an auction in New York. The guitar had been beautifully made in California by a small company with a reputation among the leading rock musicians.

The guitar had a strange history, and was meant to have passed through the hands of a number of guitar heroes at the end of the sixties and early seventies. There was no documentation with the instrument to indicate who had owned it over the years, but the original bill showing that it was bought from Tansa of California had come with the instrument.

Weston hoped that he could use this instrument as an extra dynamic in his act. For a moment he remembered how the auctioneer had held the guitar by its neck, looking as though he was acknowledging the roars of a crowd at the end of a concert, with the handmade gold machine-heads on the instrument suddenly reflecting the lighting of the auction rooms. Weston had known instinctively as a professional musician that his excitement at seeing the guitar was nothing to do with the external appearance of the instrument. It was something deeper, almost like seeing a beautiful girl in a crowded place and then seeing her eyes turning to meet his, and not turning away.

It makes me wonder what motivated this particular story. I guess, as it was published near Christmas, that idea of a perfect gift. Perhaps Kate Bush imagined receiving a historic instrument would be a great present. A bit of a dream. She herself was at an auction around about this time. In fact, at the end of 1981, Bush made an appearance at Sotheby’s annual rock memorabilia auction.. She picked up a Perspex sculpture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in their Two Virgins pose. She got a shooting script for The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. This auction was whilst she was finalising The Dreaming (1982). Her reason for picking up this John Lennon/The Beatles memorabilia might have been a reaction to John Lennon’s death in December 1980. Bush was a big fan of The Beatles, so I feel this story of someone buying a guitar that had this history and gravitas was loosely based on her own experience. I know Bush was engaged with auctions after 1981 but, when it came to buying stuff rather than donating to them, the late-1981 example might be unique. Perhaps she enjoyed the experience and wanted to write a short story around it:

There was a great deal of carving on the instrument, not unlike the sort of tooling and decoration that used to be found on muskets. The instrument was heavy, but Weston liked a heavy guitar, liked to feel its weight pulling down on his neck and centering in his stomach. With that sort of stability, his hands could flit around the neck and body of the instrument like white spiders.

When the rehearsals for his tour began, Weston realised that the guitar was no ordinary instrument. At first it wouldn't work at all. He felt clumsy, he felt as though he'd only been playing guitars for a couple of years, he felt as though his bones and muscles were reacting to the cold winter air like thick oil. But after a couple of hours the instrument began to sing, and by the end of the rehearsal session Weston was feeling good. When he had finished, he handed the guitar to his roadie. The roadie made it quite clear that although he thought the instrument very beautiful it was, in his terms, a "weird axe", and Weston would be better off leaving it alone. Weston laught this off--if the guitar had any sinister connections, he was going to blow them to pieces with his playing.

As he was getting ready for the first gig of the tour a message came through that Tansa of California were phoning from America, saying that Weston owed them for a guitar he had recently purchased at an auction. This puzzled Weston, as he had personally handed over the money to the auctioneer, but he had no time for these sort of problems, with only half an hour to go. As he warmed up in his dressing room the instrument responded well and Weston felt that the night was going to go in a positive direction. But when he got out under the lights in front of the audience and roars of appreciation had quietened down, he began to feel that same thick, oil-sump movement in his hands. He asked the management to put up the heating on the stage during the act. But things didn't get very much better, and by the interval he had changed his guitar and was back on one of his standard favourite instruments. When the second half ended, he pulled the place together and during his last number the audience had begun to dance at the back.

I do love how Kate Bush focused on a guitar and this sort of odd direction. Rather than someone buying it at auction and it be very positive and this dream come true, there is a twist in the tale. The drama of Weston being called by Tansa. This California thing too. In 1981, Bush had not broken into America. She loved many American artists, but there was not a huge fanbase in the U.S. for her music. It would grow but, as of the end of 1981, she was better known in the U.K. That part about asking the venue to turn the heating up on stage makes me connect dots to Kate Bush and The Tour of Life. Th dress rehearsal at The Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park, London. A Victorian space, there was no heating, so quite a bit of money was spent heating the stage and space up. The idea of a performer being cold on stage is not something we have much these days, though Bush experienced that. Like a bad dream, was this something Kate Bush had dreamt and is recalling? Did it have psychological relevance in terms of how she felt about performing and considering another tour? I do like how there are not many direct comparison to her own career. The guitar, an instrument she did not play herself, as the focal point.

On the second gig, a similar situation occurred. With only a few minutes left before going on stage a message came through that Tansa wanted to talk to him about payment for a guitar. And again, when he went on to the stage the same thing happened: he couldn't make the instrument function properly.

It was during one of these moments, when he was on the verge of deciding whether to try a particularly tricky solo on the instrument, that he noticed a man sitting in the front row of the audience, clearly lit up by the stage lighting. This man was looking at him with something more than just the expression of a fan lost in a dream of appreciation. He was definitely trying to catch Weston's eye, and it wasn't to indicate to him that liked what he was doing.

Again he had to change over to another guitar for the second half, and again the gig took off as soon as he'd made the switch. Afterwards in the dressing room, he was told that there was somebody at the back stage entrance demanding that he see Weston about payment for the guitar. Weston dismissed it; but as they were driving away from the gig, and as usual many faces pushed themselves against the window of the car to look at Weston, staring into the back seat through the warm glass of the window was the face he'd seen in the front of the audience. The man was shouting something at him and he appeared angry. Weston gave instructions to the driver to go faster, and they cleared the crowd without any mishap.

By now the rest of the band were quite familiar with the weird, unpredictable playing of their front-man and were trying to persuade him to leave the instrument alone. Weston, however, took it on stage on the third gig, and after the first hour of the first half, having been unable to make the instrument sing and soar, he flung it across the stage, where it smashed into a stack of amplifiers and fell to the ground, with the whole of the back-plate coming apart and tinkling on the wooden stage floor. He picked up one of his other guitars, but the anger and frustration that had caused him to sling Tansa's instrument away from him seemed to have affected his guitar playing, and the concert was not a success.

In 1981, Bush was producing her own music. She produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly and was putting together The Dreaming solo. Maybe there is some of her own anxiety and anger in the story. Trying to get something right. That idea of perfectionism or struggling to make something as great as you’d hope. I do not know whether the Kate Bush Club reached out to her to come up with a story for that Issue 11, or whether Bush submitted it of her own accord. This was a hectic period for her. In August 1981, Bush goes into Odyssey Studios with Paul Hardiman as engineer to record the overdubs on all tracks in a four-and-a-half month session. By October, working tirelessly on The Dreaming, she is to the point of exhaustion. Forcing her to take a short break. There are other events from around that time, such as attending Abbey Road Studios to celebrate its fiftieth birthday in November 1981. She appeared on a new chat show, Friday Night Saturday Morning, on 21st November and discussed her work. It was a time of stress for sure, so I think some of the story relates to her. This notion of preserving with something against the wishes of band members. Then getting frustrated. Almost like analysing her dreams, Bush must have faced some resistance and walls that she had to break through.

This gig was in London, and by the time they'd finished and were coming down backstage, Weston could hear a strange silence through the dressing room windows, and he knew immediately that the whole of the city was encased in snow. Depressed and puzzled, he got ready to make a run for the car. As he was doing this, his guitar-roadie came in with the broken instrument, pointing out that there was no real damage and that it was nothing he couldn't sort out in a couple of hours.

Weston wanted to get back to his bed and sleep, so he went with the roadie in the crew van. As they were pulling away from the theatre down a narrow alley, a man came running out of a shop doorway, and immediately Weston recognised him as the man who'd been watching him from the audience. The roadie pointed out to him that it was the same man who'd been hanging around the stage door saying he was from Tansa and needed payment.

As they accelerated away, the man ran faster and faster, and although the vehicle was quite easily doing in excess of 40 mph on the wet and sludgy road, the man was still gaining on them. They could hear him shouting that he'd come for payment, that payment was needed and that until Weston had made the payment he would never be able to play the guitar in front of an audience. The people inside the van were beginning to panic now, as on a straight run up a deserted and quite Oxford Street they hit 55, almost 60 mph--but the man was still gaining.

The roadie suddenly kicked open the back door of the vehicle and slung the guitar out into the snow towards the running man. He slammed the door and they skidded round the corner and were away. The last Weston saw of the guitar was the man gently picking it up out of the sludge, talking to himself--or to the instrument. Then a shop window full of Christmas decorations blocked his view. Weston didn't feel angry, but still he wanted to know what the hell his roadie meant by throwing his best guitar out of the back of the van. The roadie, who was quite shaken and upset, took a piece of paper from out of his pocket.

"I found this stuck inside the back of the guitar."

It was a bill from Tansa, and written on it were the words:

"One handmade custom guitar--material and sundries: $2000.00."

"Special effects for enchanting & capturing the minds of audiences, our fee: One soul."

Kate Bush”.

There is a lot to unpack in the final stages. This dramatic chase. Snow blanketing London. There was a lot of snow in the U.K. in 1981. Often remembered as The Big Snow, December 1981 was one of the coldest and snowiest months on record, with over half of the country experiencing lying snow on Christmas Day. Demands for payment for a guitar. You think back to that auction and what happened. Weston won that item and seemingly had paid for it. Perhaps there was an issue. A cursed guitar. In terms of something darker, Bush did buy that Perspex sculpture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The recent death of Lennon gave that culture a slightly eerier or haunted nature. Did she consider this and transpose that to a guitar? This being Kate Bush, there was something a bit unusual and sinister. You could analyse things and think that this chase is between Kate Bush and the record labels. The demand for an album to come out and this pressure. Her trying everything and reaching a bit of a crisis point. This idea of exchanging your soul to please an audience and have this dream. I think this short story would have made a great song. Nearing the end of a busy year, she did get the chance to pen the tale. Of course, Tansa is an anagram of Santa, so this is almost like a twist on the conventional magic of Christmas. Santa getting gifts for good children. Instead, we get an example of this instrument not playing properly and there being this sort of hex. Or there being a problem with it.

Instead of this magical Christmas story, there is this dramatic and tense tale that I do feel can be linked to Kate Bush. In a September 1981 interview for Record Mirror, there was pressure on her to write a book. At the same time as putting together another album: “But yes, a book is on the cards, hopefully before the end of the year, and she says: "I'd like to write it myself. Without saying anything about the other books, which I don't want to, I feel almost pressured to speak, otherwise there's this huge misrepresented area. "In one way it's ridiculous--I feel it's much too early to write a book, I've hardly done anything yet. But I really want people to be aware of reality--subjective reality, obviously. "It'd be about what it's like being me, my feelings, my friends, the people that I rely on. I need to be represented in a positive way, and I'll have to do it myself." [This book, tentatively titled Leaving My Tracks, was shelved in 1984.] Slowly Abbey Road is beginning to wake up for another Kate Bush day that is likely to last until the early hours of the next morning, and she announces candidly: "I'm beginning to feel like shit. Ireland's catching up on me. And all the things that have to be done. It's impossible to do it all in the time...perhaps if I could stop sleeping it would help." But she doesn't really believe it, even if she does wonder if transcendental meditation does help you to relax enough to cut down on those "very wonderful" hours of sleep. No, she decides, it's work as usual. Twenty-two years old, a Tour of Life and three albums behind her...and the rest can wait. Treading devastatingly and surely between the doubters and the devotees, Kate Bush may well continue to "amaze" us all”. Tansa’s Guitar is something a lot of Kate Bush fans do not know about. I do love reading what she wrote for the Kate Bush Club. This short story at Christmas 1981 is amazing. So much going on! Although 1981 and 1982 were very stressful and hard years as Kate Bush finished The Dreaming, it would al be worth it, as it truly is…

A wonderful album.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Solomon/Isolde/Marion (The Song of Solomon)/Carmilla (Surrender into the Roses)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

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

 

Solomon/Isolde/Marion (The Song of Solomon)/Carmilla (Surrender into the Roses)

__________

THERE  are not many combinations…

IN THIS PHOTO: A young Cathy Bush/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

left for this series. I am going to end by pairing Moments of Pleasure from The Red Shoes with Them Heavy People from The Kick Inside. I will lead off with a song from The Red Shoes. I am then going to finish by discussing a character from a Kate Bush demo. The first character is another religious figure. Solomon is, of course, part of The Song of Solomon. I will look at who Solomon was, but there are other subjects to talk about. I will not repeat what I wrote previously about The Red Shoes. I shall come to the sexual urgency and explicitness in it. Not that it is a raunchy song. It is Kate Bush being bold. It depends how you approach the lyrics. It was definitely something new. Her music has always been quite sensual and sexy. She is an artist who talks about sex and fantasies. Someone who has never been conventional when it comes to love and desire. You can trace that all the way back to her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. By the time of The Red Shoes being released, there was change in terms of relationships and personal lives. The Song of Solomon, I assume was written sometime around 1992. The album came out in November 1993. Perhaps we can date it as late as 1993. Kate Bush married Dan McIntosh in 1992. Is this a song about her new husband? I have focused on this song before. Many have written it off as being an offcut from The Sensual World. In some ways, it fits more onto that album. This makes me think of songs that one would imagine are more suited to other albums. I think that about Moments of Pleasure. That is on The Red Shoes. I always think that it should have been on The Sensual World. I don’t think that was a holdover or offcut. Even so, there is something about Moments of Pleasure that slots into the ethos and tone of The Sensual World.

That idea of Bush embracing sensuality or at least exploring womanhood. You could fit Moments of Pleasure right by The Sensual World’s title song. I can appreciate how The Song of Solomon is also one that could appear on The Sensual World. That 1989 album has plenty of gold on it. In terms of how people react to the song and how Solomon connects with the rest of the lyrics. This tumblr post makes some interesting observations: “It fits well enough on The Red Shoes, an album in part about picking personal mythology out of the most patriarchal of stuff; but otherwise, it's pretty clear where it goes. The Trio Bulgarka, the Bulgarian vocal ensemble of Stoyanka Boneva, Yanka Rupkina and Eva Georgieva who had some solo albums but are mainly known for Bush's work, returns here -- curiously, on none of the The Line, the Cross and the Curve choices. Bush has called The Sensual World her most "feminine" album, and this is possibly among her most explicitly feminine songs, both in the delicate instrumentation, harps and vocals and sounds like chiffon, and in the lyrics: "here's a woman singing," Bush says, drawing boundaries like curtains. Everything's beneath a thick, suggestive haze. Too many people think this song is a joke, largely because of the chorus: "Don't want your bullshit -- just want your sexuality." The fact that dismissing female sexuality is exactly the sort of bullshit Bush doesn't want is lost on everyone, and the fact that there's nothing coquettish about it. Sure, she pores over her Bible for the first time this album (though, tellingly, not the really explicit verses, which is rather a feat with the Song of Solomon in pop culture); sure, she dwells and pauses upon lines like "his left hand is under my head, and his right hand -- doth embrace me" fairly suggestively. Sure, the bridge is pretty obviously supposed to be simulating an orgasm, with lines that either read amazingly dirty or oddly submissive. But none of this explains it all. The last time she sings it, it's out of pure frustration -- don't want your bullshit! -- and sounds almost defeated, as if there's a lot of bullshit to come”.

Let’s go back to the roots. The Song of Solomon. In The Bible, Solomon was the third (and final) king of the united kingdom of Israel. He ruled a golden age of peace and prosperity. The son of King David and Bathsheba. Best known for his unparalleled wisdom, his immense wealth, and building the First Temple in Jerusalem. I do wonder what influenced Kate Bush to explore this character. However, rather than her song being about this biblical king, it connects with a lyrical poem. This article explores The Song of Solomon:

“The Song of Solomon is a lyric poem written to extol the virtues of love between a husband and his wife. The poem clearly presents marriage as God’s design. A man and woman are to live together within the context of marriage, loving each other spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
This book combats two extremes: asceticism (the denial of all pleasure) and hedonism (the pursuit of only pleasure). The marriage profiled in Song of Solomon is a model of care, commitment, and delight.
Key Verses:
Song of Solomon 2:7; 3:5; 8:4 - “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”
Song of Solomon 5:1 - “Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers.”
Song of Solomon 8:6-7 - “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.”

Brief Summary: The poetry takes the form of a dialogue between a husband (the king) and his wife (the Shulamite). We can divide the book into three sections: the courtship (1:1 - 3:5); the wedding (3:6 - 5:1); and the maturing marriage (5:2 - 8:14).

The song begins before the wedding, as the bride-to-be longs to be with her betrothed, and she looks forward to his intimate caresses. However, she advises letting love develop naturally, in its own time. The king praises the Shulamite’s beauty, overcoming her feelings of insecurity about her appearance. The Shulamite has a dream in which she loses Solomon and searches throughout the city for him. With the help of the city guards, she finds her beloved and clings to him, taking him to a safe place. Upon waking, she repeats her injunction not to force love.

On the wedding night, the husband again praises the beauty of his wife, and in highly symbolic language, the wife invites her spouse to partake of all she has to offer. They make love, and God blesses their union.

As the marriage matures, the husband and wife go through a difficult time, symbolized in another dream. In this second dream, the Shulamite rebuffs her husband, and he leaves. Overcome with guilt, she searches the city for him; but this time, instead of helping her, the guards beat her—symbolic of her pained conscience. Things end happily as the lovers reunite and are reconciled.

As the song ends, both the husband and wife are confident and secure in their love, they sing of the lasting nature of true love, and they yearn to be in each other’s presence.

Foreshadowings: Some Bible interpreters see in Song of Solomon an exact symbolic representation of Christ and His church. Christ is seen as the king, while the church is represented by the Shulamite. While we believe the book should be understood literally as a depiction of marriage, there are some elements that foreshadow the Church and her relationship with her king, the Lord Jesus. Song of Solomon 2:4 describes the experience of every believer who is sought and bought by the Lord Jesus. We are in a place of great spiritual wealth and are covered by His love. Verse 16 of chapter 2 says, “My beloved is mine, and I am his. He feeds his flock among the lilies” (NKJV). Here is a picture of not only the security of the believer in Christ (John 10:28-29), but of the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep—believers—and lays down His life for us (John 10:11). Because of Him, we are no longer stained by sin, having had our “spots” removed by His blood (Song of Solomon 4:7; Ephesians 5:27)”.

While The Song of Solomon is traditionally associated with King Solomon, scholars debate whether he is the speaker, the subject, or simply a thematic inspiration. Kate Bush has referenced The Bible and figures from it before. There is debate as to whether King Solomon is the focal point for The Red Shoes’ The Song of Solomon. Thought I look at the lyrics of her song and I do feel that she was thinking about King Solomon. In any case, there are a couple of avenues to explore before I finish with the lyrics. There is imagery and words from the song that could be seen as problematic today if they were in a song. Not least because they reference Israel. Even if we are talking about something very much rooted in history, there would be issues if The Song of Solomon came out in 2026. In thinking about Solomon today, we have chilling parallels between a figure from The Bible and a current Israeli regime. The fact that Song of Solomon does seem to have connections to that King of Israel gives it a tarnish. In terms of biography, here is more about Solomon: “The Bible says that Solomon consolidated his position by liquidating his opponents ruthlessly as soon as he acceded to the throne. Once rid of his foes, he established his friends in the key posts of the military, governmental, and religious institutions. Solomon also reinforced his position through military strength. In addition to infantry, he had at his disposal impressive chariotry and cavalry. The eighth chapter of 2 Chronicles recounts Solomon’s successful military operations in Syria. His aim was the control of a great overland trading route”. Rather than be haunted and scarred by what Israel is doing to Gaza and the Palestinian people now and connecting it to the time of Solomon, we can look at the poem between two lovers. You can read it as a couple who have doubts and their strength is tested, though they are resolved and connected at the end. I keep thinking about how Bush came to write her song and how it connects to Song of Solomon. Whether she was thinking about that poem and adding her take, or considering Solomon and assuming the male figure in the poem was him.

Few articles scrutinise the origins of Kate Bush’s song from The Red Shoes. Bush re-recorded it for 2011’s Director’s Cut. The vocals from the Trio Bulgarka remain, yet there were new elements. I wonder why Kate Bush reproached this song. Maybe she did not like the production. Or she wanted to strip the song down. If there is a title-link between The Song of Solomon and Song of Solomon, Bush’s reading and lyrics paint something more personal: “Don’t want your bullshit, yeah/Just want your sexuality/Don’t want excuses, yeah/Write me your poetry in motion/Write it just for me, yeah/And sing it with a kiss”. There is this blend of Bush being poetic and biblical. In terms of referencing the book and also blending in something quite lyrical and romantic: “Mmm, just take any line/“Comfort me with apples/For I am sick of love/His left hand is under my head/And his right hand/Doth embrace me”/This is the Song of Solomon/Here’s a woman singing”. Whilst I have discussed Solomon, there are two other characters that are more literal and directly references. These lines mention them: “I’ll be the Rose of Sharon for you/I’ll do it for you/I’ll be the Lily of the Valley for you/I’ll do it for you/I’ll be Isolde or Marion for you/I’ll do it for you”. The name, Rose of Sharon, first appears in Hebrew in the Tanakh. In the Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs) 2:1, the speaker (the beloved) says, "I am the rose of Sharon, a rose of the valley". Interesting to wonder where Bush got inspiration to mention the Rose of Sharon. It is her referencing Isolde and Marion. Two particular options. Isolde (Yseult) is the tragic heroine of the Arthurian romance Tristan and Isolde, known for a powerful, consuming, and fateful love.  Marion (Maid Marian) is the steadfast, loyal lover of Robin Hood, famous for her rustic charm, companionship, and devotion. Both fateful and devoted lovers. Bush casting herself back in history. To legend and lore. Fictionalised lovers to an extent. It is the spread of these characters in terms of periods of history and their depiction. Solomon potentially tying into the man/king figure in Song of Solomon. What is Bush saying with this song? She is saying that she could be anyone for this lover. She can take different forms or be a variety of things. Is this her being subservient and submissive? She is definitely confident and brash when it comes to her demands. Though there is that contrast in terms of moulding into different forms, some of them tragic and ill-fated, when it comes to pleasing her lover. A fascinating song to unpick, it sounds more potent and striking as part of Director’s Cut. I have perhaps not done full justice to The Song of Solomon. In nay case, it is a song that warrants more investigation and affection.

Surrender Into the Roses is an early Kate Bush song. Although there is one character mentioned, there is also mystery in terms of their relevance. Camrilla is named in the song. Let’s look at the lyrics: “Last night you were on my balcony/You needn't try, know the whole story/Before it's too late I must get away/But both of us know you must stay/Oh, come on, Carmilla/Surrender into the roses/Go back home under the posies/Surrender into the roses/Carmilla, Carmilla, Carmilla”. There is a floral link to The Song of Solomon. Bush imagining herself as these flowers. Though there is biblical connection, we do have Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valley. Here, there are the rose and posies. No stranger to bringing flowers and floral life into her song, many have connected Kate Bush’s Carmilla from Surrender into the Roses to a source that many might not think Kate Bush would have known about. Though, for anyone who knows about Bush (Cathy Bush, we should say, as she would have written this song before her professional career began. Dreams of Orgonon wrote about Surrender into the Roses, a.k.a., Carmilla:

“Felicity Toulson’s essay in the Bush-themed fanzine Homeground. Toulson makes the so-compelling-as-to-be-obviously-right argument that the song is an homage to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic Gothic lesbian vampire novella Carmilla, and frankly makes her case right away by pointing out that the lyrics are totally vampiric—the song literally mentions covering a room in garlic flowers. It’s a horror song in its tropes and atmosphere.

It’s also a lover’s quarrel gone horribly wrong. Carmilla is largely famous for its sapphic attributes, with the relationship between the characters Laura and Carmilla being an explicitly lesbian one (this is made explicit in the Hammer horror film adaptation The Vampire Lovers—a fun connection to a song we’ll cover here soon). This sexual-romantic tension is expressed in the song too: “before it’s too late I must get away/but both of us know you must stay.” It’s a mildly startling little recording, one that foreshadows Bush’s various engagements with intertextuality and queerness (bonus: it’s one of at least two Kate Bush songs to rhyme “roses” with “posies.” In the later song she even pronounces “posies” in a way that makes the rhyme parse on record). Our time exploring the Phoenix era is ending, so we may as well go out with lesbians and vampires”.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

There is a lot to examine there. Although Kate Bush does not mention Laura in the song, there is every likelihood that she was thinking about this novella when writing Surrender into the Roses. I love these lines: “Tying, dying, flowers around the room/It keeps me safe, but oh! the sickly perfume/Well, it makes me long for the good times/When you were really alive”. It is a very short song, through one of Kate Bush’s most intriguing. A wonderful demo that I feel should have got a bigger life. There is that Horror connection. An early example of Bush exploring the Gothic genre. You could say that Wuthering Heights, her 1978 debut single, was a classic example. The ghost of Catherine Earnshaw trying to grab Heathcliff. Hammer Horror, the first single from her second studio album, Lionheart (1978), has those obvious connections. Throughout her career, Bush explored and expanded on Horror/Gothic ideas. Bringing the dark and macabre into her music. Though I am not sure whether she wrote anything similar to Surrender into the Roses. When she was at school, Bush wrote poetry and her writing did explore less conventional forms of romance. If 1993’s The Song of Solomon is her perhaps at her most charged and sexually confident, there is also that ambiguity and blend. Between her making this demand, but also compromising or conforming. A lot to talk about. Surrender into the Roses is more straightforward in a sense, though it is no less unconventional. Perhaps the song was considered for The Kick Inside, but seen as too odd. Bush’s poetry referenced death. There was darkness to a lot of it. In terms of poetry that was mor sexually liberated and less conservative, her brother John would have exposed her to that. No shock that she would pen a song that is a vampiric lesbian love song!

I am writing this during Pride month (June). Bush writing a song that is about intersexuality. That would have been rare in the 1970s. Was there taboo about her releasing a song like this on her debut album, or was Surrender into the Roses seen as a demo that was not substantial enough to put on an album?! Like many of Kate Bush’s songs, you can connect to films, literature and television. The Song of Solomon made me think about Song of Solomon and The Bible. Exactly where Bush was drawing inspiration from. Surrender into the Roses goes to The Vampire Lovers. I do wonder whether a young Cathy Bush was allowed to watch The Vampire Lovers. A fan of Hammer Horror flicks, perhaps she was exposed to a risqué film at a young age. Her household was quite open, though you wonder whether Bush was simply referencing a film she had heard about or if she actually saw it. In terms of its quality, it doesn’t stand up today. This review shows that there are flaws: “The Vampire Lovers runs 91 minutes, or about an hour and a half. It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but it certainly isn’t the worst. It’s a solid “B” film, with a good story, good pace, and “titties galore.” It is a Hammer Horror film after all. The Vampire Lovers also plays heavily on the “lesbian vampire” angle, much more so than the original work. The lone drawback, the one black spot, is Forbes-Robertson’s character. While Pitt is far from a good thespian, and that takes away a little, this character takes away a lot. The character isn’t in Carmilla, and never gets explained in the film. We know he’s a vampire, and dressed in an aristocratic black suit and matching top hat, but also a “zombie green” makeup all over his face. The character just appears, says nothing, doesn’t really do anything, and we don’t know his fate at the end. The Vampire Lovers stands as a good “read, then watch” companion to Carmilla, and as a standalone film”.

IMAGE CREDIT: Precast reinforced concrete heart

If there were age restriction in terms of what children could see at the cinema, the 1970 film could have been shown on the T.V. Though I feel Bush read the 1872 novella, Carmilla. The fact is the novella was written by an Irish author, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and it was a foundational work of English-language vampire literature. Kate Bush’s mother was Irish, so perhaps a curiosity regarding Irish culture and literature. Though there would have been vampire films shown when Bush was growing up. A lot of them evolved from Carmilla. This amazing article explores Carmilla. I have written previous about The Gay Farewell (Queen Eddie), a song that very much explores queerness and a queer character. In the 1970s in the U.K., there was this struggle for L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ representation and equality. The first Pride march took place in London in 1972. This might have compelled Bush to think about the way she represented love. Less heteronormative. Though it is also the Gothic nature of the novella which would have fascinated her:

“The queer elements of this story are obvious in even a superficial reading, as are the sexually subversive and feminist undertones of Carmilla’s narrative. This is particularly true when the novella is set against the backdrop of the late Victorian era of its publication. While we often think of the Victorian age as deeply repressive of sexual desire outright, let alone homosexual desire, female platonic and even romantic love was in fact commonplace during this period (even if explicit lesbianism was not socially endorsed). You can read my other blog post on Boston Marriages to learn more about such 19th and early 20th century sapphic relationships.

Manifold interpretations of the novella’s text abound. Some focus on the intersection of feminist and lesbian themes. Elizabeth Signorotti opines in this vein that “Laura’s and Carmilla’s lesbian relationship defies the traditional structures of kinship by which men regulate the exchange of women”. She adds that Bram Stoker’s later work Dracula acts as a foil to Carmilla’s “reckless unleashing of female desire.”

Amy Leal emphasizes the “unameable desires” of Carmilla, suggesting that Carmilla’s anagram name games are perhaps a symbol of the closeted queer experience of the Victorian period. She notes, “[i]n every incarnation over the centuries, Carmilla must adopt an anagrammatical variation of her original name, each of which carries its own host of interpretations hinting at the forbidden same-sex desires in the text.”

Likewise, Marília Milhomem Moscoso Maia opines in her analysis that “Carmilla is a mysterious character and the same monstrous, who feeds on blood to the innocence of the young. It is a transgressive figure and a threat to the patriarchy of a society that lives under the aegis of the Victorian Era.”  She adds, “Sheridan Le Fanu sustains a perception of lesbianism in the book depicted in something torturant and codified in a double system of opposite binary significations such as pleasure/displeasure;  love/hatred; joy/rage and forbidden/desirable.”

Lindsey Vesperry expands on these themes of a female monster as a threat to Victorian heteronormative social hierarchy. She notes, “[t]he vampire Carmilla, who is a vehicle for the natural world, transgresses the boundaries of Victorian femininity by preying upon young women, and the male characters attempt to reestablish the patriarchal system by staking her. The ‘unnatural’ Carmilla certainly stands as a challenge against a male-dominated civilization by her mere existence.” She concludes that the novella itself represents masculine fear of “the monstrous feminine” which so boldly challenges patriarchy”.

What also could have compelled this young genius is how complex a character Carmilla is, as you can see from the article below. Carmilla is an underrepresented and underrated novella. How influential and important it is. I am sure Catherine/Kate Bush would have known about this as a child when she discovered the 1872 novella. Fascinated by so many elements, she wanted to bring this novella and its antagonist, into a song:

“Carmilla” is unusual for Le Fanu primarily in that its antagonist is a beautiful, young woman with no attitude of haughtiness or entitlement (at least that she lets on). Le Fanu’s villains tend to be corrupt and corpulent aristocratic men: judges, earls, squires, lords of the manor, demon lovers, etc. If they are females (and they rarely are), they are proud noblewomen who shine with beauty but reek with corruption, as in “The Child that Went with the Fairies” – a highly influential prologue to “Carmilla,” as it so happens.

While Carmilla often repels Laura, she is not an arrogant potentate – more like a sluggish, slightly depressed loner who is desperate to possess the heart of her friend. She even exhibits the effects of a variety of mental illnesses (most prominently, borderline personality disorder, a neurosis that causes people to demand affection when it is withdrawn but reject it when it is offered).

Best known as the book that influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula (though it was also heavily influenced by “Ultor de Lacy” and “Aungier Street” – more on that later), and as the one of the earliest uses of the lesbian vampire trope, “Carmilla” is woefully underappreciated as a Gothic powerhouse that stands among the best contributions to the genre of vampire fiction”.

I shall wrap things up here. In thinking of Surrender into the Roses, it makes me wonder whether people know about the Phoenix/Cathy Demos. You can read more about them here. In terms of what she was writing about and how she was developing as a songwriter, this Dreams of Orgonon article provides some guidance and great analysis. Perhaps I am overreaching or have got my perspectives wrong. Though I may also have not dug deeply enough. The Song of Solomon and Surrender into the Roses written years apart and are vastly different, though each traces back to some very compelling sources. Two intriguing songs of desire that are far from ordinary. The Song of Solomon was Kate Bush at arguably her most explicit. Surrender into the Roses was this curious and agile young mind exploring love in a way that was more like poetry than popular music. Each of these songs highlight that there is…

NOBODY like her.

FEATURE: Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow: Crimson: Light Became the Enemy…

FEATURE:

 

 

Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow

ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush

 

Crimson: Light Became the Enemy…

__________

I  am completing…

the ‘red’ section of my look at John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow. This is quite a short section. The next part takes us to ‘orange’ and a few sections around that colour. It goes as far as Never for Ever and John Carder Bush photographing his sister around that 1980 album. And the music videos. Some of the brilliant shots he got from that time. Right now, we are sort of wrapping up. We are sort of looking at 1978. In his book, we learn that “In those days, both Kate and I were very much night people”. That is the magic time for composers and artists. Photographers get to enjoy the quiet and have less distraction. Writers like Kate Bush could draw inspiration from that stillness and time. John Carder Bush notes how “There is also that feeling that by not going to bed you are extending your time on the planet and living more”. Photography sessions often ran late through the note to the following morning. I can imagine Kate Bush being this night owl. When it came to recording when she started to produce, she would have sessions going late. I am not sure whether this is something that stemmed from her childhood. Wanting to stay up late and being fascinated by what that time of the day offered. In terms of its mystery and stillness. John Carder Bush observed how modern photographers can get a great shot. They have digital equipment, so there is less risk. When he was photographing Kate Bush, there was always that sense of jeopardy. Or making sure that you had a great shot before you left. “Before I would start to process the black and white shots into the early hours, I would put away all the camera equipment, take down the lights, roll up the background and dismantle the set while everyone else was packing up their things and getting ready to go home”. These are the more technical details of his process. I think it is important, as we look at these shots of Kate Bush he took in her early career and assume it was very fast.

“But every part of the analogue process I used was fraught with danger. Every stage was critical – one mistake and the whole process would be ineffective, and I wouldn’t necessarily know until after the film processing stage”. One of the standout lines, which we see on page fifty-seven is “Once the film had been exposed to the massive amounts of controlled light in the studio for each photo, light became the enemy”. He curses this “demonic, indifferent destroyer that could slip through the tinniest cracks”. I don’t know if we ever think about how these timeless shots look so natural and easy but, in reality, things are different for photographers. In the 1970s, there was not the luxury of having digital equipment, being able to edit everything and doing multiple shots easily. “With colour, the rolls went off to a colour laboratory I knew I could trust. But I processed the black and white myself”. I am going to skip some of what he says – as it goes so deep with the whole process -, however, it is worth reiterating the challenges he faced. “The unknown results of the whole process, from loading the film that morning, which now seemed like a week ago, could be looked at in negative, and with the first perusal would come excitement or disappointment, even dismay”. It must have been tense for John Carder Bush to see if the shots he took would be development and look good or the expression he hoped he’d shot would be released. Getting that control and of light and chemistry right was crucial. The route from the shot being taken to us seeing it is long and often brutal. In terms of how it could all go wrong. In the end, there would be a contact sheet with a row of black and white images, which John Carder Bush likened to “postage stamps of my sister”. There was a connection between the siblings that extended to photography and an instinctive eye. John Carder Bush would know which shot worked the best and which one was right. So did his sister. We throw forward. The trails and that experimentation. Such a pain for a photographer who wanted to get the best shot but was hampered by the restrictions of the time. Images of him  experimenting “with developers and bromide papers late night after late night”, “I almost poisoned myself using toners in the tiny bathroom under the stairs in my flat that I could convert into a darkroom when it wasn’t being used for its original purpose”, and “The result of this crash course in experimentation and chemistry was the first album cover I did for my sister: The Dreaming”.

Though we are pre-Never for Ever chronologically, there is that nod to 1982. I did not know about the details of what she wanted for the cover. She wanted a black and white shot, but one that had a “toned finish and hand tinting to give the suggestion of the photography of Houdini’s time”. That would be between 1874-1926. The cover sees Bush with a key on her tongue and a man’s head (Del Palmer, her boyfriend at the time) in the shot. It was depicting Houdini being fed a key by a kiss so he could escape a trap. Bush playing his wife, Beatrice ‘Bess’ Houdini. John Carder Bush writes how he loves the skin tones on the cover. They were achieved, as he says, “in natural light against the ivy that covered an eighteenth-century wall that had once surrounded a large fruit and vegetable garden, and were lovingly coaxed out of the alchemy of developers and fixatives and the loving, thorough purification with water before being committed to the bath of selenium toner where magic happened, or didn’t”. That image was then hand-tinted by his girlfriend, Vivienne Morgan Chandler. We get to know about this very important woman, as “it has to do with living inside the rainbow”. She and John Carder Bush had a child together. She is very relevant to the book, as Chandler (who died in 2013) was a fine art photographer who became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Photographers. It was, as we find out “her own research into printing methods, developers, toners and papers” that helped John Carder Bush the results he wanted for The Dreaming and The Whole Story (1986). One of the most surprising revelations of this section of Kate: Inside the Rainbow is that those early photo sessions were unenjoyable. Many shots had been taken to give to record companies and magazines “An aura of vague, undefined projection suffused the studio”. John Carder Bush does say that there were superb shots taken. But after having to go to dance rehearsals, practise, production meetings, interviews and the likes, the last thing his sister wanted to do was to project and be this other person. When she should have been relaxing and simply being herself. I can understand that. The single and album covers were different. They had “all the fun of the Cathy book photos but with make-up artists, hair stylists, costumiers, flashlighting, backdrops and the magical Hasselblad, the icon of the medium-format cameras”.

Kate Bush and her brother working on the emotional trappings and settings for these shots. “The music industry was convinced that image alone could sell the product”. The importance of getting the shot ‘right’. We learn from the photographer about the Hasselblad. If he takes a still from a video shoot thirty years previous, it is still crisp and looks great. The VHS copy of the final video looks lifeless and blurred. Colourless. That is why I have argued that so many of her videos need an HD upgrade. The video artform is explored too. How it was essentially a series of stills strung together. How expensive it was to make a video, with no guarantee it would be shown on T.V. Now – or when the book was published – videos seem easier to make. You could do a one-take video and it would be a lot less rigorous than what directors had to endure decades before. That excitement of taking a shot that would be used on an album cover. A piece of art almost. John Carder Bush writing how he would buy albums on the strength of the artwork. Less common when it came to the C.D. era. Artwork and the importance of the image not as paramount. We are in a digital age but one where vinyl is very important. Yet, there are few standout album covers each year. Where you get that phenomenal and memorable image. John Carder Bush looks back at promo shots from the past and why some were not used. It might be, as he muses, “Perhaps it’s that during the intensity of a portrait session a mood evolves, partly on purpose and partly because of the time, the place, the season, the currents of our lives, and that when we looked through the transparencies and contact prints we were probably looking for shot that best captured the mood”. A different case for album covers. Many exquisite ones that were never used, yet “the ones we did choose still stand out as the most appropriate”. John Carder Bush reminisces how his sister was getting a “healthy distance from the madness of fame”, though that didn’t allow much permanence. He was still based in the same flat he lived at for thirty years (where he was living at the same address as his sister); she would have to move to avoid intrusion and obsessive fans. Criminals too. Never really being secure or settled anywhere.

As a stills photographer on her videos, John Carder compared himself to a thief. One that crept among the shadows to find the right shot. Trying to get a different angle or perspective that the cameraman did not, whilst also trying to stay out of the way. Walking onto a video shoot would amaze John Carder Bush. How many people were involved. A comparatively small crew for a stills shoot. As Kate Bush was discussing choreography, what she wanted from the video and was being made up and prepared, her brother would navigate a labyrinth of cables and crew to get himself positioned to take a perfect shot. Almost like a sniper in plain view. The final analogue sessions he did with his sister was for 1993’s The Red Shoes. That was using the beloved Hasselblad. In 2011, for Director’s Cut, a Canon digital camera belonging to his son, Gavin, was used. John Carder Bush does not consider himself to be a professional photographer, despite the fact he produced images for magazines and albums. He shot his sister but very few people outside of that world. He did not usually look back but, when constructing Kate: Inside the Rainbow, he had to. He remembered fondly the Cathy photos. Those he took of his sister as a girl. Even though they “probably represent just an hour or so out of her childhood, their flavour still seems to linger in these photos that scan many years of adulthood”.  I like how he says, when selecting images for the new book, he was confronted by the passing of time and the date of the images. When he took the images of his sister, “there is a very personal sort of vortexing into the ‘soul’ of the shot that bypasses the details of the date – does it do to me for a split second what those photos I kept in my desk at boarding school did for me? Does the arrow strike its target? If it does, the passing of time is irrelevant”. In the end, however stages and constructed the photos are, nothing has changed. “Just look at her eyes…”. The final words before we reach 1980 and Never for Ever. Completing ‘red’ before go into the ‘orange’ of Never for Ever and beyond, I did want to highlight the limitations John Carder Bush faced. How light could be this great gift but also an enemy. How a shot could easily be ruined and there was this sense of nervousness when it was developing. The equipment he used and his memories from this early years. I guess that take us through 1978 and maybe into 1979. How he switched from black and white to colour at one point and analogue to digital later. Though things changed and evolved, other aspects stayed the same. Chief among them, the startling potency and beauty…

OF his sister.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Eaves Wilder

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: Nick Scott for DORK

 

Eaves Wilder

__________

SIX months ago…

I spotlighted Eaves Wilder. It was an omission on my part to neglect her music to that point. Though I have been a fan for years. I wanted to revisited this incredible London-based artist. I am not going to repeat things I wrote in the previous feature. There are some great 2026 chats with an amazing and beautiful artist that is among our absolute best. I have so much respect and love for everything Wilder does. She plays London’s The Social on 24th June. One of our finest artists – as I think I acknowledged last time -, her debut album, Little Miss Sunshine, came out in April. I think that it should be shortlisted for a Mercury nomination. It is a perfect album for inclusion, as it is exceptional and worthy in its own right, though it is important we recognition artists genuinely deserving. I love Sam Fender, though he seemed dismissive last year when he won it for People Watching – even though the album was worthy. I am going to get to a couple of interviews around Little Miss Sunshine. I am ending with a positive review for the album. I don’t usually just dump in entire interviews without editing but, when it comes to some, I feel it is important to include the majority of what is said. In the case of Eaves Wilder, we get some explanation and background. In terms of why Little Miss Sunshine is important. Someone who, at one point, took a big step away from music. Why her debut album arrived this year and not sooner. DIY spoke with Eaves Wilder in April. Having hit pause until she had something to say, “with debut album ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, Eaves Wilder is learning to follow her instincts”:

“After releasing her debut EP ‘Hookey’ in 2019, London’s Eaves Wilder took a step back. “There’s so much noise in the world, and so many people making music, and I felt like I was one of them,” she explains, speaking from her living room over Zoom. “I thought: ‘I need to figure out if I’ve got something to say that I think I could add’.”

During what felt like a mid-life crisis (“well, hopefully not mid-life!”), Eaves decided it was time to throw in the towel and, if she ever wanted to move out of her parents’ house, get a more stable job - that, or she’d join a nunnery. “I still think it’s quite a good idea,” she grins, citing The Sound of Music as inspiration. “It’s free rent and free food; you get to garden, read and listen to music all day - it sounds lovely!” Unfortunately, her boyfriend pointed out that she’d have to give up beer, which put the plan firmly to bed.

Before calling it a day entirely, Eaves - who’d previously felt constricted by a pressure to produce radio-friendly, all-out pop - decided to try leaning into her own tastes. The result was ‘Mountain Sized’, which she describes as “basically a huge train of thought thrown up onto a song”; finally freed from writer’s block, the rest of her imminent debut album, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, soon followed.

“I’m really fuelled by the stuff in my gut. I think that’s why I’m drawn to certain sounds and why I love big, heavy distortion and loads of reverb,” she says. “It’s really instinctive now, rather than led by what I think I should be doing. It’s purely me and my stomach, and what I think sounds cool.”

Her comeback single of sorts, ‘Everybody Talks’ addresses the saturated online content farm that made her want to quit music in the first place, with her airy vocals growing more urgent over a spiralling chorus. “Everyone talks before they actually realise if they have something to say,” she explains. “We’re not meant to have this many opinions about everything. Our worlds are way too big.”

Right down to its name, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ is a rejection of the ever-cheerful, smiling woman Eaves felt expected to impersonate, packaging the anger, frustration and fear that felt truer to her experience of young womanhood within snarling guitars and massive instrumentals inspired by Wolf Alice, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots. Opener ‘Hurricane Girl’ reimagines the oft-mythologised troubled woman from a more sympathetic angle, while the thundering ‘Just Say No!’ recalls the intoxicating false praise of being taken advantage of.

It’s clear that being a young woman has consciously shaped much of Eaves’ relationship with the industry. She credits that to her mum, journalist Caitlin Moran, who would sit Eaves and her sister down in front of MTV “for hours” while pointing out how none of the male artists wore barely-there spangled leotards. “She’d say: ‘do you see how powerful he looks?’,” Eaves remembers. “‘He’s not having to do any of that shit - why are they?’”. That early education was formative; now, it pervades every facet of her musical life. “My view of the world has always been through a very feminist lens,” she nods. “It’s inescapable - once you see the world that way, you can’t go back”.

I do like this interview from Under the Radar earlier this month. Rather than it being the standard interview regarding promotion and getting insights into her debut album, instead, Eaves Wilder reveals her ‘firsts’. It is a great insight into a truly tremendous songwriter. I do hope that Little Miss Sunshine receives lots of award nominations, as it is among the best albums of this year. Women are ruling music, and Eaves Wilder is an example of queens on top. Little Miss Sunshine is an album you need to get on vinyl, as it contains music that draws you in. Even if there is a lot of her in the album, I think everyone can relate and understand. An experience that never excludes the listener. When I hear the album, I close my eyes and imagine myself in the songs. The feel and warmth of vinyl means it is an album you really need to get on this format:

“Wilder garnered attention and acclaim for her early singles and 2023 EP, Hooky, but considered walking away from music and even toyed with becoming a nun. But then she wrote and arranged Little Miss Sunshine in her shed and later co-produced the album with Andy Savours (My Bloody Valentine; The Horrors; Black Country, New Road; Sorry).

“I remembered when I realized I’d written a concept album and that it was a whole self-contained world. It was like ‘Holy shit!’ And in that moment I realized that’s why I had almost walked away,” she explains. “At my lowest, I just wanted to be unhuman, unfeeling, and unmoved. Like a mountain or a tree. Or the sky. These are all things that have a purpose but I didn’t know what my purpose was. And so what I had to do was figure it out, song by song.”

Read on as she discusses the early influence of her dad, her love for a certain Time Lord, and unlikely first musician crush.

First record your parents played for you?

My dad was constantly playing records. I remember him playing [Nick Drake’s] Bryter Layter a lot, and also ELO a lot.

First album you bought?

Elastica, by Elastica.

First favorite band?

The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

First favorite song?

Everything in the Doctor Who soundtrack by Murray Gold.

First concert you went to?

My dad’s a music journalist, and my mum was away a lot, so he would take us with him for all the gigs he had to review, which was awesome. I saw Carole King when I was really little and I remember it really stuck with me. I don’t think I’d seen a band fronted by a woman on piano.

First instrument?

High School Musical microphone that lets you duet with Troy. I ran that thing to the ground until his voice was like all distorted and fucked up cos I think I had also kissed it a lot it and it fucked with the electronics.

First recording device?

I got a four-track little portable recording machine when I was about eight and would mysteriously walk around school listening to my demos waiting for someone to ask me about it.

First time you performed in public?

I had formed this band for the school”.

Prior to getting to a review of Little Miss Sunshine, let’s come to Rolling Stone UK and their interview with the remarkable Eaves Wilder. They spotlighted an artist who “turned anger and disillusionment into newfound power on the glorious and deserved second chance of debut album ‘Little Miss Sunshine’”.

“What did it feel like when you started to write songs again after the break? What sounds and ideas were coming out?

It started from a point of me being like, ‘I’m gonna quit music, so what would I make? I’m just gonna experiment a little bit and see what I would make’. I was really anti-music at the time. I was, like, over it. I was really into books, and it was all coming from a few books and a few movies that I loved. About half way through, I realised, ‘Oh, this is all coming from the same place, and these will tie in together. Maybe it could be a thing!’

I remember talking to my mum and my sister, and my sister knew I was having writer’s block. She kept on hearing songs by, like, Olivia Rodrigo, and being like, ‘You should write a song like that!’ I’d say, ‘Fuck off! I’m trying!’ I remember just being like, ‘I can’t write a banger right now. I just can’t’. I just wanted to write something really pretty, and she was like, ‘Well, you’re allowed to do that too’. That just clicked something in me. I was like, ‘Oh, I could just make something that I think sounds really nice and isn’t meant to have mass appeal’. I remember my mum playing me a Liz Fraser song, which I’d never heard before. I went straight to the shed in my garden and wrote the first song for the record.

You’ve said your album is about world building, and its song titles – ‘Hurricane Girl’, ‘The Great Plains’, ‘Mountain Sized’ – are very tied to nature. What does the world you’re building look like in your head?

It was the polar opposite of where I actually was, in this really rainy spring in the UK. Everybody was so depressed! I was thinking of really vast American landscapes. I was super into the Laurel Canyon scene, and then from that, I was reading Daisy Jones and the Six, and Little House on the Prairie has always been one of my favourite books. It all just seemed to be this place that was pure fantasy and escapism – just being a little girl on a ranch, not having to think about her phone or, like, having a job or joining a nunnery…

The album is called Little Miss Sunshine – did that film inspire the album?

It actually didn’t! I’ve watched it before, but [the title] was more of a joke to myself, because I was such a bitch at the time – I was really going through it. I wasn’t nice to be around. Really, I was quite unhappy and really angry at the world actually, I think. I liked the idea of it, especially when you’re a woman that’s my age, it’s really not hot to be really angry or kind of a bitch or annoyed, and you need to have this sunny disposition. That’s what’s encouraged. And I really want to have that! At first I present as having that, but then deep down, I’ve got all of this other shit that’s going on, and that’s songs like ‘Mountain Sized’ and ‘Hurricane Girl’. I tried to use weather to describe all of these different weather fronts that were coming in and out of me at the time. It started off as a joke, and now it makes me quite happy, because the point of the album was trying to find the light in things again. I guess I did that eventually”.

I want to end with a review from DIY. They gave some great insights into one of the most important debut albums of this year. In terms of getting this incredible young artist to a wider audience. A complete and arresting album from Eaves Wilder. I do feel that this album is worthy of being played on some huge stages. Let’s hope that Wilder’s summer is busy with festival requests and a load of dates:

“Despite its sound owing much to late-‘90s alternative – and that it’s coming two years on from her initial breakthrough – there’s something so beautifully ‘now’ about ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, this debut full-length from Eaves Wilder. Not the ‘now’ that one might imagine rapacious, cartoonish A&Rs to seek – that’s already been and gone, despite their efforts, if it even existed. But a ‘now’ that, among other things, has digitally-literate teens metaphorically crate-digging in a way that’s seen many a veteran act performing to audiences younger than their biggest hits; Olivia Rodrigo using her stage as a pseudo mixtape, Hayley Williams spilling her own guts across new material, and acts like Mitski, Wolf Alice and Wet Leg crossing over into pop spheres in various ways. That tangent is to say, there’s an audience ready and primed for a record like this, should it find them.

The scene opener ‘Hurricane Girl’ sets is one that contrasts Eaves’ saccharine vocals – exaggerated in their effect as to veer towards the sinister – and soaring guitars. To use a decidedly ‘90s reference point to match its result: it’s as if Alisha’s Attic had been reached by riot grrrl. Similarly, ‘Ropeburn’ continues in the ‘90s alt-pop vein, while that same intense vocal turn adds a dollop of intrigue to ‘English Tea’, its “…or we could go for a drive / Or you could sit with me” given multiple interpretations.

There’s a glorious oomph to ‘Just Say No!’, while ‘The Great Plains’ feels like a classic summertime radio bop, a hint of wistful resignation to its repeated “I wanna be a cowboy, mama”; closer ‘Summer Rolls’, too, whirls dreamily into being a classic, expansive final song. It’s ‘Daisy Chain Reaction’ that’s the true gem here, though; its witty title matched by an enviable ability to ooze ennui, an excitable, chugging pulse and an immediate sense of having already existed for decades, a song that’s not trying to be - but just is. Equal parts escapist and infectious, while simmering with if not rage then an itchy frustration, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ is, yes, the exact misnomer one would assume its title to be, and yet entirely suited to the coming months”.

I really love Little Miss Sunshine and everything Eaves Wilder releases. A quick follow-up from my Spotlight feature late last year, I am going to watch with interest what comes next from Wilder. She will want to take time to promote her debut. And not be rushed regarding a follow-up. If you are searching for an artist who is going to endure and be releasing music for many years more, then you need…

TO connect with Eaves Wilder.

_____________

Follow Eaves Wilder

FEATURE: Spotlight: Supergloss

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Supergloss

__________

I am excited…

that Supergloss is this amazing D.J. getting so much love and respect. Born in Germany, she is now this D.J. queen that is known and adored throughout the world. I will come to some interviews with her soon. However, I want to bring in a little bit of biography before moving on and going deeper with this incredible talent:

“Drawing inspiration from the timeless techno tracks of the 90s and 00s, Supergloss creates a highly danceable blend of energetic sounds that seamlessly combines the styles of the past and future. Her musical style sits between the genres of acid, trance and techno. With her music, she aims to activate the listener’s feminine energy through a selection of hip-moving tracks and playful beats. Born and raised in Germany, Supergloss began her musical journey at the age of 5 when she started playing the classical piano. Her musical interests and tastes continued to evolve as she grew up, moving from Hyperpop to Hip Hop before finally finding her passion in Techno after settling in Berlin.

Refusing to be defined by a single style or label, Supergloss offers a fresh adventure with each new mix she creates. Since her first gig in 2021, Supergloss has made a splash in the techno scene as a new, fresh face in the industry. Her unique style and infectious energy have set new tones and earned her a dedicated following. With regular bookings at established clubs and internationally renowned party series like Berghain, Basement, K41 or Fusion Festival, Melt and Boiler Room”.

I have put some social media links at the bottom of this feature, and I would urge you to follow her. You need to connect with the wonderful Supergloss. She is coming to the end of a run of tour dates that has seen her have a pretty busy last couple of months.

The first interview I am coming to is from The Beat Asia. They spoke with Supergloss early last year as she was taking her sets to Asia and Hong Kong. They explained how “Asia embraces a true hustle culture; by night, we let our hair down and erupt in a magnificent energy to good crowds and good music”:

“How long have you been working in this industry?

The first club show I played was in 2021 in Berlin, so already four years ago. Time flies when you're doing what you love. For the past two years, I have been able to do DJing and producing as my main profession and fully focus on music.

I love your name Supergloss. How did you come up with it?

Thank you! The name was born after a fun night out when I kept teasing my friends by applying my lip gloss too often. I am a known gloss-addict in my friend group, so the name was my instinctive first choice when an alias was needed for me.

What got you started as a DJ and what do you love the most about it?

When I first started off, I never had the intention of starting a career. My best friend taught me how to mix and use the decks, and my curiosity and interest for music grew from there. I think that’s the most important part. Music is an endless resource, and I love to take it all in. Combined with the culture behind techno music, its roots and the clubs and festivals showcasing it – it’s a deep dive. I never get tired of this industry. There’s always something to discuss, ideas around how to take part in this scene, and people to connect with.

How would you describe your style of music?

To be honest, I prefer when other people describe my sound - because as the artist you never know how people interpret your style.

Speaking about my track selection, I usually go for Trance and Acid Music and glue it together with some classical Techno elements. Electronic music is really diverse and for me it’s too boring to stick to only one genre. So, I keep exploring new corners and niches and include them into my sets whenever I feel that it fits.

Can you tell us more about your creative process and how you curate your mixes?

Everyone has their own way of preparing their sets or approaching their productions. For me it works best when I wake up in the morning and feel hungry for music. It’s an intuitive feeling and I start to feel ideas spreading and a vision coming to life. I try to imagine being part of the crowd and visualize the dancefloor at exactly the set time and translate this into my preparation.

Which artists have had the greatest influence on your music?

Even though I was born in 1998 my strongest musical influences come from the 90s. Discovering artists like Laurent Garnier, Planetary Assault Systems, Thomas P.Heckmann or even Megamind and Cores was eye opening. I like bold, euphoric, melodic music with a strong bass line, it tickles something in brain that I try to recreate.

What has been your best experience so far in your DJ career?

After four years playing sets, I need to say that I appreciate the whole journey as one. It’s very hard to pick a favorite. Of course, there’s been sets that feel magical because everything seems right in this moment, like my shows at K41 in Ukraine, Fusion Festival or in Radion in Amsterdam. But the best experience is always seeing people enjoy the moment.

When I focus on single faces, and I see how they light up with the music, that's what makes it most special. In that moment, performing takes on a new meaning”.

I want to remain at start of last year, and this interview from Fizzy Mag. They spoke to the Berlin-based D.J. around the release of her E.P., Space Office. I have never seen one of her sets but, listening and watching them on YouTube, you get a fraction of what the crowds feel. As an artist and producer, she is putting out this stunning music that you cannot afford to miss out on:

“You’ve described your music as activating listeners’ feminine energy with playful beats. How does this concept influence the way you approach producing or crafting a set?

Whenever I’m preparing a set, I try to envision what I would like to hear at that moment. I need music that moves me from inside, that makes me feel confident and cheerful – that’s when I really enjoy a set. So I try my best to translate that into my selection – anything that makes me feel like it can make me move the way I enjoy moving. And I see it translated on the dancefloor as well. Often the guys take a step back, and the front row is filled with women in groups just smiling and enjoying – that’s when I know I’ve got them right on the spot where I wished them.

Transitioning from classical piano at age five to spinning techno tracks in Berlin is quite a leap. Was there a defining moment that sparked your love for electronic music?

Definitely, the Berlin club scene started a fire in me. Before moving here, I was going to some festivals that had electronic music acts, like Nature One or Piknic Électronik in Montreal – but I don’t think I really understood it at that point in my life. The nightlife in Berlin really taught me the concept and the community behind this music – and I instantly knew I wanted to become part of it. Having a musical education is very helpful because it shows that, even though techno music is quite repetitive and technological, it’s deeply theoretical – just like playing the piano.

Berlin is a mecca for electronic music. How has the city’s vibrant club culture shaped your identity as a DJ and producer?

I feel pretty blessed that I made my first steps as an artist in this city. When you attend club nights in the highly respected venues of this community, you can actually hear the quality. I understood what it means when the DJ is able to read the crowd, the window blinds open up after a few hours, or what it means to stay impatiently in the toilet queue because you don’t want to miss a second of the DJ set. I learned from these experiences – and I try to bring this vibe to other cities now. Being a techno fan living in Berlin is a privilege, and not every country has access to this level of quality. So I try to enrich my own selection, way of working, and especially my expectations for myself from this.

Your performances are known for their infectious energy and fresh perspective. Can you share a particularly memorable gig where you felt the crowd fully connected with your vibe?

Last year I was touring in South America for the first time – also my first time visiting. I felt like the people were really waiting for my set, and from the first moment I played in Santiago, nobody left their spot. Sometimes, as a DJ, you have these moments when you lock eyes with almost everyone on the dancefloor, and they all look satisfied – that’s the best feeling in the world. My mission is to make people happy, and it’s my goal – I felt like I accomplished that there.

When someone finishes enjoying one of your shows or listens to your music, what’s the lasting impression or feeling you hope they take with them?

Joy – not the hands-in-the-air type of joy, but the feeling that everything was fine in that moment. I believe that even in the darkest underground clubs, it’s possible to transport some kind of bliss.

Your first solo EP is set to release in January on Noom Records—congratulations! Can you share what this project means to you, the inspirations behind it, and whether we can look forward to more solo work in the near future?

Thank you! I’m so excited about it – I can’t believe I’ll be releasing on my all-time favorite label. I’m already working on new music since I’ve found a new passion for it. It makes the DJing part feel so much more intense and meaningful when you can play your own tracks – it’s a bit magical.

Supergloss is proof that techno can be both a celebration of its history and an exploration of its future. With her first solo EP and an ever-expanding tour schedule, her journey is just getting started—and we can’t wait to see where she goes next”.

I will end with an interview from this year. However, last June, KALBLUT. were in conversation with this amazingly passionate D.J. and artist. Someone who lives and breathes for what she does. There may be some repetition in terms of the information here, as some of the questions were sort of asked in other interviews. Though I have tried to find some different takes and angles:

“You mentioned moving through different genres, before settling on techno. What about techno resonates with you the most, and how did that transition happen?

I got involved with techno music when I picked up my first student job at 18 in a Comedy Bar in Hamburg. Sometimes after my shift I needed an outlet. I was still awake after working during the night, so I decided I wanted to go to a club to dance on my own. People recommended I go to Waagenbau in Hamburg. It was exciting to go alone- I think I didn’t even change my dirty clothes after work. I stepped foot into the club and it was intimidating; the toilets were flooded and I saw high people for the first time in my life. It was a bit of a shocker, but I enjoyed the music so much. It felt like my secret for the next months, that I sometimes went there for 1–2 hours after work. But then I moved to Berlin and my flatmate showed me around the Berlin nightlife. I started to listen to techno music in my daily life and since then never stopped. Berlin’s nightlife was magical before Covid and I am so grateful I still got to experience it with people that are 10 years older than me – people who taught me the etiquette of nice ravers and always invited me to the coolest events and festivals. We traveled together to Bassiani, K41, or Garbicz Festival in Poland – that really shaped my musical taste and spirit.

How do you approach the creative process when mixing different styles? What elements do you think are essential in creating a highly danceable track?

When DJing and selecting tracks, I always try to combine the old and the new. Sometimes a 20-year-old track has something that a track released yesterday is missing- and vice versa. It can be the pumpier kick or the more complex 303. While producing, I always try to create a specific kind of acid bassline that lifts you up a bit from your heels when dancing to it, or at least lifts me. I’m trying to keep a static energy flow with a dramatic pit. That sometimes stops people from dancing, but I can see how some people close their eyes, just vibe, and wake up again after the drop. I love that.

Who are some of your musical influences, particularly from the 90s and 00s, that have shaped your sound?

From these years, I reference the tracks from the catalogues of Noom Records and Bonsai Records a lot – when I go harder, I also look to UK labels like Stay Up Forever. I love the acid from this era- it’s so dirty and raw. Other than that, I admire the Love Parade trance music and sets. The music is individual, ecstatic – everything seemed so free-spirited and raw. I’m sometimes sad that I wasn’t there.

Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for your music career, and are there any specific goals you hope to achieve in the next few years?

I always aspire to be better with every set – and by better, I mean more pleasing for the crowd. It’s my main goal to always make people happy when I play. I accepted for myself that this is what I can deliver best with my music. I stopped overthinking if my music is not hypnotic or trippy enough, and this acknowledgment put me on another level of understanding the stuff that I play. I have this dream of introducing more people to this sound again. It’s a sometimes forgotten spirit that I want to try to reintroduce.

What advice would you give to young, aspiring DJs and producers trying to carve a niche in the music industry?

If you want to carve a niche, you need to build one for yourself. Try to understand your taste as if you have never heard a popular electronic music track before. Rinse away the idea that what the successful DJs are playing is the ultimate thing. You need to stand behind what you do and protect it. And then you can hope that other people like it as well. You cannot force the majority to like what you do, but you also can’t force people to try to introduce themselves to it”.

DJ Mag featured Supergloss for Recognise 108. Where they salute and highlight the best D.J.s around. Providing an incredible mix as part of her interview, it is fascinating learning about Supergloss. Her background and path into being a D.J. Why she chose the genres and sounds she has. I think that she will have a very busy and eventful summer. Going to lots of great places. She has a few more dates in her current run, though you know there will be festivals and other dates coming soon. You cannot keep Supergloss down, as she has this drive and determination to bring joy and togetherness to people around the world. Bonding people through music:

“Her ongoing love affair with trance and acid techno, and her desire to reinterpret those genres for new audiences, is driven by the “drama” of it. “The melodies, the build-ups and the long drops – this is what brings the attention back to the dancers, you know? There’s space to breathe; to drink something, to hug each other, to kiss their partners. This is the perfect music for it.”

“People come to the clubs and they bring their free time,” she adds. “This is the most valuable thing we have right now, in this economy. They take the time to listen to your music, and in those two or three hours with my audience, I want to give them a little bit of relief.”

"It’s fascinating how far apart clubs and scenes can be, yet still share so many codes and values. It feels like everyone across these scenes could be friends. There’s something really beautiful about that.”

Just in time for summer, Supergloss’ mix for DJ Mag’s Recognise series is packed with those carefree, escapist atmospheres. Here, Supergloss blends contemporary acid and trance producers with a handful of genuine underground classics as anchors, including Kai Tracid's definitive 'Acid Phase' remix and Blu Peter's cult favourite 'The Pictures in Your Mind (Arabesque Mix)'.

It also happens to be “the earliest in-the-morning mix I’ve ever recorded,” she says. Recorded while wide awake at 5AM due to jetlag, it contains “all of the tracks that I didn’t get a chance to play on the tour”.

“Mixes can sometimes feel a bit more artistic than when you’re in a DJ booth,” she says. “I always feel like a painter with a blank canvas when recording a mix at home. You can really think about what you’re doing with patience and care.”

When it comes to making her own music, Supergloss credits Omon Breaker for “basically teaching me how to produce”. “I was, again, very curious, and you can only get so far with YouTube tutorials,” she says. “I needed someone to sit next to me and explain things. I’m also a very quick learner. And I think we inspired each other – he inspired me because I learned so much from our EP, and I had really fresh ideas because I was very naive.”

Her debut solo efforts come in the form of the ‘Space Office’ EPs, with tracks like the euphoric ‘Unshame’ offering a thrilling blend of nostalgic ‘90s acid, trance flourishes, and functional, modern percussion. This month, she shared another new track, ‘Astral Body’, a vibrant Goa psytrance anthem, which featured on RAW's 'Summer Hits 7' compilation.

She has another solo EP on the horizon, set to be released on X-IZE in the summer. Landing in the midst of a packed festival schedule, you’d wonder where she finds the time to finalise a new release on her own label, but the truth is that she feeds off this restless energy. “Summer is my favourite season,” she smiles. “I wish it could be summer festival season all year long.”

This summer, she’ll play events including Terminal V Croatia, London’s Junction 2, Ukraine’s Ickpa and Belgium’s XRDS. What, we ask, is her favourite part of being a touring artist? “I’ve always loved travelling. Even before I became a DJ, I was constantly backpacking and exploring. I know what it’s like to save up for a whole year just to afford a flight ticket. So this feels like a privilege.”

“The most interesting thing for me is observing people in different countries,” she continues. “It’s fascinating how far apart clubs and scenes can be, yet still share so many codes and values. It feels like everyone across these scenes could be friends. There’s something really beautiful about that.”

Those connections extend all the way to what Supergloss describes as “the most southern techno club in the world” in Chile. She played there in 2024, in Puerto Montt – “almost in Patagonia” – at a party hosted by the local collective XRave.

“Even surrounded by all those mountains, it felt like a party in Berlin because of the people, their energy and their love for the music. It’s a symbolic memory for me. You can be in the most southern techno club in the world and still feel welcomed, because everyone sees you as part of something bigger.”

As Supergloss’ summer schedule gathers pace, those moments of connection are what she values most, and that sense of belonging stands as the most rewarding part of her journey so far”.

If Supergloss comes to London in the future, I would love to interview her. Her story and path is really compelling and inspiring. One of the greatest modern D.J.s, do make sure that you connect with her on social media. Here we have…

A universal sensation.

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Follow Supergloss

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Jae Stephens

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 

Jae Stephens

__________

I spotlighted…

PHOTO CREDIT: Bradley Meinz for NME

Jae Stephens in November. I wanted to come back to her music, as I feel this year is a big one for her. You can see where she is touring later in the year. There are some big dates in Stephens’s diary. I am glad that she is coming to the U.K. in October. She was here last year, but I was unable to go and see her perform. Her incredible album, TOTAL SELLOUT, came out last November. Since then, there have been singles released. I waned to explore some of the newer chats with an artist that people should definitely seek out. Such an amazing sound and this enormous confidence and power as a singer, you know that Jae Stephens is going to be making music for years to come. Before coming to something newer, the NME feature from November is worth reintroducing. Getting a lot of love from the U.K. press, there is this urgency about her music. Someone who means business! I feel that the next couple of years are going to be massive. In terms of where Stephens plays. I feel she will get some headline slots and collaborate with some major artists:

“London is where I became a woman,” says Stephens, who upped sticks from her balmy Californian home to the grey skies of Blighty straight out of high school, aged 18. “I was obsessed with it by way of One Direction, I’m not gonna lie to you,” says Stephens, whose fandom fixation garnered her a Tumblr-famous following of over 200,000, for whom she would also post cover songs. “From there, it snowballed into wanting to understand a whole other culture [and] music scene. I just think it was really meant to be.”

It didn’t take long for her to fall in love with British dry wit and offbeat fashion, and the chaos of the Tube, while she also met her management and participated in her first-ever songwriting sessions in the city. “It definitely felt like my coming-of-age movie,” the 27-year-old says of the two years she lived in the UK. “Then I started dating a British guy, and I was living my Wattpad dream!”

Even after moving back to LA, Stephens would return to the UK each year to hone her songwriting chops, writing for herself and others including Bryant Barnes, Sharylen, and Khamari. It wasn’t long before she found herself in the studio with superstar songwriter MNEK, whom she’d first heard on BBC Radio 1 during late-night essay-writing stints. Starstruck, it was one of the first times she felt out of her depth as a young artist in the studio.

“Back then, it was very hard because I wanted everybody in the room to think, ‘Wow, she’s really good, she came up with the concept, the melody, the title and this crazy bar, then she got on the mic’. I wanted to be the valedictorian of the studio.” Penning her first song aged eight and self-releasing music in her teens, Stephens’ headstrong resolve came from a “fuck it, I’ll do it myself attitude” that was born from necessity, meaning she had to learn to trust others creatively and process her self-imposed pressure to perform as a rookie.

And while ‘F**k It I’ll Do It Myself’ was also the befitting title of her self-produced debut EP, nowadays she’s happy for others to take control or chime in as the mood dictates. “I’m really happy to play either front or backseat driver,” says Stephens, whose trajectory has seen her since pen tracks for artists like Jennifer Lopez, Normani and Sinéad Harnett. “Like, this is not a real job; we should be having fun. We’re just writing fucking songs – it’s not that deep!”

Watching how other people work in the studio slowly led her to ‘Body Favors’, the second track taken from ‘Sellout’. Underpinned by a sludgy bassline, honeyed vocals and playful melody, the track’s mischievous lyrics (“Sour on top but it’s sweet below / But how many licks til you reach it though?”) encapsulate what had come to be Stephens’ quintessential sound after struggling to find her own on the electro-tinged R&B of her first EP and its contemplative successor, ‘High My Name Is’.

“I just felt like [‘Body Favors’] was me personified. That doesn’t make sense,” she pauses. “Songified? It had so much character and spunk and was a little sexy and a little sweet and was tongue-in-cheek, and it was mildly appropriate without being vulgar. It was upbeat but wasn’t too squeaky; it had edge but wasn’t too dark. It walked such a specific line, and I remember thinking ‘I have no idea who we would send this song to, I can’t think of anyone who fits all of these opposing boxes… but I can!”

Hitting that perfect recipe pushed Stephens to refocus on herself and intentionally pursue a career as an artist. “When I wrote that one, it definitely made me feel like I had an identity, because I was definitely strung [out] with that a bit, musically,” she says. “I’m not the smooth and sexy seductress with R&B songs – bitch, I’m goofy! And I like to have fun!”.

I guess Jae Stephens might call TOTAL SELLOUT a ‘project’, rather than a debut album. We learn from this interview that there is a debut album coming. The past year has been very busy and productive for Jae Stephens. She has achieved so much. Though you feel she is only just getting started. The Texas-born artist has released a series of E.P. and played some amazing shows. However, things are gearing up to a debut album:

“YouKnowIGotSoul: It’s been a year since our last interview. At that time last year, you were opening up for FLO and you were on your first tour. Just talk about what this year has been like since then. You dropped the full project, you’re headlining your own tour now and also have your own  podcast.

Jae Stephens: Oh my gosh, it’s been so busy. I feel like this has been the year of a lot of realized goals and things that I really wanted to accomplish. It’s been really exciting releasing my project and just some of my favorite songs ever including “Afterbody” and “Boyfriend Forever”. And just really seeing how people have responded to those songs because I always had a good feeling about them. Just the response since then, off the back of the whole project, to now enabling me to do my own tour has been really great. It’s been a really busy year since then and the following year is about to be even busier, so I’m so excited.

YouKnowIGotSoul: Could you have imagined all of this happening last year? Was this all part of the plan?

Jae Stephens: We make plans and God laughs. But I definitely had in my mind that I wanted to release a full body of work and I wanted to go on tour, and I feel like that has absolutely happened because we worked for this. Me and my whole team, we’ve just put in a lot of time and effort into making sure all the  music has been very intentional and giving the fans what they want to see, what they want to hear. So it makes me really happy that it’s paying off and everybody is receiving it so well. I think we’re doing what we’ve set out to do.

YouKnowIGotSoul: And the entire “Sellout” project, like you mentioned, is finally out now. I love seeing how much your songwriting has evolved from the first part up until now. What did you enjoy most about the entire creative process of this project?

Jae Stephens: I think for me it was really a process from the beginning to the end. I think that you can hear and even see in the visuals me kind of figuring it out as I go along, getting more comfortable, finding my sound, finding how I want things to look, how I want things to feel. So it’s been a real process of just finding myself, learning my style. I really enjoyed finding the people that I love to work with and just finding my footing and finding out how to have fun in this process. It can be a lot, it can be overwhelming, but I’m at a point now where I’m really having fun, and I think that is the “Sellout” way. So I’m really happy to have gotten here to this point. And yeah, that was definitely the result of this project.

YouKnowIGotSoul: Right, for sure. Now, of course, you had a big moment with “Body Favors” last year, and now the new record “Afterbody “is another viral moment for you. Did you foresee this happening for you to have these type of moments?

Jae Stephens: I definitely know which songs I feel special about and which ones I hope the fans will gravitate towards and resonate with. So yeah, “Body Favors” and “Afterbody” were definitely both examples of that. I knew when I was writing them that they were special, that they felt very uniquely me. You never really know what’s going to happen, but you can always have a feeling. So I’m really glad that the audience has gravitated towards those songs because it definitely validates my gut feeling about what I want to hear in my music and what the fans want to see.

YouKnowIGotSoul: So, after this tour, you’re going to head off to Europe with Khalid?

Jae Stephens: Yes. Oh my gosh. In October. I mean, that feels so far away, but my summer is going to be jam packed. I’m going to be at Pride, I’m making my festival debut at Lollapalooza, and then I’ve got a whole album to roll out, so there’s a lot going on, but I’m so excited. I’m super excited to tour Europe with Khalid, who is just so sweet and so iconic, and I haven’t performed in Europe except for my show in London last year, so I’m really excited to experience that, bigger venues, different kinds of crowds and see what the European crowds are giving. It’s going to be really exciting.

YouKnowIGotSoul: And then finally, we just talked about your new album briefly, your debut album that’s going to be dropping. Just talk about maybe some of the differences and some of the similarities that we’ll hear from Sellout versus this new project.

Jae Stephens: I mean, it’s definitely been a different process in the sense that I had a good idea of what I wanted it to be from the very beginning, and I’ve started it with that foundation. I think that it’s still going to be very female focused, female-led, femininity, fun, and just very grounded in that confidence, just like “Sellout” was. I do think maybe a difference here will be I’m a bit more focused on telling a story and showing a bit more sides of myself across this album than maybe I was on “Sellout”. So it’s always going to feel very confident, but I do think that there will be some songs that you listen to and you’ll get another side of that confidence, or you’ll hear another side of the story, and it’ll make you wonder a little bit about who Jae Stephens really is. So I’m really excited about that. But yeah, it’s always going to be fun, confident and fresh”.

I am going to end with this live review from Howard University News Service. Even if she has been in the industry for a while now, I think this year is her most important so far. In terms of how she is going from strength to strength and getting into the ears and eyes of so many new people. These upcoming tour dates will confirm Jae Stephens as one fo the most important voices of her generation. A wonderful artist:

“Under the fluorescent lights of the Songbyrd Music House, Jae Stephens graced the stage for the third show of her latest tour. The vivacious singer, who blurs the lines between Pop and R&B music, certainly showed listeners why her name shall not be forgotten.

For nearly one leisurely hour, Stephens delivered numerous self-assured anthems and hypnotic club hits. Songs from projects like “Total Sellout” were particularly crowd favorites during the sold-out performance on April 9. Aside from the underrated newcomer herself, Haitian pop star Sarina Désir initially served as the night’s opening act.

In just 7 songs, she asserted herself as another musical force to be reckoned with. Though as a woman above all, the Maryland based artist also reaffirmed her worth in the vocal proclamation, “What U Didn’t Know.” The track, originating from an EP with the same title, addresses what she is looking for in a partner and how she refuses to neglect her boundaries in pursuit.

Like this one, other tracks were heavily reliant on tempos and sounds heard exclusively in Haitian music. “Kiwi,” on the other hand, provided attendees with a brief change of pace. The single from her 2020 EP, “Glass Paradise,” showcased Désir’s technicality. Melodic runs were common as she alluded to being undeniable, often irresistible – rather similar to the mentioned fruit.

Impromptu dance breaks kept the momentum high while “Rina” finished the remainder of her set. Before her final note landed, she eagerly treated the audience to a snippet of her anticipated song “PAPI,” which was set for release the following day.

Out of what appeared to be enjoyment, murmurs about downloading the song and supporting Désir’s other music were heard as Stephens was next up.

After an intermission was taken, a call to the fictional station, “SELLOUT FM,” projected from the surrounding speakers. A gentleman called in to seek advice about his partner. Stephens, staying true to her witty, flirtatious personality, answered just before hitting the stage with her two dancers.

The crowd engagement tool paid homage to “The SELLOUT Podcast,” a platform that Stephens provides for fellow emerging artists to gain further exposure.

Welcomed by a multitude of cheers and claps, the Dallas-raised, Los Angeles-based futurist opened with a shortened rendition of “Body Favors.” Sporting a Chicago-house-inspired bassline, its fast-paced rhymes got the audience off their feet and amped from the second half of the show.

“10/10” was another solid exemplification of Stephens’ word play. She confidently mused, “I’m the tea, not a trend, to the T, ten out of ten.” The ambiguous statement sparked a popular “clock it” social media motion from fans and the artist herself.

Several “Jae Baes,” as her supporters are called, appreciated the sense of connection that the moment rendered. Some even attributed Stephens’ personality to their increased consumption of her music. There were also assertions about her ability to go mainstream.

“She’s a Black pop diva,” Nevaeh Boone, age 19 exclaimed. “People say we need more Black pop artists, [but] we have them right here.”

Marcus Phillip, age 19, had similar sentiments, insisting that “she’s a really great artist.” He felt inclined to support Stephens after friends shared her music with him. The concert was his first time seeing the creative in person, but it won’t be his last.

Stephens is Raedio and Def Jam’s first major label artist. Founded by Insecure creator Issa Rae, Raedio prides itself on music publishing and overall supervision. Stephens’ ties with the label date back to 2022 when she was one of the winners of its Creators Program with Google.

Songs such as “Better Boy,” “SMH” and “Boyfriend Forever” were additionally heard. Jae and the Baes, as she jokingly named herself and her dancers, performed choreographed numbers that even required further on-stage audience participation.

“Afterbody” was sung prior to the end of the show. In the high-energy 2025 dance track, Stephens discusses being the main attraction amongst everyone else in the room.

Themes such as unapologetic feminism and independence can be interpreted within her music. Bryce Newby, age 29, supported this argument by sharing his thoughts once the show ended.

After recently being let go from his job, he decided to attend the concert, feeling invigorated despite the sudden circumstances.

“Seeing somebody like Jae who loves her art, who cares about her art, just makes you want to go hard [yourself],” Newby said.

“I love people that are themselves, true and through,” he later added.

Newby referenced Stephens being the same way she is on stage in comparison to how she is on Twitter.

It is safe to say that after D.C.’s show, Stephens should not be gatekept. The self-proclaimed “SELLOUT” possesses the rare ability to harness her individuality within an industry where conformity is common.

As opposed to compromising who she is, as the name suggests, the 28-year-old is changing the game, taking her artistry into her own hands”.

If you are new to Jae Stephens, I would urge you to listen to TOTAL SELLOUT and the singles she has put out. If you are able to see her live, you are guaranteed to get this amazing show! A phenomenal performer, it is going to be exciting to see how far Stephens can go. a stunning and hugely original artist who is at the…

TOP of her game.

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Follow Jae Stephens

FEATURE: Spotlight: JELISA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Zsofia Bodnar

 

JELISA

__________

IT is a shame that I missed…

PHOTO CREDIT: Tess Letort

JELISA when she recently played in London. Jelisa van Schijndel is a multi-talented artist and singer-songwriter from Amsterdam. With her raw and authentic sound, she effortlessly blends alternative soul, R&B, Indie, Funk, and more into her unique musical expression. From an early age, JELISA has expressed herself through various art forms. Her talent hasn’t gone unnoticed: she has been discovered by radio stations such as Sublime, Veronica, NPO Soul & Jazz, and more. Her latest E.P., Melancholia, in January. I am taking some of that biography from JELISA’s YouTube page. This is an artist I am new to, but I was instantly a fan of. One of the beautiful and strongest voices in modern music, I think. I cannot see a lot of press and interviews from this year, so I am going back to last year for the most part. I do want to start out with Crisp Sheets and their interesting conversation. Part of a series of women who inspire them, we get to know more about the wonderful JELISA:

“Can you tell us where and how you grew up?

I was born in Amsterdam, moved to a small village next to Amsterdam with my mom, dad and brother. Loved playing outside by the water and trees. I had a lot of hobby’s and went to a dance academy at an early age. I was very ambitious trying to achieve my passion as a dancer/ singer.

Where did your passion for music came from?

I’ve always been sensitive to sounds, my dad used to go to a lot of concerts and also because I danced I was always surrounded by music.

Also watching music video’s and listening to different kinds of music, also my brothers music.

Who or what inspires you?

Lots of different forms of art inspire me, from paintings to architecture, culture, people, clothes, emotions and situations

What’s your latest song about?

A song that has not yet been released is about not giving up but continuing with what your doing, keep on trying.

What do you like most about what you do?

I like that I get to write feelings down and share it with other human beings. Create projects, being on stage, being in the moment with the magic of the music.

And what are the downsides?

That everything is work, it never stops. I'm always thinking about what’s next. You have to push yourself, if I’m not going to do it, nobody will.

What’s your biggest dream?

Performing on big and small music festivals, giving concerts all over the world. And creating more music for the people.

Do you have any advise for beginning artists, creators or freelancers?

Just create, keep on going, bad days will always be there. And celebrate achievements.

Best place in Amsterdam to enjoy music?

Paradiso, Cafe alto, at my house haha”.

I want to go back to her debut E.P., Do you feel the same?, that came out on 25th January, 2025. It is a remarkable E.P. that I would urge everyone to listen to. You immerse yourself in the world of the songs. I do hope that JELISA comes back to London and plays again soon. The amazing c-heads spoke with JELISA in February 2025:

“Can music heal? Can a song hold all the weight of love, longing, and transformation? Jelisa’s voice makes you believe it can. With a sound that blends the depth of alternative soul with the richness of jazz, blues, and psychedelic influences, her music carries a wonderful warmth, intensity, and sincerity. With her new EP Do You Feel the Same?, she invites listeners into a deeply personal journey of love, longing, healing, and transformation.

To visually interpret the heart of her EP, she teamed up with Amsterdam-based photographer Zsófia Bodnár, who has Hungarian roots, for a stunning editorial, capturing the essence of each song through intimate, evocative imagery. Every frame captures the vulnerability and strength embedded in her music.

“I want listeners to know that it’s okay to feel, and that we’re all on this journey together,” Jelisa shares in this conversation, reflecting on the healing power of music. In this interview, she opens up about the inspiration behind her songs, the emotions that shape her sound, and why love remains the most important force in her life.

Your upcoming EP is a deeply personal project. Can you share more with us about the inspiration behind it?

I think I get a lot of inspiration from life and its emotional shifts, both the good and the bad. My upcoming EP Do You Feel the Same? reflects on these transitions. I guess I’m exploring a lot of love, sadness, confusion, healing, and growth. It’s a deeply personal project that, for me, embraces vulnerability and inner strength. Musically, I think I’m influenced by a wide range of genres like jazz, indie, blues, soul, R&B, funk, psychedelic, African rhythms, different cultures, different kinds of art, and time periods. But in the studio, I just let my intuition guide the creative process, which makes the sound feel pure and authentic to me. Hopefully, the listeners connect with the journey and find their own emotions in the music.

Which song on your EP is your favorite, and why?

For me, it really depends on my mood. The song I’d Rather Live in My Dream really reminds me of a memory that I cherish. But sometimes I feel like I want to experience the depth of the song and get lost in Hurt, while other times, I gravitate more toward something uplifting like Flying Away or This Body. Each song brings its own story and emotion. I guess I love them all for different reasons.

Music often has the power to heal and connect. Is this the message you hope your listeners take away from this EP?

Yes, definitely. I’ve always felt that music has the capability to heal and bring people together, and that’s something I really hope comes across in this EP, Do You Feel the Same? For me, music is a way to express how I feel and what I sometimes can’t say or am not aware of. Writing music feels like therapy sometimes. Getting it out and making art from it feels really fulfilling. If it can help someone feel less alone or more connected to their own emotions, then that adds extra purpose to me and to the music. I want listeners to know that it’s okay to feel and that we’re all on this journey together.

Soul music has such a rich history of storytelling and emotion. How do you see your music fitting into that tradition, and how do you hope to push the genre forward?

I mean, I’d love to carry the soul tradition with me, but I’ll do it in my own way. Soul music is about storytelling and deep emotion, which I connect with naturally. While I try to honor those roots, I guess I also bring in my own voice and experiences. My music will always be centered around stories and emotion, but I hope to stay true to my creativity and intuition while continuing to blend more genres into it.

Where do you see yourself in around 10 years?

Oh, that’s a tough question! In 10 years, I hope I’m still joyful and deeply connected to my passion. If that’s still music, that would be amazing, and I’d love to still be writing music that feels authentic. I’d love to be touring, playing at festivals like North Sea Jazz, Montreux, or Glastonbury, and sharing my music with people who truly connect with it. (Manifesting haha.) Collaborating with other musicians and continuing to explore new sounds. But most of all, I just want to keep growing, stay true to my creativity and intuition, touch people with my music, and explore and enjoy life in general. And I’d love to be a mom someday. (smiles)”.

I couldn’t find too much else in the way of interviews, so I will leave things there. This is someone who I feel should get more attention and love. With an E.P. released earlier in the year and tour dates under her belt, I wonder what the next few years hold. This is a truly wonderful artist that everyone…

SHOULD listen to.

__________

Follow JELISA

FEATURE: You Put Light in My Life: Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

You Put Light in My Life

 

Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart at Fifty

__________

I wanted to mark…

fifty years of a true classic song. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart is a duet between Elton John and Kiki Dee. It was released on 21st June, 1976. Written by John with Bernie Taupin, they used the pseudonyms Ann Orson and Carte Blanche, respectively. It was their pastiche and tribute to Motown duets, especially those between by Marvin Gaye and artists Tammi Terrell and Kim Weston. It was unusual in the Elton John catalogue, as we associate him with his solo work. Not known for his duets. In April 1976, John was between albums. His tenth studio album, Rock of the Westies, was released in October 1975. His eleventh studio album, Blue Movies, came out in 1976. That latter album was not one of his best. Though 1975 was a successful year. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy came out in May 1975. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was this standalone single. The song was offered to Dusty Springfield at the time, but the offer was withdrawn. Her partner Sue Cameron said Springfield was too ill when the song was offered to her. I want to explore Don’t Go Breaking My Heart further. It reached number one in the U.K. and U.S. Last September, the track surpassed a billion streams on Spotify. I am keen to come to a few features around Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. In 2019, Ultimate Classic Rock illuminate the story behind a tremendous and hugely popular song:

“Elton John and Bernie Taupin used the pseudonyms Ann Orson and Carte Blanche – a bit of wordplay on the phrases "a horse and cart" and "carte blanche" – for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," just as they had done on Rock of the Westies. According to producer Gus Dudgeon, John came up with the music first and then had Taupin pen the words, a different process from how they traditionally worked.

“Elton didn’t have a lyric for it," Dudgeon said, according to John's official website. "It was so weird to see him writing a song in the studio with no lyric. I’d never seen him do it before. And all he was singing was ‘Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart…’ That’s what he sang all the way through!”

For inspiration, they looked to Marvin Gaye's run of hit duets with Tammi Terrell and Kim Weston ("Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "It Takes Two," "You're All I Need to Get By"), which combined uptempo R&B with an orchestra. With the help of percussionist Ray Cooper, John's keyboardist James Newton Howard was given the opportunity to write the arrangement. He came up with a chart that used 20 strings (12 violins, four violas, four cellos).

"I wrote the arrangement on piano and then wrote it down on paper: the old-fashioned way," Howard recalled to EltonJohn.com. "There were no sequencers back in the day. Well, there were, but there was no way to sync them to tape. So, I just plunked it out on the piano, wrote it down, sent it to the copyist and that was it. ... The one thing I remember Elton saying is, ‘You should do a string solo.' The solo in the middle is full orchestra, so that was kind of fun."

John and his band recorded the track in Toronto during the sessions for Blue Moves and sent it to London for Dee to add her contribution. “I remember getting a copy of it with Elton singing his vocal," she also told EltonJohn.com, "and also doing my part in a high voice! I worked hard on my parts. Elton had already stamped the song with his vocal, which in a way is quite good, ‘cos it gives you a groundwork on how you’re gonna sing it. The precedent has already been set by him, and the writing and production of the song. I seem to remember working quite hard to get the right attitude. Good vocals are always hard work.”

She continued: "It was pretty informal. It’s interesting how something you approach with such a casual attitude – like the video (which was done in a couple of takes for a TV show), who would have thought that would have been played so much over the years?”

Released as a standalone single in June 1976, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" went to No. 1 in both the U.S. (four weeks) and the U.K. (six weeks). That ranked as his sixth song to top the Billboard Hot 100 in four years, it was also Elton John's last until 1986, when he sang on Dionne Warwick's charity single "That's What Friends Are For." One of John's own compositions wouldn't reach No. 1 until another duet, George Michael's live remake of "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" did so in February 1992.

In honor of their success on "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," John gave Dee a gold heart necklace with the song's title engraved on it; as of 2011, she said she still had it. And even though he's revisited "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" on several occasions, including singing it in high-profile situations with Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show, the Spice Girls, Minnie Mouse, RuPaul and actor/comedian Steve Coogan, John has never forgotten his original duet partner. They recorded a cover of the Four Tops' "Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever" for her 1981 record Perfect Timing, she joined him onstage at Live Aid for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and they interpreted Cole Porter's "True Love" for his 1993 Duets album”.

There are a couple of features on the Elton John website worth highlighting. This one gives us ten fun facts about Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. As it turns fifty on 21st June, I hope there is new celebration and articles written about the song. Even if people associate Kiki Dee with the one song, it is clear there is a lot more to her than this. I remember hearing the song as a child and instantly being hooked. It is so infectious and uplifting:

“1. Today in 1976, Elton had the No. 1 song on the Billboard Top 200 chart for the sixth time in just four years.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart spent four weeks at No. 1, eight weeks in the Top 10, 15 weeks on the Top 40, and four and a half months on the Top 100. It wound up at No. 2 on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles chart for 1976 and was Elton’s last No. 1 release in the US until Candle In The Wind 1997.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the duet became Elton’s first No. 1 single in Britain on July 2 – its 4th week on the UK Singles Chart. It spent six weeks at the top and a total of 14 weeks on the chart.

2. The song was written differently from almost every other composition in the Elton John/Bernie Taupin catalogue.

Elton uncommonly came up with the title himself whilst creating the tune at Eastern Sound Studios in Toronto, Canada. He then called Bernie, who was not at the Blue Moves sessions during which this song was recorded, and asked for a lyric to go with that title.

The original lyrics Bernie wrote had very little to do with the final version – only one line (and the title) remains in the song we know today.

3. The track was recorded two days after Elton’s 29th birthday.

Elton played electric piano on the session, with band member James Newton Howard on acoustic piano, Elton’s usual instrument. Other band members included Caleb Quaye (guitars), Kenny Passarelli (bass), Roger Pope (drums), and Ray Cooper (congas and tambourine).

Kiki’s vocals were tracked later in London, using as a guide the demo tape that had Elton singing her lines in a higher voice than his own part.

4. There are three uncredited backing vocalists on the hit single.

Cindy (now Cidny) Bullens, Ken Gold, and Jon Joyce, the backing vocalists on Elton’s 1976 tour, recorded their background parts to Don’t Go Breaking My Heart in London, in May 1976 after Kiki’s vocal had been done. The backing vocals, arranged by Bullens, can be heard along with Elton and Kiki on the “Woo-hoo”, “Nobody knows it”, “Don’t go breakin’ my…” and other parts.

5. ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ was the 143rd song producer Gus Dudgeon worked on with Elton between 1970 and 1976 (roughly 24 songs per year).

After finishing on Elton and the band’s parts, Gus returned to London to record Kiki’s vocal. “I worked hard to make [my vocal] happen,” Kiki recalled. “But I think I probably felt quite comfortable because I’d already done I’ve Got The Music In Me with Gus – and that was a hard vocal for me to get. So, we had trust with each other. And that’s hugely important, I think, because confidence is everything in the studio.”

6. The song was not part of any album at the time of its release.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was Elton’s third stand-alone single, after Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (1974) and Philadelphia Freedom (1975), and later appeared on Elton John’s Greatest Hits Volume II and subsequent compilations… most recently, Diamonds (2017).

It has also been included as a bonus track on the reissued versions of Rock Of The Westies, even though it was not recorded during that album.

7. The single won Elton two awards in 1977.

Ivor Novello for “Best Pop Song” and “Best Male Vocalist” American Music Award.

8. 19 official versions of the song have been issued:

  • 1976: Elton John and Kiki Dee’s original single, released on June 21 in the US and July 2 in the UK.

  • 1993: Elton John and RuPaul, from the album Duets, with 13 additional remixes and dub versions by Giorgio Moroder, Serious Rope, and Roger Sanchez.

  • 2000: A live version with Kiki Dee from Elton’s One Night Only album.

  • 2018: Q-Tip featuring Demi Lovato covered the song on Revamp: Reimagining The Songs Of Elton John & Bernie Taupin and was that album’s pre-release single.

  • 2018: Sherlock Gnomes version – PNAU built the new dance track using elements from both the Kiki Dee and RuPaul recordings.

  • 2019: Rocketman Official Sound Track (Interlude) version, sung by Taron Egerton and Rachel Muldoon.

9. There have also been a handful of TV and film renditions, with assorted duet partners, after the original promo video:

  • The Muppet Show with Miss Piggy (“a wonderful lady that I’ve always wanted to work and sing with”) in 1978.

  • With an animated Minnie Mouse (voiced by Russi Taylor) on the Totally Minnie NBC musical television special in 1988.

  • The BRIT Awards broadcast on Feb 14, 1994, with RuPaul.

  • With the Spice Girls on the An Audience with Elton John ITV special, in September 1997.

  • The British Comedy Awards in December 2000 with Steve Coogan (in his Alan Partridge character).

  • Taron Egerton and Rachel Muldoon partially recreate the 1976 video in this year’s Rocketman film.

10. Elton has performed ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ live both with and without a duet partner, including:

    • May 14, 1976: According to reports, Elton surprised the audience at Baileys nightclub in Watford when he brought Kiki out on stage to perform the song almost two months before its release.

    • With Kiki at Chicago Stadium, and other scattered shows during the 1976 Louder Than Concorde tour, including the final run of seven shows at Madison Square Garden.

    • A solo version at the Edinburgh Playhouse on Sept 17, 1976.

    • With Kiki at Live Aid on July 13, 1985.

    • At the One Night Only concerts in Wilkes-Barre, PA (without Kiki) and New York City (with Kiki) in October 2000.

    • At the Stonewall Equality Show on July 2, 2006 with Kiki at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

    • With Demi Lovato at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on January 13, 2016.

    • On February 4, 2016, as part of a medley while donating a piano to the Kings Cross St Pancras station.

    • Also… Elton was a surprise guest on the song during at least three Kiki Dee concerts in the mid-1970s and at two Ed Sheeran shows in 2015”.

I am going to end with this feature. It tells how Don’t Go Breaking My Heart dominated during the summer of 1976. I still think that it sounds tremendous, even though I have heard it dozens of time. A delightful song that you can tell was a pleasure to record, it would be great for Elton John and Kiki Dee to reunite and perform this number again:

“As detailed by fans caught up in the “summer of Elton” 40 years ago, much joy was found from seeing Elton in concert, following him in the media, and listening to his songs on radios and record players across America, Britain, and the world at large.

One song especially – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart:

“That was ‘my’ song that summer.”

“The perfect summer song.”

“Our theme song.”

“We sang it all summer.”

“It seemed like the radio stations were playing it every ten minutes.”

“I think I drove the local radio stations crazy repeatedly requesting it.”

“My sister’s cell phone plays Don’t Go Breaking My Heart when I call.”

These are just some of the enduring attachments that have been made to a 4 and-a-half-minute song that captured the attention of Elton lovers on both sides of the Atlantic like none before it. It not only was the first of Elton’s singles to reach Number One in the UK charts, but it also stayed on Billboard’s Top 40 in America for 16 weeks…six of them at Number One and ten in the Top 10.

But it wasn’t just a defining moment for fans during the summer of the American Bicentennial and a British heat wave, it also made a lasting mark on the lives and careers of those who worked on the recording…most notably Kiki Dee and James Newton Howard.

While Kiki was a known entity before she was asked to duet on the track (having already done two albums on Elton’s Rocket Records label and enjoying chart success with Amoureuse and I’ve Got The Music In Me), her visibility rose considerably following its release. To this day she honors the song by including it in her live sets with guitarist Carmelo Luggeri.

People have got a lot of fondness for that song. I did a guest spot at a big music festival…and when the other acts were playing I went out into the audience. A lot of people told me how much the song meant to them. One was an Indian guy who’d come over in 1972 and 'Don’t Go Breaking My Heart' was his favorite song ever. It was very, very sweet.

Kiki Dee

James had been a member of the Elton John Band less than a year when Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was recorded. He had previously done some arrangements for Melissa Manchester but the prominence of his string charts on an Elton John hit single most certainly laid the groundwork for his becoming one of the premiere film composers working today.

James: I didn’t study orchestration in school, I kind of just learned by myself. I was a classical piano student, so I knew how to read and write music. And I just sort of knew that I would be able to arrange for strings. That song was one of the first things I’d ever done.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart‘s backing tracks were recorded at the end of the Blue Moves sessions in Toronto, Canada, in early 1976. Having completed one of his most adventurous albums to date, Elton took hold of a very catchy musical idea and ran with it…eventually asking Bernie Taupin to write lyrics around the melody and title phrase.

Song producer Gus Dudgeon: Elton didn’t have a lyric for it. It was so weird to see him writing a song in the studio with no lyric. I’d never seen him do it before. And all he was singing was ‘Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart. Don’t go breaking my heart…’ That’s what he sang all the way through!

The songwriting credit went to pseudonyms that Elton had devised for himself and Bernie during the Rock Of The Westies album, “Ann Orson and Carte Blanche” (a mash-up of the phrase “A horse and cart” and “Carte Blanche”, the name of a prestigious credit card at the time). During its writing and recording, the song was nestled firmly in the warm embrace of the Tamla/Motown sound – a sort of nine-year-old follow-up to the 1967 classic Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and other duets by Marvin Gaye with female artists on the Detroit-based label. A label, by the way, which had signed Kiki Dee as its first white artist in 1970.

Kiki: Elton and I are both the same age (three weeks apart), and we grew up on Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Kim West and the Tamla/Motown duets.

James: It definitely had a lot to do with the tradition of Motown strings and things like My Girl. The one thing I remember Elton saying is, “You should do a string solo.” The solo in the middle is full orchestra. So that was kind of fun.

James’ transition from second keyboardist in Elton’s band to orchestral arranger came about with the help of percussionist Ray Cooper.

Gus: I remember clearly, Ray just suddenly turned to me one day and he said, “You know, you really ought to give James a chance to do some orchestral arrangements…he’s really good. He knows his stuff.” And a good thing too…it’s a bloody good arrangement.

James: When I first joined the band Ray kind of took me under his wing. He was a classical music guy and we talked a lot about orchestration and classical music in general. I think I expressed to him my ambition to be able to do that with Elton. Having been a huge fan of Paul Buckmaster – he wrote the greatest string charts ever for Elton, in my opinion. And Gene Page’s extraordinary orchestration. Del Newman was great. So there was a tradition of great orchestrations in his records and it was something I was excited to attempt to do. And I went to Elton and asked him if he’d consider letting me do it on the Blue Moves album. He said, “Well, let me think about it.” And he must have conferred with Ray at some point. He came back to me and said, “Yeah! You can do it.”

Kiki’s path to the project was with a bit less direct involvement: Elton had produced my first album for Rocket (Loving and Free) in 1973, and we toured together in 1974. So perhaps when they came up with this song they thought “Well, it’d be nice to get Kiki on this”…’cos I was in his life. It was pretty informal. It’s interesting how something you approach with such a casual attitude…like the video (which was done in a couple of takes for a TV show)….who would have thought that would have been played so much over the years?

After Elton and the band were done in Toronto, Kiki was given an unfinished recording and ultimately taped her vocals to the backing tracks in a London studio: I remember getting a copy of it with Elton singing his vocal, and also doing my part in a high voice! I worked hard on my parts. Elton had already stamped the song with his vocal, which in a way is quite good, ‘cos it gives you a groundwork on how you’re gonna sing it. The precedent has already been set by him, and the writing and production of the song. I seem to remember working quite hard to get the right attitude. Good vocals are always hard work.

The finished song is one of the denser that Elton had done to that point. In addition to the two vocalists (each doing multiple tracks and heavily reverbed) and seven band musicians, there was an orchestra of 12 violins, 4 violas, and 4 celli. This left little breathing room, especially in the pre-CD days where vinyl singles had to survive the test of transistor radio speakers. This could have been intimidating to the new kid on the conductor’s podium, but James was not daunted.

James: I just completely ignored all of that. I wrote the arrangement on piano and then wrote it down on paper: the old-fashioned way. There were no sequencers back in the day. Well, there were, but there was no way to sync them to tape. So I just plunked it out on the piano, wrote it down, sent it to the copyist and that was it.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart was released in June 1976 and quickly lived up to its pop potential, reaching the top of the US Hot 100 chart on its sixth week. In the UK it leapt up to #1 on the UK singles chart in just three weeks.

Gus: It gave me a buzz because you could tell straight away that the song was really commercial. Really vibey and up.

Kiki: I remember hearing it on the radio for the first time and thinking, “Wow.” ‘Cos some records, especially in those days, they have to sound great on the radio…and this was one of those records that did. I remember thinking, “Oh, this could do okay…this could go.”

And “go” it went…

James: It was exciting! I remember on the cover of one of the bigger music magazines there was a review and it mentioned my string arrangement, which I was very excited about. That was really a fun time.

Kiki: I was terribly proud for my mum and dad…’cos they’d stuck with me. I started professionally when I was 17 years old, and this was over ten years later. So I was so pleased for them. And Elton was chuffed. He had a little gold heart necklace made for me, which said, “Don’t go breaking my heart.” I’ve still got that.

Elton John and Kiki Dee: 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'

Since that time, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart has continued to thrive in popular culture in any number of ways: Elton himself has recorded versions with Miss Piggy, Minnie Mouse and RuPaul…and self-confessed Elton fanatic Valerie Bertinelli sang as Elton (with Mackenzie Phillips playing Kiki) on an episode of the popular television sitcom, One Day at a Time the winter after the single’s release”.

Fifty years after its release, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart still sounds full of life and wonder. Though there is some bittersweetness to the lyrics, this is a song that always lifts me! Such committed performances from Elton John and Kiki Dee. It is why Don’t Go Breaking My Heart…

CAN never be broken!

FEATURE: Stronger Than Me: The Legacy of the Wonderful Amy Winehouse

FEATURE:

 

 

Stronger Than Me

IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in January 2004/PHOTO CREDIT: Karen Robinson

 

The Legacy of the Wonderful Amy Winehouse

__________

IN October…

IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse photographed in 2006/PHOTO CREDIT: Broomberg & Chanarin

the world will mark twenty years of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. Her second and final studio album, it was a magnificent final release from an artist that we lost too soon. Back to Black is one of the most remarkable albums ever released. Amy Winehouse’s debut album, Frank, arrived in 2003. On 23rd July, 2011, we received the news that Winehouse had died. She was twenty-seven. Rather than make this a morbid feature, I did want to remember Amy Winehouse fifteen years since she died. Celebrate her music. You can see the artists today who clearly have been influenced by her. Including RAYE, Winehouse’s legacy is huge. Olivia Dean, Sienna Spiro and Jorja Smith either have cited Winehouse as an influence or have been compared to her. In terms of her voice and the gravitas it held, there has been nobody like her since. I don’t think there ever will be. Winehouse was also so honest and real. I will end this feature with a mixtape feature songs from her two studio albums and some other selections. I do want to start off with this article that discusses the legacy of Amy Winehouse. It is not just her impact on the overall music scene. People who met her and recall her fondly. So funny and always memorable, she had such humour and character. Whilst many will associate Amy Wineouse’s legacy with controversy and addiction issues, we need to remember her phenomenal music. Someone who left an impression on everyone she met:

“What would the music world look like today if we had never been introduced to Amy Winehouse? Would artists like Adele, Florence Welch, Elle Goulding, Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey and Halsey have experienced the same rise to prominence? Amy’s unconventional style and incredible voice showed that female pop artists didn’t need to look or sound a certain way. Like Amy, they could be whoever they wanted to be and still be successful.

As well as her amazing vocal range, modern female stars have also taken inspiration from Amy’s authenticity. Amy never once shied away from talking about any personal struggle and she always told the heartbreaking truth in her music, no matter how tough. We see this a lot today with female stars singing their own truth and relating to so many othersaround the world. Artists are using their music as the same type of outlet that Amy did, and listeners are relating more to this honestly and individuality.

When Amy released her debut album Frank she was only 20 years old, but showed that she had talent beyond her years. The album was the only one she ever made while completely sober and it was so well received it earned her an Ivor Novello Award for composition and songwriting. It was also the first and last jazz album she made. Amy never wanted to confine herself to one genre and instead used all of her musical inspirations to combine multiple genres and create a sound so unique it would stay relatable and adored for years.

Her second and final recorded album Back To Black won her six Grammy’s, making her the first British woman to do so in just one night. The album combined R&B, soul, funk and rock elements to produce mega hits such as ‘Rehab,’ ‘Love Is A Losing Game,’ ‘Tears Dry On Their Own,’ and ‘Back To Black.’ All of which documented her personal struggles with substance abuse and toxic relationships. Back To Black has been regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time and the most personal of Amy’s work. The album told her story in a raw and beautifully troubled way that made the world really understand just who Amy Winehouse was. Strip everything else away and you find that she was just a broken girl who loved too much, and there’s something admirable in that.

There are many things to remember about Amy. Her powerful voice, her lyrical poetry, her symbolic thick winged eyeliner and beehive hairdo. Although her musical career was short, she definitely made an impact on the world. An impact that you can still see today with female artists. Amy was more than extraordinary. She was a visionary who used her truth to create something memorable. Her life was filled with many different tragedies but perhaps the biggest of all was that it took her death to make the world realise just how incredible she was”.

In July 2021, NME ran a feature ten years after Amy Winehouse died. They spoke with family, fans and celebrity peers about this hugely missed icon. They recall and pay tribute to a “force of nature with a fierce sense of humour”:

“Along with Winehouse’s ‘Frank’ collaborator Salaam Remi, Ronson produced half of Amy Winehouse’s landmark second album, 2006’s ‘Back to Black’. Together, they made for a formidable pairing – from the parping ‘Rehab’ to the smoke-stained regret of ‘Love is a Losing Game’, they forged a pop sound that dabbled in retro influences, and would influence the entire musical landscape after the album’s release.

Though Winehouse counted ‘60s girl groups, Motown and classic soul as influences – and enlisted Sharon Jones’ band The Dap-Kings to back her – the record veers away from being derivative, instead centring around Winehouse’s unmistakable vocal and vibrant lyrical voice. “He left no time to regret,” she sings in the opening lines of the title-track, her voice cracking with anger. “Kept his dick wet / With his same old safe bet.” It was cutting, fiercely witty, and unmistakably Winehouse – and across ‘Back to Black’, the searing one-liners kept coming.

“I can sometimes hear ‘Back To Black’ in some restaurant in the background and it does nothing, and then I’ll hear it on another occasion in, like, the lobby of a hotel, and it has a really heavy effect on me,” Mark Ronson told NME in 2019. “She kinda put me on the map, so all of my success and everything I’ve had since is somehow linked back to this thing.”

“‘Valerie’ doesn’t feel like it’s our song any more; it’s its own world” – The Zutons’ Dave McCabe

Though ‘Back To Black’ was Winehouse’s masterpiece, her slightly lighter debut album ‘Frank’ still established Winehouse as a fearsomely talented songwriter. ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’ finds Winehouse’s narrator bluntly defending infidelity with increasingly creative twists of logic: “​​Baby, you weren’t there,” she insists, “and I was thinking of you when I came”. And the matter-of-fact ‘Fuck Me Pumps’ is both biting and hilarious, meticulously mocking a woman and her garish shoes.

“Her legacy is beyond comprehension,” singer-songwriter Laura Mvula tells NME. “I think people will still be unfolding it for decades to come.” The Birmingham artist, who recently melded her love of soul, jazz and blues music with bright, disco-tinged pop on latest album ‘Pink Noise’, cites Winehouse as a huge influence – “particularly her vocal style”.

Mvula explains: “I think I was subconsciously imitating her when I was younger and first started to sing – not even as a solo artist, but just when I was learning what my voice was. If you listen to ‘Frank’, that’s the music that raised me, this neo-soul expression that she managed to birth in the UK and give its own identity. That is huge – no one’s done that since; not as authentically, transcending and also celebrating race at the same time.”

Enormously influenced by a huge number of Black musicians, Winehouse covered the likes of Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk and The Shirelles. ”You could say that it’s inherently Black music,” Mvula says, “but to me she is her music. 100 per cent.”

While forging a new kind of neo-soul, it’s also fair to say that Winehouse rarely minced her words – and had little patience when she was compared to less innovative artists releasing music around the same time. Case in point: her slightly tongue-in-cheek dislike of Dido – which culminated in the singer pelting a billboard for the singer’s album ‘Life for Rent’ with an apple during an appearance on Popworld in 2004. When Amy Winehouse did feel passionately about a new artist’s talent, however, she supported it relentlessly.

“She was really supportive,” says singer Dionne Bromfield, Winehouse’s goddaughter and a MOBO-nominated singer. “I think she really saw a lot that I didn’t really see in myself at that age.” The best advice Winehouse gave her? “Be true to yourself,” Bromfield says. “Amy was someone who wore her heart on her sleeve. I think that is probably why she connected so well with people: people felt like they were almost talking to their friend or hearing their friend talk when listening to Amy.”

Bromfield has been working on a documentary about her relationship with Winehouse: Amy Winehouse and Me: Dionne’s Story airs on MTV UK on July 26. Though various other tributes are set to come out to mark 10 years since Winehouse’s death – the BBC are releasing Amy Winehouse: 10 Years On, while her mother Janis Winehouse has also made her own film, Reclaiming Amy – Bromfield hopes that her own personal celebration of a friend and mentor can show her own unique relationship with the singer.

“Amy was a very very funny person and I really wanted that to come across,” she says, adding with a laugh: “She was a really good cook if you could actually manage to get her to finish what she was cooking, because she always used to want to potter around a bit. She was really good at meatballs, and she used to do a really banging chicken soup. I mean, that’s a proper Jewish woman there with her chicken soup.

“She loved comedy stuff: when I watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air now I actually just remember all of the times watching it with her, and can almost actually hear her laughing at certain gag lines. And – oh my God – she would kill if I didn’t call her ‘Auntie Amy’. Jesus Christ! I really wanted to allow people to see this side to her.”

Bromfield sang with Amy Winehouse on several occasions, but their final performance at London’s 3,000-capacity Roundhouse – just a couple of days before the singer tragically died in 2011 – stands out as a treasured moment: “It was the last time that I actually saw her, and the last time that she was seen by the public. I really wasn’t expecting her to be there. She was at the side of the stage, and was just like: ‘I wanna come on and dance’. It was just really nice. It was the first time she’d ever actually seen me perform properly, but it was also the last time that she’d see me.”

Pondering why Amy Winehouse continues to be so influential a decade after her passing, Bromfield puts it down to one rare quality that so few artists have in such staggering abundance. “I just think it’s the honesty,” she says. “Her personality came through with her music, and I think that is really what people love about her. I honestly don’t think we’ll ever get another Amy”.

There is another feature I am keen to come to, before finishing up with an interview with Amy Winehouse. One of the biggest and most important parts of her legacy is the Amy Winehouse Foundation. “The Amy Winehouse Foundation helps thousands of young people to feel supported and informed, so that they are better able to manage their emotional wellbeing and make informed choices around things that can affect their lives”. I think that there is this distortion when it comes to remembering Amy Winehouse today. Some associating her only with her death and her darker moments. Far bigger than her relationship troubles, Grazia published a feature in April that explored Winehouse’s true legacy. How her voice, music and fashion has influenced so many. “Following Blake Fielder-Civil’s tell-all interview about his marriage to Amy Winehouse, her friend Naomi Parry sets the record straight”:

“Amy and I had a sisterly bond. While I was there for her during her darkest moments, she was there for me, too. When I left my partner, Amy put me up at her house. When my niece was being badly bullied, she suggested we go and talk to her school (can you imagine?). And when I walked into a lamppost and gave myself an almighty black eye, Amy threatened to track down the offending lamppost and give it a piece of her mind. She was sharp, compassionate, and had a mouth on her that she’d use to defend others.

She supported me in my career too, giving me a foothold in a tough industry and championing my work as a stylist. That was typical of her – she lifted up those in whom she recognized talent. Every show, she would introduce her band one by one, giving everyone their moment to shine. She sent her goddaughter and protégé, Dionne, to the Sylvia Young Theatre School and later performed as Dionne’s backing singer on Strictly Come Dancing. She spotlighted lesser-known artists and wore pieces from emerging designers because she understood how much that visibility meant.

Ultimately, Amy was a normal person who happened to become extremely famous. She had loving friendships and some unhealthy relationships, and fame magnified both. Every shady character and every bad decision was exacerbated by her circumstances – and the ripple effects were felt by all of us who loved her.

So when I saw headlines about her ex-husband claiming in a recent interview that he and Amy had discussed reconciling in 2009, I wasn’t surprised. Not because there was ever any real chance of it happening, but because it likely reflected how low Amy felt at that time. If she had truly wanted that reconciliation, it would have happened, but it didn’t. And who hasn’t, in a dark moment, thought about going back to an ex?

What I do know is that by 2011 she was in a very different place. I remember her sauntering into the kitchen at her Camden Square home one morning while I was staying with her, singing to herself as she made breakfast. She told me how good she felt and, when I asked why, she said, “You know that feeling when you’re completely over someone and it doesn’t hurt when you hear their name anymore?” She followed it up with something along the lines of wishing him well.

Recently, Mark Ronson paid a beautiful tribute to Amy at the BRITs. He honoured Amy’s role in his success and highlighted the positive, creative force she truly was. That’s exactly how she should be remembered. For me, she’ll always be my little friend with the big voice and the hair to match – the one who gave the best hugs, who loved fiercely, encouraged relentlessly, and never stopped championing the people around her”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Naomi Parry attends a mural unveiling to mark the Design Museum's Amy Winehouse exhibition announcement in Camden on 14th September, 2021 in London/PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

I am going to end with a 2004 interview. This was right near the start of her career. Paul Du Noyer chatted with Amy Winehouse in a London café. Frank had come out by then and was well received, though this huge fame and focus was not on her at this time. You can feel and hear a less incumbered and a more natural person coming through. You get to see this humble and very honest young woman. Winehouse at her best:

“Winehouse came into the Big Top of Pop following a stint in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. She signed at 17 to a branch of Simon Fuller’s management empire and after that to Island Records. But she was already a showbiz kid, whose turbulent education had taken in a few stage schools. One of these was the Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone: it’s almost the Eton of the Pop Idol generation, giving us sundry Spice Girls, Appletons, S Clubs and Busteds. Winehouse, one is unsurprised to learn, got expelled.

Did stage school make you a performer, Amy?

“Well,” she ponders, “that school is not a shit school, the Sylvia Young. They’ve got a reputation because they are the best. It’s not a pop star factory, they channel your creativity and you learn to use it. That’s what I did. For every precocious kid there were kids who really worked. They sent you out to work. Stage school is a job. You learn how to get the fuck on with it. I learned a lot of important things.”

But you didn’t get along with it?

“No, but I’ve never been to a school that I came away happily from, ever. With Sylvia Young’s it wasn’t a monstrous, call-my-parents-in, scream the school down thing. It was quiet and under-handed. I was devastated leaving there. Of all the schools, I would have stayed there happily.”

Winehouse was raised in the north London suburb of Southgate. Her mother is from Brooklyn and her father, a taxi driver, is an East Ender. Her parents separated when Amy was nine, though her father remains in close touch. “He’s a great man, my Dad,” she says. “I love him. I love my Mum, but me and my Dad are two peas in a pod. We’re really impulsive people. It’s good that my Dad moved out when I was growing up, or we would have had some terrible clashes.”

On her American mother’s side of the family she has relatives in Miami and Atlanta, though she rarely had the chance to visit: “We didn’t have that kind of money. I’m sure the family would have paid for us, but we’re proud people.”

It’s the norm now for young musicians to be weaned on their parents’ record collections. But Winehouse denies her jazz buff Dad was a formative influence. “Not really. There was what he had in his car. And there were tapes at home. I would go to sleep listening to things like Sinatra and James Taylor. But that’s as far as my parents went. You discover music the most when it’s music that no one tells you to listen to, that you find out for yourself.”

So you weren’t sat down and told, Listen, this is good for you?

“Ha! I’d have told them to fuck off. I’ve always been a rebellious person. The only music that truly spoke to me was jazz and hip hop.”

It’s often said that first novels are autobiographical. People use up their life’s experiences. Did you do that with your first album? Could that be a danger for the second?

“Yeah but… I dunno. Life is inspiring, regardless. I don’t want to make a second album talking about record companies and stuff. The thing that always drove me with Frank was human interaction and that will always drive me. Relationships and how fucked up they can get. I guess that’ll always inspire me.”

I like the way that CDs are used as reference points in your lyrics. (There is even a photo of her collection on the album’s artwork.) Is the title Frank a reference to Sinatra? In Take The Box you’re splitting up with a boyfriend and dividing the spoils.

“Yes. When I say ‘Frank’s in there and I don’t care,’ that is literally a Frank Sinatra CD. He bought me it for Christmas and I was putting all his stuff in a box, like his T-shirt that I used to sleep in. He bought me Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours – ironically, cos it’s one of the classic heartbreak albums of all time. Frank as a title for the album is a good word, It is frank… Dunno. Maybe with more time I would have come up with a better title.”

Well, if you have to name your album after someone, who better than Frank Sinatra? (I intend this in the blandly upbeat way you adopt to keep your interviewee on side. She’s having none of it.)

“I don’t agree. There’s a whole mess of people better than Sinatra.”

Are there? Really?

“Sinatra had an emotional connection with music. That was his thing. He had the tone in his voice. But singers? I know a hundred singers that piss on Frank. And musicians. And just as a person: he was an arsehole. But he had an emotional connection to songs that touched everyone, women, men, soldiers. So… Er, sorry, I’ll have to write down a lyric or I’ll go mad.” (She delves into a little pink handbag – keys, fags, mobile, make-up – and rummages for notebook and pen.) “I’m always getting ideas for concept albums!”

If you had to give up either singing or songwriting, which would it be?

“I’d cut my throat out. Singing is singing. If I couldn’t sing a song, and express it, which – ” (her expression darkens) “ – which I haven’t been able to for the past five months but that’s OK it comes from me, I understand that – if I couldn’t do that, I’d be fucked. Singing and writing go hand in hand for me, it comes from one place.”

Do you enjoy singing?

“Yeah, I’ve always sung. I always assumed that everyone could sing, that that’s what they do when they’re happy or sad. And when I was growing up and having the pain and suffering that teenagers do, when you think the world hates you because you’re 15, I could sing like a little bird. I can’t sing like that no more. I’m too complacent. They gave me too much free shit…”

(She sighs deeply and stares at her tapas.) What do you mean, they gave you too much free shit?

“They put it all on a plate. I feel like I’ve got nothing to work for sometimes, even though I’ve got lots to work for.”

(She lights a cigarette.) Of course you have, surely.

“Yeah. Anyway… Amy, chill the fuck out. I’m sorry.”

Do you feel pressurised by all the weight of expectation around you?

“A little bit. But that’s myself. No one could be a harsher critic than myself. I am feeling that pressure. There are days when I wish I could just take a break from my own head.”

What are you up to with your new music? Have you started yet?

(She sulks like a 12-year-old. Blows out hard, hot cigarette smoke.) “Not at all. Writing the album seemed hard but once it was done I thought, that wasn’t hard. It’s doing all this promo shit that is the really hard work. The only thing you have to remember when writing is, Be honest, always. But with promo it’s always, Shut your mouth, Amy! Smile!”

(She suddenly seems 65 years old.) “There’s nothing real in it, nothing real. Which really drains me. But you know what? It’s gotta be done.”

This year’s girl gives me a tired, trouper’s smile and walks back out into Camden Town”.

23rd July will be a sad day. It will be fifteen years since Amy Winehouse died. However, more than see it is a black and tragic thing, we need to look back and remember her warmly. The incredible music she left behind. Her true legacy. How she impacted the people she met. How her music has transformed lives. Artists today who are influenced by her. Back to Black turns twenty later in the year, so there will be a lot of attention around that. Truly, there was nobody quite like Amy Winehouse. We will never see another. This Camden queen was…

A true original.

FEATURE: Mama Tells Me I Shouldn't Bother… The Cardigans’ Lovefool at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Mama Tells Me I Shouldn't Bother…

 

The Cardigans’ Lovefool at Thirty

__________

IN June…

The Cardigans played at London’s Eventim Apollo. Led by Nina Persson, there is hope that the Swedish band will play more shows in the U.K. Not only because they are an amazing band who have released so many brilliant albums. Their acclaimed third studio album, First Band on the Moon, was released on 6th September, 1996. The third album from the then-quintet, I think it would be great if they came back and did some thirtieth anniversary shows. I think the London show was a celebration of that album, but such a huge record deserves more focus. There are so many great moments on First Band on the Moon. However, its lead single, Lovefool, is the standout. One of the defining songs of the 1990s. I was at high school when Lovefool came out, and it is a song I instantly fell in love with. I still get shivers when I hear the song! Written by Peter Svensson and Nina Persson, it is a beautiful, lush and wonderfully performed song. Perhaps a little dated now, you cannot fault the majesty of this gem. Reaching number two on the U.K. chart, I wanted to celebrate thirty years of this song. It was released on 5th August, 1996 (that was its European release date). It is interesting looking at the reviews and impressions of Lovefool. The retrospective reviews about Lovefool are interesting. There was a lot of praise for Lovefool in 1996. Although some felt it was sugary and a little too kitsch, many proclaimed Lovefool as a catchy and instant classic track. I think it is among the finest songs of the 1990s:

“Justin Chadwick of Albumism said "Lovefool" is "one of the more exciting straight-ahead pop songs of the contemporary era", calling it "pure, exquisitely produced pop perfection." John Bush of AllMusic deemed it a "depressing lament of unrequited affection". Annie Zaleski of The A.V. Club described it as "giddy". Dave Fawbert of ShortList wrote, "It's one of the best things in life when a song comes along, you listen to it, and you just think: "Well, that's perfect isn't it?" Every little bit of this three minutes and 14 seconds is absolutely, utterly unimprovable, from the little bllllrrrrring guitar intro, all the way through to that gorgeous ritardando and final chord at the end. Impossibly stylish, groovy and ice cool, this is, you'll be unsurprised to hear, still brilliant, fully 20 years on. The Swedes, they build things to last—Volvos and 'Lovefool', two sides of the same coin.” Sal Cinquemani of Slant called it a "tongue-in-cheek smash", writing that "Lovefool" "criminally crowned the band as one-hit wonders in the U.S." Treblezine wrote, "it's not difficult to understand the effect of this song. It's got that certain quality that digs right down into your being and glows with a precise sense of rhythm and pleasure”.

Prior to getting to some other features around Lovefool, I want to focus on American Songwriter and their 2024 feature around and indelible ‘90s classic. They say how The Cardigans “had every intention of rocking out in a way they hadn’t done on previous records. But one song required a subtler, slinkier approach. It’s a good thing they took that approach, because the song in question, “Lovefool,” turned out to the most successful of their career”:

“Fool” Me Once

The Cardigans formed in Sweden in the early ’90s, and they were distinguished early on by the dreamy vocals of lead singer Nina Persson and an eclectic musical bent. They began the process of collecting material for their third album First Band on the Moon while they were still touring the album Life, which they had released in 1995.

As a result, it was in an airport where guitarist Peter Svensson first played the song to the rest of the band. He had the first part of the chorus (Love me, love me, say that you love me) in place. Persson didn’t think the song should be quite so syrupy, so she countered with Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me. She explained to The Guardian what went into her lyrics:

“It’s a song about how it’s very human to bend over backwards when it comes to getting love. The character is very calculating, aware that what they’re going to get isn’t real but that it’s better than nothing.”

Booting the Bossa Nova

When Svensson initially wrote the music, he envisioned the song played with a bossa nova rhythm. Needless to say, that slightly antiquated style wasn’t exactly in demand on the various radio formats of the time. The band’s producer, Tore Johansson, gave the band a hard time about the song, suggesting they switch it up.

Johansson convinced The Cardigans to throw more of a disco feel behind the song, without revving up the pace so much that it would lose the prettiness of the melody. That’s when “Lovefool” came together into a version that did well right off the bat in countries all over the world.

But the song’s exposure went into overdrive when filmmaker Baz Luhrmann reached out to the band. He was looking for just the right pop songs for his modernized version of Romeo + Juliet, and “Lovefool” caught his attention. Once the song appeared in the film, The Cardigans found themselves hitting new heights of popularity.

What is the Meaning of “Lovefool”?

The portmanteau title of “Lovefool” hints at the song’s duality. The narrator is clearly in love with the person she’s addressing, but she can feel him pulling away: Dear, I fear we’re facing a problem / You love me no longer, I know, she sings to begin the song. But she explains that she can delude herself as long as he sticks around: I don’t care if you really care / As long as you don’t go.

The narrator receives advice from others she ignores: That I ought just stick to another man / A man that surely deserves me / But I think you do. She also neglects all the logic that tells her she shouldn’t subject herself to this anguish anymore: Reason will not reach a solution / I will end up lost in confusion.

I can’t care ’bout anything but you, Persson sings to close out the song, but her voice sounds far more quizzical than decisive. “Lovefool” suggests we’ll put up with all manner of indignities to be with the one we love. The Cardigans dressed that somewhat sour message in a chirpy sheen to make it accessible, and the rest is ’90s pop history”.

I will finish with a piece from The Guardian. Before that, I do want to source a 2016 interview from Billboard. Looking back on Lovefool at twenty, Nina Persson shared her thoughts. It was a massive success and one that most have grated the band to a degree. Maybe being associated heavily with a song they were weary of, in retrospect, they were pleased of its success and play it live. I do hope the band have some upcoming gigs where they play Lovefool. I am writing this ahead of their date at the Eventim Apollo (27th June), so I am not sure if that was in the set:

“Lovefool” — the uber-earworm from the band’s third studio album, First Band on the Moon — swiftly became a hit in Europe but didn’t debut internationally until Oct. 5, 1996. “We put out that song and record and embarked on a long tour, so in one way, nothing changed for us,” frontwoman Nina Persson told Billboard recently over the phone from Los Angeles, where she was preparing to play a show with Local Natives. “Then the movie came out” — that would be Baz Luhrmann‘s ’90s-defining Romeo + Juliet — “and the U.S. caught on tremendously.”

After Romeo + Juliet was released on Nov. 1, 1996, “Lovefool” debuted on the Adult Pop Songs chart dated Nov. 30 at No. 39. It then hit the Radio Songs chart the following week, peaking at No. 2 and staying there for eight nonconsecutive weeks. It spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Pop Songs airplay chart, beginning with the Feb. 22, 1997-dated tally. (The song did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, because at the time, non-commercially available songs — like “Lovefool” — were not eligible to chart on the list.)

As Persson recalls today, “Lovefool” felt like an odd fit for The Cardigans. “We definitely were aware that it was a single and a catchy song when we wrote it, but the direction it took is not something we could have predicted,” Persson says. “It wasn’t necessarily our character; it felt like a bit of a freak on the record — which, objectively, it still is.” The song’s upbeat feel wasn’t the band’s initial intention. “Before we recorded it, it was slower and more of a bossa nova,” Persson says. “It’s quite a sad love song; the meaning of it is quite pathetic, really. But then when we were recording, by chance, our drummer started to play that kind of disco beat, and there was no way to get away from it after that.”

The band had already shot a different music video for the U.K. and Europe — “much more bleak, much more our original style,” Persson says. “We had an actor playing a sort of handsome-man-love-interest of mine, and he was supposed to be a kind of gangster and the band played his gang members.” But thanks to the success of Romeo + Juliet, another video debuted and became ubiquitous on MTV, cementing Persson’s public image as a flaxen-haired pixie floating at sea, a message in a bottle in human form. Watch the MTV staple below, as well as a side-by-side comparison of the two videos:

Persson acknowledges she and her bandmates weren’t initially thrilled by the success of “Lovefool.” “It took over our whole existence, and it wasn’t something we totally identified with,” she says today. The Cardigans played it on Beverly Hills, 90210 and on the morning talk show circuit; Persson remembers being “freaked out” when she’d see the video on screens in American clothing stores. “We were kind of snobs,” she acknowledges. “We felt like these things were glitzy, and we felt like, ‘No, no, we’re a rock band!'”

But today, with the distance of two decades, she’s able to look on the song a bit more kindly. “Now, we see it from the other end, and we’re proud and thankful,” she says. The band happily plays “Lovefool” in concert. And as Persson herself wrote on her Instagram on the anniversary of the song’s U.K. release: “We love you, sweet nuisance!”.

In 2023, The Guardian spoke with The Cardigans’ Nina Persson and producer Tore Johansson about the best-known track from the Swedish band. I think there are those who heard it first in 1996 and it has stayed with them. Some have changed their views and now like a song they were a bit cold towards. Those who were spellbound by it and still are. Others who are discovering it now. I do think it is one of those tracks impossible to dislike. It has a simple heart. Rather than – as some feel – it being cloying or too sickly, it is this seductive and wonderful song that is rightly hailed as one of the standout songs from the 1990s:

“Nina Persson, singer and co-writer

In 1995 we had just released our second album, Life, and were touring a lot. We were in an airport somewhere waiting for a flight and were looking at material Peter Svensson, our guitarist and songwriter, had written for the next record. He played this song on guitar: it was a bossa nova at that point. I thought it was beautiful, but found the chorus “Love me, love me, say that you love me” too cliched, so I tried to offset its sweetness by adding: “Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me.” It’s a song about how it’s very human to bend over backwards when it comes to getting love. The character is very calculating, aware that what they’re going to get isn’t real but that it’s better than nothing.

Our producer Tore Johansson would break our balls. He couldn’t stand that it was a bossa nova and immediately had our drummer play a disco beat. Disco wasn’t being used a lot then and it helped the song stand out. The first time we released Lovefool, in 1996, it did well. We didn’t think it could be any bigger. Then, a year or so later, Baz Luhrmann asked us for a song to use in his film Romeo + Juliet. It felt really nice that he personally got in touch. We offered him a different song that was way more romantic but then he heard Lovefool and said: “No, that’s what I want.” We were invited to the premiere but were away on tour at the time. I still haven’t met Leonardo DiCaprio. I never got my chance, before I turned 25, to have my moment with him.

The culture verged on pornographic. There were shoots of me licking an ice cream, while Peter made guitar mag covers

After that second release, I was in a Nike store in New York one day and the video came on their big screen. The salespeople were all singing along. “Oh my God!” I thought. “This is big.” I had to go outside – I was freaked out. I loved music but I had no intention of being famous. I also had a problem with how women were presented. At the time, there was this horrible culture that verged on pornographic. There were photoshoots of me licking an ice-cream, gross stuff like that, while Peter got to be on the cover of guitar magazines.

Lovefool has definitely come back around, with the 90s being so hot right now. My 12-year-old son and his friends know it through things like TikTok. Young girls ask me if I’ve met Justin Bieber, because of his song Love Me, which borrows the chorus from Lovefool. We thought it was bullshit at first. Let a 15-year-old use our song? No way! But our manager said: “You guys want to think twice because people say this kid is going to be really big.” We’re happy we did.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images

Tore Johansson, producer, played bass

My friends and I were hobby musicians. We built Tambourine Studios in Malmö just to have a place to record. We started recording other bands to make money. One was the Cardigans. I never really wanted to be a producer but I ended up recording all of their albums except one and having an amazing, almost full-time career with them for many years.

When they came to me with Lovefool, I thought: “Yeah, it’s really good, but we’ve made so many of these indie bossa nova songs. Couldn’t we try something a little funkier?” Latin rock and disco were the big inspiration, the organ was inspired by Oye Como Va by Santana.

We bought a restaurant. That was fun. But in a very Malmö way. Not much cocaine going on

We recorded it totally analogue. Our studio was like an authentic 1970s studio: it’s an easy way to get that kind of retro sound. We worked hard on every instrumental part to get it perfect. I think I played bass on the chorus and Peter on the verse. Nina is super good at doing vocals. She had a sound and she had a style.

The Cardigans are very down to earth, so Malmö was a great town for them to be famous in. We had this weird double life, of being pretty normal at home while all this crazy stuff was happening around the world. There was so much money coming in to the studio, we started a record label and we bought a restaurant. That was fun. But in a very Malmö way. Not much cocaine going on.

I went on to produce Franz Ferdinand’s first album, as well as lots of other bands. But Lovefool is definitely my claim to fame. If I’m at a wedding or something, meeting people who don’t know me, I can tell them: “You know that ‘love me, love me, say that you love me’ song? That was me.” I can do that and be proud”.

It is hard to believe that Lovefool turns thirty on 5th August. To me it still feels recent, as I think about the song and have good memories. Though those memories are from three decades ago, so it is also distant. Glad that The Cardigans are still together and they are not a band to dismiss a massive hit and refuse to play it. It means new generations of fans can discover a song that turned them into international superstars in 1996. Also go and listen to First Band on the Moon, as it is tremendous album. However, when you think of its standout moment, few can argue against…

THE mighty and divine Lovefool.

FEATURE: Expecting: The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Expecting

 

The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells at Twenty-Five

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IT seems like a lifetime away…

IN THIS PHOTO: Jack and Meg White (The White Stripes) in 2002/PHOTO CREDIT: Kelly Ryerson for FADER

when you consider Jack White today. He announced a new album, Frozen Charlotte, on 10th July. He has put out so much work since The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells came out on 3rd July, 2001. I wanted to recognise twenty-five years of a fabulous album. One of the very best the duo of Jack and Meg White released, a Deluxe edition came out in 2021 for its twentieth anniversary. I will come to some reviews around The White Stripes’ third studio album. It was the biggest step forward. Their 1999 eponymous album is a raw and Blues-heavy record. With 2000’s De Stijl, there was a broader palette. Maybe not as sludgy or heavy, you can feel different colours and sounds. Even so, it was not a massive shift. Just enough to show that De Stijl was its own thing. I feel White Blood Cells is a different beast to anything they produced before. Jack White’s songwriting at its very best. Recorded at Easley McCain Recording in February 2001, it was finioshed quickly. That is how the duo operated. Lo-fi but always nuanced and astonishing, White Blood Cells is my favourite album from The White Stripes. So many standout moments, people associate it with songs like Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Hotel Yorba and Fell in Love with a Girl. Their most varied and accomplished album to that point, White Blood Cells was not a big commercial success. It charted quite lot but the reviews were very positive. That mix of rawness and sweetness. The bond between Jack and Meg White. I want to explore some features around White Blood Cells. I cannot find any online interviews from 2001 around the release of the album. However, there is one from 2002. FADER put The White Stripes on their cover. Speaking with them after the release of White Blood Cells as their stature and celebrity was growing, it is interesting reading what they had to say:

“But the White Stripes are big, and famous in that tired-ass latter half of the 20th century way. Famous enough to have a reported $1,000,000 dangled in their faces to appear in a massive celebrity-driven Gap ad campaign—a payday they turned down after Jack had already sang on their third album, last year’s White Blood Cells: Well you’re in your little room/ and you’re working on something good/ but if it’s really good/ you’re gonna need a bigger room/ and when you’re in the bigger room/ you might not know what to do/ you might have to think of how you got started/ sitting in your little room…

Why would they want to be successful? You can’t even ask that question in America, at least not in the new America of the New Economy and the Internet and necromantic politics and weekly record sales updates and outposts of mall culture around the world. Perhaps this is why the idea that the White Stripes might not want to blow up and go pop hasn’t really been the dominant narrative flying off the rock and roll desk over at New America Media, Marketing and Promotion, Inc. It’s probably more a function of capitalism than a simplistic matter of race, but journalists are patented suckers for white people digging into their own souls through music forms of black American origin, like the blues, jazz, rock and roll, and hip-hop. This makes for both good copy and good business sense: writers and editors love that shit, because they love to build ’em up so they can tear ‘em down—maybe because there’s nothing more dangerous to the collective than a man or woman who simply doesn’t give a fuck and takes chances. who tries to reach out and break to the other side, whatever that side may be. (“I like putting myself in other people’s shoes,” says Jack.) Here are the White Stripes, the standard brief goes, a guitar/drums duo from Detroit who say they are brother and sister and has released three noisy albums of blues-based garage rock with touches of Zeppelin and the occasional Bob Dylan or Marlene Dietrich cover. They always wear red and white. The guy is really pale and scrawls the name of obscure bluesman like Blind Willie McTell on a white T-shirt, and get this: the girl bangs the drums with a deliberate kid-like thrashing!

“There’s different things we love: we love country music, we love the blues, we love rock and roll, we pretty much love anything American, from the South. So we have all these different influences,” explains Jack. And so naturally because the White Stripes tried and actually succeeded at an honest visceral music that smells like cigarettes, tastes like old motor oil and hits like an alcoholic girlfriend, they have provoked the usual media hateration. Time’s Benjamin Nugent went all out, putting his J-school diploma on the line and dong a bit of tidy investigative work. “In 1996, John (Jack) Gillis and Megan (Meg) White, got married, and Jack took Meg’s last name,” reported Nugent diligently. “Jack says he grew up with ten older siblings in the southwest Detroit house he currently shares with roommates, and this is rumored to be true. Meg, he claims, grew up in the suburb of Grosse Pointe… Last year they divorced, but the band remained intact…” The British press has mainly ignored this. They’re pissing their pants because the White Stripes are the best new big thing since, well, the Strokes.

Of course, one country’s dampened knickers are another nation’s legacy of blacks and blues (or something like that), and that’s not a new story either. White people have always been obsessed with the blues, at least since John and Alan Lomax made their famous Southern field recordings (the ones Moby sampled for Play) a couple of decades before an adolescent Mick Jagger sent away for sides from Chess Records in Chicago. A lot of folks both black and white might write the whole thing off as a rinky-dink taboo attraction to the forbidden “other”—with the thinking being that the “other” is the entire black American nation. That’s not entirely accurate. Black as they are, the blues are also part and parcel of America’s outlaw ethos: the first bluesmen were primarily jobless, itinerant musicians whose lyrics and lifestyle were an obvious liability to black America’s emergent race-building consciousness in the late 19th and early 20th century. The bluesman was not pulling himself up by the bootstraps, and the music would not or could not be considered “a credit to the race” until decades later. Today, of course, famous bluesmen open tourist traps in Times Square.

“The blues are completely honest. It’s just perfect to me,” says Jack, matter-of-factly. “Every song can only be one man’s story against everybody’s.” One man’s story against everybody else’s! Jack White says he grew up poor and white in a neighborhood called Mexicantown and that he first started listening to the blues when he was the only white kid at his mostly black high school that didn’t wig out. But who knows if he’s telling the truth? Just what, exactly, did Jack White do to be so black and so blue?

This identity politics line of questioning is for squares and comes out of the cross-roads where the basic American obsession with authenticity meets the country’s central personality trait of near-pathological lying. It’s also patronizing racism, American-style, that the king of the Delta Blues can sell his soul to the Devil in legend but Jack White of Detroit can’t call his ex-wife his sister. The White Stripes—like the blues—are unconcerned with such a trick bag and so they exist squarely outside the matrix. Outside that system, honesty is urgency as much as it is truth-telling, and Jack White sings like there’s things about him and Meg and they peoples that they desperately want you to understand, even if he can’t or won’t make it exactly plain for you. And if you listen to their albums and can’t tell what’s a White Stripes song and what’s a cover, that’s the interstitial space in which the blues have always existed. At their best, the blues themselves are a question, a sort of black American koan that take a long time—perhaps a lifetime or just the 70-some odd years between the first recording of Son House’s “Death Letter” and the White Stripes version—to really understand just one man’s story. It looked like ten thousand people gathered ‘round the burial ground/ I didn’t know I loved her ’till they began to lay her down.

And if the White Stripes are a little self-aware, as they were when drawing parallel between the blues and Holland’s De Stijl art movement for the title of their second album, they are not self-consciously so. Detroit as a city is almost completely unself-conscious. The girls there eat red meat, drink dark liquor and chain-smoke Camels, and the guys are probably still cool with their moms, have day jobs and girlfriends and peculiar ways of handling cigarettes and the smoke they produce. No one seems to have a cell phone and when you go to the record store there’s no Latin section and there are actually street signs that point the way to Mexicantown. As late as last November the White Stripes were playing $5 shows ($1 for students) and when the band records some songs for a local PBS station and “The Big Three Killed My Baby” is cut from the program because General Motors sponsored the show, no one blinks twice.

“We never set out to say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna be a garage rock band and that’s it—we’re gonna use the same three chords over and over again. We’re gonna make six albums and then we’re gonna stop.’ We never said that,” says Jack. “We never wanted to play for the same 50 people all the time.”

“And that’s what you could say about these last few years in Detroit: a back-to-basics look at what music means.” Jack continues, “What does it actually mean? With all its faults and fakes and videos and clothing and album covers, what does it actually mean? It’s just looking towards getting back to what it really was, not looking back and reminiscing as much as getting things back to normal again.” There is no irony in Detroit. When the White Stripes can turn down a million dollars from Gap and Jack still says there’s no hope in the city, it calls to mind something Detroit techno DJ Mike Banks said or wrote somewhere: No hope No dreams no love My only escape is underground”.

I found a review of White Blood Cells from Pitchfork. If their first two albums had some high points among some less-than-spectacular songs, everything on White Blood Cells clicks and stays with you. A song as short as Little Room as memorable as a bigger one like I Can Learn. The sweetness and charm of We’re Going to Be Friends together with the snarl and punch of I Think I Smell a Rat. Such a hugely listenable album that you will revisit time and time again:

“Virtually all of these songs address a distanced lover. Sometimes he's coming home to see her; other times she's done him some permanent wrong. The lyrics are succinct and direct, and poetic like an aged bluesman. On "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," he sings: "If you can hear a piano fall, you can hear me coming down the hall/ If I could just hear your pretty voice, I don't think I'd need to see at all." He concludes the song with, "Any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most/ And you know why you love at all if you're thinking of the Holy Ghost."

On the country hootenanny "Hotel Yorba," the Stripes reflect the grit of early Railroad Jerk-- a glee-filled boogie with Jack's voice breaking and whooping, almost on the verge of a yodel. "Fell in Love with a Girl" is frenzied and rollicking (the album's best), complete with Yardbirds-type "ahhaa's" and a joi de vivre tempered by the admission that trouble is sure to follow: "My left brain knows that all love is fleeting."

Indeed, many of the songs admit that the love is lost. On "The Union Forever," Jack White mourns, "It can't be love/ Because there is no love." The song is a riff on Citizen Kane, including a strange breakdown with sampled dialogue from the film. Here, the White Stripes are the most experimental they get, which is to say "not very," though the song reminds me of the ragged power of Royal Trux without the pointless artiness. Certainly, it would be nice to hear the White Stripes take this music in a new direction, but this band is all about the songs, and the songs are good enough to stand alone, sans-flashy effects and tape editing.

"The Same Boy You've Always Known" is another high point. For a ballad, it rocks harder than most bands' hard-rockers, yet it wrenches in its emotional impact. Jack White repeats certain key lines, straining his voice to impart meaning and feeling. Again, the state of the relationship in question is uncertain. The song ends uncommitted and terribly sad with, "If there's anything good about me/ I'm the only one who knows." How many bands have failed with entire albums of moroseness to only express the alienation of those two lines?

The closest thing to a dud on this record is "We're Going to Be Friends," a gentle, nostalgic ditty of innocent love and childhood. It's a little too pleasant, lacking any of the fear and confusion of those pre-double-digit years, but its softness gives the record's midpoint some time to inhale before another six exhalations of fire.

Finally, at the close of the album, Jack sits alone at the piano for "This Protector." Though its message is vague, there are implications of religion and loss: "You thought you heard a sound/ There's no one else around/ 300 people out in West Virginia/ Have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within you/ But now... now... now, now, now, NOW!" Now what? It's the floating resonance of the moment, the intensity of the feeling, that gives these words meaning.

White Blood Cells doesn't veer far from the formula of past White Stripes records; all are tense, sparse and jagged. But it's here that they've finally come into their own, where Jack and Meg White finally seem not only comfortable with the path they've chosen, but practiced, precise and able to convey the deepest sentiment in a single bound. It's hard to know at this point in the game where they'll head from here, but what matters is right now. And right now, I want to listen to this album again”.

I will end things with Stereogum and their twentieth anniversary feature around White Blood Cells. I first heard it around 2003. That is when its follow-up, Elephant, was released. Although most critics and fans would say Elephant is a superior album, I have always had more love and fascination with and for White Blood Cells. Twenty-five years after its release and no other group have tried to replicate the sound of The White Stripes. Some have maybe tried, but none have been able to elicit this kind of majesty and brilliance:

“In the beginning the White Stripes had consciously entered themselves into Detroit's lineage of noise-bombed rock 'n' roll, a continuum of feral howlers stretching from the Stooges and MC5 to the Gories and Detroit Cobras. They might have been happy to remain in that world forever, but their twist on the ragged Motor City tradition was too compelling for the rest of the world to ignore. Jack and Meg built up a mythos -- adhering to a strict red-and-white dress code, pretending to be brother and sister -- and a small but potent catalog, culled from the rough 'n' tumble corners of British and American music history. Their sound was deeply familiar but utterly peculiar. And just when nostalgia and backlash against garish late '90s trends opened up a window for back-to-basics rock bands to become real-deal superstars, they put out the strongest front-to-back statement of their career. White Blood Cells catapulted the White Stripes from the dive bar circuit into superstardom. By the end of the following year, they had appeared on the cover of Spin, accepted an MTV Video Music Award from the Olsen twins, and toured arenas with the Rolling Stones.

It's easy to look back on the hype surrounding the retro rock revolution and laugh -- and the idea that these kids in Converse were here to rescue rock 'n' roll from Fred Durst's clutches is admittedly silly. But in hindsight, getting excited about the best of these bands made perfect sense. The Hives, if one-dimensional, were a total powerhouse. The Strokes, if derivative, were pop-songwriter geniuses with the kind of swagger you can't teach. And listening through White Blood Cells is a reminder that the White Stripes were so much more than gimmick and persona. The album is a staggering outpouring of creativity, a reminder of how stridently unique a mishmash of uber-authentic influences can be. The sense that you're witnessing a Mojo editor's wet dream is quickly overshadowed by all the fun you're having. These songs are catchy as hell. They rock. Sometimes they hoot and holler too.

All those dusty blues, country, and garage rock records informing the White Stripes' ethos had been filtered through Jack White's twisted imagination, yet even his wildest ideas were grounded in Meg White's less-is-more simplicity. And really, both of them were about serving the song above all else. Underneath all the idiosyncrasies, White Blood Cells is a pop record that at times rocks extremely hard. For all the volatility animating these songs, melody rules all. Even the hooks Jack stuffed away at the end of the album are stunners, from "I thought you made up your mi-i-ind!" on the scathing rocker "I Can't Wait" to "You thought you heard a sound!" on the haunting piano-led closer "This Protector." The noise Jack wrangled from his guitar tended to imprint itself on your brain, too, as if he couldn't separate his most fiery impulses from his pop pedrigree. And for two people who had fallen out of sync, romantically speaking, he and Meg sure had a telepathic ability to pivot from quiet to loud and back.

"Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" was a transcendent example of this chemistry in action, but White Blood Cells covered so much ground beyond that initial blast. The album's other singles -- the unhinged hootenanny "Hotel Yorba," the rampaging punk-rocker "Fell In Love With A Girl," the precious twee fantasy "We're Going To Be Friends" -- were proof of how many ways Jack could write about being smitten. And he had much more than infatuation on his mind back then. A wordless hard-rock anthem called "Aluminum"? Yes, definitely. A discordant Citizen Kane homage about how love does not exist? Absolutely. He's the same boy you've always known, but he's finding it harder to be a gentleman every day. He thinks he smells a rat. You send him to Toledo. (Toledo? Toledo!)

These sidelong sentiments were threaded into many kinds of rock music -- tunes that, despite their throwback feel, were nearly as inventive as the Lego-animated Michel Gondry music video that got the band on TV. The same artisanal touch Jack brought to his upholstery day job played out in songs that shared a sensibility but never a mold. This had been the White Stripes' M.O. since they started, and it reached its apotheosis in the winter of 2001. In just four days of harried recording, before this batch of songs could calcify into rote muscle memory, Jack and Meg wrangled their inspiration and nervous energy into a tour de force. Clearly they had some inkling that they'd captured something intoxicating because both the cover art and the album title hinted at an influx of unwelcome attention. Still, some part of them relished the prospect of expanding their empire beyond the confines of the dingy rock 'n' roll subculture that raised them, or else they would have ended the band for good before it had a chance to make them famous. This stuff was really good; they were gonna need a bigger room”.

On 3rd July, it will be twenty-five years since the release of White Blood Cells. I hope that Jack White shares some words about the album. Meg White is no longer in music, so I don’t feel she will post anything about White Blood Cells. Even so, anyone has never heard of this album seriously needs to hear it now. It is a lo-fi, high-quality offering…

FROM The White Stripes.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Saidah

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Liam James

 

Saidah

__________

I am spending some time….

with the incredible Saidah. This is an amazing D.J. that everyone should know about. This Amsterdam-based queen has London roots. I want to lead off with Nowadays Magazine and their interview with Saidah. This acclaimed and hugely respected D.J. draws inspiration “from the birthplace of garage to bring high-energy four-to-the-floor beats to her sets. Blending UKG classics with underground gems across garage, house, and bassline genres, she offers a fresh sound and perspective to open up the UK scene to new audiences. A resident at Amsterdam’s Radio Radio, she hosts her monthly radio show Sweet Like Chocolate, dedicated to UK dance music soundscapes, and a quarterly club night inviting personal inspirations to join her on the program”:

“Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got hooked on music?

I grew up in a household where music was always playing. I had a heavy UKG influence from my mum, who was into that scene, and grime from my older brother, who rapped and had Channel U on the TV at all times. I also love to sing, so I was involved in bands and choirs from a very young age. As soon as I was old enough (and even when I wasn’t quite...), I couldn’t get enough of clubbing, and that opened up a whole new way of experiencing music for me.

What inspired you to become a DJ?

I’ve honestly wanted to learn how to DJ from the moment I saw someone do it. The idea that you could be in control of the music, play all of the songs you want to hear, and experience everyone in the crowd loving the music as much as you do felt like the coolest thing ever to me. But I didn’t learn until I moved to Amsterdam and one of my besties had decks and taught me how to use them, which I’m forever grateful for. I fell in love with it immediately, and spending hours on end discovering music, learning techniques, and developing my own style inspired me to share that with people on dance floors”.

What challenges did you face while breaking into the industry, and how did you overcome them?

I think the biggest challenges came from within, to be honest. You have to continuously believe in yourself and what you’re doing- if you don’t, then it’s very hard for anyone else to. I struggled with imposter syndrome a lot at the start, but I think the only way to overcome it is to continue to challenge yourself to do things outside of your comfort zone. Then, when you achieve those things, you can look back and say, "That was something I didn’t think I could do, and I did it, so I’m definitely capable of doing this next hard thing.". It’s also about letting go of perfection and not being too hard on yourself when things don’t go as expected. Learning to be comfortable with discomfort and imperfection is a huge superpower, and it allows you to enjoy every moment so much more, which is what it’s all about really.

Where do you see yourself in five years, both musically and professionally?

I’ll be releasing some of my own music later this year, and I’ve been working on tracks both as a producer and a vocalist. So I’m excited to see what new opportunities that brings and to contribute to the scene. I hope that I’ll get to travel to cool places, meet even more amazing people, and mature as an artist and performer. So much has already happened that I would never have imagined a few years ago, so I feel really hopeful about what comes next”.

There aren’t many interviews available with Saidah. Her E.P., takeme2, is out. It is phenomenal. I would urge everyone to listen to it. I think that can’t stop is the best track on the E.P. Like all of the tracks, it has such energy. It is a work that really gives you a boost and a lift. I am going to end up with DJ Mag and their interview from last month. They spent time with Saidah ahead of the release of takeme2. The “fast-rising Amsterdam-based, London-born DJ, producer and vocalist opens up about finding her feet as she surfs UKG's new wave”:

“Having studied music at school, Saidah turned her attention to production shortly after starting DJing. Initially, she shadowed peers and played around on her own, then did a course with Parisian house producer Julien Chaptal. "That was less about how to use Ableton and more about how to be experimental in what you create," she reflects.

A keen collaborator, she’s also featured on several tracks with friends in recent months. In April, there was 'NICE + SLOW', a link-up with Lamsi released on Nervous Records, which blends UKG with Afro-diasporic rhythms beneath Saidah’s sensual, stripped-back vocal. Before that, in January, came 'Tears', a festival-ready slammer that doubles as a deeply personal track for Saidah, which revealed something important about where her music could go.

It came about after an invite to the studio from producer friends Freddi and Milion, who were building tunes ahead of Lowlands and were in need of some vocals. Saidah had come straight from London after a final conversation with a partner of almost seven years. Despite that, she didn't expect to fall apart. "I just thought I'd go into the studio and be like, ‘OK, let me just do some vocals, and it's gonna be okay’. But I was very emotional."

Keen for her to tap into something real before singing, the producers asked, ‘What are you going through right now?’ It broke Saidah open. "I just burst into tears, and I was like, ‘I feel like this is what I should talk about on this track, so you guys can just leave, and I'm just gonna talk into the mic and talk about what's going on’." She poured everything out, then left before she could listen back. When she finally heard her words on the finished track, she understood. "This is it. This is what it's about. It's about putting stories and emotions into the music."

The experience clarified something that has become central to her sound: she's a singer who has spent years in choirs and bands, but what she's really interested in is speaking. "I actually much prefer my voice on tracks when I’m talking rather than singing," she says. "It adds this extra layer of storytelling."

"I try to just think about it as if it's me playing at home. Because when I'm playing at home, I'm dancing like crazy."

Saidah was born and raised in South East London. Her mum had been a garage raver and "pretty much the source of my musical upbringing,” she says. “Some of my earliest memories are just being in the car with her and listening to these UK garage compilations. We would be singing along to them. I knew all the words to every single track."

Growing up in that particular pocket of the city, with an older brother who kept Channel U on the TV at all times, and who spent his evenings rapping and making beats, meant that Saidah was plugged into the musical landscape on her doorstep. Garage and grime mixed with Erykah Badu's neo-soul and the R&B of Destiny's Child, before university years in Manchester led her to the Warehouse Project. The ingredients were all there. The opportunity to do something with them wasn't.

"It felt very inaccessible," says Saidah on the idea of DJing at that point. "There were all these dudes who ran their parties and DJ’d and booked each other. It was never a case of, like, ‘Oh, maybe you might like to try this’." So she never did. Instead, she built a serious career in advertising. Keen to experience living somewhere new, she applied for jobs in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona. It was the Dutch capital that ultimately came calling. Six years later, she's still there, but everything has changed.

Now that her debut EP is here, there is much more music to come, and the sound has already evolved. Her producer tag is the sound of her laughing, and it feels like an intentional signpost of what’s to come. "This lightness, this joyfulness through the music: I think the future stuff is leaning much more heavily into that."

The people she's previewed demos with have struggled to name what genre they belong to: garage drum patterns are layered beneath trance-inflected synths, house vocals and tempos that don't fit the mould. "I hate the idea of using a reference track," she says of a common practice for many producers, especially early on. "You're literally using a template to create music, and that's not what it's about at all. You should go into it and just figure out what sounds good to you."

Saidah quit her corporate job last year after signing with management, a characteristically impulsive move that served as a sort of “now-or-never” moment. "I can't have regrets in life. I have to just do it," she says. Though her diary is now full all summer long, the nerves haven't entirely gone just yet. Big shows still bring them, but she's learned to manage the moment.

"I try to just think about it as if it's me playing at home,” she says. “Because when I'm playing at home, I'm dancing like crazy." It’s an energy you can really feel in her mix for DJ Mag’s Recognise series – a blazing 70-minute set packed with all manner of UK club heaters, her voice and solo productions unmistakably peppered throughout the tracklist.

Connecting with the crowd, as though inviting them into her home, she says, is everything: eye contact, smiling, jumping around with people. "That makes me feel part of the experience rather than a performer with a barrier between us”.

I am going to advise everyone to follow Saidah. You can see here where she is playing. A busy summer of festivals ahead. If you do have the opportunity to hear a set from Saidah, it will be a phenomenal experience. With a debut E.P. out and this momentum behind her, there is a lot of love around Saidah. I think that everybody should check out…

THIS remarkable D.J.

____________

Follow Saidah

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Frank Ocean - blond

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

 

Frank Ocean - blond

__________

EVEN though…

he has only released two albums, they are both masterpieces. I am focusing on Frank Ocean’s second and most recent album, blond. Released on 20th August, 2016 and recorded between Abbey Road Studios, London, Electric Lady, New York and Henson Recording Los Angeles, blond received sweeping acclaim. It is considered one of the greatest albums of the 2010s. Ahead of its tenth anniversary, I wanted to explore the album. I will end with some reviews for blond. I am starting with Vice. They spotlighted Frank Ocean’s words about the album:

“Minutes after releasing his new album, Blond, Frank Ocean shared a post on Tumblr explaining the inspiration behind the record. You can read it in full below and listen to Blond here.

Two years ago I found an image of a kid with her hands covering her face. A seatbelt reached across her torso, riding up her neck and a mop of blonde hair stayed swept, for the moment, behind her ears. Her eyes seemed clear and calm but not blank, the road behind her seemed the same. I put myself in her seat then I played it all out in my head. The claustrophobia hits as the seatbelt tightens, preventing me from even leaning forward in my seat. the pressing on internal organs. I lean back and forward to release it. Then backwards and forward again. There it is—I got free. How much of my life has happened inside of a car? I wonder if the odds are that I’ll die in one. Knock on wood-grain. Shouldn’t speak like that. We live in cars in some cities, commuting across space either for our livelihood, or devouring fossil fuels for joy. It’s close to as much time as we spend in our beds, more for some. The first time I did shrooms, my manager had to come rescue me from Caltech’s ‘Trip Day.’ As I got into her car, I swear to God the aluminum center console in her Porsche truck looked like it was breathing, like the throat of something. On the freeway, leaving Pasadena, we spoke and I looked away, outside, at the wheels and tires of cars doing that optical illusion thing they do where it looks like they’re spinning backwards, which, according to Google, happens because our brains are assuming something completely wrong and showing it to us.

Staring, I was transfixed by all the indicator lights oscillating and throbbing against the wind. We drove thru downtown LA headed west, flying on the same freeways I used to run outta gas on. Welcomed in by the perennial creatures, imperial palm trees and climbing vines living their lives out just off the shoulder. The feeling familiar enhanced, on the 10. I used to ride around in my sinewy crossover SUV, smoke and listen to rough mixes of my old shit before it came out, or whatever someone wanted to play when they hooked up their iPhone to the aux cord. A few years and few daily-drivers later I’m not driving much anymore. It’s been a year since I moved to London, at the time of writing this, and there’s no practical reason to drive in this city. I ordered a GT3 RS and it’ll keep low miles out here but I guess it’s good to have in case of emergency :) Raf Simons once told me it was cliché, my whole car obsession. Maybe it links to a deep subconscious straight boy fantasy. Consciously though, I don’t want straight—a little bent is good. I found it romantic, sometimes, editing this project. The whole time I felt as though I was in the presence of a $16m McLaren F1 armed with a disposable camera. My memories are in these pages, places closeby and long ass-numbing flights away. Cruising the suburbs of Tokyo in RWB Porches. Throwing parties around England and mobbing freeways in four project M3S that I built with some friends. Going to Mississippi and playing in the mud with amphibious quads. Street-casting models at a random kung fu dojo out in Senegal. Commissioning life-size toy boxes for the fuck of it. Shooting a music video for fun with Tyrone Lebon, the genius giant. Taking a break/reconnaissance mission to Tulum, Mexico, enjoying some star visibility for a change. Recording in Tokyo, NYC, Miami, LA, London, Paris. Stopping in Berlin to witness Berghain for myself. Trading jewels and soaking in parables with the many-headed Brandon aka BasedGod in conversation. I wrote a story in the middle—It’s called “Godspeed.” It’s basically a reimagined part of my boyhood. Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years. It’s surprisingly my favorite part of life so far. Surprising, to me, because the current phase is what I was asking the cosmos for when I was a kid. Maybe that part had its rough stretches too, but in my rearview mirror it’s getting small enough to convince myself it was all good. And really though… It’s still all good”.

A number one album in the U.S., U.K. and beyond, the California-born artist perhaps topped his incredible 2012 debut, Channel Orange. There were very few promotional interviews around Blond. I want to come to The New York Times and their conversation with Frank Ocean. There is debate whether you call Endless a studio album and place it among his discography. Endless is a visual album released on 19th August, 2016, as an exclusive streaming-only video on Apple Music, and preceded the 20th August release of Blond:

“Control is often at the forefront of Mr. Ocean’s mind. When he was on tour, his concerts would be recorded each night, and he would watch the tape, type up notes and email them to his team to prepare for a morning meeting. When “Blonde” and “Endless” were being recorded, he carried the hard drives with his music in his backpack, and the backups, too: “I’d rather the plane goes down in flames and the drives go down with me than somebody put out a weird posthumous release.” When he answers questions, he takes meaningful pauses, mulling over premises, before answering in expansive stories paired with precise bursts of logic.

After bouncing around hotels in London, he moved into a furnished apartment that he eventually stripped bare of all but the essentials: “I just wanted to be able to walk around and not run into an end table or some useless piece of furniture.” He rode electric bikes around the city, made new friends — “which is not as difficult as celebrities make it sound” — went on dates. He recorded in a handful of studios, including Abbey Road, where he asked for the studio, too, to be decluttered, removing furniture and bringing in flower arrangements.

Piece by piece, the music that would become “Blonde” and “Endless” was coming together, though up until then, it had been slow going. He’d begun recording at Electric Lady in New York, but after he took a pause away from the studio, the rhythm of writing was gone. “I had writer’s block for almost a year,” he said. During that time, he would go to the studio, “stare at the monitors and come up with nothing, or nothing that I liked.”

That dry spell broke only after he reconnected with a childhood friend from New Orleans who was going through difficult times. That conversation, he said, “made me feel as though I should talk about the way I grew up more.”

He decided that he wanted “Blonde” and “Endless” to be more autobiographical than his earlier releases. “I wrote ‘Channel Orange’ in two weeks,” he said. “The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.”

So he turned inward, and backward, telling stories about his childhood, family life, and romantic relationships — some frivolous, like on “Nikes” (“He don’t care for me/but he cares for me/and that’s good enough”); some meaningful, like on “Self Control” (“Wish we’d grown up on the same advice”): “That was written about someone who I was actually in a relationship with, who wasn’t an unrequited situation,” he said. “It was mutual, it was just we couldn’t really relate. We weren’t really on the same wavelength.”

In places, like on “Ivy,” he manipulated his voice to sound younger, to better capture the time he was evoking. Many of the new songs have two or three competing narratives — different points of view participating in the same story. “That was my version of collage or bricolage,” he said. “How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves, we know the story, we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.”

On “Blonde,” especially, you used a lot of different voices.

Sometimes I felt like you weren’t hearing enough versions of me within a song, ’cause there was a lot of hyperactive thinking. Even though the pace of the album’s not frenetic, the pace of ideas being thrown out is.

Are they always multiple points of view, or are they multiple Franks interrupting each other to be heard?

It’s the same thing — to me — because my point of view from one emotional state to another is a different point of view. Sometimes I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

Were you working toward a fixed idea on these albums? Or was it mutating and evolving as you went?

When I was making the record, there was 50 versions of “White Ferrari.” I have a 15-year-old little brother, and he heard one of the versions, and he’s like, “You gotta put that one out, that’s the one.” And I was like, “Naw, that’s not the version,” because it didn’t give me peace yet.

You were reaching for something ineffable?

They’re just chords, just melodies. I don’t know what combination of those objects is gonna make me feel how I need to feel. But I know precisely the feeling that needs to happen.

Regaining Control of Business

At the same time he was chasing a perfect-feeling sound, he was trying to regain control of his business relationships. He replaced his team — new management, new lawyer, new publicist. And he began negotiations to free himself from his contract with Def Jam, the label that had signed him in 2009 and effectively shelved him until his self-released debut mixtape “Nostalgia, Ultra” caused a stir online in 2011. “A seven-year chess game” is how he described the process of buying himself out of his contract and purchasing back all of his master recordings — using his own money, he said.

As a condition of the arrangement, he said, Def Jam took on distribution of his next project, “Endless,” which is available only as a streaming video album on Apple Music. Then, less than two days later, came a big surprise: “Blonde,” released independently by Mr. Ocean. (Apple Music paid to host the premiere of “Blonde,” but Mr. Ocean said there was no ongoing relationship with Apple.) This was Mr. Ocean’s checkmate, an album wholly his own that took center stage: “Blonde” debuted atop the Billboard album chart with the third-biggest opening week of the year, behind only Drake and Beyoncé.

When releasing “Endless” and “Blonde,” he took his time: “I know that once it’s out, it’s out forever, so I’m not really tripping on how long it’s taking.” He described his mood after the release of “Blonde” as “postpartum.” Rather than going on a promotional tour, playing radio festivals and making the usual rounds, he spent about a month traveling: “China, Japan, Oceania, France, just around. Casual”.

Let’s finish with a couple of reviews for blond. I am dropping the ‘e’, as the album cover says ‘blond’. I am not sure why everyone adds the ‘e’. Even so, I will move to The Line of Best Fit and their 9/10 review for Blond. In the header of their review they say how “Since disappearing from the public eye, Frank Ocean’s aroused more intrigue, generated more content and provoked more discussion among fans and critics than some of the most visible and productive artists - churning out material, hits and media appearances - could even wish for. It makes you wonder. Maybe Frank Ocean’s been with us all along - as a mirror for ourselves”:

“On the 45-minute long visual album Endless, we watch numerous Frank Oceans stalk the interior of a large industrial warehouse as they proceed to construct – in between breaks to check a smartphone – a tall wooden spiral staircase. The staircase is effectively destroyed as he ascends to its summit (around the 38-minute mark), before Frank resumes silently building from scratch all over again. It would be easy to view the whole thing as a metaphor for the creative process (the “endless” formation, evolution, destruction and/or revision of ideas) – if the warehouse is Frankie’s brain. But it might be too easy. Endless might actually be a statement on the art of patience. Which might feel somewhat incongruous in what are unequivocally urgent times; but there’s a hell of a case for slowing down - as consumers, dreamers, creators. As people. To view the piece in its entirety - to begin to understand it, and the artist who made it - requires patient and undistracted reflection. And, it would seem that since his spectacular debut-proper Channel Orange left its indelible mark on the pop landscape, Frank Ocean’s been learning the value of these lessons, too.

Blonde is at once both complicated and understated, invoking the very best of Channel Orange and rendering it even more fragmented and porous. Channel Orange was effortlessly subtle and moving in its approach to imagery and storytelling – combining a photographic eye for detail and a close attention to minutiae (the fingertips and the lips burning from the cigarettes on "Forest Gump"; the newborn baby reaching for the nipple on "Sierra Leone") with trippy surrealism and flights of sheer fantasy (the aliens watching live from the purple matter on "Pink Matter"; the condo on the cloud in "Pilot Jones"). It was a world in which the hyper-real and the pure imaginary were collapsed into one another and remolded anew – where time slowed, and where nothing and everything was true. But Channel Orange played out in scenes and sketches – albeit delicate, incomplete ones – which we were able to step into and step out of: we’re on the roof looking out across Ladera Heights with our character in "Sweet Life"; we’re right there in the taxi at rush hour on "Bad Religion". Blonde lacks these obvious entry and exit points. They’re there, for sure, they’re just not so easy to find.

Blonde is anchored in the same closed universe as Channel Orange and, to an extent, Nostalgia-Ultra: cars, drugs, pool parties, sex, love, loss, sunsets and moonlight; characters speeding through a blurred existence, unsure of where they’re heading, finding truth and meaning in only the most ephemeral and transitory highs. We’re there from the off: "Living so the last night / Feels like a past life", he sings on the opening track "Nikes". But on Blonde our proximity to these characters and their world is magnified. Frank gets right to the surface of his subjects, right up close to the flesh. This close up it’s hard to see the entire picture; we’re so close to the image it flinches, retracts, becomes something different altogether: "The markings on your surface / Your speckled face / Flawed crystals hang from your ears / I couldn’t gauge your fears / I couldn’t relate to my peers". There’s a line of argument that says one of the problems of living in late capitalism is that it’s all empty surface-level. If anything, there’s less and less real tangible surface-level experience. We’re lost in our own bodies. Like James Blake’s (and Blake’s influence is felt all over this record – as is Frankie’s all over Blake’s, The Colour In Anything), Frank Ocean’s art often reflects and tries to work through these tensions: "Where I cannot / Where I cannot / Less morose and more present / Dwell on my gifts for a second / A moment", he sings on "Seigfried".

We drift throughout the majority of Blonde, orbiting these fragile points of contact, points that feel constantly under threat; we hover precariously over moments of indeterminacy and confusion – the feeling of not knowing how to feel, where lack and desire merge, and become the same. It’s in his style of delivery, in the way he occasionally murmurs, trips off the edge, attenuates, languishes, dissolves (see "Good Guy", or "Close to You"). And it’s there in the writing, too: "Is this the slow body / Left when I forgot to speak / So I text to speech, lesser speeds / Texas speed, yes / Eventually, eventually, yes / I only eventually, eventually, yes" ("White Ferrari"). The writing isn’t always suspended precariously at this trembling threshold, though. There are times when it boasts a brilliant photomontage-like quality – whole scenes cut with sharp details, transitioning frame by frame with a flicker, and then opening up before you. Take this, for example, from "Skyline To": "Gliding on the five / The deer run across / Kill the headlights / Pretty fucking / Underneath moonlight now / Pretty fucking / Sun rising, sand, comes a morning / Haunting us with the beams". Elsewhere, the writing feels like it's buckling under the weight of its own mad potential. Take this piece of Beckettian hopscotch from "Siegfried": "Dreaming a thought that could dream about a thought / That could think of the dreamer that thought / That could think of dreaming and getting a glimmer of God / I be dreaming a dream in a thought / That could dream about a thought / That could think of dreaming a dream".

It would be wrong to suggest, however, that Blonde plays out entirely in a state of dizzy disillusionment, or in a tangle of philosophical windings. When it needs to soar proudly, when it needs to shout, it does exactly that. Blonde is a work of supreme confidence and assurance, one that bounds assertively between genres and styles. It sounds delightful. Between the vague cracklings of sad-boy electronica – a modification of an aesthetic pioneered by the likes of Radiohead and James Blake in the UK – there are big, expansive moments of defiant pop ("Ivy") and impressive flourishes of avant-gardes soul ("Pink + White"). These are enjoyable moments, but they're not without the weight of history either, which cuts into the soft flesh of the album when you least expect. Even as we’re sliding amorphously through these melting snapshots of intimacy and desire and nakedness, the full horrors of American racism still clatter terribly and immediately into the fold. The album’s sense of sadness and alienation (and terror) takes on a whole different import and resonance in the middle of "Nikes", with Frank paying tribute to the life of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old African American boy murdered on the walk home from his local store by George Zimmerman, in 2012. It’s a simple, devastating one line: "R.I.P. Trayvon / That nigga looked just like me". Elsewhere, the nightmares of Hurricane Katrina flash traumatically across Blonde, like unexpected forks of lightning. And when Frank sings "this is summer / Keep alive, Stay alive", on "Skyline To", it’s not hard to read as a tragic reminder that America’s hottest months are invariably its most deadly.

For an album that is at times intentionally difficult to follow - for all its vague and indistinct meanderings between subjects, between minds and bodies, between place and time, Blonde remains a highly accessible album - and not just sonically. Frank Ocean writes and delivers in a way that makes peculiar sense to those of us inheriting a world bound by so many mad contradictions and discrepancies; one that places us – the young - at its "centre", while remaining incapable of responding to our realities and our grievances. It’s as if those who were brought up living with the Internet are often presumed to have unconditionally assimilated all the manifold perplexities of digital media, past a point of no return. Which is partly true, but it’s not that simple. We’re looking for truth and goodness just like every other generation of seekers, and we’re doing our best to cling to it whenever we recognise it, however fleeting. His music speaks to these fraught and complicated urges: "It’s hell on earth and the city’s on fire / Inhale, in hell, there’s heaven", goes the hook on "Solo". But there’s also a quiet confidence underlying the uneasy melancholia that dominates Blonde, a feeling that when real change eventually comes, it’s going to be on our terms: "We’ll let you guys prophesy / We gon’ see the future first". We might be fucked up, but compared to “them” we’re doing just fine: "You’re tired of moving, your body’s aching / We could vaca, there’s places to go / Clearly, this isn’t all that there is / Can’t take what’s been given / But we’re so okay here, we’re doing fine".

Blonde is a strangely pertinent album. But it never screams its message – if you can really call it that. It’s never didactic or instructional or overbearing; importantly, it never treats its listeners as stupid. Frank Ocean shares our doubts and our anxieties – you can sense it in his writing, in its trepidation, in its ambivilance. Blonde’s not about telling us how to live (it’s decidedly ambiguous on hedonism and materialism, for example.) Rather, Blonde allows its listeners to make their own minds up, and to take what they need from it - to live. It’s this same kind of assurance – allowing the art to speak for itself, and a faith in his audience to listen and to respond - that kept him tinkering away for so long at this project in near total secrecy, until it was properly ready for release, until it was right. After all, there’s no rush. Not really. He might even disappear again soon. It shouldn’t matter to us; because Blonde is a work of art that will stick with us all for way longer than four short years”.

DIY praised the astonishing 2016 album, blond. They note how Frank Ocean “doesn’t have all the answers, and ‘Blonde’’s brilliance comes from how content it is not knowing an absolute truth”. There is no doubt that blond is among the finest albums of this century. I have listened to it more in preparation for this feature. It never fades or loses its magic:

“When music and meaning don’t fully click together like a neat stack of Lego bricks, ambiguity steps in. If a record is billed as being “open to interpretation’, that’s often code for “there’s not a great deal to see here, guys.” That’s not the case for Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’, an album that will be poked and prodded at by deep-thinking fans for years to come, and for good reason.

Searching for ‘Blonde’’s true meaning is like fishing for treasure in the Great Barrier Reef. There’s bound to be something down there somewhere, but you’ve got to get past the infinite, beautiful distractions. In truth, the follow-up to ‘Channel Orange’ thrives in its own uncertainty. Its best moments play out like a lucid dream. And it works because it’s so content with not knowing an absolute truth.

Fluid and curious, the record explores like there’s always something else to see. Strict song structures are scarce, save for the dazzling ‘Ivy’ and ‘Pink + White’. Instead, flooring split-seconds and sudden jolts of life step in out of nowhere. Andre 3000’s show-stopping ‘Solo (Reprise)’ verse gives way to ‘Pretty Sweet’’s white noise and a fitting Outkast-nodding beat frenzy. ‘Nights’ splits into two parts - from disjointed, N64-on-steroids playfulness to a twisted, after-hours purple haze.

There are funny contradictions everywhere, like how an anti-drugs speech from Frank’s Auntie (‘Be Yourself’) is immediately followed by ‘Solo’’s opening line, “Hand me a towel I’m dirty dancing by myself / Gone off tabs of that acid.” Right up to the record’s title - it can be called ‘Blonde’ or ‘Blond’ - there’s no certainty. Each song is like a story with a dozen alternate endings. But there’s something refreshing in not having the answer. Especially in 2016, when one opinion can be gospel while everything else is void, when you’re told to be aware of everything while barely anyone knows the reality.

Big name cameos from the likes of Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar are so subtle, they’re barely audible. The former can be heard in the background of ‘Ivy’, while Kendrick is reserved to a couple of accentuations. More airtime are given to a joke interview recorded by Frank’s brother when they were kids, on ‘Futura Free’. That’s less his way of hogging the spotlight, more proof of ‘Blonde’’s unpredictability and how split-seconds stay in the memory rather than specific songs. The way ‘Self Control’ clicks together - with the help of Yung Lean - from a disjointed love song into an emotional juggernaut. The way Frank employs Elliot Smith lyrics (“This is not my life, this is a fond farewell to a friend”) when he’s in the middle of pouring out his soul. The way ‘Ivy’’s vinyl-crackle notes bend out of shape.

It’s been a year of sudden-releases and snap judgements. But few records need to be unpacked as slowly as ‘Blonde’. It will take months for the dust to fully settle on 2016’s most long-awaited album. For ‘Channel Orange’ purists, the record’s more outward-thinking moments will understandably frustrate - Frank’s rich sense of storytelling is still here, it’s just fragmented. But once ‘Blonde’’s ambiguity begins to piece together, it becomes something remarkable”.

However you stylise the album title, I do feel that blond is among the greatest albums of the century. In terms of what comes next for Frank Ocean, I am not too sure. There have been single releases (such as 2017’s Provider and 2019’s DHL), but nothing in the way of a third album. As we await that – if it will ever come -, we should marvel at blond ten years after its release. We mark thar anniversary on 20th August. A decade later, and blond remains…

A heavenly release.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Your Hounds of Love (Hounds of Love)/Beelzebub (Kite)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

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

 

Your Hounds of Love (Hounds of Love)/Beelzebub (Kite)

__________

I have….

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Furmanovsky

talked about God and Jesus in this feature run, and I have also mentioned a historical embodiment of The Devil, Adolf Hitler. Characters in Kate Bush songs that have taken me in different directions. Bush is no stranger to incorporating religious figures and iconography into her songs. The same regarding historical figures. Joan or Arc mentioned in more than one song. I will come to a devilish mention in a song from The Kick Inside that has an interesting history. Before getting there, it is worth discussing animal characters from perhaps Kate Bush’s greatest song. I will come to the argument as to whether Hounds of Love is her finest achievement. Many consider it to be Kate Bush’s best song. I could have also mentioned the fox that is referenced in the track (“I found a fox caught by dogs/He let me take him in my hands/His little heart, it beats so fast/And I'm ashamed of running away”). I always think of that fox as a metaphor or symbol of the heart. Being torn by the hounds of love. The album title, perhaps, not referencing actual dogs. Even though Kate Bush is photographed on the cover of her 1985 with her two Weimaraners, Bonnie and Clyde, I don’t think the ‘hounds’ in Hounds of Love’s title track are canine. More spirits or a dark energy that is chasing her. There is a lot to discuss when it comes to this iconic track. I shall come to the question as to whether it is Kate Bush’s highpoint. There are some features that rate it number one. In terms of the characters, Your Hounds of Love, I see this a cross between actual hounds and a spiritual evil. We do find Bush stop to take a fox in her hands. One whose heart is beating so fast. Does that fox represent her own heart, or is it courage dying? Are they literal hounds capturing an actual fox? I think it is open to the listener. Before I explore subjects relating to the song and those hounds, Kate Bush explained the meaning behind that epic title track. The third single from Hounds of Love, it reached eight in the U.K. Even if Bush said in one or two interviews it was about love in general or relating to someone else, I think this is a song about her. One of her most personal to that point (1985). Kate Bush did explain her thoughts behind Hounds of Love:

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

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985

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

Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985

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

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

If not literal dogs that are tearing apart Bush, I do feel that they are characters in the song. In the video, we do see Bush and her male compatriot running. There is this chase. I shall come to that. Even though Hounds of Love is arguably her finest song, some critics were sharp and sexist. To show how tinned-eared, misogynistic and insulting journalists (male mostly) were in 1986, here are two examples of reviews for Hounds of Love:

“All mock, muted orchestration and thumping mock-tribal drums, this is Kate simply being Kate, and whether that makes you want to roll around in sandpit is strictly up to you.

Jim Reid, Record Mirror, 22 February 1986

Bush has always strived to be different, but this quest has often led her astray – an olive stone in the ashtray of life. ‘Hounds of Love’ eschews the lentil nightmare as Bush reaches notes most groups never even dream of.

Ted Mico, Melody Maker, 22 February 1986”.

I do think that Hounds of Love is this fascination song. In it, we hear Bush actually make yelping/barking noises. Giving the impression that there are dogs chasing her. In terms of the concept and idea of the song, this was very different to what other artists were doing. They were more literal regarding fears, the terror of commitment and being chased by love. Rather than go down this route, Kate Bush gave the idea that these hounds of love, who you might feel were warm, benign or would be loving, are actually frightening! Or that she had built that into her mind. Perhaps they would catch her and be all friendly and lick her. There is darkness and horror in this track. At the start, the line “It’s in the trees!/It’s coming!” is quote from a line spoken in the film Night of the Demon by Maurice Denham. Although the plot of the film (an American psychologist who tries to combat an evil cult leader who can sentence his enemies to death through the use of a runic scroll, given to his victims without their knowledge) cannot be connected to Hounds of Love and its meaning, Kate Bush did reveal it was one of her favourite films. Another occasion of films making their way into Bush’s work. This was not new. So many examples through the years. Though there does seem to be this horror element. Bush playing with ideas of possession and the spiritual. Something she did in Wuthering Heights (1978). 1986’s Experiment IV is about a machine that is built that could kill people with sound. Hallucinations, spirits and the macabre can be found elsewhere on Hounds of Love. Mother Stands for Comfort and Waking the Witch are examples.

Even if Kate Bush often referenced Horror and films in her work (Get Out of My House from 1982’s The Dreaming was inspired by Stephen King’s, The Shining), she didn’t bring in actual audio from someone else. That Night of the Demon exert is a great way to start the song. I keep thinking about the hounds and whether they are physical bodies. Kate Bush saying it is less literal, I tend to find myself coming on the side that she may have had dogs in mind. Bonnie and Clyde were her dogs. Looking and thinking of them when writing the songs, what if they turned on their master? Dogs seem to embody love and devotion. Turning them into these possessed things chasing down a woman is very scary. Though it could be Bush’s mind manifesting this anxiety into a nightmare situation. The video for Hounds of Love was the first Bush directed solo. She assisted and collaborated on other videos. This was her first solo credit. Influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, there is a supporting artist in the video that is meant to be Alfred Hitchcock. That is a reference to the director cameoing in many of his own films. Bush was now the director. Gow Hunter is Bush co-lead in the video. He is seen dancing alongside her while the pair are handcuffed together in a dramatic, Night of the Demon-inspired sequence. Bush said that the late Gower was "a lovely man" with "the face of a great film star".  Even if you feel the hounds of love are spirits or not real, there does seem to be this idea that they can be seen and have a real form: “Among your hounds of love/And feel your arms surround me/I’ve always been a coward/And never know what’s good for me/Oh, here I go!/Don’t let me go!/Hold me down!/It’s coming for me through the trees/Help me, darling/Help me, please!/Take my shoes off/And throw them in the lake/And I’ll be/Two steps on the water”. In spite of the fact the words are quite heavy, the cello by Jonathan Williams and percussion from Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott gives Hounds of Love this lightness. The percussion acts as a heartbeat, but the cello has this sense of grace. Or is it meant to be stabbing?! I feel there is something more romantic and classical mixed in with this blackness. Bush’s vocals and playfulness also balances out the sense of fright and impending attack. Her production work is also startling and brilliant. It is like this cinematic production!

As much as I have theorised about the tangibility and physicality of Your Hounds of Love that is mentioned in the lyrics, is the song actually Kate Bush’s best? For a while, there was a consensus that Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) – the lead single from Hounds of Love – was her best track. Wuthering Heights had that honour for a time. MOJO ranked her fifty best songs in 2024. They placed Hounds of Love at number one: “No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?” The uncertainty, however, is not reflected in the confidence – the perfect, dazzling completeness – of the song’s execution. On Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush is going at full pelt, chasing the horizon, running her vision to ground. Not really the hunted, but the hunter all along”. The Guardian ranked Bush’s singles in 2018 and placed Hounds of Love in fourth. They did say this: “The moment when its mood of pregnant fear finally shifts into one of gleeful surrender – “don’t let me go, hold me down” – is one of the most jubilant in Bush’s catalogue”. As foreboding as I have made the song sound, in the end, Bush/the protagonist surrenders to what is chasing her. That is when you get that literal sense of hounds actually wanting to show affection and love. Seeing them as snarling and in search of blood, it is only Bush’s doubts and fear of commitment that is creating this paranoia and fright. By stopping running and showing trust, she actually embraces what is chasing her. It might be a representation of Hounds of Love as an album and this huge project she undertook. Some of the doubts and bad sides of doing that. Taking so much on. However, she was the master and in control. Someone who could more than handle the hounds of love!

From a 1985 contender for Kate Bush’s very best song to a track from her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. Kite is one that a lot of fans know, yet it is rarely talked about. Not viewed as up there with her best, though it is a wonderful song. Again, rather than perhaps a physical manifestation of a character, perhaps something more internal or non-literal. Though Kate Bush does name-check Beelzebub, so I am counting that. It is an interesting reference, in terms of how he fits into the song. There are comparisons with Hounds of Love. In the sense that there are these intense feelings inside. Both I think relate to Kate Bush, though she says in interviews how they are not personal. If Hounds of Love is about a fear that then turns into embracing this and seeing that it is good, Kite’s struggle is the need to get high. I sort of imagine Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and The Beatles claiming it is not about LSD. Kite is very much a weed song (Kate Bush’s version of the Paul McCartney-penned Got to Get You Into My Life from Revolver, perhaps? A song very much about that desire to get high). One I feel has more of Kate Bush in it then she lets on. The Beelzebub name-check gets me wondering. Why select that particular character and figure as a starting point? If it is a casual and almost goofy reference to Beelzebub, I do think that this Devil in her stomach is this desire to be pushed upwards. “Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o/My feet are heavy and I’m rooted in my wellies”. For Music Talk in 1978, this is what Kate Bush said about Kite: “In the song, the character starts to feel that he is rooted to the ground, but there is a force pulling him up to the sky. A voice calls out, “Come up and be a kite”, and he is drawn up to the sky and takes the form and texture of a kite. Suddenly he’s flying “like a feather on the wind”, and for a while he enjoys it; but the longing for home and the security of the ground overtake these feelings”. There is something in those lyrics. I wanted to focus on Beelzebub, as that was an interesting choice. Maybe it was a stream-of-consciousness inclusion from Kate Bush. I have seen some people theorise that Beelzebub could be menstrual cramps or period pain. That this intense and hot fire in her belly was from her period. Menstruation referenced in The Kick Inside’s Strange Phenomena.

It is another case of religious imagery coming into Bush’s songs. Jesus has made an appearance. God most memorably, in 1985’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). That was probably the most serious or grand use of a religious figure. In the case of Kite, this is basically a song about Bush getting high. She may say that it is about a man who is pulled from the ground and then needs to be rooted. Taking a leap, I am going from Beelzebub to The Beatles. To come back to them. They were no strangers to experimenting with music. And drugs. Although weed did not hinder or help their creative process, it was definitely a part of their world. Not that Bush was following them. I think, for The Beates, it might have been a sign and norm for the time (the 1960s). For Bush, there was this communal and bonding aspect. Though I think it was also to help with nerves. Take the edge of. I have said before how Bush occasionally would be told to leave the weed alone when recording. Almost like taking sweets from a child! Donald Sutherland, who worked with Bush on the Cloudbusting video, definitely had a word with her about her smoking. Bush started smoking cigarettes as a young child. Many see her as this middle-class girl who was quite spoiled. She was well off. Cigarettes and weed was not rebellion. She grew up in a very artistic and free household. Though there were rules and boundaries, the Bush household in the 1960s and 1970s was not over-strict. It is interesting that Kite does nod to smoking. Though it also has a story behind it. I think the Beelzebub reference is about The Devil creating anxiety and rumble. This need to rise above him and get rid of that feeling. Kate Bush has said how Kite was her attempt to write a Bob Marley song. Not one of her biggest idols, you can see why Bush was intrigued and struck by his music. Surely, in 1976, she would have known about Rastaman Vibration. Exodus came out in 1977. Huge albums from Bob Marley and The Wailers. Maybe a young Cathy Bush heard 1974’s Natty Dread when she was sixteen.

If there was nothing unusual about white artists in the 1970s attempting Reggae songs, I feel Kate Bush lyrics and her delivery is different to other artists. Dreams of Orgonon talked about Kite. Though it has this Reggae vibe and is quite laid back, it also has Progressive Rock elements. You could write Kite off as this light and filler song. It is far from that! If you look at the documentary I have included below, where Kate Bush and her band/crew are preparing and rehearsing for 1979’s The Tour of Life, you can see her rehearsing Kite. I can only imagine the reaction the song got from the audiences. A number I feel would be stronger and more impactful live than on record:

“Kate Bush makes her television debut in a disused railway depot in Germany. Behind her stands the KT Bush Band, the musicians she chose to play her music, in front of a backdrop of green land and a volcano, apparently the German realization of a Yorkshire moor. Bush begins her idiosyncratic mime-shaped dance and the music follows her in a jumpy, facetious rendition of “Kite.” Bush uses her full body as an instrument, using shakes and poses to fill the stage.

It’s unsurprising “Kite” should be the runway Bush launches her television career on. The track is the B-side to “Wuthering Heights,” and a chirpy enough deep cut. “Kite” responds to “Wuthering Heights,” sharing its A-side’s fascination with stepping out of ordinary human experience; visualizing this process as a skyborne anabasis.

“Kite” is a dance song in a different fashion from “Wuthering Heights”; whereas “Heights” is famous for the dance retroactively applied to it, “Kite” actually depicts a sort of radical bodily movement. “Kite” depicts an Icarus-type character: a person being drawn from the ground and towards the air. Over the course of Kite’s run time, Bush expresses ennui on the ground with quite possibly the silliest opening lyric of all time — “Beezlebub is aching in my belly-o/my feet are heavy and they’re rooted in my wellios” — swoops through the air like “a diamond kite,” and finally gets sick of her flight with “I’ve got no limbs/I’m like a feather on the wind.” Bush puts herself through a odd contrapasso (indeed, directed by a sort of god in the shape of eyeball in the sky) where a desire to ascend quickly becomes a descent into the fear of “shit, how do I get down from here.”

Which is to say that “Kite” is a psychedelic rock song. The track’s metaphor isn’t exactly subtle — indeed the song is constructed around an unspoken pun about being high. Bush has an out-of-body experience she’s been aching for and finds the force drawing her upwards won’t let her down again. A taste of the divine is inherently terrifying.

There’s a taste of prog rock to this — bands Bush enjoyed such as Genesis, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson were similarly enamored with playing surreal melodies and writing about off-beat, ethereal subject matter. “There’s a hole in the sky with a big eyeball” sounds like a missing lyric of “21st Century Schizoid Man.” The chorus inviting the listener to “come up and be a kite/and fly a diamond night” is about as blunt a nod to mid-Seventies prog as one can write. Bush wears her prog influences on her sleeve in the early days, and surprisingly “Kite” is one of the songs which heavily showcases this.

Leave this alone and you get a psychedelically tinged prog rock song about the hubris of transcendence. Nothing to write home about, but perfectly enjoyable fluff. Yet “Kite” moves into curious dissonance by playing itself as eccentric reggae (something acknowledged by Bush herself, who called it “a Bob Marley song.”) On its own merits, this isn’t a idiosyncratic move — every white rock artist in the Seventies was attempting and failing to do reggae songs in a fatigue (a trend perhaps most prominently realized by Eric Clapton’s nauseating rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff.”) But with its moderato tempo and time signature shifts, “Kite” isn’t straight reggae. It utilizes the trappings of the music for its own ends to create conflicting juxtapositions, such as the bass’ cannabis-like rumble under Bush’s acidic vocals. In the end this doesn’t save “Kite” from being silly faux-reggae, but Bush is good at enough at dazzling her listeners to keep the tracks’ seams from showing too much”.

Religion and history were present right through Kate Bush discography. I think about Bush’s name-drop of Beelzebub. Rather than him being another form of The Devil, Beelzebub is instead “known in demonology as one of the seven deadly demons or seven princes of Hell, Beelzebub representing gluttony and envy. The Dictionnaire Infernal describes Beelzebub as a being capable of flying, known as the "Lord of the Flies", "Lord of the Flyers", or the "Lord of the Flying Demons”. That element of flight and flying. Connecting to kites. Even though we know weed is very much at the heart of the song, I do feel that Kate Bush was thinking deeper. Nodding to some of her favourite Progressive Rock artists. There was always the danger, when you consider the lines and that opening line of Beelzebub being in her belly, it is one of her most parody-worthy songs. She was at the mercy of impressionists and satirists in the 1970s and 1980s. Faith Brown among those who took her off. Bush did find it funny. But for an artist trying to be unique and true to herself, seeing this reflection of occasional mockery and insult, that must have hurt too! You feel like Kite is an open goal for comedians of the times. If you look at the Nationwide documentary, Bush is taking the song seriously. Drilling her band so it sounds right. Kite is not just an album track on The Kick Inside. The cover sees Bush pinned to a kite with an eye behind her. That was a reference to Pinocchio. The scene occurs near the climax of the 1940 film. It takes place in Sequence 10: The Whale's Belly, right when Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket first go into the ocean to search for Geppetto. You can read more about it here. Kite almost an unofficial title track. The Kick Inside’s cover was shot by American photographer, Jay Myrdal. It is a striking cover, though Bush is very small in the mix!

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performs Kite live on The Tour of Life in 1979. The famous cordless headset microphone she wears was invented by Bush and her sound engineer, Gordon 'Gunji' Patterson

I think the cover that we see for the Japanese release of The Kick Inside, with Bush in a pink leotard, is the correct choice. It should have been on the U.K. cover, as it says so much more and is more representative of her debut album and who she was. I did write a feature about The Kick Inside’s cover shoot. Even so, you cannot knock a song like Kite. It is still in places and sort of suggests some piss-taking or parody. I love how loose Kate Bush is on the song. Letting her voice fly and zip here and there! You can feel the energy and movement of the song. Bush dropping in Beelzebub makes me think about emotions; a weight in her stomach and a deeper emotion. Though it also compels investigation and further reading. How Beelzebub featured in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), and G.I. Gurdjieff’s esoteric 1950 philosophical text, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. No doubt Bush would have read Lord of the Flies as a child. She was born four years after it was released, but it would have been in her orbit. She name-checked Gurdjieff in The Kick Inside’s Them Heavy People, so no coincidence that this connection takes us to Kite. Her brother John was a poet and introduced his sister to poetry and his writings. I feel he or Paddy (her other older brother) would have had a copy of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. One of these texts stayed in her mind and she placed it in a song. In The Gospels, Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons by the power of "Beelzebub, the prince of demons" (Matthew 12:24). All intriguing to consider. This compelling figure that is essentially at the start of a silly line. Though, this is the genius of Kate Bush: dropping in something heady and heavy with levity and whimsy. If critics saw these as carte blanche to attack and belittle, it was and is a strong and wonderful facet of her music! That imagination and use of language. Not always appealing and memorable, I think that Kite has many strengths. It has been a pleasure exploring Hounds of Love’s eponymous demons. Snarling and angry; perhaps less than actual canines, they are spirits that go through the trees. Though they are then embraced. This fear of love and commitment transforms into this bold embrace. A Bob Marley attempt for a song on her 1978 debut album, this historical (as opposed to religious, I guess) figure appears in the opening line. Such a joy to examine two…

TERRIFIC songs.

FEATURE: There’s Light in Love You See: Kate Bush and Her Impact on the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Community

FEATURE:

 

 

There’s Light in Love You See

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Kate Bush and Her Impact on the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Community

__________

AS it is Pride Month…

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

I wanted to revisit a subject I have covered before. In terms of Kate Bush and her L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ fanbase. When we think of major artists who have this enormous following within the community, our minds go to someone like Madonna. Maybe Kate Bush is not as vocal when it comes to backing and shouting out her L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ fanbase. However, as an artist, her songs did not strictly stick to the heteronormative ideal. I think it was hard for artists to bring queerness into their music. Seen as controversial or inappropriate, thankfully things have progressed since then. Even today, there are artists who are perhaps hesitant about expressing their sexuality, in case it splits their fans or creates any sort of backlash. Things are easier today for L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists today - and yet things are not perfect. Think about Kate Bush and her music. I do love how she was not restricted or felt the need to be rigid regarding sexuality and what she discussed through her music. I am going to come to articles I have sourced before. Even some of her earliest demos featured queer/L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ characters. The Gay Farewell is an example. Kashka from Baghdad. That song appeared on her second studio album, Lionheart (1978). Wow is also on that album and there is reference to homosexuality. The line “He’s too busy hitting the Vaseline”, where Kate Bush pats her bottom in the video, is pretty unequivocal! That is a song about showbusiness. It is a song that partly addresses the music industry, but its lyrics concern actors and luvvies. Last Pride Month, I ran a feature saluting Kate Bush as this ally. Someone who has always been very open regarding sexuality. A fluidity through her work, at times in music where many artists who were queer could not talk about it. Even though she is someone who very much speaks to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, there has been critique of her work. Whether, when writing about homosexuality, Bush checks her privilege and it is written about as a positive thing, and not a spectre.

I am saying that because Dreams of Orgonon spotlighted Kashka from Baghdad and wrote this: “This makes her treatment of Kashka’s gay life as a matter of secrecy distressing. The polite heterosexual audience needs its eyes shielded from the gay sex it’s teased with. Yes, remaining in the closet is a safety measure for many if not most gay people. But it takes a severe toll on one’s mental health. In “Kashka” the closet is a place where great, magical events happen (“at night they’re seen laughing”). The difficulties of closeted life don’t enter the equation. Bush reduces Kashka and his partner to an instrument of pleasure and titillation”. As I recently wrote about The Gay Farewell (also know as Queen Eddie), even Bush’s earliest songs had empathy and understanding. Where she was very open to bring in queerness. Coming to another Dreams of Orgonon article. It concerns the beautiful Queen Eddie (or The Gay Farewell as it is also know). When Bush wrote this song (around 1973), gay rights in the U.K. were being challenged. Even though it never made it to an album, a song like The Gay Farewell was very brave and bold for someone who was barely a teenager: “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”.

There is quite a lot to unpack and examine. Although her allyship and empathy is perhaps not completely without fault or some naivety, this was an artist writing these songs very young. In a British society where gay rights were often attacked, ignored and stigmatised. Although she had some L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists that she looked up to, such as Elton John, there was not a music scene promoting and spotlighting them in a way that is more familiar today. I guess David Bowie had this fluidity and androgyny that was also appealing to her. But think of music in the 1970s and how often queer love was being written about. Not as much as you’d like. That sense of stigma for artists did not end for decades. Some would say it is still a barrier. So we cannot mark Kate Bush down. I am going to end with a recent article in The Guardian, where a writer reveals how Kate Bush’s music was so powerful and resonant when it came to coming out as a trans woman. The trans community among the most pilloried and abused today. They are often vilified and marginalised, and yet it was music written many years ago by this incredible artist that broke through. I do want to get to writings where Bush is spoken about as an ally and idol. Kate Bush’s music has always been very open and free. In the way she talks about desire and sex. Which must have been liberating and inspiring for many who lived on the fringes. In 2018, forty years after her debut single, Wuthering Heights was released, Attitude wrote how “the queen of quirk left a lasting impact on the gay community“:

“Queer people identified with Kate Bush because of that otherness, because of her bravery and defiance, her fearless examination of previously ‘taboo’ themes, and her often high-camp performance style. As Rufus Wainwright told The Guardian in 2006: “She is the older sister that every gay man wants. She connects so well with a gay audience because she is so removed from the real world. She is one of the only artists who makes it appear better to be on the outside than on the inside.”

The magnificent, lushly exotic ‘Kashka from Baghdad’ from 1978’s Lionheart, is one of the prime examples of Kate’s celebration of the joy of the outsider status. “Kashka from Baghdad,” she sings over sensual piano chords, “lives in sin, they say, with another man – but no one knows who.”

Kate fixes her gaze firmly on an outcast couple, the music alternately romantic, enigmatic, and menacing, as male backing vocals chant aggressively behind her as she shrieks “at night / they’re seen / laughing / loving” but, by the time the narrator observes that “they know the way to be happy,” the aggression has subsided into regal elegance.

It’s a powerful statement of approval, and Kate herself put it simply when she told Interview Magazine in 2011: “I just liked the idea of this couple. Nobody really knew much about them—and they’re obviously having a great time.”

Observational songs like ‘Kashka’ highlight Kate’s keen eye for detail and empathetic lyrical style; her warm, graceful acceptance – and endorsement – of homosexual desire marked her out as an LGBT advocate from the outset.

Her frank openness and recognition of a gamut of gender norms and of the reality of sexual fluidity became a recurrent theme in her work; ‘Wow’, a biting satire of the theatrical business, finds Kate singing “He’ll never make the scene / he’ll never make the Sweeney / be that movie queen / he’s too busy hitting the Vaseline.” If we were in any doubt as to her underlying meaning, her performance in the video removes all doubt as she taps her buttock on the payoff line.

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 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”.

At its roots and at heart, it is Kate Bush’s empathy, and approach to gender expression that means she is this icon. There was never a hesitation around avoiding queer relationships through fear of attack. Even though she is heterosexual, here is a writer who observes all humans and wants to include them. Always writing positively and with great investment and interest, that was instilled into her from a young age. You feel like, as a child, she would have been fascinated by people as a whole, regardless of sexuality and gender. More orthodox or mainstream artists are either hesitant about discussing queer love or, if they are queer themselves, feeling like they had to keep that hidden. I guess there is privilege and a lack of pressure from Kate Bush, but there is also that bravery and boldness. Something that continued. Even a song like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) has been adopted by the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. A song about understanding and swapping places to better relate to someone else. Its use in Stranger Things so powerful for a number of reasons. DIVA used this as a starting point for their 2022 love letter to an eternal queer icon:

“Teenagers across the world are now discovering her magic for the first time, with the track experiencing a rapid increase in Spotify streams since it featured in cult Netflix series Stranger Things. With Season 4 premiering in May 2022, this season’s storyline features a much-darker hook as teenagers across Hawkins perish in eerily similar circumstances. The gang quickly decipher this as the work of demon of the upside-down, Vecna, finding that the only way for an infected victim to fight off this fate is to play their favourite song. This is where Kate Bush comes in.

After eternally beloved Max Mayfield finds that she has been cursed by Vecna, experiencing headaches, jarring nightmares and haunting visions, she dazes into a trance and rises six feet into the air one afternoon. Recognising this as Vecna’s murder method, the gang scramble for her Walkman. “What’s her favourite song?” they scream at Lucas, Max’s ex-boyfriend. With his hand landing upon the bluish hue of the Hounds of Love cassette, Running Up That Hill quickly comes blaring through Max’s ears. Caught in an eerily realistic, trance-like dream, Max escapes Vecna’s chokehold and sprints through the upside-down, dodging falling boulders and debris alike, moving towards the white, cloud-esque image of real like. Seeing herself floating above her best friends, she flashes back on all the happy memories she’s enjoyed with her friends and family alike. Tumbling through the vision back into real life, Kate Bush quite literally saved Max’s life. What a beautiful metaphor that is.

Kate Bush is the ultimate queer icon. Her music has always been a home for misfits, though Running Up That Hill is arguably her most mainstream, tame track. Wearing an armour-like costume for the Babooshka music video and red dress for Wuthering Heights, she has relied on costume and dance alike to express herself. With a multi-dimensional approach to creativity, her music isn’t just a collection of notes: it’s an experience. Drawing heavily on techniques employed by visionary mime artist Lindsay Kemp – who personally taught her – Kate Bush has always used her body and her dance routines to express emotion, and to tell a story. The video for Running Up That Hill is deeply symbolic of that fact, pairing with dancer Michael Hervieu to create an intricate, storyboard-like performance that was vastly aheadof its time, playing on Bush’s background in ballet.

Creative aesthetic aside, Kate Bush famously sang about anal sex in 1979 track Wow, which featured on her second album Lionheart. Singing about an actor who will never be a “movie queen” because he’s “too busy hitting the Vaseline”, in the video, she winked and patted her bum to ensure that her message of allyship was truly disseminated. What an icon. And, of course, the music video was censored by the BBC, which is always a good sign of a forward-thinking bit of art. Think Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

All in all, Kate Bush’s music has been a critical source of comfort and, by extension, an expression of identity for LGBTQI people for decades now. Ginny Lemon lovingly referenced her by dragging up as the Wuthering Heights-esque young Kate on Drag Race UK for the gay icon category. And that very sentiment is true: Kate Bush is the ultimate queer icon, and forever will we applaud her for her deeply unique, kooky ways of being. Music wouldn’t be the same without her”.

I am surprised there have not been newer articles written about her music and how it connects to L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people. Last October, Alexandra Diamond-Rivlin wrote a very personal and moving article for The Guardian, where she talked about Kate Bush’s music, and how it helped her come out as a trans woman. I want to include the whole thing, as I feel it would be a disserve to cut bits out, lest the impact and full picture by distorted, dampened or diminished. Before getting there, I would urge people to support and check out the Trans Journalists Association, and support L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ charities and organisations like the LGBT Foundation. Mind Out. Stonewall is another incredible resource. Mermaids supports trans, non-binary and gender-diverse children, young people and their families. You can find more here:

“It wasn’t safe for me to discover The Sensual World, the eponymous track on what Kate Bush described as her “most female album”. The song was intended to be a rejection of the masculine influence that had unwittingly shaped the artist’s previous work, and an ode to something taboo within the female experience. Based on Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses – a stream of consciousness in which the character reflects on her experiences of nature, sex and love – Bush wanted to celebrate the experience of life inside a woman’s body, and the ways it gives her spiritual and sexual pleasure. I knew that, for someone like me, who was already being bullied, to openly love a song like this could make me an even more obvious target to those who saw femininity as a sign of weakness. More daunting than that, it might force me to confront my own repressed desires.

By the time I was around 17, I had already spent most of my teenage years in a constant state of survival. I wasn’t yet out as a transgender woman; this was a part of me I could keep secret, unlike my effeminacy. I had a naturally high voice, which I tried and failed to deepen. “You sound like a girl,” was one of the daily taunts aimed at me by pupils at my school, even as I strained my vocal cords. My camp mannerisms and the way I walked were other noticeable crimes to the boys around me, who enjoyed mocking my “sassy” stride. Growing up in an environment such as this meant I never saw my femininity as something to embrace. That I was soft and girlish was a sign of a defective self. Still, it felt safer to be a feminine boy than a boy who wanted to become a woman.

Her ode to womanhood invoked all the things I knew I could be: euphoric, audacious and free.

The school I attended in Plymouth was single sex, but high-achieving girls were allowed to enter its gates at sixth form, something I was grateful for. Some of the new students lived near me, by the forests surrounding the city. One morning, while we ambled along the grassland, one of the girls shared her headphones with me and played her favourite music. That’s when the discovery was made.

For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bush’s ethereal voice. On my solitary walk home, I listened to her song again under the shelter of leaves and the furry limbs of trees. I listened carefully, but most of her words appeared formless – lines sung breathlessly behind an orchestra of uilleann pipes and other traditional Irish instruments I remembered learning about in class. In certain moments, her words’ sharpness broke in again like splices of light along my trail: “to where the water and the earth caress … now I’ve powers of a woman’s body.” Moments such as these were laced throughout, often referencing nature, and culminating in postcoital bliss: “Mmh yes.” I pictured Bush dancing among trees in a state of synaesthetic ecstasy, her body lit by a neon green glow. My body swayed instinctively to the rhythm. It didn’t bother me that I must have looked like a girl doing it. I followed the flickers of emerald to the forest’s end.

Something shifted in me that day. Bush’s ode to womanhood felt like an invocation of all the things I knew I could be: euphoric, audacious and free. I started to view my femininity not as a flaw, but as an affirmation of life; a way of indulging in the intense pleasure of the world, nature and my body.

It still wasn’t safe to be my natural self in my final year of school. My transition came a couple of years later, when I moved away for university. But, from this point onwards, I knew there was a place in my mind to escape to whenever I wanted – the lush, fevered universe Bush had created – where I danced in recognition of my own sacred womanhood. And waiting patiently for that reverie to become my everyday reality, I was able to refuse the voices that told me it never would”.

From gay clubs and spaces playing the music of Kate Bush and providing this safe and loving space, through to major artists discussing Kate Bush, to those who have been given this new life and strength thanks to Kate Bush. I have probably not done full justice to her music and how she has affected, infused and enriched conversation around L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ people! Though I felt compelled to write about Kate Bush…

THIS Pride month.