FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert

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IT has been a while since…

PHOTO CREDIT: Echoes/Redfern/Getty Images

I was last in Vinyl Corner. I wanted to come back to focus on a magnificent live album. Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert is an album that you really need to hear. I don’t think you need to be a big fan of Coltrane or know much about her. It is about the power and beauty of the performances and music. I would advise people to seek out this album on vinyl. Here are a few more details about an extraordinary live experience:

“A previously unreleased, killer live recording from 1971.  Recorded live, by Impulse! at a charity gala given at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Integral Yoga Institute in 1971, this incredible set never saw commercial release until now. The gala concert was one of two halves with the first two transcendental tunes by Alice taken from the album she had just released on Impulse! and then two explosive tunes by her late husband John Coltrane. Naturally, à la Coltrane/Dolphy at the Gate, which picked up the recent Grammy nomination for Best Liner Notes, the package includes some knockout editorial, with essays by Lauren Du Graf and Alice’s producer Ed Michel”.

I wanted to expand a bit more and give some more detail and background to Alice Coltrane and her performance at Carnegie Hall. Among the greatest Jazz performances the space has ever seen, it did seem to be this revelatory moment. You get a sense of what the crowd felt and the feeling in the air in 1971. So transcendent and divine. That live album was recorded in the same year she released the masterpiece, Journey in Satchidananda (the title track and Shiva-Loka are played during the Carnegie Hall set) You can stream the live album of course, though this is well worth investing in. Get the vinyl copy too:

“Described by a writer for Pan African Music as “a splendid and ecstatic memento of spiritual jazz with some of its greatest masters,” Alice Coltrane’s 1971 Carnegie Hall concert (and its corresponding album release) left an indelible mark on audiences and the history of jazz music as a whole.

Born Alice McLeod in Detroit, Michigan, Coltrane embarked on her musical journey at a young age, displaying prodigious talent and a deep-rooted connection to spirituality. Her marriage to legendary saxophonist John Coltrane further ignited her passion for music, propelling her into the realm of jazz luminaries.

Coltrane made her Carnegie Hall debut on April 14, 1968, in a program titled “Cosmic Music,” which featured her original music in addition to works by John Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison. Just a few years later, on February 21, 1971, she brought together an all-star cast of jazz legends to the Hall in a benefit concert for Swami Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga Institute.

Coltrane performed on both piano and harp, joined by saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, bassists Jimmy Garrison and Cecil McBee, and drummers Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis. Also featured were rock band The Rascals and singer-songwriter Laura Nyro.

Coltrane would go on to perform at Carnegie Hall five more times, the last of which were back-to-back performances on September 21, 1984, alongside pianist Marilyn Crispell with saxophonist Sam Rivers and bassist Reggie Workman. According to the review published in The New York Times, Crispell opened with a solo piano set, followed by the Alice Coltrane Quartet, which recreated John Coltrane’s Impressions in commemoration of his birthday on September 23”.

I am going to end by bringing in a couple of reviews for Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert. MOJO were among those to share their thoughts on an album that was released via Impulse! Back in March. The more I pass through the album the more it impacts me. You can be completely new to Alice Coltrane and it will not affect what you get from this album. It is an astonishing thing to behold:

“WHEN ALICE Coltrane took the stage at New York’s Carnegie Hall on February 21, 1971 she’d just returned from a five-week sojourn in India where she’d swum in the Ganges, visited the holy city of Rishikesh, and found a certain kind of peace, a salve to the pain she’d been experiencing since the death of her husband, John, in 1967. As quoted by Lauren Du Graf in the long-form essay that accompanies this release, Coltrane said, “The trip to the East gave me the spiritual motivation to come out more – to do more with my music.” Part of a series of benefit performances to raise money for her guru, Swami Satchidananda [pictured above], the Carnegie Hall concert finds Coltrane in an intense state of divine liberation.

Playing with an expanded double quartet comprised of Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp on tenor and soprano sax, Jimmy Garrison and Cecil McBee on bass, Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis on drums, plus Swami Satchidananda followers Tulsi Reynolds and Kumar Kramer on tamboura and harmonium, Coltrane sets off proceedings with a new composition, Journey In Satchidananda, from her recently released fifth studio LP. It begins as a heavy, creaking procession anchored in slow contemplation by bowed and plucked bass and chiming cymbals before Coltrane’s cascading harp glissandos and Pharoah Sanders’ breathy, keening flute fill the groove with layers of bright, glistening sunlight. Then, Archie Shepp’s soprano sax breaks through with a high, hovering gospel-blues wail. It’s a massing of the troops, an indication of just what this double-quartet are capable of. Another harp number, Shiva-Loka, goes deep into a world of slow, ethereal meditation, the percussive, double-kit groove of Blackwell and Jarvis locked in conversational communion as Shepp and Sanders’ soprano saxes chatter and cry over the surface.

However, little prepares us for the epic, half-hour version of John Coltrane’s Africa that follows. Beginning with a Blackwell and Jarvis floor-tom battle, Coltrane’s agitated, roiling keyboard chimes are soon interlaced with wild-free blowing from Sanders and Shepp in an extended act of screeching liberation that is simultaneously joyous and terrifying. Ultimately, it feels like a cabalistic mass, a summoning of the spirit of John Coltrane and Africa itself. Defined by an hypnotic 10-minute bass solo, McBee hands over to Garrison who imitates the vocal cadences of the Nigerian talking drum before all nine players return for a wailing Africa coda and a barnstorming, funk-heavy and utterly free rendering of John Coltrane’s 1966 composition, Leo. Remastered from Ed Michel’s 2-track “reference mix” (after both 4-track masters were lost), The Carnegie Hall Concert now sounds magnificent despite a few rare spots of distortion. What began as a benefit for Swami Satchidananda and evolved into a summoning of John Coltrane’s spirit now stands as a tribute to the liberating force of Alice Coltrane herself. It’s a communion. Drink deep”.

I will wrap up with a review from Pitchfork. In one of the most extensive and detailed examinations  In many ways, this album is a good entry into the work of Alice Coltrane. It might compel you to look further and wider and seek out her contemporaries. You will get so much from Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert:

“There are a lot of reasons to be excited about The Carnegie Hall Concert. It’s only the second full live album in the official Alice Coltrane catalog (an incomplete version of this same Carnegie Hall concert was previously released as a bootleg), and it dates from her most celebrated period as a bandleader, recorded just one week after the release of her acknowledged masterpiece Journey in Satchidananda. It features generously roomy renditions—including versions of two key Journey tracks, each clocking in at more than double the length of the original—that readily transport and at times overwhelm despite the occasionally rough sonics of the source tape. (Sadly, the 4-track master tapes of the concert were lost over the years—“Don’t ask me how,” writes Coltrane’s frequent producer Ed Michel, who oversaw the original Carnegie Hall recording, with palpable frustration in his production notes—so the release is drawn from a 2-track reference mix.)

And the album’s supporting cast is extraordinary, bringing together musicians from Journey—Pharoah Sanders on tenor and soprano sax, flute and more, Cecil McBee on bass, and Tulsi Reynolds on tamboura—with bassist Jimmy Garrison, a previous sideman to both Alice and John; Archie Shepp, a collaborator of John’s and, like Sanders, a strongly established saxophonist-bandleader in his own right; dual drummers Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis, the former of whom had joined John on 1960 sessions co-led by Don Cherry; and harmonium player Kumar Kramer.

But there’s another, perhaps even more valuable aspect to the album, exemplified by the “Africa” reentry described above: the way it helpfully complicates Coltrane’s rapidly crystallizing legacy. At this point, Coltrane’s overdue canonization has fully taken hold. During roughly the past decade, thanks to a series of illuminating reissues and tributes and a steady stream of namechecks (from tastemakers including Solange and André 3000), her work has been given its rightful due apart from the long-enshrined catalog of her iconic husband and collaborator, reaching a slew of new listeners in the process. But as her name has morphed into a kind of buzzword—often invoked in conjunction with the now-inescapable descriptor “spiritual jazz”—her image has at times been reduced to a near-caricature, that of the serene queen of the ashram, smiling benevolently from within her brilliant orange robes.

While there is of course some truth to that characterization, Alice Coltrane was not all prayer rugs and incense. As Flying Lotus—her grandnephew and frequent, outspoken champion—noted in a 2021 interview, Coltrane “was the matriarch of the family, but she was also the Godfather. She took care of everybody, but you couldn’t mess with Auntie.” In a starker way than any other prior Alice Coltrane release, The Carnegie Hall Concert allows us to glimpse these two incarnations side by side: Coltrane as both matriarch and Godfather; Coltrane as spiritual-jazz mystic and formidable heir to the harshly ecstatic fire music that her husband had spearheaded in the last few years of his life.

That juxtaposition seems almost intentional, as the concert is divided into two neat halves. First comes the Journey material, the title track and “Shiva-Loka,” as they’re sequenced on the album. In starting the show this way, Coltrane was both showcasing her new LP and honoring her guru. As Lauren Du Graf lays out in her helpful and detailed liner notes, the Carnegie Hall performance was actually part of an all-star benefit for the Integral Yoga Institute founded by Swami Satchidananda, Coltrane’s spiritual teacher at the time, her guide both out of grief, in the wake of her husband’s death, and on a transformative 1970 trip to India, and—as she’d cited in the Journey liner notes—a “direct inspiration” for the album.

Coltrane’s harp work on these first two tracks is flat-out gorgeous, but she seems content to play a mainly textural, supportive role. That changes dramatically on the final two pieces, 20-minute-plus renditions of two compositions by John, “Africa” and the minimal, staccato fanfare “Leo,” both featuring Alice on piano, the instrument she’d played in John’s band and worked at diligently in her earlier, largely undocumented musical apprenticeship in Detroit. These performances are as shatteringly intense as the first two were quietly meditative. The ensemble seems to be not just performing John Coltrane repertoire but consciously channeling the relentless rush of his most forbiddingly dense free-form work. “Africa” has a strong flavor of Trane circa the mid ’60s, when he beefed up his working band with extra drummers and saxophonists—with Shepp joining in occasionally and Sanders eventually signing on as a permanent addition—to create ever-escalating action paintings of sound.

As Alice switches instruments, so do Shepp and Sanders, picking up the tenors they proudly hoisted alongside Trane on 1965’s Ascension, and seeking out similarly furious peaks (Shepp’s roaring, ragged cries around the 5:00 mark are particularly arresting, as are Sanders’ multiphonic shrieks around 8:00). Alice also had plenty of experience playing alongside John in this mode—check out Live at the Village Vanguard Again! or Live in Japan, both recorded in ’66—but here, she’s even more commanding. During her solo, she establishes the firm bedrock of the piece while letting fly with swooping, swirling right-hand cascades. She often sounds here like either two or three pianists playing at once, nodding to the great McCoy Tyner, who was at the keyboard for John’s original version, while blasting off into her own distinct stratosphere.

More magic comes during her extended feature on “Leo,” a piece she had performed many times with John and would often reprise in later years. Starting around the 5:00 mark, she conjures a massive wall of rippling notes before launching into a series of breakneck dashes with the double-strength rhythm section, punctuated by prismatic storm clouds of sustain. You rarely hear Alice Coltrane mentioned in the company of the great power pianists of free jazz—Cecil Taylor, Don Pullen, Matthew Shipp, and others—but her staggering performances during this latter portion of the show confirm just how much she deserves to be regarded as a titan of that idiom.

Ultimately, the release of The Carnegie Hall Concert feels right on time, providing a welcome jolt of focus to a widespread impression of Alice Coltrane that’s started to seem just a tad vague. She’s here in full: the matriarch we now know well and duly appreciate; the Godfather we may not have ever properly reckoned with. The devotee of Satchidananda; the torchbearer for John. And the bandleader and instrumental powerhouse who marshaled formidable talents like Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, and found space for them within her rapidly expanding musical vision. There were more Alice Coltranes still to come, as she moved into challenging orchestral music, mind-bending organ work, and, ultimately, decades filled with devotional song. As this set shows, she always contained multitudes”.

I have not offered too many of my own insights and interpretations. I feel that others can do it better and with more clarity and expertise! I was drawn to this album when it was reissued/released on vinyl. It sounds exceptional! I am thinking of adding it to my collection. Such an affecting album from the great Alice Coltrane, I think a lot of people have discovered her music after hearing this album. Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert is an album that hits…

ALL the senses.

FEATURE: The Greatest Movie Soundtrack Ever? The Incredible Pulp Fiction at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Greatest Movie Soundtrack Ever?

The Incredible Pulp Fiction at Thirty

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EVEN though it was not released…

in the U.S. until 14th October, 1994, Pulp Fiction was shown at Cannes on 21st May, 1994. I am marking its upcoming thirtieth anniversary by looking closely at its soundtrack. One of Quentin Tarantino’s earliest and best films, it went on to win eight major awards from a total of twenty-six nominations. Pulp Fiction won for Best Original Screenplay at the 67th Academy Awards. One of the greatest films ever, it still really holds up after thirty years. Even if Tarantino’s acting cameo in the film is pretty awful, his direction and writing is masterful. Suffering a little bloating and need of editing – one of the curses of most Tarantino films -, it is s sharp, funny and iconic film that I hope gets new celebration and showing on its thirtieth anniversary. It must have been exciting for audiences at Cannes seeing the film thirty years ago. The soundtrack from Pulp Fiction is almost as iconic as the film itself. Tarantino is brilliant when it comes to great needle drops and pairing perfect music with iconic scenes. Someone who must spend hours sifting through vinyl and meticulously looking for the right song for his movies, I wanted to argue that Pulp Fiction is one of the greatest soundtracks ever. It may be the very best. The soundtrack was released in September 1994.

As the film was first shown thirty years ago on 21st May, I want to bring in a few features that go deep with one of the finest and most memorable soundtracks ever. American Songwriter investigated the Pulp Fiction soundtrack a couple of years back:

“Composition and Track Order

Comprised of 16 total songs, the Pulp Fiction soundtrack featured a wide array of musical styles and hit singles. It also featured sections and skits from the movie, which was one of the most popular in the entire 1990s, so that when you put on the record, you’re back in the movie. In your car? You can still hear the actors and the dialogue about foreign hamburgers (Royale with cheese!).

But the real meat of the album is the music. The soundtrack, thanks to writer-director Quentin Tarantino, introduced music lovers to handfuls of great, specific, nuanced tunes. Songs like “Jungle Boogie” by Kool & the Gang, “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green, “Lonesome Town” by Ricky Nelson, “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield, and more.

All of these songs became favorites amongst people now in their late 30s and early 40s. But there’s more! Like “Flowers on the Wall” by The Statler Sisters, Dick Dale’s rendition of “Misirlou” and “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon” by Urge Overkill.” What gems.

Origins

The movie itself has no traditional film score. Instead, it was an eclectic group of songs that could be heard on either AM or FM radio—songs director Tarantino loved. In total, there are nine songs from the movie on the LP and four tracks of dialogue bits, which are then followed by music. There are three tracks of dialogue alone, as well. Seven songs featured in the movie were not included on the original 41-minute soundtrack.

Upon its release, the album reached No. 21 on the Billboard 200, and Urge Overkill’s cover of the Neil Diamond-penned “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” peaked at No. 59.

Tarantino chose surf music like Dale’s track because, he said, “It just seems like rock ‘n’ roll Ennio Morricone music, rock ‘n’ roll spaghetti Western music.”

According to legend, many of the songs on the soundtrack were suggested to the director by musician Boyd Rice, via their mutual friend Allison Anders, including Dale’s now-infamous track. Others were suggested to Tarantino by friends Chuck Kelley and Laura Lovelace, who were relied on as music consultants. (Lovelace also appeared in the movie as Laura the waitress.)

Legacy

In 2002, a two-disc collector’s edition of the album was issued. The first disc contained the songs, including four more tracks. And the second disc was a spoken-word interview with Tarantino.

The soundtrack has since been certified platinum in Canada. And by November 1994, total sales of more than 1.6 million had accumulated. By 1996, two million units had been sold. In 1995, the soundtrack reached No. 6 on the charts.

The success of soundtracks like the Pul Fiction offering, helps to bring to light songs that may have been lost to time. In this way, they were like tangible playlists, showing light on songs that were popular historically but that then earned a resurgence, like “Jungle Boogie.”

One reason why the soundtrack was so beloved was because of the curatorial flare Tarantino (along with music supervisor Karyn Rachtman) had as an artist. Wrote a critic in The Orange County Register, “Unlike so many soundtracks, which just seem to be repositories for stray songs by hit acts regardless of whether they fit the film’s mood, Tarantino’s use of music in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction exploded with a brash, Technicolor, pop-culture intensity that mirrored the stories he was telling.”

Wrote Billboard, “Pulp Fiction…successfully spoke to those attuned to the hip, stylized nature of those particular films.” Adding, “In some cases, like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, which were not geared toward any specific demographic, the soundtracks were still very focused albums,” said Kathy Nelson, senior VP/general manager at MCA Soundtracks. “In both cases, the body of work—both the music and the film—has a specific personality.”

To this day, the genre is popular and one of the kings of surf rock, Dick Dale, has songs in commercials that sell everything from food to toothpaste”.

In 2014, to mark twenty years of Pulp Fiction, Medium wrote how Quentin Tarantino’s curated classic changed the way we watched movies. I think it has inspired so many other film soundtracks. I am not including all of the feature, though I wanted to bring most of it in:

“The Rebirth Of Cool

The songs used in the film give it a timeless quality, a sense that events on screen are happening in an alternate reality. The action seemed to be set in the present day, but the characters remain blissfully unaware of the period’s dominant forms of music: grunge, hip-hop and electronica. In their world, it is perfectly normal for John Travolta’s Vincent to be doing Adam West’s bat-dance to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” or for The Revels’ “Comanche” to be the song of choice for Marcellus Wallace’s soon-to-be-living-the-rest-of-his-short-ass-life-in-agonizing-pain rapist.

Divine Intervention

Prior to Pulp Fiction, the standard methodology behind a major film soundtrack was to simply “play the hits” (if you had the budget), as Forrest Gump did that same summer of 1994. Releasing a high-profile double-disc set—a collection of massive hit records from earlier eras, including Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” CCR’s “Fortunate Son” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”—it sounded as if they ordered a copy of Freedom Rock and jammed to it in the editing room.

“What I don’t want to do, and I’ve seen it done in a lot of movies, is they turn up the soundtrack to create a false energy. Or in particular, to create a sense of period,” said Tarantino in a 1994 interview, included on the 2002 expanded reissue of the Pulp soundtrack. “‘Okay, it’s the 60s. We’ll play a lot of 60s songs and that will create the period.’ To me that’s cheap, it’s annoying, and like listening to the radio and watching a movie at the same time. They don’t really go together… I try to avoid that.”

Neither Pulp nor Reservoir Dogs had the Forrest Gump-sized budgets to splurge on your parents’ favorite songs, so they had to make-do with more obscure selections. Quentin Tarantino had little interest in going after the obvious big hits, so he picked a series of more off-the-beaten-path numbers when writing the screenplays for both films.

Tarantino’s original music supervisor on Reservoir Dogs told him that it would be impossible to get the rights for some of the songs written into the screenplay, so their only option would be to use “muzak” covers or cheap copies. Lucky for Tarantino, music supervisor Karyn Rachtman had a different plan. Without her, both Pulp and Reservoir may have sounded very different.

“He had a music supervisor on the film, who told him that he couldn’t have any 70s songs, because they couldn’t afford them,” Rachtman told Cuepoint. “So they had to get 70s sound-a-likes, to like, make up 70s songs, so it sounded like 70s songs, but ones you didn’t know. And he was devastated, and most devastated about ‘Stuck In The Middle With You,’ he wrote that scene to that song.”

Karyn, who hadn’t yet been hired for the job, was determined to see Tarantino’s vision through; that is, to see Mike Madsen’s Mr. Blonde severing the ear of a bloody, bound and gagged cop, to the accompaniment of Stealers Wheel.

“They had, I believe, $10,000 allocated for all the music in the film. And [Quentin] said, ‘Help me get ‘Stuck In The Middle With You.’ What can you do?’ And I was like, ‘I’m going to go get it.’ And it was a hell of a hard job, I’m going to reach out to Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty (of Stealers Wheel), at the time whom weren’t speaking. [Producer] Stacey Sher and I put a plan together and explained about how we were paying homage to “Singin’ In The Rain” in A Clockwork Orange, and that it’s a violent scene. Here we are, asking for a song for no money, and to a violent film, and for a filmmaker you’ve never heard of,” she said.

“So it was a tough job, but needless to say, I got the song and it took up the entire music budget. And Quentin was like ‘Thank you so much, what can I do for you now?’ and I was like ‘You can fire your music supervisor and hire me.’ And he did,” she remembers fondly.

Rachtman, who would later help round out the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, worked closely with Tarantino to see that what was written on the page would be heard on the silver screen.

“Especially in Pulp Fiction, Quentin was a horrible speller. He really wrote most of those key songs to that film in the script. But he would make up titles for them that didn’t exist, and spell things wrong. And I’m like, ‘I can’t find this song.’ Of course it would be a lot easier today with the internet and all that kind of stuff, but that was a tough job. Quentin very much writes to music.”

It’s something that the recent chart-topping Guardians of The Galaxy soundtrack quite obviously took a cue from, building the film around a series of semi-obscure, retro tunes. Marvel Studios’ latest even uses one of Tarantino’s original selections from Reservoir Dogs, with Blue Suede’s “Hooked On A Feeling” lifted right from K-Billy’s Super Sounds Of The 70’s playlist.

“When I heard about the Guardians Of The Galaxy soundtrack, I got a little jealous. I have an 18-year-old and 24-year-old, and they were telling me it’s pretty cool,” said Rachtman.

Hopefully they realize that their mother’s work on both Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs laid the groundwork for the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. In the Tarantino style, the music of Guardians plays a central role in the new film, but like Forrest Gump, it still “plays the hits.” While it is largely built around the obscure 70s tunes, it also relies on obvious, overdone crowd pleasers like Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” Tarantino didn’t go for this. Like a good DJ, he defined what the hits would be and what the next trend would be.

The soundtrack of Pulp Fiction is largely built around 60s surf tunes, most notably the opening credit sequence track, “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones. The song is so synonymous with the film that many just refer to it as “The Pulp Fiction Theme.” However its origins are much deeper: the song originated as a 1927 Greek rebetiko composition, was made popular by Dale’s cover in 1962, and again by The Beach Boys a year later for their Surfin’ USA LP. The song has been covered dozens of times throughout the last century, and most recently was sampled for Black Eyed Peas’ “Pump It.”

What Tarantino has referred to as “rock & roll spaghetti western music,” the surf rock resurgence exploded into 90s pop culture as of a result of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, and simultaneously with Portishead’s hit single, “Sour Times,” released that same year. However Rachtman largely credits the origins of the comeback to Link Wray, who many view as the pioneer of the power chord.

Inevitably, what Quentin wrote in the screenplay was not always attainable from the rights holders. “I remember ‘Locomotion’ by Carole King was refused,” recalls Karyn.

“At one point I thought of using ‘My Sharona’ for the sodomy-rape sequence. ‘My Sharona’ has a really good sodomy-beat to it, if you really think about it,” Quentin revealed in the soundtrack interview. “Apparently part of the band was for it, but one in the band was a Born Again Christian who just wasn’t for it and was like, ‘No, I’m not interested.’”

Says Karyn, “Quentin’s mother came on the set when we were at Jack Rabbit Slim’s, and she said, ‘Why is Quentin using [Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’]? Why did he chose that song? I used to listen to that song all the time when I was pregnant with him.’”

Among the myriad surf tunes and twangy guitars are a few funk and soul classics that belong to the gangster Marcellus Wallace and his crew. The first of these is Kool & The Gang’s “Jungle Boogie,” which acts as the backdrop for Vincent and Jules’ oft-imitated car-ride conversation — it plays on the radio while they discuss the finer points of Amsterdam’s McDonald’s menu. Later in the film, perhaps referencing that earlier moment, Sam Jackson’s Jules uses the band name as a substitute for the word “cool,” telling Tarantino’s bath-robed Jimmy character, “Hey, that’s Kool and the Gang. You know, we don’t wanna fuck your shit up!”

Marcellus has his own theme song, Al Green’s soul classic “Let’s Stay Together,” which plays when we are first introduced to the back of his bandaged head. It’s implied that Marcellus prefers this kind of slow, romantic baby-makin’ music. Perhaps Jules didn't know just how prophetic he was being during his Big Kahuna Burger interrogation, telling Big Brain Brad, “And Marcellus Wallace don’t like to be fucked by anybody except Mrs. Wallace.”

While the Pulp soundtrack is built on retro tunes, its biggest hit was Urge Overkill’s newly-recorded remake of “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon,” which first topped the charts in its original Neil Diamond incarnation in 1967. This cover version was the only modern-ish song on the album, released as its lead single. The song was recorded as a throwaway in 1992, for the band’s vinyl-only Stull EP, primarily to fulfill their previous record label contract before signing with Geffen Records in 1993. Ironically it would end up being the band’s biggest hit.

“The movie was such a global hit, as was the soundtrack,” Urge Overkill’s Nash Kato told Cuepoint. “One doesn’t necessarily guarantee the other. You can have a hit movie, but nobody buys the soundtrack, or vice-versa. But both were such big hits. That three minute cover that we pulled out of our ass took us around the world.”

With so many of the soundtrack’s songs taken from yesteryear, why didn’t Tarantino just use Neil Diamond’s original 1967 version? Supervisor Rachtman recalls, “I had never heard that [Urge version] before, and Quentin just loved that, and I had nothing to do with it, except for making the deal on it. It was just something that Quentin was just a huge fan of, and he had to have that version. And I remember Neil Diamond’s publishing company was being very difficult, but afterwards I think he was very grateful.”

“The thing is, our version is really so squishy. Everything’s a little of out of tune. There’s no solid meter. The drums speed up and slow down,” says Urge’s Nash. “Everything that was so wrong with that take became so right for that pivotal scene in the movie, where everything turns to shit. [Mia] snorts all of that heroin, which she thinks is coke, and then all of a sudden she overdoses. They used it in the narrative, it wasn’t incidental music. She walks over to the reel-to-reel and this is the song she wants to hear. I don’t think he would have bothered licensing that tune if it had been any more correct, you know?”

As legend has it, Uma Thurman picked the song from a handful of options that would animate her drunken solo dance scene and shortly-to-follow heroin overdose. “The story we got from Quentin is that it was a pivotal scene. He had it down to three, possibly four tracks. So since it was Uma’s scene, he was going to bounce it off her and let her choose,” recalls Nash. “I don’t know what the other songs were that we were up against. So apparently when she heard ours, she was like ‘This I can do.’ She sings and dances to it, and… O.D.’s (laughs). So it better be the right song!”

However the greatest tale surrounding Urge’s hit cover is how Quentin’s hobby of vinyl crate-digging led to his discovery of the track, which he allegedly found in a used/discount bin, somewhere in Europe.

“This was a long running gag for us, for a while. Because some poor fucker thought that we sucked, or this record sucked and cashed it in for a dollar or two, or something. And then Quentin Tarantino, an avid record collector, picked it up for 50p or whatever the currency is,” laughs Nash. “We’ve always wanted to find the guy who thought the record sucked and changed the trajectory of our musical career.”

“And film history, at that,” adds Eddie”.

There are other great features like this, that look at the amazing songs featured throughout Pulp Fiction. You can buy the soundtrack here. I think that it is the greatest soundtrack ever. The way the dialogue sits alongside the songs. I know some soundtracks concentrate on songs without any dialogue clips. Not only is the range of the songs phenomenal. The way the songs sit in the scenes. Some are integral to the action and moment. Others more in the background. There is a mixture of well-known tracks with some that many people would have discovered through the film. A beautiful blend of genres and artists! You can hear songs from the soundtrack and they are synonymous with scenes from Pulp Fiction. The power of Quentin Tarantino’s writing and music love. The passion he put into selecting the songs. As Pulp Fiction premiered at Cannes on 21st May, 1994, I wanted to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary by saluting its soundtrack. It remains, in my view, the greatest…

MOVIE soundtrack of all time.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts: Coffee Homeground

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts

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

Coffee Homeground

_________

THIS particular Kate Bush song…

was one of only a few that she wrote new for her second studio album, Lionheart. That was released in November 1978. The issue was, as I have written about a lot, is that EMI were so eager to get another album out following the success of The Kick Inside – released in February 1978 – that it gave very little time for Kate Bush to write new material. So busy promoting her debut, she was only really able to write new songs on the go. Penning what she could when she had a free moment. The other two songs that were new, Symphony in Blue and Full House, are incredible. Symphony in Blue especially is a wonderful and beautiful song. There is something distinct about Full House with its sound of paranoia and fear. Maybe an insight into the mind of Kate Bush. Perhaps someone herself feeling stressed or like she had no space or freedom at that time.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush ‘Red Head'. This was an out-take from the back cover series of portraits that Gered Mankowitz shot for Lionheart in August 1978

It was definitely a sonic move away from songs on The Kick Inside. Even if most of Lionheart’s tracks were older numbers that were perhaps overlooked for The Kick Inside, what she wrote new for her second album was quite different in terms of style and subject. The final two tracks on Lionheart sort of deal with a sense of darkness and horror. Hammer Horror is dramatic and sweeping. That ends the album. It was the first single released from Lionheart. The penultimate track is Coffee Homeground. In terms of the composition, it is vastly different to anything Kate Bush had recorded to that point. Some of the most interesting lyrics she ever wrote. I would have loved to have seen this released as a single, as a really good video could have accompanied it. The long-running Kate Bush fanzine, HomeGround, took its name from that song. A high honour for a track that few people really know about. You never hear it played in radio.

If Full House was, in Bush’s own words, relating to a lot of the emotions she was feeling at the time – including paranoia and anger -, then there is a continuation of that on Coffee Homeground. This is a track that Bush wrote whilst she was in the U.S. in 1978. Promoting The Kick Inside – though there were no live performances or T.V. spots -, it is quite exciting imagining Bush in the U.S. in general at that time. It must have been quite scary and lonely, though there is something romantic thinking about her writing a track in a private moment. The background of Coffee Homeground is intriguing. Bush wrote the song whilst in the U.S. in May 1978. Only a month later, she was in Japan for some promotion. It shows how she was being dragged from pillar to post in an intense time. A couple of months after The Kick Inside came out, she was in America. A nation that she had no intention of breaking or wanting big success in, there was a challenge getting The Kick Inside shifting units there. It did not do much at all. Even so, I guess it was expected any artist at the time would go to America. With some wonderful synthesiser work from Duncan Mackay, Coffee Homeground is one of the standouts from Lionheart. Wild, weird and woozy, this is what Kate Bush said about the inspiration behind the song:

“[‘Coffee Homeground’] was in fact inspired directly from a cab driver that I met who was in fact a bit nutty. And it’s just a song about someone who thinks they’re being poisoned by another person, they think that there’s Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it’s got poisen in it. And it’s just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of German [vibe] to try and bring across the humour side of it.

LIONHEART PROMO CASSETTE, EMI CANADA, 1978”.

Bush addresses someone that might be lonely and, as a way of keeping people around, poisons them. A grim way of preserving people and keeping them trapped. Slipping poison into coffee and food, Bush, as the narrator, is wise to the plan. Despite it being loosely inspired by a cab driver in the U.S., it seems like another song that references her position and state at the time. After the anger and paranoia of Full House, we have a song where someone is wary of dangers and traps. Maybe the sheer pressure and expectation on her at the time – she was still a teenager when she wrote Coffee Homeground – bled into the song. You can definitely read some of the lyrics as Bush having to refuse offers or dealing with those who don’t want the best for her. Some of the lyrics are among the most vivid and visually arresting that she ever created: “Offer me a chocolate/No thank you, spoil my diet, know your game!/But tell me just how come/They smell of bitter almonds/It’s a no-no to your coffee homeground/Pictures of Crippin/Lipstick-smeared/Torn wallpaper/Have the walls got ears here?/Well, you won’t get me with your Belladonna – in the coffee/And you won’t get me with your aresenic – in the pot of tea/And you won’t get me in a hole to rot – with your hemlock/On the rocks”.

I have seen Kate Bush’s Coffee Homeground discussed a few times here and there but, by and large, it is a song overlooked. Some magazines have placed it fairly high in their rankings of Bush’s songs, though I feel many do that to put something more obscure in the pack. It would be nice if Coffee Homeground got some radio airplay once in a while. It is a wonderful song. Coffee Homeground has been immortalised through the decades-running fanzine. It was also one of the tracks performed during 1979’s The Tour of Life. Normally the second song of Act 3, at least many fans got to see this song come to life. I am interesting seeing how it was staged and what concept Bush went for when she brought it to the stage. There is an interesting discussion about Coffee Homeground on the Dreams of Orgonon website from 2019.

“Coffee Homeground” comes at the tail end of Lionheart, when the album’s slower and quieter tracks have all trailed off. As the album’s penultimate track, it provides Lionheart with a relatively bombastic and staunchly theatrical climax. For all that Lionheart explores stagefright and theatrics in depth, it’s a much quieter album than that description might suggest. There are few especially up-tempo songs on it, and Bush’s piano guides her backing musicians through her songs. “Coffee Homeground” almost sounds out of place on the same album which has “Oh England My Lionheart” and “In the Warm Room,” with Bush’s camp attempt at a German accent and Kurt Weillian orchestral scoring. It’s by the grace of Lionheart’s strong thread of camp that “Coffee Homeground” is allowed to work, exploding into full blown theatrics at the end of an album which previously treated them as something more to be discussed than outright embraced.

As we’ve discussed at length in this blog, Kate Bush is a consistent purveyor of camp. Her mime training, her focus on character in her songwriting, and a constant awareness of form are camp attributes of her songs thus far. When we get to the Tour of Life, we’ll see just how far she takes that. Bush’s camp instincts to come a head in “Coffee Homeground,” is one of her most unreservedly theatrical songs. It’s hard to overstate just how theatrical this song is. Bush as a singer is always expressionist; in “Homeground” she takes this camp tendency to its logical conclusion by doing a funny accent. Her play at a German accent is willfully funny, one of the silliest things on Lionheart. Bush was often mocked for her gurning and high-pitched vocals (by such comedians as Faith Brown and Pamela Stephenson), and “Homeground” suggests she’s in on the joke to some extent, or least just as capable of having fun with it. On the track she engages in Sprechgesang, a kind of singing in which a singer rapidly moves back and forth between speaking and singing. This a natural move for Bush, who’s done this sort of thing before — moving back and forth between speech and song is a stylistic norm for her. But it’s worth investigating just what brings her to it this time around.

Bush’s use of Sprechgesang, her mimed German accent, and an unusually playful orchestra make up a hat tip to the early 20th century German theater team of playwright Bertolt Brecht, composer Kurt Weill, and singer Lotte Lenya. This collective is one of the most influential in 20th century theater, and we could get a whole book out of talking about any one of them. Let’s start with Brecht, as his writing is useful for discussing Bush’s storytelling in “Homecoming.” Brecht’s great contribution to dramatic theory is “Epic Theater,” which, like glam rock, revels in its status as artifice and production. Jack Graham has written about Epic Theater as applied to Doctor Who before, so for a more thorough take on the subject you should read his post. Suffice it to say here that “producedness,” as Jack puts it, is a key aspect of both glam rock and Epic Theater. Both are conscious of form and actively embrace it, taking no care to hide the fact of their creation, as opposed to more realist modes of theater. The two forms are thus resultingly compatible on some levels.

Yet there’s an element of Epic Theater which Bush neglects altogether: its strident anti-capitalism. Brecht was a Marxist who used the theater to shatter an audience’s preconceptions of how a capitalist society works. Bush has never been very interested in subverting the established social order. Even when she’s an actively subversive songwriter, she’s still essentially being one in the position of a well-to-do middle-class heterosexual white woman. This lack of political intent makes “Coffee Homeground” feel like it’s missing a key ingredient (and I’m not talking about hemlock). It’s not clear why this song has to be a Brechtian homage — it makes the song more striking, but it’s not clear what Bush is trying to say.

Resultingly, Bush’s engagement with Epic Theater is a purely audible one. “Homeground” owes more to Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya than it does to Brecht, as it’s their sound Bush pillages. Bush’s trill becomes a half-spoken warble as she strives to sound like Lenya for a track. It’s not a bad impression — sure, it sounds nothing like Lenya’s voice, but Bush doesn’t do the worst job of imitating her speech patterns. Musically, the strongest resemblance to Brecht and Weill’s work here is the morbid subject matter applied to carnivalesque scoring. The melody contains huge leaps and never sounds quite the same, as the intro and bridge repeat essentially the same phrase in a different key every time they appear. There are little discordant details such as the use of the non existent #VII chord of B flat (A), which doesn’t appear in B flat major or B flat minor. The pre-chorus will make a play at being in A before transforming into some mode of B (possibly mixolydian, or anything with a flattened seventh). Even if “Homeground” lacks conceptual clarity, it’s far from banal.

The decrepit house of “Homeground” is as much a stage for the song itself as it is for Bush. In a period where she’s torn between the obligations of touring and her desire to give her songs the time they need, “Coffee Homeground” is the sort of song Kate Bush is bound to produce. Her shortcomings and her ambition clash violently, and the result is as fascinating and vexed as anything she’s ever made. This has been a challenging period for Bush, and as we’ll see in the next two weeks, it’s about to climax.

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

Recorded July-September 1978 at Super Bear Studios in Nice. Released as B-side of “Hammer Horror” on 27 October 1978 and on Lionheart on 12 November 1978. Performed live on Tour of Life in 1979. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, piano. Stuart Elliott — drums, percussion. Ian Bairnson — rhythm guitar. Duncan Mackay — synthesizer. David Paton — bass”.

A magnificent and hugely interesting song from Kate Bush, it was an early – if masked and fictional – insight into her mindset in 1978. A song that different from themes of love and romance. This was Kate Bush taking us somewhere unusual and dark. One could say she did that with songs like Wuthering Heights. Coffee Homeground is a different beast altogether. It is a deep cut that warrants new love and some overdue exposure. The penultimate track from one of her most underrated albums, it is a gem from Lionheart. If you have not heard the wonderful Coffee Homeground, then do go and…

CHECK it out.

FEATURE: Revisiting… Eddie Chacon – Sundown

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

Eddie Chacon – Sundown

_________

ONE of the very best albums of last year…

PHOTO CREDIT: Pat Martin

was also one of the most under-reviewed and overlooked. The tremendous Eddie Chacon released the wonderous, beautiful and hugely memorable Sundown. I wanted to alert people to it. I would encourage people to go and buy the album. A mediative and soulful debut for Stones Throw Records – as Rough Trade describe Sundown -, Chacon wrote and produced the album with John Carroll Kirby. Many might know Chacon from the legendary duo, Charles & Eddie. Following on from his magnificent 2020 album, Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, Sundown is an even finer creation. His work has been acclaimed by the likes of The New York Times and The Guardian. I shall come to a review from The Guardian for Sundown. There is a lot to get through, so I will jump in now. I will get to an interview from FADER in a minute. First, I want to drop in 15 Questions and their interview with Eddie Chacon from last year:

“Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I’m generally at ease with the ebb and flow of being creative.

I tend to wait patiently until I have something I need to get out. In the meantime, I’m paying attention to everything. Just waiting to be moved by something I suppose.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work?

I need to have fairly concrete subject matter worked out in my mind before I start working on something new.

I use visualization a lot. Not only in my songwriting but across the board. Literally in everything I do.

What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

I don’t plan when I’ll be creative. I have access to my recording studio 24/7 so I tend to just wander in there when I’ve got something on my mind that I feel strongly about. In my personal life I’m quite the opposite in that I’m a meticulous planner. So on one hand I create when I feel like it but I’m also well aware of the scheduling of things.

I know I need to come prepared when I’m gonna be working at a certain time with a producer or writer. Somehow this method has worked for me ever since I can remember. I’ve always had a fairly easy no stress relationship with the creative process. Suffice to say I quit for nearly 20 years because I’m well aware that I need to work with a great producer and it took that long for me to get the opportunity to work with one. (laughs)

I’ve always had a great ability to delay gratification.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I don’t prepare. I have meticulously built my studio so that nothing gets in the way of my creative process.

I think I don’t prepare because the significance of that somehow freaks me out.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I don’t really have a ritual in this regard. I do have this thing about my creative space being clean and minimal with no chaos. Maybe that is my ritual.

What do you start with?

I try to be mindful of my stress level. I’m not creative when I’m stressed so I do things that make me feel open and relaxed.

How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

I usually don’t start unless I’ve got a line or title that I feel strongly about.

When do the lyrics enter the picture?

Lyrics are the first order of business for me. Not a finished lyric but a strong sense of knowing what I’m writing about.

Having said this, much of my work is stream of consciousness. I guess it’s just free styling really. Where do they come from? They occur to me naturally once I feel strongly about something. I’m not saying
I have to understand the subject matter. In fact, much of my work is about the sadness, confusion, loss and suffering that comes my not understanding something. I think this is where a lot of my best material comes from.

Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Both.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion?

Subject matter that sheds some much needed light on something or communicates that we’re not alone. I try to give the listener a door to their own feelings or sometimes I’m searching for a door to my own feelings.

What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

All of the above.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Some songs happen in a few minutes and some I work on for a week. Some are ideas I’ve tossed around in my head for years.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

If I’m well prepared. Meaning my thoughts are sorted in my mind. Some of the songs will seem to write themselves and sometimes I rely on good old fashioned experience to be able to articulate what I’m trying to say.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it?

I usually let things be what they want to be as long as the work is potent and meets my criteria for what I enjoy in a song.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally?
I call it a meditation but when I’m in the zone I feel it’s all a meditation. Life I mean.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process?

I’ve read that a lot of people tweak endlessly but for me it’s like a cake. When it’s finished it’s finished with some exceptions of course.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on?

I’ll sometimes make a few tweaks here and there but generally I don’t continue to work on it.

I do reference my own music when I’m having problems getting to something that I did right on a previous song.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally?

I think production is key. At this point in my life I don’t consider myself a producer but I have a strong desire for my music to be in its own lane so for me there are very few producers out there that I feel can do this.

It’s aspirational but my desire is for my music to live in its own rarified airspace. This is high minded I know but it’s helpful to strive for this.

How involved do you get in this?

I work with producers that I feel are beating to the sound of their own drum. This resonates with me. I work with John Carroll Kirby and Nick Hakim and I feel they both embody this.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness.

I can’t relate to this. I think celebrating your hard work is a super important part of the process. All of my favorite artists throughout history played as hard as they worked. I subscribe to this.

How do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

Celebrating or rewarding yourself when you’ve completed something is the best way to get back to work I believe”.

I don’t mean to mangle this interview but, as it is extensive and detailed, I am editing down this from FADER for clarity. Though some of the flow and narrative might be cut short and fragmented. I think what remains should compel people to read the entire thing – and give a good idea of what Sundown is about and Chacon as an artist:

“Nobody else in the world has had a career quite like that of Eddie Chacon. He started his first band, Fry By Nite, with his two buddies, Cliff and Mike, in the mid-1970s at the age of 12, playing shows in the Castro Valley’s abandoned movie theaters. Fry By Nite never took off, but those theaters turned out to be some of the smallest venues those three kids would ever play. Mike Bordin founded Faith No More; Cliff Burton joined Metallica.

Eddie went in a different direction. He moved to L.A., got a job as a staff songwriter at CBS Songs, and earned himself some respectable credits — though the debut solo album he’d been working on turned out to be a flop. He wound up in Miami, signing a deal with Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew. The idea was that Chacon would record an album called Sugaree under the pseudonym Edward Anthony Lewis. But sessions with the legendary Dust Brothers turned out to be — according to a recent article in the Guardian — “an education in heavy weed consumption.” Chacon ended up being credited as an engineer on 2 Live Crew’s infamous As Nasty As They Wanna Be — the first album in history to be legally defined as obscene. But he was 26 years old and no closer to realizing his dreams of working as a solo singer-songwriter.

Chacon moved to New York and signed with Josh Deutsch at Capitol Records. Soon after, he met another young, aspiring singer-songwriter, Charles Pettigrew, on the C Train. The two bonded over a copy of Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man — nobody’s sure exactly which of them was carrying the LP — and realized they were both signed to the same man at the same label. They teamed up and, as Charles and Eddie, wound up with one of the biggest R&B hits of the 1990s (the smooth and irrepressible “Would I Lie To You?”) and a pretty successful debut album, Duophonic. They also wrote and recorded “Wounded Bird,” a sugar-packet-sweet ballad for Tony Scott’s True Romance. But their second album, Chocolate Milk, would end up being their last. The music industry had changed around them. What they thought would be a hiatus in 1997 turned out to be an amicable breakup. And though they started talking daily again in the early aughts, even sharing ideas for new music, Charles never told Eddie he was sick. He died of cancer in 2001.

PHOTO CREDIT: DeMarquis McDaniels

Eddie hadn’t stopped making music. He wrote songs for other people, including the English pop group Eternal. He worked with the Danish producer Poul Bruun, which led to credits on a handful of massive Scandinavian records. But, as he told Aquarium Drunkard in 2020, he was lost in those years. One day he walked into his studio, the same as he had every day, and realized he didn’t want to make any music. He was depressed. A perceptive friend sent Eddie a camera with a note saying “I think you’d be good at this.” Somewhat inevitably, he was. In fact, he ended up as the Creative Director at Autre Magazine.

It was only in 2018, when a mutual friend set up a meeting in L.A. between Chacon and the jazz-soul songwriter and producer John Carroll Kirby, that he really entertained the notion of returning to music. The result was Pleasure, Joy, and Happiness — a moody, gently funky, oddly meditative record that sounded unlike anything Chacon had done before. Chacon, between a falsetto and a honeyed croon, always seemed to be ruminating on something or dispensing some gentle wisdom. And, though at times it seemed as though it might have been his swan song — a perfectly unexpected record to call time on a completely unconventional career — Chacon is back again. His new album, Sundown, is out this Friday.

Our house was filled with music. I’m the youngest of three, and my older brother was obsessed with Led Zeppelin and Robin Trower and [Crossby, Stills, Nash & Young]; Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon and Pink Floyd Animals, these were the soundtracks of my childhood. That was through one bedroom wall, and on the other wall, my brother Jim was obsessed with early Barbara Streisand and the soundtrack from Lady Sings the Blues where Diana Ross is playing the part of Billie Holiday. So I just had this mixture of hard rock — my mom and dad called it acid rock — and crooning soul music. I became obsessed with James Brown when he came out with “Get on Good Foot (Parts 1 & 2).” I remember having that 45 and playing it on our green shag carpet on this little record player we had. We three little kids danced around that 45 until we wore it into the ground, man. We would go to Walgreens and buy the same 45 over and over again because it would get so scratched up from skipping all around.

Were you writing your own music as early as Fry By Night?

My brother tells me that I would make up songs and tell him they were mine from the time I was six years old. He would say, “You didn’t write that.” I would say, “Yes, I did.” I was trying to make up songs that sounded like the Delfonics or Bloodstone, pivotal songs to me. There was a band called Cold Blood featuring Lydia Pense from the San Francisco Bay Area — they were really popular in our house. She was a Janis Joplin-esque soul singer, a beautiful blonde girl singing like Janis Joplin. It freaked me out.

I can almost decipher the vocabulary of myself as a singer, where certain aspects of my tone came from. My voice has somewhat of a raspy grit, and I always used to try to mimic Lydia Pense. I wanted to have this crooning, easy, low tonality, and I became obsessed with the song “Natural High” by Bloodstone. Of course, Tower of Power was a pivotal band if you grew up in Northern California in the late ’60s and early ’70s — and, of course, Sly Stone. I can put together this little jigsaw puzzle of where different parts of my voice were formed.

When you then moved to New York City, it seems like you and Charles almost had a compulsive desire to keep writing music — that you were writing wherever and whenever you could.

That was largely driven by Josh Deutsch. I never met anybody like Josh, and I have to credit him for taking what was already a strong work ethic and upping the ante. This guy had me whipping out my guitar in taxi cabs going from Uptown to Downtown to a studio. I’m like, “Dude, we’re going to be in the car all of five minutes.” He’s like, “Just get it out, man, let’s do something.” We were lying on the ground, writing lyrics on napkins.

Then it just dissolves. When you realized you were leaving the label, did you think you would pick up and take it somewhere else?

We thought that what turned out to be a permanent break would just be a short break initially. There was a series of awful events in which, around that time, Charles lost his father and his sister, and he was overcome with grief. I was much younger and far more narcissistic, so I was more driven by the music and career. I wasn’t able to process what he was going through the way I would’ve processed it today. So months turned into years, and a few years after that, I got a phone call that Charles had passed away. I didn’t know that he had cancer. In fact, within six months of his death, we’d started talking on the phone again, sending cassettes back and forth to each other with song ideas. I remember one of the last things we said was, “Let’s get an attorney to get us a record deal again and make another record.”

All I could think of was how we started with nothing. I was on my last $500, and I know he was broke too. I looked around, and by that time I’d bought a beautiful house in the hills, my rockstar dream home, and I had my walls covered with 25 gold records. I had this immense sadness come over me: The man who traversed the whole journey with me from nothingness to us both having our dreams come true — homes and comfort and all the joy and gratification that goes with that — was gone. I remember being in touch with those emotions, and it made me feel such a depth of sadness.

PHOTO CREDIT: DeMarquis McDaniels

What is that you find in this communion with other people, in collaboration, that helps you to find your peak?

I’ve always felt like the job of a good collaborator or producer is to mine the gold in the people you work with. I find that the essence of great collaborations is a genuine interest in helping out the other, not helping out yourself. It has to be in the service of someone else to be great, I believe.

When did you realize that you wanted to keep doing this — that this was the beginning of something, not the end of something?

I didn’t have a realization. I have zero entitlement and don’t think the universe owes me anything. I just take it moment to moment. I never really thought of it as a followup record. And even if it was a followup record, what I’ve learned from my past experience with Charles is don’t overthink it. If there’s magic in the room, let it be. So we didn’t continue with the heaviness or significance of, “We’re making a followup record. We’ve got to make it better or bigger or splashier.” We just showed up”.

I am going to end with some positive reviews for the sublime Sundown. If you are not sold or still unsure whether you want to check out this album, then I hope the reviews push you towards the affirmative. Record Collector Mag had this to say about one of the musical treasures of last year:

“The re-emergence of US soul singer Eddie Chacon has been one of the more heartening musical stories of recent times. In a nutshell: Chacon was one half of Charles & Eddie, the early 90s R&B duo who scored an international smash hit in 1992 with their then-inescapable debut single, the sugar-sweet Would I Lie To You?. The pair’s fame was short-lived as subsequent singles failed to set the charts alight and their second album, 1995’s Chocolate Milk, struggled to find an audience. They were dropped by their label and Chacon embarked on a series of unrealised projects, including collaborations with 2 Live Crew and the Dust Brothers. When his former partner, Charles Pettigrew, died of cancer in 2001, Chacon put music on hold to become a successful fashion photographer.

Still, an urge to create music that had taken hold as a teenager wasn’t easily shaken off. Chacon released “dark disco” as The Polyamorous Affair with his wife Sissy Sainte-Marie from 2008-11, but to little fanfare. It was only when he met pianist and producer John Carroll Kirby in 2019 that Chacon’s musical fortunes changed. Kirkby’s production work with Solange on A Seat At The Table (2016) and When I Get Home (2019), along with performance credits on Frank Ocean’s 2019 single DHL and The Avalanche’s We Will Always Love You (2020), meant he was in demand. He and Chacon bonded over music and began jamming together, work that coalesced into 2020’s Pleasure, Joy And Happiness, a sublime and cathartic collection of modern soul that was apparently meant to bring closure to Chacon’s career, but through word of mouth became the hit that launched an unlikely third act.

Sundown takes the slinky, lo-fi wooziness of Pleasure, Joy And Happiness and uses it as a blueprint to expand upon. Where there were brittle drum machines, there’s now shuffling percussion and inventive drumming. Layers of synths have been joined by live flute, saxophone and trombone. There’s a new sense of confidence in the vocals, the clarity of the melodies, and production flourishes. Lyrically, too, there’s a shift – the troubled soul-searching has (mostly) given way to a sense of joy and acceptance at his place in the world.

There are songs here that do not so much start as saunter into earshot, in no rush to reveal themselves and all the more seductive for it. Haunted Memories is a case in point, beginning uncertainly – all fluttering Rhodes and searching, stuttering beats – until a groove has emerged from nowhere for Chacon to drape a subtly sing-song melody upon. Or the soft jazz-funk of Far Away, with its insistent groove that simmers away seductively beneath Chacon’s careworn falsetto. Songs that at first appear slight become formidable with repeated listens without losing their freshness, it’s some trick Elsewhere, as on the glorious strutting dry-funk of Holy Hell, the languid, warped soul of Step By Step, or the sunshine groove of Morning Sun there’s a directness to Chacon’s music that adds a new dimension to his sound. As does the healing, near-new age sound of the title track, a blissed-out evocation of the wonder of nature that sounds inspired by Chacon and Kirby’s Ibizan jam sessions. Far from signifying an ending, Sundown suggests Eddie Chacon is just getting started”.

There are two more reviews I am keen to get to. MOJO definitely showed a lot of love and respect for Eddie Chacon’s Sundown. An album I only recently listened to in full. I think that it is so magnificent. Revealing something different every time you pass through it. An album you can not listen to only once. It is such an astonishing work:

"I ALWAYS said if I got my head screwed on straight I could make one great record where I was honest with myself," Eddie Chacon told me in 2020. We were talking just prior to the release of his debut solo LP, Pleasure, Joy And Happiness, released some 28 years after his brief shot at fame with neo-soul duo Charles And Eddie, and following a good decade in which he’d turned his back on music completely. "I’d wanted to make this album my whole life," he said, but it’s taken my whole life to get there.”

That album, an ethereal, stripped-down collection of haunting confessionals, recorded with Solange and Frank Ocean collaborator John Carroll Kirby, in which Chacon revisited past failures and regrets, his haunted falsetto floating on Kirby’s vaporous synth lines, all underpinned by skeletal drum patterns, was Krapp’s Last Tape via Channel Orange. It was, in Chacon’s words, his “one great record”. So where do you go after you’ve made the album you’ve been waiting your whole life to make? How do you follow up on a swan song?

First you go back to working with the man who made it all happen. Recorded in Ibiza with Kirby, utilising the island’s sole Fender Rhodes, and then bolstered at 64 Sound Studios in northeast Los Angeles, with Logan Hone on flutes and saxophone, Elizabeth Lea on trombone, Will Logan on drums and David Leach on percussion, Sundown is both a bigger sounding LP than Pleasure, Joy And Happiness but also a deeper one. Ushered in by the deceptively simple opening track, Step By Step, a reeling ‘quiet storm’ appeal to “listen to your heart”, reminiscent in its seductive slink of peak-era Sade or Robert Palmer, here is an enticing soul record about barely hanging on (Far Away), losing everything (Comes And Goes), the difficulty of long-term relationships (Holy Hell), blaming the world for your own failures (Same Old Song), and, on the title track, age and loss. Tellingly, Chacon and Kirby say Sundown was inspired by repeat listens to Pharoah Sanders’ cyclical 1975 live track, Greeting To Saud, vibing on its meditative power. That mood is certainly present but so is that seductive atmosphere of ’80s/’90s soul; ruminations on mortality, failure and experience dressed up in a livery of pointillist seduction. The resultant combination is incredibly powerful, an emotionally rich and often lyrically dark album underpinned by both the “be here now” spirituality of Sanders and the “in the moment” seduction of Sade and Palmer. At its heart is a powerful message: if you’ve lost everything you can still embrace the beauty of the present instant or, as Chacon sings on the deceptively light Every Kinda People groove of the final track, The Morning Sun, “The morning sun/Touches everyone”.

Let’s finish off with The Guardian and their review of Sundown. Awarding it five stars, it is clear that this album should have got a lot more airplay around the world. I heard it on stations like Soho Radio, though it didn’t really reach the commercial stations. It is an album that deserved more exposure and love. Let’s hope stations tune in when Eddie Chacon puts out his next album – whenever that comes:

“It was hard not to notice a tone of amazement about the glowing reviews of Eddie Chacon’s debut solo album, Pleasure, Joy and Happiness. Whatever musical highlights people expected 2020 to bring, a warped soul album by a singer in his 50s, working with a producer who had previously collaborated with Harry Styles, Solange and Frank Ocean, wasn’t among them. Nor was a comeback by one half of Charles & Eddie, previously filed away alongside Tasmin Archer and Tony Di Bart in a drawer marked early 90s one-hit wonders. No matter that Charles & Eddie had been a more substantial proposition than most of said drawer’s other denizens, as anyone who listened to the charming retro-soul of their 1992 album Duophonic would tell you.

Their debut single Would I Lie to You? was the kind of hit that achieves what you might call obliterating ubiquity: a global smash that succeeded in overshadowing everything else its authors did. Under the circumstances, you couldn’t blame Chacon for walking away, which he eventually did, becoming a photographer and creative director after his erstwhile partner Charles Pettigrew’s death from cancer in 2001. And yet, nearly 30 years after Chacon’s solitary hit, and apparently out of nowhere, here was Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, an understated, left-field triumph, Chacon’s plaintive but emollient voice drifting over collaborator John Carroll Kirby’s gauzy, off-beam synths, samples and electric piano, singing songs that seemed to speak of hard-won experience: Trouble, Hurt, My Mind Is Out of Its Mind.

The question that haunts Sundown is whether the unexpected success of Pleasure Joy and Happiness can be replicated: a sense of anticipation attends its release that clearly wasn’t there before its author’s status was upgraded from one-hit wonder to low-key R&B legend. The answer turns out to be a qualified yes: it replicates its predecessor’s success precisely because it doesn’t try to replicate it, taking a noticeably different route to invoking a mood of hazy calm. The sound has shifted. The drum machines have largely been replaced – or at least augmented – by live percussion; there is brass and woodwind alongside the samples and electronics; it feels jazzier.

On Far Away and Haunted Memories, Chacon, now 59, sings over muffled clusters and runs of electric piano notes, like a particularly inconspicuous improvised solo that runs throughout the track. The sound of Same Old Song exists on the cusp of pillow-soft early 70s soul and the era’s spiritual jazz. Chacon has mentioned Pharoah Sanders as an influence on the album, although the Lonnie Liston Smith of Astral Traveling might be a more obvious comparison – and its electronic washes and drones stop it shifting into the realm of homage or pastiche. And with its spiralling synth solo and 80s groove, you could append the descriptor “jazz funk” to single Holy Hell without anyone getting too upset, while noting that it is jazz funk of a distinctly warped cast.

The tone of the songs has shifted, too. Although a vein of melancholy still runs through the album – “I’ve been thinking too much,” it opens, “I’ve been barely hanging on” – it’s more obviously tempered by optimism, albeit optimism of an ambiguous variety. “We’ve got each other and that’s a start,” offers Holy Hell’s equivocal assessment of a relationship. “We can keep on shining / But we can’t stop the hands of time.” Meanwhile, The Morning Sun’s component parts seem to pull towards slightly different ends: the blissed-out lyrics and breezy sax at odds with the slightly discordant, faintly ominous synth weirdness that’s going on underneath them.

Tightly written melodies – as on Holy Hell or Step by Step’s appealingly rough-hewn take on a vintage slow jam – vie for space with more abstract tracks. Haunted Memories feels as if you are eavesdropping on a jam session at the precise moment when a song starts to emerge through the mist. The title track moves in the opposite direction, gradually, joyously unravelling. Regardless of the setting, Chacon’s voice sounds fantastic – his falsetto on Comes and Goes is particularly gorgeous – and the effect is the same, potent and affecting: it’s an album that pulls the listener in close and envelops them in its rich, heady world for its entire duration.

When Pleasure, Joy and Happiness was released, Chacon talked about it as a culmination, half an hour of music into which he’d poured everything he had: “a perfect representation of who I am”. It made you wonder if it was a one-off, a curio unlikely to be followed up. Soothing, moving, occasionally disquieting and utterly immersive, Sundown suggests its predecessor was something else entirely: merely the first step of an entirely unlikely and entirely delightful career renaissance”.

An album that I was keen to promote and spotlight. One that I think everyone should listen to. If you have not heard it or are not aware of Eddie Chacon, then I would urge you to play Sundown. It is an album that you will not forget! It did get some press, though not as much as it should have. More an underground album rather than one that was reviewed a lot and played far and wider. It is a same, as Sundown is a work of…

MAJESTIC beauty.

FEATURE: Radical Optimism and Some Dissenting Voices: Why Dua Lipa Remains Underrated and Is One of Our Most Important Artists

FEATURE:

 

 

Radical Optimism and Some Dissenting Voices

PHOTO CREDIT: Tyrone Lebon 

Why Dua Lipa Remains Underrated and Is One of Our Most Important Artists

_________

I am a big supporter of Dua Lipa…

PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Beleiu for ELLE

and feel she is one of our most important artists. Someone who, in terms of the Pop league, seems to be rated below someone like Taylor Swift. In fact, a lot of U.S. Pop artists seem to get more acclaim and backing from the media. Maybe a bigger fanbase. I am thinking about everyone from Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish through to Drake and Ariana Grande. I find Dua Lipa’s work more varied and energising than, say, Taylor Swift’s. More individual and deeper than many of her contemporaries. We also have the excellent Charli XCX but, compared to the fellow British Pop artist, Lipa seems to be a more wide-ranging artist in terms of her talents and sound. A figure and personality I am more drawn to. Someone whose visual aspect and interviews are always standout. She comes across as a passionate and ambitious artist who has a long future. I feel, after a few small film roles, that she has a genuine career in film. Someone like Lady Gaga: she who can turn her hand to any role. I also think that Lipa, with a successful podcast and book service:

“Service95 is a global editorial platform founded by Dua Lipa. Launched in February 2022, it encompasses a website, weekly newsletter, the podcast Dua Lipa: At Your Service and the Service95 Book Club.

The website and weekly newsletter feature a considered curation of lists, stories, perspectives and conversations with a global lens. There are brilliant articles from some of the world’s most compelling voices – on everything from style and arts to social justice and politics.

In Dua Lipa: At Your Service, our founder goes deep in conversation with some of the world’s most inspiring minds – from actors to activists. Its three seasons are brimming with fascinating stories and life lessons that inspire us all not simply to be more curious about the world around us but, ultimately, to be of service.

In the Service95 Book Club, books represent diverse global voices, telling powerful stories spanning fiction, memoir and manifesto. Members are invited to read along with the Book of the Month aided by discussion guides, author Q&As and further reading lists to bring readers closer to the authors, their inspirations and the worlds they create”.

I do think that Dua Lipa is an artist not as respected and celebrated as she should be. When it comes to modern Pop/music icons, there are several in the U.S. We have some great artists here. I think that Dua Lipa might be our standout artist. Someone who should be put on the same pedestal as the biggest artists out there. As a performer and songwriter, I feel she is superb. In a modern scene where the likes of Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo are among a wave of brilliant women inspiring the next generation – you could throw in SZA and any number of contemporaries -, Dua Lipa is subjected to as much doubt and scrutiny as she is acclaim. I know I have recently written about the majestic Lipa. I have argued how she is one of our most underrated idols. That is apparent when you look at some of the reviews for Radical Optimism. Even though music critics have to react to the album on the first listen or so and cannot have too much time to ruminate, it seems like there have been some unfair write-ups. Dua Lipa is headlining Glastonbury in the summer. She has revealed that a 1980s Pop legend will join her on stage. She is going to put together an incredible set! Even though music opinion is subjective, I do think there have not been enough reviews recognising the strengths of Radical Optimism. Perhaps Dua Lipa being compared with contemporaries too much rather than people reviewing the album on its strengths. It makes me think, once more, how Lipa remains undervalued. I guess the fact that she claimed the album was influenced by psychedelic sounds/act and Britpop might have lead people in the wrong direction – as there are more Dance sounds and 1980s/1990s Pop nods that hint more to Europe and America than British mid-‘90s Pop. Even so, the more I listen to Radical Optimism, the more I think that it will ensure as one of this year’s strongest.

It is a tough climate and industry. I think that too many artists give too much away on social media. Feel they need to be revealing or open up their private lives. In a bid for connection, transparency and popularity, they can end up revealing too much. Dua Lipa’s Instagram has that mix of personal and professional. She posts photos and videos of professional engagements, together with snaps and insights into her life. I feel a lot have called her feed a little personality-free or like a model’s life. The music seen as lacking ideas. In both cases people are wrong. I am going to end by celebrating Dua Lipa and hinting at what her future might hold. I want to bring in some different reviews for (the brilliant) Radical Optimism. The Line of Best Fit, in one of the more dismissive reviews, were clearly not listening to the same album – though everyone is entitled to their own opinion:

“Lipa has described Radical Optimism as indebted to both 1990s rave culture and psychedelia. The intriguing addition of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and producer/remixer Danny L. Harle as producers and co-writers suggests that Lipa was at least serious about her intentions, but these influences don’t really come to fruition. Opener “End of an Era” introduces the album’s mood as more rooted in balearic house: all sun-warmed synths, laid-back beats and optimistic lyrics about a holiday romance. It’s all very effortless, until a stilted spoken word section kills the mood (“another girl falls in love, another girl leaves the club” – ahh, the duality of woman). The catchy “French Exit” sustains the vibe with a gorgeous, distinctly Mediterranean guitar/drum duet, but Lipa again breaks the mood with her dorky spoken French. Spoken word bits are often awkward, but it feels significant here that what magnetism Lipa possesses doesn’t carry over when she’s required to be more informal, more ostensibly human.

The propulsive “Houdini” is deathly addictive, a fantastic first single choice which continues Future Nostalgia’s aerobics-core disco revival. “Whatcha Doing” is also in the vein, but unfortunately sounds like a re-run of Lipa’s Barbie soundtrack single “Dance the Night”. Another single, “Illusion”, is a showcase of Lipa in possibly her most fitting role; that of dance single vocalist. Here she is tasked with embodying known emotional signifiers and tropes rather than creating her own. “Falling Forever” is a bold attempt at a more avant-garde kind of dance track, but just sounds bizarre, and curiously like it’s being played at 1.25x speed. The “Running Up That Hill” drum fill is a neat steal in theory, but its gravitas doesn’t serve the song. There’s a few more unexpected bits of instrumentation on the album – like the flute in the mid-tempo “Maria” – but they all sound like late add-ons to spice up the palette of synths, beats and Spanish guitar.

When Lipa breaks out of the dance-pop mold, her confidence and conviction drops substantially. “These Walls” is a more introspective take on the breezy, rooftop terrace mood of much of the album, but aside from a woozy guitar line it’s bland and corny, its production and lyrics giving Natasha Bedingfield-lite (“If these walls could talk / They’d tell us to break up” – really?). The closing track “Happy For You” radiates zen feelings about an ex’s new relationship, and even calls back to an earlier Lipa hit (“Together you look hot as hell”) but it’s weightless, dull and lacking, as though the peace Lipa is describing could just passively happen to a person, rather than be the result of hard work or struggle. As the album fades out, the lasting impression is absence – of a twist in the tale, a subtle kernel of doubt, the weight of experience”.

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The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis provided his thoughts on Radical Optimism. It is hard to shake off that feeling that many critics are writing about the album in relation to what was promised in terms of its influences and sources, rather than setting that aside and viewing it on its own merits. Going into things a little clouded and fixated on trying to find Britpop and Psychedelic touches:

“But it’s so far removed from what Dua Lipa has claimed it is that you find yourself frantically searching for evidence of what she might have meant. Does the “psychedelic” part refer to the presence of songwriter/producer Kevin Parker, who certainly started his career making lysergic alt-rock with Tame Impala, but turns up here in his pop hitmaker guise familiar from his work with Lady Gaga and the Weeknd? Is the regular presence of an acoustic guitar – and a pretty sliver of electric slide that decorates These Walls – supposed to signify Britpop?

PHOTO CREDIT: Tyrone Lebon

You could drive yourself mad doing it, so perhaps it’s better to focus on what is here, rather than what isn’t. It’s sunlit and appealingly frothy – you could divine a lot from the fact that Radical Optimism was sent out to journalists under the pseudonym Candy Floss. That it lacks an immediately grabby pop anthem along the lines of Physical or New Rules doesn’t mean it lacks hooks: they’re just the kind that burrow under your skin without you noticing, as on singles Houdini and Illusion. Similarly, the production tends to subtlety: most of the sonic excitement happens in the lower end, in the busy acid lines that underpin Maria, the thunderous live drums of Falling Forever and the combination of slap bass and sprawling deep electronics behind Watcha Doing. Maria deals in Jolene-like love rivalry, Happy for You ends the album on a note of Someone Like You-ish passive aggression – the kind of song in which the protagonist professes at length to be delighted at how hot their ex’s new partner is, which means the album’s much-vaunted optimistic tone takes on a hint of a fixed grin – but for most part, the lyrics are of the type that rhyme “sweetest pleasure” with “gonna be together” and “this could be forever”, ie they seem to exist primarily in order to give the singer some words to sing rather than actually expressing anything.

In a way, that seems very on-brand. Dua Lipa’s refusal to engage with the more soul-bearing aspects of 21st-century celebrity has made her the kind of pop star one suspects Andy Warhol might have had a lot of time for: a slightly remote, visually arresting space into which fans can project whatever they want. Profile writers looking for an angle have recently suggested she’s everything from big-sisterly “agony aunt for lovelorn club kids” to a “dauntless warrior queen” to a sharp-eyed operator carefully plotting every part of her success. Being a blank slate has served her well thus far, although it’s seldom a strong long-term strategy, and Radical Optimism lacks a unique personality as a result – particularly compared with the vivid writing of her peers. It’s a well-made album with mass appeal and, of course, there’s no law that pop music has to be deep. But the adjective in its title certainly doesn’t belong”.

Before getting to that interview from The Guardian, The Independent were closer to the mark in their five-star review. I feel that there is a lot to recommend about Dua Lipa’s third studio album. Even though her best work still lies ahead, it does show that she is someone always moving and trying to do something different to her peers:

“You have to admire Dua Lipa’s steely sense of purpose. Back in 2017, when she was working on her self-titled debut album, she told her A&R Joe Kentish that she planned to work with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker on her third album. Kentish laughed and told the emerging star to hold her horses. But seven years later, here she is with her third album, Radical Optimism, and here’s Parker, playing and producing on seven of the 11 tracks.

This artistic conviction has been one of the Albanian-British artist’s driving traits from day one. We heard it in the uncompromising regime of her 2017 single “New Rules”, in the brisk edicts of “Don’t Start Now” (2019) and again on “Houdini”, the advance single for this record, on which she throws down the gauntlet to a potential lover with the line: “Prove you’ve got the right to please me.” Urgent, upbeat, demanding and funky, Lipa is a finger-snap personified throughout Radical Optimism.

She takes control from the off. A flurry of Seventies synth-flutes open “End of an Era”; that trademarked rubber-band-bass sends her striding onto a dancefloor to take the initiative. “Hey/ What’s your name?/ Come with me,” she demands. Parker’s dropped in some live percussion – the shimmer of a hi-hat, some bells and a chime – into the mix, contributing a more organic vibe to Lipa’s muscular brand of disco pop

But she doesn’t need a live band to create jeopardy; she’s always enjoyed the one-two punch of bass and vocals (fuelled by sparkly synths) to speed pulses. On “Houdini”, the melody builds as she urges a potential lover to “catch me before I go”, ramping up interplanetary levels of pressure by stressing that “time is passing like a solar eclipse”. Tick tock, snap to it!

The make-or-break stakes remain high on “Training Season”, where a rattling snare prods the unready into action. “Whatcha Doin’” finds another irresistibly elastic bass line catapulting Lipa into a romantic “collision”, while the club beat of “Illusion” finds her laughing at a player who’s “Tryna’ make me yours for life, takin’ me for a ride.” Her energy and swaggering self-confidence are contagious.

Fittingly for such an international artist, Lipa accessorises certain tracks with a little Eurodisco, skirt-twirling, sambuca-shot fun. There’s a Latin strum and flamenco handclaps on both “Maria” and “French Exit” (the latter a term for leaving without saying goodbye).

PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Beleiu for ELLE

There’s a dreamy little American slide guitar gilding the lower key on “These Walls”, whose melody is so sweetly peppy that non-Anglophones are unlikely to realise is a breakup song) and some gloriously abandoned ululation on “Falling Forever”, which makes you want to throw her hat into the ring for Eurovision 2025. The beat thunders on at a gallop as Lipa – often more of a pouty/breathy singer – really gives the vocal some welly.

Unlike many of her pop peers, Lipa doesn’t offer any diaristic glimpses into her private life, joking in a recent interview that she is too British to “spill guts”. She certainly sounds like a woman who has little time for that sort of smush. Like an Eighties aerobics instructor, she wants bodies on the dancefloor: feel the burn, sweat it out. Dress in something that allows you to bend and snap along with her, you’ll end up glowing with Lipa’s Radical Optimism”.

I want to bring in sections of that interview with The Guardian before I wrap things up. It highlights various sides of Dua Lipa. Why she should be as highlighted and celebrated as much as many of her female peers. I think that women like Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and Beyoncé are so inspiring and empowering. Not only incredible artists, they are also activists and businesswomen. Multiple sides. A huge balancing act. You get the feeling that, through music and wider afield, Lipa wants to change the world and make a difference:

“Her best songs do sound as if they’ve been made for a hot, sunny day at Glastonbury (arguably more so than her prized night-time headline slot). If you’re looking for lyrical profundity, Dua Lipa’s music is not your go-to. Most of her songs, written by a team with her at the helm, are about being betrayed by rubbish boyfriends, not standing any nonsense from rubbish boyfriends, having great sex with rubbish boyfriends and dumping rubbish boyfriends. But if you’re after electro-pop dancefloor bangers, she’s up with the best (One Kiss with Calvin Harris, Be The One, Physical, New Rules).

Lipa was born in London to Kosovan-Albanian parents who fled Kosovo in 1992, just after Yugoslavia had been dissolved and at a time of growing discrimination against ethnic Albanians. Her mother, Anesa, the child of a Kosovan father and Bosnian mother, trained as a lawyer. Her father, Dukagjin, is the son of Seit Lipa, an esteemed historian and a former head of the Kosovo Institute of History. In the 1980s, Dukagjin was a member of the Kosovan rock band Oda, before training as a dentist. In England, their qualifications were useless. So they waited tables while retraining – Dukagjin in marketing and Anesa in tourism.

I tell her I’m struggling with the theme of radical optimism, particularly in such a polarised, war-torn world. Lipa has been vocal in her criticism of the Israeli government and her support of the Palestinian people. “You know, it’s not just Israel and Gaza,” she says, “it’s also Russia and Ukraine. And there is so much happening in Sudan. There’s so much going on in our world that’s horrible. I think everybody’s feeling that sense of hopelessness.”

Exactly. So where do we find optimism? “For me, music has always served as a form of escapism. It’s about community, togetherness. It’s one language that we can all universally connect with.”

Agreed, art can be a great way to escape and bond. But I still don’t get the optimism. “I just like to see things in a positive way. Every time when you look back and in hindsight go, ‘Oh, that thing that upset me is so irrelevant now.’” And the radical element? “It’s the idea of being radically accepting of who you are, of your flaws. It comes over time, learning about yourself, going through different experiences, maturing. Understanding that being forgiving towards someone is just as important for them as it is for you. It’s about being able to move on. That is radical acceptance in its clearest form.” One song, Happy for You, sums up her philosophy of radical optimism – she spots an ex with his new model girlfriend and finds it in her heart to be pleased he’s found love.

Music writers have pointed out that in an era dominated by female singers with a distinct USP (Beyoncé empowers, Taylor confesses, Adele provides a shoulder to cry on), Lipa does not have one. She would probably agree and say that’s her strength. There are many Duas; she contains lucrative multitudes. So there is the singer who gets you dancing; the bikini-clad Instagram babe who always seems to be holidaying with a hot boyfriend (actor Anwar Hadid, film-maker Romain Gavras and now Masters of the Air star Callum Turner); the #sponsoredcontent creator who writes on X: “So fun being back with my @porsche family for 24hrs in Singapore!!!” Then there is the campaigner who wants to educate about social injustice, and the arts curator who runs a book club and interviews literary giants (she has taken the club to women’s prisons). And finally, there is the aspiring media tycoon who founded the website Service95 in 2022, which she describes as a “global style, arts and society venture – the ultimate cultural concierge – at the service of the reader”.

Perhaps it’s the podcasts that reveal most about her character and ambitions. Interviews with Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart, campaigner Monica Lewinsky and pop star Charli XCX were beautifully handled. But what’s most interesting is how little she divulges about herself. Often her subjects will tell Lipa a story about fame or the music industry, for example, and say that she must have experienced a similar thing. We wait for the revelation, but Lipa skilfully bypasses it and segues on to her next point. It’s a conjuring trick of sorts. She appears to invite us into her life – showing us what she reads, where she holidays, which issues she cares about – while revealing nothing truly intimate.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tyrone Lebon

Is she aware of how little of herself she gives away in her podcasts? “Oh, 1,000%,” she says. “I guess I just wear different hats, and when I’m in my podcast world, and especially when I’m interviewing different artists, I’m there for them and for their story.”

You have an incredible knack of not answering their questions, I say. She smiles, curious. “Go on,” she says. Take Charli XCX, I say. When she asks which songs of yours you hate playing, you don’t answer. “Well, that’s really interesting because I don’t have a song that I hate playing,” she says.

OK then, one you’ve written that you hate?

“Yeah, I have that, but I can’t tell you that.”

Exactly, I say, but you’re happy for Charli XCX to tell you. “That’s entirely her prerogative. I don’t want to say because I write with other people. It could be a song that someone’s really proud of. I’m not going to go and shit on that.”

So next time Charli XCX guests on her podcast and offers up her least favourite song, is she going to tell her to keep it to herself so she doesn’t cause offence? No, she says. “I love how open she is, it’s great. Maybe I’m a bit more of an overthinker.”

She tells me about Radical22 Publishing, her publishing and production arm. “Through my book club, I get sent lots of new books, and if I find a story that I love, then maybe I can help produce it or bring it into a different world.” She mentions a documentary series on London’s musical heritage, directed by Oscar winner Asif Kapadia that Radical22 is producing. “It’s about Camden, which is my home. I’m so excited about that. I want to grow with all these other aspects of my job.”

It’s now that I feel I’m seeing the real Dua Lipa. And it’s now that the podcasts she has made with Apple CEO Tim Cook and former New York Times editor-in-chief Dean Baquet begin to make sense. Sure, the music is important to her, but Lipa seems to be playing a longer game.

When she met Cook and Baquet, she saw the interviews as learning opportunities: how do you grow the world’s biggest tech company? How do you lead the world’s most influential media organisation? How do you plan for, shape and, of course, control your global success? Her interview with Baquet was strategic. The NYT had run an advert in May 2021 targeting Lipa and supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid. The ad, paid for by the World Values Network headed by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, featured photos of the three women, with a headline saying “Bella, Gigi and Dua, Hamas calls for a second Holocaust. Condemn them now”. It claimed the women had accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and “vilified the Jewish State”. Lipa said at the time: “I utterly reject the false and appalling accusations”, and called it a “blatant misrepresentation” of who she is.

When she interviewed Baquet a year later, she interrogated him about the advert and told him how it had affected her. Baquet struggled to provide a convincing answer as to why the paper had run the ad, simply saying there was a church and state separation between editorial and advertising. But, I discover today, there was an even more politic reason for the podcast. It was Lipa’s way of resolving her problem with the NYT. What clued-up superstar wants to be at war with such a powerful organisation? “For me, it was important because I wasn’t working with the Times because of it.” You had boycotted it? “I wasn’t doing any media work with them because I felt I was put in danger. So it was important to talk to him about it. It was something that I needed to get off my chest.” She is no longer boycotting the NYT.

We’re giving a platform to voices we think need it, news people might not go looking for. We offer something different to the Guardian or the New York Times

What is fascinating in her interviews with Cook and Baquet is how much common ground she finds with them as cultural curators, media grandees and global influencers. As well as its book club and podcast, Service95 provides news features, restaurant reviews and travel pieces.

As she has almost 90 million Instagram followers, would I be right in thinking that she’d like to create a media empire? “Yeah, potentially. I think the media sphere is changing drastically.” And, yes, she understands perfectly why her fans may prefer to come to her for news. “We have a lot of subscribers. We’re giving a platform to voices that we think really need it, and it’s news that maybe people might not necessarily go looking for. I think we offer something different to what the Guardian or the New York Times are doing.”

Are you going to take my job? I whimper. “Definitely not,” she says. “I need you. Because I want to commission interesting stories, but I need the writer. I need the journalist. Journalists are super vital. The people who tell the stories are super important.”

She recently started to learn Spanish, French and Italian, and plans to be fluent in all three languages by the time she’s 35. Where do you see yourself then – a multilingual, singing media tycoon?

“Yeah, all of it,” she says. “Why not? Yeah. Hell, yeah.”

On my way out, I ask again about her shirt. “Isn’t it like the AC Milan top?”

“No, I designed it myself with my team,” she says firmly. “Do let me know if you want to write something for us.”

Thank you, I say, much appreciated.

“1,000%,” she says”.

I feel like the reviews for Radical Optimism have not been as sunny and considered as they should be (though sources like The New Yorker have been kind). No worries! I think the album will sell loads. Its streaming figures are impressive. The singles from the album have done really well. Even if they did not stay in the high numbers for as long as hoped, she still has scored three top tens from the album so far. She is going to bring that album to life at Glastonbury in June. We are also going to see Dua Lipa go on to bigger and better things. She will enjoy huge concert tours around the world. Documentaries and more film work. I can see Dua Lipa going on to do a lot of charity and humanitarian work. She is someone who is not only an incredibly powerful and incredible artist. She has so many facets. Much deeper and more impressive than many give her credit for! As compelling and important as her peers. Still in her twenties, we are going to see this incredible artist go from strength to strength. I feel she will produce an astonishing headline performance at Glastonbury. In years to come, we are going to hear and see so many different sides from Dua Lipa – though future albums and in other projects/guises. I think that the brilliant and hugely listenable Radical Optimism more than…

LIVES up to its title.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A Summer-Ready Cocktail

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Şule Makaroğlu/Pexels

A Summer-Ready Cocktail

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WE have seen some great weather…

PHOTO CREDIT: Engin Akyurt/Pexels

as of late, yet it is always temporary. Spring has not really got into its groove yet. Many people are looking ahead to summer, as it seems we will get warmer and more settled weather. In spite of that, it has been nice to experience some summer-ready days! Some warmth and sunshine. It is not long until summer not so, as I do from time to time, I wanted to put out an uplifting mix that brings some audio sunshine at the least. A playlist and mixtape that is ready for the summer months. Songs you can play to summon the scent of the season. From some classics decades old and tracks released fairly recently, there should be enough in this mix that gets you in a better mood. Conjures up some temporary warmth. If you are in need or some summer cocktails and visions of warmer climes, then I hope that the mix below…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alesia Kozik/Pexels

DOES the job.

FEATURE: The Alchemy: The Generation Differences of Experiencing the Rise and Dominance of the Music Icon

FEATURE:

 

 

The Alchemy

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna photographed for Rolling Stone in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Steven Meisel

The Generation Differences of Experiencing the Rise and Dominance of the Music Icon

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THERE has been a lot written…

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift/PHOTO CREDIT: Beth Garrabrant

about Taylor Swift’s latest album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Some see the album as not breaking ground and the same as her other albums. There have been big reviews like this. This is another one. A double album, some argue it could be edited better. Many fans love the album, though many have come out to say that it is not that interesting or different. One cannot argue against the fact that its creator is an icon. The biggest artist of her generation. There is almost this hegemony where Taylor Swift is dominant. Having won so many awards, broken records and been a part of one of the biggest tours of all time – her Eras Tour -, she is someone who has a legion of fans. Every one of her albums get so much hype and explosion. So many features and discussion. You can do your research, but there are so many articles written that dissect and discuss THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. I am not a massive Taylor Swift fan myself, though I admire her as an artist. She is a tremendous songwriter. Someone who is hugely inspiring and a modern icon. She will put out many more albums and no doubt appear in and direct films. I think we get to a point where each album she puts out will get more and more attention and scrutiny. It will break streaming records, sell massive units and then scoop loads of awards. Some would say that is deserved, though some would counter that it is because it is Taylor Swift: it would be wrong not to garner an artist and album with that much acclaim. One of the of the downsides of all this fame and focus means that Swift cannot really enjoy a private life in the way she would. I think she is also subjected to much more criticism than many artists. Also, a sense of pressure that future albums need to top what came before.

Taylor Swift is breaking records that Madonna previously held. Perhaps the two most successful female artists ever, Swift wants to distance herself from Madonna. That said, it won’t be long until the two collaborate on something. Madonna is in mind, as she is still touring. The Celebration Tour is a phenomenon. Sitting alongside Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour as the biggest and most successful. Full of spectacle and wonder. Three music queens producing something history-making. I think Taylor Swift very much reminds people of Madonna. Not just in terms of the fact they are blonde Americans. In terms of what they have achieved in their golden days. One could say Madonna was the biggest artist in the world from the 1980s through to the 1990s. Her 1980s was hugely successful. Taylor Swift enjoying the same acclaim and peaks in the 2020s. I have been thinking about Madonna as more than one of her albums celebrates a big anniversary this year (Like a Virgin turns forty later in the year). I grew up listening to Madonna, so I am experiencing two music icons in different times. Comparing the experience of the modern icon and ones from the past. Both Taylor Swift and Madonna are massively acclaimed and brilliant artist, yet they have risen and reached their peak at very different times. In terms of how Madonna rose and became an icon. How Taylor Swift has today. It takes nothing away from the achievements of each, yet I feel the feeling and sensations you feel now are perhaps not as potent and enduring as they were back in the 1980s and 1990s.

One could say that Taylor Swift will go on to become more celebrated and successful than Madonna. This would have seemed inconceivable a few years ago even though, with her streaming figures and album sales rising – not to mention her huge wealth -, we are in a position where we may be witnessing an artist who is going to be the most successful woman of all time. Not that Madonna can be dethroned as the Queen of Pop – I am not sure whether Swift would call he music ‘Pop’ -, but we might be living through a time that we will never see again. In terms of a single artist achieving as much. When I was young, I experienced Madonna through traditional sources of the time: MTV, music T.V in general, radio and print media/music magazines. I was born in the same year her eponymous debut came out (1983), so I was very young watching her go from this promising artist to a world-straddling legend. Maybe 1989’s Like a Prayer was the moment where she was untouchable and unstoppable. Today, on tour and inspiring countless artists, she is still this amazingly important person and icon. Her impact will never fade. There are differences in how icons are made and how we make them today. In terms of the past, a lot of the reason Madonna became an icon – apart from the music – was because of her distinct music videos, the innovative nature of her tours, in addition to the fact her music was played on radio and we read interviews about her. All forms of media sharing their opinions on her. Pre-Internet, there was a slower build but one that was more exciting and enduing. I am not sure, if Madonna came through now, there would be quite the same affect and feeling now.

It is hard to explain. I think the Internet and social media now can make an icon faster. Taylor Swift able to share clips of songs and teasers. So much of the marketing and feedback is done online. You do see her music videos played, though I think the role of radio and music T.V. is far less important than social media and digital reviews. Her tours are also important. I think most of her acclaim and popularity has come in a shorter time. Swift has always been popular; the past few years have been particularly busy and eventful. A real explosion. Building from albums such as 2020’s folklore, this acceleration has been fuelled by social media, momentum and, obviously, a gifted and wonderful artist evolving and going from strength to strength. In decades to come, we will talk of Taylor Swift and think of her as one of the best artists of all time. Swift might well endure as long as Madonna, though I think it is less likely she may be touring like Madonna is now at the age of sixty-five. Swift has re-recorded some of her studio albums. I think it is easier to make an icon now, as there is so many more media outlets now. A much bigger network who can share music really fast. Does this take something away from the phenomenon of crowning and celebrating an icon?! I suppose the more we go digital and the more the Internet takes charge, things are going to feel different. I wanted to use Taylor Swift and Madonna as two icons from different times – though both are touring and recording at the same time. Growing up between Madonna albums and seeing this evolution and transformation. Different looks and sounds. The magazine articles and press discussion around her. She faced criticism and sexism, yet Madonna always came out fighting and was this indomitable artist who was in a league of her own.

Today, we have Taylor Swift. The embodiment of a modern-day icon. Someone who has the same fame and popularity as Madonna in her regency. It is wonderful seeing her get good press and doing so well. Whilst it is exciting and like we are part of history, there is something a little numb about it. Maybe it is the sheer amount of press and wave of acclaim that seems overwhelming. I think that the way an icon was constructed and defined decades ago was more impactful and dug deeper than it does today. Whether things are more mechanical. There is definitely something missing. I look back at old photos of Madonna and some early clips. That rush of nostalgia and warmth. In many ways, it is a great and strange time to be around. Remembering days where icons like Madonna and Prince were made. How that made us feel. How they endure and influence to this day. Being around now to see Taylor Swift rule and break records. It made me think about those differences and what separates them. Everything now is so much faster and full-on. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Maybe good in some ways as we can see and hear more from an artist a lot faster. What is clear that two living icons (look at what Madonna is still capable of doing - over four decades since her debut album came out!), Madonna and Taylor Swift, are going to be adored and revered…

FOR decades more.

FEATURE: Generation X-Why-ZZZZ: How Ageism Against Women Is a Form of Discrimination That the Music Industry Is Slow to Eradicate

FEATURE:

 

 

Generation X-Why-ZZZZ

IN THIS PHOTO: Kylie Minogue

How Ageism Against Women Is a Form of Discrimination That the Music Industry Is Slow to Eradicate

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I know that it applies to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Elena Rubtsova/Pexels

all genders, though ageism is a form of discrimination that affects women most. This is not a new or surprising conversation. I think that there are a lot of forms of discrimination that still exist. Misogyny and sexism has not really radically shifted and improved. I guess we can say there is more awareness and acceptance of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists. I still think that women are the recipients of most of the discrimination and marginalisation. Black women perhaps the least exposed and celebrated. Women still the minority when it comes to radio playlists. Festivals not fast enough to create balance. In terms of representation, celebration and equality, men in music are still seen as superior. There have been a few discussions over the past year or two that have centred around ageism. Perhaps not as talked about as sexism or misogyny, I remember Kylie Minogue acknowledging the fact that ageism is no longer seen as cool. This would have come after she was left off of BBC Radio 1’s playlist. Padam Padam was the first single from her acclaimed album, TENSION. It was not played by BBC Radio 1 – until complaints and people highlighting this changed that. I agree that ageism is not cool though, as Minogue – who is in her fifties – highlighted, it clearly was present. That does not mean that it has gone away. In fact, radio stations especially are still championing and including more younger female and male artists. Male artists do encounter ageism too, though it has always been something much more common regarding female artists.

Earlier this year, Pet Shop Boys claimed how there is no longer ageism in music. Their logic being that acts like that can still be popular. That there is this embrace of older acts. They are short of the mark. They can sell albums and get played on radio because they are established. And a male act. I don’t think that there is the same sort of security and visibility for older female artists. Women over the age of thirty or forty who are making steps into the industry struggle so much more than younger artists to get noticed and played. Recently, actor Kate Hudson revealed how she faced sexism when she tried to go into the music industry – at a shockingly young age. At the age of forty-five, Hudson is now launching a career in music:

“At the age of 45, Kate Hudson is launching her music career. That chapter of her career almost didn’t happen, though, because she was discouraged from even going down that path over a decade ago. Her shocking ageism experience probably isn’t the only story in Hollywood, but The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery star has the clout and the power to make her dreams become a reality.

Husdon admitted that the unhelpful advice she received “jarred” her at the time. “It was in my early 30s and they basically said, ‘It’s done. Past. You’re too old,'” she told CBS Sunday Morning. “And for me, it wasn’t just about being a performer, it was about wanting to write music.” She admitted that “it kind of resonated for a bit” until she was ready to say, “Nah, f**k you. No, no one tells me what to do!” That brings her to this stage of her career and the launch of her debut album, Glorious.

Kate Hudson performs onstage at the 35th Annual GLAAD Media Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on March 14, 2024 in Beverly Hills, California.

It took a long time for her music to reach the public, but not because of the music executive who tried to thwart her career — Hudson sometimes got in her own way. “I guess I wasn’t ready for it until now,” she revealed. “I just don’t care anymore what people think. It was never right whether it was my own stuff or feeling afraid to mess up my movie career. It just never felt right…until now. I’m just doing it”.

James lead Tim Booth recently told Channel 4 how he has faced ageism. A successful band who have been making albums for decades, they are not immune to that discrimination. I think it highlights how there is this preference for younger artists. How relevance is defined by age. Artists in their teens, twenties and early-thirties seen as cool and current, whereas any artist over that is ‘past it’. Will Young, in the video for his song, Falling Deep, worked with dancers his age (he is forty-five). He recognised how there is this desire and allure for young and fresh artist. If you are established and should be played because of that legacy, it seems less important to the industry. Will Young, in this article, acknowledged how there is particular discrimination against women. Ageism plays into a wider narrative and spectrum of discrimination. One that is affecting women more than anyone else. A recent report about gender equality also highlighted how there was age discrimination. Younger women in the industry less likely to face discrimination than those of a different generation:

“Prepared by MIDiA Research and featuring a forward by Melissa Etheridge, the report — available here — aggregates responses from 4,146 creators and professionals in the music industry. This research was done through an online global survey translated into 14 languages and executed in November and December of 2023.

Of these respondents, 64% were men, 32% were women and 6% were gender expansive, with this segment indicating that they identify as nonbinary, agender, transgender or other. One-on-one interviews were also conducted with women and gender expansive creators in the U.S., South Africa, France, Mexico, and India.

Among the key findings, the survey found that — despite some recently documented gains for women in music creation and representation — women and gender expansive people are far more likely than men to experience the music industry as “generally discriminative” based on gender, with 49% of women and 41% of gender expansive individuals expressing this belief, compared to only 16% of men.

Age plays a factor in regard to this finding, with Gen Z less likely to perceive gender discrimination than older generations. 31% of 16-24-yea- old women view the industry as generally discriminative based on gender, compared to 54% of 25-34 year olds and 42% of women 55 and older. The report notes that this finding “could reflect improving conditions” but could also be a function of younger women not yet being in the industry long enough to experience discrimination.

The study also found that three in five women in music have experienced sexual harassment, and that one in five have experienced sexual assault.

More than 70% of women who have these experiences do not report them, the study says, “due to fear of retaliation and not believing anything would change being the most common reasons.” The study also notes that 53% of men who witnessed sexual harassment and/or assault did not report it, with 37% of these men saying that they “did not feel it was their place.”

Additionally, 56% of women who reported sexual assault responded that their claims were ignored or dismissed. The study found that nearly one-third were told to “keep quiet about it” while 12% were terminated from their job after reporting an incident.

As such, the study states, “the burden is on women to adapt their behavior to avoid misconduct, rather than on perpetrators and the wider industry to stop it happening in the first place.”

In terms of money, the study found that women and gender expansive people “are twice as likely as men to discover they are paid less than colleagues in the same or similar roles.” Identity compounds this issue, with 49% of women of a marginalized race or ethnicity having learned they’re paid less than colleagues. The study advises that the pay gap “is likely even more widespread than these statistics indicate, as individuals may be subjected to unequal pay without knowledge of it”.

Even if ageism against women has slightly moved and there has had to be some evolution, there is still this barrier. Artist LT (Leanne Tennant) told me how she has faced ageism and continues to do so. Many other women facing barriers and fewer opportunities when they reach thirty. Things are even bleaker when they hit forty. I do feel that there is this thing where artists over thirty and forty are only seen as relevant and worthy for particular radio stations and demographics. Even if bigger festivals like Glastonbury will book women over the age of thirty and forty, there is still a reliance and dominance of male acts and younger artists. Kylie Minogue’s third imperial phase shows that there is still ageism in the industry. Women baring the brunt of this. Things can change and get better. I don’t feel enough is being done from those in the industry. Like sexism and gender imbalance in general, few are keen to move the dial when it comes to embracing women of ‘a certain age’. I think about this article. Artist Lola Blanc, who was twenty-seven at the time, wrote how ageism is something she constantly faced:

“In a culture where artists and actresses and writers alike are either fibbing or withholding the truth of their birth dates, because everyone around us is telling us we're only as valuable as we are young, the impulse makes sense. It might mean fewer acting roles, or less interest from labels or agencies, or no longer having a "thing." And that's extremely daunting. But maybe it's only the norm until it's not. Sia and Tina Fey—women known for the merit of their talent rather than the size of the boners they induce (though they're both totally boner-worthy)—give me hope.

Yes, I am getting older. In a few years, I'll be 30, and maybe I'll be tempted to email all the websites that have ever listed how old I am and ask them to erase any evidence that I'm human. Tempted, perhaps, to do my darnedest to make the world believe that I am still young and fresh and sparkly and dumb and infantile and fuckable, available for the defiling, even as my humanity pulls me, faster and faster, into smarter, stronger adulthood. Tempted, as it were, to be a part of the problem.

Except I do believe it's a problem. Time is moving, and it's happening to all of us, no matter how well we conceal the shrinking lips and deepening lines that come with its passage, and what I can't quite wrap my head around is why women are supposed to be so goddamn ashamed of it.

The truth is, I'm thrilled to be beyond much of the insecurity and ignorance of my teenage years and early 20s. I feel beautiful. I'm doing the best work I've ever done, I know more than I've ever known, and I'm excited at the thought that, with every passing year, my work will improve and I'll know infinitely more than I do now. I believe that I am valuable. So why am I, along with countless other women, being told to feel like I'm not? I'm only in my 20s. What happens in ten years? Twenty?”.

Recently, J-Pop artist kiki vivi lily discussed her experiences with ageism. Many women are making the best music of their career when they are in their late-twenties and thirties. That experience and time means that they have richer and more personal stories. Music that is stronger than what they were making in their teens and twenties. Legends like Madonna and Rita Ora have recently responded to ageism in the industry. One can also say that platforms like TikTok have not helped. How there is lookism and an obsession with beauty standards. If women are over thirty or forty, they are not seen as desirable or worthy as younger contemporaries. As I say, things are better now than years ago, though we are nowhere near the point where ageism against women has ended. Male artists do face it, though you can look at playlists, festival line-ups and further afield and see how things are easier for men who are part of Generation X or older. Career highs from the likes of Kylie Minogue show that you can never write off an artist or define them by age. Minogue’s recent album far stronger than most of the work being put out by modern and younger Pop artists. I am hearing of incredible women who are struggling to get heard and respected because they are not in their twenties. Music should be ageless and barrier-less. However, when it comes to female artists, they are facing so many pushbacks and issues. It is evident that…

NEEDS to change.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Cuts from Twenty Golden Albums of 1979

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: This photo of The Clash’s bassist Paul Simonen smashing his bass guitar onstage was taken from the wings backstage at The Palladium in New York City on 21st September, 1979, during the band’s Take The Fifth U.S. Tour (their seminal album, London Calling, was released on 14th December, 1979, and it features this iconic image on the cover)/PHOTO CREDIT: Pennie Smith
 

Cuts from Twenty Golden Albums of 1979

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LATE last year…

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in Kyoto, Japan in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Masayoti Sukita

I put together a series of playlists that collated songs from albums celebrating big anniversaries in 2024. One of them related to 1979 and albums turning forty-five this year. I want to come back, as there are some real classics in the pack. Rather than include a song from each of the great albums of 1979, I have narrowed it down to twenty. Albums from amazing bands and iconic solo artists. I think 1979 is one of the greatest years for music ever. A real turning point between what was popular until the late-1970s (including Disco) and the Pop and various sounds that defined the 1980s. From a Fleetwood Mac album that followed on from their finest release, through to one of David Bowie’s more underrated albums, below are a selection of the very best from 1979. If you want a flavour of what defined the year, then the mixtape below should give you…

IN THIS PHOTO: Fleetwood Mac circa 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Norman Seeff

A good idea.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential June Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Peggy Gou

Essential June Releases

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I am looking ahead…

IN THIS PHOTO: Charli XCX/PHOTO CREDIT: Harley Weir

to next month and albums out that you will want to pre-order. I am going to highlight a dozen or so albums that you will want to investigate. Maybe not quite as packed as May when it comes to standout albums, there are still plenty that are worth keeping your eye out for. You can see what else is out via this website. I am going to start with albums from 7th June. It is quite an interesting week for album releases. I will start with Alfie Templeman and his new album, Radiosoul. This is an album that you will want to pre-order. One of our finest young songwriters, this is going to be among the most fascinating and brilliant albums of this year:

“Radiosoul, Alfie Templeman's second studio album, is an ambitious suite of tracks that showcase a bold new acid-pop direction for the Bedfordshire-born polymath. The record features production from Templeman as well as Nile Rodgers, Dan Carey, Karma Kid, Oscar Scheller, Will Bloomfield, Justin Young, Josh Scarbrow and Charlie J Perry. It is an album of self-discovery, one that zips between genres at whim and showcases a newfound incisiveness and acerbic humour to Templeman’s lyricism, whilst retaining the sense of joy that defined his previous releases. It is the work of a prodigiously talented songwriter truly coming into his own”.

Let’s get to one of the most anticipated albums of this year. One of our most popular and influential Pop artists, Charli XCX’s Brat is out on 7th June. Even though the album cover – I am not sure if it is the final one – is awful, the music inside is going to be terrific. It is a very interesting and fertile time for great Pop. Dua Lipa recently released her album, Radical Optimism. It will be interesting to see what Charli XCX offers with Brat. Following the underrated CRASH of 2022, I think that we will get one of Charli XCX’s best albums yet in June. It is going to be exciting to see what she puts out into the world. Go and pre-order the album if you can:

“Charli XCX’s sixth studio album Brat is the eagerly awaited follow up to 2022’s Crash, which reached number 1 on the UK’s official album chart. Brat is an exhilarating club record built around high art references and social commentary. Avant-pop and electronic superstar Charli XCX has become an iconic figure in the arts, having helped expand the landscape of popular music over the last decade by seamlessly traversing the underground and mainstream with her artistic output. Over the course of a trailblazing career, the multi-hyphenate creative has earned critical acclaim for her innovative style and entrepreneurial spirit and seen her forward-thinking approach reshape pop culture in the process”.

I am going to move to an album I am really looking forward to. Goat Girl release Below the Waste on 7th June. I would encourage people to pre-order the album, as it is going to be remarkable. They are an incredible and truly original band that always release the most interesting and engaging music. I am keen to see what comes from Below the Waste. From what has come from the album so far suggests that we are going to witness something amazing. Go and check out songs such as motorway and ride around:

“Goat Girl - Lottie Pendlebury (she/her), Rosy Jones (they/them) and Holly Mullineaux (she/her) release their third album Below The Waste on Rough Trade Records. The album was co–produced by the band and John Spud Murphy (Lankum and black midi).

Pieced together like a collage over an extended period of time, the instrumentation was tracked mostly over a ten-day stint in Ireland at Hellfire Studios, in the shadow of the infamous Hellfire Club itself. They also used Damon Albans, Studio 13. Additional strings (Reuben Kyriakides and Nic Pendlebury), woodwind instruments (Alex McKenzie) and vocals (including a choir made up of family and friends) were added to this framework at a number of locations, from a barn in Essex to Goat Girl’s own studio in South London.

Singer Lottie on lead track: “I was listening to lots of music at the time by Phillip Glass and Deerhoof that plays with the relationship between tension and resolution which definitely influenced this song. I was yearning for honesty and authenticity in relationships I held with people, probably partly because at the time, like everyone, we were so isolated from one another. But it also felt deeper than that, like the conversations I dreamt of stripped away all of the etiquettes we desperately clung onto and went below the surface to where the most interesting parts of ourselves tend to be suppressed”.

An album that might pass some people by but you certainly need to be aware of is from Peggy Gou. I Hear You is an album I am tempted to pre-order. One of the most iconic and important artists and D.J.s today, I Hear You is the debut from the sensational Peggy Gou. Such a phenomenal talent, I think this will bring her work to a wider audience. Someone is who is known more as an underground D.J., producer and artist, this will take her to the mainstream and around the world. If you have not heard of Peggy Gou and are not familiar with her work then do go and check her out:

“Artist, producer, DJ and cultural trailblazer Peggy Gou releases her long-awaited debut album. One of the most hotly-anticipated debut records in recent years, I Hear You is released via XL Recordings. The ten track album is the culmination of years of work for the Korean-born artist, who’s uniquely revered as both an underground icon and global sensation, sticking by her own unwavering vision to become one of the most in-demand electronic music artists and DJs in the world. Featuring previous singles, the 2023 chart-topping global hit “(It Goes Like) Nanana” and her Lenny Kravitz collaboration “I Believe in Love Again”, the LP sees Gou stepping into the next level of her artistry and boldly claiming her voice through the kaleidoscopic lens of ‘90s house music.

Talking about I Hear You, Peggy Gou says:

“I Hear You is more than just my debut album. It embodies countless hours of dedication in my journey to create something timeless, and is a testament to the power of listening, to ourselves and to each other”.

I will wrap up with albums from 7th June by concentrating on The Mysterines’ Afraid of Tomorrows. One of our hottest and brightest bands, go and pre-order this album. I am a fan of the band, so I am really interested to hear Afraid of Tomorrows. It is going to be another tremendous album from the Liverpool quartet:

“The Mysterines are a four piece alternative rock band from Liverpool, England. Formed in 2016, the angst-ridden, grunge-inspired indie quartet are fronted by vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter Lia Metcalfe. Their imposing frontwoman melds together more than her lifetime’s worth of experiences with the kind of deep, impassioned vocal you won’t forget in a hurry. In her songs and stagecraft you’ll see and hear everything from PJ Harvey’s raw and ragged stomp to the crazed carnival energy of Tom Waits and eviscerating poetics of Patti Smith.

The first great British rock band of the post-pandemic era, The Mysterines let us in on Lia’s unfiltered look at life, the universe and everything, complete with serious riffs and an unflinching honesty.

Recorded and produced by Grammy Award winning producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen) in LA, Afraid of Tomorrows is a deeper and darker foray into The Mysterines’ psyche than its predecessor, and reflects the maturity and growth of the band”.

There are three albums from 14th June that are worth bringing to your attention. I will get to them soon enough. I will finish with the last from 7th June that is of interest. It is Carly Pearce’s Hummingbird. If you have not heard of this album, then this album might be for you. A perfect introduction to an astonishing talent. Go and pre-order Hummingbird:

“Carly Pearce’s highly anticipated fourth studio album hummingbird via Big Machine Records. Produced by Pearce, Shane McAnally, and Josh Osborne, hummingbird marks Pearce’s debut as a co-producer and fully represents her new musical chapter – one of forward motion. Following the success of her last studio album 29: Written In Stone, Pearce fully leans into her authentic country sound encompassed by the symbolism of the hummingbird which represents the album’s themes of growth, humility, understanding, playfulness, and optimism. Discussing her inspirations for the hummingbird album, Pearce says, “I have lived a lot of life in the last few years. Entering a new decade has brought a lot of maturity, growth, heartache, and healing. I am still a work in progress, but these songs represent my honesty, playfulness, and openness to keep growing”.

There are two albums from 14th, 21st and 28th June I will finish off with. Moving on to 14th and I want to illuminate Normani’s Dopamine. You can pre-order/save it here. There is not a lot of information out there as to what to expect from the album. I found this article from back in February, where Rolling Stone reacted to the news that Normani’s long-awaited album would be coming this year. Now that we have a date, there is a lot of anticipation and intrigue:

“Normani’s debut album is finally coming! Fans went into a frenzy on Feb. 21 when the R&B star announced that she’ll be releasing her debut album. It’s called Dopamine. While an exact release date has yet to be announced, the singer teased that fans can expect the new music at some point this year.

“Cryingg typing this rn,” she wrote on Twitter with an image of the album cover. “DOPAMINE THE ALBUM.”

The cover art sees Normani posing atop a large black rocket in a two-piece swimsuit as she looks into the distance. With the album artwork, she also shared a short snippet of her singing a R&B song, showcasing her luscious vocals.

“It’s a representation of my evolution. It’s the version of me that’s been through some things over the course of the last few years,” Normani told Who What Wear.

And while fans are certainly excited at the idea of Normani’s long-awaited solo album finally coming out, they’ve been here before. Since launching her solo career in 2018, around the time that Fifth Harmony disbanded, Normani has built up immense anticipation for her upcoming LP: she’s teased about having an album title ready, dropped numerous A-list collaborations, and has hinted that it was almost done for nearly six years.

Through the years of musical drought — she has 15ish songs out, most of which are collaborations — fans have been asking her (and themselves): “Where is the album?” Well, it looks like it’s finally (almost) here.

“I end up having certain conversations with myself where I’m thinking, ‘Is what everybody is saying true? Did I miss my moment? Did I wait too long? Do they still care?’” Normani told Who What Wear”.

Actually, there is one more from 14th June that I want to mention prior to moving on. The Decemberists’ As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again is an album you’ll want to look out for. Go and pre-order if you can. With a beautiful album cover and some amazing music within, I think that fans of the band and new converts alike will want to grab their new album. I would recommend it to those who have not heard of The Decemberists. A band well worth investing in:

“For over 20 years, The Decemberists have been one of the most original, daring, and thrilling American rock bands. Their distinctive brand of hyperliterate folk-rock set them apart from the start, releasing nine full-length albums that are unbound by genre and highly ambitious. Now the beloved indie band is back with their first new album in six years, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again - not only the longest Decemberists album to date (and their first intentional, proper double-LP) but also their most empathetic and accessible, its 13 songs like semaphores of mutual recognition for our fraught times and faint hope.

Reuniting with producer Tucker Martine (R.E.M., Neko Case, Sufjan Stevens) who began working with the band on The Crane Wife, the album features R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, The Shins’ James Mercer and Lizzie Ellison on background vocals.This, songwriter Colin Meloy will tell you proudly, is the best Decemberists albums and perhaps the ultimate realization of 22 years of work. In many ways, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again feels like an aptly titled renewal for The Decemberists. The first full-length release on YABB Records, the band’s own label, after a run of nearly two decades with Capitol. As they were once, here are the Decemberists again, now an independent band empowered by singing stories that sound instantly familiar and convey some bit of hard-won wisdom”.

Two great albums from 21st June that are worth pre-ordering. I want to start with Gracie Abrams‘ The Secret of Us. A stunning young artist who is about to release her second album. It looks like it is going to be a step up and expansion from her remarkable debut album, Good Riddance. I would encourage people to go and pre-order The Secret Life of Us:

“Gracie Abrams returns with her sophomore album, The Secret of Us released via Interscope Records. This is Gracie's most expansive body of work both sonically and narratively.  Coming off the heels of her hugely successful debut Good Riddance Gracie shows us how much she has accomplished in one short year. Gracie's growth as a songwriter and vocalist is showcased in her most extroverted album yet, as she continues to work with longtime collaborator Aaron Dessner. A portion of these songs were also written with Gracie's best friend, Audrey Hobert. This album was written with the urgency with which you run home to detail every moment of a night to your friend, with her live experiences over the past year having deeply shaped the identity of this album”.

The tremendous Kate Nash is someone who I have been listening to for years. I am looking forward to 9 Sad Symphonies. It is out on 21st June. It sounds like her new album is going to be a step away from those who remember her early work. There is going to be a mix of emotional depth, elegance and the distinct vocal and lyrical voice of the amazing Kate Nash. Go and pre-order her album here. She is a wonderful artist who always puts out great albums. A very distinct artist:

“Kate Nash's new album 9 Sad Symphonies is her first signed to the legendary Kill Rock Stars label - The album was produced and mixed by Grammy winning Danish producer Frederik Thaae (K Flay, Jada, Crown The Empire) - Marking a new chapter in Kate's illustrious career, the album's lyrical scope is both deeply personal and achingly relatable, whilst its orchestral arrangements and melodies draw from Kate's experience in the world of musical theatre.

Kate Nash is a Brit Award-winning singer-songwriter, musician and actress known for her fearless approach to music and unapologetic storytelling. A platinum selling artist with a career spanning over a decade, she has garnered critical acclaim for her chart-topping hits and electrifying live performances. From her debut album Made of Bricks to her latest releases, Kate's artistry continues to resonate with audiences and has earned her a dedicated fanbase. She also captivated audiences as Rhonda in Netflix's Emmy-nominated GLOW”.

There are two from 28th June I will round up with. The first is Hiatus Kaiyote’s Love Heart Cheat Code. This might be a new name to you, so it is fair enough it may be a harder sell. I would say to go and stream songs by Hiatus Kaiyote. Released through the Brainfeeder label, I would genuinely encourage people to go and order Love Heart Cheat Code. It is going to be a wonderful work that will stay in the mind and memory for a long time:

“Melbourne-based, 3 x Grammy-nominated band Hiatus Kaiyote release Love Heart Cheat Code via Brainfeeder Records / Ninja Tune. Love Heart Cheat Code is a snapshot of four musicians dancing together on the edge, 11 playful, exuberant tracks that shine light. Yet, for a band that made a name for itself with its complexity and received critical praise and multiple Grammy nominations for their embrace of maximalism, one of the most striking things about Love Heart Cheat Code is its simplicity. Recommended if you like… BADBADNOTGOOD, Moonchild, Jordan Rakei, Kamasi Washington, Yussef Dayes”.

I am going to end with another slightly more obscure album. Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats’ South of Here. I am quite new to the band, but I am now compelled to listen back before their new album comes out. I would definitely encourage others to take a listen. Very much worth pre-ordering South of Here. An album that is going to make an impact when you hear it. From what I have heard from the band, they are likely to give the world something truly special on 28th June:

“South of Here, the fourth full-length studio release from Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, reckons with a lifetime of pain and trauma and transforms it into a stirring and soul- baring rumination on love, loss, hope and resolve. Following And It’s Still Alright, Rateliff’s beloved 2020 solo LP, and The Future, The Night Sweat’s acclaimed 2021 release, the new album blends both sides of his immense talent: emotionally potent, vivid storytelling and the rugged, R&B revivalism that has powered the band to world-wide acclaim over the past decade.

Produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, Kevin Morby) with principle recording at Sonic Ranch outside of El Paso, TX, South of Here was written by Nathaniel Rateliff and performed by The Night Sweats: Nathaniel Rateliff (vocals, guitar), Luke Mossman (guitar), Joseph Pope III (bass), Mark Shusterman, (Hammond B3, piano), Patrick Meese (drums, piano), Daniel Hardaway (trumpet), Jeff Dazey (tenor sax), and Andreas Wild (baritone sax). Playing with intuitive beauty all in service of the song, the Sweats are in peak form, while Cook’s production captures the group’s soulful fire with immediacy and purpose.

Songs such as “David and Goliath,” “Heartless,” “Get Used to the Night,” and “South of Here” reach across damaged connections with brutal honesty, and others like “Remember I Was a Dancer,” “The Center of Me,” “Everybody Wants Something,” and “Times Makes Fools of Us All,” are cinematic portrayals of self-doubt and innocence lost.

Walking a line between cutting truths and joyful noise, the band delivers 11 original tracks with exquisite warmth and empathy. Bound by the struggle for identity and the search for belonging, South of Here reverberates with the understanding that we’re all in this beautiful mess together”.

Those are albums from next month I think you should pre-order. You might have others you want to check out. Maybe none of the above. The point of this feature is to give a guidance and heads-up as to what has been announced so far. Of course, like every month, we may get some surprise releases for June. Things can change between now and then. There should be enough to get started with if you consider the albums above. I hope that my guide has provided you with…

SOME useful suggestions.

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 1989: Lesley-Ann Jones (You Magazine)

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

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

1989: Lesley-Ann Jones (You Magazine)

_________

I am retiring this feature now…

but I must offer eternal thanks to this website for providing a huge and astonishing array of Kate Bush interviews throughout the years. Ones that I have selected and included in various features. It has contributed to so much of what I have written over the past year or two. I feel like I have spotlighted as many of the interviews as I feel worth mentioning. I am finishing with a good one. I am ending this feature run with an interview from 1989. The reason I chose it is because it was published shortly after The Sensual World came out. An important time in Kate Bush’s career, there are some interesting areas of focus. Lesley-Ann Jones – who I follow on Twitter and whose work I respect – was writing for You Magazine. I guess there is more leaning on her personality and personality rather than the album. Kate Bush, from 1978 through most of her career, has faced some combative interviewers and others who have given her short shrift. Many I have featured in this series show what she had to endure as an artist. How professional and calm she was at all times. It is testament to her professionalism and resolve that she navigated some rather unusual or overly-personal questions and comes out with dignity and poise:

“Under The Burning Bush

... is just an ordinary woman very much in control of her life. But in front of the camera Kate Bush ignites and the release of her latest album, The Sensual World, is bound to start the sparks flying again.

She looks like any other young student making the best of a bad grant. Her uniform - jeans, sweatshirt and trainers - is on overtime. A plum-rinsed, disorderly mane. Kate Bush is a 31-year-old millionairess.

The pure unearthly quality in her voice has made a mockery of musical fashion and made Kate Bush a platinum-selling artist for over a decade. In the flesh she is nice, kind, pretty and she smiles a lot. And that's about it. Confront her with a lens though and she ignites. In the 11 years since she made `Wuthering Heights' she's learned about the potency of her image and the sexual invitations it gives out.

"I never really understood the power of photography. As a dancer, I was incredibly at home in my body. I simply didn't see it the way other people did. Pictures give such immediate impressions. In all the early photo sessions I did, we experimented with dancers' clothes, discovering how interesting and versatile dance garments can be. This was all well before the leotard era.

"Subsequently, EMI produced a large poster of me in which you can clearly see the outline of my breasts through a rather skimpy vest. It seemed innocent enough, rather nice, even - at the time. But with hindsight, I completely understand why people said I was overtly sexual. It stood out a mile. Then it didn't seem the least bit suggestive. Now, I would definitely have the picture cropped."

Today she says, almost sadly, that she is now much more aware of the darker side of life. And, just as sexuality must not be confused with things sensual, there is a great difference between innocence and naivety.

"You can retain your innocence throughout life," she believes, bless her. "It never really goes away. No, innocence has nothing to do with being childlike. No, I'm not a child-woman. No, I'm not reluctant to grow up. God. What is this world for if you can't always appreciate the innocence in life?"

Kate Bush is not exactly the archetypal rock star. When she hasn't got a new album out, she disappears off the face of the earth (I mean Eltham). While most rock 'n' rollers seize every photo opportunity, from falling out of Langan's Brasserie to cropping up at every showbiz bash going, Kate has not even been on the road for ten years.

"I did a tour once," she remembers, squinting into the distant past. "I haven't wanted to do one since. Consequently a lot of people think that I hate touring, but that's not so. I absolutely loved it. But it was so exhausting mentally and physically that I was literally drained, wasted, afterwards. It took a long time to recover."

She gets away with murder when you think about it. One tour in a decade, then she retreats into her personal recording studio, leaps about in her own dance studio to her heart's content, evaporates into thin air for years at a time, then comes belting back into the charts like she's never been away. In any other artist this would be intensely annoying, sickening even. In Kate, it is endearing.

You could say she has well and truly screwed the system. She is doing it still. It is four years since Kate's last album, Hounds of Love. Last week saw the release of her sixth, The Sensual World, which features, so I'm told, Bulgarian backing singers, and Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour, the man who discovered Kate.

Theirs was an unlikely encounter: she the shy, 15-year-old, violin- and piano-playing doctor's daughter, he the wild and wicked lead guitarist with 70s supergroup Pink Floyd.

"A friend of the family, Rickie Hopper, introduced us", Kate recalls. "Absolutely terrified and trembling like a leaf, I sat down and played for him. But Dave liked my songs very much. He put up some money, sent me into the studio to make three really well-produced tracks. I did "The Man With the Child in His Eyes", "The Saxophone Song", plus some obscure thing which ended up on a B side somewhere."

By 16, Kate was signed to Pink Floyd's own record company EMI. She has been there ever since. To gain live experience, she sang in a three-piece rock 'n' roll band, the KT Bush Band, playing pub gigs around the Lewisham area. At the same time she started dance and mime classes.

She now has a string of top ten hits and five huge selling albums under her belt. "It's all thanks to Dave," says Kate, modestly. "He's such a lovely person. So generous. So ... yummy! He did it out of love, you know. I paid the money back, of course, eventually - but I couldn't have done it without his backing. For me to work with him on this album was a real honour."

Not half the honour it must have been for a gauche South London schoolgirl to be heard by one of the world's most respected rock guitarists. "I don't know," says Kate. "I wasn't really into Pink Floyd at the time."

She wasn't really into school either. Not exactly academically thick, but "the idea of university just loomed like a really sinister thing. I couldn't face it. I was lucky - something came up and took my mind off it."

Kate would be the first to admit she has led a sheltered life. She emerged from a tightly-knit, middle-class family environment (mum, dad, two older brothers - John, a photographer, Paddy, a musician) to share her life with the same boyfriend, bass player and music engineer Del Palmer, for the past ten years.

She says she was incredibly close to her father. "My mother, to whom I have always been very close also, was a muse. But my eye was almost always on what my father was up to. Don't you think that, as a child, your aspirations are out into the world?"

"You take the whole domestic situation, including your mother, for granted. Little did I know it was mum who was holding it all together.

"My relationship with Del is very stable. We work together, we live together. It works so well for us. That can be a very intense set-up, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It's all very close and direct. After ten years, maybe we ought to be restless, but we're not. Some say the decade between 20 and 30 is a very telling time in terms of human development, but I believe that the whole of life is like that.

"Del and I argue a great deal - over songs. But we consider it healthy. Who wins? Normally, I do. I'm not the shy, retiring, fragile butterfly creature you sometimes read about. I'm tough as nails."

She's still rather shy and home-loving. Kate laughs openly when you call her a recluse, but then admits that, yes, she is happiest behind closed doors. Preferably those of her elegant, unostentatious South London Victorian mansion. Beautifully decorated, with shades of blue predominant, her home is Kate's absolute refuge.

"I don't go on holiday," she says. "I'd rather stay at home. I went to Jamaica once years ago. It was a real culture shock. I went from a dingy little London studio with no windows to this absolute paradise. I could barely stand it. Even the sound of the birds was deafening.

"People go on and on about me being a recluse, but it doesn't bother me. To me, a recluse is just someone who gets on with what they want to do. If that's me, then I'm happy to be one.

"A large part of this business is so false, isn't it? You hear such a lot about the rock 'n' roll life-style, but I really don't know what that is meant to be about any more. The showbusiness life has simply never appealed to me. I wasn't attracted to the music business by the idea of wearing a black leather mini and getting legless at all the right parties every night. What I wanted to do was make music. That's all I want to do now."

She makes music, she makes millions. She would be making babies had she the time and the immediate inclination, being a gently maternal soul, but she will make do with cats for now. She is kind to animals, refusing to eat or wear them, but gives in to a fish dish occasionally.

"Once, that would have been impossible for me," she says. "But later I decided we have not to be so hard on ourselves or other people in terms of eating habits or anything else. It's like me and smoking. It's such an awful thing to do, it's so obviously bad for us, but we gaily carry on. I've cut down a bit, but I can't kick the habit."

Some call Kate obsessive, claiming that her work is the most important thing in her life, and that everyone around her gets dragged in with her. "It's true," she smiles. "I'm obsessive about most things which take my fancy. I'm just like that. Once I start something, I'm committed. I just can't put it down.

"It's very hard for example, to stand back from an album, allow it to be finished and then let people evaluate it for what it is. It's a terrifying process for me. And consequently making the album in the first place gets harder and harder for me. This one took me over two years to make, so I had about two years `off' after the last one. So I come back to writing completely cold. It's like, I sing, do I? Every time it's like I've never done it before. Is it good enough? Is it rubbish? I've had to train myself to listen to that internal voice, the one I go to sleep with. I've had to learn to believe in myself and in my own judgement.

"Most of the new songs are about relationships again. Maybe I'm saying, "If things get rough, it's OK really." And, it takes me two years to say that! I have to sweat blood and shed real tears before I know I've put everything into it. That's why I worry that the creative process is getting harder and more painful for me every time. At what point will I find that I've used it all up? That there are no more albums left inside me?"

That's a thought. What will she do then?

"I think I'd like to make a little film. Being a movie actress is not something I have craved, but the right thing might tempt me. If there comes a time when I can only manage one album a decade, it would be good to have something else to keep me busy. And anyway, you learn so much just by jumping in at the deep end."

And jump she intends to”.

I may resurrect The Kate Bush Interview Archive but, for now, I bid it farewell. I have ended with one from 1989, as we celebrate thirty-five years of The Sensual World in October. One of her very best albums, it was a turning point. In terms of the narrative and lyrical trajectory. Perhaps more personal than 1985’s Hounds of Love. A more female-sounding record with more feminine energy. As she was in her mid-thirties when it came out, maybe Bush was thinking ahead to starting a family or wanted to take her music to new places. The incredible reviews showed that it is an album adored and respected! I think that there are some good and respectful interviews from 1989, though the success earned from Hounds of Love did not earn her interview where she was given more respect and time to talk about her music. It has been fascinating delving into interviews Bush was involved in between 1978 and 2011. Let’s hope that we have not seen the last of them! That she will be back at some point and we get to learn even more about the icon. One of the greatest songwriters ever, there is something about a Kate Bush interview that is arresting and insightful. I wanted to finish with a bit of an underrated classic in that sense. I am closing it there. Who knows, I may return to The Kate Bush Interview Archive…

IN the future.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Ludmilla

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: João Maia

Ludmilla

_________

AN artist that some people…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ygor Marques

might not have heard of, I wanted to spend some time with Ludmilla. The Brazilian artist is a sensation and role model. She released her latest studio album, Vilã, last year. Married to Brunna Gonçalves, this L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ modern-day icon, in 2020, became the first Afro-Latin American female musician to reach one billion streams on Spotify. I want to start with an interview from last year. Billboard spoke with her last year. The Queen of the Favela, she has this amazing and versatile sound; an enigmatic flow in Portuguese. This Rio de Janeiro native is ready to conquer the globe:

“When Ludmilla stepped onstage to headline Palco Sunset at Rock in Rio in September 2022 — an all-star lineup boasting the likes of Megan Thee Stallion, Guns N’ Roses, and Dua Lipa — the Rainha da Favela boldly announced her arrival. Donning a black lace one-piece and a fur cropped coat, her long black shiny hair looking splendidly, the Rio de Janeiro native oozed confidence, and proceeded to belt out the words to baile funk banger “Favela Chegou” (or Favela has arrived), a single from her 2019 full-length Hello Mundo.

Rock in Rio is one of the world’s largest music festivals, drawing in roughly 700K attendees annually, and the performer had hordes of fans losing their minds over her captivating vocal range and powerful stage presence — and, to keep it real, her twerking dexterity. In March, she will appear in Lollapalooza Brasil, the same month that her next album drops. Her prior studio release, Numanice #2 (2022), garnered the singer her first Latin Grammy for best samba/pagode album.

Ludmila Oliveira da Silva was born to sing. It’s something that comes “from inside my soul,” she tells Billboard Español over Zoom. The artist had just returned home to Rio from a business trip to Argentina. She mentions proudly that she writes most of her songs, and began to do so at an early age. Her inspiration? Seeing The Beyoncé Experience Live (2007) on DVD, a game-changer for the pre adolescent. “I saw her so free on stage, so happy, so confident, and I wanted to do that too,” she recalls. “That’s how I found myself in music.”

For a short stint in her early career, Ludmilla dubbed herself MC Beyoncé, and released her breakout hit “Fala Mal de Mim” (2013) under that stage name —  a viral YouTube release that clocked in at 15 million views at the time. While Queen Bey has been her number one idol, she also takes cues from SZA, Kehlani, and Rihanna. “They caused all this, you know?” she muses. “I really wanted to externalize these things that I feel inside me.”

Although Ludmilla’s admiration for American neo-soul, pop and R&B have helped fuel her creative wanderlust, her love for homegrown sounds is unparalleled. She built her artistic persona embracing Brazilian art forms, from samba to pagode and funk carioca, with an enigmatic flow that’s all in Portuguese where she reps life in the favelas, self empowerment anthems, and rendezvous encounters. She’s a household name in her native country, who’s widely recognized as the Rainha da Favela (or Queen of the Favela).

“I come from the favela here in Rio de Janeiro, where funk is a very strong genre. It’s a musical genre that saves lives,” she asserts. “In these communities, you have a lot of connections with funk and Black music.” Favelas have become synonymous with the slums, and although poverty and crime abound, music and culture are potent agents of change (think the roots of hip-hop in the Bronx).

“I started singing and began appearing in the media through funk. I saw that my musical range was wide, that I could do everything I dreamed of, everything I wanted to do. So I started to invest more in this, and now I am at this moment,” she says.

With a highly versatile ability to create riveting pop that spans Latin trap, funk, soul and more, coupled with her alluring stage presence, Ludmilla is poised for her Stateside breakthrough.

Name: Ludmila Oliveira da Silva

Age: 27

Recommended Song: “I would recommend ‘Rainha da Favela’ because it describes who I am as a person, where I come from, and what I’m about. It’s about me, and it encapsulates the image I want to deliver.”

Biggest achievement: “First my fans, and second is that now I have the power to control my own career because people want to hear what I have to say. I now have full artistic control in my own market and a management team that’s helping me on this path. “

What’s Next: The public can expect lots of different things, like private shows, called Lud Sessions, which have become pretty notorious. Lots of collabs with people from Brazil and beyond, and a new album due in March”.

I want to move on to some more recent interviews. I think that Ludmilla is going to be a worldwide name very soon. She is perhaps not as known in the U.K. as the U.S. perhaps. This is going to change as we head through this year. Remezcla talked to Ludmilla about singing in Spanish and performing with Beyoncé:

“After an outstanding year, 2024 feels like the right time for Ludmilla to embrace her dreams of an international career fully. And if she needed a sign, the invitation to perform at the main stage of Coachella came just at the right time. “If I’ve been given such a cool stage to start an international career, I might as well take the chance to do something I’ve always wanted and been asked to do [by fans]: to sing in another language,” she shares.

Though Ludmilla humbly admits she is not fluent in Spanish, she is dedicating herself to studying the language. “I know I will have to take risks and I will make mistakes [while trying to speak in Spanish], but that’s how we learn,” she adds.

But singing in a second language and performing at arguably the most famous festival in the world are minor challenges for someone who has overcome several hardships related to racism and homophobia back home. As a Black woman starting as a funk MC in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in 2012, she had a hard time being taken seriously as an artist. And after she broke that barrier, more hate and prejudice came in 2019 after revealing she was in a relationship with a woman, her now wife Brunna Gonçalves.

Only I know what I go through in my own country, let alone [what can happen] in a different country. But I am brave. Even if I’m scared, I go on anyway.

Though there’s no assurance that Ludmilla won’t face the same prejudices abroad, she’s ready to take on anything. “Only I know what I go through in my own country, let alone [what can happen] in a different country,” she shares. “But I am brave. Even if I’m scared, I go on anyway.”

Despite the sour side of fame, fulfilling her younger self’s dreams gives her strength. In November 2023, Ludmilla was among a select group of Brazilian personalities who met Beyoncé during her surprise appearance in Salvador to promote Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé. It was a meeting that would’ve seemed unthinkable for teenage Ludmilla, who went by MC Beyoncé before her first album release in 2014.

“Beyoncé is my biggest influence in music. To meet her had always seemed [like such a] distant [possibility]. But to know that she knows me and was excited to meet me? I was so surprised,” she exclaims.

Looking back, meeting Beyoncé feels even more special, given the recent release of the Houstonian singer’s latest album, Cowboy Carter. As Brazilian funk conquers more fans across the world, Beyoncé included a sample of DJ Mandrake on “SPAGUETTII.” Merely hours after its release, we ask Ludmilla about this culture clash. “I know Beyoncé is very attentive, does a lot of research, and looks for new music and producers across the world,” she says. “It would be pretentious to think I presented Brazilian funk to her. Perhaps I have shown her different ways of singing and dancing funk, but when I started my career, she was already dancing to funk in Rock in Rio [in 2013].”

While grateful and proud of her origins, Ludmilla’s sound and brand are no longer restricted to funk or any genre or label in Brazil. “I am a singer. If I have a purpose, if I want to do something [in a different genre], I won’t hold back. I consider myself an artist. That’s it,” she says.

Now, it’s time for the rest of the world to know all of her sides. “I’ve dedicated myself so much to ‘Piña Colada,’ and the outcome is amazing. The video is fun, it’s sarcastic, it has a double entendre. And there’s so much more to come. I’m rehearsing for Coachella, and after that, there’ll be an international leg of Numanice, a new pop tour in Brazil, more international songs… I am very excited about this moment of my career,” Ludmilla exclaims”.

I am going to end with a new interview from The Guardian. Some important British press that will bringing Ludmilla’s name to more people here. I hope that she gets booked for a lot of U.K. festivals going forward. If you have not heard her music or know much about Ludmilla, then I would encourage you to seek her out. She is a phenomenal artist who is going to have a very long career:

“Already the most listened-to Black artist in Brazil and a favourite of Beyoncé, Ludmilla has a whole new audience after her viral Coachella show. She discusses the racism and homophobia she’s had to face getting this far

In between her two-weekend debut at Coachella earlier this month, while the first concert was going viral, the Brazilian singer Ludmilla did business meetings, spent a day in Miami and kicked off new music projects. This interview took place on her way back from a short trip to the mountains surrounding the Hollywood sign, a call squeezed into a schedule that will end with a party: “I deserve some fun too,” she says.

She is following the guidebook to pop stardom, with her sights on an international career. Performing a repertoire of Portuguese-language songs, drawing from Brazil’s raw baile funk sound as well as pagode (a modern branch of samba), Ludmilla has already won a Latin Grammy and become the most listened-to Black artist in Brazil, and one of the only women of Afro-Latin heritage anywhere to reach a billion streams on Spotify and do a set on Coachella’s main stage. One of her admirers, Beyoncé, sent over a voice note to introduce it: “From Rio to Coachella, ladies and gentleman, Ludmilla!”

“This is a new, strange scenario to me,” she says. “To me it’s not possible that in a country like Brazil, with so many Black women and more than 500 years of history, I am the first Black woman to sell out a stadium; the first one to reach one billion streams.”

Born in 1995, Ludmilla was raised in Duque de Caxias, one of the most populous suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. Baile funk was filling every corner of Rio by the end of the 90s, and became her bread and butter. In 2012, she released her first single, Fala Mal de Mim, under the moniker MC Beyoncé. She dropped the alias two years later, but never left the Bey-hive – hence the Coachella shoutout.

IN THIS PHOTO: Ludmilla kissing her wife Brunna Gonçalves on stage/PHOTO CREDIT: Steff Lima

“Today, I’m more secure of who I am,” she says, while stressing her beginnings. “I’m a pagodeira, and I love R&B, but I’m also a funkeira. Baile funk comes from our communities, from people like me who started singing because we were trying to have a better life. We weren’t worried about what gringos wanted from us. Black people must take the baile funk movement by the hands.”

Fifty-five per cent of Brazilians are Black or mixed race, but white people occupy many of the prominent positions in music, from performers to executives. “When I first started as a singer, I was a victim of racism and I used to suffer in silence,” she says. “But now I know how important I am and how I can help women like me. After I performed at Coachella, on the first weekend, I saw many Brazilian people crucifying me on social media, just because of racism. This is a struggle I can’t just give up. But it’s annoying – a white singer doesn’t need to speak out about this.”

The day after Ludmilla’s second Coachella performance, Brazilian social media flooded with further controversy: sharp-eyed viewers noted a quick frame projected on Ludmilla’s stage backdrop displaying a street sign that championed Jesus Christ over Tranca-Rua, a key figure of Afro-Brazilian candomblé and umbanda religions. Some people accused her of propagating religious intolerance – violence towards Afro-Brazilian religions has been growing as evangelical Christianity becomes more and more popular – while others argued the picture was just a raw, real glimpse of today’s Brazil.

She defended herself robustly on Twitter and referred to Erika Hilton, a Black and transgender Brazilian MP whose words also introduced Ludmilla’s concert at Coachella: “This is my house and in my house I will not tolerate any kind of hatred.” When I ask her about it, she’s now guarded – “I don’t have a religion, and I believe that prejudice is profoundly sad” – but opens up a little more when discussing Brazilian politics.

Ludmilla has been married to Gonçalves for four years, a wedding that took place in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Despite same-sex unions having been ruled as legal by the Brazilian supreme court in 2011, the country’s lower house MPs drafted a bill in 2023 stating they would be contracts rather than marriages. “It’s not the best scenario, but we have evolved and we can’t step back in this matter,” she says. “Lots of bisexual and lesbian women told me after my Coachella concert that they felt represented”.

A truly awesome and inspirational artist, the amazing Ludmilla is someone that everyone should know. Do add her to your playlist and follow her career. I am fairly new to her, yet I am compelled to follow her closely. It only takes a few seconds of listening to her music before you…

ARE truly hooked.

____________

Follow Ludmilla

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ludmilla/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/ludmilla

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3CDoRporvSjdzTrm99a3gi?si=A31wqmgJQAeZ9Ws0IWkVBA

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSCB1IQUmNa8Gn5VfSUAUpg

FEATURE: Change The Tune: Highlighting the Impact Online Abuse Has on Artists

FEATURE:

 

 

Change The Tune

IN THIS PHOTO: BBC Radio 6 Music presenter Afrodeutsche

Highlighting the Impact Online Abuse Has on Artists

_________

WE live in a time…

PHOTO CREDIT: Tracy Le Blanc/Pexels

when it is so hard to police and eradicate online abuse. We can identify when it happens, though it is always tough to completely ban. People can be blocked from social media, yet there are so many fake accounts and ways that trolls and abusers can make their way back. It is an impossible situation. I don’t think that social media platforms do quite enough to ensure that those responsible for harassment and abuse are not allowed to do it again. Artists are not immune to abuse. It turns my attention to an initiative that BBC Radio 6 Music are launching as part of BBC’s Mental Health Awareness season. I wanted to bring it to focus:

“As part of the BBC’s Mental Wellbeing season, BBC Radio 6 Music will launch Change The Tune - an on-air, digital and social media initiative to raise awareness of the impact that online abuse has on the lives of artists.

We will hear from musicians and presenters, who will share their online experiences, as well as from mental health professionals about the effects that personal attacks online can have on individuals and their lives.

In response, 6 Music will launch a clear code of conduct and a new means of reporting comments of concern on its own social media platforms.

The initiative will feature:

·        A Journeys In Sound special on 6 Music (Monday 13th May, 11pm-12am), presented by 6 Music broadcaster and psychotherapist Nemone and featuring Rebecca Lucy Taylor (Self Esteem), Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHES, Nitin Sawhney CBE and SHERELLE.

·        Lauren Mayberry: I Change Shapes – a 1 x 15 minute documentary for BBC iPlayer (live from 6am on Monday 13th May).

·        A social media initiative across 6 Music’s platforms (from 10am on Monday 13th May) which will see the station share: a clear code of conduct for its online community; a new means of reporting comments of concern; and films from 6 Music’s AFRODEUTSCHE, Craig Charles, Deb Grant, Jamz Supernova and SHERELLE, as well as Gossip and Hak Baker about their own online experiences.

Working in partnership with 6 Music for Change The Tune is Music Minds Matter – sister charity of Help Musicians, which supports the mental health of everyone working in music in the UK.

Lauren Mayberry says: "The internet has been such an intrinsic part of my career, positively and negatively. Social media was really baked into the way that CHVRCHES first got discovered but there were consistent side effects to that which I don't think I would ever have anticipated. We know a lot more now in terms of the impact that can have on people but I'm not sure how we change that behaviour, or the conversation around it." 

In support of Change The Tune, 6 Music presenter Guy Garvey says: “Our social media is for celebrating artists. It celebrates the people listening as well. By tuning into 6 Music, you're already part of this community. I'd say the rule should be, support good ideas, and if you don't like something, keep it to yourself.”

Nemone says: “It’s been really thought-provoking speaking to artists about their lived experience with social media and to hear first-hand about the impact that online comments of a personal nature have. It brought home to me how important it is for us all to reflect on how we show up online and the kind of community we want to shape.”

Samantha Moy, Head of BBC Radio 6 Music says: “6 Music has always aimed to be a positive and uplifting place for artists and fans alike, where we celebrate the widest range of music possible, both on-air and across platforms. With Change The Tune, we want to give musicians the space to share their online experiences, the good and the bad. At the same time, we will put measures in place that we hope will make our corner of the internet a kinder, encouraging and more supportive place for musicians’ work. I’d like to thank all the artists, presenters and our colleagues across the music industry who have contributed so openly to Change The Tune, as well as to Music Minds Matter for their support.” 

Laurie Oliva, Director of Services and Research, Help Musicians and sister charity Music Minds Matter says: “Musicians pour their souls into their performances and records in a uniquely personal way, which means sharing their music is an inherently vulnerable endeavour. At Music Minds Matter, we understand the mental health pressure that can come with a job in music, especially for artists who often need to be on social media to grow their fanbases and build sustainable careers. However, being online should be a place to find your tribe, not to divide. We’re so pleased to partner with 6 Music on this important series and ensure those who may be struggling know they have a charity that will listen, understand and help.”

Journeys In Sound (6 Music)

On Monday 13th May (11pm-12pm), 6 Music will broadcast a Journeys In Sound special, in which 6 Music presenter and psychotherapist Nemone hears from Rebecca Lucy Taylor, otherwise known as Self Esteem, Lauren Mayberry of the synth-pop band CHVRCHES, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Nitin Sawhney CBE, the BBC’s disinformation and social media correspondent Marianna Spring, 6 Music presenter, DJ and artist SHERELLE, as well as psychotherapist and former Babyshambles member Dr Adam Ficek about their perspectives on online abuse and the challenges they have faced in the digital space.

IN THIS PHOTO: SHERELLE

Rebecca, Lauren, Nitin and SHERELLE talk openly and frankly in the programme about their use of social media as a tool to promote their music and connect with fans, and reveal how such platforms have made them a target for shocking misogynistic and racial abuse.

Marianna comments on the digital world in which we find ourselves now. She shares her own experiences of receiving extreme hate online, the repercussions it has on her everyday life as an investigative reporter and the importance of shining a light on the darker areas of the internet.

Nemone also explores the subject with Dr Adam, the founder of Music & Mind, an independent service that helps musicians, creatives and music industry workers navigate their mental health and wellness.

Lauren Mayberry and Nemone will also discuss Change The Tune on Lauren Laverne’s BBC Radio 6 Music show on Monday 13th May (7.30am-10.30am) and Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show on Wednesday 15th May (12pm-2pm).

A BBC Audio production.

All radio programming will be available on BBC Sounds.

Lauren Mayberry: I Change Shapes (BBC iPlayer)

Live on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Monday 13th May, CHVRCHES frontwoman Lauren reflects on the highs and lows of her journey in music as she launches her solo career.

From worldwide success to online trolling and misogyny, the singer-songwriter speaks candidly about putting negative experiences as an artist behind her - including online threats – and the cathartic nature of her solo writing, which she describes as ‘psychological unstitching’.

Before her time as the frontwoman of CHVRCHES, multi-instrumentalist Lauren made an impact locally in the Glasgow music scene and was surrounded by a group of like-minded friends, who she met through TYCI: a DIY feminist fanzine that she co-founded to address gender imbalance in music.

National and international success followed and Lauren was quickly thrust into an exciting new world, however, there was a darker side. Lauren recalls how the narrative around her success was often centered on gender and image, rather than musicianship, and how she frequently faced abuse online, including misogynistic comments and violent threats.

This documentary will see Lauren explain how her fight against abuse made its way into her writing and how her experiences motivated her to move forward in an empowering and progressive way.

Commissioned by BBC Scotland and produced by BBC Scotland Productions.

IN THIS PHOTO: Jamz Supernova/PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lambert

Social media

On Monday 13th May from 10am, 6 Music will launch Change The Tune across its social media platforms.

The station will reaffirm its mission for its online spaces - which includes the support and celebration of artists - and outline a clear code of conduct for its online community. The code of conduct is as follows:

In addition, there will be a new and simplified method for reporting comments of concern, with artists and fans alike able to contact the station via an email address that will be available on 6 Music’s social media platforms from 10am on Monday 13th May.

Across the week, (Monday 13th – Friday 17th May) 6 Music’s social media accounts will post films from artists and 6 Music presenters - AFRODEUTSCHE, Craig Charles, Deb Grant, Gossip, Hak Baker, Jamz Supernova and SHERELLE - in which they’ll share their personal experiences of online abuse.

Music Minds Matter

Partnering with 6 Music on Change The Tune is Help Musicians’ sister charity Music Minds Matter – its range of services include a 24/7 support line, available for free to everyone working in music in the UK.

Audiences can visit BBC Action Line for more information about how to get in touch with Music Minds Matter, from Monday 13th May onwards.

The BBC’s Mental Wellbeing season

Change The Tune is part of the BBC’s Mental Wellbeing season, which takes place throughout May. The BBC will be bringing audiences a range of mental health and wellbeing content across its platforms and services, highlighting stories of those who have faced mental health struggles as well as helping audiences understand how to look after their mental wellbeing, and where to go for support. More information is available at bbc.co.uk/mental wellbeing.

Journeys In Sound

The Change The Tune special of Journeys In Sound marks the start of a new four-part series of the returning programme (Monday 13th – Thursday 16th May, 11pm-12am). Journeys In Sound sees 6 Music’s Nemone explore the link between music and the mind and combine her role as broadcaster and integrative psychotherapist to find out how music really affects us.

IN THIS PHOTO: Alison Mosshart/PHOTO CREDIT: David James Swanson

Further episodes will see Nemone in conversation with Alison Mosshart (Tuesday 14th May), Paul Weller (Wednesday 15th May) and Jane Weaver (Thursday 16th May) about the songs that have soundtracked the ups and downs of their lives. 

Alison Mosshart, artist and one half of enigmatic duo The Kills, discusses: growing up in the sleepy town of Vero Beach in Florida; how she convinced her parents to let her travel abroad as a young teenager with her first band Discount; her surprising love of Annie the musical; how she met her bandmate Jamie Hince on a trip to London; letting go on stage; long car journeys as a form of self-care; and how she has maintained a level of mystique in a world of social media. Featuring music from Led Zeppelin, Gang Green, PJ Harvey, Fugazi, The Dead Weather and Captain Beefheart. 

Speaking about whether she feels it’s difficult to maintain distance in the era of social media, Alison Mosshart says: “I don’t really think it is, you just have to not post every day. I think it is up to you. I get it, I get the pressure, especially with work, especially with the way things are, having to brand yourself on such an extreme level to actually have a career in music and it’s really sad. It’s horrible. I hope I never have to do that because I will be the worst at it. It’s not going to come naturally to me.” 

Paul Weller, the prolific, award-winning singer and songwriter affectionally known as “The Modfather” by his fans, reveals: what life growing up with the Wellers in Woking was like; the impact of The Jam’s success and subsequent split had on him; working with his musical ‘brother’ Steve Cradock of Ocean Colour Scene; the joy he feels playing live; how his life has changed since giving up alcohol; and how he tries to look after himself. Featuring music from The Beatles, Little Richard, The Four Tops, The Who, The Sex Pistols and The Clash. 

Speaking in the programme, Paul Weller says: “Music was my escape […] I used to peer over the city walls and think ‘yeah one day I’m going to escape this and I’m going to go and do something else’. And that’s what music’s enabled me to do. But also in the first place, music made me realise there were other possibilities as well.”

Jane Weaver, who has performed as part of the Britpop group Kill Laura, the folktronica project Misty Dixon and as a solo artist, talks to Nemone about: growing up in Widnes; the influence the Liverpool music scene had on her as a teenager; the pitfalls of the music industry; living with coeliac disease and the long road to a diagnosis; overcoming an eating disorder and postnatal depression; and the tragic disappearance of her Misty Dixon band mate, Dave Tyack. Featuring music from Prince, U2, OMD, 10,000 Maniacs, The Icicle Works, Hawkwind and The Velvet Underground. 

Speaking in the programme, Jane Weaver says: “It’s made me kind of resilient but I have experienced quite a lot of sexism in my time. Just people treat me differently because I’m a woman […]. I seem to get some kind of Columbo-style detective people who will interview you and say ‘exactly what did you do on your record’ […]. I’m fine being a nerd and talking about process or talking about instruments or technical things or things I did or didn’t do. I’m quite happy to do that but a long few minutes in I realise ah, you’re only asking me that because you think a man is behind everything.” 

About BBC Radio 6 Music 

With a reach of 2.52m listeners (Rajar Q4, 2023), 6 Music brings a broad range of music and culture beyond the mainstream to music lovers with a curious spirit, combining the cutting-edge music of today with the iconic, ground-breaking sounds of the past 50 years. Presenters include: AFRODEUTSCHE, Amy Lamé, Cerys Matthews, Chris Hawkins, Craig Charles, Deb Grant, Don Letts, Emily Pilbeam, Gideon Coe, Gilles Peterson, Guy Garvey, Huw Stephens, Huey Morgan, Iggy Pop, Jamz Supernova, Lauren Laverne, Marc Riley, Mark Radcliffe, Mary Anne Hobbs, Nathan Shepherd, SHERELLE, Steve Lamacq, Stuart Maconie, Tom Ravenscroft and Tom Robinson. 

About Help Musicians and Music Minds Matter

Help Musicians and sister charity Music Minds Matter are powered by a love of music, which is why they empower and support those who create it and make it happen.

Music Minds Matter puts mental wellbeing centre stage in music. It works proactively to help prevent mental health crises, providing everybody who works in music with the early support, knowledge and tools they need, at exactly the time they need them.

For over 100 years, Help Musicians has been working hard to make a meaningful difference to the lives of musicians across the UK. It offers a broad range of help to support music creators in times of crisis and opportunity - ensuring musicians across the UK can achieve their creative potential and sustain a career in music”.

It is going to be amazing and important hearing BBC Radio 6 Music’s Change The Tune. If you were not aware of it, I hope that the press release above gives you motivation to listen. I also hope that it opens up conversations about online abuse and how it affects artists. I follow so many who have experienced it. It is always devastating and unacceptable. It can have such a massive impact. For that reason, it is so important that the like of Change The Tune exists. I hope that it can genuinely lead to change online. Artists deserve to feel safe and respected online (as does everyone). Let’s hope that we can see improvement and change…

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

VERY soon.

FEATURE: Dream of… Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Dream of…

Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication at Twenty-Five

_________

ONE of the most popular…

and successful albums of the late-1990s, I have been thinking particularly of albums that turns twenty-five this year. Those great albums that were released in 1999. At the end of the decade (century and millennium), it was a fascinating time for music. Some really timeless and extraordinary albums came out. I think one of the best was from Red Hot Chili Peppers. On 8th June, 1999, the band released their seventh studio album. I think that it might be their finest work. Some might argue. Others might not like the band. I have to admit I am not a huge fan, though I do really like Californication. It came out as I was about to leave high school. A few months later, I would leave a school I had been for five years and was about to embark on the next step. I was embracing music and connecting with it in a different way. It was s source of comfort, guidance and inspiration. I am going to come to some features and reviews for the mighty Californication. Produced by Rick Rubin, the album was a number one in several countries, though not the U.S. and U.K. Even so, it was a top-five in both nations. Big singles like Scar Tissue and Californication are indelible and classic. Incredible tracks that have stood the test of time. I think Californication has aged well. It still pops and has a real sense of gravitas. Not only because Rick Rubin is producing. The fact the band are still going today gives the album a real and true sense of relevance. I wonder whether there is anything planned for its twenty-fifth anniversary. You can go and pick up a copy of the album. I wonder if a new vinyl reissue will come about. There is a Deluxe Edition with some extra tracks. I think that a new reissue or expanded edition would be great.

There will be some twenty-fifth anniversary features. Before coming to some reviews, I will look at twentieth anniversary features that came out in 2019. I would seriously urge anyone who has not heard the album to check it out. I discovered it new and carried it through sixth form college. I remember when Californication’s follow-up, By the Way, came out in 2002. It was a big album for my during university. A band I heard earlier in the 1990s, they made a big impression in 1999. I remember buying the Scar Tissue single when it came out in May 1999. It was a real revelation! Even though I do not love all of the tracks, there are at least four or five songs on the album that rank alongside the band’s best. I will start out with Albumism and their 2019 anniversary feature:

“Happy 20th Anniversary to Red Hot Chili Peppers’ seventh studio album Californication, originally released June 8, 1999.

The anecdote goes something like this. In September 1991, L.A funk rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers released their now classic record Blood Sugar Sex Magik. This record was the band’s fifth and took them from a cult concern to international superstardom mainly thanks to the single releases of the mega anthem “Give It Away” and the beautiful rock ballad “Under The Bridge.” The band toured the record globally for years. The strain on the band was immense and the period ended with the band’s genius guitarist, John Frusciante, leaving to pursue a heroin addiction and an undercooked solo career.

In tatters but maintaining a united front (the Chilis’ had a knack for losing members), the band marched on, releasing a series of compilation records and live recordings, and in late 1995 eventually releasing another studio album titled One Hot Minute. Frusciante's replacement, former Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Narvarro offered the band a darker more metal edge to their funk rock sound. Though popular and offering another round of well-received singles (“Warped,” “Aeroplane”), One Hot Minute was not deemed a reputable follow-up to Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The record today is mostly discarded by fans and the bank alike.

Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith later said of the record, “We don't really feel that connected to that record anymore.” And perhaps it’s clear to see why. Musically it was a departure, but on a personal level, Narvarro and the band’s vocalist, Anthony Kiedis, were heavily into drug use. The record affiliates itself with a dark moment in the band’s personal lives.

A pause of several years for reflection and recovery whilst personal issues were ironed out followed. And then in 1999 came Californication, the return of a now fully recovered and clean John Frusciante to the band fold, and a renewed sense of purpose and unity. Californication scored the Chili Peppers a bunch of worldwide hits and saw tours of massive arenas the world over. They were redeemed.

In 2002, the band released their eighth studio record By the Way, which is something of a masterpiece in my own opinion. The record continues the sunny vibes of Californication and adds Beach Boy style harmonies and even more introspective lyricism to the mix. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

In terms of artistry, musical direction, lyrical themes, and stylistics, the distance between Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Californication may as well be light years. The band were older and wiser for having experienced everything that had come within that decade. Even in terms of aesthetics, the band appears so very different from their 1991 funk-boy incarnation.

Sure enough, compare Blood Sugar Sex Magik’s more risque risqué songs such as “Apache Rose Peacock” and “Sir Psycho Sexy” with anything on Californication and you’ll see the appetite for the carnal has been replaced with a yearning for the spiritual, though there are examples such as the throwaway “Get on Top” and the perverse “Purple Stain” that hollaback to the band’s early primal urges but they don’t gel as well.

Californication spouts enough new-age pop-psychology in its lyrics to make even the most money-grabbing practitioner blush. The song “Californication” itself is a dark meditative reflection on the cheap and tacky underbelly of the sunny side of Hollywood lifestyles. Like Hole’s Celebrity Skin, released a year before, it lays waste to the idea that fame and fortune in Hollywood is a noble endeavor. But it does this in a series of couplets such as, “space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement,” that capture the absurdity perfectly.

So here’s the crux: the distance in time between the two records is just under a decade. 1991 to 1999. This doesn’t seem a huge leap of time, but the artistic jump the band achieved during that period feels extraordinary. And here’s the other, quite extraordinary thing, the distance in time, as of writing, between Californication and now is twenty years (hence this anniversary article) and every day that time period is lengthening.

Yet, to my mind the band is perpetually stuck in this short artistic timeframe. I haven’t experienced enough post-Californication Red Hot Chili Peppers—with the exception of By the Way—enough to shake them out of what I perceive as a golden period. 1991 to 1999 will always remain the same distance and a brilliant example of an artistic evolution.

But I also feel that the Chili Peppers have hardly evolved from the point of Californication. To my mind they appear to be the same band now—at least in sound—as they were then. I know in some respects I’m wrong. Their current guitarist, Josh Klinghoffer, who has been with the band since 2007 (when Frusciante vacated again), has brought a whole new set of talents to the overall sound of the band. But without experiencing that youthful rush, I’m lost.

Back to the record for a moment. The evolution in sound was not met with overall praise from critics. In its review, NME joked, “Can we have our brain-dead, half-dressed funk-hop rock animals back now, please?” and in some respects the reaction to this can be explained.  Because of the lack of albums to reveal the sonic/lyrical evolution, the Chili Peppers made big leaps that were not fully understood by critics or listeners. This is the Chili Peppers in the lost 1990s. A band that should have, much like they did in the 1980s, released a cluster of records that improved continuously on their sound in a more progressive sense. A band that should have dominated the landscape of rock and funk and MTV culture. Instead we only got one relatively mediocre record bookmarked by two brilliant, yet very different records.

For me and no doubt many others of my generation, the 1990s are an incredible stretch of time. I started the decade still in primary school, by the decade’s end I was legally drinking, I’d had numerous girlfriends, and I’d even had sex, I was staying out late, I was contemplating leaving home. My personality, my very identity was forged during this decade. It took many attempts and many failures to find the rudimentary person I would become in adulthood.

This is the way every generation, at least in the post-war era in which teenage responsibility was vanquished, feels about their youth. The Baby Boomers long for the idealism of the Sixties, Generation X has a deep fondness for the Reaganite Eighties and older millennials like myself long for the ‘90s. It will be the same for future generations I’m sure.

The era in which one finds themselves, in which one grows, will be ingrained as deeply affecting, and these chops and changes will feel like they happen within an eternity whilst experiencing it, but when time stretches away from those moments it all feels incredibly short. Anything after this blissful era is just surplus time. An article by Marc Wittmann in Psychology Today posits that, “It is probably true that life cannot be experienced with the same freshness we felt when we were much younger. That is what ‘experience’ means: losing the sense of novelty.”

As I get older I’m experiencing this loss of novelty and by all accounts so are the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Californication is the Chili Peppers as grown-ups. We would never experience them in any other way again”.

I will move to a feature from Stereogum. They take a deep dive into a classic from the 1990s. Perhaps the defining work from Red Hot Chili Peppers. I listen back to Californication now and memories flood through. Listening to these songs for the first time. It summons so many vivid moments and scenes:

“For many young people around the country, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were a gateway band — a popular group through the ’90s alt-rock boom from whom you could trace the paths back to different progenitors than those of their peers. (Plenty ’90s rock acts could point you to Hendrix, but RHCP could also point you to Parliament.) And as such, they were also the first impression of a lot of things for those young listeners, whether you were a teenager when Mother’s Milk came out or whether you were of the next generation, RHCP one part of your introduction by way of their massively successful late ’90s singles.

If you were part of the latter group, Californication might live on as their definitive work, rivaled only by their 1991 breakthrough Blood Sugar Sex Magik. This, in some ways, was the album that seemed to capture everything this band was always supposed to be. It made them feel, at the time and aided by a clutch of singles destined to soon be ubiquitous in every small town shopping mall and on every small town alt-rock station, as the embodiment of a certain kind of late ’90s iconography. Extreme sports and artificial energy drinks and turn of the millennium graphic fonts attendant to both. The same sun-drenched place glimpsed in ’90s alt-rock videos, where everything seemed more saturated than it could possibly look in real life.

It didn’t matter if this was authentic or the stuff of skateboard video games and sunglasses stores. This was yet another small chapter in America’s long history of mythologizing California, the Golden Coast and the frontier and the full realization of this country’s identity. The Peppers, for better or for worse, felt like the total fulfillment of that promise, a vaguely cartoonish one for the end of a century.

“Californication,” the song, despite being named with a very characteristically RHCP pun, was actually about the darker side of things. You see that name, and you’d immediately assume it was another piece of ribald funk with Anthony Kiedis offering up a semi-juvenile rap. Instead, it’s a fairly mournful, balladic composition. There are still some clunkier lines, naturally, but there are also some truly poignant ones. Rather than a celebration of their hometown and its mythology, “Californication” echoed the addiction, alienation, and self-destruction that had actually colored the individual lives of the Chili Peppers’ members.

Californication, the album, is not exactly “dark.” But it is more consistently gentle and somber than they had ever been before. At this point, this band, and its individual members, had been through it. And you could hear that in the music. Californication represented a previously hard-to-imagine prospect: an older, ever so slightly wiser Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The Chili Peppers had already come back from horrible circumstances. They had already lost one guitarist and friend to drug addiction, when Hillel Slovak overdosed in 1988. It compelled Kiedis — whose tumultuous upbringing and relationship with substances would be further detailed in his 2004 memoir Scar Tissue, named for one of Californication’s key tracks — to get clean. His struggle would continue on through the ’90s, with one relapse casting a shadow over 1995’s already-troubled One Hot Minute. After Slovak’s death, they’d hired a kid named John Frusciante, and the band went on to release albums that started to gain wider and wider traction, initially peaking with Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The explosion of fame proved a lot to process, and Frusciante departed the band and subsequently battled a brutal heroin and cocaine addiction through the middle of the decade.

The ensuing years were not easy for the rest of RHCP either. Aside from Kiedis’ personal struggles, the prospect of following Blood Sugar Sex Magik was challenging, especially as they tried to find a groove with their new guitarist, Dave Navarro. The chemistry never quite developed, and despite having some strange, enduring RHCP tunes, One Hot Minute was regarded as a disappointment by every metric — the hits weren’t big, it didn’t sell as well, neither critics nor fans embraced it. Navarro would leave the band, and Flea convinced Frusciante to rejoin the fold.

It was a strange place to be. RHCP had already been around since the early days of the ’80s, but they were now approaching the other side of another decade, one that had granted them stardom. They had already undergone runaway popularity, the valleys that can follow; they had already undergone addiction and recovery and loss in multiple cycles. The only album they had released since their breakthrough had been written off as a failure. And so, going into the late ’90s, they had rebuilt what in hindsight can easily be called the definitive Chili Peppers lineup — Kiedis, Flea, Frusciante, and Chad Smith. And they were positioned for, in need of, a comeback moment. They got one.

Whether it was the travails of life or having Frusciante back, RHCP returned with an album that broke new ground for them artistically. Softer, more introspective, more tasteful. Kiedis, suddenly, could really, really sing when he wanted to. (There’re plenty of annoying honks across the album still, but there’s also singing.) It was a rebirth for the band creatively, personally, and narratively. Californication became a huge success, surpassing the heights of its predecessors and unleashing a series of singles that became some of the band’s pivotal tracks.

Along with the aforementioned title track and “Scar Tissue,” Californication also featured “Otherside” — a genuinely pretty and cathartic composition that ranks amongst the band’s very best. It’s hard not to hear the reintroduction of Frusciante as being crucial to songs like these. In his second run with RHCP, there was always something odd about seeing him onstage. He seemed sadder and weirder than the rest of the band, or at least than the music they made. And that in turn pushed RHCP in this era, Frusciante’s guitar work effortlessly shifting between clean and fluid, then percussively funky and precise, classicist then wildly creative. Say what you will about the resulting sounds they made collectively, but RHCP could always boast a small collection of musicians who played off each other perfectly. Frusciante was vey much a part of that, his guitars adding just the right textures to the rhythms of Flea and Smith, his background keens lacing Kiedis’ melodies with melancholy.

All of which is to say that, the more mature iteration of RHCP some of us saw in this stretch of their career wasn’t ever 100% true, nor was the aging/soft version decried by those who missed the partying goofball pranksters of the past. If you still wanted RHCP to be fun and silly and puerile, there was a bit of that on Californication. If you had been curious what would happen if earlier, mellower tracks like “Under The Bridge” and “Breaking The Girl” had not been outliers, you got your answer on Californication. Across its 15 tracks, the album had a whole lot of room for all the moods and sounds this band wanted.

And oftentimes, those explorations, those sounds of a just-about-middle-aged Red Hot Chili Peppers, resulted in some of their best songs, including but also beyond those major singles. “Parallel Universe” remains one of their nimblest and most propulsive rock songs. Working off an inverted structure, “Savior” flipped between thunderous verses and dreamlike, wispy choruses (or chorus stand-ins).

It was fitting that Californication concluded with a tribute to journeys taken together, to the endurance of close bonds amidst trials and defeats. After their respective battles through the middle of the ’90s, Californication was the sound of four guys coming back together, still with some unspoken musical connection between them in their bloodstreams, and revitalizing each other. They crafted themselves a turning point.

From here, their magnitude was confirmed. Rather than continuing a potential decline set off by One Hot Minute, Californication redirected the path upward, to sustained status as one of the world’s last gigantic rock bands, to Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductions, to a striking amount of albums sold.

But more important than material metrics, Californication remains one of the prime arguments in a messy, surprisingly convoluted career if you are going to try and make your case for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. As popular as this band has been and will remain, debates will never go away regarding their actual quality. There is certainly a lot of embarrassing output to their name, and they’re being one of those bands you can get into easily at 13 years old always seems to saddle them with a guilty pleasure status as you get older.

Chances are none of that was on the mind of kids who found this album in 1999, though. They weren’t on mine, at least. At the time, it was the sound of these four guys reunited, at the height of their powers, not without missteps but able to evoke some fantasy place somewhere else. Later, you could decipher the darkness hanging at the edges, too. But for a while, the Red Hot Chili Peppers offered music that sounded like a transmission from the West Coast that was just as glamorous as more respectable Californian legends. Whatever you think of this band, that world they created resonated for a lot of young people then. And because of that, there’s something about Californication that still resonates today”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews for the globe-straddling Californication. This is what Entertainment Weekly had to say in their positive review of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ smash seventh studio album. One that is still played and revered to this day. I hear singles from the album played regularly across multiple radio stations:

“The Red Hot Chili Peppers couldn’t have picked a better year for an attempted comeback. Way back in the ’80s, the Chili Peppers’ overflowing keg of metal, rap, and funk pioneered the funky-white-boy pose, at both its best and worst. After the stumble of 1995’s almost-there One Hot Minute, though, they laid conspicuously low (thanks, in part, to accidents and recurring drug habits), and maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea: How much longer could they have carried on the horny-shirtless-stud shtick before descending into self-parody?

Starting with its elbow-in-ribs title (which makes one think they’ve been spending quality time with fellow sex-pun groaners Van Halen), Californication has the whiff of desperation. And when Anthony Kiedis opens his mouth, the situation grows even more dire: ”All around the world, we could make time/Rompin’ and a-stompin’, ’cause I’m in my prime,” he raps on the first track, ”Around the World.” You’re tempted to hit the stop button on your stereo then and there.

But then something startling happens. Perhaps it’s the return of guitarist John Frusciante, who played such an integral role in 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik. For the bulk of Californication, the Peppers sound more relaxed, less grating, and, in their own way, more introspective than ever before. The soul-searching sentiments of ”Otherside,” ”Californication” (which appears to take digs at Courtney Love and ”celebrity skin”), and the sobriety-imbued ”This Velvet Glove” are set to music that’s lilting and freshly scrubbed.

The rockers are powerful but not obnoxious (or clotted with popping bass lines), and the whirlybird pulse of ”Parallel Universe” also marks new turf for them. The Chili Peppers — Kiedis, in particular — can’t refrain from sub-beat-poetry lyrics, throwaways like ”I Like Dirt,” and the naughty finger-painting ode ”Purple Stain.” But those tendencies are kept to a minimum. Californication is the sound of aging party animals who sense the room is emptying out and that they’d better look for another, healthier buzz”.

I am going to end with a review from Rolling Stone. Although some have been mixed or a bit sniffy towards the album, there are those who find plenty of positives about Californication. It is an album with so much variety and depth. Some incredible and compelling songs that still sound so essential twenty-five years later:

“LET’S KEEP IT real: white boys do not have to be funky; they only have to rock, and that the Red Hot Chili Peppers do quite wickedly, thank you. Historically, though, RHCP albums have been long on sock-it-to-me passion but short on the songcraft that made their hero George Clinton’s most acid-addled experiments lyrically haunting and melodically infectious. Up until this new Peppers joint, Californication, that is. For Lord knows what reasons — age, sobriety, Blonde on Blonde ambitions or worship at the altar of Billy Corgan — they’ve settled down and written a whole album’s worth of tunes that tickle the ear, romance the booty, swell the heart, moisten the tear ducts and dilate the third eye. All this inside of song forms and production that reveal sublime new facets upon each hearing.

Back in the revolving-guitar saddle is John Frusciante, of Blood Sugar Sex Magik fame, who replaces the outgoing Dave Navarro (who, of course, replaced Frusciante himself not so long ago) and proves once again why he’s the only ax slinger God ever wanted to be a Pepper, too. As in days of yore, Frusciante continually hits the mark with slithery chicken licks, ingenious power chording, Axis: Bold as Love grace notes and sublimely syncopated noises that allow the nimble Flea to freely bounce back and forth between bombastic lead and architectonic rhythm parts on the bass. If there were a Most Valuable Bass Player award given out in rock, Flea could have laid claim to that bitch ten years running.

The real star turn on this disc, though, is by Anthony Kiedis, whose vocal cords have apparently been down to some crossroads and over the rehab, and returned with heretofore unheard-of range, body, pitch, soulfulness and melodic sensibility. On “Scar Tissue” he laces out a falsetto purple enough to have made Jeff Buckley swoon with envy; on “Savior” he croons and belts with enough chest-thumping pride to suggest that Vegas is just a kiss away, sustaining supple, buoyant tones with such ease, you know he must be amazing himself, too. (As a friend observed, if she didn’t know it was Kiedis, she would have thought the vocalist a Kiedis clone who could actually sing.) The point being that until you hear Californication, you haven’t ever heard Kiedis truly sang, as they say in the church, nor prove himself so adept and moving in the lyrics department, either. Just in time for Matrix fever, “Parallel Universe” speaks of an “underwater where thoughts can breathe easily/Far away you were made in a sea, just like me” to the beat of a track that hybridinally splits the difference between the Yardbirds and Eurodisco. (Flea and Frusciante’s remarkable handheld trillings on that one are more than a little technically impressive, we should add.)

The band treads more-familiar funk-rap ground on cuts like “Get on Top” and “Right on Time,” and on this album’s “Under the Bridge” reduxes — the title track and the aforementioned “Scar Tissue,” a dreamy Venice Beach pimp stroll with lullaby-lovely slide guitar. But songs like “Otherside” and “Porcelain” are delicate, vulnerable and volatile enough to earn the rubric Pumpkins-esque, while the baroque progressions and contrapuntal maneuvers heard on the hook-drunk “Easily” could have one thinking that the Chili Peppers car-jacked Elvis Costello and made off like musical bandits. The poetry found on “Easily” is no joke: “The story of a woman on the morning of a war/Remind me, if you will, exactly what we’re fighting for/Throw me to the wolves, because there’s order in the pack/Throw me to the sky, because I know I’m coming back.” As dope as all of the above are, however, they’re only the setup for the glistening simplicity and serenity displayed on the disc’s denouement, “Road Trippin’,” a finger-picked Olde English tyle number that ties the album up in a bow while gently inferring that Californication is the recovering singer’s way of reminding himself to wake up and live and be “a mirror for the sun.”

While all previous Chili Peppers projects have been highly spirited, Californication dares to be spiritual and epiphanal, proposing that these evolved RHCP furthermuckers are now moving toward funk’s real Holy Grail: that salty marriage of esoteric mythology and insatiable musicality that salvages souls, binds communities and heals the sick. Not exactly your average white band”.

On 8th June, the fantastic Californication turns twenty-five. Few bands can hit a new peak and level on their seventh studio album. A consistency and sense of importance that is pretty impressive. One of the finest albums from the final years of the twentieth century, I wanted to salute Californication ahead of its twenty-fifth anniversary. It is an album that I would recommend everyone listens to…

RIGHT away.

FEATURE: Every Second Counts: Will the Album Make a Full Comeback?

FEATURE:

 

 

Every Second Counts

IN THIS PHOTO: The cover for Billie Eilish’s forthcoming album, Hit Me Hard and Soft (out on 17th May) 

Will the Album Make a Full Comeback?

_________

I want to use an entire…

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift/PHOTO CREDIT: Beth Garrabrant

BBC article as a focus for an interesting conversation. They looked at artists like Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift and recent albums. In fact, Billie Eilish does not release Hit Me Hard and Soft until 17th May. Even though artists like Eilish have a couple of albums under their belt, it is not the case that they will put out a string of singles prior the release date. I think we have gotten so use to artists releasing three, four or five singles over the course of an album’s release and marketing campaign. I guess we have artists like Dua Lipa who are still going down the singles route. Regardless, Taylor Swift put out very little before The Tortured Poets Department recently. Billie Eilish is going to release her album without putting out singles. Swift and Eilish releasing an album without any singles coming out. It means that fans experience the album as it arrives without any preconceptions or guidance in terms of sound. I think singles can often be red herrings. Too many singles can be overwhelming and a bit full-on! It seems exhausting when you get so very much released from an album. I do know that mainly massive artists can afford releasing an album without singles coming. They will get huge sales and acclaim if an album comes out with no singles. The BBC look at a run of recent albums and how they have been promoted in regards single releases:

“Beyoncé released two in one go, Dua Lipa let her fans have three. Taylor Swift? She kept everything under wraps.

The Tortured Poets Department dropped last week with no singles released in advance and, next month, Billie Eilish says she'll be doing the same.

For years, commentators have been warning that the album is dead and the single reigns supreme.

That's partly down to streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music which let fans pick and choose their favourite tracks from artists and curate personalised playlists.

But could two of the world's biggest stars opting to ditch singles breathe life back into albums?

Announcing Hit Me Hard and Soft, Billie said she wanted her fans to hear the album in one go.

And in an interview with Rolling Stone, she explained why.

"Every single time an artist I love puts out a single without the context of the album, I'm just already prone to hating on it," she said.

"I really don't like when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don't want one little kid to be in the middle of the room alone."

Even though he's responsible for the weekly Official Singles Chart, Martin Talbot, the chief executive of the Official Charts Company, admits he's more of an album fan himself.

"It's fantastic that Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift are doing what appears to be something designed to push music fans back to the concept of an album," he tells BBC Newsbeat.

"There is a danger that music fans lose sight of what an album is and what an album represents.

"The album represents the kind of apex of the creative vision of a particular artist.

"And it's really important for the creative health of music and the cultural environment we preserve that."

PHOTO CREDIT: Stas Knop/Pexels

Fans take control

In the 70-year history of the charts, Martin says collating the top 40 singles has changed dramatically.

It started with calling around a few record stores each week to ask which singles - specially selected and released by musicians - were their bestsellers.

Now, thanks to streaming platforms, anything can be a single - and anything can enter the chart.

"The great thing about the digital environment is that it puts the control in the hands of the consumer, in the hands of music fans," Martin tells Newsbeat.

"Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, they may just be releasing albums, but each of those tracks that make up those albums is available to stream in isolation," he says.

"And if those tracks get enough streams, they will go into the singles chart, regardless of whether the artist deems them to be singles or not."

That decision could be a thing of the past for artists as big as Taylor and Billie, although Taylor did release a music video for one song - Fortnight - on the day her album dropped.

That went straight to number one, but other tracks that weren't officially promoted, including Down Bad and the eponymous The Tortured Poets Department, also debuted in the top five.

But for up and coming talents like Beth McCarthy singles are as important as ever.

Beth McCarthy performing on stage. Beth is a 26-year-old white woman with blonde hair dyed pink. She wears a grey denim crop top with a pink tartan tie around her neck. She holds a microphone to her face with her right hand, revealing a black line tattoo on her inner upper arm. Beth's eyes are closed as she sings, holding the microphone stand with her left hand. The staging behind her is lit purple

Singer Beth McCarthy says singles are still important for artists establishing their sound

"Singles are a massive part of what starts your career," the singer tells Newsbeat.

"It creates a way to release music without the pressure of making a whole body of work and figuring out an entire sound.

"It lets people get to know you but in short, little bits rather than having to do the whole big thing."

Beth, from London, will be performing at Radio 1's Big Weekend in May on the Introducing stage, and hopes to release her first album soon.

"I've been doing singles and EPs because they're a shorter way to create something that isn't going full pelt into an album," she says.

"And for me, making an album, I want it to be done properly and done in a way that really works together and feels like art."

Album art for Beyoncé's album, Cowboy Carter. Beyoncé is a 42-year-old black woman. She's styled in a red, white and blue patent cowboy-themed outfit including a cowboy hat, chaps and a buttoned up shirt. She's pictured sitting side-saddle on a white horse, her long silver hair flowing behind her. In her right hand, she holds the horse's reigns and in her left she holds aloft the American flag.

Beyoncé dropped two singles from Cowboy Carter in one go

Aside from refining an artist's sound, another good thing about releasing singles is how they can get fans excited for a new album.

"The single is still one of the most powerful promotional tools for an album," says Martin.

He gives Texas Hold 'Em as an example, one of two singles Beyoncé released from Cowboy Carter which he says "fed directly into the success of her album" - which debuted at number one.

But Martin says for most artists, singles have an important role to play in keeping album sales high.

"Part of the job of releasing singles is to keep the album in the public eye and to continue to ensure that people are reminded it exists," he says.

Vanishing from the limelight might not be a worry for Taylor, who within five days of releasing The Tortured Poets Department broke Spotify records with more than a billion streams.

She also broke UK chart records, with the album reaching number one and outselling the rest of the top 10 combined.

Could it be the start of a comeback for the album?

Billie's brother and collaborator Finneas suggested a return to listening to albums in full was due a comeback.

"We're not even at 'song' anymore," he told the magazine, saying music was increasingly being consumed in trending soundbites on TikTok.

But "everything's a counter-movement to the movement," he added.

"I think that's going to lead back to immersing yourself in an album. I really do”.

I don’t think that we will see a day where every major artists releases an album with no/one single beforehand. It can be quite risky and backfire! What is pleasing is that we have artists such as Billie Eilish keen to let fans experience an album. Not going down the route of singles coming out and there being this endless promotion and cycle. Even Beyoncé, with COWBOY CARTER, took an unusual path with her album. Not quite the same way of doing things. I feel there is a demand, against the brevity and ephemeral nature of platforms like TikTok, for albums and something fuller. Beth McCarthy is right when she says that artists need to release albums to establish their sound. New artists especially need to get singles out so that albums can get some traction and context. It is a complex debate and conversation. It is clear that the rise in vinyl sales and the fact physical music is doing so well is seeing artists react. Maybe they do not want to give too much away. An album is a very special and personal thing. Artists want fans to feel and absorb it as a single thing. If you take it apart and release singles, often people can listen to those singles and maybe skip album tracks. If you only have the album, then you are hearing it fresh and have no bias/favourite songs going in. I do hope that the desire for full albums and some big artists not releasing singles leads to others following suit. I don’t think that any new or rising artists should risk not releasing singles if they can’t afford to.

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

Vinyl sales are booming and we are also seeing cassettes and CDs taking off – though not hugely. I hope that manufacturers will put out devices so that people can listen to cassettes and CDs. That opportunity to listen to albums on the go. There is still a place for TikTok and artists putting out songs and snippets. Many may still want to release a string of singles before an album. There is nothing wrong with that. I feel that this reliance and way of doing things will fade slightly. Artists maybe not seeing the benefit of releasing singles. Too few views or videos not being embraced the way they once were. Instead, we will get the element of surprise. Not knowing what Billie Eilish’s album will sound like. I think it will result in more album sales and streams that otherwise would have been the case because people have that curiosity and blank canvas. Rather than it being a marketing ploy or anything cynical, these amazing young artists realise how important albums are. They do not want to take them apart or distil them. Albums have always been popular. The art of releasing an album with no singles and prioritising that has not been common with major artists. We will see others do this. Although not every one can or will do the same, there are positive steps towards artists eschewing releasing multiple singles and only doing one or two – or none at all! It is pleasing and exciting discovering artists such as Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift not releasing singles and instead putting out an album. It means that fans get…

A fulsome and dedicated listen.

FEATURE: New Waves of Appreciation: Why Kate Bush Being Discussed More in the U.S. Now Is Especially Timely

FEATURE:

 

 

New Waves of Appreciation

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in her home studio (in Kent) in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: George Bodnar

Why Kate Bush Being Discussed More in the U.S. Now Is Especially Timely

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I have been compelled…

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

by a recent video in which Kate Bush was being discussed by Rolling Stone contributors. On 24th April, they shared a video where one of her classics, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), was being dissected. More than that, they dissected and explored Kate Bush’s legacy and how her music has impacted through the years. They also speculated on her future in music. It interested me watching. How this U.S. source/video has come at a very interesting time. As part of their 500 Greatest Songs series, they looked deep into Kate Bush’s most popular track:

“Kate Bush has always been a fiercely original art-pop icon. But with “Running Up That Hill,” she achieved a new kind of feat. “Running Up That Hill” was a massive Top Ten hit, dominating U.S. radio all over the summer of 2022—even though it was a song she released back in 1985. Her classic synth-goth anthem sounded ahead of its time in the Eighties, but only Kate Bush could make it a song that STILL sounds ahead of its time nearly 40 years later.

In this week’s episode of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs, hosts Brittany Spanos and Rob Sheffield discuss the long, incredible legacy of Kate Bush and “Running Up That Hill.” They’re joined by their brilliant Rolling Stone colleague Julyssa Lopez, a Kate Bush expert and longtime hardcore fan, to discuss why “Running Up That Hill” speaks to our moment”.

There has been a lot going on recently regarding Kate Bush. I think a lot has shifted and changed since she was inducted (finally!) into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year. I feel that was a moment when Kate Bush was finally embraced and accepted by the U.S. Maybe a lot of that particular heavy lifting was done when Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was used in Stranger Things a couple of years ago. That led the song to top charts – including the U.K. – and connect with a new audience in America. Until very recently, Kate Bush had not really been embraced in the U.S. She never wanted to crack the country and be a success there. She never toured in America. Even so, in the past decade or two, she has had her music used in T.V. and film. It has been a very interesting time. The last few years has been a bit of a rolling ball that has grown larger. I am hearing new and rising artists around the world – and not only in the U.S. – who are inspired by Kate Bush and are discovering her fresh. Rolling Stone sitting down and spending some time talking about how iconic Kate Bush is. Beside some great placement in U.S. media and screen, there is this discussion and debate. I do think that things will accelerate and expand in the next couple of years. I am not saying this response and respect in the U.S. will compel Bush to record a new album. She will see that any album she brings out now will have a larger and more willing U.S. audience – even if 2011’s 50 Words for Snow was quite successful there. I do think that the U.S. could be one of Bush’s most warm and biggest markets. Looking on social media, there are so many followers I have in the U.S. who are either finding her music now or are familiar with her but are discovering new sides and layers. This could have a bigger impact and wave of possibility.

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Jon McCormack

It is humbling and a relief that her music has reached the U.S. in a very real and massive way. A lot of fairly recent documentaries about Kate Bush have come from the U.K. I do think that something could come from a U.S. source. As Bush’s music and career has reached new heights in America, this will lead to other documentaries and projects. Something that unites musicians and well-known fans of Kate Bush. Documents her start but brings things up to date. In the U.K., there have been recent magazine articles and there are books coming up about Kate Bush. Graeme Thomson is producing another issue of Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush. I think that we are going to see some U.S. books and a lot more spotlight here. Not that America is the be all and end all. I am curious how it will affect the rest of the world. I am musing here. It was just a nice surprise to see that Rolling Stone video. So much detail and discussion around Kate Bush. Some interesting exchanges and points. I feel like we are going to see Kate Bush love and representation come from all corners. Not only will there be a lot of new material – books and articles – published about Kate Bush. You can feel and see her legacy through so many artists coming through right now. That will only increase. I also think that major artists will pay tribute to Kate Bush in their own way. Whether that means covering one of her songs or being influenced and incorporating some of Bush’s sounds in their own work. I am hearing shades of Kate Bush in new work from artists such as St. Vincent and The Last Dinner Party.

Through all of this, I wonder how Kate Bush feels. I am not sure how much she sees when it comes to these videos and articles. She has posted updates to her websites and knows that there are so many new fans picking up her music. We are in a moment when there is perhaps more attention and detail analyses of her music than recent decades. Perhaps more than back in 1985 when Hounds of Love came out. I do have this sense of something incredible coming along. Maybe not from Kate Bush herself but the wider world. You can feel and see all these dedicated fans old and new more in love with her music and legacy than ever before. Great discussions and new books. We don’t know what the future holds, though I do think about how the U.S. is finally on board. How generations Z and Alpha are invested and finding the music. Maybe they are still quite narrow when it comes to the albums and songs. I do think one of the drawbacks of an album like Hounds of Love getting most of the focus is that so much of the listenership and streams goes there. That said, we have recently seen Army Dreamers go viral. That is from 1980’s Never for Ever. This album could well get some big moments. In that a song or songs from it could make their way to T.V. and film. I always think that there are albums of Bush’s that are ignored or not as regarded as they should be. I guess this is my thinking out loud. 2024 is a year where so much has happened already. There is this crackle and buzz in the air. More love and respect for Kate Bush than I have witnessed in years. This will only increase. I am fascinated what else is going to arrive this year. The more that comes in the way of Kate Bush appreciation, it does the beg the question as to…

WHAT might come next.

FEATURE: A Wonderful Blast from the Past… The Online Return of the Iconic Our Price

FEATURE:

 

 

A Wonderful Blast from the Past…

IMAGE CREDIT: Our Price

The Online Return of the Iconic Our Price

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THERE are signs of reversal and return…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alax Matias/Pexels

to a time that we thought had past. I mean, in the early-‘00s, few people would have predicted record shops would survive long. Also, when digital music started to take more of a hold and charge, it was understandable that physical music formats would prove less popular. Not only have compact discs and cassettes survived and continue to rise (slightly) in sale. We have a booming vinyl market and chains like HMV remain strong. The flagship HMV store on London’s Oxford Street was resurrected and reopened last year. It does seem there are leaves and shoots when it comes to returning – in a small way – to the prosperity of physical music and record shops in the 1990s. Another happy piece of news highlights how Our Price have returned. They will start online, though there is hope that stores will reopen soon. NME report how there the chain is back in business. It is a positive sign that their online presence could return to the high street:

“The classic UK music shop Our Price is set to relaunch later this month.

Our Price was a popular chain of record stores across the UK and Ireland, which launched in the early ‘70s and became a famous presence on high streets across the country up until the early ‘00s.

Founded in 1971 by Gary Nesbitt, Edward Stollins and Mike Isaacs, the first branch was located on London’s Finchley Road and, for the first five years, the six stores were branded The Tape Revolution and concentrated on selling CDs and eight-track tapes.

From 1976 onwards, the chain was rebranded as Our Price Records, in response to higher demand for vinyl records, then rebranded once again as Our Price Music in 1988, before landing on Our Price in 1993. By this point, over 300 branches had been opened across the UK and Ireland.

Despite having branches in locations such as Kings Road, Chelsea and being named as the second-largest retailer of records and tapes in the ‘80s – with Woolworths benign the first – the business was put under threat by the expansion of HMV.

PHOTO CREDIT: Our Price

After a plethora of issues, the business gradually declined, and closed its final branch in 2004. However, it has now confirmed that it will be relaunching, and set to open its doors again next week.

“For two decades Our Price has held a special place in the heart of many. Today, we’re thrilled to announce we’re making a comeback! Get ready to discover the value and excitement you loved about Our Price as we gear up for a grand re-launch on the 30th April 2024,” reads a post on the store’s website.

Similarly, the shop posted an update on Facebook, building anticipation for the return – two decades after it closed.

“Countdown’s ticking and we’re pumped. And (if I’m honest) pretty jittery. We’re a crew of musos, DJs and enthusiasts reviving a beloved brand,” it began. “We’re not exactly swimming in cash, so no flashy launch. We’re doing things organically, adding new lines every month. For us, it’s all about good vibes and keeping it personal.”

It continued: “Also (and this isn’t PR speak) we want you to be part of the journey. Tell us what you’re into. We want to hear from you. Drop us a line once the site is live telling us what you want from Our Price.

“For day 1 we’ve got about 20,000 vinyl, some very cool tees, and the beginnings of what will ultimately be a carefully curated range of hi-fi and audio equipment. It’s going to be great.”

You can sign up to the store via the official website ahead of its launch on April 30. Those who sign up are offered “free shipping and all the pre-orders, product updates and comp news”.

News of the brand’s comeback comes after it was reported last December that sales of vinyl records in the UK had hit their highest level since 1990.

It marked the 16th consecutive year of rising sales, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which also added that the vinyl market had increased more than four times as fast with an 11.7 per cent rise to 5.9 million units in 2023”. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Vlada Karpovich/Pexels

Our Price was a big part of my childhood and teenage years. Alongside HMV, I would get singles and albums here. Whilst I mainly bought physical music, there were also posters and other bits of music merchandise. At a time when there was not Internet options to order music, these shops were invaluable. One could say they lack purpose and place now. As physical music survives and thrives, Our Price prepares to relaunch. Today (30th April), we will see a once-iconic and legendary name come back. This new success story shows that there is a place for independent and chain stores. It is not only vinyl sales that is responsible for Our Price coming back. Physical music has found a new generation and renewed purpose. I am excited to see how that develops and grows. We end April welcoming back Our Price. One cannot rule out the possibility of its branches appearing on the high street. I wonder whether cassettes albums will play a part. Whether singles will make a comeback. If once-dissolved chains can come back, it does mean there will be questions around expansion and survival. How will Our Price differ from HMV. I feel a lot of music lovers would like to see a mix of multiple physical music formats together with merchandise and electronics. Giving customers options and the likes of Our Price being able to co-exist with independent chains. You can go to Our Price’s website here. Rejoice in the fact that we have another reason to cheer. Think back a few years or so when there was fear that the pandemic was going to threaten the existence and possibility of many record stores. Now, in 2024, we are in a healthy position.

Even though there is a long way to go until we return to the golden days of years past, I think we will see further improvement. The hope that we see waves of people visit Our Price and ensure that they are trading for many years to come. If the website is a success and flourishes, it will lead to a call for stores to open. For people like me who relied on them and would often discover new albums that would stay with me for years, it is a chance for music lovers older and young to have the same experience. Not to take anything away from the Internet, though there is something different about browsing and shopping on the high street. Going into a branch of Our Price and seeing what is in stock. I think it is important now more than ever that we encourage as many people to come into music stores. If you know Our Price or are new to them, go and check out the website today. It is the start of an exciting and promising new path. I think that we will slowly start to see chains return. That would give options regarding layout and stock. Maybe getting ahead of myself, it is good that sites like What Hi-Fi? are sharing the news. It is amazing to think how the industry has seen this revival and growth post-pandemic. The lust and demand for physical music many felt would never happen. I am so pleased. It is very early days, though there is every reason to suggest Our Price will be back in force and have a real stake and physical presence on the high street. Today, online, we wish Our Price all the best. It is very much…

PHOTO CREDIT: Our Price

A welcome return!

FEATURE: Sure Shot: Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Sure Shot

Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication at Thirty

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THERE is not a lot written…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch (MCA), Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) and Mike Diamond (Mike D) in London in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images

about a hugely important Hip-Hop album. Beastie Boys’ glorious fourth studio album, Ill Communication, was released on 31st May, 1994. It is coming up to its thirtieth anniversary. A wonderful album that is among the best the trio ever release, I wonder why there has not been more celebration and retrospection. Produced by Beastie Boys and Mario Caldato, Jr., it is a hugely varied and eclectic album. The album draws in elements of Rock, Punk and Jazz. Compared to the more sample-based first two albums, Beastie Boys’ Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz, Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch, and Michael ‘Mike D’ Diamond relied more on live instruments from 1992’s Check My Head and 1994’s Ill Communication. Featuring collaboration and contributions from Money Mark, Eric Bobo and Amery ‘AWOL’ Smith, Q-Tip and Biz Markie, this is a fascinating and hugely wide-ranging album. One of the most impressive and nuanced that Beastie Boys ever released. Ill Communication reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart. It was also their second triple platinum album. One of my favourite tracks on Ill Communication is Sure Shot. It is a hypnotic and amazing track, though it is one where Beastie Boys shout at women and offer salute. They were accused or misogyny and sexism in earlier songs, so this was sort of a correct and musical apology. Perhaps the most famous song from Ill Communication is the majestic and towering Sabotage. With its Spike Jonze-directed video – one of the best of all time -, it is the pearl in a golden album. I will get to a couple of reviews for Ill Communication. I will start out with a feature from The Conversation. They write how the album is “an artistic statement, a swag of songs greater than the sum of its parts”:

“The album itself is a kaleidoscope of jazz-infused break-beats (where Herbie Hancock meets the Chemical Brothers), smooth instrumentals, bratty punk interludes and gritty, guitar-driven monsters. These unwittingly expose the group’s musical influences, and define its fundamental essence. This is the Beastie Boys in their natural state, where they have nothing left to prove and only critical appreciation to gain. Ill Communication differed from the band’s usual anarchistic and boyish flavours by gliding into a realm with a deeper appreciation for sampling, musicianship, musical arrangement and storytelling.

With a jazz flute sample taken from Jeremy Steig’s Howlin’ for Judy, and a layered drum break taken from Run-DMC’s Rock the House, the opening track of the album, Sure Shot, bounces into an energetic myriad of break beat drums and lyrically fragmented phrases referencing music and pop culture icons:

‘Cause you can’t, you won’t and you don’t stop

Mike D come and rock the sure shot

I’ve got the brand new doo-doo guaranteed like Yoo Hoo [a popular, chocolate-flavoured soft drink]

I’m on like Dr John, yeah, Mr Zu Zu [Zu Zu Man by New Orleans musician Dr. John]

I’m a newlywed, I’m not a divorcee

And everything I do is funky like Lee Dorsey [Everything I Do Is Gonh Be Funky by Allen Toussaint, recorded by Lee Dorsey]

Cultural obsessions are nothing new for the Beastie Boys, but the breadth of material and the diversity of lyrical citation found here far outstripped their previous work on Licensed to Ill (1986), Paul’s Boutique (1989) and Check Your Head (1992).

The album features tracks such as Tough Guy, a short and sharp interlude reminiscent of their early punk roots referencing Bill Laimbeer (a tough NBA basketballer of the Detroit Pistons) and Root Down, a slippery deviation laced with a Jimmy Smith sample of the same title.

Before too long, the album peaks, reaching the infamous Sabotage. With bone-crunching guitars and fuzz bass, this lyrically and rhythmically heavy song takes aim at the media and paparazzi with the band expressing its disapproval of the constant barrage of propaganda being spread to discredit musicians and celebrities. Their tongue-in-cheek, ’70s cop show, parody video clip, directed by Spike Jonze, received numerous MTV awards.

While Sabotage is now rightly famous, it’s the collaboration between the Beastie Boys and A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip, Get It Together, that for me represents the pinnacle of this album. Teaming up with arguably one of the smoothest and most influential rappers of the era significantly enhances the album’s aesthetic appeal and offers a point of differentiation amid so many nasally driven raps.

Get It Together samples Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In by the Moog Machine, Headless Heroes by Eugene McDaniels, Escape-Ism by James Brown, Four Play by Fred Wesley and The Horny Horns and A One Two by Biz Markie to create a distinct, misty blend of soul-jazz and funk-infused hip-hop that can be now considered quintessentially Beastie Boys.

The instrumental component of this album is nothing short of exquisite. Songs such as Sabrosa, Futterman’s Rule, Ricky’s Theme and Shambala all contribute to its flow.

Where other hip-hop artists couldn’t offer such diversity in live musicianship, the Beastie Boys led the way in adding this instrumental flare to their sound. They left their stamp as innovators, crossing the boundaries of multiple genres.

To conclude, I must draw attention to the album’s final track Transitions. The secret is in the title. Could this be the finale that subtly outlines their sonic signature and confirms that behind all good music is thought, emotion and purpose?

Transitions closes out Ill Communication by providing a moment of instrumental solace with its alluring, harmonic charm, but more so, the absence of the Beastie Boys’ trademark vocals deliberately draws attention to the quality of their musicianship. Ill Communication is undoubtedly a landmark recording for the Beastie Boys and one that defines the end of the Golden Age”.

As there is not a lot in terms of anniversary features and retrospectives about Ill Communication, I will come to a couple of reviews. Assessed by Rolling Stone in 1994, it is a wonderful and legendary album that sounds timeless. You can put it on now to someone not familiar with Beastie Boys and they would be able to connect with it. So varied is Ill Communication, you get so many different angles, stories, moods and highlights. I think that it is still so important and powerful thirty years after its release:

“WHY NOT A Beastie revolution?” proposed the B side of the Beastie Boys‘ first 12 inch back in 1983; 11 years later, it has happened — it’s time to get ill in ’94. Since their comeback in 1992 with Check Your Head, the Beasties — Mike D (Mike Diamond), MCA (Adam Yauch), Adrock (Adam Horovitz) and various cohorts — have bum-rushed nearly every media outlet, starting their own studio, record label, magazine and line of merchandise. Still, the core of the Beasties’ appeal remains their music — as funky as the Ohio Players’, as experimental as Sonic Youth’s.

Ill Communication continues the formula established on Check — home-grown jams powered by live instruments; speedy hardcore rants; and insane rhyme styles buried under the warm hiss of vintage analog studio equipment. (An old-school distrust of the digital age pervades Ill: As Mike D states on “Sure Shot,” “I listen to wax/I’m not using the CD.”) Since the Beasties’ earliest recordings, recently compiled on Some Old Bullshit, their mission remains intact: to explore the unifying threads between hip-hop and punk, taking their basic elements — the scratch of a needle across a vinyl groove, a pounding snare-bass thump, the crunch of a power chord — and slicing them up with a Ginsu knife. The resulting B-boy bouillabaisse blends both genres, living up to Mike D’s boast that he’ll “freak a fucking beat like the shit was in a blender.” Ill maintains the Beasties’ consistency of style, but underneath its goofy, dope-smokin’ antics lies — gasp! — an artistic maturity that reveals how the Boys have grown since they began as pimply New York punks making anarchic noise.

The Beasties’ fourth album lives up to its title — layers of distortion and echo often render the vocals unintelligible, reducing them to yet another rhythmic element. A reggae influence also pops up on Ill, but instead of the stuttering dancehall pulse pervading hip-hop, the Beasties look to the reverb effects of dub innovators like Lee “Scratch” Perry (name-checked in “Sure Shot”) for sonic inspiration. Elsewhere, the Beasties show their roots in “Root Down” — in this case, the strutting bass undertow, organ fills and wah-wah, chicken-scratch guitar of ’70s blaxploitation-era funk. Throughout, the Beasties demonstrate their musical diversity, ranging from the Gang Starr-style minimalist piano loop of “Get It Together” (featuring a virtuoso freestyle cameo by Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest) to “Sabotage,” a bass-driven metallic rapfest. Only on the hardcore punk of “Tough Guy” and “Heart Attack Man” do the Beasties falter. While these tracks have visceral power, they ultimately show the Beasties to be punk classicists, unable to transcend the now reactionary sounding influences of ’80s thrash pioneers like Black Flag, Minor Threat and the Germs. Indeed, if the Beasties gave their hardcore the same sonic complexity they give their funk, they would prove truly dangerous.

The Beasties’ funk emanates from the flow of their call-and-response rhymes, from the play of MCA’s rasp against Adrock’s freaky nasal cadence. Unafraid of the ridiculous, the Beasties remain masters of the absurdist rap lyric, such as when Adrock comes “steppin’ to the party in the Fila fresh/People lookin’ at me like I was David Koresh — yeah!” (“The Scoop”). The Beasties detail their expected obsessions with basketball (“Tough Guy”), golf (Mike D’s “wearing funky fly golf gear from head to toe”) and smoking pot (“Legalize the weed, and I’ll say, ‘Thank heavens,’ ” proclaims Adrock on “Freak Freak”).

Ill also conveys the Beasties’ more serious side as they pay homage to hip-hop’s New York roots. Constantly hyping that “motherfuckin’ old-school flavor,” they drop references like Busy Bee and the Zulu Beat show, romanticizing New York as a mythic rap Mecca. Despite their current status as residents of Los Angeles, MCA states in “The Scoop” that “New York City is the place that I feel at home in,” while Adrock claims in “Do It” that he “got the beats in Manhattan/You can hear the texture.” Even more surprising is MCA’s growing role as the Beasties’ social conscience: On “Sure Shot,” he states that “disrespecting women has got to reduce” and details his interest in Buddhism on “Bodhisattva Vow” and “The Update.”

Amazingly, the early-’80s material compiled on Bullshit prefigures nearly every musical development on Ill, moving from the blaring hardcore of “Transit Cop” to “Jimi,” an anti-drug song (!) whose narrator moans, “Let’s, like, get my bong and do up some heavy weed” over midtempo funky drums and psychedelic guitar. “Cooky Puss,” the Beasties’ first hip-hop release, sounds remarkably contemporary — its references to women as “bitches” predate gangsta rap, and it was a successful phoneprank record long before the Jerky Boys.

Bullshit ultimately demonstrates the nascent Beastie philosophy, which Adrock articulates for ’94 on “Alright Hear This”: “I brought a microphone/And I pick it up/And then I fuck it up/And then I turn it up … with the mighty rockin’ sound/And you know my culture — I came to get down”.

I am going to end with a more contemporary review from the BBC. following on from a third studio album that seemed less impactful and accomplished as 1989’s Paul’s Boutique, form and critical acclaim was restored:

“While it was far from disappointing, the Beasties’ third LP, 1992’s Check Your Head, lacked a lot of the wow-factor that’d graced their sampladelic masterpiece of 1989, Paul’s Boutique. A return to the New York trio’s scrappy punk sound, prominent on early demos, Check Your Head was solid, competent, mixing the band’s trademark rhyme schemes with bombastic percussion and over-amplified riffs. But for their next set, messrs Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA would have to step their game up.

And didn’t they just. 1994’s Ill Communication mixed together elements of the preceding pair of long-players – the bratty sneer of the group’s 86 debut, Licensed to Ill, was by now forgotten – to present 20 tracks fluttering from low-slung funk to caustic rock’n’roll via bona-fide mega-hits and jazz-tinged instrumentals. Trading lines with such liquidity that, at times, the three voices blend into a perfectly unprecedented stew of consciousness, our protagonists were promptly re-established as both a rap force and a commercially viable proposition. In the UK, Sabotage – this album’s lead single – charted higher than any Beasties cut had since 1987’s No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn, buoyed by its now-iconic cop show-spoofing video. But one track alone couldn’t come close to representing the full spectrum of sounds on its parent LP.

Opening with a canine squeal before breaking into a flute loop cribbed from Jeremy Steig, Sure Shot wastes no time in setting a tone for what’s to follow: pop culture references, in-jokes, shout-outs to the Beasties’ supporting cast, all atop the sort of bread-and-butter hip hop beat that’s backed the dropping of science since day dot. Tough Guy’s a Check Your Head hangover, but at less than a minute it’s over as soon as the racket’s begun. From there, the Beasties slip back into hip hop mindsets – B-Boys Makin’ With the Freak Freak brings distorted vocals to the fore, ahead of Root Down’s appearance as a scratchy partner piece to Sure Shot, its reappropriated sample also drawn from jazz circles, namely Jimmy Smith’s Root Down (And Get It). Sabotage sits at track six – one of this set’s heavier numbers, with an opening riff that’s immediately recognisable (name that tune? Two seconds, max…), it’ll forever be heard with its video firmly in mind.

The album’s numerous instrumentals help to break up the dizzying cavalcade of rhymes coming at the listener from all sides – performed by the Beasties, they’re rooted in lounge-jazz territory, and the likes of Sabrosa and Eugene’s Lament would later feature on an all-instrumental collection, 1996’s The In Sound from Way Out! (the trio has since released a ‘sequel’, 2007’s Grammy-winning The Mix-Up). Of the rap numbers in the record’s second half, Do It welcomes long-standing Beasties buddy Biz Markie for its disyllabic ‘chorus’, and The Scoop positions the three MCs behind the same fuzzy production front erected by B-Boys… several tracks earlier. Heart Attack Man is a two-minute thrash-about introduced by a laughing-himself-apart Mike D; and the penultimate number Bodhisattva Vow is a showcase for MCA’s Buddhist philosophy, tumbling forth over Om-like drones.]

Ill Communication returned the Beasties to the number one position on the US Billboard 200 – the first time they’d topped the chart since Licensed to Ill – and their next two albums, 1998’s Hello Nasty and 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs, would repeat the feat. Clearly, this is the collection that steadied the Beasties after a minor commercial wobble – that, and it represents the moment when three brats from the other side of the Pond properly grew up, developed attitudes that looked to the future rather than live for the present, and became global superstars for all the right reasons. It remains to this day the quintessential Beastie Boys collection – perhaps not the most influential, nor the most critically celebrated; but certainly the most concisely encapsulating”.

Such an important album in the history of Hip-Hop and the legacy of Beastie Boys, the wonderful Ill Communication turns thirty on 31st May. It is still so vital to me. It came out not long after my tenth birthday. I think it was the first Beastie Boys album I heard. If you have not heard the album before then make sure that you check it out. The fourth studio album from Beastie Boys still sounds extraordinary…

THREE decades later.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Leyla McCalla

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Scheurich

Leyla McCalla

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I am going to go back a year or so…

before I come up to date with interviews with the remarkable Leyla McCalla. She is an extraordinary artist that everyone should know about. Maybe you do already know about her. Now a successful solo artist, she formerly played with the GRAMMY-winning band, Chocolate Drops. In terms of genre, she can be placed somewhere before Folk and Bluegrass, though that might be too niche or definitive. I think that her music is far more expansive and genre-less as that. I want to actually head back to 2022. That is where Leyla McCalla was speaking about then-new album, Breaking the Thermometer. Holler. spotlighted an amazing and compelling Americana (so many genres described depending on the interview) artist. We hear how eclectic she is. In terms of her sounds and where her music emanates and originates from:

“While country music remains stubbornly wedded to a narrow set of aesthetic practices, Americana has often taken a more open-ended approach. What began as a rootsier alternative to the mainstream has expanded in recent years to include a vast swath of different sounds and styles, in the process becoming much more inclusive of voices that country music has historically marginalized.

For Leyla McCalla — a singer and multi-instrumentalist whose bonafides include recording and touring with The Carolina Chocolate Drops and co-founding Our Native Daughters with Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell and Amythyst Kiah — these are welcome changes. In her solo work, McCalla is as apt to draw from trad jazz and zydeco as from folk and old-time, treating her cello and tenor banjo as portals to vastly different musical worlds. The daughter of Haitian immigrants and human rights activists, McCalla also draws deeply from Haitian folk music, taking inspiration from styles like rara and twoubadou and frequently singing in Creole.

On Breaking the Thermometer, her assured fourth LP, McCalla traces a fragmented history of Haiti, beginning in the present and working backwards. A companion of sorts to a theater performance commissioned by Duke University — who acquired the archives of Radio Haiti, the first independent radio station in Haiti, in 2016 — the album weaves voice recordings from new and historical interviews into traditional songs and original compositions.

The result is multilingual melange that offers an evocative and layered interrogation of identity, belonging and the freedoms that we too often take for granted. Holler spoke with McCalla about her creative process, the timeliness of her message and how she learned to embrace the different genre labels people put on her music.

Let’s talk about the title of the album, Breaking the Thermometer, which I understand takes its name from a proverb. Why did that resonate with you?

Sean Dominique, who was the director of Radio Haiti until he was assassinated in 2000, used that metaphor to describe the role of the independent press in a free society. He was saying that the press is the thermometer of the people. You can crack down on the press, you can repress freedom of speech, but it won’t hide the fever — it won’t fix any of the underlying problems. I love that proverb, because I feel like it sums up the research I was doing on Radio Haiti and also speaks to the human rights violations and attacks on democracy that continue to happen in Haiti and around the world.

Why did you feel like the story of Radio Haiti was important to tell at this particular moment?

In the United States, we tend to think of ourselves as immune from the struggles with the Democratic process that have afflicted places like Haiti. We like to think of ourselves as very far away from things that happen in so-called “shithold countries” — to use a phrase that we’re all familiar with. But if the Trump years taught us anything, it’s that we’re not. We need to recognize that we’re not immune from losing our freedom of speech or otherwise having our civil rights violated, and I feel that the story of Radio Haiti helps us to see our vulnerabilities as well as our strength as people.

There are stories of incredible suffering on the album as well as moments of joy and hope. Why was it important for you to tell both sides of this story?

There hasn’t been a lot of space for nuance in U.S. media and the Western imagination. In the early part of the 20th century, Hollywood films depicted voodoo — which I feel is the ultimate expression of Haitian spirituality — as “black magic”, something evil and bad. Then during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, the CDC said that there were “Four H’s” that increased your risk of contracting HIV: hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, homosexuals and Haitians. Throughout its history, Haiti has been subject to a misinformation campaign that’s really tied up in racism. In the last 10 years, I’ve been part of a movement of people in New Orleans who are trying to acknowledge the Haitian roots of a lot of our cultural traditions here. Haiti is a big part of U.S. history and continues to be, but we never think of it that way. I also just think that Haiti is beautiful in an extremely nuanced way, in the same way that the United States is beautiful in a nuanced way. There is so much activism and resistance happening at every level of society, and I find that fascinating.

How did you approach turning these historical records into songs?

It’s been a super intuitive process of listening to the material and pulling out the elements that are interesting to me. Sometimes it takes the form of actual music recordings, and other times it’s just the sound of someone’s voice or a particular phrase that catches my attention. I’m not a fluent Haitian creole speaker, so I’ve often had to listen over and over again and really work through what was being said. I’d basically take what I heard and what I felt like I could play along with on my instruments, and that became the basis for the songs. It’s been a lot of experimenting and feeling the natural curves of the music.

One thing I find interesting about this album is how much it pushes against and expands the sonic boundaries of what is considered Americana. Is that something you set out to do?

For me, making music is very intuitive. I wasn’t thinking, I want to expand what Americana is. Honestly, I find it remarkable that this music is considered Americana, and I think that’s more reflective of the times than it is necessarily of the music. Genre lines seem to be getting blurrier, and there are also strategic things that the industry is doing to make the listenership more inclusive. They know that more people need to see themselves in this music, and that means it has to include more than just white guys with guitars. I feel like I still think like a folk musician, even if I’m using electric guitars and a drumset and evolving to a much bigger sound. That's the heart of where we’re coming from, and maybe being so inspired by different folk traditions and traditions in Haiti is what makes it Americana. The other thing is, people will just call your music whatever they want to call it, and I’m coming around to the idea that it’s all good. Maybe none of it completely tells the story of what your music is, but that’s okay — none of it is wrong. I guess my thing is like, if I can fit into your categories, isn't that a good thing?”.

I am going to come to a couple of reviews for Leyla McCalla’s new album, Sun Without the Heat. KLOF chatted with McCalla about her most personal album to date. I am quite new to her music, though I would really recommend it to everyone. She is an artist that you definitely need to know about and have on your playlist. One does not need to know about Bluegrass, Americana or Folk to appreciate the wonderful Leyla McCalla:

“McCalla’s previous outings have embraced Haitian folk music, Latin licks, Creole swing and the nostalgic old-time magic of New Orleans. She’s not been averse to some revved up rock riffs either. Her songs never flinch from reality, hardship or anxiety despite their heartwarming vocals and honey-laced melodies. Sun Without the Heat is perhaps McCalla’s most emphatic album yet, both musically and lyrically. Full of sensual ecstasy, twangy strums and hip-rolling dances, it’s nourished by African roots music but often glides into a mystic herbal haze. Explaining her narrative approach to this project, McCalla says, “I always look to writers and poets, to philosophers and thinkers for inspiration, to help wrap my head around stuff. My friend jackie sumell runs a social sculpture project called The Solitary Gardens in New Orleans, highlighting solitary confinement in US prisons, especially at Angola in Louisiana. I told her I was thinking of songs about the overwhelm of life and she gave me this book called Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. It’s basically about black feminist lessons learned from marine mammals. I’m naturally existentialist so I’m always going, like, why are we here? That book helped me see myself and the challenges in our society, the devastation of this planet, the separation from ourselves in nature. I also read Liberated to the Bone by Susan Raffo. She talks about the original wounds of our society – colonisation, genocide, taking land from people and using the ‘colour’ line to justify it all. All these things resonated as I’ve been studying Haitian history for years. This was the storm of research that went into writing the album.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Scheurich

McCalla’s symbolism is kept simple, yet her songs can embody both joy and suffering. “It comes from trying not to mince words, trying to be specific and not confused about what’s coming through. Sometimes it appears in more figurative language, but this record came out as quite prayerful. A lot of these songs were written in the studio, I arrived with some words here or a verse there, but didn’t know the gaps. There’s a few phrases adapted from other writers, including Frederick Douglass’s poetry from the 1850s.” One source for the new songs was Duke Ellington, whose Far East Suite inspired the stunning track Tree. “I’d been listening to Mount Harissa from that album, trying to remake it with words. Tree is about a woman who feels unloved and turns herself into a tree, isolating herself. I wanted to liberate this woman, maybe myself, from feeling that way. And to push it musically to the edge, make it a little scary. Women are powerful! And trees have these incredible root systems, they’re connected to all of life. They host life.” McCalla came into this album hoping to get an Afrofuturistic angle on the diasporic music that’s been in her mind. “I had some highlife things on the guitar, I was also mining West African grooves and banjo lines. The last album was so much about Haiti and its ancient rhythms, many of which derive from African drumming traditions. It’s not something I hear a lot of in the ‘folk’ world, maybe more in a global music context.” McCalla’s drummer, Shawn Myers, is well-versed in diasporic styles of music, notably from Haiti and Brazil. He plays a key role in building the album’s energy and healing frequencies. McCalla also credits producer Maryam Qudus with ideas and choices about guitar textures. “I played her a lot of music I appreciate from the 60s, or stuff made to sound like that. I love fuzzy trebly guitars and Maryam had lots of pedals and studio tricks.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Scheurich

The stark and moving Give Yourself A Break has some celestial plucking from guitarist Nahum Zdybel. It’s a song tribute to McCalla’s late brother, written from varied perspectives. “I used to call my brother and ask him for advice, or vent to him about what was going on. He was always gentle with me, never judgmental or reproachful. I imagined the song as a lullaby and thought about my daughter while writing it. I wondered what my brother would tell me while I’m parenting this child? It became unclear whether it was my brother singing to me, or me singing to my daughter. Or even my daughter singing to herself. Who knows? I was thinking about the impermanence of life. Give yourself a break while you’re here on this planet. We weren’t born to be just suffering and reckoning with our decisions all the time. We have to rest and allow ourselves some space.” In her media notes for the album, McCalla says she wanted to write a song that could’ve been sung at marches during the civil rights era. The record’s closing cut, I Want To Believe, is that song, a hopeful hymnal backed by the dignified richness of cello and piano. “I Want To Believe came about when I was thinking of the 60s activist Fannie Lou Hamer and the modern BLM protests,” she says. “Then you look at what’s happening at Columbia University right now where students have set up on the grounds, saying they won’t leave until the school divests itself of Israeli institutions that profit from apartheid and genocide. When I think about my life comparatively I’m glad to be in 2024 and not 1963. There has been progress made but there’s more to come. I think of it as a circle, or a spiral, it’s not a linear path. We can never rest on our laurels and say we’ve solved racism.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Scheurich

McCalla is among an incredible generation of black female artists in the UK, US, South Africa and elsewhere. Naming some, she recalls, “I met Matana Roberts when I was a cocktail waitress at a venue she played. To me she’s like a friend, an elder, a hero, an amazing thinker. She gave me one of the original transcripts of her Coin Coin project that I found in a house-moving box recently. It’s like a piece of treasure. I saw Aja Monet perform this year at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. Kadhja Bonet is the little sister of my friend Bria who plays viola in my band. I feel part of this incredible web of black artistry. And yet it’s like we need more spaces to connect more directly. There has to be an opening for that. It is different to interact with a black woman’s work for me. I feel like I understand where they’re coming from. I don’t think that’s projection, I think it’s experience.” Away from music, McCalla has been busy in her garden. “I just planted so many seeds and I’m really praying it all works out how I’ve imagined,” she says, laughing. “I’m trying to do a wildflower sanctuary for bees and for tracking pollinators. Then I have tomatillos, basil, Thai basil, sweet peppers called Jimmy Nardello’s, some eggplants, bush beans. I’m a real crazy person, I have a garden at home but also a community plot. I got really obsessed about the health food movement in my early twenties. I was a waitress at this vegan and raw food restaurant in the East Village called Caravan Of Dreams. So I was always into cooking healthily and learning about it. When the pandemic hit I got even more into fermented food, sourdough bread and catering at home. I went all in. That’s when my gardening really took off and I learned about things like soil health too. I’ve been away travelling for a week, so I’m in the ‘missing my kids’ part of the cycle. But I love cooking for the family, I’m a real homebody”.

Such a wonderful artist, SPIN shared their take on the magnificent Sun Without the Heat. This is an album that everyone needs to hear. One of the most powerful and memorable that I have heard this year. Even though I am quite new to Leyla McCalla, I am going to follow her and see where she heads next. The New York-born artist is so fascinating. Such a beautiful and rich voice that takes you directed into the music:

“Leyla McCalla, erstwhile Carolina Chocolate Drop and occasional Our Native Daughter, is on a search: “I am trying to be free … I’m trying to find me,” she sings at the start of this album’s first song, “Open the Road.” Then later, near the end of Sun Without the Heat, she delivers herself a message: “Give yourself a break.” In between, she depicts a struggle to balance life as a single mom with her mission as an artist and activist. It’s not that explicit, of course. On multiple levels, the album is an imaginative weave: With her deft band, the New York-raised, New Orleans-based musician (on cello, banjo, and guitar) pairs music from her Haitian-American roots with threads of its Caribbean, Latin-American, and African family tree. She also echoes her past explorations of economic disparity, cultural identity, and colonialism’s pernicious persistence while adding frank, poetic looks at her own heartbreaks, doubts, determination, and hope for renewal. As such, it’s the most engaging, dynamic and, crucially, personal of her five solo albums. She’d recently hinted at this fusion with her gripping multi-media theater work Breaking the Thermometer, which drew both from the violent history of Radio Haiti’s defiance of the nation’s dictatorships and from conversations with her own Haitian grandmother. Heat is something different, though. Even when she sings “Can’t have the sun without the heat,” a line from an 1857 Frederick Douglass speech meaning that anything good comes with struggle and work, she’s covering both cultural history and her own life. But overall, as on the torchy “So I’ll Go” and the quasi-rhumba “Tower,” the latter with a stinging guitar solo from guitarist Nahum Zdybel, McCalla is grappling with matters of her own heart. Does she give herself a break? Well, kinda. The album closes with a prayer in “I Want to Believe.” Emphasis on the want. The struggles—personal and otherwise—will never be over. No sun without the heat. – GRADE: A”.

I am going to end with a review from MOJO. They gave a very positive and interesting review to the wonderful Sun Without the Heat. Ten years on from her debut solo album, Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes, I think that Layla McCalla has produced her finest work to date. An artist always building, growing and evolving. I really love what she is putting out into the world:

“LEYLA McCALLA’S previous album, the Obama-approved Breaking The Thermometer, was a song cycle about Radio Haiti-Inter and how the station’s journalists chronicled the suffering of the country’s marginalised people in the face of political instability, corruption and bloodshed. It’s testament to her inventiveness, her deftness, that such weighty material translated to so uplifting a listening experience. The Haitian-American cellist/singer/songwriter pulls off a similarly impressive feat on this follow-up, inspired by Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons From Marine Mammals, a text by academic Alexis Pauline Gumbs that explores the historic mistreatment of sea life as a metaphor for society’s abuse of oppressed people. Again, heavy stuff. But McCalla once more works her alchemical magic, her Caribbean-rooted folksong engaging with the overriding message of Gumbs’ work: that change is always possible. So there are songs here to soothe, to reassure. Her honeyed vocal is often in comfort mode, as on Give Yourself A Break, where she strings her words of compassion across simple ukulele strum and Pete Olynciw’s contemplative bass. On the keening, closing track I Want To Believe, her tentative optimism is cushioned by reverb-heavy piano chords and a melody retracing Desperado’s steps, the warmth of the familiar offering strength. But these aren’t simply lullabies to pacify. Scaled To Survive is a rumination on the bond between parent and child and the importance of joy, McCalla directly quoting Gumbs’ text when she sings, “Thank you for laughing me into this portal”, over upbeat guitar chimes, an undertow of cello and the chirping of birds. On lines like “What you learned drowning taught me how to breathe” and “How do you let yourself feel all the pain?”, she’s also keenly aware of her parents’ sacrifices as first-generation immigrants, pushing the song into a darker space.

McCalla and her musicians pursue this tension throughout. On Tree, a woman metamorphoses into a sapling for want of love, while another throws herself into the ocean, searching for escape. As if to mirror these turbulent journeys, the song’s shimmering acid-folk itself shifts into intense psychedelic freak-out, Nahum Zdybel’s volcanic fuzz guitar and Shawn Myers’ brittle snare as abrasive as some sublime Zamrock jam. Take Me Away’s yearning for transfiguration – its earnest plea of “Make me unafraid, make me brave” – is soundtracked by guitars that sound like thumb pianos, set to charged, Fela-worthy Afrobeat shuffle. These are songs of hope and transformation. But as on the title track, dedicated to former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Mc-Calla knows you can’t have that hope without fear, and she never ignores that the act of transformation can itself be traumatic. This edge, this acknowledgment of the stakes at play behind her messages of faith, pushes these songs past any risk of empty sentimentalism, and makes Sun Without The Heat truly uplifting”.

For anyone who does not know about Layla McCalla, then do yourself a favour and listen to her music. Her latest album is a wonderful and accomplished album that is very open and moving. A sensational and unforgettable listening experience. The stunning Sun Without the Heat is surely one of the best albums…

OF the year.

___________

Follow Leyla McCalla

PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Scheurich

Official:

https://leylamccalla.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/leylacello/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/leylamccalla

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2Roq56H3IIvY3DZUKrGO7Y

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLU2ydZ3FX_UXICRPMDatDA

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/leylamccallamusic/

REVIEW: SARA – Runaway

REVIEW:

SARA – Runaway

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IT is always hard knowing how to start…

writing a review for someone who releases their debut song. In the age of social media, we can get context and some biography in a way we would not necessarily have had until recently. Unless you were an artist as hyped and known as, say, Madonna or The Beatles, chances are that a debut single would normally not being more than the song and a bit of history about that act. Now, in a positive I feel, we can learn more about an artist and their ‘journey’ to that moment – though some prefer to keep cryptic or private. Whether there are TikTok videos, social media posts, demos online or cover versions, we can get that layering and nuance. At a time when modern titans like Taylor Swift are taking up so much media and public time, I often wonder how much of that fame and spotlight detracts from upcoming and new artists trying to establish their name. Streaming services still seemed more geared to established artists rather than those starting out. I would love to see regular playlists that highlight new artists. Maybe a monthly one that compiles debut singles. So that more people can invest in an artist from the ground level upwards. I think that the debut single is both nerve-wracking and exciting. On the one hand, this is your first statement. Maybe the first taste people will have of your music. Each artist has hope and expectation of how their debut single will be received and how many streams/views it will get – whether realistic or not. It is such a capricious industry is music. Those worthy of huge acclaim and investment often straggle and can be overlooked, whereas the bland and generic can be embraced and lionised in a way that is baffling and angering. An original and distinct debut single can create this early momentum and electricity that can be sustained for an entire career. A listener can hear that original song and get heady scents and intoxicating notes. Hard-hitting lyrics and something personal. A great hook or a sublime melody. That unique opportunity for an artist to come out of the gates with something extraordinary and true to them. In a music landscape where there is such competitiveness and a particular sound demanded by the mainstream – I feel TikTok artists and a particular type of Pop is still more favourable than anything else -, it is so hard to navigate. It is almost business-like launching a single: needing to know what the market wants and how exactly you promote it to ensure people see it. I can only imagine how stressful and hard it is for any artist in 2024 to launch themselves into the wider world. To see that song come out and hope that it is heard and liked. This take me to the wonderful SARA.

One might feel that a one-named artist is quite hard to be distinct in a landscape where so many musical alternatives coexist. It is true that an instinct or Google-unfriendly name can be a detriment. I have seen artists called ‘Kate’ launch themselves and, no surprise, they are quite hard to find through Spotify or on a search engine! Bands with a rather mundane or over-used name. In the case of SARA, I think this uppercase forename choice is apt and strong. It is the moniker of German-born Sara Balk. I will come to her debut single in a minute. You can find her on Spotify here. There is a YouTube channel here. One feels will have an official music video attached to it soon. More on that in a minute. You can also find SARA on Instagram. I first discovered her through TikTok. Her bio reads “50% singing 50% figuring out life”. I think that is an identifiable position and mission statement. So many young artists who are on the same page. A little about SARA before I move along. In a music scene where so many young solo artists either look and sound the same or are packaged that way, SARA is refreshing. She is stylish and both extraordinarily captivating and down to earth. Phenomenally cool and beautiful, there is also this reliability and kindness that radiates from her TikTok videos. Fast-talking, excited, passionate, arresting and very honest, this is an artist who lets her fans in. She has a distinct look, vibe, personality, sound and voice. One might think those are prerequisites of any artist: in a modern music scene, they are not as common as one might hope. The genuine excitement that she radiates knowing that Runaway is about to – or now officially is – out in the world is sweet and humbling. She needn’t be nervous or worried: this is a phenomenal first step! I think, as I type, she is based out of London. She has spent time in Germany and New York. I think that SARA is heading back to New York soon. This is a mixed blessing for so many who love her. I yearn to get to New York. To live there one day. Apart from some of my favourite music ever originating from there, my favourite ever film, Frances Ha, is set there. I am homesick for a place I have never visited. I think there is a German word for that – SARA would know! –, though I don’t think that it is as romantic as it should be!

@sara_mxsic This song came out todaaaaay, Runaway is ready to be streamed wohooo! #newmusic #behindthesong ♬ Runaway - sara_mxsic

My point is that the sheer thought of New York makes me pine helplessly and devotedly to somewhere I can see myself living one day. I can understand why SARA would feel comfortable and seen there. If we were to lose her to N.Y.C., then one can forgive that! London is great, though maybe not as full of opportunities and the right people as New York. I will end this review sort of playing fantasy manager. Imaging gigs she could play, what an album might sound like, and how else her career can grow. As we read, I believe this amazing artist is walking the streets of London. She must be very proud that her debut single is out in the world! Runaway is a song that I can see a see a brilliant music video being made for. I sort of imagine something between a Michel Gondry video and something in black-and-white. Maybe set on the streets of London, there are thoughts in my head. It will be exciting seeing what SARA does with a video for Runaway. Such is the instant power and pull of the track, I know that many listeners will have a view of what it will look like. It is a bit hard assessing the sound of an artist on the debut single. They will broaden and release more songs, so one can never hone them to a genre or particular lyrical trajectory. SARA spoke with me about the song. In terms of the lyrics and inspiration, she said this: “The lyrics are inspired by my own journey. I grew up in a small German town where I’ve always felt judged and watched. Everyone knows each other there and word travels fast, so if you don’t comply with the small-town culture’s standards, you’re quickly made fun of or treated as an outcast. I spent my childhood and teenage years supressing so much of myself and holding back what I really wanted to put out in the world because I was surrounded by people who thought they had the right to tell me what I should and shouldn’t be doing. The older I got, the more I felt the need to break free and start a new life somewhere where no one knows me. I ended up doing exactly that and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. I now see the people that used to be mean to me in school and some of those people seem really unhappy with the life they’re living now just because they’ve built it according to other people’s expectations of them. I think a lot of hate is based on jealousy. My theory is that people who try to discourage you from making your dreams come true secretly have the same dreams but they are too scared to take a risk and follow them themselves. So with Runaway, I’m trying to encourage people to go for what they know will make them happy, no matter what others say”.

Who to compare SARA with (as, unfortunately, everyone needs every artist compared to another!). I think there are elements of Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift. Bits of Runaway remind me of classic Paramore. This may sound me comparing SARA with other blonde-haired artists, though I think there is relevance to each name. There is definitely something American-influenced in Runaway. One can feel the rush and multicultural buzz of New York together with elements of the music SARA would have grown up around. I can definitely feel this artist maybe feeling a little trapped or not as satisfied in life as they should be. Going for what they need and have. To me, that relates to the city. New York perhaps. A different landscape. Whether SARA is looking for love, career possibilities or even a different vibe, one gets so many interpretations and possibilities from the song. I like how there is a moment for the song to build and create imagery. An introduction that starts off quite gentle and spacey before a beat gives it a pulse and sense of expectant and imminent rush. So many artists jump straight for the first verse and feel the need to go in with whistles, fireworks and bells. Runaway was written alongside GRAMMY award-winning Chris Sclafani (Ed Sheeran, Halsey, Selena Gomez). He produced the track. You can feel that esteemed C.V. present here. Giving the same love and professional focus to a new artist as to those heavyweights. What strikes me first about Runaway is that there is so much texture and feel. This feeling that the listener needs to close their eyes and picture themselves in the song. With a voice that is rich and soulful, SARA comes to the microphone. She is ready for what life throws her way. Prepared for everything that life “throws on the table”, you get an instant sense of what Runaway’s title might refer to. That sense of change and movement. Both physical and psychological. Getting into a different physical space in order to get into a better headspace. That is how I see it anyway! The chorus, when it comes, is one both charged and catchy. Not as needlessly bombastic and cynical (with an emptiness) as so many Pop songs, this is a natural part of the song. You can feel each line leading to the chorus. When it comes, there is nothing jarring or out of place. Instead, one gets something satisfying and memorable. SARA talks about people maybe not being true to themselves. It is clear that SARA spends a lot of time on the road. Every night she is on the road. Calling each new city her home. Many artists can relate to this. Maybe there is this sense that she is looking for somewhere to settle and feel safe. Perhaps this sense of transition and change is all part of life. Figuring out who she is and where she wants to be.

That title, Runaway, seems to be a tag that others apply to her. Some feel that she is flighty and impulsive. Instead of this ambitious young woman who is going after what she wants, perhaps there is some resistance and conflict. The production allows SARA’s voice to be front and centre. So many songs see the vocal buried. It can be frustrating now hearing what an artist is saying or the composition is too loud. That need for force and volume. Runaway is a modern Pop song, though one that also nods to classics. More reliance on the depth and emotion in the voice and the storytelling aspect. Perhaps a Taylor Swift comparison is not too far-fetched or off the mark. Though I am not sure whether SARA would welcome that comparison and is a fan of her at all! Anyway, there is cleverness to the words. SARA talks about people laughing at those who live someone else’s dreams. So someone might label or pigeon-hole someone. Deride anyone with their own mind. Now, if someone lives a dream and succeeds, those same people get jealous or are shown up. It is an interesting dynamic. So much of this must relate to SARA and what she has encountered. Maybe people doubting her music dreams or what she wants from life. I get that feeling SARA has moved from a small town in Germany because she wanted to go somewhere people do not judge her. The fact she then went to London and is going to New York. Going to places that are bigger and more welcoming. From the smallest town where there is judgement and narrow-minded people to cities where there is much more openness and similar-minded people. This is something that so many people can relate to. A reason why Runaway will resonate and be a success. I know that many of SARA’s fans can hear the words she sings and they will apply to them! A song that is going to give people hope and a sense of understanding and clarity.

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A post shared by SARA (@sara_mxsic)

You get the feeling that SARA is counting down the days until she is gone. Other people maybe doing the same. This real feeling that she has been doubted by others. Her dreams diminished or seen as ridiculous. It always speaks more about other people and how they have lived their lives. People who have not achieved as much as they want or have led a safer and less interesting life. I do feel that Runaway is the start of a magnificent run from this incredible artist. I am not playing proxy manager or P.R. here, though I do feel that a debut album is not far away. SARA did reveal in the interview with me that more music is coming. She has a plan of where she wants to head and what is coming. Even though there are not gigs in the diary yet, I know there are venues throughout London that would house her. Some spaces where she would definitely be embraced. What strikes me hardest is how assured Runaway sounds! It is a real confident and compelling start to her recording career. It would be interesting if a music video was coming for Runaway. Something a little filmic where we get to see SARA running away or struggling to meet the expectations of others. I think that SARA could also have this successful acting career ahead. She has this aura of someone who could easily transfer to the screen. I know that she will get loads of gigs in New York when she gets there. The remainder of this year is going to be busy for her. If you have not heard Runaway and SARA, then make sure that you check her out. Such a wonderful and loveable artist, I feel that we are going to hear a lot more great things from her. I really love Runaway and what she has achieved here. I have so much respect for her and will be following SARA’s career with great interest. Make sure that you follow and show love for…

THIS remarkable human being.