FEATURE: Trash Talking: Shirley Manson’s Blast Against Ageism: A Music Industry Issue Slow to Shift

FEATURE:

 

 

Trash Talking

IN THIS PHOTO: Garbage’s Shirley Manson in 2022/PHOTO CREDIT: Kathryna Hancock

Shirley Manson’s Blast Against Ageism: A Music Industry Issue Slow to Shift

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I can’t recall when it was…

IN THIS PHOTO: Garbage/PHOTO CREDIT: Garbage

but Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant said that ageism in music wasn’t a think anymore. Although ageism does impact men, it is still an issue very much faced by women. A fresh and sadly unsurprising case of ageism against Garbage from Daily Mail recently provoked rebellion and anger from their lead, Shirley Manson. Labelling the band as “unrecognisable” in their new photos, it did seem very much pointed at Shirley Manson. The fact is that she looks amazing! A remarkable beautiful and vibrant woman who, as she says herself, rocks harder than anyone. A hugely influential musician who has been at the front of one of the greatest bands of their time. Even if the comments came from the bowels of the gutter press, it still can’t be ignored. The fact that there is still this problem of ageism in the music industry. One that exists throughout society. In recent years, artists such as Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga have addressed ageism levelled at them. These amazing women producing the best and most essential music of their careers. It is sad and a horrible example to set when women are judged on their looks and age. A lot of women who ruled in the 1990s and are still making music today being compared to their former selves. Judged to be unrecognisable or strange because, and how dare they, they have aged! And wonderfully too. However, if a woman doesn’t look like she is in her twenties and is how she ‘should’ look, then she is maligned, criticised or marginalised. I am going to come to some comments Shirley Manson made in a recent interview. Before that, here is her reaction to the Daily Mail article:

“Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson has responded to “weaponised” comments about her appearance.

Taking to Instagram this morning (April 13), Manson shared a screenshot of a Daily Mail article that claimed the rock band looked “unrecognisable” in new album promo photos for recently shared single

“Quite a header from the Daily Mail yesterday,” her caption began. “What is THIS supposed to mean?!? The Druids look almost exactly the same as they have always done for thirty years so I can’t help thinking this is directed at me.

“Look – I’m nearly sixty years old. Of course I’m not going to look anything like my late twenties self?!?” she continued. “Quite honestly I think it would be a bit creepy if I did but hey that’s just me. Either way – this kind of language is weaponised to put a woman like me in my place.”

Manson’s comments come after Millie Bobby Brown slammed numerous tabloids that criticised her appearance in March, while Lady Gaga also hit out at “ageism” in the music industry the same month.

The ‘Stupid Girl’ singer went on to say she rejected the “gift”, writing: “This gift is a fail. I shall continue to age as I am. I will continue to wrinkle and flub – lose an inch of my height here and gain a new inch or two there – but I will still look cute in my pyjamas with bed head and no make up on and I will always – no matter what I look like – no matter what they say about me – I will always – and forever – rock HARDER than most.”

News of the band’s upcoming eighth studio album ‘Let All That We Imagine Be The Light’ was first shared back in February, when it was confirmed that the band had finished work on the 10-track follow-up to 2021’s ‘No Gods No Masters’. The record is due for release on May 30 (pre-order/pre-save here)”.

In an interview with The Guardian recently, Shirley Manson talked about her experiences as a woman in music in the '90s.  Even if the industry has shifted in terms of its misogyny and sexism – not fully but it is not as flagrant as it was back then -, it is clear that things have not changed completely. Ageism still an especially big concern. Sexism evident when we look around the industry: from playlists to festival line-ups to headline acts. It seemed like a brutal landscape thirty years ago:

“The 90s were also brutal to women in the music industry. “I was so young and I was hungry and distracted. I didn’t notice a lot of the micro-misogyny and the micro-sexism at first,” Manson says. “I was blinded by the dazzle of my career. I wasn’t paying attention. Back then, I read my own press, like a fool, and I was reading these horrible descriptions of me, really degrading or sexual in nature, or just nasty shit. It wasn’t just the male writers, although primarily the 90s music journalists were male. It really stung, and I found that hard.”

Critique was often lascivious and slavering, but any amount of objectification was supposedly fine because it was always ironic, and that, in itself, was bullshit. But it morphed into a kind of bitterness and resentment, which I never understood. People would tear into Manson – and everyone: Kenickie, Sleeper, even Salad – and I never really got where the anger came from”.

Ageism shouldn’t have a place in modern music! It is not only tabloids and the garbage press that are offending music royalty. Is there still this invisible line between women in their twenties and early-thirties and those who are older. If you are in the latter camp then are you less relevant? The ludicrous clickbait from Daily Mail. Suggesting a woman in her fifties should be subjected to this toxicity and ageism. Manson and her contemporaries look and are amazing! Some of the finest and most engaging live performers are in their forties, fifties and sixties. Kylie Minogue still delivering five-star sets! Someone, as I argued, who should have headlined Glastonbury this year. Lady Gaga – again, where was her call for this year’s Glastonbury?! -, is someone who has faced ageism. She recently spoke about it at the iHeartRadio Music Awards:

“Lady Gaga has reflected on ageism within the pop industry in an acceptance speech at the iHeartRadio Music Awards.

The US singer, 38, who recently topped the UK album charts for a fifth time with her latest album Mayhem, said she is “just getting warmed up” even though “the world might consider a woman in her late 30s old”.

The Abracadabra singer picked up the innovator award and also won the best collaboration gong, along with US music star Bruno Mars, for their hit single Die With A Smile, which features on her new record.

“I don’t know totally how to think about this, because winning an award honouring my entire career at 38 years old is a hard thing to get my head around,” she said, while accepting the innovator award.

“On the one hand, I feel like I’ve been doing this forever, and on the other hand, I know I’m just getting started.

“Even though the world might consider a woman in her late 30s old, for a pop star, which is insane, I promise that I’m just getting warmed up.

“Innovation isn’t about breaking rules, it’s about writing your own and convincing the world they were theirs all along. 

“Like showing up to the Grammys in an egg, or creating an anthem that everyone told us was too controversial until it became undeniable.”

The singer was once carried onto the red carpet in an egg at the 2011 Grammy Awards.

“If I have learned anything in three decades I’ve been at this, it’s that the most powerful innovation is your authenticity,” she added.

“Every time I was the only woman in the room, the loudest voice was inside my own head telling me not to compromise.

“Listening to that voice always showed me exactly where I belonged.

“And tonight I think of my grandmothers, fiercely brilliant Italian-American women who reinvented their destinies with nothing but strength and dreams and determination.

“They didn’t invent technology or art – they invented possibility, shaping the future with nothing more than their minds. And those women, my ancestors, they’re the greatest innovators that I’ve ever known”.

I didn’t really want to leave things at liking and interacting with Shirley Manson’s Instagram post. It is always women calling out ageism. You do not see that many men shouting against those who seem to feel women in music are faded, past it or do not appeal to the eye if they are past the age of thirty. It is always horrible when you see a woman in music have to speak out against comments from the media, fans or someone in the industry. There does need to be this vocal outcry from men in music. One can say artists like Shirley Manson and Lady Gaga have fought back and rightly stated how women their age are in their prime, just getting started and not going to take notice of the kind of crap they are subjected to. However, you feel like the problem of ageism is not going away. Rather than judge women and castigate them if they have the audacity to not stay super-young forever, these queens should be given….

THE respect they deserve.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Mel B at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Sami Drasin/NBC (via Glamour)

Mel B at Fifty

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THERE is always that hope…

IN THIS PHOTO: Spice Girls in N.Y.C., April 1997 (Left: top to bottom: Geri Halliwell-Horner (née Halliwell; ‘Ginger Spice’), Emma Bunton (‘Baby Spice’) and Melanie Chisholm (‘Sporty Spice’). Right: back to front: Victoria Beckham (née Adams; ‘Posh Spice’) and Melanie Brown (‘Scary Spice’)/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael O'Neill

that the Spice Girls will perform together again. Whether there are tensions within the group that can’t be healed or it is about timing, we do wish that one day they would reconsider taking to the stage again. Maybe a festival appearance or another tour. The Spice Girls’ final album, Forever, turns twenty-five on 1st November. One celebration that we have before then is the fiftieth birthday of Mel B. On 29th May, fans will mark the birthday of an artist who, with Emma Bunton, Victoria Beckham, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Horner, transformed music in the 1990s. They made a huge impact and created this phenomenon. Whatever you think of the solo output of the individual Spice Girls members and whether it came close to their work as a group, you cannot deny that Mel B was a huge reason for the Spice Girls’ success. In July 2024, Mel B was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Leeds Beckett University for her career and work for the charity Women's Aid. She is someone who I really respect. Because she turns fifty soon, I am going to end with a compilation featuring Spice Girls classics and deep cuts. A few solo songs from Mel B. Before then, here is some biotrophy from IMDB:

“Born on May 29, 1975 in Leeds, England, Melanie Brown became a member of Spice Girls in 1994.

As a recording artist, Mel B's achievements with the Spice Girls are legendary: 55 million records sold worldwide, nine number one singles in the UK, 11 gold records as well as a total of 24 platinum and multi-platinum records. The Spice Girls reunion World Tour was a critical and popular triumph and the group was recently named Best Band by the U.K. Glamour Awards. Mel B has continued the same successful ways as a solo artist. Her 1998 single "I Want You" with Missy Elliott sold 80,000 copies in its first week, and gave Mel B her first solo #1. "Hot" was her first solo album, released on 9th October 2000. It entered the UK charts at #28. Despite producing 2 Top 5 singles (3, if you include the hit "I Want You Back"), the album only ever re-entered the chart once after dropping out of the Top 100 - peaking at #95 when "Feels So Good" was being promoted in February 2001. She followed up with the release "LA State of Mind" in 2005.

Mel B has also shone brightly as both an actress and television personality. She starred as "Mimi" in the smash hit Broadway musical "Rent", performed in the Vagina Monologues in London, had key roles in the feature films "LD 50 Lethal Dose", the Will Smith co-production "The Seat Filler", and appeared as a comedic performer in the British show "Burn It". Mel B has made a significant impact in the world of television, hosting "This Is My Moment", "The MOBO Awards", "Pure Naughty", "Voodoo Princess", "Top of the Pops", "Party in the Park for the Prince's Trust", and "The All Star Animal Awards" in addition to her role as a correspondent on the highly-rated "Access Hollywood." Mel B's most recent triumph was taking America by storm by on ABC's smash hit "Dancing with the Stars". Mel B and her partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy were the highest-scoring couple during the 2007 season and made it to the finals, earning a perfect score on their final dance.

Mel B is also a best-selling author; her hit autobiography was released in 2002. The book features her compelling personal insights and experiences, both as a Spice Girl and in her own life. "Catch a Fire" reached #7 in book-sales charts”.

That biography is a little out of date, though it does give you an indication of her legacy and brilliance. I would advise people to buy her 2024 book, Brutally Honest. As Melanie Brown, she wrote it with Lucy Gannon:

“As a Spice Girl, TV talent show judge and Broadway star, Mel B a.k.a Scary Spice, has been a global icon since her twenties. But behind the glittering façade of fame, the struggles and pain of this working-class, mixed-race girl from Leeds are laid bare in her critically acclaimed best-selling memoir, Brutally Honest.

With deep personal insight, remarkable frankness and trademark Yorkshire humour, the book tells how she went from Girl Power to girl powerless during her ten-year emotionally abusive marriage. Tracing a path through the key moments in her life, she reflects on her childhood, rise to fame and her chilling downward spiral before she finally broke free.
In this expanded edition, written with Louise Gannon, Mel brings her story up to date. With her trademark honesty, she tells the unfiltered story of piecing herself back together, dealing with trauma and new heartbreak whilst becoming a champion for survivors of abuse, performing once more with the Spice Girls and receiving her MBE from Prince William.

MEDIA REVIEWS

You cannot underestimate the awareness this book is raising about coercive control – it is helping us to save lives.

This book is so powerful so real, so strong and so emotional – this is exactly Melanie.

An unflinching account of how an icon of girl power became utterly powerless in her own life, this brave and important book deserves to be read by fans and non-fans alike. Utterly absorbing and deeply affecting. - The Guardian

This is the most gut wrenching, punch-in-the-stomach honest celebrity autobiography I’ve ever read. Mel B […] takes us to the darkest places behind her Scary Spice persona, educating about the true horror of domestic abuse in the process. - The Sun

If [Melanie] Brown awakens even one reader to the reality of their situation, her legacy will endure long beyond the second Spice Girls reunion. - The Observer

By opening up about the realities of abuse and addiction, Mel B has launched a new, but equally important, version of Girl Power. Brutally Honest will grip you from the start - Grazia

Much like a rolling Netflix series, you find yourself hungrily digesting chapter after chapter of Melanie’s life in one sitting. Some parts are hilarious and relatable; others are just painfully difficult to read. - Gal-Dem

Brutally Honest is a captivating memoir that candidly discusses the chain of abuse that still exists for women in society and what it will take to break it. - OK! Magazine

Brutally Honest is just what it says. Melanie Brown’s account of an abusive relationship – of the once fearless Scary Spice being made to feel so worthless that she believes suicide is the only way out – is gripping, shocking and harrowing. - The Guardian”.

We will soon mark the fiftieth birthday of an artist and songwriter who has accomplished so much. Doing wonderful work as an Ambassador for Women’s Aid, she is someone who has written about her experiences of domestic abuse and discussed it. Mel B gives strength and support to so many people. In terms of the future, maybe a Spice Girls reunion will wait. Wannabe turns thirty next year, so the members might do something for that. Regardless, I wanted to salute the wonderful Mel B (or Melanie B/Melanie Brown). Below is a mixtape of Spice Girls and solo songs where we get to see her talent shine. In the world of music, there is nobody like her. An icon and inspiration for millions through the decades, she is so loved and admired. Whether new music, a book or acting, I hope that we get something new from Mel B…

VERY soon.

FEATURE: All His Love Is 'til Eternity: Kate Bush’s Timeless The Man with the Child in His Eyes at Forty-Seven

FEATURE:

 

 

All His Love Is 'til Eternity

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in March 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix 

Kate Bush’s Timeless The Man with the Child in His Eyes at Forty-Seven

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IT is no surprise that…

Alexis Petridis wrote the following in 2022 about Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes: “Bush wrote The Man With the Child in His Eyes when she was 13, which frankly beggars belief: eerie, sexually charged and astonishingly beautiful, it would be an incredible achievement for an adult. As it was, it offered the first sign that Bush wasn’t merely a prodigiously talented writer, but an actual genius”. Released on 26th May, 1978, I am looking ahead to the forty-seventh anniversary of this exceptional song. The second single from her debut album, 1978’s The Kick Inside, it reached number six in the U.K. Bush performed The Man with the Child in His Eyes during her sole appearance on Saturday Night Live in the U.S. There is still a lot of mystery around the song. I have written about it numerous times through the years. Nobody knows for sure exactly when The Man with the Child in His Eyes was written. I have always assumed Bush wrote it at East Wickham Farm when she was thirteen. Anywhere between 30th July, 1971 and 29th July, 1972. Bush herself has said she wrote it when she was sixteen. Maybe some time during 1974. Perhaps when she was living at 44 Wickham Road. A year before she stepped into AIR Studios in London and recorded it. Although we should believe Kate Bush, I do hope it is true she wrote it when she was thirteen, as it gives extra weight to the beauty and maturity of it. However, she was still a teenager so it is a remarkable achievement! The B-side of The Man with the Child in His Eyes was Moving.

There is also debate and mystery as to who the titular ‘Man’ is in the song. Even though many feel it is a former boyfriend, Steve Blacknell, others feel it is her mentor David Gilmour. However, Kate Bush has always said it is about nobody specific and it is about men in general. Before re-evaluating the song and arguing why it still sound otherworldly and unique to this day, I want to bring in some useful background and analysis. I will come to part of an article from Dreams of Orgonon and their inspection of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. Before that, returning to something I have quoted before, here are examples of Kate Bush discussing the meaning behind one of her most loved songs:

“I just noticed that men retain a capacity to enjoy childish games throughout their lives, and women don’t seem to be able to do that.

‘Bird In The Bush’, Ritz (UK), September 1978

Oh, well it’s something that I feel about men generally. [Looks around at cameramen] Sorry about this folks. [Cameramen laugh] That a lot of men have got a child inside them, you know I think they are more or less just grown up kids. And that it’s a… [Cameramen laugh] No, no, it’s a very good quality, it’s really good, because a lot of women go out and get far too responsible. And it’s really nice to keep that delight in wonderful things that children have. And that’s what I was trying to say. That this man could communicate with a younger girl, because he’s on the same level.

Swap Shop, 1979”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Fievez/ANL/REX/Shutterstock

Prior to getting to that Dreams of Orgonon article, it is worth acknowledging how loved The Man with the Child in His Eyes is. Covered by quite a few artists, it is played widely to this day. Ranked highly when it comes to her impressive catalogue of songs. In 2018, when ranking Kate Bush’s singles, The Guardian placedThe Man with the Child in His Eyes second to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). MOJO ranked Kate Bush’s fifty-best songs last year and put The Man with the Child in His Eyes in fifth. Even if I have sourced these quotes before, this warrants repeating. This is what they said: “The contemplative but still visionary preamble to Wuthering Heights, which it preceded on The Kick Inside. The soundtrack is assured orchestral pop – imagine an autumnal daytime analogue to Scott Walker’s Sleepwalkers Woman – and within she cross-fades the archetypes bewilderingly. Simultaneously a daughter/mother/lover, her reverie concerns an understanding father figure who’s also a child – and who, it appears, exists only in her imagination. Still wholly bewitching, though, and incredibly she wrote it when she was just 13”. Stereogum included The Man with the Child in His Eyes in their top ten Kate Bush songs feature (“Written by Bush at age 16, “The Man With the Child in His Eyes” is another example of her knack for introspective songs that validate the interior lives of women and girls. “It was a very intimate song about a young girl almost voicing her inner thoughts, not really to anyone, but rather to herself,” she said during a 1981 appearance on the TV show Razmatazz. Sparkling orchestras and her burbling piano intertwine in a gorgeous, almost fugue state, bolstering the character’s observations. “The piano just started speaking to me,” she said in a promo interview. “It was a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic”). No denying the fact that this song is a work of genius.

I will come to my point and main argument. Before that, I do want to get to the Dreams of Orgonon analysis that I have teased. There are some observations made about The Man with the Child in His Eyes. One of those Kate Bush songs that stops me in my tracks every time I hear it. Something that holds that much power. It is mind-boggling how beautiful and accomplished it is:

“It’s a song that’s as striking for what it is as what it isn’t. It’s simple and incomprehensible, childlike and mature, populist and intricately niche. And it just works — “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” is as deliberate and intelligent a song as Kate Bush has recorded so far. It lingered in obscurity and exploded into the light. That’s probably as apt a metaphor for the Bush story in this era as anything.

“The Man with the Child in His Eyes” resembles little else Kate ever produced in its content or historical context

We’re in the era where Kate is a precocious unknown, venturing into the recording studio for the first time and staking her claim to it. The most commonly remarked-upon aspect of “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” is Kate’s age when it was written. The song’s recording date and release date are spaced out by about three years, putting the creation and publication of the song in entirely different worlds. I’m not going to quibble with exactly how old she was at the time (13 or 14 according to popular accounts, and 16 by Kate’s own memory, which would dates its composition some time before the ’75 AIR London session), but there’s a point to be made here: discourse around on this song tends to point out Kate’s age at the time and leave it at that. And it’s hard to fault that—it’s unheard of for someone in their early-to-mid teens to write pop songs this good. The song stuck out to everyone during production—everyone from ubiquitous beneficiary Dave Gilmour to EMI manager Bob Mercer knew they were hearing something special. But plenty of artists record hits at a young age. What makes “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” stand out?

The answer presents itself immediately—most young artists in the Seventies didn’t write their own hits, and their hits were rarely so good. The only other UK hit single written by an under-18 female artist by the time of “Child” that I can find is “Terry,” an a lugubrious piece of grimdark pop from 1964 by 16-year-old Twinkle. Apart than that, young singers didn’t (and probably weren’t permitted to) write their own songs. The lack of songwriting royalties certainly didn’t hurt precocious young stars—Helen Shapiro recorded hits without writing them, and Little Jimmy Osmond hit number 1 at the age of nine with the agonizing “Long Haired Lover from Liverpool.” Picking on these young artists who sang some micromanaged mediocre hits four to five decades ago would be petty at best and mean-spirited at worst, so we’ll eschew that, but all this shows just how odd “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” was. It was as far from micromanaged as possible. Its inception and recording predate its public release by about three years, and Kate was mostly left to her own devices while creating it (her family helped her procure business deals that would basically allow her to do whatever she wanted creatively).

So what we’re given with “Child” is that ever-so-rare thing in pop music: a young person’s vision of the world, undiluted by executive interference. In it Kate sings about a strange, wonderful man, older than herself but with an adolescent spirit that’s not unlike hers. The song is somewhat impenetrable, like any artistic work by a young person beginning to navigate the world, and it’s accessible and applicable and gorgeous.

We find eyes romantic and beautiful—there’s an aesthetic thrill to them as well as the excitement of seeing someone’s emotional state reflected in them. The old adage about eyes being the window to the soul is a tedious aphorism because of its obviousness, not because it’s not true. The singer of “Child” is discussing their point of view, but also finding joy in the perspective and experiences of someone else. It’s a straightforward dynamic, expressed obscurely. Few details are imparted about the titular Man at all—the singer is interested in capturing their spiritual essence. There’s an implication of the picaresque to the song, particularly in how the singer refers to the object of their attention as someone “telling me about the sea,” suggesting someone who’s embarked on adventures, probably imagined ones. Reality isn’t what counts when you’re young—it’s the inner landscapes you’ve traveled.

There’s a nice lack of dependence to the song as well. Kate leans on no one here—the song’s protagonist places themselves at a safe distance from the Man, and Kate herself has even more control of the affair than she’s probably aware of. She doesn’t lean on male-pioneered rock or ballads—she offers her spin on the genre by discussing her experiences as a woman. As we’ll see, Kate Bush isn’t above gender essentialism—she’s written countless songs about the supposed central human dynamic of relationships between men and women”.

Nothing really exists like this. In terms of the themes and ideas behind the song, has another artist talked about the child-like wonder and playfulness of men? The fact that a part of them never grows up. I Can’t really think of a track like it. There are female artists who write songs in their teens, though I have not discovered a song like The Man with the Child in His Eyes. The blend of the piano and orchestra. Again, there has been nothing like Kate Bush’s masterpiece since. The effect it has on the senses. That production sound and Bush’s vocal. That combination still has not been bettered for my money. There are Kate Bush songs where you can hear comparable efforts. Maybe tracks that have not aged that well. However, The Man with the Child in His Eyes is ageless. Like its central hero, the track has something inside that remains child-like. It sounds spine-tingling now because it is not overloaded with technology that is dated. It is a pure and from the heart. Not a bid for commercial success or trying to fit into what was around in 1978. A song that sounds classic and modern. Like nothing else but somehow relatable and universal. A set of lyrics that could only come from Kate Bush but could also be seen as poetry. Many artists have been compared to Kate Bush but none have written a song like this. One of the reasons why it is seen as one of Bush’s best and is going to be impossible to equal. I don’t think an artist today could write a song like it. They would get it wrong or it would sound insincere somehow. Whether she wrote it aged thirteen or sixteen, you can imagine her sitting in her room with a pink felt tip pen and composing these lyrics. Picture Kate Bush at AIR Studios in June 1975 backed by an orchestra and delivering this sublime and faultless vocal. As it turns forty-seven on 26th May, I felt it was important to mark that anniversary. Hard to believe it turns fifty in three years! Alexis Petridis wrote how the song showed that Bush was a genius. When you listen to The Man with the Child in His Eyes, it is…

HARD to disagree with.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Never for Ever: An Album on the Cusp?

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Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Aris

Never for Ever: An Album on the Cusp?

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SOMETHING I have written about…

when discussing Kate Bush’s work in the early-1980s, there was this moment of transition and change. For Kate Bush feature 997, I am returning to Graeme’s Thomson’s brilliant Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. I like what he says about her third studio album, 1980’s Never for Ever. It was a crucial moment in her career. We can discuss the aftermath and legacy of the album. How it went to number one and there was this boost in terms of how EMI viewed her. Bush would solo-producer 1982’s The Dreaming and was given a lot of freedom. There is no doubt that Never for Ever is simultaneously a remarkably successful and brilliant album but one that remains underrated and very rarely discussed. It is a brilliant album that contains some of her best songs. Maybe not as daring and epic as Hounds of Love (1985) or as raw and layered as The Dreaming, it is one of her very best releases. You can definitely feel the bridge between her first two albums – The Kick Inside and Lionheart were both released in 1978 – and where she would head for The Dreaming two years later. In terms of creative leaps, few are bigger than what Kate Bush did between 1980 and 1982. One cannot compare a song like Blow Away (For Bill) from Never for Ever and The Dreaming’s final track, Get Out of My House. They are extremes. If some say Bush was transitioning in 1980 and Never for Ever is this centre point between a simpler style and sound and something more advanced, some like to think of it as her on the cusp. Producing with Jon Kelly on Never for Ever, there was more responsibility and freedom. However, she would be truly unleashed and set free for The Dreaming. Do some people think of Never for Ever as promising or a compromise?

Graeme Thomson describes (Never for Ever) as a “tentative autocracy”. Her working relationship with Andrew Powell (who produced her first two albums) had run the course – though he did arrange strings for The Dreaming’s Houdini -, and this was Kate Bush in control. Never for Ever seemed like a rebirth. Her first, anyway. Beginning again. After finishing work on her 1979 On Stage EP, Bush did say that she had not really begun. When working on Never for Ever, there were new rules and players. This was not going to be a similar experience to the one she had in 1978. After the success and experience gained for 1979’s The Tour of Life, new boldness and inventiveness came into Kate Bush’s work. New technology and lyrical directions. However, one can see Lionheart as an album that needed more time and room for Bush to create and The Dreaming as this new phase of her career. Never for Ever perhaps an awkward bit in the middle that nodded to where she came from and hinted at where she would go. The feeling about this being an album ‘on the cusp’ is mirrored by Graeme Thomson. In the sense that it marries older songs with new compositions (The Dreaming was the first album since The Kick Inside with all-new songs).  It was released in 1980 but was being recorded in 1979 (and 1980). Spanning the old and the new in terms of compositions and decades, Bush also fused players from her live band and those who worked on her first two albums. This sense of the old and new. Does this make Never for Ever unfocused, unbalanced and lacking originality? I don’t think so. What we do have is an artist not repeating herself but not yet in a position to release something like The Dreaming. After the energy and planning it took to get her tour going and successful, Bush did not really have the headspace or time to labour in the studio intensely. Del Palmer, Paddy Bush, Brian Bath and Ian Bairnson part of the eclectic array of musicians Bush assembled.

As I mentioned in previous features, Bush cast players for Never for Ever. Even though the recording environment was not as intense as it was for The Dreaming, there were still many hours dedicated to some songs. Pushing her players to get the best performance. Maybe a bit of a diversion, but I am going to reframe Never for Ever. Rather than it being ‘on the cusp’ or a period of transition, it very much is this new creative period and iconic album. I am not going to source an interview. However, I did find something Kate Bush wrote for Flexipop that was published in September 1980. It is her weekly diary and gives you some idea of how she was living during the time of recording the album:

“Friday

One hell of a day. I get up at about half ten. I don't have breakfast--I never do. Just a cup of tea. The first thing on the agenda is an interview with Paul Gambaccini. Before I leave I read my post, which is mostly business. Most other mail goes to my fan club, which is really well organized now. Fantastic. My driver picks me up at about noon. We go to a small studio in Soho. I can't drive. Apart from my driver I go everywhere unaccompanied. The reason I use the driver now is that it was getting ridiculous with cabs, it really was. It's so much easier now, it's just wonderful. [Actually Kate did obtain a drivers license, after one failure, in 1976.]

About three o'clock we go from Soho to Round Table at the Beeb, which Gambaccini also does. [This is a radio programme in which celebrity musicians and critics sit around to listen to and review new records.] We get there about four-thirty. A couple of kids outside--one who's always there every time I go to the BBC. His name is Keith. Must be in his early twenties. He always shows me things I've never seen before, like posters out of record shops. Old magazines. A picture of Pink Floyd before Gilmour was in it--I went WOW. I was really surprised, you know--they were all autographed and everything. I sign a few things, and then go in.

I don't have a go at anyone on the show. There's never any reason to do that. After, I have to go down to Abbey Road studios to re-mix the new single. We get there at about eight-fifteen. About this time I have my first bite to eat of the day--a toasted sandwich and chips. And of course, lots of cups of tea. The only way I can tell if I need food is when I feel sick. I smoke more at night, but I still usually get through less than twenty a day. John Player Special at the moment. We're still at it at three a.m. and I feel fine, but the engineer wants to call it a day. He's a great engineer, and I know he can finish it tonight, so I talk him into it. Come seven a.m. I'm not exactly perky, but I'm still not at all tired. I'm very much a nocturnal creature. My driver picks me up and I get to bed about seven-thirty a.m.

Saturday

I live alone--in southeast London--and today I don't get up until late: perhaps one or two p.m. A friend of mine from the Hare Krishna temple rang me up about eight-thirty, but I was too tired to natter much. About three o'clock I go over to my parents'--they live twenty minutes' drive away, in Kent. I'm doing a TV show in Germany on Tuesday [the programme was RockPop, and the taping was in mid-September, 1980] and my Mum's got some clothes to lend me. I'm going to do two numbers for the show. Army Dreamers is one, and I want to dress up as a cleaning woman. My mother lends me a headscarf, an old apron, and lots of my old jumble clothes. The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action--it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who's obviously got a lot of work to do. She's full of remorse, but he has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream

I stay round my parents for a few hours--after all, you can't just go round, take all the clothes you want and rush off--drink lots of tea and eat chocolate eclairs and sandwiches, the sort of things that mothers like to fill you up with. I feel absolutely delightful after that, and I go back to start work on my routines for Tuesday.

What I do is have a little cassette machine with the mixes I'm going to work on, and I go into my back room where I have four mirrors propped up against the wall, and I rehearse in front of them. It's all very well to work out the routine for Army Dreamers, but the two dancers I work with [Stewart Avon-Arnold and Gary Hurst] are busy--one's in Godspell and one's in France. So I needed people who would be able to perform. Paddy, my brother, he does pretty well. And the guys from the band, who are natural performers anyway. I am pretty wiped out still, and I don't get as much done as I could have. After working out for a while I don't feel too good, so I have a bath and try some more. I work out for two or three hours, then cook a meal for myself.

I'm not a bad cook. I love making bread. It's such a wonderful thing to do. So I watch the telly--the late-night movie: guys having their eyes pulled out, or something really awful. Paddy has come back by now, so we have a long chat and I get to bed about three o'clock. [Apparently Kate was still sharing the family's Lewisham building of flats with her two brothers. She has since moved to a house of her own, situated nearer her parents's home in Kent, and she uses a third building as a private dance studio.]

Sunday

Sunday is definitely the day that I have to physically work out. When I get up I can hardly stand up. My calves are beginning to feel sore from the night before.

Again, I get up around early afternoon. I don't bother buying Sunday newspapers--I don't read newspapers much at all, though if there's one around I'll read it. I don't read books very much either. I have a big guilt thing about that--I'm missing out so much, I read fact rather than fiction, usually when I'm on holiday. I tend to read religious things or theories on the universe. [This sounds like an early reference to Stephen Hawking, whose book, Kate has since explained, partially inspired her 1989 recording, Deeper Understanding. Another example of the long gestation periods typical of Kate's work.] I love Don Martin (of Mad magazine), he cheers me up. And if there's a Beano around, I've just got to look at it. When I was a kid that was really my thing. The illustrations are really great.

I spend all the day working out the routine for Babooshka. All Sunday is working out--dancing and miming. For miming you have to get the inflexions exactly right. I don't do that in front of mirrors, though. I hate watching myself sing. It's really weird. I also do more work on Army Dreamers. Gary, the dancer who's in Godspell, rings me up--and I've been sending out messages for him to ring me all day. We have this weird telepathic thing with the telephone. Whenever I want him to ring and whenever he wants me to ring him I get these 'messages'. So he rings up and says, 'I've been getting these messages all day, what's the matter?' I tell him that we've been trying to work out these routines, and quite honestly it would be useful to know what he thought of them. He says he wants to see me anyway, so he comes around at about midnight. He gets home at about five or six in the morning. I have a bath and go to bed.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980

Monday

I have to get up early because the single is being cut. I have to be at Abbey Road at two o'clock, and while I do the cut, the band go off to get their army gear for Army Dreamers. Then we all go over to my parents' to rehearse--there's no room for full-scale rehearsal in my flat. We do it in the garden. That song is pretty well tied up by the evening, so I go home. I generally get stuff ready for the trip. I don't take huge amounts of stuff with me, just hand luggage. Waiting for luggage at the terminal roundabouts is such a drag. Again, I get to bed around four a.m.

Tuesday

The car for the airport leaves at eight-fifteen, so I'm pretty wiped out. No one hassles me at the airport. A few years ago there used to be loads of photographers, but they don't bother me anymore. It makes things a lot easier, not having to walk up a corridor with everyone going 'OOOH LOOK'.

We arrive at about half one, and go straight to the TV station. I'm not very successful in Germany, and it's a big market, so it's an important show for me. Problems straight away. The stage has three tiers, which are going to get in the way. It has a big glass section they want me to work on--I work ninety-nine per cent of the time in bare feet, and there's this huge chunk of broken glass in the middle. I say, 'no way, you'll have to get rid of it'. It takes them half an hour to take it apart, and then I notice all these huge staples sticking out of it, so I ask this guy to pull them out.

The show starts at about eight--I fill in the time doing my make-up, sewing up little bits and pieces of my costumes that are falling to bits. I like to do that myself, it saves time. I'm so pleased when the show is over, and it went well. We go for a lovely meal courtesy of the record company. Things like that normally aren't lovely but I enjoyed this a lot--really nice. Leave the restaurant about one, go to the hotel, have a FANTASTIC bath and go to bed about three.

Wednesday

We have to be ready downstairs by half eight, and go straight to the airport. Flying doesn't bother me too much--only when I fly a lot in a short space of time, because then the odds seem to get higher. I try to be philosophical about it--once you're in the plane there's not too much to be done. Arrive in London later than morning. Do an interview at the Heathrow Hotel, and have some photos taken. Then I go home and feel wiped out again, so over to my parents' to sit in the sun. I recuperate, and go home again. I slob around, clean the flat up--it's in awful shape...I feed the cats, Zoodle and Pyewacket. Even when I'm that tired, I still don't get to bed till three or four. I spend a lot of time on the phone.

Thursday

Radio all day. I was meant to start with Luxembourg, but they pulled out, so I go straight to Capital. [Capital Radio is the independent station that broke Kate in 1977 by playing Wuthering Heights months before its official release date.] There for three, a very short chat. Then I do Radio One, then hang around a bit to do Brian Matthews on Radio Two. I leave about nine, and go home. On the way I pick up a Chinese takeaway. I don't need a bodyguard or anything for stuff like that. If people do recognize me they're not too likely to smother me in kisses or anything. Get home about ten, look through some photos with my brother [this would be John Carder Bush], and natter about odd bits of business. If I've got nothing to do I have a quick tinkle on the piano, which I try to get to all the time. Bed as usual three a.m”.

I want to source from two articles before finishing up. In 2020, to mark forty years of Never for Ever, Ben Hewitt wrote an article for The Quietus. He noted, though Never for Ever may not be her most celebrated, it is probably her most pivotal – “ the start of her transition from artist to auteur”:

“Another Bush biographer, Rob Jovanovic, estimates she spent an unprecedented five months writing and demoing at Abbey Road, honing new and old ideas alike, while keyboardist Max Middleton told Thomson the sessions were so exacting because of her obsession with finding “something nebulous that was hard to pinpoint”. For Bush the autonomy was worth savouring, no matter how painstaking the process. “It was the first step I’d really taken in controlling the sounds,” she said, “and being pleased with what was coming back.”

Listen now and you can still hear that fundamental shift Bush spoke of, the birth of some new, peculiar magic

Never For Ever is a starting point, not a zenith, and those miraculous opening six minutes aren’t as groundbreaking as her later innovations. But it is, I’d argue, the first of her LPs that’s genuinely experimental.

While Bush’s earlier albums are full of idiosyncrasies, these songs offer a fuller glimpse of the pioneer who’d make The Dreaming, Hounds Of Love and the rest: not just a wildly creative songwriter, but an intrepid explorer and studio perfectionist to boot.

In that sense, the LP’s final two tracks, despite being the most explicitly political Bush had ever written, aren’t quite the radical outliers they seemed back in 1980. For all their polemical grist, she saw them as personal, poignant stories just like all her others, and although most critics lauded them for reckoning with ‘real life’ in a way her older efforts didn’t, their power transcends such bogus rules of authenticity. They’re spectacular not because their subject matter is inherently weightier than yarns about paranoid Russian wives or grumpy syphilitic composers, but because Bush brings it to life with exactly the same kind of exquisite, singular imagination; they’re political songs that have been twisted and transmogrified so they can exist in her strange universe, not the other way round. If Never For Ever made her a bolder, sharper songwriter, it was still absolutely on her own terms”.

In 2022, PROG celebrated Never for Ever as this visionary album. Rather than it being a transition album, latchkey kid or merely promising, this was and is a groundbreaking album. One that was record-setting and influences artists to this day. I have taken sections that provide some insight into the recording in addition to the way Never for Ever was very much Kate Bush starting anew. She saw it that way. Rather than dismissing her first two albums, it was the first Bush could grasp creative control and make an album that stood and felt true to her vision:

“Never For Ever was an album of firsts for Kate Bush: her first co-production; her first release after renegotiating her EMI deal; her first time recording at Abbey Road, and her first use of the (then brand new to the country) sampling synthesiser Fairlight CMI, which was so to shape her material for the next decade.

Bush’s new-found confidence and step away from the machine (something she was soon to perfect) was to inform Never For Ever – an album influenced by death, technology, relationships and a 21-year-old simply bursting with ideas. “There are 10 tracks, and if there is a main theme, it’s about human communication and its difficulties,” Bush wrote in September 1980, a few months after her 22nd birthday. Although largely stylistically different, Never For Ever fitted into the pattern of the day for art rock experimentation crossing borders and genres. It is blessed with the same spirit as Robert Fripp’s Exposure, David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), Fear Of Music by Talking Heads, and Peter Gabriel’s third album. Never For Ever may not be the masterpiece that 1985’s Hounds Of Love is frequently cited as being, but, for many, it remains their favourite Kate Bush album, and one that unquestionably paved the way for future triumphs.

She had already established her own royalties company, Novercia, with eldest brother John Carder Bush (aka Jay) co-ordinating the business. Her family members were directors, and her new lawyer, Bernard Sheridan (who looked after artists such as Matt Monro and Pink Floyd), renegotiated her contract with EMI as a tape lease deal, meaning that she owned her recordings. Still a rarity then (as now, some would argue), the final decision on everything would be hers.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980 signing copies of Never for Ever/PHOTO CREDIT: Chas Sime/Central Press/Getty Images/File

In the studio, all the trappings were sheared away; although she was clear about who would have final say, Bush was in no doubt that she was dependent on the people in her team. And there was a cast of musicians: brother Paddy was there, as always, as well as fellow KT Bush Band alumni guitarist Brian Bath and bassist Del Palmer – who had played on Wow and on The Tour Of Life – were now in the pool of players, as were drummer Preston Hayman and guitarist Alan Murphy. Returning across the sessions from earlier albums were Ian Bairnson and Duncan Mackay. It was the first time for Peter Gabriel bassist John Giblin and keyboard player Max Middleton. It was very much a case of selecting the right player for the right song.

Never For Ever can be divided track and feel-wise by the studios in which they were recorded. Egypt and Violin (both premiered on The Tour Of Life); The Wedding List and Blow Away were all 1979 recordings at AIR. These are the most conventional-sounding tracks, imbued with the deep-brown shagpile carpet late-70s feel of her first two albums.

The move to Abbey Road (“the land of Beatles, tea, smiles and sticky buns,” she was to write) in January 1980 marked the quantum shift in the album and Bush’s work. “It was a very magical experience,” she told seasoned EMI publicist Brian Southall. “Being on your own in Studio 2 is fascinating… as I felt there were at least 10 other people with me; the place has tremendous presence. I don’t think it’s just the fact The Beatles recorded there, but a combination of all the people who have been there over the years and all their combined creativity.”

“It was a real home record for Kate,” Jon Kelly told Mojo in February 2003 – her first time at the St John’s Wood complex was marked by the studio being filled with flowers and plants.

Recording for Never For Ever was completed on May 10, 1980. It was readied for release in June, but EMI held it back until September to avoid other key releases of that summer, McCartney II and The Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue. In late June, another taster was offered as Babooshka was released as a single. A much more conventionally commercial song, it had a killer chorus, and was based on the traditional English folk tune Sovay. Its tale of intrigue with John Giblin’s fretless bass, and the breaking glass solo so gleefully arrived at Abbey Road, propelled the record to No.5 in the UK charts. It was Bush’s highest single placing since Wuthering Heights, and 11 places higher than Breathing.

Lionheart had the inscription ‘hope you like it’ etched into its run-out groove; almost underlining late teenage anxiety wondering if lightning would be able to strike twice. There was no such concern with Never For Ever. Emboldened by her tour, maturing with new friends, technology and allies, from Nick Price’s memorable cover illustration inward, Never For Ever was a grown-up record. Its sleeve notes and thanks were telling: to “all the musicians who have worked patiently and understandingly on this album to make it the way I always wanted it to be.”

“Kate was a joy to work with,” Larry Fast, who played the Prophet synth on Breathing, recalls. “I have the highest regard for her artistry and she was one of the nicest people that I’ve had the pleasure to be invited to work with.”

Never For Ever is the album on which Kate Bush grew up. The naïveté of her first albums was being replaced with a conscience, new wonders, and a hint of despair. The inexorable pull of art rock was intoxicating – there was something in the air – the rush of available, and in time, affordable technology, the freedom to discuss art in a way that seemed less pretentious than a decade earlier – it was like punk had shooed away the pixies and goblins and now one could talk of existentialism without fear of being attacked. Never For Ever proved that Kate Bush was a serious artist. It opened the Pandora’s box of the studio to her, and technology and sound became the vehicle in which she could best present her work.

Richard Burgess saw how she thrived in this environment and recalls his role in altering her sound with great affection: “I love being in the room with people who are more creative than me; the ideas start flowing and it just bounces back and forth: when a creative spiral starts to happen and you just start to take off. Definitely with Kate it was like that. There’s no barriers; no ego. If someone has a better idea, you are on it. Five minutes later you can’t even remember whose idea it was because it was all so seamless. It’s exhilarating in itself to be in that kind of environment, never mind the actual end result that you create.”

David Mitchell retrospectively calls Never For Ever “a cabinet of curiosities housing some highly desirable items.” It’s her transitional album and it benefits greatly from that; in fact, the recording spanned two studios and two decades, it was as if she was putting old diaries away and starting afresh”.

Released on 8th September, 1980, Never for Ever turns forty-five later this year. I hope that people reapproach the album and, rather than see it as a sign of what was to come, they do recognise it as a moment when Kate Bush announced herself as this serious artist. In the sense that her production, songwriting and vision was beyond fault or parody. That she was not the artist she was in 1978. Only twenty-two when Never for Ever came out, it is a remarkably mature and confident work. One that does not betray her past or radically departs from that early work, it is an album that is its own thing. A revolutionary album. Rather than Never for Ever being on the cusp or caught between the old Kate Bush and what would be, we have to acknowledge that Never for Ever is a  groundbreaking work of genius that…

WARRANTS a lot more respect.

FEATURE: Feminist Icons: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

FEATURE:

 

 

Feminist Icons

PHOTO CREDIT: Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

__________

MAYBE she would find it…

PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Summerton for Harper’s Bazaar

problematic or inappropriate being called a ‘feminist icon’. At the very least, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has discussed the reasonability of being labelled as such. For this part of my series, I wanted to shine a light on the Nigerian author. Even though her heart is in fiction and her new novel, Dream Count (“Through the interconnected lives of four women, the critically acclaimed author of Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah spins a mesmerising and moving study of love, happiness and the quest for fulfilment in contemporary society”), is highly acclaimed, she is someone who is regarded as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature. The Nigerian’s 2012 talk, We Should All Be Feminists, was sampled by Beyoncé as well as featuring on a T-shirt by Dior in 2016. She is remarkably powerful and influential voice in feminism. Before getting to some interview where we can learn more about Adichie as this iconic and influential feminist, I want to grab wholesale from Wikipedia when it comes to her legacy.  Adichie is also on the Concepción Feminist Mural in Madrid, Spain:

“According to Lisa Allardice, a journalist writing for The Guardian, Adichie became the "poster girl for modern feminism after her 2012 TED Talk 'We Should All Be Feminists' went stratospheric and was distributed in book form to every 16-year-old in Sweden". Adichie has become "a global feminist icon" and a recognised "public thinker" per journalist Lauren Alix Brown. Parts of Adichie's TEDx Talk were sampled in the song "Flawless" by singer Beyoncé on 13 December 2013. When asked in an NPR interview about that, Adichie responded that "anything that gets young people talking about feminism is a very good thing." She later refined the statement in an interview with the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, saying that she liked and admired Beyoncé and gave permission to use her text because the singer "reached many people who would otherwise probably never have heard the word feminism."

But, she went on to state that the sampling caused a media frenzy with requests from newspapers world-wide who were keen to report on her new-found fame because of Beyoncé. Adichie said, "I am a writer and I have been for some time and I refuse to perform in this charade that is now apparently expected of me". She was disappointed by the media portrayal, but acknowledged that "Thanks to Beyoncé, my life will never be the same again." Adichie was outspoken against critics who later questioned the singer's credentials as a feminist because she uses her sexuality to "pander to the male gaze". In defence of Beyoncé, Adichie said: "Whoever says they're feminist is bloody feminist."

Scholar Matthew Lecznar said that Adichie's stature as "one of most prominent writers and feminists of the age" allowed her to use her celebrity "to demonstrate the power of dress and empower people from diverse contexts to embrace [fashion] ... which has everything to do with the politics of identity". Academics Floriana Bernardi and Enrica Picarelli credited her support of the Nigerian fashion industry with helping put Nigeria "at the forefront" of the movement to use fashion as a globally-recognised political mechanism of empowerment. Toyin Falola, a professor of history, in an evaluation of scholarship in Nigeria, criticised the policy of elevating academic figures prematurely. He argued that scholarship, particularly in the humanities, should challenge policies and processes to strengthen the social contract between citizens and government. He suggested that the focus should shift from recognising scholars who merely influenced other scholars to acknowledging intellectuals who use their talents to benefit the state and serve as mentors to Nigerian youth. Adichie was among those he felt qualified as "intellectual heroes", who had "push[ed] forward the boundaries of social change”.

I want to go back to 2017 and an interview from The Guardian. In it, she answered the questions/accusation aimed at her that she was making equality mainstream (as The Guardian noted: “Isn’t that the point?”). Adichie is fascinating to listen to and read. As a diversion, Adichie is a key voice when it comes to feminist fashion. How women who love fashion and makeup are often seen as silly, shallow or vain and without any depth. She has acknowledged the relationship between beauty, fashion, style and socio-political inequalities. Adichie is also hugely committed to promoting body positivity as a way of acquiring agency. She is someone who takes immense pride in her African features such as her skin colour, hair texture and curves; dressing in bold designs featuring bright colours to make a statement about self-empowerment:

“The success of We Should All Be Feminists has made Adichie as prominent for her feminism as for her novels, to the extent that “now I get invited to every damned feminist thing in the whole world”. She has always been an agony aunt of sorts, “the unpaid therapist for my family and friends”, but having the feminist label attached has changed things, and not just among her intimates. “I was opened to a certain level of hostility that I hadn’t experienced before as a writer and public figure.”

This is partly why she has written the new book, to reclaim the word feminism from its abusers and misusers, a category within which she would include certain other progressives, and to lay down in plain, elegant English her beliefs about child-raising.

In Nigeria, you control children. My daughter is 15 months. So she tears a book? Whatever. She throws my shoes down. So?

Dear Ijeawele is, in some ways, a very basic set of appeals; to be careful with language (never say “because you are a girl”), avoid gendered toys, encourage reading, don’t treat marriage as an achievement, reject likability. “Her job is not to make herself likable, her job is to be her full self,” she writes in reference to her friend’s daughter, a choice Adichie has come to elevate almost above any other.

That day in Lagos last summer, her friends were furious at the cheek of the young man’s question, but she rather liked his bravery and honesty in asking it. She replied in the same spirit. “Keep your love,” Adichie said. “Because, sadly, while I love to be loved, I will not accept your love if it comes with these conditions.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Stephen Voss/The Guardian

Having a baby has made Adichie think differently about her own parents, particularly her mother. Grace Adichie, who had six children and worked her way up from being a university administrator to the registrar, taught her daughter to love fashion as well as books, and was a “very cool mum” whom she idolised as a child. Nonetheless, and in the manner of most snotty young adults, young Chimamanda went through a phase of being “very superior” to her mother. Now, the novelist looks at her daughter and gulps.

Adichie recently came across her own kindergarten reports. “My father keeps them all. You know what the teacher wrote? ‘She is brilliant, but she refuses to do any work when she’s annoyed.’ I was five years old.” She laughs. “I couldn’t believe it. My husband couldn’t believe it. I must have been an annoying child.”

It’s not as if she comes from a family of radicals. “My parents are not like that. They’re conventional, reasonable, responsible, good, kind people. I’m the crazy. But their love and support made that crazy thrive.”

Unlike Adichie, who was raised exclusively in Nigeria, her daughter will be raised in two cultures and subject to slightly diverging social expectations. Already, Adichie says with a laugh, friends and relatives from home are concerned that her mothering is insufficiently stern. 

“A friend was just visiting and she said to me, ‘Your parenting is not very Nigerian.’ In Nigeria – and, I think, in many cultures – you control children. And I feel like, my daughter is 15 months, she doesn’t have a sense of consequences. And I enjoy watching her. So she tears a page of a book? Whatever. She throws my shoes down. So? It’s fun. I love that she’s quite strong-willed.” The joke between Adichie and her husband – whom, to her intense annoyance, their daughter looks much more like – is that her character cleaves to the maternal side. “He says to me, ‘Well, at least we know where she got her personality from.’ She’s quite fierce.”

In the new book, Adichie’s advice is not only to provide children with alternatives – to empower boys and girls to understand there is no single way to be – but also to understand that the only universal in this world is difference. In terms of the evolution of feminism, these are not new lessons, but that is rather Adichie’s point. She is not writing for other feminist writers, and shows some frustration at what she sees as the solipsism of much feminist debate.

The proposition is that feminism has become so mainstream as to be an empty marketing tool, a mere slogan on a bag or a T-shirt. Without being named, Adichie is implicated in this critique, given that last year she collaborated with Christian Dior on a T-shirt bearing the line We Should All Be Feminists; depending on one’s view, this is either a perfect example of pointless sloganeering or a brilliant piece of preaching to the unconverted.

“I’m already irritated,” Adichie says. “This idea of feminism as a party to which only a select few people get to come: this is why so many women, particularly women of colour, feel alienated from mainstream western academic feminism. Because, don’t we want it to be mainstream? For me, feminism is a movement for which the end goal is to make itself no longer needed. I think academic feminism is interesting in that it can give a language to things, but I’m not terribly interested in debating terms. I want people’s marriages to change for the better. I want women to walk into job interviews and be treated the same way as somebody who has a penis.”

Adichie’s irritation with aspects of what she thinks of as “professional feminism” is that it runs counter to her ideas as a writer: that people contain multitudes. She is a brilliant novelist and a serious thinker, and she is also someone who makes no apology for her own trivial interests. “Life doesn’t always follow ideology,” she says. “You might believe in certain things and life gets in and things just become messy. You know? I think that’s the space that fiction, and having a bit more of an imaginative approach, makes. And that the feminist speaking circuit doesn’t really make room for”.

Before ending with a couple of recent interviews, I want to come to this interview from last year and some takeaways. It really captured my eyes. An interview people should listen to/read in full. In it, “Chimamanda delves into gender dynamics in African societies, the influence of colonial histories on women's narratives, and the crucial work of reframing African stories. From literature to feminism, this episode explores the rich complexity of African identity and storytelling through the lens of one of the continent’s leading literary voices”:

“Makhtar: Thats very powerful and personally touched me. Let me go back to feminism. What I see in your literature is that you talk about the resilience, the strength of women, I found a lot of this resilience in what you mentioned about these ancestors, these women which were very strong. And people forget, often that Queens were the head of some empires in Africa, people forget it. So, tell me the link between what you express as feminism today. And that affiliation that you have with our history.

Chimamanda: I think I've always said that there are different feminism's and that for me, my feminism is African, because I'm African. And really, it's just this belief that women are equally human. It's actually quite simple. And, you know, I think that my ancestors believed that as well. And I don't I don't like to romanticize our history, I don't want to suggest that, oh, everything was fine before the white man came because that's not true. But at the same time, there's a complexity that we had that somehow has been erased from, from us, collective idea of ourselves. So the way that we have learned to talk about ourselves, for me is not authentic. And so, I like to talk about my great grandmother, who I've already mentioned who she was, she was described as a headstrong woman. But that's because she stood her ground. That's because she was a feminist. That's because she felt that the parts of culture that diminished her, she wanted to resist. Her husband died quite young. And so his brothers wanted to sort of take over these things. And she said, No, and that was kind of unusual at the time. So she was labeled headstrong. But in the stories that we tell about our past, the women are all kind of really submissive, and they don't really have a voice.

And, and that's not true. I love reading about pre-colonial Africa, I find it fascinating just how just wonderfully complex the worlds were. So, I remember reading this account of an English woman who was sort of touring through Igbo Land in the 1860s, 70s. And she was just shocked that women did so much because she'd come from this Victorian England where women just sat at home. And Igbo women were the traders in the market, Igbo women, and she just found it shocking. And because she found it shocking, she labeled it bad, because it did not match her own idea of what the world should be. So imagine this person then writing a book, and saying, oh, this terrible thing they do. And then people go to school and read that book, and they absorb these ideas. And that's how we start to think of ourselves in just really, in my opinion, dangerous ways because we learn to diminish who we are. So, there's a part of me that just wants to really resist that and to say, there's a lot about our history that we can take in and be proud of. Because, you know, it was beautiful.

Makhtar: And you know, an example of that I sometimes give is ‘Mrs.’. Yes. Mrs. doesn't exist in my traditional culture. Women keep their name. And that just illustrates for me some of the things that sometimes were not identified as belonging to our society.

Chimamanda: I'm not a Mrs. I do have a wonderful husband, and children. But so in Nigeria, many people did not understand why I choose to keep my name. And so often some people would say to me, this is very bad, because you're not following Igbo culture. And then I would say, this is not even Igbo culture. I mean, you can choose to do whatever you want, but don't justify it using culture in a way that is not true. And we're teaching our children what is not true. Because actually, traditionally, in Igboland, people did not have surnames, children were identified by the names of their mothers, because often it was polygamous. So you know, my father, for example, would say to me that his grandfather was known as Mya Omeni. Omeni was his mother, and had my father not gone to school, he would have been known as Mwanem, son of his mother. And actually, in Igbo the word for sibling is my mother's child is one name, my mother's child. And so, you know, I think about these things. I think, ‘I wish we had more of an infusion of our real history, so that we actually know what it was like’. We don't have to follow it if you don't want it. But you know, I think we've lost that as well. And I really have been thinking about waste. I'm thinking about writing something about pre colonial Africa, for example, that will, you know, again, not romanticize, but just tell it like it was because there's so much that's beautiful. And you look at the history of Europe, for example, which many of us know, because we went to school, and a lot of it is still a kind of selective storytelling, you know. So the reason that we can think about the monarchies of Europe with a kind of respect is because they have been selective about what they told us, you know. I want to do that for West African history as well”.

I am going to finish up soon. Before I get, there are a couple of other interviews that I am keen to include. Harper’s Bazaar recently spoke with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Someone who claims fiction is her religion, this is a great discussion. The world has waited a long time for a new novel. It is wonderful that “the author, activist and cultural phenomenon is back with a book full of dreams as big as her own”:

“While her award-winning novels – Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah – are transportive, incisive portraits of family and societal conflict within sweeping political contexts, her lectures and essays seem to encapsulate truths of the modern age, whether she is examining grief, championing storytelling or speaking out against artistic censorship. Her prescient ideas have helped define feminism for the 21st century, the message adopted and the word spread not just via bestselling books or TED talks, but also through the lyrics of Beyoncé or Maria Grazia Chiuri’s launch collection at Dior.

Adichie had concluded her talk with the sentiment: “I like to think of literature as my religion… fiction is in many ways like faith, which is a leap of the imagination.” When we connect a couple of months later in February – she in her bright Maryland home, hair up, and clad in a coral sweater; me in London – I remind her of the last time we met: how the setting had amusingly reinforced that parallel between fiction and faith. I ask whether she finds herself turning to the latter more nowadays. “I think that is such an important and relevant question, so the short answer is ‘yes,’” she responds. “You know how young people say, ‘I felt seen?’ You just asking that made me feel ‘seen.’” She gives a deep laugh. “But seriously, it’s not just that we live in – at the risk of sounding melodramatic – perilous times. We do. It’s also that after my father died and then my mother died, everything changed for me. I changed. I have felt this awareness of how fleeting life is, and suddenly this deep longing for meaning. That’s all tied up with the idea of faith”.

I am going to end with an interview from The Guardian from February. It is quite a revealing and open interview. Adichie has lost both parents and seen Donald Trump become President again. She has also come back to writing fiction following backlash regarding her comments on gender and trans women in particular. A writer and feminist whose work I am quite new to, having read interviews and experienced some of her work, she has definitely opened my eyes and mind.  I am definitely going to seek out Dream Count:

“Incubating for some time at the back of her mind was the idea that she should write more about the “gritty reality” of women’s bodies and the obstacles to women’s lives caused by gynaecology. She saw it as demystifying the experience of, say, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Or fibroids. Or the violence of the birthing experience. “There’s a lot that has to do with having a female body that isn’t much talked about,” she says, “and it’s consequential for women’s lives.” For a long time, she was reluctant to discuss these, fearing she – a renowned feminist – would fuel a tendency to treat things such as PMS as a joke. “Code for a woman being unreasonably irritable,” she says, darkly. But in addition to the “remarkably unpleasant experience” of having surgery for “a very big fibroid”, hormonal issues have plagued her entire life.

“If one is writing honestly about women’s lives, it seems self-evident that we have to talk about these issues in a very open way, because they affect everything. They affect how well a woman does. They affect your emotional wellbeing. They get in the way of your dreams. If you’re a woman whose dream is to have a family, for example, fibroids can get in the way.” She laughs that she is not trying to raise awareness in an NHS public service announcement sort of way, but because “I was trying to write about women’s lives in a way that feels truthful and wholesome and full for me”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jared Soares/The Guardian

She says hers was a life “deeply shaped” by her parents, that their deaths have left her truly changed. In this way, Dream Count is a “departure”: “The person who wrote Purple Hibiscus was young, but still the person who wrote Half of a Yellow Sun. And in some ways also the person who wrote Americanah. But today I am alone. I’m a person who looks at the world differently.” She spoke to her mother the night before she died. “She was fine; she went to mass. The next morning – my father’s birthday – she was gone. If somebody wrote that in a fiction class I was teaching, I’d be like, ‘No, this is too much.’”

The time since has involved much self-reflection. There are “things I regret; positions I took”. Can she name any? She clicks her tongue. “Not even so much the position as the how.” She says she didn’t want to talk about this because she knew she would cry. “My mother and I were very close. But there are many times when I was short with her when I didn’t need to be. There’s a tendency for girls to do that with mothers. I wish we would stop. I want to tell all the girls in the world. I’m not saying, ‘Don’t express frustration.’ I’m just saying, take a step back and think, ‘Am I doing this with grace?’ Was this in her teenage years? “No, older. When I was a teenager, I was equal opportunities horrible: I felt I knew everything, that my parents knew nothing. Sometimes, I would not be patient with her. I would be patient with my father. She saw the world a lot more clearly, as women often do.

“Women go through a lot. I wish I could have done better.” She finds a tissue. “Lord, why did I start saying this?” She smiles. “My mother would not read everything I wrote, but she would tell everybody that it was wonderful”.

Maybe some might not feel Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a feminist icon or someone who is seen as one of the great feminist voices and writers. I would disagree. Whether you agree with her comments about trans women in 2017 or feel that the way she was criticised was fair or not, she is a modern-day feminist icon. On the transgender argument, it is something that I have had to think about and wrestle when writing this feature. Whether, if anyone reads this, people would criticise me for celebrating her in light of her remarks. I am a huge advocate and supporter of the trans community so cannot wholeheartedly agree with and support Adichie’s phrasing. However, I can recognise how powerful her writing is regarding women and feminism. This article highlights the importance of feminism and gender discourse. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an activist and author whose…

WORK you should read.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Donna Summer – I Feel Love

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Donna Summer – I Feel Love

__________

A huge song that…

must rank alongside some of the best of all-time, I Feel Love came out on 2nd July, 1977. Originally a B-side, Donna Summer’s classic was produced and co-written by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Included on Summer’s phenomenal fifth studio album, I Remember Yesterday, it was the B-side to the single, Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over). It seems like one of the oddest A and B-side combinations in music history. Given how much more emphatic and better the B-side is! A couple of months after the single was released, it was reissued with the sides reversed. I Feel Love reached number one in many countries and is one of Donna Summer’s most iconic songs. This futuristic cuts that sounded like nothing else in 1977, it struck a chord with David Bowie and Brian Eno. When making the Berlin Trilogy, Eno came running in after he heard I Feel Love and told Bowie that the song would change the sound of Club music for fifteen years to come. Quite a lot has been written about I Feel Love. I am going to source from a few features. All state how this 1977 song was the sound of the future. One that sounds ahead of its time and untouched now. In 2017, Pitchfork marked forty years of I Feel Love. They look at the background and history of the song and spoke with the studio gurus behind the masterpiece. The Robot-Funk classic that has endured for decades. Rather than include the whole feature, I have taken the opening sections - but would advise you to read the entire thing:

“Released 40 years ago, in early July 1977, “I Feel Love” was a global smash, reaching No. 1 in several countries (including the UK, where its reign at the top lasted a full month) and rising to No. 6 in America. But its impact reached far beyond the disco scene in which singer Donna Summer and her producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte were already well established. Post-punk and new wave groups admired and appropriated its innovative sound, the maniacal precision of its grid-like groove of sequenced synth-pulses. Even now, long after discophobia has been disgraced and rockism defeated, there’s still a mischievous frisson to staking the claim that “I Feel Love” was far more important than other epochal singles of ’77 such as “God Save the Queen,” “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” or “Complete Control.” But really it’s a simple statement of fact: If any one song can be pinpointed as where the 1980s began, it’s “I Feel Love.”

Within club culture, “I Feel Love” pointed the way forward and blazed the path for genres such as Hi-NRG, Italo, house, techno, and trance. All the residual elements in disco—the aspects that connected it to pop tradition, show tunes, orchestrated soul, funk—were purged in favor of brutal futurism: mechanistic repetition, icy electronics, a blank-eyed fixated feel of posthuman propulsion.

“‘I Feel Love’ stripped out the flowery aspects of disco and really gave it a streamlined drive,” says Vince Aletti, the first critic to take disco seriously. In the club music column he wrote for Record World at the time, Aletti compared “I Feel Love” to “Trans-Europe Express/Metal on Metal” by Kraftwerk, another prophetic piece of electronic trance-dance that convulsed crowds in the more adventurous clubs.

The reverberations of “I Feel Love” reached far beyond the disco floor, though. Then unknown but destined to be synth-pop stars in the ’80s, the Human League completely switched their direction after hearing the song. Blondie, equally enamored, became one of the first punk-associated groups to embrace disco. Brian Eno famously rushed into the Berlin recording studio where he and David Bowie were working on creating new futures for music, waving a copy of “I Feel Love.” “This is it, look no further,” Eno declared breathlessly. “This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next 15 years.”

In the wake of “I Feel Love,” Giorgio Moroder became a name producer, the disco equivalent of Phil Spector. He even appeared on the cover of Britain’s leading rock magazine, New Musical Express. The Moroder hit factory was widely considered the Motown of the late ’70s, with Donna Summer as its Diana Ross”.

In 2022, Jude Rogers spoke with co-producer Pete Bellotte about the song. She also spoke with a few of its famous fans. Published by The Quietus, it is a fascinating and insightful feature. There is a whole new generation who are discovering Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. It is a song that will never sound dated or a sad product of its time. I have been thinking about the track a lot recently and how ahead of its time it was. Such an amazing moment of gold that must have sounded completely unlike anything else when people heard it in 1977:

“But ‘I Feel Love’’s magic is also about another extraordinary element: Donna Summer’s ethereal vocal, which helped create a template for the future of club mixes, and the bedrock of genres like house and garage. Summer had had hits already with Moroder and Bellotte, most famously 1975’s ‘Love To Love You Baby’, inspired by a lyrical ideas of hers, which she recorded lying on the floor in the studio, so her friends couldn’t see her, singing it in an approximation of the voice of Marilyn Monroe. She had intended that to be a demo for somebody else, she told German TV in 2009, as it felt “too sexy a song” for her to sing.

But the emotion behind ‘I Feel Love’ came from a very real place. “We wanted the music to sound like an automaton – relentless,” Bellotte explains. “The beat sounded heartless, but Donna was the heart. She was love.”

On the night that Summer was meant to be writing the song’s lyrics with Bellotte, he was kept waiting for three hours. Summer was having a romantic crisis, trying to work out whether or not to leave the boyfriend she had thought about while writing ‘Love To Love You Baby’, artist Peter Mühldorfer, for a man she’d just met, Bruce Sudano, of the group Brooklyn Dreams. “She was on the phone to her astrologer trying to work out her astrological compatibility with both of them,” Bellotte says, a smile in his voice. “And that was the very night that she decided to be with Bruce, who became her husband, who she had two children with, and who she stayed with for the rest of her life.’

Bellotte completed the lyric himself while he waited. Summer apologised profusely to him when she came down – "she was always such a lovely, easy person to work with" – and delivered the song in one take. Summer was also fun, Bellotte says: she loved messing around with different tones and delivery. “Whatever suited the song. She just did the vocal for ‘I Feel Love’ that way, going high, in that range.” As she did, the idea of female pleasure and ecstasy entered the synthesiser’s mechanical world, one often thought of as very masculine before, especially in the world of prog. A new shimmering juggernaut of sound was launched into the world, accessible to everyone.

The trio “didn’t think that much” of their new song to start with, but their boss at Casablanca Records, Neil Bogart, jumped on it. He’d also spotted ‘Love To Love You Baby’’s commercial potential in 1975, after seeing the effects it had on people at an orgy in his house, and asked for it to be made into a 17-minute mix, long before the era of the commercial twelve-inch disco single). “He was an incredible music man,” Bellotte says. “He also suggested three edits to the track which really made it work. He understood what it could do and where it could go.”

Despite its success, Bellotte is still staggered by the song’s ongoing legacy. “Thing is, none of us – me, Giorgio, Donna – ever planned anything. Things just evolved. Here we were, an Italian, an Englishman and an American in Munich, three foreigners in a foreign land – it was an accident we got together in the first place.” Giorgio, Donna and him were in the studio all the time, he adds, working hard. “We didn’t drink, smoke, or take drugs. We barely went out.” After ‘I Feel Love’ was a huge global smash, however, things changed a bit. “We’d stop at 6 pm, and go out to nice restaurants every night for our dinner.”

Bellotte also only saw ‘I Feel Love’’s impact in a nightclub once, in the late 1970s. A friend had begged him to come along, and see it for himself. “I couldn’t believe it. I’m not a nightclub person, as you may have realised from my other interests. But people were going absolutely mad.”

In the last forty-five years, he has also had time to reflect on why the song might work. “Music changes but love doesn’t. Love’s the same as it was centuries ago.” And when it’s coupled with a relentlessly physical, sexual beat – bringing men and women, men and men, women and women, together – love keeps going, backwards, forwards, everywhere, forever”.

I am going to end with a couple of features from The Guardian. First, in 2012, music critic Jon Savage and producer Ewan Pearson spoke about the iconic and majestic I Feel Love. A song that clocks in at under four minutes, it packs so much in during that time! It is an epic track with a short runtime. I want to include what Jon Savage noted:

“Pop critic Jon Savage

A cinematic drone comes in fast from silence, quickly overtaken by two synthesised rhythm tracks that will go in and out of phase for the next lifetime. On top, Donna Summer soars and swoops as she tackles the minimal lyric: "It's so good [x five], "Heaven knows" [x five], "I feel love" [x five]. The words are so functional that her voice becomes another instrument, almost another machine, but then there is the real heart of the song: "Fallin' free, fallin' free, fallin' free …"

I Feel Love was and remains an astonishing achievement: a futuristic record that still sounds fantastic 35 years on. Within its modulations and pulses, it achieves the perfect state of grace that is the ambition of every dance record: it obliterates the tyranny of the clock – the everyday world of work, responsibility, money – and creates its own time, a moment of pleasure, ecstasy and motion that seems infinitely expandable, if not eternal.

Back in 1977, I Feel Love was a radical breakthrough, and was designed as such. It was started as a cut for I Remember Yesterday, an album that producer Giorgio Moroder originally planned as a mini-tour through dance music history: a Dixieland number here, a Tamla number there. To complete the project, he needed what NME called a "next-disco sound".

"I had already had experience with the original Moog synthesisers," Moroder told NME in December 1978, "so I contacted this guy who owned one of the large early models. It was all quite natural and normal for me. I simply instructed him about what programmings I needed. I didn't even think to notice that for the large audience this was perhaps a very new sound."

I Feel Love was quickly remixed and, extended to eight minutes on a 12in, made an immediate impact. As Vince Aletti wrote in his 13 August 1977 column for Record World, "perhaps the most significant development in disco sound this year is the success of totally synthesised music. Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express was the breakthrough record." Name-checking Space (whose all-synth Magic Fly was a huge UK hit in late summer 1977), Aletti observed that Kraftwerk's "impact was immediately underlined by Donna Summer's I Feel Love, which took the synthesiser rhythm and compressed and intensified it so it was both more physically exciting – like stepping into a tangle of high-voltage wires – and more commercial".

I Feel Love went to No 1 in the UK during the high summer of 1977, and stayed there for four weeks – filling dance floors everywhere, because it's so good so good to dance to. Like David Bowie's Low and Heroes, and Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express, it was also the secret vice of those punks who were already tiring of sped-up pub rock, and it sowed the seeds for the next generation of UK electronica.

It didn't chart as high in the States – No 6 – but it became an all-time gay classic, a totem of the pre-Aids era ("Fallin free, fallin' free, fallin' free"). That iconic status was reaffirmed by (Sylvester producer) Patrick Cowley's monumental 15-and-three-quarter-minute remix, which really does go on for ever and ever without trashing – even enhancing – the concept of the original.

I'm guessing many of you will have heard I Feel Love pumped out loud, will have felt moved to dance, and will have felt time stop, the instant prolonged. Something of that feeling attaches itself to the record wherever it's heard, and it never gets dulled by repetition – or endless imitation. I must have heard I Feel Love a thousand times and it still takes my breath away: it's one of the great records of the 20th century, and the name on the label is Donna Summer”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Simon/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

I am ending with a feature from 2020. The Guardian were ranking the best British singles of all time. Donna Summer’s I Feel Love came in fourth. Hailing its “Hypnotic synth, peerless vocals and visionary ambition”, they remark how this timeless song is one of the greatest ever. A huge moment in popular music. A turning point. It still sounds so bold and hypnotic to this day. A track we will be talking about for decades more:

“I Feel Love began life in 1977 as a bookend track to round off a disco concept album. The theme of I Remember Yesterday, Summer’s fifth album, was to evoke different decades, starting in the 1940s and ending up with a song that would represent the future. Moroder and Bellotte realised the sci-fi textures they needed could only be produced using a modular synthesiser. The pair had previously used a Moog Modular 3P to record Son of My Father but found the process of wrangling the complicated, Tardis-like rack of oscillators and patch cables to be “a pain in the butt”. The process was complicated by the fact the synth was owned by a pop-phobic avant garde composer called Eberhard Schoener.

But Schoener’s assistant Robby Wedel – the unsung hero of the I Feel Love story – borrowed the Moog and reassembled it in Moroder’s studio. As well as supplying the technology, Wedel solved the most pressing of many problems that the team faced in creating the sound of the future by sequencing the electronic composition to the 16-track recorder. It was this act that made it such an outstandingly avant garde track – no one knew the synth was capable of this, not even Robert Moog himself. But the task remained painstaking. The highly temperamental instrument would not stay in tune for long and had to be manually retuned after each 20-second section was recorded.

Wedel nails one of the key ingredients of the track when he describes the bassline as being like “a giant’s hammer on a wall”, its power matched only by trance-inducing hypnotism created by astute use of a delay-like effect. If you listen to the track through good headphones you can hear the bassline hit first via the left channel only to play again a sixteenth later through the right channel, giving it that instantly recognisable juddering spatiality.

Of course, it’s not entirely machine-made. Apart from Summer’s peerless vocal performance, which included a spontaneously improvised falsetto, there’s also the beat. Wedel, who knew the Moog inside out, used it to generate hi-hat and snare sounds with white noise but couldn’t quite get the bass drum sound right, so a session musician, Keith Forsey, was brought in to play the metronomic 4/4.

Remarkably, Casablanca didn’t think that much of I Feel Love’s future potential and it was consigned to the B-side of the Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over) single, released 1 May 1977. Yet the track soon took on a life of its own and began tearing up dancefloors. By 2 July, it had been released as an A-side. It went to No 1 in the UK, Australia, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands.

For many, what was already a damn near perfect track, was – somehow – improved the following year by a remix. Patrick Cowley, a visionary cosmic disco producer who was part of Sylvester’s backing band, warped the track into a psychedelic 15-minute masterpiece. What’s truly stunning about his remix is that it was a bootleg made from an off-the-shelf copy of the album, with him adding extra percussion, crackling snare fills, and washes of ecstatic electronic noise. Not having the luxury of having Wedel sync his work, he did everything painstakingly by hand. While initially only available on DJ acetates and white labels during Cowley’s active lifetime, it got an official release at the end of 1982 and became a massive hit all over again.

It’s impossible to completely quantify the effect of I Feel Love on dance music. It signified the end of one era in disco (that of lush orchestration and large bands) and the start of another (the producer as electronic auteur backing a diva). Along with Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express, it acted as a conduit between the avant garde and the dancefloors of the world. It foreshadowed the rise of house music and techno. Despite early outlier users such as Stevie Wonder, I Feel Love decisively recast the image of the synthesiser. It was no longer primarily the tool of pallid European futurists and the toy of rich prog rock musicians, but the key to dance music’s revolutionary potential going into the 1980s and beyond.

Not only has I Feel Love never gone out of fashion, it has consistently jumped between genres in the intervening decades with incredible ease. I Feel Love is, or has been, a staple of house, techno, electroclash and nu-disco sets while also exerting an influence on post punk, new wave, EBM, hi-energy, P-Funk and industrial. There is no end to the list of artists who have been influenced by this track, but one exchange acts as a revelatory example: in 1977, Brian Eno charged into the studio while David Bowie was recording, brandishing a copy of I Feel Love, and stated excitedly: “This is it, look no further. This is going to change the sound of club music for the next 15 years.” His only mistake was one of gross under-exaggeration”.

I thought I had included I Feel Love in Groovelines before but haven’t. It is long-overdue that I should come to this song from the late and great Donna Summer. A classic B-side that got a swift promotion, Brian Eno underestimated the power and legacy of the track! It completely changed Pop music. Such a radical and futuristic piece of art, it is still inspiring artists now. I Feel Love has a huge impact on genres like Post-Punk and New Wave. It also affected and influenced future sub-genres of Electronic Dance Music such as Techno and Italo Disco. One of the greatest Dance songs ever and one that has been ranked highly by critics through the years, I was excited to explore it for Groovelines. Such a work of genius that will…

NEVER lose its magic.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Pozer

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Nelta Kasparian 

Pozer

__________

I am shining a spotlight…

on the sensational Pozer. Tyrone Paul is a British rapper from Croydon, South London. The artist gained success and attention after his debut single, Kitchen Stove, peaked at number twenty-two on the UK Singles Chart. His E.P., Against All Odds, was released in February. It is an incredible release. Pozer is a Drill talent that incorporates Jersey Club. A unique and fascinating artist who is going to go a long way. I am going to get to a few interviews. I want to start out with one from last year from NME. I only recently discovered Pozer but I can recognise he is someone who is a vital and powerful voice in modern Drill:

“What made you want to fuse UK drill with Jersey club?

“I was paying attention when the New York drill scene was coming up. There’s a batch near Harlem called The Sweepers – and they do this Jersey-style drill, full-on – so I’m bumping their tunes, taking in how energetic the songs are. But I’m also taking in how atmospheric Jersey club can be, deeping how jumpy the drum patterns are.

“I’m feeling the Jersey-style beats but thought, ‘Hah I can’t do the full on American style – the screaming – because that’s not me.’ If I do my ting in the typical UK drill sense, it’s not going to be widely acceptable and it’ll be oversaturated. I thought I could merge the Jersey club wave with my UK heritage and see what happens.

“With my beats, I met [producer] RA [‘Malicious Intentions’] through my manager. I dug through a lot of these beats and his beats stuck out to me the most. Young Madz [‘Kitchen Stove’] is a magician too, I tell him what I want, we run through drums, pick which ones we like the most and he makes the magic happen.”

Are there any other types of experimental beats you’ve rapped on?

“I’m a rapper’s rapper. I did it boom-bap style but it goes over people’s heads. I got a song where I remixed Luther Vandross’ ‘Never Too Much’ too.”

Credit: Press

Who’s on your Mount Rushmore of UK rap?

“Skepta, JME, D Double E, Ghetts.

“My favourite is JME but I rate the whole of BBK. [JME] really set the lane, he would rap about nerdy shit but you could tell he grew up in ends. When I was young, me and my uncle would watch Channel U and that’s where it came from – the sets on the rooftops, Crazy Titch’s flows, bare man squashed in a basement spitting – that’s the essence. It set the tone for me to be in the position with the advancements and with the internet, they’ve already paved the road for me to run.”

Have you done any live shows?

“I’ve done one or two little open mics before Kitchen Stove. It was good, I got a lot of love. It’s nerve-wracking when you first start but that’s why I needed to push through and just do it – you can’t get too comfortable in your comfort zone in situations like that and I learned there’s many levels to performing, engaging with the crowd and breath control.

“Me, personally, I’ve never been gone to shows really but allow going to a show as a fan and I’m having to sing your songs to your face when I can do that at home for free? I want people to make me stay on the stage. I want them to experience something and think, ‘Rah my man performed, the show was banging, the tunes were lit’”.

I am going to move on to a conversation with i-d. After Pozer’s first two singles set records, with the release of Puppies, this artist was stepping into the big leagues. Pozer plays Reading & Leeds in August. I can see him playing a lot of festivals in years to come. If you have not followed Pozer on social media then make sure that you check him out. The sound he is creating is unlike anything I have heard. I am excited to see where he heads:

“His confidence in his voice is unmistakable, bolstered by the fact that he became the first UK rapper to have his first two singles chart simultaneously in the UK charts — no small feat for an artist still in the infancy of his career. But “Puppies”, for Pozer, is more than just another song. It’s a statement of intent. “I’ve worked very hard to be here,” he says of his rise. “Everything else before was an introduction.” 

Growing up in an estate in Croydon, south London, as the eldest of 11 siblings — he has ten younger sisters — Pozer slipped easily into the role of older brother. “I was very responsible,” he says. “I wouldn’t call it a burden. Pressure makes diamonds, and even before the rap, I was under pressure.”

Pozer’s first foray into music came from informal cyphers with friends. “We’d just spit bars on the way to places, but no one was recording anything,” he says. “I didn’t do open mics, and I didn’t go to many concerts.” When most of his peers were out partying or hitting the club, Pozer stayed home. “My parents always wanted to know where I was, so I kept it low-key,” he says. “When I should have been out partying, I was working, writing. My music is my life.”

“I was working and this man recognised me from TikTok. I couldn’t get my head around it.”

Pozer observed the stark wealth disparity that existed in London, and how “the fine line between having and not having” influenced everything around him; that divide would go on to drive him to keep his head down and write about his experiences and his life. “Life moves fast,” he says. “Either you’ve got money, or you don’t, but you learn from the struggles: I wrote about my day-to-day, about the experiences I’ve been through.” 

A series of freestyles in 2018 on TikTok found Pozer a bit of a following. There were early comparisons to UK heavyweights like Fredo, Nines and Skrapz. With gritty beats and raw lyricism, his sound echoed the sounds of Chicago drill pioneers like Chief Keef, Lil Reese and Young Chop. But it was the breakout hit “Kitchen Stove”, released this past February, that truly established Pozer’s place in the UK rap scene, peaking at No 22 on the singles chart. Two months later, he followed it up with “Malicious Intentions”, a sharp, sleek track that landed at No 41.

These two songs touch on the quintessential Pozer style: music that blends the kinetic energy of Jersey club with the realism of UK drill, creating a sound that’s tense and visceral, and which prioritises ceiling-threatening basslines. “I can just hear it – the pocket. I’ve always had that ability. Play anything, even Rick James, and I’ll find the pocket to rap over it,” he says. “Writing has always come naturally to me. Music was always loved in my family, but no one took it seriously. I did.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Nelta Kasparian

True to that bravura, Pozer’s flow feels effortless, but it communicates vivid depictions of the life he’s left behind: “I sauced my first blade at nine / At the age of 12, slap bine, 15, beat a court case,” he raps on “Kitchen Stove”.

After the success of his first two singles – as well as a warm response to their follow-up, “I’m Tryna”, the veil between fame and obscurity started to wear thin. Suddenly, Pozer was leading a double life: working at a paint store while also seeing a new path unfold before him. “It was crazy, you know,” he says. “One day, I was at the store and this grown man recognised me, and said, ‘I see you on TikTok.’ I couldn’t get my head around it because a lot was happening very quickly.” 

He’s now found himself in increasingly rarefied spaces: earlier this year, Pozer was in Paris for fashion week, hanging out with AJ Tracey, a longtime inspiration. “When I first heard him, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s hard’,” Tracey says. “Reminds me of me a lot: deep voice, that cadence and flow, clarity where you can hear every word. It sounds like proper British music.”

When Tracey and Pozer met, Tracey gave him a piece of advice: to take care of his newfound wealth by learning financial literacy skills. “I’m not trying to big bro him,” Tracey says via phone interview. “He’s his own man, but I just thought it would be helpful if I say to him, ‘Yo, look, there are a couple of the things that you need to be working on to make sure that all this success that you’re due to have, God willing, the funds are channelled into the right places.’

“It’s very important that I pass that on to people who are going through the same kinds of motions,” he continues. “When I was younger and I was coming up, no one did that for me, bro. It’s about paying it forward.”

For Pozer, who spent his first paycheck from music on “rent, buying out JD and Foot Locker”, it was wise counsel. “Rap doesn’t last forever,” says Tracey. “So you need to make sure that you know on the flip side you’re good, otherwise you don’t want it to be for nothing.”

Even as Pozer’s star has risen, he’s stayed committed to perfecting his craft. Every detail, whether in his music or his visuals, is meticulously planned. “I know who I am and what I’m trying to get across. I set the foundation, and my team and I build from there. We’re perfectionists, always pushing ourselves to raise the bar,” he says. “Whether it’s a Jersey beat or something different, it has to be at 110%”.

I am going to wrap up with an interview from Rolling Stone UK from earlier this year. Blending the harder-edged and moody U.K. Drill with the syncopation of Jersey Club, it has allowed Pozer to engage with a wider audience. Against All Odds is a lighter and perhaps more accessible version of Drill. It still holds huge power. Pozer is now an award-winning artist and chart success. It is clear that his sound has struck a chord with so many people:

“Meshing together the moody atmosphere of UK drill and the upbeat, bouncily syncopated kick formulations of Jersey Club (which emerged from Newark, New Jersey, in the early 2000s) has allowed Pozer to appeal to a wide audience. Before the release of ‘Kitchen Stove’, he built huge anticipation by posting snippets of the track on social media, and when he shared his second single ‘Malicious Intentions’ a few weeks later, he became the first UK rapper in history to have their first two singles chart in the Top 40.

The 22-year-old tends to keep a low profile, but this kind of success doesn’t go unnoticed. In February, he beat big-name nominees like Central Cee, Headie One and K-Trap to win Best Drill Act at the MOBO Awards, and his position at the forefront of Rolling Stone UK’s Future of Music list for 2025 represents another landmark achievement. Elsewhere, on collaborations with artists including AJ Tracey, Nemzzz and JS x YD, he’s stuck to his distinctive sound while reaping the lyrical rewards of hours spent chilling with friends as a teenager, competing over who had the best eight-bar.

Satiating fans’ calls for new music, Pozer has just dropped his debut project Against All Odds, a four-track mixtape focused on the significant changes he’s been going through lately. It’s purposeful and forward-thinking, laced with hopeful bars like “Trials, tribulations, strife and struggle / I come from the dirt, mud, rubble… take risks and I make stacks double” and “I used to bruck down packs in tens / And now I get paid for spitting out gems.” At a poky cafe/bar in Hoxton — a slightly confused cross between a cocktail-centric tiki bar and a gentrified east London cafe — Pozer explains the project’s key objectives.

“The whole tape is there for inspiration value,” he says. “It’s for every yout from the ends that’s tryna do more than what is stereotypically shown. Against All Odds is on the lighter side of what we know as drill… most guys don’t wake up in the morning listening to drill, so I wanna shine a light on the other side of the people who come from these places but don’t 100 per cent resonate with everything drill as a subculture has to offer. I’m shining a light on me and everyone else living normal lives, talking about your habits, and [about] breaking bad ones.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Saradjola

That theme is central to tape opener ‘Habits’, which sees Pozer rap: “Badness, from a yout I’ve been on badness / I’ve shed blood, sweat, tears / And still I ain’t shed these bando habits”, storming through confessional bars on top of a chunky, industrial, Mumdance-esque beat. The Croydon-raised rhymer recently followed through on this desire to break habits by moving to north-west London, in search of a fresh chapter in his life.

While Pozer didn’t view music as a serious career option until last year, he’s been creating it for as long as he can remember. “My earliest step was drums, I used to bang on everything, so my mum bought me a drum set for my birthday. That was my first introduction to music; then I hit seven, eight or nine, and I started seeing my uncle using [production software] Fruity Loops and listening to music on his iPad. I grew up on the essence: poor recording quality, hearing guys spitting bars, and being like ‘Yeah, I know him from down the road, fam,’ you know when it hits home who these people are and where they’re coming from.”

A love affair with grime ensued. Pozer started hoovering up old DVDs of rooftop clashes, high-energy live sets and behind-the-scenes footage showing MCs like Crazy Titch chilling on the block or walking their dog. Since he was young, he’s loved the raw energy and dynamism of artists like JME, Skepta, Wiley and Kano, and in his clean, urgent delivery you can spot solid traces of this heritage. Sonically, there are also parallels with the kinds of dark, ominous flavours that define grime beats by producers like Rude Kid or Sir Spyro, lurking in the murky synth chords of tracks like ‘Malicious Intentions’ and ‘Puppies’. The man responsible for crafting most of Pozer’s instrumentals is RA.

“You have to shout out RA the God, he’s pivotal!” Pozer enthuses. “I met him through my manager sometime after the ‘Kitchen’ snippet was doing well. He’s a magician. For the sound I was trying to make, he understood everything, and he understood what I wanted to portray on the beat. For me, you have to talk to me outside of music to understand what I’m trying to do with the music, and he’s a man I can have those conversations with.”

Pozer’s close relationship with RA has helped spawn a futuristic sound that’s often guided by long, drawn-out synths that ooze and fizz, and tightly compressed, generously scattered kicks that build tension. The focus on creating suspense is replicated in recent visuals; the blockbuster music video for ‘Shanghigh Noon’ (directed by Red Moons and Arseni Novo) takes the track’s East Asian-inspired central melody and constructs a dramatic, fast-moving shootout sequence that speaks to the high production quality of UK rap videos today. For Pozer, it’s all about making the videos “a strong depiction of the lyrics”, building a world that extends beyond the four tracks of his debut tape.

There are certain parallels to be made between Against All Odds and other recent UK rap projects with an experimental sci-fi-esque tint, like CASISDEAD’s Famous Last Words or Jawnino’s 40. It’s not outlandish to say that what links these sounds is a desire to reach beyond a difficult or underwhelming reality, and grasp something otherworldly.

So, what does success look like in 2025? “I’m adjusting on the go, brushing shoulders with people who are setting the tone for my behaviour, and trying to soak up as much information as I can wherever I go and apply it elsewhere afterwards,” he says. “I just wanna do more musically, and I wanna have bare fun with everyone that’s got man to the position I’m in now”.

I am going to end things there. If you are new to the amazing Pozer – like me -, then I would urge you to check his music out. Having completed a strong of gigs and more ahead, this is a very busy time for him. I know the rest of this year is going to see new fans and success come his way. I think that we all should investigate and respect an…

INCREDIBLE voice in British Drill.

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Spotlight Pozer

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/pozer_bigcrd/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/438fi8qqvXNEPoUrYLIO7J?si=BXTx3ChCQh-o6N8evBAc_g

YouTube:

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

FEATURE: Bravo, Cuntissimo: Why Messages in MARINA’s New Track About Fearless Women, Patriarchy and Ageism Strike a Chord

FEATURE:

 

 

Bravo, Cuntissimo

Why Messages in MARINA’s New Track About Fearless Women, Patriarchy and Ageism Strike a Chord

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ONE of my favourite artists around…

it is always great when new MARINA music comes around. Formerly Mariana and the Diamonds, I have been following the work of Marina Diamandis for years. The Welsh-born artist is someone I really admire. Her debut album, The Family Jewels, was released in 2010. Her current album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming album, Princess of Power, arrives on 6th June. Butterfly and Cupid’s Girl have already been released from the album. Exceptional songs that hint at what is to come from her sixth studio album. One that might be her best yet. With a fabulous album cover and a gloriously-named new single, Cuntisissmo – I have not heard it on the radio yet but wonder if broadcasters can say the title and get away with it -, it made me reflect on a recent interview. One where MARINA was discussing the album but talking about Cuntissimo. What it means and the spirit behind it. I think that we still have a music industry where women are judged and subjected to misogyny and sexism. Any fun-loving, fearless and free-spirited women seen as disruptive or messy. Maybe Charli xcx is an example of a female artist not subjected to that sort of judgment. However, greats like Madonna have definitely been judged through their career. In her case, there has been ageism and sexism for years now. Someone constantly judged and criticised. That subject of how women are judged and expected to ‘act their age’. It is something that still happens now. Although there is not the same tabloid scandalisation and obsession with women in Pop and harassing them, you still get women called out and attacked for having fun or being bold. There is still ageism. A music industry where women especially are seen as essential only if they are under the age of thirty. In a modern Pop scene, there is very much this emphasis on the young. Though a few modern icons – such as Charli xcx – are over thirty, most of them established themselves in their twenties. Many stations not playing music by women of a certain age.

This is something most often discussed by women. Men not really addressing the issue. Even though it does not affect them directly, it is something they should voice their outrage at. Taking from this Rolling Stone interview, it is interesting what MARINA says about Cuntissimo and the subjects of ageism, women living life to the max, and the patriarchy:

“Marina wants you to meet the Princess of Power, the love-radiating heroine of her new album. The cult-favorite pop queen has revealed full details of her sixth studio album, Princess of Power, out June 6, and released its third single, “Cuntissimo,” ahead of her main stage Coachella performance on Friday, April 11.

“We are meeting a Marina who is not guarding her heart so much anymore,” she tells Rolling Stone. “I think part of why this album has felt so freeing is that I think I’ve really dove into my fear of love. That’s why for me, it’s so powerful that this superheroine’s biggest power is love.”

She adds: “It can sound trite, but the ability to love is so powerful and brave. It’s a courageous thing, particularly if you’ve been hurt in the past. It can be really hard to reprogram yourself, and I’ve finally been able to do that.”

Marina sees Princess of Power, which she recorded with producer CJ Baran, as reflecting something true about her inner self. “Maybe to others, I’ve had a bold energy. Internally, I’ve always struggled to feel like I’m allowed to be my own person,” she says. “The album is about teaching yourself — or re-teaching yourself — how to love.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Sophia Loren in 1955/PHOTO CREDIT: John Springer Collection/Corbis via Getty Images

The single she dropped along with the album announcement, “Cuntissimo,” is an anthemic pop song inspired by glamorous, brave, confident women “who enjoy life to the max.” As she says this, Marina scrolls through a list of queens who embody “Cuntissimo” on her phone — Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Madonna, and Rihanna among them.

“That’s really key: pleasure,” Marina says. “Throughout the centuries, it’s been denied us that freedom to be silly and messy. Women have been under such a strict patriarchal power for so long, but this is just like, ‘Fuck you.’”

She pauses before adding: “I want women to not be afraid to age. I think it’s not talked about in pop. Pop pretends it’s not happening. We are getting older. But I don’t want to feel ashamed about it or feel like I have to cling on to youth.”

In some ways, the song recalls themes from her first album, 2010’s Family Jewels, on which she sang about how “girls are not meant to fight dirty/Never look a day past 30.” (The song’s video drops Friday morning.)”.

I love the meaning and mandate behind Princess of Power. I was especially struck reading about Cuntissimo and the meaning behind it. It got me thinking about the music industry and whether it has shifted. Society at large. How there are these incredible women who are brave, fun and fearless. Rather than being celebrated and seen as icons, there is normally this kickback and judgement. In a patriarchal society, there is never going to be respect and equality for women. When women get past thirty, seen as less vital or relevant. MARINA talking about age and it not being a barrier.

Women denied of fun. I still think it holds true. Maybe not to the same extent as years or decades past, we still exist in a world where free and strong women are not as valued as men. Where there is this strict double standard and set of rules that is not shifting. It is wonderful that artists like MARINA are addressing the patriarchy, brilliant queens and not being afraid to age. It does make me wonder, as usual, why there is not more allyship from men. Using their platform to deliver protest against patriarchy and the way women are still reduced to their looks and youth. How women who are unconventional and enjoy fun attacked or seen as bad role models. Pop music especially has always been seen as an arena for young women. Even if things have slightly shifted, there is still ageism and this sense of taboo. That is a woman is past thirty or hitting forty – MARINA is forty this year –, then they are relegated to certain stations and would not get the same focus as younger women. Men not really exposed as much to ageism. I am really looking forward to Princess of Power. I think it is going to be one of the albums of the year. I would love to see MARINA perform it live. Hopefully, there will be dates in London. She has dates in the U.S. booked through this year that stretch from now until August. I am sure there will be some U.K. dates soon. MARINA really is…

ONE of our most important artists.

FEATURE: I Turn on My TV: Encouraging More Kate Bush Fan Videos

FEATURE:

 

 

I Turn on My TV

IMAGE CREDIT: Rainbow Pie 

Encouraging More Kate Bush Fan Videos

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AT the moment…

there are a good range of Kate Bush music videos. The quality is not too bad. However, there are very few that are HD/4K. You would think her iconic songs such as Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Cloudbusting and Wuthering Heights would be upgraded. I think that Bush would approve. I am not sure why it has not happened already. In terms of expense, it is not going to cost that much to convert many of her videos to 4K. I think it would attract more people. Kate Bush has said in the past how she would love for her videos to be on a DVD. That has yet to happen. However, we are lucky that there are all of her music videos. I do wonder if there is a long-term plan from Kate Bush regarding the visual side. She has remastered her albums more than once and there has been this quest to get these vinyl albums out to people. However, in terms of the music videos, not as much archiving work and retrospection. However, as her big singles are played on radio, people will be able to find the videos easily enough and enjoy. I do hope that there are at least one or two HD/4K videos coming where we get to see this very clean and crisp – and almost cinematic – representation for an iconic song. I guess we have all had the same thought as me. It doesn’t happen much now but, in the past, artists recorded more than one video for a song. Radiohead did it for High and Dry (off The Bends): one video for the U.S. and the other for the U.K./elsewhere. Kate Bush did that. She filmed two videos for Wuthering Heights. The red dress version for the U.S. The white dress video followed. She also filmed two videos for Rubberband Girl. The second was for the U.S. Even though there are examples of Bush doing more than one take of a video, there is this whole other thread and phenomenon: the fan-made video. Many artists have fans who will do their own versions.

Rather than them filming a video and doing a whole production – as that is quite expensive -, there are videos or visuals where fans will put that over a Kate Bush track. One classic example is the video for The Infant Kiss. That song was from Never for Ever but was not released as a single. There have been other attempts. I see there is one out there for Hello Earth from Hounds of Love. I guess it would be a big undertaking that Kate Bush might see as unnecessary but, as classic artists including The Beatles and The Beach Boys have done it, they have allowed various songs of theirs to be given to filmmakers to create modern videos for older songs. They usually revolve around reissues or documentaries, but it does give new light to songs that might not have had a video the first time around. There are songs from Kate Bush’s catalogue that I feel could and should have this kind of consideration. I am thinking about Get Out of My House and Houdini from The Dreaming (1982). Even Jig of Life from Hounds of Love (1985). The Fog from The Sensual World (1989). Mrs. Bartolozzi from Aerial (2005). There are possibilities. I am not sure how fans approach videos when they tackle a Kate Bush song. In the case of The Infant Kiss, this was a video initially made in 1984 that was set to footage from The Innocents – a film that inspired Kate Bush to write The Infant Kiss. Getting the rights to a film or how complex it might be. However, at a time when there is greater access to so many different visual styles and possibilities, it would be nice to see more fan-made videos. There are plenty of tribute acts and cover versions. However, not many fans of filmmakers taking a Kate Bush song and doing something new with it. I don’t feel it would need Kate Bush’s permission to do that. People can cover her songs without permission, so I am not sure whether someone would need to wait for Bush to give her go-ahead.

Her music is arguably more popular now than it has ever been. There is a lack of HD and 4K Kate Bush videos (some fans have done their version but it doesn’t look that great and I don’t think it is genuine HD by the look of things). Maybe there will not be anything as big as what The Beatles did with songs such as I’m Only Sleeping or The Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice for instance. However, there are albums with big anniversaries coming up. Never for Ever is forty-five later in the year. Hounds of Love turns forty. Aerial will be twenty. Big albums that won’t get vinyl reissues or anything from Kate Bush. I would love if a filmmaker got permission to do videos for songs from that album. Whether they are animated or feature actors playing out scenes and scenarios. There is a role for the fan-made video. So many songs under-explored or unknown that could do with a video. I would be very tempted myself. My favourite Kate Bush song is Houdini. It would be great either to put some existing footage over that song or do something from scratch. There are actors I would have in mind to play the parts. Maybe Kate Bush would need to give her permission. Some might think it strange to do something like that where it is not tied to an anniversary. However, as many artists have plenty of fan-made videos and Bush has had a few in the past, I wonder why there is an absence now. Her music videos and the visual side of her work is something that fascinates me.

I use The Beatles and The Beach Boys as examples of bands who have had recent music videos made. Their well-known songs given a new filmed version, an animation or, for most of the songs, the first music video. I am thinking about those Kate Bush anniversaries. Most eyes will be on Hounds of Love in September. I am writing a run of features for that album. It would be wonderful for new filmed videos for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) or even Hounds of Love. Tracks from The Ninth Wave not released as singles. Visualisations of tracks such as Waking the Witch or The Morning Fog. Never for Ever has a big anniversary. I wonder if Kate Bush has considered this at all. She has no objection to reissuing albums and has done archiving for a few years now. Maybe she is past that stage. She has always had a love of music videos and loved doing it. Perhaps the financial constraints put fans off or there are legal requirements and express permission from Kate Bush. That would be a shame if true. However, given the beauty of the recent Little Shrew (Snowflake) video and how Bush brought that non-single to life in a way that reframed the song, it is only right that fans get their opportunity to approach her work like that. Gems from 50 Words for Snow – where Snowflake features – such as Among Angels. I know there were some animated videos for tracks on that album. Looking back at the classic catalogue and these iconic songs, a new generation would have their ideas of reworkings or new visuals. How Army Dreamers and Breathing – from Never for Ever – could get an animation or a powerful filmed video each.

It is a thought I have had for a while and I wonder if it is one other Kate Bush fans also share. I know there will be. It is likely we will see some activity from Bush later in the year. She has revealed that she is keen to work on a new album, though that might not come out until next year – though never say never! She has reissued albums and won’t do that again. However, there definitely will be something around Hounds of Love turning forty as that is not too important to pass up! Among the many Kate Bush dreams, being tasked with a music video and choosing a song to take on is tantalising. I love the limited fan videos there are out there. Vidding is a fan labour practice in media fandom of creating music videos from the footage of one or more visual media sources. I know Queen had a vidding/fan-made video in 2019. Maybe some would say TikTok sort of allows fans to make short videos anyway. It is a way of taking a Kate Bush song and doing something over it. It is not the same as an actual video and people do not usually create something and put it over an entire song. There is a role and demand for traditional filmmaking and this labour of love. I don’t know. Of all the artists in the world who deserve this tribute and run of fan videos – aside from The Beatles perhaps! – is Kate Bush. The Infant Kiss showed that it can be done and done well – and Kate Bush loved that video. Since then, really only the odd thing here and there. With a whole wave of new fans and a whole wave of creatives and incredible filmmakers out there who love Kate Bush’s music, I know that there is…

DEFINITE demand.

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Joni Mitchell - Hejira

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

 Joni Mitchell - Hejira

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IN a new feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: Joni Mitchell in 1976/PHOTO CREDIT: Joel Bernstein

I am going deep inside a classic album. In the coming months, I am going to cover a wide range of iconic albums from throughout the decades. Even if Hejira is not the most celebrated and talked-about Joni Mitchell albums, I think it is one of the best. Following the sublime The Hissing of Summer Lawns in 1975, Hejira was a bit of a departure. Hejira is the wonderful eighth studio from Mitchell. Released through Asylum Records, its songs were a result of Mitchell writing during a period of frequent travel in late-1975 and early-1976. I am going to start out with an article from Joni Mitchell’s official website. There is a great archive interview where Dave Blackburn spoke with A&M staff engineer Steve Katz about the making of Hejira, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter and Mingus – a run of three wonderful albums that was a move away from the more Folk-based sound of her previous work:

“DB: "I read that the recording for Hejira was mostly complete when Joni was told about this bass player from Florida that she might really like. Joni apparently flew him out to L.A and he ended up putting down his parts on four songs. Is that how you remember that?"

SK: "Yeah, and I don't know if he replaced any of the other tracks but she pretty much gave him free rein because she had already listened to the Weather Report stuff, I guess. I remember, he came in, and we met him. He was so different, with the fretless bass and an Acoustic 360 amp. We mainly ran him direct but we still miked his amp and combined those sounds together. He was pretty adamant about using some of the amp sounds - he liked that."

DB: "And he liked to double and triple track himself, right?"

SK: "Sometimes we'd speed the tape up - go double speed." [Probably that low C "bomb" where he enters during Overture on Don Juan was achieved by playing his lowest normal C with the tape running at double speed. When returned to normal speed his note would be an octave lower, and below the range of a four string bass guitar.]

SK: "If we were going to double a riff, he knew exactly what he had played; he would play it perfectly. He was amazing, the guy was just brilliant! Karen Carpenter was like that - she could double and triple her voice, singing an inch off the mic. She was the most amazing singer I'd ever worked with." 

DB: "So working with Jaco was a pleasurable experience, then?"

SK: "Ha, oh yeah. He was new, he was different, he was completely out of the box. Other bass players were like vanilla compared to him. He was a rainbow - any color you want, he could do it. I'd never seen anybody like him, and he was just a kid!"

DB: "Well she was always looking for players who could paint with sound. That's why she liked Wayne Shorter too..."

SK: "It wasn't always what Wayne played; it was what he didn't play. That's how you have to listen to Wayne Shorter. He would play, but it was always the holes that he would leave. These guys were just phenomenal. She was starting to create with all these new sounds that she had now in her toolbox."

DB: "We haven't mentioned Larry Carlton yet, but he was another guy who could paint with sound and really interact with a track"

SK: "She used him, [and later Steve Lukather, on Wild Things Run Fast] Those guys were very creative when they played. The way her melodies were, Larry could paint a really nice picture with his guitar."

On Blue Motel Room

[There is a very good chance, though Steve doesn't remember for sure, that Joni's guitar on Blue Motel Room was recorded at her home and then transferred to the multi-track at A&M for the rhythm section and vocal overdubs. It has a 'home recording' room sound, and prominent tape hiss that would not have been there if it had been recorded there.]

DB: "Were you a fan of Joni's outside of being in the studio? Did you listen to her records?"

SK: "It's funny. I graduated high school in 1970, and then in '71 or '72 I went to Valley College, in the San Fernando valley, and I was taking a lot of general classes; I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And in the library they had turntables. I remember, for the longest time, if I had an hour or two between classes, I used to bring in Joni's first three albums, 'cause I loved those three records. I'd put them on and people would come in and say 'do you mind if we listen to that with you?' She was widely popular."

DB: "So when you did get to work with her, that was pretty exciting then?"

SK: "Yeah, I loved these records growing up, and here I am all of a sudden working with her!"

DB: "Well, so what was she like to work with?"

SK: "Oh, she was amazing. Henry and I would never really know what we were going to do when she'd come in. We were ready, we always had a vocal mic up, but we just had to wait and see. She would go home at night and work out parts and then she'd show up and say 'I want to work on this.' One time she showed up with Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther to do backgrounds [for Off Night Backstreet]. Jaco would come in to the studio, and he'd be waiting with us, and she'd show up an hour or two hours late, and then we'd start, but nobody really knew what we were going to be doing."

DB: "So once Jaco was involved, he stuck around for the remainder of the project?

SK: "Yeah, he pretty much showed up almost every night." [especially for the DJRD and Mingus albums.]

On Hejira guitars and effects

SK: "She had a few guitars on Hejira, none of them solid body." [they were most likely Gibson hollowbody arch tops with flatwound strings - the Ibanez GB10s she later toured with in 1979 and 1983 were not available until 1978. The exact guitars she used will probably never be known as neither Steve nor Joni remembers what she played, and Henry is no longer with us to ask.]

SK: "She would go to Guitar Center and try out stuff" [she was also a regular customer at Westwood Music, owned by luthier Fred Walecki, who was her guitar tech/advisor.] "She'd come in and lay down things she'd been rehearsing at home; she never really did her rehearsing in the studio.

DB: "And the pedal effects she was using on the record?"

SK: "Yeah, all that was done either at Guitar Center or at home. A lot of time these guys would show up with stuff that hadn't even been released yet. They had deals with these companies who would give them stuff to try out."

[The Boss CE-1 chorus/vibrato pedal was released in 1976 and was the first chorus effect in a pedal format to be available; it is very likely a part of the guitar sound on Hejira, along with a phaser pedal giving a "liquid" swirling effect - likely the MXR Phase 90 which had been released in 1974 and was the first product sold by MXR. Then one or two more layers of guitars, including an acoustic, would be added and then be panned left, center and right, giving the album its lush panoramic texture full of modulated movement.]”.

Before getting to a review and some modern acclaim for Hejira, I want to keep inside its making of. Some insight form those involved. Back in 2006, Doug Fisher spoke with Joni Mitchell about Hejira. Many people do not know about the album or assume it is inaccessible or too out-there. Even though it is very different to 1971’s Blue or 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon, it is a remarkable album that everyone needs to listen to:

“Whenever Joni Mitchell had trouble sorting out her life, she took to the road. But in early 1976, with a turbulent love affair on the rocks and too many drugs in her body, she hit the highway almost with a vengeance.

"I was getting away from a romance, I was getting away from the craziness and I was searching for something to make sense of everything," she says. "The road became a metaphor for my life."

And it inspired the album many of her fans and music critics consider her masterpiece.

Released 30 years ago this week, the nine songs on Hejira form the remarkable personal journal of a nomadic, romantic dreamer whose aural notebook is filled with the stories of doomed love, late night roadhouse dance floors, wedding gown fantasies, lost chances and a deep yearning to escape and start over.

Mitchell is not convinced Hejira is the best of the 22 albums that made her among the most influential singer-songwriters, male or female, of the past 40 years. She won't attach that label to any of her albums.

'Hejira could only have come from me'

But she concedes Hejira is probably her one album that could not have been made by anyone else.

"I suppose a lot of people could have written a lot of my other songs, but I feel the songs on Hejira could only have come from me," she said an interview with the Citizen.

The stories they tell are so vivid, their observations so naked and the landscapes so haunting that Kris Kristofferson famously urged her in a letter to be "more self-protective ... to save something of yourself from public view."

But Mitchell says self-confession, no matter how risky and revealing, was essential to her writing during that era.

"My songs have always been more autobiographical than most people's," she says. "It pushes you toward honesty. I was just returning to normal from the extremities of a very abnormal mindset when I wrote most of the songs (on Hejira).

"When life gets interesting I get very alert, and life was very interesting. I think that took the writing to another level."

Mitchell talked about the album by phone from her home in Los Angeles, where she revealed she's recording her first collection of new songs in nearly a decade. More wary of public scrutiny these days, the Canadian singer agreed to a Citizen request to discuss Hejira because, she said, the album recalls an "interesting transitional" time in her life and her career.

Musically, Hejira certainly marked a departure from the two jazz-tinged but radio-friendly albums that preceded it. Gone were the hummable melodies, conventional formats and jaunty horn sections she used as Top 40 flirtations on 1974's Court and Spark and '75's The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

In their place, Mitchell offered seductively sparse rhythms, lush swirling guitars and the brilliant spark of Jaco Pastorius's fretless bass to create an unceasing musical motion that is as mesmerizing as the highways she travels in her songs.

The album is also a departure lyrically. Using the music's structural looseness to her advantage, Mitchell gives her words a simple directness and poetic polish seldom seen in her music before and rarely found again.

"To me, the whole Hejira album is really inspired," Mitchell says. "There is a rootlessness to it, for sure, but also discovery along the road."

Despite good reviews, Hejira did not sell as briskly as the more accessible albums Mitchell released during the first half of the 1970s. Although exact numbers are hard to get, there are indications sales of Hejira are stronger today than ever.

Voting on jonimitchell.com, an excellent fan-driven website, ranks Hejira as Mitchell's most popular album. A critics' poll done in the late 1990s placed the album in a first-place tie with the Blue, a moody collection of love songs she recorded in 1971.

Mitchell says Hejira's songs were written during or after three journeys she took in late 1975 and the first half of 1976.

The first was a concert tour cancelled amid turmoil after six weeks in February 1976 when Mitchell and her drummer boyfriend John Guerin ended their on-again, off-again relationship, this time seemingly for good.

Soon after, Mitchell signed on with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review, a ragged, drug-soaked circus that also variously included Joan Baez, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, Ronee Blakely, Allan Ginsburg and members of the Band. She soon became a frequent cocaine user.

"I realized you couldn't stay on that thing straight -- you'd be the only one," she explains. "It was just insane." Looking back, she says, the drugs had both "great and disastrous" effects: "I had terrible insomnia but I wrote a lot of epic poems," including Song for Sharon, for many the masterpiece around which Hejira orbits.

In danger of losing her equilibrium, Mitchell fled for home in Los Angeles. She was only back a few days when two friends, one of them a former lover from Australia, showed up at her door proposing they drive across the country to New England.

Mitchell eventually dropped them in Maine before heading alone down the coast to Florida, around the Gulf of Mexico and across the southwest back to California.

"I was driving without a driver's licence," she remembers. "I had to stay behind truckers because they signal you when cops are ahead. I had to drive in daylight hours only to stay out of harm's way."

In the South, where hard rock and country music dominated the airwaves, Mitchell was a virtual unknown. "It was a relief. I was able, like The Prince and the Pauper, to escape my fame under a false name and fall in with people and enjoy ordinary civilian status."

The cross-country sojourn resulted in six of the songs on Hejira, which Mitchell says was originally called Travelling -- "that wouldn't have been very memorable," she jokes.

While looking through a dictionary, Mitchell came across the word "hejira," an Islamic term for exodus or breaking with the past. It became a song title -- and against the will of her record company, which wanted something less cryptic -- the name of the album.

"I'd been struggling with a title for the song," she says. "The idea of departure with honour captured the feeling I was after very well”.

I will get to a great Pitchfork review soon. When Rolling Stone were ranking the best 500 albums of all time last year, they placed Hejira in 133. It is one of those albums that is undeniably a classic and work of brilliance but is often compared to other work less favourably. When we talk of Joni Mitchell, we discuss Blue but Hejira does not get the same sort of affection. I was keen to explore it more and spotlight one of her finest albums:

“No regrets Coyote/We just come from such different sets of circumstance,” what a perfect way to start an album. ‘Coyote’ was written about Sam Shepard, a member of Bob Dylan’s entourage from the Rolling Thunder Review with whom Mitchell had a brief relationship. Mitchell joined the tour for a few shows in 1975. She picked up a relationship and a cocaine habit. The song is all about sex, drugs and Folk Rock ‘n Roll. The album in itself is a road trip album. It was written mostly in the car while Mitchell was road tripping solo following ‘The Hissing Of Summer Lawns’ tour (#258). ‘Hejira’ is an Arabic word meaning “journey,” and that’s just what this record is. Mitchell later said “I suppose a lot of people could have written a lot of my other songs, but I feel the songs on ‘Hejira’ could only have come from me.”

At the height of her fame and success, Mitchell donned a red wig, sunglasses and told people along the way that her name was either Charlene Latimer or Joan Black. Mitchell had grown increasingly frustrated with session Rock musicians and started to look towards the Jazz world. It was on this record that she formed a musical connection with arguably the greatest bassist of all time, Jaco Pastorius and his fretless bass coupled with her guitar and vocals dominate the sound of this record. The songs are unique and different to her previous recordings in that there’s no real distinct chorus and verses. It’s mostly a flow of consciousness from Mitchell. Her lyrics are beautiful, as are the songs. Best enjoyed on the open road”.

I am going to end with a Pitchfork review from 2022. Awarding it a 10, there is a lot of great detail and background to the mesmeric Hejira. I think that it is an album that should be played and talked about more. An easy and obvious choice for this first Beneath the Sleeve:

“At the end of the ’70s, Mitchell told Rolling Stone it was never her goal to be the queen of her generation, or the best. Her goal was to remain interested in music. Her steady gravitation toward jazz was proof, from Blue’s approximations of its textures to the experimental yet accessible Hissing of Summer Lawns. She considered the electric jazz fusion of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way to be the previous decade’s definitive record and absorbed its astral atmospheres. She was an avant-gardist among rock’n’roll people in an era when improvised music was creating rock stars of its own. Still, Mitchell inhabited that slippery space unique to those ahead of the times.

Rolling Thunder didn’t only fuel the luminous and literary “Coyote.” It also broke her down physically and left her addicted to cocaine. (She allegedly told the tour to pay her in coke and wrote ever-longer poems high late into the night: “Everybody took all of their vices to the nth degree and came out of it born again or into AA,” she said in 1988.) A month after, attempting to start her own tour for Hissing, her wrecked state and endless battles with her drummer John Guerin​​—the self-described “jazz snob” to whom she was engaged—resulted in its abrupt cancellation.

So the circus gave way to a spirit journey. Mitchell found herself sitting at Neil Young’s beach house wondering how to recuperate from such self-annihilation, longing to travel. Soon two acquaintances—one, an Australian former lover; the other, a lover-to-be​​—showed up together at her door in Los Angeles. The boys were going to drive cross country; their destination, for the Aussie ex with a 20-day visa and a grim custody battle, was Maine. “We were going to kidnap his daughter from the grandmother,” Mitchell said. “You could have made a whole movie about that trip.” (Paging Todd Haynes.)

Thirty-two years old with no license, Mitchell drove this band of outsiders east before looping back solo, down the coast of Florida and then along the Gulf of Mexico, “staying at old ’50s motels and eating at health food stores.” She adopted fake names like “Charlene Latimer.” She was often disguised in a red wig. She wrote most of Hejira on the guitar she kept in her white Mercedes. “I was getting away from romance, I was getting away from craziness,” Mitchell said, “and I was searching for something to make sense of everything.”

Hejira exalts the art of being a woman alone. It is restless music of road and sky, of interior and exterior weather suspended, epic and elemental. Her narratives unfurl with driving forward motion, telling stories of black crows and coyotes, of cafes and motel rooms; a bluesman and a pilot; psychics, hitchhikers, mothers, a guru. She contemplates eternity in a cemetery. She sees Michelangelo in the clouds. She hears jazz in the trees. Blue’s optimistic “traveling, traveling, traveling” gives way to an insatiable “travel fever,” each cartographic song extending the road further from Savannah to Staten Island to Canadian prairies, from Beale to Bleecker Streets. Her solitude distills the details into ascetic elegance.

The stark arrangements on Hejira, free of traditional structures, with only a few players on each song, are iridescent like glitter on icicles or sand. Mitchell stretches the unresolved tone of her “chords of inquiry” into a nine-song epiphany. The fretless bass, spare percussion, and unusual harmonics depict her wintry lucidity as well as the extremes of her existence, which she had accepted in service of her creativity. The protracted song lengths were allegedly a product of her drug addiction, while their clarity was inseparable from her process of getting clean.

She had started playing with the jazz fusionists of L.A. Express on Court and Spark—musicians who wouldn’t “put up a dark picket fence through my music,” as she once put it—and during a pit stop on her road trip, guitarist Robben Ford played her an advance copy of the debut album by Jaco Pastorius, an electric bass player who, like Mitchell, was really more of a painter. The 24-year-old had a tendency for introducing himself as “the greatest bass player in the world.” Mitchell (and most of the best bassists in his wake) wouldn’t have disagreed. She called the eccentric Floridian the bass player of her dreams. Pastorius used a knife to pry the frets off his instrument and transform it, playing more fluidly, flexibly, or as Mitchell called it, “figuratively” than anyone. Having only recently joined the intrepid Weather Report, Pastorius overdubbed parts atop four cracked-open Hejira songs, rhythms that liberated the music.

Hejira’s tenor is one of personal reconstitution, but Mitchell populates the lyrics with characters she met along the way, some literal, some symbolic, each representing a fundamental component of her character. “Furry Sings the Blues” describes her actual visit with the bluesman Furry Lewis near Memphis’ crumbling Beale Street, one birthplace of the blues, and could be an allegory for the corruption of a music business that left its pioneers behind, another parking lot paved over paradise. (That’s Neil Young on harmonica.) “A Strange Boy” recounts her disappointing tryst with her travel companion and his confounding immaturity, standing in for the overall inadequacy of men that Mitchell had contended with so often. It’s attuned to mystery, representing this guy she couldn’t crack in amazing dialogue, like, “He asked me to be patient/Well I failed/‘Grow up!’ I cried/And as the smoke was clearing, he said/‘Give me one good reason why.’” On the discordant “Black Crow,” Mitchell likens herself to the bird overhead, brooding, searching, diving. But the most powerful of these itinerant encounters occurs solely in her imagination.

On “Amelia,” she becomes the sky. Her ode to Amelia Earhart is soaring and celestial. “Like me,” Mitchell sings of the disappeared aviator, “she had a dream to fly.” This austere six-minute ballad takes the form of a conversation “from one solo pilot to another,” Mitchell has said, “reflecting on the cost of being a woman and having something you must do.” Ambition must often go it alone, and Mitchell accordingly subtracts bass and drums entirely. What sounds like sweeping pedal steel is really Larry Carlton’s electric lead guitar and vibraphone. The song’s harmonic character is an arresting question mark, both unsettled and at ease, just like solo travel, knowing there might be something, someone missing yet savoring the space created by absence. Mitchell spoke of Hejira’s “sweet loneliness,” to which “Amelia”’s major chords and resilience attest. “Amelia, it was just a false alarm,” goes Mitchell’s refrain ending each verse, ending every romance, too. As she sings of “driving across the burning desert,” likening six vapor trails to “the hexagram of the heavens [...] the strings of my guitar,” and how Earhart was “swallowed by the sky,” the whole forlorn song seems to go that way. Stars glint in its upper edges.

Clouds and flight, metaphors for freedom and what tempers it, had long been two of Mitchell’s central obsessions. She called descendants of the Canadian prairies, like herself, “sky-oriented people,” and writing on a plane in 1967, she had looked down on clouds to contemplate life, arriving at her standard, the timeless “Both Sides, Now.” But nine years on, in “Amelia,” she equates her living in “clouds at icy altitudes” with her long-standing depression that left her admitting she’s “never really loved.” When she pulls into “the Cactus Tree Motel” to sleep on the “strange pillows of my wanderlust,” the inn’s name is an allusion to her 1968 song about a woman “so busy being free.” Her life’s motifs knock the door in Georgia, too, on the winking torch song “Blue Motel Room,” where rain turns the ground to “cellophane,” a word Mitchell famously used to describe her defenseless Blue era; “Will you still love me?” she yearns coolly, echoing a formative influence”.

An album that I was keen to dissect and go deep with, I hope those who do not know about Hejira are compelled to seek it out. Even if you are not a fan of Joni Mitchell or the blend of Folk and Jazz I would still advise you to listen. It is a wonderful album that is referred by many people but not as loved and spotlighted as much as it should be. A truly magical and spiritual album that you should…

IMMERSE yourself in.

FEATURE: My Goal Is Moving Near… Kate Bush’s Sat in Your Lap at Forty-Four

FEATURE:

 

 

My Goal Is Moving Near…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a single cover outtake for Sat In Your Lap/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush’s Sat in Your Lap at Forty-Four

__________

THE first single…

from Kate Bush’s 1982 album, The Dreaming, I wanted to look ahead to the forty-fourth anniversary of Sat in Your Lap. It is such an important song. In terms of when it arrived and how it changed perceptions around her music. Different from anything that was on 1980’s Never for Ever, Sat in Your Lap was this revelation. It hinted at the sounds of The Dreaming. Something with more percussion and a heavier beat. A denser album perhaps. Though Sat in Your Lap is one of the more accessible songs on Kate Bush’s fourth studio album, it is still a step on from Never for Ever in terms of scope and production. Released on 29th June, 1981, it arrived over a year before the album. EMI, perhaps keen not to leave a long gap after Never for Ever’s final single – Army Dreamers was released on 22nd September, 1980 -, and The Dreaming arriving, the first single was put out. In terms of the single releases, they spanned from June 1981 to November 1983. It was not an entirely successful album in terms of its singles. However, Sat in Your Lap did reach number eleven in the U.K. I am going to include some information and background to Sat in Your Lap. I will also include an interview from 1981. Before that, here are some words from Kate Bush regarding one of her all-time best songs:

“The idea of the demos was to try and put everything down as quickly as possible. Next came the brass. The CS80 is still my favourite synthesizer next to the Fairlight, and as it was all that was available at the time, I started to find a brass sound. In minutes I found a brass section starting to happen, and I worked out an arrangement. We put the brass down and we were ready to mix the demo.
I was never to get that CS80 brass to sound the same again – it’s always the way. At The Townhouse the same approach was taken to record the master of the track. We put down a track of the rhythm box to be replaced by drums, recording the piano at the same time. As I was producing, I would ask the engineer to put the piano sound on tape so I could refer to that for required changes. This was the quickest of all the tracks to be completed, and was also one of the few songs to remain contained on one twenty-four track tape instead of two!

Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982”.

I am going to move to a feature from Dreams of Orgonon from 2020. Such detail and passion, it is interesting reading what they had to say about Sat in Your Lap. After a period of burn-out and so much hard work, there was this moment when Kate Bush could not write or create. Sat in Your Lap was a revelation and moment when something changed:

“Yet Bush’s listlessness and struggle to write songs persisted for some time. It’s not hard to see why — the stress of Never for Ever’s production and the attention of the British public would be enough to put a damper on anyone’s creative output. It took seeing other musicians at work to get her motivated again. In September, Bush and her boyfriend Del Palmer attended a Stevie Wonder concert at Wembley Arena. Wonder was in a period of creative renewal himself. Having recently turned out a rare Motown flop in the distinctively titled Journey Through “the Secret Life of Plants”, he’d rebuilt confidence with his delightful Hotter than July LP. The concert broke Bush out of her writer’s block — “inspired by the feeling of his music,” as she later wrote, Bush got back to work on her songs, and forged a path towards her next album.

Bush’s work to date was largely harmonic, built around what notes went together interestingly on the piano. Rhythm was secondary for her: it’s hard to think of a rhythmically powerful song on Bush’s first three albums. Her preparations for Kate Bush IV had thus far consisted of little bits of melody, but without a focal center. After the Wonder concert, she realized she needed to start her songwriting from the rhythm track upwards. At home, she programmed a rhythm into her Roland drum machine (according to my friend Marlo, the Roland on her demo from the period sounds like a CR-78, and woe to anyone who disagrees with Marlo on drum machines), and “worked in [a] piano riff to the hi-hat and snare.” A demo resulted: “Sat In Your Lap,” Kate Bush’s first solo production, was in its nascency.

“Sat In Your Lap” wasn’t always Bush’s first self-produced song. For a time, she entertained bringing in experienced producers, including long-standing David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, going so far as to spend a day in the studio with him. The collaboration went nowhere, and Visconti has grossly remarked “all I can remember is the Bush bum.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bush decided to take on the producer role herself, with the intensive collaboration of a series of engineers. The first set of sessions for the album that would be The Dreaming were staged at Townhouse Studios in May 1981. Her collaborating engineer was Hugh Padgham, a producer for Phil Collins and XTC known for the “gated drum” sound that would define 80s pop (compress the drums, use a recording console’s “gate” to remove their reverb, resulting in a kind of sound vacuum. See Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”). Bush and Padgham’s time in Townhouse was productive yet short-lived. Padgham is rare among Bush collaborators in having negative feelings about working with her, grumbling about her tendency to overpack a mix and experiment rather than having a concrete, straightforward vision. After laying backing tracks for three songs, Padgham moved on, dissatisfied with his latest gig but having indelibly marked the sound of The Dreaming.

Bush’s ad-libs, piano riffs, and rhythm track came together quickly in the studio, quicker than any other song on The Dreaming. Having a drum-centric engineer like Padgham was incredibly useful for her, as the early recording of Bush’s rhythm track showed. “Sat In Your Lap” is heavily percussive, built around its drum sound and brass section (initially synthesized on a Yamaha CS-80). The partially syncopated drumbeat (“dum-DUM-dum-DUM”) is Preston Heyman’s most memorable to date, a fine translation of the demo. The frantic, almost pharyngeal rhythm track has a kick drum so guttural and suppressed (though not apparently gated) that it can easily be mistaken for one of Bush’s vocal onomatopoeias. The track’s sonic menagerie (Bush’s recurring motif of musical instruments as bodily extensions lives to a maniacal extent), a veritable ensemble of screams, tinny horns on the Fairlight CMI, swishing bamboo sticks (thanks to Paddy Bush and Preston Heyman) childlike whispers, “HO-HO-HO’s,” and bellows of “JUST when I think I’m king!”.

I am going to end with John Shearlaw's interview from September 1981. Appearing in Record Mirror, there are some interesting exchanges. I don’t think I have included this interview before so I wanted to highlight it here. With the world unsure of what album would follow and what Sat in Your Lap would lead to, it was such an intriguing time:

“Kate Bush today sets up her own interviews, controls her own photographs, slavishly protects her fans through her club and, more so than ever, works on albums and tours at her own pace. And still we love her for it?

It's been two years now since what Kate calls her "Tour of Life", a massive circus of a tour that won't, repeat won't take place again until next year at the earliest. Again, it's been six months since the last single and Sat In Your Lap, as much as anything she's done, is the start of a new era, another "cosmic cycle" that will see the release of a new album later this year.

And now that all those ideas in the past--a theatrical tour that was a combination of the innovative and the unexpected, an album last year that surpassed all that went before it--have become reality, she's a powerful personality. SHe makes points where she used to make only comments, argues from experience now as much as from excitement, pushes herself as an artist ("one of us", she says, referring to the type) much more than a surprised, precocious talent.

Yet she's still infectious [huh?], vulnerable at times, as open to ideas as ever. Richness and fame don't embarass her; slowness in honing her creativity probably does, just a little.

Her favourite expression on this meeting wasn't one of wonderment, astonishment (ah, the cliche!); rather a dismissive pout of "Pah!" -- almost French, knowledgeable, and nearly coquettish.

"Pah! Let them think that! Pah! That's wrong!" she seems to imply, ready to underline her ideas. Call it a change, call it maturity, call it confidence in her art, for it almost certainly is. Take money:

"I've changed. I don't pretend it's not there any more, which I used to do," she says. "I'm not worried about being rich, I just didn't think of taking advantage of it. Now I buy things that I can use, things that will help me, like synthesisers and drum machines.

"My life has never been into money, more into emotional desires; like being an incredible singer or an incredible dancer; and if I can buy something that can help me, I will now. But I wouldn't buy something that I couldn't live with, like a country house which I don't need. [Actually, about two years after giving this interview, Kate bought--a country house.] I'd rather buy a huge synthesiser that I could live with all day."

She emphasises and explains, thinks out the question, returns to her theme. The easy answers have gone over the years. Take her career...

Kate maintains that there hasn't really been a gap, even though she admits that Sat In Your Lap only surfaced after her longest break to date.

"My slowness at doing things surprises me," she says, "but i have been doing things continuously. It's a battle to keep up with all the things I want to do, and obviously things like dancing are going to suffer. I couldn't spend twelve hours a day in a studio like I'm doing at the moment, and dance, as well."

Again the emphasis on her way of working--the only way. The ups and downs are of her own making, they don't follow rules. And Kate only bows to her own pressures.

"The last album was the first one that I would actually hand over to people with a smile," she says, almost seeming to imply that it was the first one she was actually pleased with, "and that was followed by a greater period of non-creativity, when I just couldn't write properly at all.

"It happened before, when the tour was over, and then I felt I'd just given so much out that I was like a drained battery, very physically and tired and also a bit depressed.

"This time it was worse; a sort of terrible introverted depression. The anti-climax after all the work really set in in a bad way, and that can be very damaging to an artist. I could sit down at the piano and want to write, and nothing would happen. It was like complete introspection time.

"I suppose I had about two months out earlier this year...and that was a break I really needed. It gave me time to see friends, do things I hadn't been able to do for three years.

"It wasn't really as if I was missing out on normality," she laughs. "I'd rather hang on to madness than normality anyway, so it was more like recharging."

But something more came out of it than just a rest?

"Oh yes!" The smile returns. "I felt as if my writing needed some kind of shock, and I think I've found one for myself. The single is the start, and I'm trying to be brave about the rest of it. It's almost as if I'm going for commercial-type "hits" for the whole album.

[I have always been struck by this statement. It seems to me to indicate that Kate really doesn't have a very sound notion of what is "commercial"--which is all to the good, of course. For if she felt that The Dreaming had a commercial sound, then some listeners's criticism that she seemed to have developed a calculatedly commercial sound for the next album, Hounds of Love, loses credence, since her mental image of "commercial" sound is so different from the sound of Hounds of Love.]

"I want it to be experimental and quite cinematic, if that doesn't sound too arrogant. Never For Ever was slightly cinematic, so I'll just have to go all the way."

The shock that Kate refers to, eyes almost ablaze as she uses the word, came months ago...after she started to work with a rhythm machine while she was writing.

"I'm sure lots of things that I'm trying to do won't work," she says, "but I found that the main problem was the rhythm section. The piano, which is what I was used to writing with, is so far removed from the drums. So I tried writing with the rhythm rather than the tune."

Sat In Your Lap, naturally, is the first fruit of the new approach--original (in that it could only be Kate Bush) marriage of pounding drum sounds and two layers of voice. There is a theme, but it's the rhythm that hits you first, blasting right through to the synthesised end--a step that she knows is likely to continue the critical division.

"I was really frightened about the single for a while," she admits. "I mixed the song and played it to people, and there was complete silence afterwards, or else people would say they liked it to me and perhaps go away and say what they really thought.

"Of course it's really worrying, because there's an assumption that if you're one of us, an artist, you don't need feedback at all, when in fact you need it as much as ever, if not more. I really appreciate feedback, and I'm lucky that the people closest to me, my friends and family, are used to me and realise that I've got my own 'bowl of feedback' to rely on."

And that's more important than the public reaction, or do you worry?

"There will always be some who are irritated by me. I seem to irritate a lot of people," she smiles, "and in a way that's quite a good thing."

Nor will the change stop there. Drums, Kate enthuses, are as wide a concept as music itself, and she's determined to go further than "a lazy acceptance of a drum kit." Add that to the news that she'll be working with other musicians on the new album--"the best around"--and it seems likely that "Kate Bush 4" will be one of the big surprises of the year.

As a preview she plays me one track that's currently being worked on: a wild soaring collusion with Irish group Planxty entitled Night of the Swallow, which also features one of the Chieftains. Again the sound is unmistakable, but this time it's Kate Bush married to the heartbeat of traditional Irish folk.

Discussing the project brings Kate Bush into larger-than-life focus once more. The burning enthusiasm returns, along with the string of "amazings", "incredibles" and "fantastics". She'd been up all night in the studio the previous night in Dublin, and her reactions are genuine, real and hard to resist.

"I'm still really up from the experience," she says. "In fact, I'm still reeling from it. I asked them if they'd be interested, and the whole thing was so relaxed, it was wonderful. I badly want to work with them again. I'm so excited about the fusion.

"And I think that there's so much of the Irish in my mother that it all suddenly came back to me--it was fate rearing its head at just the right time!"

So that's two surprises already, and although Kate has been making demo tracks since March, and Abbey Road is now her second home, the rest will have to wait until summer completion...if all goes according to plan.

What about the book you're planning to write, though? Again, she sighs (a marginal sigh) and repeats her line: "There's so many things I want to do, and it's so hard to fit them all in..."

But yes, a book is on the cards, hopefully before the end of the year, and she says: "I'd like to write it myself. Without saying anything about the other books, which I don't want to, I feel almost pressured to speak, otherwise there's this huge misrepresented area.

"In one way it's ridiculous--I feel it's much too early to write a book, I've hardly done anything yet. But I really want people to be aware of reality--subjective reality, obviously.

"It'd be about what it's like being me, my feelings, my friends, the people that I rely on. I need to be represented in a positive way, and I'll have to do it myself."

[This book, tentatively titled Leaving My Tracks, was shelved in 1984.]

Slowly Abbey Road is beginning to wake up for another Kate Bush day that is likely to last until the early hours of the next morning, and she announces candidly: "I'm beginning to feel like shit. Ireland's catching up on me. And all the things that have to be done. It's impossible to do it all in the time...perhaps if I could stop sleeping it would help."

But she doesn't really believe it, even if she does wonder if transcendental meditation does help you to relax enough to cut down on those "very wonderful"hours of sleep. No, she decides, it's work as usual.

Twenty-two years old, a Tour of Life and three albums behind her...and the rest can wait. Treading devastatingly and surely between the doubters and the devotees, Kate Bush may well continue to "amaze" us all”.

On 29th June, 1981, Sat in Your Lap was released. The first taste of The Dreaming, it is also one of Kate Bush’s best-loved singles. Forty-four years after its release, this song still stands out in her catalogue. So invigorating, propulsive and exciting, the video too really stands out. Filmed at Abbey Road Studios, it is one of my favourites of hers. Not only does Sat in Your Lap prove that Kate Bush was an exceptional songwriter. It is ample proof that she is also…

A wonderful producer.

FEATURE: The Modern Things: Björk’s Post at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Modern Things

Björk’s Post at Thirty

__________

ONE of my favourite albums…

of the 1990s turns thirty soon. On 13th June, 1995, Björk’s Post was released. Ahead of its anniversary, I want to explore the album in more detail. Even though many associate it with songs like Army of Me and Possibly Maybe, there is so much more to Post. A work with no filler. Many argue that it is Björk’s finest album. Though I would put it in the top three, I can see why people think it is her finest moment! Similar stylistically to 1993’s Debut, Björk wanted Post to be a more extroverted collection of songs, featuring a broader range of genres and sounds – including Electronic, Dance, Techno, Trip-Hop, IDM, and House. Björk produced Post herself with co-producers including Nellee Hooper, Graham Massey and Tricky. I am going to start with a feature from Albumism. They wrote about Post for its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2020:

“Debut is about expression. Intimate. Isolated. Looking out. It’s counterpoint, 1995’s follow-up Post is more focused on exploration.

Having moved from the natural landscapes of Iceland into the bustling and confronting big city appetite of London, Björk’s second LP is very much an album of “after.” It is the sound of discovery and journey. Less looking out as an astute anthropological observer, and more living out, getting in amongst it. Exposing oneself to the world and letting the world expose itself in return.

Initial sessions recorded in the Bahamas yielded a sense of freedom for Björk as she crafted her tones with a sense of joy. Here she and collaborators let sounds shape the songs and let access to their surroundings influence the feel of several efforts. Rumors abound the vocals were recorded on the edge of beaches, singing into the sea, and dug from the depths of caves. All very plausible and all very Björk, who was never going to be your average singer-songwriter.

Returning to London to flesh out the album, Björk pulled in more collaborators to help add warmth and greater musicality to the collection that was very stark and heavily beat-driven. The result is an album that is, as Björk herself puts it, “musically promiscuous” with songs not only cross-pollinating genres within the flow of the album, but within the very fiber of the songs themselves.

Opening with the plodding heaviness of “Army of Me” Björk sets to shatter any expectations the listener may have. Menacing and mechanical, “Army of Me” is strangely motivational with its “get your shit together” sensibilities. Melding trip-hop with industrial and bubbling techno with eerie horn flourishes and skittish synth runs, the track is a sonic feast that emboldens the listener with every bar. And Björk delivers a powerful, near raspy vocal that grabs you from the first line.

The spell cast by “Army of Me” doesn’t let up for the remaining forty plus minutes of the album. With “Hyperballad”—one of the most twistedly romantic songs ever dedicated to wax—Björk offers some self-care tips to surviving one’s need of self and sharing space with another. She describes how each morning before her lover wakes, she climbs to the top of a mountain and throws things off in a sense of cleansing and survival. It’s wild and lovely all at once. A sense of self and sacrifice. With a constantly propulsive beat that shutters along, little melodic blips and blops wind their way to the pounding energy of the chorus where Björk’s vocals take that leap off the mountain and soar around before coming back to earth. “Hyperballad” has to go down as one of Björk’s greatest moments on record and without a doubt, it’s one of the most exciting songs of the ‘90s.

All the bluster is stripped bare for the moving “The Modern Thing” that lets Björk’s vocals swirl and wind their way through expression as they soothe one moment and explode in the next. Lyrically, Björk ponders if all of life’s great inventions have always existed, just waiting to be (metaphorically) dug up and discovered.

Whilst the unexpected should be expected with Björk, few would have predicted a soft shoe shuffle into big band with a cover of a relative obscure B-side by Betty Hutton. But “It’s Oh So Quiet” not only works, but it does so with pure abandon. As the last track recorded for Post, it’s inclusion was meant to shake things up for the listener, but it would also do the same for the artist with its accompanying life-in-technicolor video catapulting Björk into the pop mainstream.

Balancing out the pop sensibilities of “Quiet,” the following track “Enjoy” delves into the darker side of things with a stalking beat and near threatening horn stabs as Björk gives into her most lust-filled desires. Its prickly and grating, and delightfully satisfying. It’s the kind of song you could see Trent Reznor aching to cover.

With “Isobel,” Björk retreats to the forest in a semi-autobiographical telling of a clash between modern living and nature. Backed with lush string arrangements, “Isobel” is an enchanting listen that is sensual and comforting set against a series of rolling tribal inspired percussion. As Björk’s vocal expressions are so idiosyncratic, it makes sense that they’re the main focus of your listening experience. But a song like “Isobel” also displays her ability to layer lush beds of backing vocals that wrap around you like a warm hug.

A sense of solace and haunting is present in “Possibly Maybe” with its hypnotic slow melody and trip-hop inspired back beat. It’s a slow unwinding of defenses and letting go of any hope. Although it is ultimately a song of heartache, the arrangement makes it comforting.

From heartache to hope, Björk takes us on a trippy mix of Zydeco and Afro-Cuban inspiration with “I Miss You” that unfolds on the listener in a joyous way akin to rolling down a long hill in sunshine. There’s an impatience in the music that reflects the lyrical turn as Björk sings, “I Miss You / But I Haven’t Met You Yet.”

“Cover Me” is a stripped back moment of revealing admiration that skews any sense of structure with a wicked smile.

The album closer “Headphones” is, as the title suggests, best experienced with said devices in place. Like a guided meditation, Björk is a sonic tour guide talking through a real time creation of sound. Aided (and inspired) by Tricky, the track is a perfect representation of Björk as avant-garde artist. And the perfect reminder of the many jewels to be uncovered in subsequent albums”

I am moving to a feature from Treblezine. I know there will be new inspection and investigation of Post ahead of its anniversary on 13th June. I remember the album when it came out in 1995. Although I was not a huge Björk fan at the time, in years since, I have really come to love all of her albums. Post is right up there with the best. A step on from her 1993 debut, new generations of fans have discovered this album. It still sounds like nothing else:

“An account I don’t quite remember, from an ostensibly less cretinous version of Twitter that no longer quite exists, once shared a long string of emojis: a woman, a mountain, a cloud, a wheel, a bottle, a knife, a fork, rocks, etc. The only explanation given: Björk.

It takes a minute or so to see the link—it’s a deeper cut than a woman and a swan, for instance—but the imagery is drawn from “Hyperballad,” a standout song from Björk’s sophomore album Post. In its narrative, Björk imagines herself ascending a mountain while her partner is asleep, and undergoes a ritual of purging, walking up to the precipice and hurling objects off the edge, “Like car parts, bottles and cutlery.” It’s almost absurd to imagine, this person quietly rising in the stillness of dawn for the sake of throwing heaps of garbage into an abyss. But the resolution is one of security and well-being, confessing that she pushes herself to fling projectiles into the void, “So I can feel happier/To feel safe with you.”

It speaks volumes about Björk’s unconventional vision truly that such a peculiar piece of songwriting can be so recognizable even in nonverbal form. “Hyperballad” was only a minor hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Dance Club chart but coming nowhere near the Hot 100, yet it’s become a signature song for the singular Icelandic artist, a moment in which disparate, even contradictory instincts all come together in unlikely, rapturous harmony, an honest and vulnerable core wrapped in orchestral techno armor.

By age 29, when Post was released, Björk had already experienced something on the order of a half-dozen careers in music. In her early twenties she fronted The Sugarcubes, releasing her first all-time great song with 1988’s “Birthday” and subsequently opening for U2 a few years later. A visit to the Icelandic Punk Museum in Reykjavik, converted from a former public bathroom, further details her early post-punk years as a teenager in bands like Tappi Tíkarrass and KUKL. Even her debut album, Debut, was—technically speaking—her third, following a folk-pop album she made as a child and a seldom-heard jazz record she made in 1990 between Sugarcubes records.

It makes perfect sense that Björk recorded and released Post just before turning 30, an age when energy, fearlessness and confidence all seem to intersect.

Her actual but not literal debut, Debut, however, lived up to the importance of its title by delivering on the promise of Björk’s arrival as a solo artist. The 1993 album saw Björk immersing herself in the sounds of trip-hop and house music, collaborating with producer Nellee Hooper on a set of beat-driven songs heavily inspired by the music she’d been hearing in clubs, as well as records by Brian Eno, Kate Bush and artists on the Warp Records roster. Bearing little to no resemblance to any of Björk’s prior projects or releases, it offered up one of the most significant of many reinventions throughout her four-decade career.

Post, released two years later, presented a more extensive exploration of Björk’s artistic impulses and internal self. It’s an album that juxtaposes big sounds with contrastingly vulnerable emotions, a reflection of her new surroundings after relocating to London, looking beyond the club—either rock or discotheque—and probing a vast, chromatic and aural palette while somehow finding a way to unite its most contradictory sounds and distant points through a kind of sly introspection. Björk described the album as being her most “promiscuous,” in part because of how she brought so many different collaborators into her unique vision: Tricky, Howie B, 808 State’s Graham Massey, Brazilian composer and arranger Eumir Deodato and so on. Perhaps more accurately it’s a reflection of the many aspects of her own identity: defiant, complex, somehow both insular and extroverted. The entirety of Björk, both as an artist and as an individual, can be heard on Post.

As a 15-plus-year veteran of the music industry at just under 30 years old, Björk’s abilities were never in doubt. But perhaps more than anything, Post reinforced the uniqueness of her perspective. We perhaps take for granted that the aesthetic and stylistic hybrids on Post—merging trip-hop with orchestration, pop with industrial, avant garde electronic music with a more mainstream-friendly approach to songwriting—which came to be the norm in both alternative music and even well beyond that sphere in the years that followed. Still, there weren’t many songs prior to this album—by anyone—that sounded much like “Army of Me,” a buzzing industrial stomp backed by a John Bonham drum loop that saw the petite Icelander laying down the law with intimidating fury: “And if you complain once more/You’ll meet an army of me.”

Where “Army of Me” outfitted Björk in battle armor, the ambient twinkle of “Possibly Maybe” lays bare her vulnerability, her daydreams of unrequited love turning to bitterness: “After a while I wonder/Where’s that love you promised me?” And in the grimy, sweaty grind of “Enjoy,” she attempts to reconcile physical attraction with self-conciousness, an effort to be in the moment (“sex without touching” is the phrase she uses, but you get the sense that, yes, there will be some touching involved).

The broader musical palette that Björk draws from likewise allows her to explore a more complete range of emotions beyond big-time sensuality, though there’s no question that there’s plenty of that to go around. On the brief “Cover Me,” in which Björk recorded her vocals in a cave during recording sessions at Nassau’s Compass Point Studios (after what was then a recent renovation and reopening of the temporarily shuttered hideaway), she sings, “I’m going hunting for mysteries.” By and large, she finds them, frequently wrapped in idiosyncratic stylistic choices and haunting arrangements. Teeming with bright bursts of horns and hypnotic layers of percussion, “I Miss You” imagines an ideal partner that might not even exist, playfully accompanied by an animated video in which her head is bitten off by piranhas. Meanwhile, the left-field hit “It’s Oh So Quiet” is an update of a 1951 Betty Hutton vocal jazz song that hits reset at the halfway point, its brassy sound and punctuations of unfiltered screams a startling attempt to shock the audience, and the bane of karaoke DJs worldwide”.

Before finishing off with the influence and legacy of Post, there is a review that I want to get to. A five-star review from Slant Magazine, their praise and huge applause mirrored reviews from 1995 and those since. A huge chart success and an album that is seen as one of the best of all time by many sources, it still sounds fresh and exciting thirty years later. An album that has not dated at all. For anyone who has never heard the album, I would urge them to do so. It is a genius album from one of music’s true innovators:

“Though Björk had enjoyed minor cult fame as the lead singer of the prog-punk band the Sugarcubes, it only took one solo album to solidify the Icelandic artist as a viable pop iconoclast. The plainly titled Debut and its accompanying music videos showcased the endlessly fascinating sides to Björk’s offbeat persona: sweater-clad explorer (“Human Behaviour”), bejeweled sensualist-egg chef (“Venus as a Boy”), lovesick insane asylum inmate (“Violently Happy”), and, perhaps most intriguingly, trailer-hitch improvisational performance artist (“Big Time Sensuality”). All four of the album’s singles tickled the fancies of pop fans who secretly wished pop iconography would take more dangerous, sensual leaps of intuition: Björk, through sheer force of will, seemed as experimental and frightening as her pop ditties were cute and ingenuous.

Then, of course, there was her voice: She could rarely be bothered to sing in the 4/4 time signature dance music often requires, and her paradoxically husky and reedy, thickly accented vocal tone could sound at turns childlike and tremulous or like a shriek from the crypt of banshees. But Debut, for all its sense of independent self-actualization, is honestly as much an achievement by producer extraordinaire Nellee Hooper as it is a reflection of Björk’s titanic character. Her 1995 follow-up, Post, upped the ante by plugging listeners into the diverse pop mixtape playing inside her mind, and if she had to go suss out producers as sundry as Graham Massey and Tricky to achieve her goals, then so be it.

It’s telling that Post includes two tracks initially slated for Debut and then scrapped when they seemed too far out at the time: “The Modern Things,” reportedly a response to rockist fans of the Sugarcubes who cried “sellout” when Björk learned to love the computer sequencer, and the opening track “Army of Me.” Right from the word go, Post is several furloughs beyond any of Debut’s perceived weirdness, as “Army of Me” provocatively merges a Weather Report-esque jazz-fusion bass riff with a heavy-timbered rock drumbeat to match her contemptuous vocal delivery (“Self-sufficience, please!”). Without missing a beat, Björk puts herself into the role of fragile suicidist on “Hyper-Ballad,” as she throws tchotchkes over a cliff to approximate the nature of her own plunge. A phenomenal journey, the track begins with lightly shuffling drum n’ bass before expanding into an immense house groove.

“It’s Oh So Quiet,” an instrumentally faithful cover of a 1940s Betty Hutton big band number, was Björk’s biggest crossover moment ever, and if it’s usually rejected by most Björkheads, well, then that’s another testament to the extent she implores people to open up their musical horizons. Each track on Post reveals another emotional extreme: “Possibly Maybe,” an almost masturbatory ode to the wax and wane of love affairs; “Enjoy,” a dark and dubby dalliance with the seedier side of sexuality; and “I Miss You,” which should resonate with anyone familiar with the “Amor Omnia” speech in Carl Dreyer’s Gertrud. And in case some odd ducks still hadn’t caught on to Björk’s lost-in-a-costume-shop approach to public guises, Post came fully equipped with another barrage of music videos (six of the little buggers!), many of which have gone on to become classics, most notably Michel Gondry’s industrial wasteland “Army of Me” and Spike Jonze’s clodhopping tribute to Busby Berkeley and Jacques Demy, “It’s Oh So Quiet.”

Collaboration has always been an important aspect of Björk’s work ethic. Testifying to this is the fact that she has had romantic affairs with a great many of her colleagues (Tricky, Stephane Sednaoui…though probably not Lars von Trier). She also suggested that the Post remix album, Telegram, is, if anything, even more true to her personal vision than the prototype, despite having an even wider range of styles and producers (a shrieking, classical Brodsky Quartet “Hyper-Ballad” mingles with a distorted, NIN-like “Possibly Maybe” and a ghetto-blasting hip-hop “I Miss You”).

For many, the delicate balance of Post represented the ultimate Björkian pop experience, and one that has yet to be topped. In fact, Björk’s next album, her 1997 glass-dragon Homogenic, indicated with one fell swoop that Björk had moved beyond pop into what one might call her own cloistered “genre of me.” The shimmering Vespertine, from 2001, suggested a move on Björk’s part to translate her own unique musical style back into the world of pop (with some fantastically emotional moments like “Undo” and “It’s Not Up to You”), but Post will likely always remain the Björk album that most successfully sustains her winning balance of experimental whimsy and solid pop magic”.

I am going to end with some information from Wikipedia. In terms of the legacy and influence of Post, it has had such an impact through the years. Not just in terms of affecting other artists. How significant it was in Björk’s career. Rather than repeating her debut, Post took her music to new places. When she followed Post with 1997’s Homogenic, again, Björk evolved once more:

“The album's influence has been identified as being increasingly palpable on the contemporary music landscape, and later reviews of the album also make note of the timeless aspect of the music. Writing for The Daily Review, James Rose wrote in 2015: "Post is where mainstream music could have gone. While modern chart music hasn't gone there entirely[,] she undoubtedly helped broaden the playing field. [The album] stands today as a body of work that still informs the more marginal artistic fringes of modern music and reminds us how narrow and staid our world would be without outliers like Björk. Also in 2015, Andrew Shaw of Nerdist felt that Post "chose to ignore expectation, market restrictions, and contemporary trends", and that Björk "pushed her vocal performances into new places, where no other vocalists could dare to sing". He compared the album's impact on audiences to that of Jimi Hendrix's 1967 album, Are You Experienced, writing it "set the benchmark for what was possible when you take tradition and set it on fire". Raymond Ang of The Wall Street Journal considered Post to be "Björk's last stab at the pop game… she would dig deeper into her increasingly avant-garde interests and, in the years to come, thrill and challenge her audience".

David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors is an admirer of the record, stating he was influenced by Björk's deconstruction of classic melodies. American singer-songwriter Amy Lee has said Post is "one of the biggest records in [her] life". DJ Shadow sampled "Possibly Maybe" in "Mutual Slump", a track off his 1996 album, Endtroducing...... The Vitamin String Quartet—known for its series of tribute albums to rock and pop acts—covered "Army of Me" and "You've Been Flirting Again" in the 2001 album, Ice: The String Tribute to Björk. In 2008, Stereogum released a compilation of cover versions in homage to the album, titled Enjoyed: A Tribute to Björk's Post. It features: Dirty Projectors, Liars, Xiu Xiu, High Places and Atlas Sound, among other artists.

Much of Post's six music videos have gone on to become classics—most notably "It's Oh So Quiet" and "Army of Me". At the time of its release, music videos were beginning to be used as an art form, and Björk's visual output during this period—and her career in general—have become a clear example of the medium's artistic legitimation. Spanish writer Estíbaliz Pérez Asperilla has identified recurring motifs and themes through Björk's videography; these include nature and a magnified depiction of Björk. Surrealism and technology have also been identified as recurring features in Björk's visual output of this period. David Ehrlich of Time Out considered her "one of the first artists to meaningfully explore the aesthetic and semiotic value of CG and its relationship to the [videos]." Writing for Paste, Alexa Carrasco felt, "Björk has created some of the most beautiful and weird videos to ever play on MTV." The popularity of the music video for "It's Oh So Quiet" made the song one of Björk's most ubiquitous tracks, and was considered her first breakthrough on MTV. The music videos—and the pink boots Björk wears in "Hyperballad" (the work of Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck)—were displayed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, as part of the 2015 Björk exhibition. They were also featured in the 2016 exhibition, Björk Digital, which premiered at Carriageworks as part of the Vivid Sydney festival”.

I am going to finish there. On 13th June, the incredible Post turns thirty. One of the defining albums of the 1990s, as I said, it still sounds so fresh. You can put it on now and find new layers and details. Testament to the incredible production and the phenomenal songwriting. Björk performances so electric and stunning. I am not sure if there is going to be a thirtieth anniversary reissue of Post. However, you can grab it on cassette, C.D. and vinyl, so I would suggest you go and get it. This album holds a very special place…

IN my heart.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Connection: Classic Albums Released on the Same Day

FEATURE:

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Wellington Cunha/Pexels

Connection: Classic Albums Released on the Same Day

__________

FOR this Digital Mixtape…

PHOTO CREDIT: Anton H/Pexels

I wanted to look at an interesting phenomenon. That is when classic albums are released on the same day. It doesn’t happen often. However, if you look back through the years and all the times there have been incredible albums released the same day, it must have been great for music fans. These amazing albums coming out the same week and not knowing which one to spend your money on! That sort of excitement does not really happen these days. However, that is not to say we will never see a day when two massive albums come out the same day and there is this feverish anticipation. Although I cannot include dates in a playlist, I have found albums released the same day and included tracks from each. Putting them side by side. I am doing it in pairs, so the first two albums were released the same day; the third and fourth etc. Spotify has the wrong date for the release of Soundgarden’s Superuknown, and there is debate whether Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde was released the same day as The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, but I believe they were (though some might argue that). From A Tribe Called Quest and Nirvana in 1991, Björk and Alanis Morissette and Radiohead and Elastica in 1995, there have been these wonderful clashes. To see it happen is…

ALWAYS a joy.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A Career-Spanning Pulp Celebration

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Jackson

A Career-Spanning Pulp Celebration

__________

FEW people…

expected the iconic Pulp to announce new music. Speaking with Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 6 Music, they talked about their new single, Spike Island, and their upcoming album, More. I have another Pulp feature coming soon as Common People turns thirty on 22nd May. That is a single from their fifth studio album, Different Class. Their eight studio album is coming out on 6th June. To celebrate this, I wanted to compiled a mixtape of the best Pulp tracks. The great singles and some deep cuts. Starting out with their latest single. NME reported on the wonderful news of new Pulp material:

“Pulp have announced a return with details of their first new album in 24 years ‘More’ and the festival-ready single ‘Spike Island’.

Jarvis Cocker and the Britpop icons have had fans waiting on new material having signed a new record deal with Rough Trade last year after reuniting again in 2023 for the first Pulp shows since 2012 – playing new songs while out on the road, such as ‘Farmer’s Market’, ‘Spike Island’, ‘My Sex’, ‘You’ve Got To Have Love’, ‘Background Noise’ and ‘A Sunset’.

Then, last summer, it was reported that the group were “back in the studio” after frontman Cocker was spotted in Walthamstow, London. The singer was pictured carrying an orange Rough Trade tote bag while waving at the camera.

Now the band have announced ‘More’ – their first album almost 24 years – will be released on Friday June 6. The album was recorded and mixed at Orbb Studio in Walthamstow E17 and produced by James Ford. The album is also their first since the passing of bassist Steve Mackay, who died in 2023. The record is dedicated to his memory.

Speaking on BBC 6 Music this morning, the band confirmed that “the record has been done for a while” and the wait between records felt like “a lifetime”, before completing it in three weeks.

“[Playing live] was a big influence on it – that we played and the songs came back to life,” said Cocker. “We did play one new song towards the end of the tour and no one threw stuff at us or left to go to the bar’

“We chose to do it quickly… it wanted to come out.”

The new single ‘Spike Island’ is a synth-led indie pop gem that sees Cocker reflect on life at a point of great change: “Dead in my tracks/ I was heading for disaster, then I turned back. The universe shrugged, shrugged and moved on”.

It is also a nod to the historic Spike Island gig that The Stone Roses, played in Cheshire in May 1990. The show saw The Stone Roses perform to 28,000 fans at the site of a disused chemical plant – becoming one of the most legendary gigs of all time and seen as the precursor to the Britpop era.

Pulp have made reference to the Spike Island show in the past – namely in their song ‘Sorted For E’s & Wizz’, which was shared as part of their 1995 album ‘Different Class’. Speaking on 6 Music, Cocker confirmed that he “never went to the concert, but I’d spoken to people who went and picked things up second hand from it” to piece together images and phrases that captured the show and the mood of the occasion.

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Lyrically the idea for ‘Spike Island’ came from Jason Buckle (of Relaxed Muscle) who co-wrote the song and went to Stone Roses’ infamous Spike Island gig where a DJ repeatedly shouted, “Spike Island, come alive!”

“I was told that someone was interested in investigating A.I. & did I have any ideas?,” he said in a press release about the accompanying video. “The first idea I had was to animate the photographs that Rankin & Donald took for ‘Different Class’: after all, back in 1995 they had been an ‘artificial’ way of dropping us into real-life situations & getting an album cover done whilst we were too busy recording the music for that album to pose for pictures. No brainer.”

He continued: “It was my initial idea to produce a kind of “making of” video that showed how the photos had come to be taken – but as soon as I fed the first shot into the AI app I realised that wasn’t going to happen. So I  decided to “go with the flow” & see where the computer led me.

“All the moving images featured in the video are the result of me feeding in a still image & then typing in a “prompt” such as: “The black & white figure remains still whilst the bus in the background drives off” which led to the sequence where the coach weirdly slides towards the cut-out of me.

“The weekend I began work on the video was a strange time: I went out of the house & kept expecting weird transformations of the surrounding environment due to the images the computer had been generating. The experience had marked me. I don’t know whether I’ve recovered yet…..”

He added: “I have to thank Julian House for some expert post-production work & Rankin & Donald Milne for allowing me to use their work in this way. As it says in text at the end of the video, I think what they did for Pulp back in 1995 was “Human Intelligence at its best”.

“My final thought? H.I. Forever!”

In a statement about the album, Cocker shared: “This is the first Pulp album since “We Love Life” in 2001. Yes: the first Pulp album for 24 years. How did that happen?

“Well: when we started touring again in 2023, we practiced a new song called “Hymn of the North” during soundchecks & eventually played it at the end of our second night at Sheffield Arena. This seemed to open the floodgates: we came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024. A couple are revivals of ideas from last century. The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley. The music for another was written by Jason Buckle. The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones & played by the Elysian Collective.

“The album was recorded over three weeks by James Ford in Walthamstow, London, starting on November 18th, 2024. This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record. It was obviously ready to happen”.

In honour of some great news from Pulp this week, I was keen to look through their back catalogue and assemble their biggest tracks and some deeper cuts that don’t get played much. Spike Island is a great taste of their new album. Keep an eye out on their social media channels for tour dates and news. You can pre-order More here. Even if you are quite new to Pulp then you will want to get this album. It will be interesting to hear what comes next from one of the best…

BANDS of all time.

FEATURE: Perfect: Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Perfect

Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill at Thirty

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I do love it…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Alanis Morissette in her hotel room in Cologne, Germany, in 1995/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins/Getty Images (via The New York Times Magzzine)

when two classic albums come out on the same day. There have been some famous examples through the years. However, 13th June, 1995 saw Björk’s Post released alongside Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill. This album ranks alongside the best of the 1990s. Jagged Little Pill was a departure from a more Dance-Pop sound of her first two albums – Alanis (1991) and Now Is the Time (1992). Jagged Little Pill is undoubtedly a work of genius, through it did have its detractors in 1995. Now, I think there has been enough retrospection and praise. Alanis Morissette worked with producer Glen Ballard after she moved from her home in Ottawa to Los Angeles. Jagged Little Pill sports classic singles like Ironic, You Learn, You Oughta Know and Hand in My Pocket. Because the album turns thirty on 13th June, I wanted to spend some time with it. An album that I experienced back in 1995 but have come to appreciate more in years since. The music industry in the mid-1990s not as supportive when it came to female artists and great works like Jagged Little Pill. I want to get to a few features of an album that I feel has inspired so many other artists. Before getting to some spotlighting of an album that went to number one in the U.S. and U.K. (and many other countries) and is seventeen-times platinum in the U.S., here is some detail about the legacy of Jagged Little Pill:

“Morissette's success with Jagged Little Pill was credited with leading to the introduction of female singers such as Fiona Apple, Shakira, Tracy Bonham, Meredith Brooks, and in the early 2000s, Pink, Michelle Branch, and fellow Canadian Avril Lavigne. American singer Katy Perry cites Jagged Little Pill as a significant musical inspiration, and opted to work with Morissette's frequent collaborator Ballard as a result. Perry stated, "Jagged Little Pill was the most perfect female record ever made. There's a song for anyone on that record; I relate to all those songs. They're still so timeless." Grammy Award winner Kelly Clarkson said of the album, "It made me a better writer. It made me a better singer." Avril Lavigne cited Jagged Little Pill as one of her all-time favorite albums, stating: "It is an album I can revisit over and over, belt every song, and never get sick of." In 2018, the album won the Polaris Heritage Prize Audience Award in the 1986–1995 category. Benny Anderson of ABBA listed the album as one of the 6 soundtracks of his life: "I listened to this a lot when it came out, at a time when I wasn't writing pop songs any more. It was a remembrance of solid golden pop, from a fantastically talented woman with great writing and a great voice, and a very nicely produced album by Glen Ballard. It's one of the top 10 albums in my life when it comes to pop records, alongside Rumours and Hotel California”.

I want to start with a feature from Albumism from 2020. They marked twenty-five years of an album that has been ranked alongside the greatest ever. Even though Alanis Morissette hoped Jagged Little Pill would gain her kudos among her late-Grunge peers, she found them aloof – and she herself was never that. However, the influence Jagged Little Pill has had and the life it has taken on cannot be denied. It is a sensational album. I don’t think it sounds too dated. You can hear artists today very much producing their own version of songs from the album:

“Just two years after Madonna co-founded the Maverick record label back in 1992, the company signed a then relatively unknown 20-year-old Morissette. Just over a year later and her debut album for the label had been released and proved to be the smash record the label had envisioned. With total sales now in excess of 33 million units globally, the album not only cemented Morissette’s star status, but went 16x platinum in the US, became the best-selling debut album of all time and garnered the singer five out of the nine GRAMMY Awards she was nominated for in 1996, not to mention taking out the number one spot in a staggering 14 charts around the world. But this album is about so much more than just groundbreaking statistics—it’s a powerful album about personal experiences.

Whilst the walk down memory lane in revisiting the album twenty-five years later is full of coming-of-age stories and in many ways, articulated everything that I was feeling then, aged nineteen, I am also reminded that Morissette was a mere year older than me at the time and wrote and produced music that not only belied her youth, but gave a voice to a generation.

Jagged Little Pill surfaced at a time when grunge was at its peak and although Morissette presented a strong, multifaceted woman, open and honest, she hadn’t ridden the same wave that her feminist peers like Courtney Love and Ani Di Franco had done. Instead, she had received success with her first two pop albums in her native Canada and even dated “Uncle Joey” (Dave Coulier) from Full House, all things that couldn’t have been further from the voice expressing torment, pain and vulnerability on Jagged Little Pill.

All that changed when Morissette met legendary record producer and songwriter Glen Ballard (Michael Jackson, The Pointer Sisters, Paula Abdul). With Ballard now providing some guidance and a wealth of production knowledge, the two set about bunkering down in Ballard’s studio, supposedly recording a song a day. According to Morissette, she penned the track “Perfect” in a mere twenty minutes and requested that her original demo vocals be used to create a rawness on the album. Ballard in tow, it only seemed fitting to have session musicians lend their wares and there was no better fit than Dave Navarro and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to provide some serious guitar work on the album’s lead single “You Oughta Know.”

A total of six singles were released from the album, with all of these songs (except "All I Really Want”) entering the top ten in various charts around the world and “Ironic” taking out the number four spot on the Billboard Hot 100, her highest charting single in the US. But it was “You Oughta Know” that set the tone for the album and gave license to a type of female sexuality and unabashed raw anger not seen on a commercial scale, showing that women get equally as irked as men, most definitely as horny and may even get a little perverse as captured in lines like, “Is she perverted like me / Would she go down on you in a theater?”

With hope in her heart, the album’s second single “Hand In My Pocket” showcases a self-assured Morissette who is able to have a little fun. The third single and album smash “Ironic”— the much-disputed irony-free song that Morissette stood by in the wake of criticism over its linguistic usage—became her trademark. Whether or not you deem the song situational irony, dramatic irony or even completely unironic, you can’t deny that Morissette’s indifference to the world and how it will eventually do you over in the end makes for a damn good song.

Apart from the officially released singles, there is even more beauty on this album. Whether it be the togetherness on “Mary Jane” as Morissette reassures a friend in the midst of grief or the religious hindsight on “Forgiven,” she adds even more layers to her self-exploration and that of others too.

Morissette delivered an opus of immeasurable beauty on Jagged Little Pill, a beauty entrenched in her psyche, her anger, her lovelorn heart and her hope. She created a fluidity and slickness within this album rare for a twenty-one-year-old novice artist. She kept her words raw and articulated emotions and feelings that many women had felt too ashamed to even acknowledge, let alone put out there for the whole world to hear”.

I want to drop in a feature from Rolling Stone from last year. In their list of the five-hundred best albums ever, they ranked Jagged Little Pill at sixty-nine. Proof that endures to this day. An album that will continue to influence and gain a whole new generation of fans. Jagged Little Pill has been nominated for a score of great awards. I hope it gets new inspection ahead of its thirtieth anniversary on 13th June:

“A very important record from my childhood, I clearly remember going halves with my sister to buy this CD. That would effectively make it the first CD I bought, or amongst the first few and I listened to it to death. While this is her third release, it was the first released internationally. A major shift in sound from her first two, many naively considered this her debut. Following her second album, Alanis Morissette moved from Toronto to L.A., where she met producer, Glen Ballard. Amongst many other releases, Ballard had contributed songwriting and production to Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ and ‘Dangerous,’ most notably ‘Man In The Mirror’ and ‘Keep The Faith.’ Influenced by Grunge and Alternative music of the time, Ballard would refine Morissette’s angst into well-crafted pop songs, resulting in 12 (13 really) incredible songs.

Why 13? Well, this might possibly be the first album on the list to include a secret track, the stalker song, ‘Your House.’ ‘All I Really Want’ kicks the proceedings off, setting the tone of songs to follow. The middle eight section in the song would be a recurring device used throughout. Track 2 is arguably Morissette’s signature song, ‘You Oughta Know.’ A revenge/break-up song allegedly about Full House’s Dave Coulier, Ballard assembles a super group of sorts to deliver the song; the soaring vocals of Alanis, the unmistakeable bass of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, as well as their one-time guitarist, Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro. The song was essentially re-arranged by the pair with the middle section heavily resembling their own band’s song, ‘Aeroplane.’ Rounding the supergroup off is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ organist, Benmont Tench. Although often rumoured, Taylor Hawkins from Foo Fighters doesn’t play drums on the recording (he was her live drummer). The 10/10 album also includes ‘Hand In My Pocket,’ ‘You Learn,’ ‘Head Over Feet’ and ‘Ironic.’ It was nominated for 9 Grammys, winning 5; making the 21-year-old Alanis the youngest winner (at that time) of Album Of The Year. It went to the #1 spot in 13 countries and to date has sold a staggering 33 million copies, making it one of the biggest-selling albums of all time (just behind MJ’s ‘Bad,’ coincidentally). It has recently been turned into a musical. I always forget how incredible this album is, until I relisten to it and I’m reminded all over again. Loved relistening to this after so many years”.

I am going to end with an anniversary review from Billboard from 2015. Their twentieth anniversary piece made some interesting observations. I have taken select sections from the feature which also included a song-by-song review. I have highlighted my favourite three from Jagged Little Pill:

“In 1995, there were plenty of angsty lady rockers with more rage and credibility than Alanis Morissette. The 21-year-old singer-songwriter hadn’t grown up playing basement punk shows or firing off feminist manifestos. Back home in Canada, she was known for the pair of dance-pop albums she released before graduating high school. Her parents weren’t even divorced.

But Morissette was no fraud. Jagged Little Pill, the era-defining international debut album she thrust upon the world 20 years ago on June 13, 1995, wasn’t some act of calculated alt-rock reinvention. Rather, it was a product of growing up. Alanis had been around the block, sung a few bubblegum tunes, and even dated a dude from Full House. It all left her wanting, and with her third album — recorded in Los Angeles after she’d been dropped by her label — Morissette decided to follow her gut and make music she could feel good about.

For the first time, this meant writing songs about feeling bad. Though drawn from personal experiences (bad relationships, career woes, adventures in Catholicism), Jagged Little Pill resonated. By November 1995, it had sold more than 2 million copies, topping the Billboard 200 and finding a mainstream audience that edgier female artists like Courtney Love and Liz Phair weren’t able to reach. This was precisely because of — not despite — Alanis’ past life in pop.

Jagged Little Pill isn’t a rock record. It’s grungy discomfort set to the kinds of tpp 40 hooks and backing tracks one gets working a guy like Glen Ballard, who Morissette met in 1994 and quickly took a liking to.

Pre-Pill, Ballard had produced artists like Wilson Phillips, Paula Abdul and Michael Jackson. With him co-writing and playing most of the instruments, there was zero chance of Alanis relocating to Alternative Nation. In terms of earnestness and emotional directness, Morissette made those Pearl Jam guys look like the cast of MTV’s The State, but that was OK. The ticked-off adolescent girls who constituted much of her audience weren’t necessarily looking for irony, and they didn’t require a spokesperson who even knew the meaning of the word.

This became apparent when “Ironic,” the disc’s famously irony-free third single, reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, continuing a hot streak that had begun with the gutsy scorned-woman rager “You Oughta Know” (long rumored to be about Dave “Uncle Joey” Coulier) and the more subdued, hopeful “Hand in My Pocket.” Two more smashes — “You Learn” and “Head Over Feet” — followed, making Jagged Little Pill one of those albums like Joshua Tree or Born In the U.S.A., where practically every track is a single, and they’re all pretty distinct.

Like those Bruce and U2 benchmarks, Jagged Little Pill today seems a bit dated. Still, Ballard’s drum machines and grunge-lite guitars (many preserved from the original demos) aren’t what anyone thinks about when they wax rhapsodic about this album. It was never meant to be hip or edgy, and 20 years later, it’s more meaningful for what it represents — a smart young woman talking honestly about her feelings and finding herself as an artist — than for how it sounds.

Read on for our track-by-track take on this, a record that earned five Grammys, sold millions and millions of copies, and gave its creator something to really freak out about: success.

“You Oughta Know”: The second-best major-label debut single of the ‘90s, right after Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” this gnashing kiss-off shocked listeners with its raw anger and frank portrayal of female sexuality. Turns out women get pissed off and horny just like men. Some even get freaky in movie theatres. This was no surprise to Flea and Dave Navarro of Red Hot Chili Peppers, who flesh out the Ballard demo and put scraping funk-rock to Alanis’ taunting indignation.

“Head Over Feet”: Alanis knows she’s a handful, and that she’s not the type to get all gushy. “Don’t be surprised if I love you for all that you are,” she tells a guy who actually treats her right. He listens when she talks and asks her how her day was, and he’s probably fine with her calling in the middle of dinner. He’s the opposite of that “You Oughta Know” dude, and Morissette sings in a plainspoken manner suited to Ballard’s basic guitar-and-drum-box backing — and the feeling of relief that has her buzzing.

“Ironic”: Alanis might have been a little unclear on what irony means, but she knew how to choose her battles. Rather than argue that “rain on your wedding day” and “10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife” constitute “situational irony,” as some defenders have insisted, Morissette owned up to the gaff and stood by her song. And rightfully so, as her highest-charting Hot 100 hit is a funny shoulder shrug of a song about how life always screws you in the end”.

On 13th June, it will be thirty years since the mighty and iconic Jagged Little Pill was released. This is an album that will be discussed for decades more. I was twelve when the album came out, so it took me a few years after that to connect with it. I am not sure whether I was a massive fan of the album in 1995 but have become in years since. It arrived in one of the best years for music ever and stands up there with the very best. Thirty years on and Jagged Little Pill still sounds amazing. Alanis Morissette’s third studio album is an…

UNDENIABLE masterpiece.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Ms. Lauryn Hill at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Ms. Lauryn Hill at Fifty

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ALTHOUGH there has not…

been any new music from Ms. Lauryn Hill, she has been keeping busy. Back in October, she performed reunion dates with Fugees. She was also at a star-studded memorial for Roberta Flack back in March. I do think that we are going to get more performances and activity from one of the icons of Hip-Hop. Someone whose sole studio album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, has been inspiring people since its release in 1998. Even if her career with Fugees was brief and she has not put out another album since 1998, she is very much in the world and influencing people still. She turns fifty on 26th May. Because of that, I have assembled a selection of songs from her time with Fugees, plus some of her incredible solo material. Before I get there, AllMusic provide some biography about the wonderful Ms. Lauryn Hill:

“Lauryn Hill broke through with multi-platinum-selling, Grammy-winning group the Fugees, but with her 1998 solo debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the singer, songwriter, rapper, and producer established herself as a creative force on her own. She successfully integrated rap, soul, and reggae into a singular sound. Eclectic, uplifting, and empowering, the album was often cited by younger artists as a touchstone. Following its success, Hill was something of an enigma, her recorded output limited to a live set, scattered compilation appearances, and a handful of collaborations. Disenchantment with the entertainment industry, along with legal issues and erratic performances, did not lessen the impact of her '90s work.

Raised in South Orange, New Jersey, Hill spent her youth listening her parents' multi-genre, multi-generational record collection. She began singing at an early age and snagged minor roles on television (As the World Turns) and in film (Sister Act II: Back in the Habit). Her on-again/off-again membership in the Fugees began at the age of 13, but was often interrupted by both the acting gigs and her enrollment at Columbia University. After developing a following in the tri-state area, the group's first release -- the much-hyped but uneven 1994 album Blunted on Reality -- bombed, and almost caused a breakup. But with the multi-platinum 1996 release The Score, the Fugees became one of the most prominent rap acts on the strength of hit singles "Killing Me Softly," "Ready or Not," and "No Woman, No Cry."

Hill followed it in August 1998 with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, her first solo release. Apart from a cover of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," popularized by Frankie Valli, each song was either written or co-written by Hill. She was also credited with the arrangement and production of the whole album, which was steeped in her old-school background, both musically (the Motown-esque singalong of "Doo Wop [That Thing]") and lyrically (the nostalgic "Every Ghetto, Every City"). As Miseducation began a long reign on the charts through most of the fall and winter of 1998, Hill became a national media icon, as magazines ranging from Time to Esquire to Teen People vied to put her on the cover. By the end of the year, as the album topped best-of lists, she was being credited for her part in assimilating hip-hop into the mainstream. The momentum culminated at the February 1999 Grammy Awards, during which Hill took home five trophies from her 11 nominations, including Album of the Year, Best New Artist, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, Best R&B Song, and Best R&B Album -- the most ever for a woman. Shortly after, she launched a highly praised national tour with Atlanta rappers OutKast.

Hill continued shaping her solo career, though it hit some significant snags. She faced a lawsuit from musicians who claimed they were denied full credit for their work on Miseducation -- a matter that was eventually settled out of court. After some film projects fell through, she retreated from the music scene as she raised her family and partially attributed her hiatus to feeling too compromised. The double-disc MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 appeared in May 2002 and documented a raw, deeply personal performance. It debuted at number three but quickly slid off the Billboard 200. During the next several years, her recordings and performances were infrequent and erratic, highlighted by a Fugees reunion for Dave Chappelle's Block Party. In 2013, she spent almost three months in prison for tax evasion but was more active after her release. The following year, the English-language version of the Swedish documentary Concerning Violence was released with Hill as its narrator. She executive produced and recorded six songs for the 2015 release Nina Revisited: A Tribute to Nina Simone, including interpretations of "Feeling Good" and "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair”.

I am celebrating the upcoming fiftieth birthday of Ms. Lauryn Hill with some incredible studio recordings and some great live cuts. Whether you are a diehard fan or are quite new to her music, I hope that the playlist here will interest you. One of music’s true greats, I do hope that we hear a lot more from her in the future. She has a talent that few others do, so it would be wonderful if she gifted us with new music. On 26th May, the world celebrates the fiftieth birthday of…

THE peerless Ms. Lauryn Hill.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Who’s Pete Townshend at Eighty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Pete Townshend in 2019/PHOTO CREDIT: Mamadi Doumbouya via The New York Times Magazine 

The Who’s Pete Townshend at Eighty

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ONE of the most influential…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Who in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: David Magnus

and talented songwriters and guitarists turns eighty on 19th May. I am referring to Pete Townshend. Responsible for some of the greatest songs ever written, I am marking his upcoming birthday by collating some of the very best. As part of the legendary band The Who, generations have been enriched by his songwriting. Although I am not old enough to have heard them in the 1970s, I have listened to their classic albums since and recognise their brilliance. There are few songwriters in music history as accomplished as Pete Townshend. Before I get to a mixtape of cuts form The Who – with Roger Daltrey singing most of the songs; Townshend singing quite a few himself -, AllMusic’s biopgaphy of Pete Townshend gives us a glimpse into his genius:

“Pete Townshend was the guitarist and primary songwriter for the Who from 1964 to 1982, also participating in the group's occasional reunions after its formal breakup. Best-known for his conceptual works, he wrote Tommy and Quadrophenia for the band, as well as the bulk of its other material. He made his first tentative solo album, Who Came First, in 1972. Dedicated to his guru, Meher Baba, it continued themes pursued in Who's Next, and like that album, contained material originally intended for an abortive conceptual work, Lifehouse; it sold modestly. In 1976, he made a duo album, Rough Mix, with Ronnie Lane, formerly the bassist in the Small Faces.

Townshend's first full-fledged solo effort was Empty Glass (1980), which sold a million copies, reached the Top Five, and featured the Top Ten hit "Let My Love Open the Door," as well as the minor hits "A Little Is Enough" and "Rough Boys." He followed it in 1982 with All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, which was less successful. Nevertheless, he felt he could no longer write for the Who, and at the end of the year, the group disbanded following a North American tour. Townshend released Scoop, a two-disc compilation of demos, in 1983 (a second volume appeared in 1987).

In 1985, he returned to thematic efforts with the album White City: A Novel, which included the Top 30 single "Face the Face." The same year, he published a book of short stories, Horse's Neck. As part of the White City project, he appeared in an accompanying film, for which he organized a band called Pete Townshend's Deep End. The unit played only a few gigs, but one was videotaped and recorded, resulting in the 1986 album Pete Townshend's Deep End Live! In 1989, he released an album based on poet Ted Hughes' children's story, The Iron Man. The record featured guest vocals by John Lee Hooker and Nina Simone, as well as two tracks featuring the three surviving members of the Who. Simultaneous with the album's release, Townshend embarked on a reunion tour with the Who, an event that overshadowed The Iron Man, which enjoyed only modest sales.

In 1993, Townshend delivered Psychoderelict, another conceptual work, to mixed reviews and poor sales. By that time, however, he had successfully reinvented himself as a Broadway tunesmith -- the theatrical production entitled The Who's Tommy had become a runaway hit, earning him a Tony Award and prompting him to pursue more stage musicals. None of these came to fruition during the rest of the '90s, though, and by the end of the decade, he was releasing live and archival recordings (notably the long-delayed Lifehouse) through his website and planning another reunion with the Who.

The Who became a regular concern following the group's 1996 reunion to play Quadrophenia at Hyde Park. After that, the band next hit the road in 1999 and performed often until John Entwistle's sudden death on the eve of a tour in summer 2002. Townshend and Roger Daltrey carried on as the Who and in 2006, they released Endless Wire, which was the band's first album in 24 years and Townshend's first collection of new songs in 13.

Over the next few years, the group performed regularly, culminating in a 50th anniversary tour in 2015. That same summer, Townshend released Classic Quadrophenia, the flagship album in a symphonic reworking of his 1973 rock opera. Featuring Townshend, Billy Idol, Alfie Boe, and Phil Daniels, Classic Quadrophenia also had orchestrations by Townshend's partner, Rachel Fuller”.

I know that there will be some features written about Pete Townshend ahead of 19th May. His eightieth birthday is reason to cheer. Formed in 1964, their most recent – and perhaps final – album was 2019’s Who. Their most recognisable and celebrated song, My Generation, turns sixty in October. I am not sure whether we will hear more music from The Who. You can check out Roger Daltrey and The Who tour dates. You can read more about Pete Townshend here. You can buy Pete Townshend and The Who’s albums here. Such an iconic and respected songwriter, ahead of his eightieth birthday on 19th May, I was keen to compile a mixtape featuring…

HIS brilliant songwriting.

FEATURE: My Tea's Gone Cold, I'm Wondering Why… Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

My Tea's Gone Cold, I'm Wondering Why…

Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP at Twenty-Five

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A number one album…

PHOTO CREDIT: Interscope Records (via The Independent)

in multiple countries around the world, Eminem’s third studio album, The Marshall Mathers LP, was released on 23rd May, 2000. Among the album’s producers were Dr. Dre, Mel-Man and F.B.T. The Marshall Mathers LP also featured guest spots from Dido, RBX, Sticky Fingaz, Dina Rae, Bizarre, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and others. Perhaps a more personal album than his previous two, Eminem’s lyrics tackled his rise to fame, criticism of his music, and estrangement from his family. Mixing different genes and sporting some of the sharpest and best lyrics on any Hip-Hop album, it is hard to hold it in high esteem without mentioning its faults. Whether playing a character or not, the album has not aged well in some respects. Its consistently misogynistic and homophobic lyrics would not be tolerated and supported in Hip-Hop today. Even though this happens still to this day, we have not really heard an album quite as vitriolic as this since 2000. In the way Eminem treats women and the violence evident through the album’s tracks. In addition to references of  the Columbine High School massacre, there are repeated threats of violence and murder. In fact, songs like Stan that actually do feature murder. In spite of this, there is emotional depth from Eminem. His poetic turns of phrase no doubt influencing scores of rapper since. Almost twenty-five years after its release you can see the legacy it has and how it is seen as one of the most important Hip-Hop albums ever. However, at a time when there is misogyny and violence against women, is it an album that we should celebrate and spotlight?

I want to bring in a couple of reviews of The Marshall Mathews LP before asking whether we remember the album for its innovation and moments of brilliance or its frequently unsettling and toxic lyrics. I will start with a review from Stereogum. They wrote about The Marshall Mathers LP on its twentieth anniversary in 2020:

“On The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem talks about himself as if he’s public enemy number one, as if he’s the most hated person in the history of mainstream America. This is an act. He wasn’t that — not yet, anyway. A little more than a year earlier, The Slim Shady LP had sold well and established Em as a shock-rap star. He’d been on arena tours — as opener, not headliner — and he’d rankled public-taste watchdogs like Billboard editor Timothy White. But his success wasn’t a public crisis yet. Still, Eminem spends The Marshall Mathers LP speaking about himself as an inescapable pariah — the despised colossus who stands astride the world. As soon as the album came out, that’s exactly what he became.

On The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem’s great superpower is an ability to magnify every perceived slight to absurd degrees. In an anodyne MTV segment, Christina Aguilera had mentioned that Em had married Kim Mathers, the woman who he’d rapped about murdering on “’97 Bonnie & Clyde.” This was a tiny on-air moment, not some grand campaign that Aguilera was waging. But at the time, it wasn’t public knowledge that Em had married Kim, so Em was furious. On “The Real Slim Shady,” the ridiculously catchy first single from The Marshall Mathers LP, Em goes nuclear against Aguilera, imagining himself at the VMAs, sitting “next to Carson Daly and Fred Durst, and hear them argue over who she gave head to first.” It’s a wild, dizzy, indefensible overreaction — one of many.

Eminem has so many enemies on The Marshall Mathers LP: Parents, teachers, gay people, journalists, boy bands, girl groups, Insane Clowns, his own fans, his mother, his wife, himself. A couple of years before he made the album, Em had been a white-trash no-hoper in Detroit, a grown kid with a failed rap career and a daughter he couldn’t afford to raise. Em had transcended his origins through sheer profane ingenuity and force of personality and a lucky connection to Dr. Dre, and he’d suddenly become a public figure. But he was still miserable. His wife was cheating on him, and he was getting into fights over it, getting arrested. His mother was suing him for rapping about her. He was going through it, and he was telling jokes about going through it: “Tell me, what the hell is a fella to do?/ For every million I make, another relative sues.”

Trolling didn’t exist as a verb in 2000, but that’s what Eminem does all through The Marshall Mathers LP. He’d noticed that his homophobia on The Real Slim Shady had made people uncomfortable, so he doubled down on it, admitting later that he’d done it just to piss people off. Pissing people off had become his religion. This was a cruder time in American public history, when you could become a free-speech crusader just by saying fucked-up shit and daring uptight old people to react. (Lynne Cheney, another Eminem adversary, took the bait, complaining about his lyrics on the floor of Congress.) Em caught the same wave that the South Park guys did, riding shock-value infamy to towering mainstream fame. On the album, Em plays the villain — “I was put here to annoy the world, and destroy your little four-year-old boy or girl” — because he knows that this will make him a hero.

As irresponsible as Em gets on The Marshall Mathers LP, though, he also vents a whole lot of anxiety about his own success and what that might mean. Sometimes, he’s outwardly offensive, as on all the moments where he raps about the Columbine massacre, “a whole school of bullies shot up all at one time.” Sometimes, he’s defensive, insisting that he’s not society’s problem: “What about the makeup that you allow your 12-year-old daughter to wear?” Sometimes, he’s self-conscious, fretting about being “in rotation on rock ‘n’ roll stations” just because of his race. And sometimes he’s piercingly, fearfully vulnerable. That’s the power of “Stan,” a nearly-seven-minute Hitchcockian horror story about the kid who takes all of Eminem’s jokes the worst possible way.

“Stan” is a fascinating relic now — a genuinely cutting and absorbing story-song that entered the lexicon, changed the dictionary, and gave toxic fandom a name. Producer Mark The 45 King sampled a ballad from the relatively unknown British trip-hop siren Dido and briefly turned her into a star on American adult contemporary radio. (This was less than two years after the 45 King had sampled Annie for Jay-Z’s “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem).” Has a not-that-famous producer ever had such a culturally impactful one-two punch?)

My colleague Chris DeVille just wrote a whole piece about the legacy of “Stan,” but the song also served a function in the moment. At the 2001 Grammys, the same night that he famously lost Album Of The Year to Steely Dan, Eminem performed “Stan” with Elton John, making a feeble attempt to defuse all the homophobia accusations. The song choice was auspicious. “Stan” is the moment where subtext becomes text, where Eminem makes his vulnerability plain. Em wasn’t just a spitball-shooting outrage magnet. He was also a smart and incisive storyteller. You couldn’t hear “Stan” and believe otherwise.

If you’re listening closely enough, that vulnerability is all over The Marshall Mathers LP. Em imagines himself in a nursing home at 30, or staying home with a 40 at 40, babysitting his daughter’s kids while she’s out getting plastered. He gives voice to his own worst impulses — to the worst impulses that anyone could have. The previous album’s “’97 Bonnie & Clyde,” where Em babbled lovingly to his daughter while disposing of her mother’s body, was bad enough. The Marshall Mathers LP gave us the harrowing prequel “Kim” — six minutes of crying and screaming and, finally, murdering: “You were supposed to love me! Now bleed, bitch, bleed!”

I hated “Kim.” It stressed me out, and made me sad, and exhausted me. So I avoided the song. I had the album on cassette, so I couldn’t just skip the song. Most of the time, I just fast-forwarded the tape to the end of the second side, sacrificing “Under The Influence” and “Criminal” so that I wouldn’t have to listen to “Kim” again. You couldn’t endure “Kim” and think that Eminem was cool, that he was someone worth emulating. He sounds pathetic, unhinged, his own worst-nightmare version of himself. But even on “Kim,” Em imagines himself as the victim, immune to whatever harm he may be inflicting on the rest of the world. It’s a perennial Eminem problem. As much as he fumes about bullies, he can’t process the idea that he might be one.

“Kim” plays out like a movie — dialog, sound effects, Em doing his own wife’s death-scream voice. “Stan” works the same way, with pencil scratches and car-in-river splashes giving physical dimension to the stories that he’s telling. The level of craft on The Marshall Mathers LP remains staggering. Where Dr. Dre only produced a few tracks on The Slim Shady LP, he and his proteges take over for much of Marshall Mathers, giving Em a tense, springy blockbuster-rap heft. And even when Em produces himself, as on the gothically pretty “The Way I Am,” the music has scope.

In terms of pure rapping technique, The Marshall Mathers LP is almost peerless. On his more recent records, Eminem has turned rap virtuosity into an empty technical display. But on Marshall Mathers, Em shows urgency and personality even when he’s speeding rings around his tracks. The album’s maddening catchiness is almost a problem. Em raps in absurdist, transgressive nursery rhymes that remain permanently lodged in my brain decades later: “Skippity bebop, Christopher Reeve!” I have spent most of the time since 2000 working in the music media, and yet I can’t see the word XXL without immediately hear Em’s clowning echoing in my skull: “Maybe now your magazine won’t have so much trouble to sell!”

The Eminem of 2000 was such a great rapper that he could make anything sound compelling — Tom Green catchphrases, UFO cockpit-radio chatter, intra-MTV gossip. A lot of it was terrible. The “Ken Kaniff” skit, wherein the two members of Insane Clown Posse give loud and slobbery blowjobs to Em’s menacing gay sketch-comedy character, is probably the most uncomfortable thing to have playing on your stereo when anyone else walks into your room. In decades of pornographic sex-noise rap-album skits, I don’t think anyone’s ever made anything worse. And yet I still kept listening. So many of us did. Apparently, there was a million of us just like Em, who cussed like Em, who just didn’t give a fuck like Em”.

I want to move onto a 2018 review from Pitchfork. Even though they celebrated its confidence and contradictions, there is this complex legacy. An album with very few radio-appropriate songs, one wonders whether spotlighting The Marshall Mathers LP is appropriate. Despite its clear problems and acidity, there is this legacy and reappraisal. How this album has changed Rap and influenced some of the best Hip-Hop artists of today:

“After the release of The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem would shatter sales records with 1.7 million copies sold in the first week alone, 6.5 million in the first month, and eventually, over 35 million sold worldwide. It’s still the best-selling rap record of all time. He would cross over from rap to pop and rock radio, sell out arenas, win Grammys, rankle Lynne Cheney in front of the U.S. Congress, add a word to the dictionary, and incite protests from no small number of social justice groups. By virtue of his whiteness and talent in almost equal measure, Eminem would come to rule pop culture in America by becoming this century’s prototypical troll.

Whatever he’s become since, there can be no question that Eminem was one of the greatest to ever do it. He blew a young Kendrick Lamar’s mind, teaching him things about narrative clarity that he wouldn’t learn elsewhere. He killed JAY-Z on his own track, thus spoke Nas. It was Dr. Dre—N.W.A., The Chronic, Aftermath Records, kingpin of West Coast rap-Dr. Dre—who got Eminem’s demo tape in the late ’90s and co-signed this twentysomething, lemon-faced, twiggy, vociferously self-proclaimed son of a bitch from the East side of Detroit born Marshall Bruce Mathers III.

He was also, and remains, a homophobe, a misogynist, a confessed domestic abuser. He wrote later that, because of his critics, he went into what he called the “‘faggot’ zone” for this album “on purpose. Like, fuck you.” He defended this ugliness using the modern troll’s boilerplate: double down on the thing they want you to change until they can’t tell what you believe and what you don’t. To be a long-suffering listener of Eminem is to contend with this petulant fake-radical impulse, but it remains an impulse that defined the scope and tenor of The Marshall Mathers LP and became part and parcel to its success.

Across his major label debut, The Slim Shady LP, Eminem established the framework of his mythology: He was born into poverty, raised without a father, shuttled between Missouri and the lower-middle-class black neighborhoods of Detroit, rootless, bullied to near-death. The album established his to-put-it-lightly Freudian relationship with his mother, his clear love for legends like Big Daddy Kane and Masta Ace and Nas, and his come-up battle-rapping at the Detroit hip-hop clubs. When the dust settled, his rapid ascent and sudden fame began to burrow into his writing, coloring his every want, thrumming behind the text.

“The Real Slim Shady” was one of the last songs written for the record. All through 1999, Eminem had been scribbling lyrics—not actual lines, just two or three words, little scraps of meter and verse unarrayed on a page—while on a world tour supporting his debut. Verses began to blacken notebooks after had found inspiration in the deregulated drug culture of Amsterdam, so much so that he almost named this album after the city. Meanwhile, over in the States, Dr. Dre and several other producers, including the Funky Bass Team and the 45 King, were assembling the beats for what would become the bulk of The Marshall Mathers LP. In early 2000, when Eminem submitted the project to Interscope label boss Jimmy Iovine, he was unsatisfied. It was macabre, morose, reflexive, and unflinchingly personal. It also didn’t have a hit.

The goal of rap, for Eminem, is to overwhelm. The Marshall Mathers LP floods the room with “South Park” and grisly kidnappings, Ricky Martin and ecstasy, the assassination of Gianni Versace and the impregnation of Jennifer Lopez. One minute you’re dealing with hypocritical gun legislation, the next you’re subject to an Insane Clown Posse diss track; as soon as you consider Bill Clinton’s abuse of power, Eminem is recasting the shooters of the Columbine High School massacre as the real victims. It is data overload, that sharp inhale and sigh of never getting a word in edgewise. For 70 minutes, you are tethered to a twirling Mathers, eye to eye, a dizzying and intimate manipulation by pathos and abuse by words. Sometimes it really is just a litany: “Blood, guts, guns, cuts, knives, lives, wives, nuns, sluts,” or, “Fuck, shit, ass, bitch, cunt, shooby-de-doo-wop, skibbedy-be-bop.” The album’s centrifugal force is thrilling and it is to Eminem’s great credit that he doesn’t once let go of his grasp.

American culture allowed Eminem to freely negate any kind of identity he wanted to, as was his inherent privilege. But, as the critic Hilton Als wrote in his 2003 essay “White Noise,” it didn’t matter to Eminem. “Mathers never claimed whiteness and its privileges as his birthright because he didn’t feel white and privileged,” Als wrote. It’s interesting, though, that Eminem never negated his masculinity or heterosexuality, two identities that were and, more or less, remain intrinsic to the success of male rappers. His privilege meant that he could shed his racial signifiers and become a ghost, a psychopath, a loving father, a bigot, a clown. So why do fans believe any of this? Why, when they listened to Eminem rip his vocal cords open and disconnect from reality and mimic slitting the throat of his wife while he screams at her to “bleed, bitch bleed” do they take him so seriously?

Part of it has to do with that virtuosity. If contemporaries like OutKast and Ghostface grew their albums from the soil, Eminem grew his from the salted earth. He’s grounded but acidic, you see the ink of his words, the indent they make on the page, the ridges formed around the letters by the force of his pen. The delight when he finds a little turn of phrase like “ducked the fuck way down,” or, “I guess I must just blew up quick” shoots out dopamine. It would be one thing if Eminem simply loved language, but more than that, he loves the tradition of rapping, this guy whose passion was donated to him by hip-hop at an early age, a vocation that rescued him from the status quo of poverty, that kept him from becoming among the millions just like someone else. At his best, he is like watching a gymnast spin on the parallel bars in slow motion:

Part of it, too, was the fantasy he offered. Along with his ’00 nu-metal tourmates Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach, Eminem’s music became synonymous with a kind of ball-chain necklace, mad-at-the-world angst, channeling the latent rage leftover from rap rock’s heyday. Here was a guy who put to carefully chosen words the feeling of being broke, at the end of your rope, jealous and backed up into a corner. Those who threw up their arms and screamed “You don’t want to fuck with me” along with him could feel a little bit of anger exiting their bodies, and the mental pressure dropping by a few millibars.

But the anger and trauma he conjured from his childhood of abuse and bullying felt uncomfortably real in all his performances. On The Marshall Mathers LP, he suits the action to the word and the word to the action. He picks the right tone for the right mood, the horrorcore of “Remember Me?,” the beleaguered artist on “The Way I Am,” the impish malevolence of “Criminal,” or the tortured, regretful, loving, deranged, murderous everything-all-at-once feeling of “Kim.” We don’t really believe it, but we believe Eminem really believes it.

Art bends the world in ways we can’t always see. This album is categorically music for kids, and it rests on the shelf as a time capsule from the last big cultural flashpoint of the 20th century. Heard now, the album is still a considerable piece of music, but it’s also full of this hate. And the targets of that hate—women, the LGBTQ community—are the same people that those in power seek to marginalize. To say otherwise is to rob great art of its power. To say that Eminem’s clearly homophobic lyrics should be read as satire is to argue in bad faith that the impact art has on the world, the way it shapes the life of those who experience it, can be controlled and mitigated. Because hate emerges under the guise of art, it doesn’t erase the profound hurt it brings to a population that may be out of your own purview”.

There is that debate about albums like The Marshall Mathews LP. Others will write about it closer to its twenty-fifth anniversary on 23rd May. So important in terms of its musical impact and how it revolutionised Hip-Hop, at a time when you could not conscientiously an album like it that came out today, will the 2000 release always have this complicated legacy? In spite of that, as Wikipedia write, there has been this reappraisal and modern-day relevance that at least shows what a powerful and important album The Marshall Mathers LP is:

“Since its initial release, The Marshall Mathers LP has been highly acclaimed in retrospective critic reviews. It has been regarded by critics as Eminem's best album and has been ranked in multiple lists of the greatest albums of all time. In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Christian Hoard said it "delved much deeper into personal pain [than The Slim Shady LP], and the result was a minor masterpiece that merged iller-than-ill flows with a brilliant sense of the macabre." According to Sputnikmusic's Nick Butler, The Marshall Mathers LP stands as a culturally significant record in American popular music, but also "remains a truly special album, unique in rap's canon, owing its spirit to rock and its heritage to rap, in a way I've rarely heard". Insanul Ahmed of Complex wrote, "At a time when the Billboard charts were dominated by squeaky-clean pop acts like NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, Eminem offered a rebuttal to the hypocritical American mainstream that criticizes rap music while celebrating—and, worse, commercializing—sex, violence, and bigotry in other arenas. This album turned Eminem into a global icon. There was a huge amount of hype and controversy around it [...] But none of that takes away from its musical achievement. This album definitively proved that the Detroit rapper was a gifted lyricist, a brilliant songwriter, and a visionary artist." Mike Elizondo, a former collaborator on Eminem's albums, said, "I felt like Marshall was part of this wave with Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction (1994) and Reservoir Dogs (1992) [...] This next level of art with incredible graphic imagery that Marshall had the ability to paint. Love it or hate it he was obviously very skilled at the stories he was telling."

Jeff Weiss of The Ringer wrote, "The Marshall Mathers LP certified Eminem as an alienated voice of a generation, a caustic wedge issue distilling the spirits of Elvis, Holden Caulfield, Johnny Rotten, Kurt Cobain, Cartman from South Park, and Tupac if he shopped at Kroger. In a postmodern abyss where everything's performative, it might have been the last album that possessed the capacity to genuinely shock.” Dan Ozzi of Vice highlighted that "Eminem was the one artist high school kids seemed to unanimously connect with. [...] he represented everything high school years are about: blind rage, misguided rebellion, adolescent frustration. He was like a human middle finger. An X-rated Dennis the Menace for a dial-up modem generation." Max Bell of Spin wrote that the album remains "one of the most critically-acclaimed, commercially-successful, and influential albums in rap history", citing rappers influenced by the album, such as Tyler, the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, Kendrick Lamar, and Juice WRLD. Bonsu Thompson of Medium described the album as "a masterful confluence of punk, bluegrass, and subterranean hip-hop that gave life to a singular brand of Americana rap." Thompson further praised the album's impact on white rappers, saying, "For a snapshot of the album's seismic influence, compare the pre–Marshall Mathers LP decade of White rappers like Everlast and MC Serch with the post-2000 landscape of Action Bronson, G-Eazy, and the late Mac Miller [...] Eminem homogenized the White rapper”.

It is clear that The Marshall Mathers LP has changed Hip-Hop. Its place in music history is set. However, as we mark twenty-five years of a groundbreaking album, what impact will it have in years to come. Its moments of lyrical genius and genre-blending cannot be faulted. However, at a time when misogyny is rising and being weaponised; where domestic abuse, violence against women and sexual violence is high, there is this sense of guilt or discomfort listening to an album as visceral and unapologetically explicit and violent as The Marshall Mathers LP. One would wonder what the album would sound like if Eminem focused the proverbial gun on himself or cut away the homophobia and misogyny. It is difficult. Both timeless and a moment in Hip-Hop that we do not want to see repeated, how do you acknowledge the bigotry and misogyny in 2025? However, without an album like The Marshall Mathers LP, you do wonder whether certain artists of today would be here without it. It is clear that, when it comes to this album, there is…

NOTHING else like it.

FEATURE: Scented Letters Received with a Strange Delight: Kate Bush’s Babooshka at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Scented Letters Received with a Strange Delight

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a photo from the Babooshka cover shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

Kate Bush’s Babooshka at Forty-Five

_________

WHEN Breathing…

was released on 14th April, 1980, people got the first taste of this new direction for Kate Bush. Maybe heavier, more political and the introduction of a song where she was in the producer’s chair (with Jon Kelly), it must have been quite hard to decide which single would follow it. Released three months before Never for Ever came out, Babooshka might have felt an obvious choice. Another bold and brilliant song, it is typically one that could only come from Kate Bush! It was released on 27th June, 1980 and reached number five in the U.K. I have written about Babooshka a lot but, as its forty-fifth anniversary is soon, I needed to revisit it. With Garry Hurst and Paddy Bush provided some great background vocals and Bush sprinkling in some Fairlight CMI magic, Babooshka is this timeless and unique song that opens Never for Ever. Maybe one of the more commercial tracks on the album, it will still very different to what was being released in the summer of 1980! Before moving on, I want to highlight an interview, where Kate Bush discussed the background to one of her best-loved singles:

“Apparently it is grandmother, it’s also a headdress that people wear. But when I wrote the song it was just a name that literally came into my mind, I’ve presumed I’ve got it from a fairy story I’d read when I was a child. And after having written the song a series of incredible coincidences happened where I’d turned on the television and there was Donald Swan singing about Babooshka. So I thought, “Well, there’s got to be someone who’s actually called Babooshka.” So I was looking throughRadio Timesand there, another coincidence, there was an opera called Babooshka. Apparently she was the lady that the three kings went to see because the star stopped over her house and they thought “Jesus is in there”.’ So they went in and he wasn’t. And they wouldn’t let her come with them to find the baby and she spent the rest of her life looking for him and she never found him. And also a friend of mine had a cat called Babooshka. So these really extraordinary things that kept coming up when in fact it was just a name that came into my head at the time purely because it fitted. (Peter Powell interview, Radio 1 (UK), 11 October 1980)”

Recorded at Abbey Road’s Studio 2 and performed live on several occasions, Ran Tan Waltz was its quirky and bawdy B-side when it was released as a single. Many do not think about hidden depths and different interpretations of Babooshka. Its historical relevance and how it helped to change perceptions around Russians. I will move to a feature that argued that in 2014. Even though the country today is (rightly) being spotlighted for its atrocities, in 1980, there was this stereotypical and maybe regressive vision of anything Russian. Before getting to that, I want to come to an article from Dreams of Orgonon. They make some interesting observations and arguments when it comes to this Kate Bush classic:

“That Babooshka is something of a madwoman is expressed by the song, and particularly its video. Certainly Kate Bush considers Babooshka a pathetic (if pitiful and tragic) villain who hurts her husband. In an interview, she described Babooshka’s motivations as “paranoia [and] suspicions,” and ascribes the husband’s desire to meet his pen pal to her similarity to “his wife, the one that he loves.” Her perspective of the song is damning of Babooshka and de facto absolves her husband. The story is ultimately one of Babooshka’s downfall, where her preoccupation with retaining control of her life costs her the marriage.

Dreams of Orgonon often takes positions on Kate Bush’s songs contrary to Bush’s own. Later this year, I’m going to argue that “The Dreaming” is a hundred miles from the anti-imperialist parable Bush intends it to be. Similarly, “Babooshka” covers more than its titular character’s vanity. I think Bush writes the couple as equal offenders, and that “Babooshka” is two songs at once: it’s a covertly traditionalist song about how women’s preoccupation with their looks hurts their male partners, and it’s a subversive feminist tract about how gender norms destroy relationships.

Of course, the song’s moral ambiguity is its most interesting aspect. While there’s an almost reactionary slant to the way “Babooshka” perceives relationships, particularly in the way it treats gender along binary and determinist lines, Bush does push against the grain. She often demonstrates a willingness to interrogate the internal experiences of her characters, particularly women characters. Exploring the ramifications of jealousy is crucial to imbuing her characters with interiority. Bush has Babooshka’s husband failing similarly, even if she doesn’t realize it. Most texts are buzzing with suggestions their authors haven’t considered. In the case of “Babooshka,” Bush enacts a complex meditation on how gendered expectations can poison relationships. Babooshka lets her suspicions and preoccupation with re-becoming young and glamorous overcome her life, and her husband lets his treacherous predilections towards young beauty lead him astray. No party comes out morally in the clear, and yet neither is entirely unsympathetic. They’re trapped in an ugly binary where people are programmed to perform in ways incompatible with human psychology. If there’s a way to use the framework of folklore in a thoughtful and modern way, this is it.

As such, “Babooshka” makes the case that Kate Bush’s songwriting can be multiple things at once and create a conflicting hive of meaning, and that Bush’s love for the archaic is hardly blinded by a nostalgic haze. She demonstrates a consistent willingness to interrogate how stories like these work, how human beings act when plugged into myth and folklore, and the ways in which these situations are incompatible with humanity. Some of the most complex women in fiction are characters in Kate Bush songs. Never for Ever’s status as the first studio album by a female artist to reach #1 in the UK remains significant for a number of reasons. If Dreams of Orgonon has a thesis, it’s that Kate Bush is a traditionally-minded person who can’t stop herself from writing feminist songs. Break the glass. Howl “Babooshka, ya-ya!” The 1980s are here, and there’s a new swordmistress of chaos to herald them”.

I will round off this feature soon. As Babooshka turns forty-five on 27th June, I want to spend a bit more time with it. In 2014, Vanora Bennett argued that Babooshka humanised and reframed Russians at a time when the nation was under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the Communist Party and Alexei Kosygin as Premier, with a highly centralised, communist system in place. It is an interesting take for sure:

“As a London schoolgirl studying Russian at the time, I didn’t care at all that Kate Bush pronounced the Russian name with the stress in the wrong place, and clearly had no idea that it meant “granny”. I just remember being gobsmacked to realise that any sort of Russian theme could come up in the charts at all – let alone one that didn’t fit either of the two prevailing Russian stereotypes. In those iron curtain days, to my mind Russians were either Ealing countesses, the children and grandchildren of the dispossessed, impoverished, desperately genteel White Russians who’d escaped from the 1917 revolution with nothing but their titles. Or they were solid, slab-faced politburo men from the newspapers, in solid suits, with hair lacquered into silvery central committee quiffs which always rather reminded me of menacing ice-cream cones.

Then suddenly this weird little fairytale about a love test gone wrong, full of the chirpy yet minor cadences of eastern folk and gypsy music, was on everyone’s lips all over the western world.

The song tells the story of a wife trying to check her husband’s loyalty by sending him notes purporting to come from a younger woman, which she signs “Babooshka”. Her fear that her husband no longer sees her as young and attractive are borne out by the barbed lines conveying his thoughts: “Just like his wife before she ‘freezed’ on him / Just like his wife when she was beautiful”. The trap is set when, in her bitterness and paranoia, Babooshka arranges to meet her husband, who is attracted to her alter-ego character because she reminds him of his wife in earlier times – and so she lets her fears ruin her marriage.

The video featured Bush beside a double bass symbolising the husband, wearing a black bodysuit and a veil in her role as the embittered wife, then changing into an extravagant, myth-like and rather sparse “Russian” costume as Babooshka. It was a kind of mass-culture rethink of some of the themes of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, the Shostakovich opera which had so annoyed Stalin – the plotting, the secretiveness, the centrality of human relationships instead of politics, and that wily female desperation bringing tragedy in its wake.

But at the time the important thing was that Babooshka’s story, with its dancey, faintly eastern-sounding music and the emotional subtlety that toned down its cruelty, helped blow away the cobwebs from what most people then thought they knew about life on the communist side of Europe. It was proof that Russians weren’t all about Pravda and giant factories and dreary rolled-steel statistics, after all. There were real people out there, too: people who liked their wild love songs in a minor key; people with hearts, sometimes broken; people struggling to escape frustrating situations.

This made Babooshka a helpful soundtrack as the vast political changes began, very soon afterwards, on the eastern side of 1980s Europe – changes that would eventually bring the divided continent back together. The song opened millions of western hearts and minds to the possibility that the easterners they were reading about were no longer anonymous foot soldiers in a cold war that was ending, but rather flesh-and-blood folks like them.

Certainly by the time I started reporting on Russia in 1991, it had become standard for kindly mentors to advise young journalists heading for Moscow that the interesting thing there, these days, wasn’t the politicians. It was the human interest stories – the “babooshkas”. They always stressed it Bush’s way, too.

And so, when Kate Bush comes on stage this week to sing Babooshka, to a London which, a generation later, is teeming with people from all over post-cold war Europe, I hope they’ll forgive the nonsense meaning the song gives the word, and the wrong stress. Bush didn’t bring the Iron Curtain down single-handedly it’s true, but her song was certainly part of the evolution in thinking that eventually destroyed barriers and reunited the people of Europe – and could do in these strained times once again”.

Paul Du Noyer of NME Babooshka as "More luxuriant weirdness from sultry songstress with high-pitched voice". That was the general attitude from a lot of critics. After delivering the epic and pulse-stopping Breathing, Kate Bush delivered a song that was both commercial but strange. Something that should have pleased everyone. Babooshka having this hypnotic charm. Lyrics that were unusual and clever. Even though Babooshka was a chart success and Never for Ever went to number one, you do wonder why many critics took against Kate Bush and had this impression of her. Babooshka is not a high-pitched vocal. She is a female artist, so it is going to be a high-pitched vocal compared to men. Babooshka is only weird compared to commercial and routine Pop. The sexism and misogyny Kate Bush faced even when she released music of this quality. However, in years since its release, Babooshka has been met with plenty of love and praise. Last year, when ranking her fifty best songs, MOJO put Babooshka at eighteen: “Russian folk traditionalism inspires modern studio mastery. Inseparable from the promo of double bass-love and warrior-princess-shape-throwing, Babooshka is a tale of paranoid relationship collapse wrapped in a buoyant pop waltz replete with glass-breaking sound effects. Compared to the rest of the often bleak and meditative Never For Ever, Babooshka’s minor-chord intrigue offers three-and-a-half minutes of relatively light relief. Not that it was an easy song to record – even Del Palmer’s bass was deemed an incorrect fit for what would become one of Bush’s biggest singles”. The Guardian, in 2018, ranked Kate Bush’s singles and placed Babooshka in fourteenth: “As straightforwardly pop as Bush ever got, famed for a video that looks like a dream a Dungeons & Dragons-playing pervert once had, Babooshka is still irresistible: its howled chorus unshakeable, the sound of smashing glass presaging 80s sample-mania”. Last year, Classic Pop decided Kate Bush’s best forty songs and put Babooshka twelfth. Turning forty-five on 27th June, the majestic and magnificent Babooshka deserved another write-up. One of my favourite Kate Bush songs, it is a clear example of…

HER distinct genius.

FEATURE: The Inessential World: Kate Bush in the Late-1980s and a Move from the Innovative to the Personal

FEATURE:

 

 

The Inessential World

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a shot from The Sensual World cover shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush in the Late-1980s and a Move from the Innovative to the Personal

_________

THERE is debate as to…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins

whether there was a period where Kate Bush’s albums stopped evolving. What I mean is, one can see a clear leap and progression from 1980’s Never for Ever, 1982’s The Dreaming and 1985’s Hounds of Love. All very different albums, there was definitely this move towards the more cinematic and ambitious I feel. It can be argued that 1989’s The Sensual World saw Kate Bush move more to the personal. I am picking up from something Graeme Thomson notes in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush. I have picked up on this before. Through the 1980s – and the late-1970s – there was nobody quite like Kate Bush. She was in her own lane and, because of that, her music stood out. One of the things critics could get their head around is the lack of context and likeminded artists. As Kate Bush was distinct, they either didn’t get her or ridiculed her. Those who understood and bonded with her music were much kinder. You wonder whether the work and effort needed to create a masterpiece like Hounds of Love was a turning point. Maybe Bush did not want to release another album with that same scope and detail. I can imagine there were periods producing that album that were tough. Making these huge songs come together. She possibly could have written something like Hounds of Love for her next album, though one suspects that she was keen to do something entirely new. The fact it took four years to follow that 1985 album probably impacted critical perception and public lustre as much as anything. Such a commercial success, eyes would have been on Kate Bush to put out a sixth studio album maybe in 1987 at the latest. The longest wait between albums up until that point has been between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love (three years). Considering the brilliance of Hounds of Love, three years was not a huge wait. By 1989, the world around Kate Bush had changed.

There is a whole other feature when we think about the particular year and how Kate Bush fitted in. In 1985, the sound she was producing was definitely fitting in to what was around it. However, this being Kate Bush, there was something head and shoulders above her peers. By 1989, the music scene had shifted. She could not repeat herself. Nor did that hold any interest. There were a host of other artists emerging that were being compared to Kate Bush. Among them were Enya, Jane Siberry and Sinéad O'Connor. If Hounds of Love and its Fairlight-led brilliance was innovative and forward-thinking, maybe there was something out of step with a British music climate where Rave and Madchester were in vogue. Bush working with a Bulgarian vocal ensemble in the form of the Trio Bulgarka. I love The Sensual World and feel it is wildly underrated, under-played and pushed aside by some – maybe wanting something closer to Hounds of Love. Bush could have created her own Dance album or fit in to the Pop factory and mainstream scene of 1989 that saw the likes of Kylie Minogue ruling. However, she wanted to take her music in a new direction. I don’t think that there was a massive dip in quality or ambition. However, part of Kate Bush’s innovative and always-changing mindset meant she was never going to do what people expected. However, many note that The Sensual World and its lyrical themes and sounds clashed with the more uplifting, euphoric Rave and Dance; different to what was popular in the charts. If her previous few albums were pioneering and moving towards this apex, Graeme Thomson feels The Sensual World was a moment when there was not this notable move forward.

If some feel the production is over-compressed and her vocals are squeezed and do not fit right in the mix, I don’t think we can blame Kate Bush entirely. Maybe there are fewer genius songs than we hear on Hounds of Love. However, anyone who feels The Sensual World is a disappointment need to revisit the album. Something I have noted before is how personal and beautiful the album sounds. I think The Sensual World sounds like it does because maybe Bush felt that the latter years of 1989 were seeing music decline. The quality going down. In terms of what was popular and what music was saying. Because of that, rather than trying to fit in with a scene she deemed inferior, she took things back. You can say that the production is not perfect and a bit muddled. However, I think that what Bush does on the album and the sounds she mixes works incredibly well. I do hear something personal on The Sensual World. Bush was in her thirties when the album came out. Like The Kick Inside in 1978, this was a very female and feminine album. An older artist (Bush was a teen when recording The Kick Inside), songs like Between a Man and a Woman, Reaching Out and Love and Anger similar to songs such as Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), in the sense that they came from a personal place but had universal relevance and meaning. This feeling that maybe The Sensual World was a deliberate attempt from Kate Bush to go against what was trendy and commercial when she was making the album. Songs that maybe didn’t have as much depth or substance as you’d hope. I will wrap things up soon. I want to bring in a part of this interview from The Guardian that was published on 12th October, 1989:

“Kate is only a little less reluctant to meet the press than she is to go on tour, and she is facing the hacks this time in order to shed some light on her latest album, The Sensual World.

To her surprise and delight, people have finally stopped asking her about her 1978 hit Wuthering Heights and about her sexuality, and instead have been asking "much deeper things". Perhaps, with the charts stuffed with House, Kylie or heavy metal, her real worth has become clear.

Pop's comings and goings don't interest her much.

"There's some really bad stuff happening in pop music, isn't there?" she murmurs, like somebody discussing a newspaper report of a small, distant war. "everyone's been wearing black for the last five or six years in the music business, and I see it as a real state of mourning for good music.."

She admires artists like Peter Gabriel and Pink Floyd, whom she sees as perfectionists who work at their own pace. She gets cross with people who dismiss middle-aged rockers as unsightly relics of a bygone era, pointing out that artists in any other medium rarely reach a peak before they're 40. 

The Sensual World isn't much like the stuff they play on daytime Radio 1, though the title track received bags of airplay as a single. The album contains 10 songs - 11 on the CD - and if it takes a while before you feel you know your way around it, it eventually dawns on you that it is magnificent.

Ms Bush has nimbly drawn a thread of continuity through music patched together from any number of sources.

Folk melodies rub shoulder with jolting funk rhythms. Simple chord progressions are transformed by audacious instrumental voicings and tone colours. Lyrics which look flat or oddly naive on paper get up and dance when Kate sings them.

Sometimes, maybe in Deeper Understanding or Rocket's Tail, you find yourself ambushed and overwhelmed by great rushes of emotion, about love or childhood or the way things keep changing even though you want them to stay the same forever.

"It's stupid really," she says, "the amount of time that's gone into writing 10 songs. They're just 10 songs, it's not like some cathedral or something.

Technology is all moving very fast, and I think that's very good if you can keep the balance between technology and compassion, which is the human element where really the work comes in. I think maybe what gets more difficult each time is writing material, finding something to say that feels worth saying - something new that hasn't beens aid on the last album”.

I have a lot of love for The Sensual World. However, the late-1980s was a very different landscape to the one five or ten years previous. I don’t think Kate Bush took too long to make the album or failed to advance her music and make something worthwhile. Instead, she was trying to create something that was different to what was in the mainstream. A move from what she had done before. I know that there was this unhappiness with the album. The reason for 2011’s Director’s Cut was to address production or mix issues (where she reworked songs from The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes). Take the songs apart and rework them. However, I am not alone in feeling there is more than meets the eye regarding The Sensual World. An album with sublime songs, phenomenal production moments, heart-stopping beauty and these incredible moments of passion – together with flights of fantasy and numbers that are historical and also futuristic. This article from 2022 argues the case for The Sensual World:

“During the creation of The Sensual World, Kate Bush turned 30, reaching a milestone that inspired an evolving approach to her work. In 1989, she told NME that the album represented a newfound understanding of her own music, a shift away from the concentrated expressions of power that she associated with the “male energy” she sought to display in releases like The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. The Sensual World is comparatively more subdued than its predecessors, although definitely not without its own sense of bombast, but one that is allowed to launch forth after indulging in its own grounded spectacles, rather than existing solely to build upon itself. Her lyricism is much more centered, too—instead of yearning for an opportunity to run up that hill that is just out of reach, her poetry embraces intimacy and renders it equally as stirring as her more exclamatory aspirations.

What encompasses all of these songs, no matter their specific subject, is the prominence of passion as a motivating force in their stories, the conflict that drives every single narrator. This idea is most literally introduced in the title track, of course, as the word “passion” already has a visceral connotation that is innately sexual in nature, again placing such a powerful force within the primal desires of the human body. “The Fog,” through its elegiac usage of a string symphony that’s almost cinematic, envisions its titular phenomenon as the periphery a love interest occupies when its narrator cannot form a tangible grasp on romance”.

I will write another feature where I chart the decades Kate Bush’s albums were released in and how it fitted with what was around it. At a moment in British music when other scenes were holding attention, some were disappointed by The Sensual World. Rather than Bush pushing technology and repeating herself, she was in a stage of her life where she wanted to be more personal or explore sensuality and womanhood. The Sensual World seeming more human and rooted compared to a lot of Hounds of Love and The Dreaming. In Pitchfork’s 2019 retrospective of The Sensual World, they ended with this: “She didn’t need to prove her own steeliness to anyone, especially the male journalists who patronized her and harped on her childishness as a way of cutting her down to size. Instead, The Sensual World is the sound of someone deciding for themselves what growing up and grown-up pop should be, without being beholden to anyone else’s tedious definitions. It gave her a new template for the next two decades, inspiring both the smooth, stylish art-rock of 1993’s The Red Shoes and the picturesque beauty of 2005’s Aerial. Like Molly Bloom, Bush had set herself free into a world that wasn’t mundane, but alive with new, fertile possibility”. An album that many people feel is inferior and not a career progression from Kate Bush really need to listen again and see The Sensual World…

IN a new light.