FEATURE: Rolling the Ball… From Seiko to Fruitopia: Kate Bush and Commercials

FEATURE:

 

 

Rolling the Ball…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978 for a print advert for Seiko in Japan/PHOTO CREDIT: Flashbak

From Seiko to Fruitopia: Kate Bush and Commercials

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IT is not an extensive list…

PHOTO CREDIT: Flashbak

but there have been a couple of occasions where Kate Bush did enter the world of commercials. Not especially in a committed ways, mind. However, there was a small bit of vocalisation from Kate Bush. It takes us back to June 1978 and Kate Bush’s trip to Japan. I guess what many artists would do in the U.S. at the start of their career, Kate Bush did in Japan. She was never concerned about America. They did not get her music or understand her. Bush had better success in Japan. A few of her singles doing very well there. Them Heavy People was renamed Rolling the Ball and reached number three. It was released as a single in September 1978. That was a couple of months before Kate Bush’s second album, Lionheart, was released. However, Bush was still promoting The Kick Inside towards the end of 1978. There are not many examples of Bush lending her music and voice to advertising. She would in the 1990s, though only her voice and some compositions. For Seiko, Kate Bush did a spot and Rolling the Ball figured in. I am not sure whether there was a deal that the song would be used in the advert before being issued as a single, or EMI issued it after her visit to Japan and that connection. It is quite an odd association, though almost unique in Bush’s career. She would not revisit the country after 1978 as far as I know. Indeed, I am also unsure how she agreed to the advert. Whether it was a quick shoot and she earned quite a bit and thought it would be good exposure. She did not have much association with Seiko or is synonymous with them. Dreams of Orgonon talked about Kate Bush’s June 1978 trip to Japan. The cover to The Kick Inside features Bush in this Eastern setting. This slightly unusual and inexplicable connection with the East. A girl from Kent, who mostly listened to British and European music, it did seem like a slightly random step. However, you cannot deny the unusualness of Bush’s hectic and eventful visit to Japan:

“Bush’s relationship with Japan is slightly vexed. She’s… well, Bush is a bit rough on the issue of cultural appropriation. The cover of The Kick Inside is famously orientalist, and we’ll have lots to talk about when we talk about The Dreaming. Bush certainly has respect for other cultures, but takes the European artist’s path of lifting cultural touchstones rather than delicately conversing with their creators — indeed, she slightly flubs her one English TV interview discussing Japan when she refers to Japanese people as “not saying how they feel.” It’s a cryptic moment and some of the messages it sends aren’t great.

Even Bush’s performances, the primary record for this period, aren’t terribly well documented. There are low-quality recordings of them, but seeing as Bush’s usual bandmates didn’t accompany her to Japan and interviews in which she discusses the trip are nigh on impossible to come by, it’s hard to find any behind-the-scenes insight into this period, which renders Bush’s work in Japan ever stranger. In addition to “Moving” and a performance of “The Man with the Child in His Eyes,” she stages the most bizarre dance number rendition of “Them Heavy People” ever on a TV show called Sound in S, with co-lead vocalists and a host of dancers. It looks nothing like any other performance of the song ever — it’s genuinely bizarre a song that mentions G. I. Gurdjieff would be treated like this. Sure, Bush has a poppy edge, but this is showbiz, not her own brand of pop.

The most jarring moment of all comes in the form of… Kate Bush doing Japanese watch commercials. That’s not a shitpost, that is a thing that literally happened. Twice. And they use “Them Heavy People,” which didn’t seem to catch a break in Japan (as it was released as a Japan-exclusive single and reached #3 on the charts, this is understandable). “We have many varieties of mood within us, but it’s up to you to choose,” Bush enunciates possibly the most animistic commercial slogan ever. It’s a strange pair of adverts, and there’s probably a reason Bush did commercials so sparingly her next foray in the business wouldn’t be until the Nineties”.

I am not sure how Kate Bush reflects on the adverts now. I forgot there was a pair of adverts. However, I love everything to do with 1978 and what Kate Bush did. She must have tired of the traveling even at that point. In 1978 alone, Bush was fly to America and New Zealand. A brief Japan visit was probably necessary but it would have sapped her. Not many people discuss the Seiko promotion, though I feel it is interesting it is not her only exploration into commercials. So much intrigues me about that first hook-up. Bush recording a tagline in the studio. Her heart not completely in it, through it was for a Japanese audience, so providing her directions would have been difficult. I think that was an issue that manifested itself in the spots. How there probably wasn’t a director or producer who spoke great English. Trying to muddle through. You can see some of the translation barriers when she was at that Song Contest and doing some live work in Japan. Quite awkward by all accounts and measures.

That seemingly weird connection between Them Heavy People and Seiko. A Seiko logo appears on the insert's back side of the Rolling the Ball single, which makes it Bush's only commercial release featuring any kind of product endorsement. Bush also appeared in print ads for the brand in Japan. I wish there were crisper and cleaner photos of those print adverts, as the ones out there are a little blurry or scratchy. However, there are a few articles that looked at these Seiko adverts. You can see the photos here. She looks pretty cool and very beautiful. The adverts not too bad. She gives it all she can, though it must have been quite a confusing and strange environment for her! In 2022, Classic Rock talked about Kate Bush in Japan and her Seiko collaboration:

“Moving had been released as a single in Japan four months earlier, with Wuthering Heights as the b-side, and while soul legend Al Green won the contest, Bush's success – she shared the festival's silver prize with Chicago soul act The Emotions, whose Best Of My Love single had topped the US chart the previous year – meant that local label EMI Music Japan were eager to capitalise.

The answer? Seiko Watches. The company produced a series of print ads featuring Bush wearing their timepieces, while the September release of new single Them Heavy People saw the singer wearing another watch on the cover with a Seiko ad appearing on the back. The same song was used in a TV spot, in which Bush engaged in some freeform dance moves before offering a short, somewhat profound voiceover.

“We have many varieties of mood within us," she says. "It’s up to you to choose.”

The single was success, reaching number three in the Japanese chart. It was backed by The Man With The Child In His Eyes, a song Bush famously wrote when she was just 13, although a super-rare, promotional-only double vinyl 7" was also produced, with the second disc featuring the two tracks released in February, Moving and Wuthering Heights. Own a copy? It's worth a small fortune.

Quite why the famously independent Bush got involved with the commercial behemoths at Seiko hasn't been made clear. And it remains the only time she's leant her face to such an campaign, although she was commissioned to write some music for the adverts that launched Coca Cola's Frutopia drink in 1994 (other ads were soundtracked by the Cocteau Twins and The Muffs).

Maybe she just fancied some free watches”.

I forgot to mention Kate Bush had traction and footing in Japan with the Moving single release. This brief spell of Japanese appreciation and commercial success. I do have a fondness for her print and T.V. adverts for Seiko in Japan. Not a lot of people talk about it, though it was this bizarrely charming part of a whirlwind and exhausting visit to Japan. Little over three months after her debut album was released and she was still unknown largely, Bush was performing in front of thousands of people in Japan and appearing on T.V. and in print. It must have blown her mind!

There was a gap when Bush did not do advertising. She did radio adverts where she had to say her name and that she loved that station/D.J. People still do it now. Probably not something that she enjoyed. However, it was part of the intervbiew circuit. In 1993, she released The Red Shoes album and the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. It was another exhausting time and Kate Bush was not getting the critical love she deserved. Feeling less committed to plotting another album or promotion after that, little risk taking on an advertising commission. To give a little background, and sourcing from Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. The Line, The Cross and the Curve for a cinematic release in April 1994. The video went on sale in October. The world, as Thomson rites, “shrugged”. In 1994, her cover of The Man I Love for a tribute album to George and Ira Gershwin and entered the chart in July. It was a fantastic song and allowed her to take her voice in a direction that we had not seen in her studio albums. Bush donated a couple of pieces of original artwork for War Child for a charity auction in September 1994. Bush appeared on Top of the Pops in November 1994. It was in promotion of the final single from The Red Shoes, And So Is Love. There was a strange amount of activity from Bush that nobody talks about. As British music was exploding with Britpop and all these new sounds and bands, Kate Bush was doing her own thing and broadening her horizons. This was a $30 million campaign  to accompany the U.S. T.V. campaign for a new Coca-Cola drink, Fruitopia. Liz Fraswer of The Cocteau Twins was the voice for the U.K. adverts. Whether the producers through the two were similar and interchangeable?! Ever since that 1978 advert for Seiko, Kate Bush would have been approached so many times for various companies and products.

You can understand why she did it in 1978, as it was the start of her career and there was the commercial exposure, financial reward and a way of getting her new music to a new audience. In 1994, she had released seven studio albums and it would not be until 2005 that she would release another album (with Aerial). I feel like it was quite lucrative for Bush. Even though The Red Shoes did alright on the U.K. chart and reached number two, it was not a massive-selling album. It did well in the U.S., but she was not shifting what she did with The Kick Inside and getting the reviews she was for 1985’s Hounds of Love. Perhaps a bit of a downturn, getting a chance to compose some short instrumental pieces for this interesting range of different-flavoured drinks allowed her to spread her wings and do more in the way of composing rather than songwriting. Graeme Thomson muses that the little scraps and musical ideas that had not made it onto albums could be used for the adverts. She had full control. It was a series of thirty-second snippets where each piece of music had their own titles: Solstice, Some People, Nice, Skin, Soul, What If, Thirsty, Person, and Fighting Fruit. I think my favourite title is Fighting Fruit. What we do get is a little bit of a nod back to 1982’s The Dreaming. In terms of the experimentation. Something different from the mainstream. Hard to put a finger on. Bush not constrained by Pop conventions and what was expected. Not that Aerial was a fuller realisation of the musical ideas she produced for Fruitopia, though you can feel that these short pieces could have been strung together into something longer. Maybe a conceptual suite around the drinks or a concept that involves the making of the Fruitopia adverts.

I have often wondered whether Kate Bush considered film composition. Being given this lease to orchestrate cinema. I can imagine she was approached at some point, though she might have been busy or felt constrained by a lack of vocals. This piece form the Kate Bush Encyclopedia provides more details. A total of eleven different adverts. Titles that differed to what Graeme Thomson noted: Fighting Fruit, Nice, Passion, Raspberry, Message of Love, Soul, Where Were You?, Teaser, Summer Solstice, Some People, and What If? You can see this list of the adverts with descriptions. It was this fascinating project. You can understand why Kate Bush was attracted:

“When Kate Bush took the assignment to do the music for Coca-Cola’s Fruitopia ads, it was indeed free rein for her. Chiat/Day, New York, creative director Marty Cooke and executive producer Andrew Chinich were overjoyed when Bush agreed to do not only one, but all nine of the spots in the Fruitopia campaign. Perhaps the fact that they told her she could do anything she wanted with the scores had something to do with it. In any case, Cooke and Chinich were just glad to get Bush on the job, which she did from London with a bunch of hand-picked musicians. “She said she was interested in providing a lot of variety, from Japanese drummers to Moroccan music… and she came through in spades,” Cooke says”.

The “odd, rhythmic, electronic pop she was making around the time of The Dreaming” is what Graeme Thomson writes in his book. You can sort of hear it. I have included a few of the adverts in here, just so you can see what she was coming up with. Really interesting. The Red Shoes was quite varied in terms of the instruments used and mixing genres, cultures and continents. However, she had to reign things in slightly for an album. Not so for the Fruitopia adverts, so you get this wider and more eclectic blend. This is what Dangerous Minds wrote when they revisited Kate Bush’s Fruitopia adverts last year:

“Rewatching the Fruitopia ads now, it’s hard not to smirk at how earnestly trippy they are. Think teenage poetry meets an acid comedown, all swirling colours, slow-motion fruit, and vague cosmic guff. But Bush’s music gives them real bite—just enough weirdness to stop it all feeling like a total piss-take. It’s classic ‘90s advertising hubris: slap some Cocteau Twins on a juice ad and call it deep. Still, there’s something charming about how over the top it all is. For a soft drink campaign, it went surprisingly hard on the vibes”.

Since 1994, Kate Bush has allowed her music to be used in adverts. However, she has done nothing like the Seiko and Fruitopia adverts. It would be amazing if Bush completed the trilogy, though you feel she does not need to and adverts do not have the same spark and allure. Instead, we can remember fondly two very different advertising campaigns. Fruitopia Bush more the composer, whereas Seiko features her in print adverts and we get to see her. There is still that lingering at the as to whether Kate Bush will…

EVER do it again.

FEATURE: Before Today: Everything But the Girl’s Walking Wounded at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Before Today

Everything But the Girl’s Walking Wounded at Thirty

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I’LL finish up on a review…

IN THIS PHOTO: Everything But the Girl (Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt) in 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: Juergen Teller

of one of the best albums from the 1990s, Walking Wounded. From the incredible Everything But the Girl, it turns thirty on 6th May. I did not realise that this was their ninth album. Amazing consistency and stamina from an astonishing duo. Also, the fact that that they were hitting a new peak nine albums in! I will get to a few articles that revisit this brilliant record. Walking Wounded is one of my favourite Everything But the Girl albums. I am going to lead off with Albumism and their great twenty-fifth anniversary retrospective of Walking Wounded from 2021. I remember when it came out in 1996 and I loved it. It was a time when I was still in the thrall of Britpop and its aftermath. Everything But the Girl provided something different and somewhat deeper:

“Though critical darlings for two decades on the strength of their early-career solo albums—Thorn’s A Distant Shore (1982) and Watt’s North Marine Drive (1983)—and string of seven albums as a duo beginning with 1984’s Eden through 1992’s Acoustic, it was their 1994 album Amplified Heart that initiated the transformation of their career.

More precisely, though Amplified Heart is a stellar affair all around, one remixed single from the LP proved game-changing for the group. When the original album version of “Missing” was released in August 1994, it made only minor ripples across the airwaves and within the record shops.

Fast forward fourteen months to October 1995, and the revered house DJ/producer Todd Terry reinvigorated the single by layering in more dancefloor-friendly beats, and the single quickly became a massive worldwide hit, one of the most universally beloved dance anthems of all time. After experiencing a career lull in the early ‘90s, Thorn and Watt were suddenly propelled to newfound heights of global popularity and commercial acclaim that at long last rivaled the critical recognition they’d garnered to date.

Coupled with the unanticipated success of the “Missing” remix, Thorn’s stunning vocals on Massive Attack’s “Protection” single a handful of months prior, and Watt’s continued exploration of the London drum and bass circuit, Everything But The Girl’s sound was destined to evolve from their more acoustic and jazz-indebted blueprint.

Upon its release in May 1996, Walking Wounded, the pair’s ninth studio effort, represented the most fully realized manifestation of their career rebirth to date. Though the group’s sonic adventurism also posed creative and professional risks. “This next step in our musical career was exciting,” Thorn declares in Bedsit Disco Queen. “There were no certainties involved in any of it, no sense of treading familiar ground; rather, a strong feeling of heading out into unchartered waters. Just before Walking Wounded came out, I remember thinking that it could go either way. We might triumph or we might fall flat on our faces. We worried that we would annoy some of the drum-and-bass underground by making a pop version of a sound that was still so new, but in the end even that never really happened.”

Masterfully produced by Watt, Walking Wounded marks the formal expansion of Everything But The Girl’s musical palette, through the adoption of more electronic, drum and bass, and house flavored soundscapes. Yet despite this new direction, the group’s arrangements are still comingled with their signature emotive songwriting & dazzling melodies. Thorn’s reassuring vocals and contemplative lyrics about the vicissitudes of life and love are perfect complements to Watt’s lush, beat-driven soundscapes.

Opening the album with a riveting rush of melodic drum and bass, “Before Today” is not your prototypical love song. And this is a good thing. A very good thing. When Thorn seductively demands “I want your love / And I want it now,” the immediacy of love and her determination to have it could not be more palpable.

Released as the second single, the shimmering stunner “Wrong” examines the “little give and take” that defines love founded upon reciprocity. More than any track on Walking Wounded, “Wrong” is most reminiscent of “Missing” and augurs the house-blessed stompers that would feature on the group’s follow-up and final album Temperamental (1999). Like its precursor, “Wrong” gets the Todd Terry remix treatment here as well, though while the beats are more pronounced, Terry’s redeux is admittedly not much of an eye-opening expansion upon the original.

A shining example of an album that exquisitely merges the cerebral, emotional and physical, Walking Wounded is the culmination of Thorn and Watt’s unparalleled devotion to songcraft and fearlessness in taking the bravest of chances with their music. Virtues that have continued to characterize their respective post-EBTG solo careers. Twenty-five years on, Walking Wounded still sounds as sublime as ever”.

It is worth getting to a review or two, just to see what critics make of this album. However, I do want to source what Rhino said in 2017 for their feature on an album that went to number six in the U.K. and scored some stunning reviews. It was a groundbreaking release from a duo who were raising the bar twelve years after their debut album, Eden. Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt would release two more Everything But the Girl albums. Temperamental came out in 1999. Apart from NME giving it 1/10 (some sh*t who clearly didn’t bother listening to it!), it did get some great reviews. Not to say 2023’s Fuse is their final album together, though it was a great album and featured highly in the year-end lists. Making the top ten in so many. One can argue Walking Wounded is not only one of the last big peaks from Everything But the Girl but maybe the best album they ever released:

“The overarching sound of the British duo Everything but the Girl (singer Tracey Thorn and instrumentalist Ben Watt) had after years settled into a pleasant, melodic pattern—keyboards and acoustic guitars laying the melodies over a mix of live and electronic percussion, with Thorn’s contralto providing the main focus and finishing touch. Something odd happened with 1994's AMPLIFIED HEART, though—a Todd Terry club remix of the song "Missing" became a massive worldwide hit, and it suddenly became apparent how ripe EBTG's music was for such aural reassessment. Heretofore unrecognized space in many of their songs' mixes could be filled with beats, echo and other accoutrements of dance music. In the right hands, a track that might have provided an agreeable diversion on the radio or in a dorm room CD player could be positively deadly on the dance floor.

Turns out the best person to take advantage of this development was Ben Watt himself, and on EBTG's next record, 1996's WALKING WOUNDED, he blew their sound wide open. The change is evident from the first notes one hears, on "Before Today"—a dreamy keyboard sample, looped several times before Thorn's voice is heard, trailed by a synth bass and hi-hat. The beats get more frenetic, paddling furiously as the song slowly slinks along. One realizes immediately how well the sound ushered in by the "Missing" remix fits EBTG's songs.

Watt plays with drum 'n' bass beats on the title track, as its skittering percussion is molded with the melody and Thorn's haunting denouement for a relationship ("Nothing can replace the us I knew"); there's a stillness that cuts through the busy undercurrent. A great contrast is "Flipside," probably the most accessible up-tempo track on the record, with a big beat contrasting the intensely inward-looking lyric. The breakdown in the middle of the song is perfect, and the slightly out-of-phase vocal provides just enough unsteady energy throughout to keep the listener engaged and moving. And longtime fans put off a bit by the club trappings will be comforted by "Mirrorball," on which an acoustic guitar provides the melodic base, lifted up in the mix, with the electronic beats dropped down. It's the most "traditional" of the album's many fine offerings.

Some might claim that Thorn and Watt were merely glomming onto a fad or three by making WALKING WOUNDED such a club record, and while acts like Massive Attack and Portishead had all but pioneered this kind of sound, EBTG proved themselves quite capable of thriving in the same space. Unfortunately, they weren't long for the world—1998's similarly structured TEMPERAMENTAL is the last we've heard from them as a band—but they certainly left a mark”.

In 2019, Pitchfork featured Everything But the Girl in their series where they revisit a great album from the past. They spend some time with a stellar and magnificent 1996 album that still sounds utterly engrossing to this day. I don’t think it has aged at all. I wonder whether Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt will mark thirty years of Walking Wounded somehow:

“In spring 1995, Thorn returned to New York with Watt, where they spent a couple of months working on more ideas for Walking Wounded. During that trip, they learned that Terry’s remix had blown up in Miami and, in fact, across the States, breaking out of the clubs and into the charts. Worldwide, it went on to sell 3 million copies.

In the months before “Missing” mania hit the UK, Watt had dived headfirst into London’s drum ‘n’ bass scene. He heard DJs like Fabio and Doc Scott at atmospheric drum ‘n’ bass pioneer LTJ Bukem’s night Speed, and connected with the freeform flow of the sound that Bukem has compared with jazz. His enthusiasm eventually convinced Thorn to join him at the club night. “It wasn’t a rock gig, and it wasn’t a rave—it felt like something new again,” she wrote in her memoir. “Strange and yet familiar, it felt possible.”

The mental space that these new encounters cracked open can be observed in the clarity with which both Thorn and Watt approached their songwriting on Walking Wounded. On the breezy “Flipside,” which features lyrics by Watt and scratching by Scottish producer Howie B, the moment Watt’s life got turned upside down is directly referenced: “London, summer ’92/I think I’ve changed a lot since then, do you?” In the next verse, Watt writes that he is “blasted land,” comparing himself to a coastline that’s constantly shifting at the mercy of the sea. It’s a poetic reminder that the processing of trauma can shape you as much as the incident itself.

In Thorn’s mouth, the lyrics serve to underline that Watt’s near-death experience left them both reeling, questioning everything they used to know. The flipside to “Flipside” comes in the form of a slo-mo drum ‘n’ bass number called “Big Deal.” Written by Thorn, she uses the titular phrase sarcastically in an attempt to deliver a reality check. With an air of frustration, she seems to sing of Watt’s search for answers in the club: “You say you wanna get cured, you wanna turn off your head/Oh and you say it hurts, and you feel unsure/First you doubt yourself and then you doubt her/Big deal, that's the way we all feel.” Everyone goes through trauma in some form or other, the song suggests, what matters is giving one another the space to work through it.

The strength of Walking Wounded lies in exactly that. Each Everything But the Girl album has its own style and story, but the one on which Thorn and Watt’s individual gifts shine brightest is the one on which they stripped everything back. They shared their knottiest feelings, created dialogue with skeletal new sounds, and made the record in a much more insular way than they ever had previously. Its timely sonics and emotionally wrought themes spoke as much to teenagers, myself included, as it did the band’s adult contemporaries (Bristol drum ‘n’ bass head Roni Size gave it thumbs up). Walking Wounded remains Thorn and Watt’s biggest-selling album with worldwide sales of 1.3 million. It did the kind of well that prompted U2 to ask them to be their tour support, something they ended up turning down because, well, they needed some space. Thorn and Watt’s relationship had been tied to their career from the very beginning, and it was time to listen to the cries for independence that Walking Wounded so clearly contained. Instead of going on tour, they started a family, and set the wheels in motion for their separate careers to come”.

I am going to finish up with the Entertainment Weekly and their hugely positive review of Walking Wounded. When we talk about the best albums of the 1990s, I don’t  think Walking Wounded is mentioned enough. Musical brilliance from Everything But the Girl. Anyone who has never heard it really does need to do so as soon as possible:

“Savvy songwriters can make even the edgiest music go pop. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain won the world’s ardor by distilling a decade’s worth of mangy underground American rock into an embraceable new sound. Madonna scored a doubleplatinum success by shaping the subterranean gay dance style known as ”sleaze” into 1990’s Erotica. And now Everything But The Girl stand poised to take the sounds best loved by today’s hipsters to Everymall U.S.A.

On Walking Wounded EBTG infuse the swank of neo-lounge music, the whir of ambient-dance, and the spaciness of trip-hop with the sweetest pop melodies these genres have ever encountered. The groundbreaking result seems at once abstract and immediate, untamed and accessible — Julie London updated to the age of Bjork.

Not that the group’s pop-friendly brand of lounge ranks as coldly opportunistic. No act has better earned the right to bring this music to the masses.

Fourteen years ago, this English duo first matched the cool elan of Peggy Lee (courtesy of singer Tracey Thorn) to the bossa nova beat of Burt Bacharach (via musician Ben Watt). Not since the Carpenters last nailed a hit in the mid-’70s had the pop world heard so exalted a sound. While bands like The Style Council and Swing Out Sister also mined marimba’d beats, none did so with the commitment, variety, and depth of EBTG. If their seven studio albums had twee and mannered moments, the group still managed to provide the broadest possible influence for today’s neo-lounge acts, from Portishead to Stereolab.

After years of attracting only the cognoscenti, EBTG finally cracked the pop charts this year when a house remix of their 1994 song ”Missing” became a surprise top 10 hit. With that encouragement, EBTG opted to set all of Walking Wounded‘s 11 tracks to dance beats. Yet, in choosing beats more radical and complex than those featured on ”Missing,” they’ve created something far more unexpected and new.

For an aural blueprint, the duo clearly drew on two key recordings — both from U.K. trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack. Throughout Walking Wounded one can hear echoes of Thorn’s memorable cameo on the title track of Massive Attack’s last LP, Protection, and a 1995 collaboration between Massive and Madonna on a cover of Marvin Gaye’s ”I Want You.”

Expanding on those revolutionary records, Walking Wounded floats Thorn’s wan vocals over a soundscape of sputtering, hissing, and clacking beats. A clutch of eccentric rhythms turn up, from the funk rumblings of ”Single” to the ambient sway of ”Big Deal.” Watt’s sparse and spacious production lets all these sounds sparkle in air, creating a dizzying 3-D effect.

Watt also coaxes an incredible range of textures from his synthesizers — from the trampoline-bounce bass of the title track to the bedspring explosion of drums in ”Good Cop, Bad Cop.” Such sonic gymnastics comprise their own new subgenre in the U.K., called drum ‘n’ bass, a form whose celebrated ace, Spring Heel Jack, collaborated on some tracks here.

To help ground the sound, Watt and Thorn offer an array of gorgeous melodies. All undulate with a sensuality perfectly suited to Thorn’s burgundy voice. In her lilting style, Thorn recalls the sophistication of Dionne Warwick at her peak; she comes across as both haunted and aloof. By juxtaposing her woozy cadences with the brusque clatter of the beats, EBTG create a great counterpoint — the musical equivalent of manic depression.

This excited sense of melancholy fleshes out the group’s pining lyrics. Every song follows a ruinous love. ”I’m eating less and drinking more,” moans Thorn in a song that recalls the aftermath of a particularly bad affair. Another love proves painful enough to reduce her to childhood, causing the singer to plaintively ask, ”Is this as grown-up as we ever get?”

Coupled with the probing and pulsing music, these torchy sentiments achieve a psychological resonance, putting EBTG way above the campiness of most neo-lounge acts. In fact, their synthesized whooshes and bleats provide modern pop’s first corollary to the weird sounds cooked up by the early ’60s’ most avant-garde lounge stylists: Esquivel and Martin Denny.

By marrying such musical leaps to their sterling pop sensibilities, Everything But The Girl provide a classic service: They offer an ideal conduit between today’s chic underground and pop fans everywhere. A”.

On 6th May, it will be thirty years since Walking Wounded was released. A masterpiece I feel is still underrated. Not discussed as much as it should be. I do hope too that we hear more from Everything But the Girl, as that musical chemistry between Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt (who are married) always yields such wonderful results. More than evident through their…

1996 album

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Jack White

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

IN THIS PHOTO: Jack White playing at Coachella on 11th April, 2026

Jack White

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THE great Jack White…

is embarking on a run of tour dates that will keep him busy the rest of this year. He is coming to the U.K. in the summer, and he is going all around the world. I have never seen him live, but I really should so, as I have been a fan of his work for decades. On 3rd July, The White Stripes’ third studio album, White Blood Cells, turns twenty-five. Even though Jack and Meg White broke up years ago, that album is so important and I wonder if Jack White will mark that anniversary. As a solo artist, White is flourishing. His latest studio album, No Name, was released in 2024. Though he has put out some new singles. I am featuring him in this The Great American Songbook and will end with a twenty-song mix of his solo material. Before I get there, I want to bring in this AllMusic biography of one of the most inventive and consistently original and dazzling Rock artists ever:

“Jack White is one of the great rock conceptualists of the 21st century. He came to fame as the leader of the White Stripes, the Detroit-based garage-punk duo who were unexpectedly one of the biggest rock acts of the 2000s. The White Stripes established White as a roots rocker -- he made sure they covered blues chestnuts from Son House -- to such a degree that his modernist art instincts were somewhat overshadowed during the band's peak. These dueling, sometimes complementary instincts, fueled White's myriad artistic pursuits both within and without the confines of the White Stripes. He started stepping out on his bandmate Meg almost immediately after White Blood Cells gave the group a blockbuster in 2001, producing Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose and forming the Raconteurs with Brendan Benson, then the Dead Weather with Alison Mosshart of the Kills. His voracious musical appetite and strict work ethic flourished once the White Stripes called it a day in 2011, as he divided his time between his Third Man Records empire, the Raconteurs and Dead Weather, and a solo career that grew increasingly idiosyncratic with each new album. Blunderbuss and Lazaretto veered close to territory he covered with the White Stripes but the proggy oddity of Boarding House Reach didn't prove to be a detour, as the twin 2022 albums, Fear of the Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive, proved: the noisy rock of the former was complemented by the quiet, introspective adventure of the latter. 2024's Grammy-nominated No Name saw him reconnecting with no-nonsense, yet rocker-fueled blues rock. He collaborated with Eminem for a live appearance at Detroit's Ford Field, and continued experimenting with the lo-fi single "G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs."

John Anthony Gillis was born in Detroit on July 9, 1975. The youngest of ten siblings, he began playing drums at an early age and took inspiration from the world-weary blues of Son House and Blind Willie McTell. A fascination with guitar followed in his teenage years. After launching his own upholstery business in Detroit, White began to infiltrate the city's music scene as the drummer for Goober & the Peas, a local cowpunk band that split in 1995. While continuing to play drums for other groups, he crossed paths with a bartender named Meg White, and the two were married in 1996. Jack took Meg's surname, and the pair formed the White Stripes after a Bastille Day jam session showed promising results.

With their color-coded image and raw, punky sound, the White Stripes became a key component of the garage rock revival of the late '90s. In addition to their music, the bandmembers stirred public interest by claiming to be siblings, a declaration that seemed slightly less incestuous when Jack and Meg White divorced in 2000. Despite the split, the White Stripes only grew in popularity as the decade progressed, eventually winning three consecutive Grammy Awards and issuing several platinum-certified albums.

Following the release of Elephant in 2003, Jack White took a break from the group to produce Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose. A critical smash, the album helped endear Lynn to a new generation of fans, thanks in part to White's credibility as a rock artist. He then returned to the White Stripes for the release of Get Behind Me Satan, which saw him expanding his instrumental range with piano and marimba. Shortly thereafter, he launched a concurrent group, the Raconteurs, with friend Brendan Benson and two members of the Greenhornes (who, incidentally, had served as backing musicians on Van Lear Rose). The Raconteurs made their debut with 2006's Broken Boy Soldiers and toured in support of the album, while White publicly stressed that his work in the band should not be seen as a side project or a diversion from the White Stripes. Thus, he began juggling his responsibilities to both groups, partnering with Meg White once again for the White Stripes' 2007 release Icky Thump before returning to the Raconteurs for 2008's Consolers of the Lonely.

While touring in support of the latter album, White suffered from bronchitis and often lost his voice, prompting singer Alison Mosshart (from the Raconteurs' touring partners the Kills) to climb on-stage and contribute her own vocals. The chemistry between Mosshart and the Raconteurs proved alluring, and the musicians opted to form a separate group named the Dead Weather. With Jack White now handling drums, the band retreated to the studio and recorded an energetic debut, Horehound, in a matter of weeks. Released in 2009, the album was well-received on both sides of the Atlantic, cracking the Top Ten in America and peaking at number 14 in the U.K. Encouraged by such success, the Dead Weather began working on a second album during the fall, with the intention of previewing several new songs during an Australian tour in early 2010. In the meantime, White secured enough free time to appear in a movie -- the guitar-themed It Might Get Loud -- and produce an album for his wife, songwriter Karen Elson.

The first solo outing from White, the bluesy, typically idiosyncratic Blunderbuss, named for a muzzle-loading firearm that was a precursor of the shotgun, arrived in April of 2012. It promptly debuted in the American charts at number one, the first White-associated album to do so. Blunderbuss also earned several Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year, Best Rock Album, and Best Rock Song for "Freedom at 21." White's second solo album, Lazaretto, followed in June 2014, preceded by the single "High Ball Stepper." It debuted at number one on the pop charts and earned positive reviews. The Dead Weather released their third album, Dodge and Burn, in September 2015, and a year later White issued Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016, a double-disc compilation of acoustic numbers from his various projects. In April 2017, he released a surprise instrumental single called "Battle Cry." A lifelong baseball fan, it was announced that the song would be used as the walk-up music for Detroit Tigers infielder Ian Kinsler, with whom White co-owns the baseball bat company Warstic. In March 2018, the strange, sprawling Boarding House Reach was released, peaking at number one on the Billboard 200. The following year, he was back with the Raconteurs for the group's third album, Help Us Stranger.

In November 2021, White returned with "Taking Me Back," a single released in two versions: a noisy, gnarled rock incarnation and a softer acoustic variation. The rock spin on "Taking Me Back" heralded the April 2022 release of Fear of the Dawn, a nervy, noisy record that found White experimenting with digital effects. The jaunty acoustic revision anchored Entering Heaven Alive, a quieter but still restless record that followed in July while White was in the middle of a lengthy and eventful tour that saw him getting married onstage and playing Saturday Night Live for the fifth time.

After a period of little discernable activity, White surprised fans on in July 2024 with the release of a bares-bones, blues-influenced album titled No Name. It was packaged like a white-label promo with only the words "No Name" stamped on the sleeve and was given away to customers at Third Man records locations for free. It topped the U.K. Independent Albums chart, cracked the Billboard 200, and finished the year with a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album. A pair of concert EPs, No Name Live and Live at Ford Field, appeared in 2025, the latter one featuring a collaboration with fellow Detroiter Eminem during the Detroit Lions halftime show. In April 2026, ahead of his sixth appearance on Saturday Night Live, White released the singles "G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs" and "Derecho Demonico”.

I am excited to see what comes next from the great Jack White. After his busy diary is through, I am sure that there will be a new album coming. He is still raising the bar this many years after he started out. It has been hard whittling down his solo material to twenty songs. However, the below represents the best…

FROM the mighty Jack White.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Elmiene

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Tamiym Cader for NME

Elmiene

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I am going to end this feature…

with a review for his brilliant debut album, sounds for someone. I am a little late in spotlighting Elmiene, as so many people have mentioned this artist for future greatness. One of the most astonishing British musical talents, everyone needs to listen to Elmiene’s music. With a string of big tour dates ahead of him – including a load of amazing North American gigs -, it is a busy time for this artist. If you are in a position to see him live, then do go and grab a ticket. This phenomenal British-Sudanese singer-songwriter is known for his modern, poetic Neo-Soul and R&B blend. I want to start out by getting to some interviews with Elmiene. There is not a great deal of recent promotion, despite the fact he has released a new album. I wonder why there have not been new interviews published with him. I am writing this on 12th April. There might be some news one online before I share it. In 2024, THE FACE spoke with Elmiene after the release of his E.P., Marking My Time. Speaking with him in early-2024, the E.P. was released the previous October:

“Yeah, so I feel pretty cool right now,” Elmiene confirms. Having completed his music degree at Bournemouth University, the 22-year-old moved to the English capital just a few weeks ago and he’s now based in Shepherds Bush. ​“London’s good if you can find a slow pocket,” he says. ​“West London feels in that world.”

Despite his relaxed attitude, Elmiene is quickly finding success. Since posting a video of himself covering D’Angelo’s track Untitled (How Does It Feel) in 2021, he’s been cosigned by Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams, had an original song used in Virgil Abloh’s final Louis Vuitton show and released two EPs in 2023 alone: El-Mean and the aforementioned Marking My Time.

With his buttery blend of neo-soul and R&B, it’s no surprise that hearing D’Angelo’s classic album Voodoo for the first time changed Elmiene’s life. ​“I was like, whatever this is, it’s nuts. I think I was 14 at the time,” he remembers. ​“I knew it was over. It was like BC and AD for me.”

Still, Elmiene never thought much about pursuing music professionally, though he wrote poetry in his free time. But then his housemate encouraged him to post covers online – the rest, pretty much, is history. ​“After that D’Angelo video went viral, I thought, this is the moment for me to make my own music. It felt like the logical next move,” he says. ​“It was a pretty seamless transition.”

Where El-Mean is Elmiene’s own prologue to his career, Marking My Time is a deeper exploration of genres he’s always loved, coupled with a generous amount of soul-searching.

“The best thing I could hope for in my music is for it to raise questions in people and for them to find answers there,” he says. ​“I always say that the one thing about music is this: if I can’t make you cry, I’ve failed. Then there’s no point, because it’s soul music and that’s what it’s all about. Now I’ve got my crew, like Syd and Lil Silva, and we’ve built the well, what else can we explore? How deep does it go?”

Where were you born, where were you raised and where are you now based?

I was born in Frankfurt, Germany. My parents moved down there from Sudan in the late ​’90s. From there, when I was about five, we moved to Oxford as we had a lot of family there. It was chill – I think that’s where I get my slow mentality from. I moved to London in November, which has sped me up against my will.

What kind of emotions and experiences influence your work?

A lot of my experiences involve searching for my place in life, my responsibilities. I love relationships in any form. Like, your relationship with your dad requires different things from you than your relationship with your mum or a lover or a friend. You have to be good at separate things for each person. But it’s all bound together somehow. That’s what I do.

What’s the most memorable DM you’ve ever received?

A good friend of mine sent me a DM the other day – we were gonna work at a studio in LA, which was in Pasadena. She lived in South LA, so it was a two-hour trip for her and also not a very convenient place to work. It’s like someone here being like, come work in Kent. I sent her the address and she sent me a voice note like, ​“Pasadena?! Who got you working there?” I don’t know the geopolitics of LA, but that cracked me up. She was like, ​“I ain’t going.” We didn’t make it work, either. I ended up doing the song with someone else”.

In 2025, TRENCH spoke with Elmiene. I hope that some new interviews pop up, as this is a musician really coming through. Even though he started in 2021 and might not be considered a rising or new artist, he put out one of the best albums of this year with sounds for someone and has a busy rest of the year:

“Sounds Like: “I make soul music. Still, I have my own beliefs about what the genre of soul really is. I’ve always appreciated the word ‘soul’ when describing Black music more than ‘R&B’, because soul could really be anything. To me, soul is just a reflection of your soul: it doesn’t box you into a genre. The irony is, even though I’ve called myself a soul artist, I don’t think anyone can hammer down what’s ‘soul’ and what’s ‘R&B’ because of the overlap, the context around the artist and, to be honest, just the fact that music is a reflection of the person. I might make a song that needs a Coldplay guitar or a piano you’d associate with a gospel record—it doesn’t matter.”

First Music That Inspired Him: “D’Angelo’s Live in Stockholm concert lit a spark for me. Sade, Omar and Craig David come to mind, too. Craig really bridged the gap between the two nations, which was really unheard of at the time. We don’t give him enough credit for that. 2Pac’s Makaveli album had a huge impression on me when I was younger as well. And I can’t forget about The Cure; my best friend, Jack, was really into Pulp, U2, Jeff Buckley and those guys back in the day. I actually did a cover of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Lover, You Should Have Come Over’ a couple of years back. You can pin a lot of my weirder influences on my upbringing in Oxford.”

There is an obscure children’s show from the 2000s called D.I.C.E (DNA Integrated Cybernetic Enterprises), set in the fictional Sarbylion Galaxy. The anime follows a crimson-haired kid called Jet Siegel who pilots a chromatic, mechanical suit to ride atop a scorching red dinosaur that transforms. Over here, on planet Earth, singer Elmiene transports himself to magical worlds via his Nintendo Switch 2, morphing into the likes of Mario, Kirby or Crash Bandicoot in a few button taps. Ever the one to separate his personal experiences, the 24-year-old talent is sort of like Jet Siegel in his own way—part regular guy, part larger than life. Instead of a molten-transforming dragon as a vehicle, Elmiene whips up fiery, emotive songwriting (à la Raphael Saadiq and Stevie Wonder) often spawned from third-person anecdotes and eye-level observations of his surroundings. Then, he’ll go back to watching an anime like One Piece. It’s that simple for him.

“Abdala Elamin and Elmiene aren’t that different,” he tells TRENCH. “The only thing Elmiene is better at is being outside, because I don’t like to be outside very much. Normally, I’m inside playing my Nintendo Switch 2; I was literally playing that before this interview. I don’t mean to talk about myself in third person, but it really feels like there’s a separation. Elmiene is kind of the only thing that’s brought me outside, in general. I wouldn’t have seen half the countries I’ve seen now since being this new person. Still, when it comes to the creative side of things, I’m super in-tune with both sides of myself.” Naturally, Elmiene veers the conversation towards his latest project, Heat The Streets. Surprisingly, he reveals that Heat The Streets was recorded by chance: “A friend of mine, [Grammy-nominated producer] Jeff ‘Gitty’ Gitelman and I knocked out tracks like ‘Different Too’, ‘Dull Jewellery’ and ‘Useless’ in a week. It’s funny because I grew up just after the mixtape era, but a mixtape for these tracks made so much sense. I would have just put them up on SoundCloud, but the label thought they were way too good for that.”

In just four years, Elmiene has mastered the art of fusing the personal with the cinematic. For every Rising Star BRIT nomination, BET Awards performance or BBC Sound Of… nod, there’s a track like “Mad At Fire”—tender and passionate—encased in Def Jam Vendetta for PS2-style artwork, a nod to a childhood favourite. That balance between soul and spectacle, the lived and the imagined, threads directly into his faith. “My faith plays a significant role in all of this,” he says. “It’s a crucial part of my journey, one that many other artists may not experience. I often grapple with the conflict between my identity as a Muslim and my career in music, which I know will be a struggle throughout my life. It’s always on my mind. The life I’m leading now takes me far away—both literally and figuratively—from Mecca. I find myself in places like LA and Paris, instead of Egypt or home. The more I pursue this music career, the more I feel I'm drifting away from my family and my faith. It’s like trying to hold onto two parallel lines that are moving farther apart from each other”.

Before moving to a review for sounds for someone, I will bring in extracts from a recent interview for Remixd Magazine. It is amazing to think that someone who produces this hugely passionate music that touches the human heart has never been in a relationship. However, Elmiene is a wonderful listener and seems to connect with people because he absorbs what they say and takes it all in. I wonder if a relationship or heartache might affect his music:

“Sitting down in Los Angeles, the UK-born singer is in a moment of transition. I sat down with Elmiene ahead of his Sounds for Someone album release (which is out now) and discussed the mindset he’s in this time around. Elmiene is stepping into a new chapter both creatively and personally. But I was surprised to learn that what makes his music feel so lived-in, so emotionally precise, is not necessarily a reflection of his own romantic history.

“I’ve never been in a relationship,” he admits mid-conversation, almost casually. It’s the kind of statement that stops you in your tracks, especially coming from an artist whose music feels steeped in heartbreak, longing, and intimacy. But for Elmiene, the source material has always been something broader.

“I’m a really good listener. I listen to people,” he explains. “I take their experiences and put it into my music.”

That ability to absorb and translate emotion is what has set him apart early on. Before the co-signs, before the move to Los Angeles, there was a viral moment that shifted everything. What started as a simple performance quickly became the catalyst for a career he never planned. “It was kind of against my will,” he says. “A video went viral and suddenly I was like, well, you’ve got to do it.”

That moment was him singing a cover of D’Angelo’s “How Does It Feel,” which quickly spread across social media like wildfire.

Now, that decision has taken him across continents, into rooms with some of the most respected names in music, and closer to the creative environment he feels he needs to thrive in. “For R&B and soul, the greatest musicians are here,” he says of Los Angeles. “Being close to everything just feels good.”

Still, despite the momentum, Elmiene is intentional about how he moves. Comparison is not part of the process. In fact, he has actively removed himself from it. “I deleted a lot of my socials,” he says. “There’s no time to be looking at anything else but what I’m doing.”

That focus shows up in the music, particularly on his newest project, which he describes as more personal than anything he has released before. Centered in part around his relationship with his father, the album leans into introspection over imitation. It is less about performing emotion and more about understanding it.

For Elmiene, that pursuit is ongoing. He speaks about growth not as a destination, but as a requirement. “If I ever stopped learning, I would stop doing it,” he says. “It wouldn’t be fun anymore”.

I will finish with a review of sounds for someone from NME. Before that, this interview from January captures an artist on the verge of his debut album. Someone who is writing what his soul guides and tells him too, this is an unignorable voice. Those are NME’s words, that it is completely true:

“After years spent nailing down his sound and expanding his mind as a musician, Elmiene is on the precipice of his debut album, ‘Sounds For Someone’. Last year, he previewed the LP with ‘Crying Against The Wind’, a heart-tugging two-part ballad shaped by his father’s death that has become the backbone for the record. Here, Elmiene is on a “search for completeness”, as if he’s reordering his life in front of the world with this newly honed version of himself.

Elmiene’s signature yearning for introspection and stillness can often be misread as melancholy. Even his mum tells him he “sounds really sad” on his debut album – a contrast to the funny, nerdy “I think of everything in terms of One Piece” personality he displays in real life. On closer listen, he’s singing with a smile in his own dreamy world. “I guess the lyrics are saying sad things,” Elmiene explains, “but I didn’t feel sad writing them. Sometimes when I listen back, I just have to shut up and go: ‘I like the groove, I like the bassline, I like the drums.’ Don’t notice the sadness too much.”

‘Reclusive’, his latest offering from ‘Sounds For Someone’, shows off this Trojan horse-like duality. “For the first time, it felt like I was actually telling people how I really am,” he says. “Like: ‘Break my routine… wake up, play video games…’ This is what I actually do.” The feel-good song alchemises a debilitating bout with sickness that trapped him in his house for 14 days. One morning at 5am, he just got up and walked “a long walk” – from Shepherd’s Bush to Alexandra Palace – in the pouring rain because he simply “missed the outside”.

He told this story to producer Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman, who was adamant Elmiene mine it for “an autobiographical song” because he’s “a weird guy, man – you need to tell the world. You need to let them know what it is to be you”. That’s the selling point of soul for Elmiene. To him, it’s the world’s “most honest genre ever”: “You’re not confined by what you’re supposed to talk about. I’m just writing what my soul is telling me to write.”

And he’s well aware of the deep history behind it – how Black music holds everything at once: desire, doubt, grief, humour, ego, tenderness, faith – and its start with legends like James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, Nat King Cole and more. His appreciation for the genre encompasses the Britons that crossed over too: Sade’s restraint, Soul II Soul’s futurism, Craig David’s “underrated” melodic instinct. He jokes that his “neeky” obsession with canonised main characters of the genre – and the lesser-told underdogs that influenced them – flavours the “secret sauce” he uses every day. That history comes full circle on ‘Sounds For Someone’, with the guidance of decorated producer No I.D. and soul OG Raphael Saadiq – the latter also playing bass across the record, including on ‘Light By The Window’ and ‘Special’.

Now, Elmiene is ready for his turn, and as part of the new class of British R&B take on the global scene. For him, that’s something he can’t do by himself: “I feel like that’s why R&B and soul haven’t really had a moment in the last 12 years or so – because it’s been people trying to fight the fight alone. You need a movement to make a movement – or else, what’s the point?”.

The mesmeric sounds for someone received so many incredible reviews. On his debut album, Elmiene has truly arrived. NME awarded the debut album five stars and said how he manages to turns small life moments into monumental music. If you have never heard Elmiene or are quite new, then you really need to listen to sounds for someone. This is someone who will be making music for decades and will be named alongside some true music legends. An astonishing songwriter who gets into the soul. If he plays in London when he is back in the U.K. then I would like to see him live. It must be a transcendent experience:

“After viral covers, acclaimed EPs and a growing reputation as one of Britain’s most naturally gifted R&B vocalists, Elmiene’s moment has arrived. The British-Sudanese singer doesn’t go for a grand statement to prove his greatness, instead his debut album ‘Sounds For Someone’ does something more: it maintains his status as the flawless technician when it comes to soul-stirring R&B. Across 12 carefully sculpted tracks – guided by neo-soul innovators No I.D and Raphael Saadiq – Elmiene treats soul as a vehicle to drive home life’s most taken-for-granted moments.

Marrying his God-given abilities with vivid storytelling and invigorating instrumentals, Elmiene creates cinematic moments on ‘Sounds For Someone’, making everyday emotions move like fully formed characters. He showcased as much with the album’s first two singles: the deeply pensive ‘Cry Against The Wind’ (coloured by grief for his late father) and the jovial loner anthem ‘Reclusive’ – he proves that his sonic stoicism has evolved well into something grander and more commanding. He alludes to this duality on the latter, singing: “I get low then I get high / I get joy sometimes I cry / I just wanna get by.”

But, no other songs feel more like watching a motion picture than the Sampha-produced ‘Special’. Elmiene zooms into love with a microscope – no grand gestures, no milestone dates, “just celebrating all of the ways” love has made him feel special – creating a sultry everyday ode to love that rivals ‘Anniversary’, the 1993 love classic Saadiq co-wrote for his group Tony! Toni! Toné!. This track is where Elmiene finally graduates from being a student of soul to its newest professor, with lived-in devotion that recalls Al Green, lingering intimacy that nods to D’Angelo and unhurried delivery that traces back to Stevie Wonder and beyond.

That same lineage runs deep on ‘Light By The Window’, where Saadiq’s magical basslines live in the details you can feel before you can hear, rolling through like a wave with the glinting guitar lines, sinking into a slinky groove that moves like sunlight across a room. Elmiene plants himself in that light, waiting, voice tracing the edges of hope and doubt as he repeats the image of being “right by the light by the window”. In a powerful tag-team moment, Saadiq passes the baton to the protégé.

Closing song ‘Told You I’ll Make It’ brings the album full circle. Written to a chopped-up reworking of ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel?)’, Elmiene rebuilds the song with a steady, hard-earned assurance – a world away from the unassuming talent who first arrived on the scene. Elmiene has had the talent since his first viral moment, but ‘Sounds For Someone’ marks the arrival of soul’s newest custodian, one who’ll no doubt create classic Sunday songs that will be played for generations to come”.

There are few artists as talented and consistent as Elmiene. An artist who always puts out the absolute finest music, sounds for someone is going to win awards and will be ranked alongside the best albums of this year. I imagine more interviews will come along. For now, absorb and experience the music of the astonishing Elmiene. I really love what he is doing and cannot wait to see where his career takes him. It is very clear that we have a modern-day great…

IN our midst.

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Follow Elmiene

Official:

https://el-mean.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/elmiene/

Twitter:

https://x.com/_elmiene_

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2CLclpIC43fLzsYq6LQvlL?si=aZB-CqnYQW6vzJRdPVy0-g

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgQRAf-8VuCeX4qaJ2J7ONA

FEATURE: Back Into the Habit: Kate Bush and Her Captivating Shoot with Brian Griffin in 1983

FEATURE:

 

 

Back Into the Habit

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1983/ALL PHOTOS: Brian Griffin

Kate Bush and Her Captivating Shoot with Brian Griffin in 1983

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I have written about this previously…

IN THIS PHOTO: For the cover of Depeche Mode’s 1982, A Broken Frame, Brian Griffin transposed Soviet social realism to a cornfield off the M11 in East Anglia/ALL PHOTOS: Brian Griffin

but it is worth coming back, as this photoshoot is one of the best of Kate Bush’s career. In 1982, Depeche Mode released an album called A Broken Frame. It was released a matter of days after Kate Bush’s The Dreaming. There was something about this cover that caught her eye. It is an iconic shot by the late Brian Griffin. A Broken Frame’s cover depicts a woman harvesting grain in a field. It was inspired by Socialist Realism and German Romanticism, and it was later featured by Life Magazine as one of the best photographs of the 1980s. Brian Griffin sadly died in 2024 at the age of seventy-five. It is always sad when we lose someone in Kate Bush’s universe. Anyone connected to her or has appeared in her world. Whether a dance, musician or photographer, what makes it sadder is a lot of people do not know about this photopaper. We associate Kate Bush with photographers like Gered Mankowitz, Guido Harari and her brother, John Carder Bush. There are others, like Anton Corbijn, Brian Aris, and Trevor Leighton who have made their impact at various stages, that might not be as discussed as ‘the big three’ as I call them. The huge connection and vital work of Mankowitz, Bush and Harari. A lot of the shoots that we see from these photographers is related to albums. Part of the promotion and something relevant. However, this photoshoot seems to have had no commercial impetus or been tied to an album. I think Brian Griffin said on his website how he had a bit of a crush on Kate Bush and he was a bit smitten (him and everyone who photographed her). By all accounts, she was verry keen and so professional. It was said how Kate Bush was driven to Griffin’s location. Brian Griffin recalled how Bush was waiting at 6:30 one morning on the pavement outside of his studio in Rotherhithe Street. Being so close to where Bush lived (she would have split her time between South London and her family home in Kent). Griffin described Bush as this extraordinary and unforgettable personality to work with. Bush loved his work on The Broken Frame and she commissioned him for a similar, rustic, and scenic shoot in 1983 near his home in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, involving a full creative team.

You can see some of his other photos here. Such an incredible talent, it was amazing to see him hook up with Kate Bush. There is a double meaning to calling the shoot ‘Into the Habit’. I am not sure if that was an official title at the time, but it has come to be known as that. The habit being a nun’s headdress. However, it also is Bush engaging in movement and dance. You can see her moving and so physical in the shoot. There was a period between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love where she stopped dancing, had a poor diet and was suffering exhaustion. By 1983, she was very much recommitting to dance. Also, in terms of photos, this was Kate Bush with a new energy. The Dreaming did take a lot out of her. She produced the album and was working all hours. It was such a tiring and intense time. It is no surprise that she needed bedrest and time off. That did not last too long. She has to promote The Dreaming from September 1982 pretty much until the end of the year. By 1983, there were changes in Bush’s life. One of her happiest years. She and her boyfriend Del Palmer bought a cottage in Kent and there was this rural retreat. I am not sure whether that was before or after this shoot. However, in the summer of 1983, bush was gardening and spending time with family and friends. Going to the cinema and planning her next moves. She would have built a bespoke studio right by her family home at East Wickham Farm and start demos and the framework for Hounds of Love tracks. It was a great year all things considered. Perhaps in this happier and more relaxed frame of mind, Bush did not need to do the photoshoot. This was not to promote a single or anything tied to Hounds of Love. What is interesting is most critics felt Kate Bush sort of disappeared after The Dreaminmg. Just before Hounds of Love came out, wondering where she was. Did they see the 1983 shoot?! Perhaps 1984 was a quiet year for her, though Bush was keeping pretty busy.

I am not sure whether there have been modern examples of artists loving an album cover and asking the photographer to do something similar for a separate photoshoot. So inspired and struck by this Brian Griffin image, Kate Bush contacted him and wondered if he could recreate that cover but have her at the front. I have not seen many people talk about this photoshoot. It is also extraordinary seeing Kate Bush as this nun in a field. In 2017, Brian Griffin discussed some of his iconic 1980s shoots and memories of them. This is what he said of working when Kate Bush when chatting with i-D - https://i-d.co/article/photographer-brian-griffin-interview/: “Kate had seen A Broken Frame by Depeche Mode and really liked the image in the cornfield. She saw that and she wanted something in a similar category. So therefore I found a field that we could work in, which was near my home in High Wycombe. We drove up there with the location person, make-up, hair, stylists, assistants, lights and did it in a field. She’s an amazing woman, just extraordinary. That’s all you can say, really. Extraordinary. A personality that you’ll never forget. Just to spend a day with her…”. It is a shame that the photos were not used for something wider. A Kate Bush E.P. or project. Brian Griffin did show the photos at an exhibition, though you sort of feel they are too good to be hidden now. I have said how we need a Kate Bush exhibition and a lot of the brilliant photos of her displayed. The ones she took with Brian Griffin in 1983 are among the best of her. Seeing her in this particular guise. I guess someone very pious or devout could ask if it is blasphemous or sacrilege having Bush dressed as a nun. Rather, this is Bush influenced by a Depeche Mode album cover and loving that image. Bush looks beautiful in the photos. For anyone driving near that field and seeing Kate Bush in the se poses must have got quite a surprise! In a massive year for Kate Bush where she was sowing the seeds for Hounds of Love and was in a happier headspace, there was this wonderful photoshoot that she did because she loved the cover for A Broken Frame. More people need to discuss these…

SIMPLY phenomenal images.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: The Kid (Ran Tan Waltz)/The Beekeeper (You Want Alchemy?)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980

The Kid (Ran Tan Waltz)/The Beekeeper (You Want Alchemy?)

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THIS is the first time in this series…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush, in 1993, rehearses The Red Shoes while the crew are setting up lights and camera/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

where I am heading away from Kate Bush’s studio albums and including a couple of rarer songs. I shall come to You Want Alchemy, which appeared as an extra track on the European and Australian C.D.-singles for Eat the Music. The first song I am bringing in is Ran Tan Waltz. Most non-Kate Bush fans do not know this song. In fact, many people who love Kate Bush do not know about this song. It is a rarity. If you watched her 1979 Christmas special, Kate, then you would have seen it. In terms of the outfits and staging, it was a little peculiar! Gender-switching, Kate Bush was dressed as what looks like a chimney sweep. It is worth reflecting on that as a point. I am looking at The Kid from that song. The baby of this couple whose mother is out philandering, Bush does switch gender roles for this song. Normally, it would be the man out having sex and leaving his wife/girlfriend. Instead, Bush puts sympathy with the man and the child. This is something that Bush has done through her music. Not to say Bush lacked sympathy for women and could not be seen as a feminist. Earlier in her career, she would refute that term. Not sure what a feminist entailed to an extent, she was one without proclaiming it. However, when it came to her music, she did write a lot about men and placed sympathy with them. The usual narrative for Pop artists might have been to pour scorn on the opposite sex or write songs of break-up and dissolution. Tense and angered, Kate Bush was rare in that sense. I have written about this before. Bush having this fascination with men. The Man with the Child in His Eyes about men who retain a child-like wonder. Something women do not do as much. Wuthering Heights portraying Catherine Earnshaw as this ghoulish evil. A ghost trying to get through the window to grab the soul of Heathcliff.

Through her career, we saw cases of Kate Bush not criticising men. Ran Tan Waltz is comical and Bush being playful. It was the B-side of Babooshka in June 1980. Perhaps understandable. That A-side is about a wife not trusting her husband. Thinking her is being unfaithful, she lures him into this trap and is proven wrong. I am going to come to that song in a future feature. Ran Tan Waltz a more extreme and explicit version of that. In both songs, the woman coming off worse. Is Ran Tan Waltz making the wife/woman look loose and immoral? I think a lot of Rock songs glamourise men sleeping around and having sex with anyone. It was no doubt a staple of music when Bush wrote Ran Tan Waltz. This idea that men would be out bedding women and their other halves would be at home. It is interesting how there is this baby. The Kid. Not sure how old they are, though it is interesting that this relationship has this air of infidelity. A new mother not satisfied with her man. Out and about every night getting with someone new. Is Bush rare in the sense of not only sympathising with men but also somewhat showing a bit of bite towards women? She wrote about women and put them at the front of some of her songs, though there are occasions where she is painting them as either hugely flawed or bad. Does this impact her legacy as a trailblazer? I don’t think so. It is not Kate Bush being anti-women. Instead, she is changing things up and being balanced in her music. Female artists often writing about men in a negative way. Bush not wanting to do that. When we think of Ran Tan Wlatz, it is clear that this is not based on personal experience or Bush trying to turn the tables on women. Instead, rather than repeating what has gone before in respect of men being cheats, Bush reverses that. Women also cheat and are unfaithful. The Kid that is referred to in the song is left crying: “Where is she/When the little thing cries?/She lies in a bed/With a friend of mine”. Although it is a slight song in Bush’s cannon, it is notable because it is perhaps her most sexual and explicit. Lines like “If she picks on a dick/That’s too big for her pride” are not what you would expect from someone like her. Perhaps trying to show that she was not as the press saw her. A hippy-dippy or soft artist who was writing these weird songs. Bush showing some edge and bawdiness here.

Ran Tan Waltz is about this wife ‘ran-tanning’ – I guess having sex – all night and then being bent double over the sink after drinking too much. “And the key’s in the lock/And she’s been on the win/And she’s stinking of drink”. I do love the comical nature of the song. Many do not credit Bush as being humorous. A few of her songs have this side to them. It seems like this young marriage was ideal and there was hope. They had a baby, The Kid, and it was looking promising. It is not said why things went sour. Perhaps they were too young and it was misguided. Ran Tan Waltz was covered by Baby Bushka and I do love that the sole live performance by Bush was during a Christmas special. You can’t imagine a song less appropriate for Christmas! Again, it shows the humour and cheekiness of Kate Bush. People have noted how Bush dressed as a man in the video is quite progressive. In terms of gender-swapping in music, a lot of male/female artists did that, though I am trying to think of female artist before Kate Bush that did. Whether you see this as genuinely pioneering and a nod to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community of Kate Bush merely adopting a persona without thinking about its wider significance, Ran Tan Waltz does need to be discussed more. I am going to come to an article that does look at the song. The most words written about a rack that virtually nobody knows about or discusses! What I wanted to explore is the variety of her B-sides. She did often have album tracks as B-sides but, as her career progressed, she wrote tracks specifically as B-sides. With Babooshka in mind, Ran Tan Waltz is this odd pairing. You have all this sympathy for The Kid. Whether a new-born or a couple of years old, little do they know what their mum is up to. The husband lamenting the fact that he has been exploited: “She saw me coming for miles/She saw me open wide”. Going back to B-sides, there was this amazingly broad collection. Some rather forgettable ones, but I am going to get to another great B-side for thew second half. Under the Ivy as the B-side for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) the best example of her genius. Passing Through Air the B-side to Army Dreamers from Never for Ever. Warm and Soothing the B-side of December Will Be Magic Again in 1980. 1980 an especially fertile year for Kate Bush. In terms of the depth and brilliance of B-sides. Not many people will rate Ran Tan Waltz as a great Bush B-side, though I think that they should.

Kate Bush often gets inspiration from poems, literature or T.V. I sort of wonder if there was anything Bush was watching or reading that influenced Ran Tan Waltz. How this new song made it into the Christmas special. As that was broadcast at the end of 1979, it was the premier of a track that would not be heard on a single until the following year. Those who bought Babooshka not expecting Ran Tan Waltz on the other side! I do think it is a clever and eccentric song that has a good composition. In Ran Tan Waltz, is Bush portraying herself as a man and stepping into his shoes or switching the narrative or a lot of songs? It is a fascinating thing to discuss. Some could argue, at a time when Bush was being criticised for not being political, Punk or edgy, this was her showing a middle finger to snobs in the Rock press who thought she was this silly girl. Dreams of Orgonon examined this song for a feature in 2019:

“There’s a lot to this. This is a blatantly negative song about relationship dysfunction, which is in part the bread and butter of Never for Ever, which has tracks like “All We Ever Look For” and “The Infant Kiss.” It deals with a marriage break in a material way: sex is referred to entirely as a rough act, one that’s driving a family apart rather than keeping a relationship’s magic alive. The husband is getting nothing at home: he is, in Internet fuckboy lingo, getting cucked.

The mother is a playgirl while the father stays home and takes care of the baby. This is Bush’s model of desire-from-a-distant played through a Feydeau farce: everything becomes dirty and obscene, even romantic relationships. Kate Bush is doing an anti-Kate Bush song. The magic of the universe has been lost to these characters. There’s not enough sex in their lives”.

It does seem that there was not a lot of sex in this relationship. The woman looking for excitement and something better than she has. Again, you think about the loss that this child faces. The Kid is being held by the father but knows nothing of the disintegration of a new family. One of the criticisms I have seen of this song is the music video. How Bush chose to visually represent this song. I think Graeme Thomson dismissed it in his biography, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. Indeed, it is probably the oddest thing Bush ever filmed. Showing just how unpredictable, cool and out-there she was and is, Ran Tan Waltz has a lot more depth than people credit for, as the article continues. It does note how unusual it is too:

“Ran Tan Waltz” has one of the strangest videos of Bush’s career. It’s a three-dancers-on-one-stage setup that’s not atypical of Bush in this era, but the costuming tips it into what-the-fuck-are-we-looking-at territory. Bush is decked out in Tevye-like garb, boasting a chinbeard, waistcoat, and bare feet, an exemplary sample of how middle-class English girls think the working class looks (à la some cabaret). To her left and right are dancers Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst dressed respectively as an upper class woman in purple and, I swear to God I am not making this up, a fucking baby in a diaper”.

Bush is tapping into modes of working class theater to touch on how sex locks into struggle. To be sure, it’s a romanticized vision of the working class, but it’s not a judgmental one. Beneath the surface, there’s some genuine probing of proletariat circumstances and how it shapes people’s sex lives. It’s not the optimistic romanticism that underpins The Kick Inside, but it’s more mature and wide-reaching”.

You listen to a song like Ran Tan Waltz and you can connect it with major Pop artists of today. Those that are accused of being too sexual or revealing. The boldness in their music. However, could you ever see Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae, Chappell Roan or even Lady Gaga filming a video that is like Ran Tan Waltz?! It would be attacked or met with such confusion. You could look at it and say it is Kate Bush being wacky and the video is stupid and weird. Look more closely and there is a lot more depth and nuance. What could have been this throwaway song is instead a gem that people need to discuss more. Who do you emphasise more with in this song? The wife could be seen as villainous and bad. Doing what men glamorise in songs and is celebrated, can we attack the character without being seen as sexist and having double standards?! Maybe the man at home should get pity, though you don’t know the domestic situation and whether it is justified. If a relationship is not working then it can be a two-sided thing. He might not want sex or is a boring partner. Even so, that does not justify someone cheating, but you do feel the woman did not get to liv her youth and got married too young. The most helpless and innocent person in the situation is The Kid. A young observer who might learn about this explosion and sordidness years later. Dreams of Orgonon noting how Ran Tan Waltz is part of a “loose trilogy” of songs that follows Coffee Homeground (from 1978’s Lionheart) and The Magician (a song written by Paul Webster and composed by Maurice Jarre for the film, The Magician of Lublin. Kate Bush recorded vocals for this song in February 1979 with music performed by the London Symphony Orchestra). The fact that Ran Tan Waltz has this gloomy nature of a Kurt Weillesque waltz. The fascinating insight that “Bush’s interest in this aesthetic is grounded in musical theater rather than Marxist class consciousness, but there’s still a latent political base to it, consisting of warped gender politics and domestic life”. Whereas we often see Kate Bush’s B-sides as good or not as substantial and layered as her singles and album tracks, Ran Tan Waltz has long been dismissed and seen as this empty sex farce with a crazy video. A song that need to be given some new love.

In terms of the next B-side, there is a dramatic shift in terms of its tone and mood. If Ran Tan Waltz stinks of booze, deceit, sex and lies, then You Want Alchemy? Smells of honey and the wild. Something far more pleasant and pleasing. Highlighting Kate Bush’s broad musical asnd lyrical palette when it came to her B-sides. was written and recorded after the completion of The Red Shoes and The Line, The Cross and the Curve in 1993. Quite a while after Ran Tan Waltz, can we say that it was a B-side? Technically, You Want Alchemy? appears as an extra track on the European and Australian C.D.-singles for Eat the Music. Last year, Kate Bush put out Best of the Other Sides. This is what Bush said of the song: “You Want Alchemy? was meant to be one of the tracks on The Red Shoes album, but because there was already so much material, it ended up as a B Side. I love Michael Kamen’s orchestral arrangement in this song. It really takes us to that lovely afternoon, up in the hills with the mad beekeeper”. In terms of this song, the character in focus is The Beekeeper. The alchemy of honey. This is what the Kate Bush Encyclopedia say: “She doesn’t get it, this fascination with bees. She seems to take a tender step into this man’s private world, to open herself and feel and respect this lonely man’s joys. She approaches with sympathy, and for a brief moment, she can share his vision, and see the alchemy”. This is another song where Bush shows sympathy for a man. In this case, someone seen as eccentric and weird. You could read this as someone criticising an artist for being odd or unusual when they are actually making something wonderful and golden. Bush was receiving a lot of criticism and being dismissed around The Red Shoes and The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Although not writing about herself, I sort of see Bush as this beekeeper that people had this impression of. In fact, they are a compelling and kind character that is doing a lot of good. The Beekeeper is a wonderful character.

In the first verse, Kate Bush not only referencing one of her own songs – which appeared on 1985’s Hounds of Love -, but also The Beatles: “What a lovely afternoon/On a cloudbusting kind of day/We took our own ‘Mystery Tour’/And got completely lost somewhere up in the hills”. Ran Tan Waltz with its odd smells, vomit, cheating, scandal and debauchery. Here, we get flowers, the sunshine and the beauty and tranquillity of the open air. I think about this song as being set somewhere in England. Bush perhaps the protagonist who is wandering along and sees this man on the hills. She happens upon this beekeeper. You may think they are a loner or this eccentric. However, there is this form of natural alchemy happening. “And he said, “Did you know they can change it all?”. Bees blessing the flowers and making honey. Something wonderful is happening: “They turn the roses into gold/They turn the lilac into honey/They’re making love for the peaches”. It seems that there is a group of people around that goes up to The Beekeeper. Whilst he does not have a name in the song, that is the title that I am giving him. Thinking that he is some kind of nut, The Beekeeper says “ZzzzZzzzz… Sun’s gone down/“When’s my cloud of bees coming home?”. Bringing this man so much pleasure, You Want Alchemy? Is one of Bush’s most splendidly pleasing and evocative tracks. One that I think would have made a great single. You do wonder whether she considered that. It would have been amazing to see a video for You Want Alchemy? “Making love for the peaches. (what they gonna do…?)/Daaaaaamaaaaakiiiiindaaaaa honey/(they do it for you)/They do it for you”. What this track proves is how broad Kate Bush is as a songwriter. I started by discussing a song that was about a wife cheating and having sex with a man’s friends and leaving a kid at home with the husband. Here, we go as far from that as possible. It is about this man who might be seen as odd but has this passion for bees and the wonder they can create. Classic Pop called the song “a breathy reverie, a delirious exhalation of joy” when they reviewed Best of the Other Sides last year.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for Eat the Music in 1993

What is notable is how this song was a B-side for a couple of singles. Whilst it did feature as a B-side on Eat the Music, it was also a B-side on The Red Shoes, the 1994 title track. On the 7” and cassette single, this was the B-side. It does make me think about B-sides and how these various songs made their way to where they did. In the case of songs from The Red Shoes, it was a bit weird and random. The first single, Rubberband Girl, had Big Stripey Lie as its B-side. That is an album track from The Red Shoes. Depending on the territory, Eat the Music had Candle in the Wind, Big Stripey Lie, You Want Alchemy?, Eat the Music (12” mix) and Shoedance (The Red Shoes dance mix). Moments of Pleasure has, among the B-sides, Home for Christmas and Show a Little Devotion. The Red Shoes has This Woman’s Work as one of the B-sides. And So Is Love includes Eat the Music (US Mix). Quite scattered and unusual in terms of some of the songs included as B-sides. However, this golden original, You Want Alchemy?, deserved more life than being buried. Bush did give it a new lease when it was included on Best of the Other Sides. UNCUT said this when they reviewed Kate Bush’s Remastered in Vinyl I-IV in 2018. That is when many heard You Want Alchemy? for the first time: “You Want Alchemy”, the B-side of “The Red Shoes” single, reveals the very soulful capabilities of Bush’s voice in its delicious hook: “You want alchemy/You turn the roses into gold”. Remastered in Vinyl IV contained all these rarities and B-sides and does also include Ran Tan Waltz. I do love the power of You Want Alchemy? It does share characteristics with Prince music of that time. Bush was a fan of Prince and the two did work together on Why Should I Love You? from The Red Shoes. I love The Beekeeper. This misunderstood hermit. Someone who is dedicated to his bees and does not meet many people. Bush is so sensual and captivating through this track. Sort of tipping to 2005’s Aerial. You could see this song appearing quite appropriate in the second disc, A Sky of Honey. It would slot right in that conceptual suite of the course of a summer’s day.

The strings are amazing. The late Michael Kamen creating something shimmering, grand and romantic. This is one of Kate Bush’s best vocal performances. Think about the near-orgasmic noises she makes. Almost contorting her face to get those sounds, it would have been amazing watching her sing it in the studio! Such a great noise that she makes! If Bush was unhappy with some of the production on The Red Shoes, thinking it was tinny, over-compressed or lacking warm and depth, then she must have been happy with You Want Alchemy? I don’t think it suffers from any of that. Instead, you get this rich and hugely atmospheric song that would have made a successful single. It does make me yearn for something I have pitched before. Videos being made for Bush songs that were never singles. Maybe casing actors in them or doing animated videos, it would be terrific having You Want Alchemy? come to life. You listen to the song and imagine yourself in this scene. Changing upon this beekeeper that is maligned or seen as a creep. Instead, when you get to talk to him and discover more, you realise that the judgemental people are the ones wrong. They lack his curiosity and passion. It perhaps is a wider commentary on how we judge people. The joy of nature and appreciation of insects like bees. So much to unpack regarding You Want Alchemy? Away from the tracks we find on her studio albums, there are these fascinating characters on B-sides. I am going to bring in a few more in future parts. Maybe also look at Lyra from the single of the same name. That was including on The Golden Compass Soundtrack in 2007. Before that, I am coming back to her albums. When it comes to the variety and depth of the characters she weaves into her songs, Kate Bush really is an artist…

LIKE no other.

FEATURE: Bigmouth Strikes Again: The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

Bigmouth Strikes Again

The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead at Forty

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ALTHOUGH this is not…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Smiths in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Stephen Wright/Redferns

my favourite album from The Smith (that would be their final album, Strangeways, Here We Come), The Queen Is Dead is seen by many as their best. The band, Johnny Marr, Morrissey, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, released a masterpiece. On 16th June, 1986, The Smiths put out their third studio album, The Queen Is Dead. 1985’s Meat Is Murder did well and has some great songs, though The Queen Is Dead elevated the band and was a real step up. It spent twenty-two weeks on the UK Albums Chart, peaking at number two. One of the greatest albums of all time, there are some features I will bring in ahead of its fortieth anniversary. Containing There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, The Queen Is Dead, I Know It’s Over, Cemetry Gates and The Boy with the Thorn in His Side, it is a timeless album from a band at their peak. The lyrics of Morrissey and Johnny Marr’s compositions perfectly fused. Before getting to something more positive, it is worth sourcing this from The Quietus that was published in 2021. Marking thirty-five years of The Queen Is Dead, Simon Price writes how there are classic tracks on the album, though a few weak ones too. Though, you could definitely say that about their other albums. Strangeways, Here We Come has a run of several songs at the end which are quite poor. Meat Is Murder is spotty in places. Are those less-than-genius moments to be overlooked, or do they make The Queen Is Dead what it is ? A flawed classic perhaps:

“The making of the album, at Jacob Studios in Farnham, was by all accounts a troubled time. It had been delayed by unforeseen factors which included bassist Andy Rourke’s heroin addiction and a legal dispute with the band’s label Rough Trade.

Nevertheless, it starts phenomenally well. ‘The Queen Is Dead’, well over six minutes long (though the original unedited take was seven or eight), carries the sense of a State Of The Nation address, but it evokes William Blake’s nation of dark satanic mills rather than some Wordsworthian daffodil idyll. A snatch of Cicely Courtneidge’s recording of First World War music hall number ‘Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty’ from Bryan Forbes’ 1962 film The L-Shaped Room conjures a reverie of nostalgic patriotism before a squeal of feedback from Johnny Marr’s guitar and Mike Joyce’s you’re-gonna-get-your-fucking-head-kicked-in drums, sampled, looped and pushed high in the mix by Stephen Street, pummel us screaming into the dystopian present.

The name of the album – actually taken from Hubert Selby Jr’s much-banned novel Last Exit To Brooklyn, where it is used in the effeminate homosexual sense, but employed with deliberate ambiguity here – had already incurred the wrath of The Sun, who branded Morrissey a sicko. (He originally considered Margaret On The Guillotine, but ended up saving that for a track on his first solo album.) And that was before anyone had heard him advocating regicide in the first verse of the title track: “Her Very Lowness with her head in a sling/ I’m truly sorry but it sounds like a wonderful thing…” A staunch Republican who had already expressed a wish to “drop my trousers to the Queen” on the previous album’s ‘Nowhere Fast’, he was raising his game by daydreaming of having her executed.

Morrissey’s lyric is scattershot, unfocussed and rambling, but burning with rage as he contemplates vignettes of contemporary life such as “some nine-year-old tough who peddles drugs, I swear to god, I swear I never even knew what drugs were!” (his voice breaking into an adolescent yodel on the word ‘were’). But the dominant narrative consists of imagined conversations with the monarch, echoing the recent break-in to Buckingham Palace by Michael Fagin, and with her heir, cajoling him to publicly out himself as a transvestite. Meanwhile, Marr channels the more fucked-up end of the Sixties (MC5, VU), his wah-wah guitars conjuring the psychedelia not of flowers and trees but of black smoke and city grime (and matched perfectly by Derek Jarman’s accompanying film). “Life is very long when you’re lonely”, Morrissey repeats as Rourke’s bass comes to the fore in its closing conflagrations. It was the heaviest, most physical piece of music The Smiths – often wrongly derided as effete weaklings – had recorded (‘How Soon Is Now’ included), and one which, even with 30 years’ familiarity, still has the power to stun you in your tracks.

‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ is one of The Smiths’ lightest, most flyaway moments, but a real beauty of a pop song with an irresistibly infectious easy charm. The boy of its title is, once again, a third person who is actually a poorly disguised first person: it is Morrissey himself who, despite his hatefulness, harbours “a murderous desire for love”. A feeling of social exclusion is a common thread throughout Morrissey’s lyrics, but on this occasion he keenly wishes to be involved: “And when you want to live, how do you start? Where do you go? Who do you need to know?”

Things were going so well, with just that ‘Shankly’ monstrosity to skip over, when another howler heaves into view. An otherwise perfectly acceptable, if somewhat slight, rockabilly number ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ is, as the title makes plain, a flimsy tale of clergical cross-dressing in which Morrissey expects the listener to chuckle indulgently to the alliteration ‘monkish monsignor’ and the rhyming of ‘canister’ with ‘banister’”.

I will come to a review for The Queen Is Dead. Before that, Classic Album Sundays spent some time with the 1986-released gem. I agree that not everything on the album is great, yet the strongest moments – and there are many of them – outweigh that. There is no denying the brilliance and legacy of The Queen Is Dead:

“Morrissey struggled with people of power in many ways, mostly because he desired to hold a position of high influence himself. When the singles leading up to The Queen Is Dead, ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’, ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’, and ‘The Boy With the Thorn In His Side’ failed to chart, he took it to the music press to make his opinions known. The singer’s pretty-boy face frequently appeared on magazine covers with extravagant headlines and costumes mocking himself as a sell-out or fraud in the eyes of mainstream media. In interviews, he accused radio DJs as fascists and Rough Trade for not caring and underselling their work. He felt nobody was listening to what he had to say about the world, and these loudmouthed statements were meant to grab the attention of his doubters to think again. Even though these statements were outlandish in many ways, it proved The Smiths were different and more human than these popular systems.

Contrary to the public’s distaste for these risky statements, bad press turned into great press for the band. The Queen Is Dead is the band’s most prolific musical statement both instrumentally and lyrically, especially for Morrissey and Johnny Marr as a team. They diverted from what was comfortable, transformed their styles to be more accommodating and confident, and ultimately reached a larger audience. The band picks apart society from the perspective of a self-aware human and native of Great Britain and accommodates it within their music without forgetting their roots with every song.

The Queen Is Dead starts with perhaps its most profound statement with the album’s self-titled song, thanks to Morrissey’s hilarious but bleak lyrics. In 1986, animosity arose between north and south Britain, and Margaret Thatcher had implemented many changes to the nation’s government. Morrissey saw her actions as negative contributions to the country’s environment, art, and leading industries, like manufacturing, and he was infuriated by her manipulation of the country’s livelihood. The songs introduction of ‘Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty’ references The L-Shaped Shaped and states a wish to be taken back to a better Britain, one not led by Thatcher.

When his voices enters the mix, Morrissey cracks jokes of Prince Charles’ weakness to his mother (such as appearing on the Daily Mail wearing his mother’s bridal veil), being a very distant descendant of a past royal, and wishes to “go for a walk where it’s quiet and dry and talk about precious things” with The Queen. His imaginative wit would eventually lead him to kill The Queen, but he feels alone in his celebration of it — why doesn’t anyone else see the fulfillment of his rage? Statements like these makes the album’s previous working title, Margaret on the Guillotine, appropriate.

This mix of humor and seriousness makes for a interesting thought experiment. When you listen to the album and focus on the lyrics, it’s hard not to explore an emotional spectrum of reactions. With songs like ‘Frankly, Mr. Shankly’ and ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’, it is hard not to laugh. Your heart may burn after listening to ‘I Know It’s Over’ imaging Morrissey being buried alive. For the first time, he hands out blatant insults towards the government, music industry, and society and stands by them, which is something you might not have expected from someone who is consistency heartbroken. The Queen Is Dead may stand as Morrissey’s greatest lyrical venture of his career.

Johnny Marr stretches his instrumental muscle most on The Queen Is Dead. He took advantage of the studio to twist an assortment of wah-generated guitar feedback with producer Steven Street to build his parts for ‘The Queen is Dead’ and blended guitar tracks with multiple tunings to compose ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’. He introduced the acoustic guitar to many of its songs, giving the album great texture and driving rhythm. He builds many of the melodies with his mastered chucking guitar-picking method but creates his most memorable moment with ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’, with an angelic riff that never gets old.

The Queen Is Dead made The Smiths’ dreams come true — to become a legendary rock band that is still an integral part of the conversation of modern music. They broke their own comfortable barriers to make grand statements about music and the world around them, and in return, they were passionately embraced and still are today. Morrissey may always be on a search for love, but when he feels the soil falling on his head, he can smile knowing that he and his band were heard”.

I want to head back to 2016 for the final feature. Annie Zaleski writing for Salon about an album, thirty years after its release, still shone bright. She wrote in detail about the lyrical genius of Morrissey. Coming into his own as a singer too. Johnny Marr’s compositions are guitar work at their most varied, inspiring and strong. Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce at their peak. The Smiths built on Meat Is Murder and broadened their palette and horizon:

“The trick is, he improved upon the stridency of “Meat is Murder”—a record with a graphic condemnation of animal slaughter and a thinly veiled account of school abuse, among other things—by embracing more sophisticated commentary. Frequently, this was tethered to the byproducts of fame. “I Know It’s Over” is self-flagellating and frustrated by a nagging perception of low self-worth (“‘That’s why you’re on your own tonight/With your triumphs and your charms'”), while “Bigmouth Strikes Again” is equally angst-ridden over things that shouldn’t have been said. “Frankly, Mr. Shankly,” meanwhile, drips with condescension and sarcasm—”Oh, I didn’t realise that you wrote poetry/I didn’t realize you wrote such bloody awful poetry, Mr. Shankly”—which supports the rumor it referred to Rough Trade label founder Geoff Travis, with whom the band was feuding. By toning down the hyperbole—and upping the incisiveness and nuance—Morrissey was more effective at getting his point across.

Yet he was smart enough to realize that the downsides of fame are only interesting to a small segment of the population, which is why much of “The Queen Is Dead” had a personalized (and politicized) slant. Instead of wallowing, he crafts a mythology around himself—or the character he’s playing on the album—bit by bit: He fashions himself a permanent outsider on “Cemetry Gates” (“Keats and Yeats are on your side/While Wilde is on mine”), identifies with the Shakespearean romantic trope of death-from-love (“There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”) and tackles the one-two punch of persecution and feeling misunderstood (“The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”). Plus, “The Queen Is Dead” has its levity: “Vicar In A Tutu” reads like a Shel Silverstein poem (despite the serious subject matter: a man of the cloth who favors dance wear), while the title track features a wry gag about lack of musical talent.

The song “The Queen Is Dead” ranks up there with the Smiths’ finest moments. On the surface, it’s a song conflating criticism of the royal family with expressions of abject loneliness and despair. Dig a little deeper, and it’s an elegy for England itself, and all the ways the country’s ingrained power structures—church, pubs, state—destroy individuals. This assertion is supported by Tony Fletcher’s meticulous Smiths bio, “A Light That Never Goes Out,” which notes that in the mid-’80s, England was facing “catastrophic levels” of unemployment, unions losing power, and a society where “minimum-wage labor replace[d] former job security for those who could even find the work.” In addition, “multiculturalism, sexual permissiveness, gay rights, and progressive education were all under attack,” while “locally elected left-wing councils were being abolished, spending on the welfare state reduced, [and] government-owned industries privatized.” In conclusion, “‘The Queen Is Dead’ made almost no reference to any of this, and yet it somehow acknowledged all of it, and that was no small achievement.” What Morrissey didn’t say, in other words, made the song a triumph.

Still, it’s a mistake to think that Morrissey was the only one steering this record to greatness. In fact, “The Queen Is Dead” is the most cohesive musical statement put forth by the Smiths’ instrumentalists: guitarist Johnny Marr, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, as well as studio compatriot/engineer Stephen Street. (Remarkably, this happened although Rourke was dealing with a heroin addiction that ended up causing him to get kicked out of the band for a spell after the album was done.) “The Queen Is Dead” feels slightly phase-shifted from then-trends (cf. well-wrought pop with a manicured ’60s influence) and unapologetically nostalgic. For example, the strings and flute on “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,” courtesy of an Emulator sample keyboard, are delightfully syrupy.

Morrissey too comes into his own as a vocalist. Although “Cemetry Gates” contains vestiges of his youthful yelp, he settles into a dynamic, adult singing approach: a Rat Pack croon steeped in conspiratorial desperation, anguished gnashing of teeth and impertinent bite. Above all, “The Queen Is Dead” possesses exquisite sonic balance, where no one part or person (yes, even Morrissey) dominates. Rourke’s cowboy-loping bass lurking below “Never Had No One Ever” and the burbling backbone of “Cemetry Gates” fit like a glove, while Joyce proves himself a versatile drummer adept at cheeky swing (“Frankly Mr. Shankly”) and rockabilly (“Vicar In A Tutu”), as well as torchy ballads (“I Know It’s Over”). And after the guitar turbulence of “Meat Is Murder,” Marr finds his comfort zone by carving out sturdy-but-delicate riffs—as heard on the galloping strums of “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” the oceanic, ornate “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” and especially the wistful “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”—edged with a chiming, lighter touch. It’s a style he’d refine and perfect in the subsequent years and with other artists”.

I am going to end with one review from Pitchfork. In 2017, they reviewed the album, as a boxed set edition was released. Awarding it a perfect ten, they wrote how The Queen Is Dead “still stands as an enduring testament to England in the ’80s, the complex relationship between performer and fan, and the ecstasy of emptiness”. I am not sure if is relevant, but this is the first big anniversary of the album since our Queen died. She died in 2022. It gives the album’s title new weight and potency:

“From Prince’s “Controversy” to Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do,” it’s always perilous when pop stars start to address their own position as public figures. Where “The Queen Is Dead” is the sort of Big Statement a band makes when it acquires a sense of its own importance, “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side” is one of a group of full-blown meta-songs on the album. Morrissey appeals to the sympathy of his disciples by lamenting the far larger number of indifferent doubters out there: “How can they hear me say those words still they don’t believe me?” There is a hint of reveling in the martyr posture in “Bigmouth Strikes Again” too, what with its references to Joan of Arc going up in flames. It doubles as both a relationship song and a commentary on Morrissey as the controversialist forever getting in trouble for his caustic quips and sweeping statements.

“Frankly, Mr. Shankly” is petty as meta goes: At the time, nobody but a handful of music industry insiders could have known that it’s a mean-spirited swipe at Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis. What’s more interesting now is Morrissey’s admission of his insatiable lust for attention—“Fame fame fatal fame/It can play hideous tricks on the brain”—but nonetheless he’d “rather be famous than righteous or holy.” Couched in a jaunty music-hall bounce, the song also serves as a preemptive justification of the Smiths’ decision to break with Rough Trade for the biggest major label around, EMI.

The cleverest of the meta-pop Smiths songs of this period, though, can be found on this reissue’s second disc of B-sides and demos. Originally the flipside to “Boy With the Thorn,” “Rubber Ring” gets its name from the life-preservers you find on ships. Although his songs once saved their lives, Morrissey anticipates his fans abandoning him as they grow out of the maladjustment and amorous ineptitude in which he will remain perpetually trapped. The empty young lives will fill up with all the normal sorts of happiness, he predicts, and the Smiths records will be filed away and forgotten. “Do you love me like you used to?” Morrissey beseeches, as if he’s actually in a real romance with each and every one of his fans, acutely aware of the perversity and impossibility at work in pop’s psycho-dynamics of identification and projection.

Two other loose categories could be formed out of the songs on The Queen Is Dead: Beside the meta, there’s the merry and the melancholy. Despite the morbid (and misspelled) title, “Cemetry Gates” is sprightly and carefree. Even though they’re strolling among the gravestones quoting poetry at each other to show how intensely they feel the sorrow of mortality, the life-force is strong in these precocious youngsters. As so often with Morrissey, the frissons come with the tiny quirks of unusual word-choice or phrasing—the little jolt of the way he pronounces “plagiarize” with an incorrect hard “g,” for instance. Featuring the album’s second instance of cross-dressing, “Vicar in a Tutu” is a slight delight with just a casual twist of subversiveness in a passing reference to the priest’s kinky antics being “as natural as rain”: This freak is just as God made him. Almost cosmic in its insubstantiality, “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” seemed at the time an anticlimactic ending to such an Important Album. Now I think the understatement is just right, rather than the obvious curtain-closer, “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”—the glide and glisten of Marr’s playing on “Some Girls” is that never-fading light.

And then there’s the life-and-death serious stuff. Both songs of unrequited love, “I Know It’s Over” and “There Is a Light” make a pair: The first spins majesty out of misery, the second transcends it with a sublime and nakedly religious vision of hope-in-vain as an end in itself. The writing in “I Know It’s Over” is a tour de force, from the opening image of the empty—sexless, loveless—bed as a grave, through the suicidal inversions of “The sea wants to take me/The knife wants to slit me,” onto the self-lacerations of “If you’re so funny, then why are you on your own tonight?” and finally the unexpected and amazing grace of “It’s so easy to hate/It takes strength to be gentle and kind.” Not a strong or sure singer by conventional standards, Morrissey gives his all-time greatest vocal performance, something ear-witness Johnny Marr described as “one of the highlights of my life.”

As for “There Is a Light”—if you don’t tear up at the chorus, you belong to a different species. The scenario involves another doomed affair, a love (and a life—Morrissey’s) that never really started. But here Morrissey hovers in an ecstatic suspension of yearning that becomes its own satisfaction, an emptiness that becomes a plenitude. The greatest of his many songs about not belonging anywhere or to anyone, it so very nearly tumbles into comedy (and there are those who’ve laughed) with the melodramatic excess of its image of the double-decker bus and the romantic entwining-in-death of the not-quite-lovers. But the trembling sincerity of “the pleasure, the privilege is mine” keeps it on the right side of the gravity/levity divide in the Smiths songbook.

Marginally more robust and shiny than the last time it was remastered, this new Queen comes with a couple of extra discs and a DVD that contains a promo directed by British filmmaker Derek Jarman. The demos contain differences that will interest the diehards. “Never Had No One Ever,” the album’s one real dud, is enhanced by an unlikely trumpet solo and some strange moaning from Moz. Elsewhere, you hear the singer trying out different word-choices and phrasings: The demo of “I Know It’s Over” lacks the “oh, mother” address and its bed is “icy” not “empty.” For those who like that sort of thing, there’s a live album, recorded in Boston in August 1986. Having seen them twice in their quasi-imperial prime, I never thought the Smiths were that potent as a live band: The delicate flower of Marr’s playing fared better in the studio, Morrissey’s voice strained to compete with amplified music, and the electricity came mostly from the audience’s ardour.

Being a Smiths fan during the band’s actual lifetime felt like an aesthetic protest vote signaling your alienation from both the ’80s pop mainstream and the political culture it reflected. As that context drops away with the passage of the decades, what endures is the peal of exile in Morrissey’s voice, a timeless plaint of longing and not-belonging. Without Morrissey’s tart wit and strange mind, Marr can be merely pretty, as shown by the instrumental B-sides of this era. Equally, without Marr’s beauty, Morrissey can be unbearable (as much of his post-Smiths career bears out). But when Morrissey’s sighs are caressed by Marr’s serene, synthesized strings on “There Is a Light,” or when the singer’s wordless falsetto flutters amid the guitarist’s golden cascades in “Boy with the Thorn,” there’s something miraculous about the way their textures mesh. It’s a great musical tragedy that barely a year after releasing The Queen Is Dead, this odd couple went their separate ways, for reasons that still feel not fully explained. These boys were made for each other—and surely deep down they still know it”.

I will end it there. As The Queen Is Dead was released on 16th June, 1986, there will be fortieth anniversary features shared soon enough. The final album where they seemed connected and in harmony, there would be splits and fractures by the time Strangeways, Here We Come arrived in 1987. I confess that not everything works on The Queen Is Dead (Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others is a stain on their career; it is a song that you could never put on an album now and get away with it), it features some of the greatest songs ever written and recorded. After forty years. The Smiths’ masterpiece still elicits tis incredible power and beauty. An album that I…

WILL never tire of.

FEATURE: Spotlight: SALIMATA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Skylar Rochon for GROWN

SALIMATA

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EVEN though she does not have…

an extensive online portfolio, it is still hard to miss the wonderful SALIMATA. The alias of Brooklyn rapper and songwriter Salma Calhoun, I want to get to some interviews with this amazing artist. SALIMATA put out her latest album, The Happening, last year. She is being tipped for greatness. And it is fully warranted! Last year, Nina chatted with SALIMATA about her new music and the Brooklyn scene:

“Growing up in Brooklyn, do you have any formative memories of listening to rap music?

SALIMATA: Very few, I remember a lot of 50 in my house growing up. We loved his videos, me, my brother, and my mom. I remember my mom was listening to a lot of Lil Wayne when most moms were bumping R&B ‘cause she was going through a break up and didnt wanna hear any love songs. I was maybe like 9 or 10. I was like wtf Lil Wayne is FIREEE, but I never really listened to what he was saying at the time. Then another time in middle school, my friend's step dad was dropping me home and “They Reminisce Over You” came on and it was the first time a rap song made me really feel something.

Let’s talk beat selection: What kind of things do you tend to gravitate towards? It seems like you can appreciate a good jazz flip.

I guess I do, I didn't know for a while the different genres in music but as people made comments on my beat selection I found out I'm really into jazz, and drumless shit. I like funky shit too, I love grime and house as well. I really just write to what forces me to write. But I really appreciate weird shit, something challenging to approach, the jazz and drumless is a little too predictable. But some chaos, some distortion makes my brain so happy. I love when a beat got me drunk or high ‘cause I'm trying so hard to figure it out. Or it just controls me. And that can be any genre, just depends on the beat.

If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be? What kind of song would you make?

It’s really hard to say ‘cause it depends on chemistry more than anything when it comes to collabing, but I'd love to do a song with The Internet. If I could scream with Show Me The Body that would be sick. If I could be Dolly and sing with Yves Tumor or Triathlon I’d shit myself.

What NYC artists are you excited about right now?

I’m excited for myself, nah lemme stop. Hmmm Duendita is phenomenal, the world must know, so for that I am excited. Also for Brooklyn’s princess Laila!, baby genius fr. Then my good sis Kelly Moonstone, all around talent, beauty, and brains. She impresses me so much and I know she can reach so many people. Lmao he already big but I’m just happy for Cash Cobain, my son really got motion. Nkiru, my sis, is on her own shit an I fuck with her heavy”.

A couple of other interesting interviews to come to before rounding things up. An advocate for health and movement, and someone who is unapologetically vulnerable and open in her lyrics, SALIMATA spoke with GROWN about being back in Brooklyn after spending some time overseas. It is evident that she is a rare talent that is going to ascend to incredible heights very soon:

“What does it feel like to perform back in Brooklyn after spending time away overseas?

SALIMATA: Oh, my gosh. I mean, it’s so weird because the best thing about New York is that it never changes. But you change. So you get to observe the same thing from a different perspective. And of course, there’s something different going on—the atmosphere changes, the people change. I know there’s definitely not a lot of New Yorkers here no more.

Somehow the music led me there (overseas). I’ve been working a lot with Fada Records—they helped me with my last album. I’m like f*cking European now at this point. It’s crazy.

But being back. It’s just been like a breath of fresh air for me. And just to be surrounded by people who get me you know? And I don’t mean that in like any specific way, but it’s been so nice just to have very simple interactions. People just get you.

I’m happy that this is my first show back. I’m mad excited. It’s a lot of new music. I’ve been rehearsing since the second I found out about the show.

I noticed a lot of people in the TikTok comments saying that ‘conscious rap is making a comeback.’ Do you feel that’s an accurate description of your work?”

SALIMATA: Oh, yeah…off rip. And I have no, there’s no insult in that whenever anyone feels like they should say, I feel like it’s such a sketchy thing for people to label someone as. Like, a lot of people don’t like that or the sound of it, because it’s very easy to be corny when you’re conscious. But, I definitely consider myself a conscious rapper. But It’s more than that too, you know? That’s one dimension. Yeah, that’s definitely one spot, but I have different pockets for sure.

In rap, especially for Black women, people try to box you. How do you sidestep that?
SALIMATA:  I really don’t care. Everything I do is honest to who I am, so no matter what form it takes, it’s still me.

When people get introduced to you, you can either let them put you in a box or intentionally present yourself in a way that shapes how they see you. People are multi-dimensional. Whatever I do is going to feel like me, so that’s all that matters.

What do you want Black women to feel when they press play on your music?
SALIMATA:  I want them to not give any f*cks—about anybody or anything. To feel comfortable in themselves, powerful. Almost like…a nice bully, if that’s possible. Nice and strong. I just want people to celebrate being themselves, how they are. Whatever that is.

At GROWN, we’re for women who are grown but still growing. How are you grown & how are you still growing?

SALIMATA: For me, it’s about emotions—how you handle life. Being grown is being able to handle things..because you don’t even know you’ re growing until you look back. Like some sh*t will just hit you and you’ll just be like wow. the way I would have handled that six months ago, a year ago.. Different. Crazy. And I’m really proud of myself ’cause I grew so much. When you grow, you attract better things”.

I was under the impression that SALIMATA was still based out of Brooklyn. However, as we learn from CABBAGES from their interview published at the end of last year, she was based in Marseille. I wonder whether that is still the case. If you have not heard this stunning artist, then you really do need to check her out. I wonder if SALIMATA will be coming to the U.K. anytime soon:

“You're Brooklyn through-and-through, but sometimes artists go to a new place, they get so caught up in that place that they close their sense of self on record. Do you feel that being in Marseille of had its own impact on the way The Happening came together?

My first project, OUCH, in my mind it's super hardcore, super rough–and not just technically, but the energy I'm bringing to the tape. For my project after that, Wooden Floors, I'm still in New York, but I'm trying to make a more sunny side version of what I did with OUCH. Now that I'm in Marseille and I made a lot of the music here, I can see how it thawed me out a little bit, even in terms of beat selection and fluidity. I'm from a city; I'm from a very hard place and our buildings are very tall, so everything's going to be very rough. I feel like, on this project, there's a lot more melody. It's just softer to me. My song "9-5" just has more of beachy vibe. I didn't realize it until everything was coming together like, alright, we're actually moving on to some softness. I'm still going to be aggressive and surprising, but there's definitely an element that comes naturally with your environment.

One of my favorite songs on The Happening is "Foil." It's just under two minutes, with this intentional fadeout, but it feels like you could rap over that beat forever. Why aren't you giving the us whole thing?

I don't be asking producers, can you extend the beat? I just take it as what it is and if it's a long beat, I be like, are you cool with me using less of it? I don't know what the rules are, but whatever I deliver is what it is. I was writing to the beat and it ended and I was like, that's kind of cool. I've always loved short songs and I know now people like short things more, for replay. You want to play it back. I think I said everything I had to say. I don't need to say nothing more. Nobody wants to feel like they're being lectured. It's hard to be conscious and not corny, so you got to be cute about it”.

I am going to wrap up now. SALIMATA put out Supastar Livin earlier this year and I can sense that more new music is coming along. I am not sure what her gig plans are, but I can’t see anything announced on her Instagram at the moment. It would be nice to get more out there about her in terms of new interviews. What her gig schedule is. I wonder if she will set up her own TikTok and get a Facebook page, as there are many out there who have not discovered her work yet. One of the names to watch this year, when it comes to SALIMATA, it is exciting to think…

WHAT comes next.

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Follow SALIMATA

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryosuke Tanzawa

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/eet_it_off_me/

YouTube:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7jS2ex4JC0DiFtMfh417jD?si=lMTqGrJhTpK8gJSlM14shg

FEATURE: Temperature Check… Some Early Mercury Prize Shortlist Predictions

FEATURE:

 

 

Temperature Check…

IN THIS PHOTO: Holly Humberstone released her new album, Cruel World, on 10th April, and it is one that I feel is worthy of a Mercury Prize nomination/PHOTO CREDIT: Silken Weinberg via NME

Some Early Mercury Prize Shortlist Predictions

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I do this around this time of year…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lauren Laverne (BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Radio 4) presented last year’s Mercury Prize in Newcastle/PHOTO CREDIT: Jonty Davies for Good Housekeeping

as the Mercury Prize takes place on 22nd October. The ceremony returns for a second consecutive year to the Utilita Arena in Newcastle. The award celebrates the best albums from British and Irish artists. We have many contenders to come before the ceremony but, in terms of eligibility, albums must be released by British or Irish artists between roughly mid-July 2025 and mid-July 2026. I am going to talk about some of those that I feel will be included. As there are three months between me publishing this feature and mid-July, I will revise this after that date. However, there have been some strong releases that I feel will be among the shortlisted. Not only was the Mercury Prize held in Newcastle and outside of London for the first time. It was also won by an artist outside of London: Sam Fender for his album, People Watching. The artist who hails from North Shields was a worthy winner. A dozen albums are shortlisted every year. There have been winners from outside of London, those most of the wins in the past decade have been from artists based in London or born there. Will 2026’s prize go to an artist outside the capital? You can follow the latest developments from this year’s awards on the Mercury Prize Instagram page. I am publishing this on 11th April, so I am aware that some contenders might slip through before I share this. However, I will share a review of each album that I feel is up for Mercury shortlisting this year. Let’s start with Lola Young’s I'm Only F**king Myself. Released on 19th September, it was one of the best albums of last year. This is what DIY wrote:

“Far from a reinvention though, Lola’s sound has never stuck anywhere near the formulaic. Her debut album’s opener and notably a pre-release single, ‘Stream Of Consciousness’ fittingly threw structure right out the window. That her third full-length opens then with the guitar-led ode to pre-rehab hedonism ‘FUCK EVERYONE’ proves a further statement of intent, in-keeping with ‘Messy’’s middle-finger to the socially acceptable and a riotous introduction to her most vibrant sound yet. For every ‘One Thing’ - the still-excellent multi-million streamed lead single - there’s a ‘SPIDERS’, one of the year’s most affecting rock ballads with driving distortion gliding into Lola’s obvious pain. In it, she deals with the notion of womanhood, identity and relationships; another staple that has emerged from one of the UK’s most exciting songwriters, presenting emotion and vulnerability with a raw swagger that have underpinned the careers of Amy Winehouse and Adele. In style, of course, she welcomely sits separate.

‘I’m Only Fucking Myself’ is an exploration of anger, written in the wake of huge success and addiction. Much here deals with external relationships and a recognition of personal worth, such as the gliding sunshine pop of ‘Walk All Over You’, paired with more personal introspection, including the momentary return to soul on ‘why do I feel better when I hurt you?’ or the emotional downfall on the acoustic ‘who fucking cares?’. Combined it paints a picture of a leading songwriter with even more to come, one that can piece together exceptional art from personal turbulence and insecurity, effortlessly reaffirming her position at the top of UK pop… if we can even call it that”.

One album that is pretty much guaranteed shortlisting is The Art of Loving Olivia Dean. Released on 26th September, this award-winning and hugely acclaimed album might scoop another honour at this year’s Mercury Prize. It has won more than its fair share of impassioned reviews. Her 2023 debut, Messy, was shortlisted. Ezra Collective won for Where I'm Meant to Be:

“While you wouldn’t describe it as a complete reinvention, it certainly constitutes a noticeable rethink. It expunges most of the cliches of Dean’s debut album – or rather quarantines them on a track called Close Up – and instead looks for inspiration to music that emanated from recording studios in 70s LA. The Art of Loving dabbles in both Rumours-adjacent soft rock – you’re never far from a sun-dappled electric piano line or a breezy acoustic guitar; Baby Steps offers up slick, yacht rock-y funk – and, on So Easy (To Fall in Love), Carpenters-style MOR pop that would once have been considered entirely beyond the pale.

It’s a sound that’s familiar without feeling hackneyed or self-consciously retro: Something Inbetween is powered by a muffled rhythm that sounds like someone playing a techstep drum’n’bass track with a duvet over the speakers; lurking in the depths of Nice to Each Other there’s a wash of shoegaze-y guitar noise and gusts of ambient synth drone. Airy and inviting, it suits Dean’s sweetly understated vocals – mercifully lacking affectation, either of the post-Winehouse “jazzy” variety or the weird, consonant-mangling “indie voice” that’s supposed to connote intimacy in 21st-century pop – and adds a cinematic gloss to her lyrics. Dean is big on diaristic detail as she navigates ex-related angst and tentative new relationships: “I don’t know where the switches are, or where you keep your cutlery.”

Perhaps more importantly, Dean and her co-authors – including Tobias Jesso Jr, and Matt Hales, who once plied his trade as singer-songwriter Aqualung – have significantly upped their game. Every chorus has been polished until it catches the light (Baby Steps offers a particularly gleaming example), while one suspects that an enormous amount of effort has been expended on making the melodies of Nice to Each Other and I’ve Seen It sound as effortlessly charming as they do.

So the album breezes past. It’s exceptionally well made but feels entirely natural; it’s mainstream commercial pop, but laudably devoid of obvious cliches. If Dean’s debut seemed like an artist trying to find their place in the landscape by ticking relevant boxes, The Art of Loving seems like someone finding their own voice. The sight of Olivia Dean battling a cartoon K-pop band in the charts’ upper echelons is proof that pop in 2025 is a business you can’t really predict, but still, The Art of Loving’s success seems a foregone conclusion”.

Another artist who was recently shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and will be again this year is Lily Allen for West End Girl. This is another hugely successful album from an artist who has produced her very best work. She is touring the album and I feel is an early frontrunner for Mercury inclusion. Released on 24th October, I want to spotlight one review for one of 2025’s best albums. Here is what Pitchfork noted about West End Girl:

“Despite unavoidable comparisons to Lemonade or 30, West End Girl is much leaner and more brutal. Unlike those records, Allen’s album is too concerned with honoring moment-to-moment feelings of hurt and betrayal to really reach for a mature overview of the breakup. But what the songwriting lacks in conceptual development, it makes up for in raw emotion and narrative thrust. Allen’s truth bears out in a blow-by-blow account of coming to grips with a partner’s infidelity and gathering the resolve to leave for good. “Never get your sympathy/I don’t think you’re able,” she sings on “Let You W/In,” “But I can walk out with my dignity/If I lay my truth on the table.” There are plenty of pop songs about love as a drug, but I don’t think I’d ever heard one about heartbreak as a threat to sobriety until “Relapse.” Going through the motions of an unwanted open relationship would be painful enough, but throwing motherhood into the mix on “Nonmonogamummy” and “Dallas Major” is simply excruciating.

The record is a relief map of broken boundaries and abandoned commitments and Allen colors it in hellacious, knife-twisting detail. On “Pussy Palace,” she reveals that Bluebeard’s dungeon is actually a West Village bachelor pad stocked with sex toys, butt plugs, and lube. The perfectly paced reveal of “Madeline” (“But you’re not a stranger, Madeline”) is stomach-churning in its implication, even as it veers into cringe comedy with an unsettling Allison Williams impersonation. One of the truest West End moments occurs in “Sleepwalking,” when Allen tries desperately to re-kindle the spark with one of the funniest inversions of Oliver! put to record: “I know you’ve made me your Madonna/I wanna be your whore/Baby, it would be my honor/Please, sir, can I have some morе?” Occasionally she strains to sell the horror. “4chan Stan” has an edgy title but a faulty premise: No one who spent extended time there has ever been worth losing sleep over. That song also suggests Allen went to the Whitney Houston school of amateur sleuthing: “Never been in Bergdorf’s/But you took someone shopping there in May ’24.”

The turntablism on “Dallas Major” feels canned and anonymous, and the sunny soft rock of “Tennis” is too nondescript to hold any tension, but for the most part the production on West End Girl acquits itself pretty well. The emotional freefall of “Ruminating” feels like a cleaned-up Farrah Abraham cut, dislodging an avalanche of conflicting thoughts over unstable dance music. The medicated lullaby of “Sleepwalking” is perfectly suited to the bad daydream of fresh heartbreak. That song and “Just Enough,” about being slowly poisoned by a lover’s refusal to share the whole truth, just barely contain her aching vulnerability. They represent an evolution of Lily Allen’s signature style, so that the lightness isn’t a foil for her irony, but a vehicle for her hurt.

Nearly a hundred years ago, the writer Ursula Parrott covered shockingly similar terrain in her 1929 novel, Ex-Wife. Parrott’s Patricia is left slowly, then suddenly by her husband, with an open relationship sealing the end of their marriage. “He grew tired of me; hunted about for reasons to justify his weariness; and found them,” Patricia wryly laments. After describing all the ways she’d bent over backwards to keep her partner in her life, Allen finally realizes that she’s been left screaming in an empty room. “Wish I could fix all your shit, but all your shit’s yours to fix,” she sings with biting clarity on “Fruityloop.” Having recovered herself from the wreckage, West End Girl is a testament to how remarkable Allen is on her own”.

I think that women will dominate the 2026 shortlist. Maybe eight out of the twelve albums. One group that I feel will be in the running is The Last Dinner Party for From the Pyre. Perhaps it has been out for long enough that it might be overlooked, though I feel From the Pyre was one of the best albums of last year. It was released on 17th October. There were a lot of positive reviews for the band’s second studio album. I want to include parts from what When the Horn Blows said:

“The band leaves no breathing room between track one and two as Count The Ways sets off with a stanky riff that will have listeners screwing their faces up in approval. The dark, angsty riff is the backdrop to the yearning lyrics that cry out in pain against the story of someone struggling to move on from an ex-lover. The Last Dinner Party has certainly taken an entirely darker turn with this album and it perfectly suits their romantic maximalist aesthetic; if Tess of the d’Urbervilles wrote a song, I’m sure this is what it would sound like.

As we move into the latter half, the project becomes filled with meditative pieces on womanhood. A Woman Is A Tree and I Hold Your Anger explore the divine relationship between nature and femininity, reflecting the female energy that courses through the veins of Mother Earth herself, as well as through every woman whilst also confronting the generational pain and love that flows down from women of the ages. Aurora Nishevci, the band’s pianist/keyboardist, leads the vocal for I Hold Your Anger bringing a welcome earthy counterpart to Morris’ ethereal rock voice.

Sail Away deals with similar ideologies but through the contemporary lens of a modern relationship. The outro of this track is a well built up crescendo which combines all the band’s voices into a hymn-like ascension which could bring a tear to any listener's eye.

The penultimate track uplifts the pace and thematically sums up the whole project with ideas of love, death and reincarnation:

Don't cry, lie here forever

Let life run its course

I'll be here in the next one

Next time, you know I'll call

Coming just at the right time before the audience is suitably mellow, The Scythe arrives to breathe a new balls-to-the-wall energy into your bones assuring you that life and all its ups and downs are a part of something bigger. The level of philosophy explored throughout The Last Dinner Party albums is enough to fill a library. Musically the song draws on more stringed instruments than the album as a whole which gives the song a strongly cinematic feeling.

Finally rounding off the album is the jaunty yet empowering, Inferno which feels like a strongly bittersweet closer. While upbeat and led by a perfectly jovial piano, the lyrics remain poetic and thoughtfully sincere and what better image could end an epic album more than a scorching blaze of fire.

From The Pyre, is a ruminative and exciting step up from Prelude To Ecstasy, and the achievement it represents cannot be understated. It feels more meaningful, and to every fan it’s clear to see the natural progression and growth The Last Dinner Party have made as a band, exploring their unique and inspiring aesthetic through sharper imagery and tighter yet bolder musical arrangements”.

Fifteen more albums to get to, so I shall try and keep it brief. One of our very best artists, Cat Burns’s How to Be Human was released on 31st October. There are a couple of omissions from this feature. Charli xcx’s “Wuthering Heights” soundtrack album might not be eligible. I am also not including Reckonwrong’s extraordinary How Long Has It Been? EUPHORIA. said this in their four-star review:

“Cat Burns’ sophomore album How To Be Human is chock full of life experiences that are so sharp it’d crack through even the thickest armor. Let’s just say that she promised to deliver on the emotional content, and she did.

Speaking on the inspiration behind the project, the British singer-songwriter said: “I left a very big piece of me on this project, going through grief and heartbreak at the same time really rewired my brain chemistry, and I noticed when people try and give uplifting messages about getting through the hard times they never really go into detail about how they got to the end of the tunnel or even what the tunnel looked like, so I REALLY wanted to do that with this album and document the trenches of processing your emotions.”

Prior to the album’s premiere on October 31, she released singles such as “Something About Her,” “All This Love,” and “Please Don’t Hate Me,” all of which I had listened to. So naturally, my hopes were high going into the album, and I was also of the mind that I’ve got a sort of grasp on her musical style.

She opens with “Come Home” – no preps, no instructions, just right smack in the middle of the battlefield and left to fend for yourself. The spoken intro more or less clued me in on what the song would be about, but it still was not enough to stop the waterworks. “It was a rainy, rainy day in Wales / And the hospital ward was blocking the sky / When you were layin’ there with such love in your eyes / Did you know it then? Or did you think you had more time?” she sings. The spoken intro and outro are from Burns’ grandfather, John Burns, who passed away last April. According to Burns, this song was written to reflect the world views her grandfather held in life.

The one song that massively tears away from this is “GIRLS!” Apart from broadcasting some x-rated thoughts, the song also doubles as a confidence-boosting feminist anthem. “That I get to talk about girls, talk about girls, talk about / I only wanna talk about girls, talk about girls, all about,” she sings in the synth-driven pop track. From there, we go to “There’s Just Something About Her,” a sort of sister track to “GIRLS!”

The closing and title track, “How To Be Human,” is a soulful track about the masks we often wear to fit into society. Some of us may find it relatable, some of us may not. In general, whether it’s an acoustic ballad, or supported by melodic piano chords or gossamer strings, the production is kept minimalistic because the lyrics are always meant to be the star attraction, and they are”.

I was going to include Robbie Williams’s BRITPOP, though I am not sure that it will be shortlisted. It is a great album, but I don’t think the judges will consider it. One that they will consider is James Blake’s Trying Times. Released on 13th March, it is one of the most recent albums in this feature. It is also one that has received so much critical acclaim. In their five-star review, DORK wrote this about Trying Times:

“Seven albums in, James Blake sounds newly unburdened. 'Trying Times' carries all the elements that have defined his music for more than a decade: spacious production, ghostly electronics and that unmistakable voice, capable of turning a single line into a moment of heft. This time, though, it feels lighter, painting a portrait of an artist standing firmly in his own space, steering the whole thing exactly where he wants it to go.

That feeling runs through the album's bones. After years navigating the machinery of major labels, Blake has returned to London and rebuilt his creative world on his own terms. 'Trying Times' reflects that shift immediately. The songs feel instinctive, unfolding with openness.

Across its thirteen tracks, Blake moves through a wide emotional spectrum without ever losing his centre. Songs like 'Death Of Love' and the wonderful 'I Had A Dream She Took My Hand' capture the strange emotional weather of the present moment, tracing feelings of overload while still reaching toward empathy and connection. His writing remains deeply introspective, now carrying a warmth that's both grounded and generous.

There's also a playful spark running through the record that gives it extra lift. Guitars wander into the mix, rhythms stretch and bounce, and Blake's arrangements leave space for small surprises to bloom. Even with the meticulous precision that has always defined his production, there's a looseness in how these songs move.

By the time 'Trying Times' draws to a close, that freedom proves irresistible. Blake sounds energised by the room he has carved out for himself, following ideas wherever they lead and completely at ease in his own creative universe”.

I may cut one album from this feature, as it is going to be quite overloaded. However, when we think about locks for Mercury inclusion, you obviously have to mention RAYE’s THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE. One of this year’ best albums, it was released on 27th March. A fair few five-star reviews for this modern classic. I want to include Rolling Stone UK and their review of an album that they highlight is “life-affirming”:

“This Music May Contain Hope is a concept album about overcoming self-doubt, heartbreak and hollow Romeos – the fourth track is titled ‘The WhatsApp Shakespeare’ – but one loose and sprawling enough to allow for musical detours. RAYE pulls off crackling funk on ‘Skin & Bones’, recruits Al Green for the silky soul ballad ‘Goodbye Henry’, and reminds us with ‘Life Boat’ that she can still write a club banger when she wants to. Her latest single, ‘Click Clack Symphony’, features beats that mimic the thwack of high heels on a hardwood floor and crashing instrumentation from Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. It’s a girls’ night out bop in the same way that a croquembouche is just a pastry.

And like a croquembouche, this album gives you a lot to digest. There are extended spoken word sections, tracks that switch tempo midway through, and ear-snagging flourishes like the brief snippet of chipmunk vocals on ‘Winter Woman’. Throughout, RAYE displays a great ear for detail – “His lips were thin and beer-stained and tear-stained,” she sings on ‘Nightingale Lane’ – and a deft turn-of-phrase. “I can’t shake this, I can’t fake this, I should just pay to rearrange this,” she sings on ‘I Hate the Way I Look Today’. It’s a reference to facial filler, perhaps, on a song that definitely isn’t musical filler.

There are bits destined to be skipped, not least the four minutes of contributor credits that RAYE recites at the end, name by name, but her warmth and generosity paper over moments that could feel de trop. The euphoric disco of ‘Joy’, which features RAYE’s younger sisters Amma and Absolutely, is every bit as infectious as her recent chart-topper ‘Where Is My Husband!’

Besides, given how creatively constrained RAYE felt during her major label days, when she was encouraged to stay in her lane as a mainstream dance-pop artist making bops for All Bar One and Love Island, it feels mean-spirited to quibble with the odd moment of over-indulgence. This Music May Contain Hope is an exciting, life-affirming listen that reminds you it’s never too late to turn things around. In a way, it’s the RAYE story writ large, with absolutely killer choruses”.

There will be some bands included in the dozen Mercury albums shortlist. Maybe three or four tops. One that I feel is possible is Gorillaz for their phenomenal album, The Mountain. Last year saw legends Pulp shortlisted (for More). I feel Gorillaz are worthy, even though they have been together over twenty years. Released on 27th February, The Mountain is the strongest Gorillaz album in some years. UNCUT gave four-and-a-half stars to this wonderful album:

“Even the most English-sounding track here – the drunken, clanking, Jerry Dammers-inspired ska of “The God Of Lying”, featuring a deadpan vocal by Joe Talbot from Idles – comes wreathed in tablas and bansuri flute, like a Bollywood take on “Clint Eastwood” from the first Gorillaz album.

The ecstatic Arabic blip-hop of “Damascus” sees Syrian singer Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bey (the artist formerly known as Mos Def) trading verses over the pulsating percussion of Viraj Acharya. “The Manifesto” started off with a simple Latin preset on one of Albarn’s vintage home organs and it would have worked perfectly if set to a dembow-style reggaeton beat, but it piles on so many Indian rhythms that it morphs – quite brilliantly – into a piece of heavy bhangra.

And the pulsating synth pop of “The Shadowy Light” is transformed by Bollywood legend Asha Bhosle, now aged 92, with a lyric that sees her welcoming the process of death (“come, oh boatman, lower my boat into still waters/And take me, finally, to the other side”, she trills, in Hindi).

Just as this threatens to look like gap-year fetishisation of brown spirituality, the Kraftwerkian “The Plastic Guru” serves as a welcome rejoinder – an account of Albarn and Hewlett’s Beatles-like visit to an ashram in Rishikesh, where they quickly grew suspicious of their assigned swami (“starring in your own show and selling your snake oil”).

Bleepy analogue synths and a jabbering four-to-the-bar piano are slowly drenched in multi-tracked sitars and the massed ranks of an Indian ceremonial band, as if to desperately assert the guru’s credentials. False idols also dominate the infectiously catchy “The Happy Dictator”, where Ron and Russell Mael from Sparks invoke the spirit of insane autocrats, like Kim Il-sung, whose rule is eternal, even after their death.

Albarn has, of course, explored grief on many occasions – Gorillaz’s “Andromeda”, Blur’s “The Ballad” and the title track to his solo album The Nearer The Fountain… are all mournful elegies to departed friends and loved ones; countless other Blur and Gorillaz songs mourn the death of relationships. You would expect an entire album with death at its central theme to be similarly hymnal, sombre and funereal, but The Mountain somehow manages to be none of these things. Its 15 tracks are filled with cheery major-key singalongs, sitar-soaked synth-pop bangers and whimsical waltzes that serve as ecstatic celebrations of life, rebirth and reinvention”.

Based in Manchester, Mandy Indiana are a band who I think are deserving of award recognition. Perhaps URGH will correct that. It was released on 6th February. Doubling down on the abrasive assault, which is what The Skinny said in their review, URGH might have passed some people by. The Mercury Prize judges would have been all over it:

“From the first serrated riff on Sevastopol it's clear that Mandy, Indiana aren't softening up on their first album for Sacred Bones. Written in an “eerie” studio house outside Leeds doesn't give the same enigmatic appeal as the crypts and caves where they recorded their 2023 debut, but the results are just as frenetic and punishing.

Simon Catling's synths are used to constant disconcerting effect, even when conjuring something resembling a club beat as on Cursive and Magazine. But don't get too comfortable as the electronics are generally subsumed into a vortex of noise or choked-off cries. Most songs strike with intensity from the off, but even in quieter moments the band know how to put you on edge; take A Brighter Tomorrow which drops its sirens in favour of a foreboding trip-hop drumbeat and disembodied vocals.

All songs are sung, rapped or screamed in French so you might not always know exactly what's going on, but the pervasive mood of pain and suffering makes it perfectly clear (and the odd word that doesn't require a translation like 'mortalité' or 'génocide'). The exception is the closing I'll Ask Her, which features a frantic spoken-word takedown of misogynistic culture over gripping noise (reminiscent of aya).

Whether shouting over martial drums, whispering behind thick, smoky synths or rapping against a razorwire guitar, URGH is an exercise in harrowing noise; unapologetically visceral and all the better for it”.

The photo at the top of this feature is of Holly Humberstone. She is a wonderful artist whose latest album, Cruel World, is going to be one of my picks for Mercury Prize glory. The Nottingham-born artist released Cruel World on 10th April. In their glowing review, this is what Under the Radar said about one of this year’s best albums:

“Opening with a brief instrumental that evokes an orchestra tuning up, it morphs into “Make It All Better,” a moody, atmospheric track that seamlessly forms the bridge between her earlier work and this new chapter.

The previous single, “To Love Somebody,” aches with longing yet still bursts with euphoric pop energy, its premise timeless: it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Meanwhile, “Lucy” finds Humberstone in more stripped-back territory, its sparse arrangement and whispery vocals working beautifully, before the title track, “Cruel World,” a song Humberstone counts among her personal favorites, strikes the perfect balance between an irresistible, fun hook-laden pop song and one that carries real emotional weight.

On a thematic level, Humberstone turns her attention outward as well as inward, examining how rivalry between women, rather than being innate, is conditioned by a wider patriarchal structure as she looks to embrace something more compassionate and supportive.

What further elevates Cruel World is Humberstone’s emotional intelligence. Even in the album’s darker moments, there is care and understanding in how she navigates her feelings, distilling messy, chaotic experiences into piercingly honest reflections.

The result is her most complete and compelling work to date, a bold, cohesive album that showcases Holly Humberstone as an artist at the height of her songwriting powers, fully in command of her craft and vision”.

Dove Ellis is an Irish artist who is one of the most talked-about artists of the moment. Someone whose debut, Blizzard, is guaranteed toe be on the Mercury shortlist, it could well walk away with the award – and it would deserve to. Not often an Irish artist wins the award. Blizzard is a remarkable album that was released on 5th December. Lots of positive reviews to choose from, but I will go with CLASH and their assessment of the best debut album of last year:

“But the music is never too trapped in nostalgia, even during moments of introspection, such as “I’ll be gone by Christmas” or “I’ll still lift up my feather / That’s how far I will go”. This makes ‘Blizzard’ gorgeous and tangible, open-hearted and unmasked, its warmth and ache laid bare on the surface.

Released together, ‘Pale Song’ and ‘Love Is’ are a double window into Ellis’ songwriting philosophy. ‘Pale Song’ contemplates the deceptive weight of the past, warning listeners not to dwell on it whilst ‘Love Is’ emerges as a manifesto, a mantra and an anthemic celebration of love in its subtleties, “(Love is) A whispered smile and it’s got nothing to lose”, anchored by expansive piano, drums, and fluttering strings.

The joy doesn’t finish there; it grows even more on ‘Jaundice’, whose driving, communal rhythm likens Titanic’s dance scene in ‘An Irish Party in Third Class’, featuring jigs and polkas played by Gaelic Storm. Effervescence continues in full flow, drifting into the warmth of ‘Heaven Has No Wings’, a soft-rock piano track with shades of the 70s.

As a final meditation, everything falls away but Ellis’ heavenly tone and the circling of sparse guitars on ‘Away You Stride’. In loss and lament comes clarity as he reveals, “I shoot at clouds / I stab at lights / I’m ducking in a crowd / I saw you in the absence of light”. The album’s final exhale feels like a quiet wound, leaving listeners suspended in wistful grace.

The release of ‘Blizzard’ is a culmination of the years Galway-born Thomas O’Donoghue has spent honing his craft in Manchester’s live scene and beyond. Fresh from touring with Geese and selling out headline shows, Dove Ellis’ debut translates his quietly magnetic presence into something much larger, one that barely scratches the surface of what he’s capable of. We’re just at the start”.

Cardinals are a sensational bands from Cork. I do think that at least a couple of Irish albums will make it into the 2026 dozen. Masquerade could well be in there. It was celebrated and definitely put the band’s name far beyond their native Cork. Released on 13th February, Masquerade got a lot of love. This is what No Ripcord noted:

“As the first half winds down, Cardinals’ flair for a sullen ballad reveals itself more clearly. Nowhere on the album is this better demonstrated than in the plainly titled “I Like You,” where lead guitarist Oskar Gudinovic adds a slow-paced fingerpicked arrangement set against an endearing accordion accompaniment. “You can have most of me/just don’t stand so close to me,” he passionately declares, grappling with the fleeting glory and confusion of young love.

There is an underlying sense of melancholy to Euan’s lyricism, which the band consciously matches with a sombre mood as the album progresses—a stark difference to the brighter sheen they juxtapose early on. The smoldering delivery of “Anhedonia,” one of the more punk-driven tracks here, has Euan leaning into his storytelling abilities by detailing a tragic character burdened by sin: “Then I stabbed him/I opened up his world/as it spun.” While the contrasts they play with are marked, they’re not necessarily jarring, maintaining a rhythmic pace that sounds forceful yet grounded. Even the heavier, politically charged track “The Burning of Cork,” which veers into post-hardcore territory, adds depth beyond mere anger before it fizzles in two minutes flat.

Masquerade is the type of vital debut that unspools with an unrefined beauty, attracting the opinion of listeners who might think that they're still figuring out their true sound. Whether Cardinals possess the talent to evolve past this fiercely passionate statement remains to be seen, but considering who they’ve been matched against, the band has tapped into a formula that sounds arguably more defined from the outset. Cardinals would be the first to admit that it’s a daunting first step, but it sure is exciting to hear them aim this high”.

In terms of other guaranteed shortlisted albums, The Boy Who Played the Harp is definitely going to be in there. A masterpiece from Dave, it was released on 24th October. Heralding a master storyteller, DIY showed a respect and love for a staggering work from one of our greatest artists:

“This is God’s plan,” begins Dave on ‘History’ – a plan he’s in the process of making happen. He’s got a strong case, too. At 27, with three critically acclaimed LPs under his belt, it feels like the world is running out of superlatives with which to describe him. What more can you say about arguably the UK’s leading rapper? It’s been four years since 2021’s ‘We’re All Alone In This Together’, but Dave hasn’t been totally quiet since then, with standalone Central Cee collab single ‘Sprinter’ becoming a massive global hit in 2023. But it’s been long enough that it’s difficult not to savour every second of ‘The Boy Who Played the Harp’.

Across its ten tracks, Dave is found in an equally introspective and outward-looking mood, with faith also playing a major part in his narrative. ‘175 Months’, named for the length of time his brother has been in prison, is a confession, while on ‘My 27th Birthday’, he questions whether he should speak out about the world’s ills while also enjoying the luxuries that come with stardom. But he’s perhaps at his best here when he has company. James Blake’s presence is a strong one, while Jim Legxacy is a dream on ‘No Weapons’, and Tems brings a lighter tone to the flirtatious ‘Raindance’. The album’s crowning moment, meanwhile, comes with the Kano-featuring ‘Chapter 16’. Alluding to the biblical story of Samuel anointing David as king, it plays out as a conversation over dinner in which Dave gives Kano his flowers and the grime grandee responds in kind. It’s deserved. It all goes to confirm that Dave has grown from hot young talent to a true master storyteller”.

I really love Joy Crookes’s work. I have been a fan for years. Juniper is a fantastic album. It may sound like an outside shot for Mercury inclusion, but I think it should be on the shortlisted twelve. Juniper was released on 19th September. I am going to come back to DORK, as they awarded Juniper five stars:

“Juniper’ is an album borne of one of the toughest times Joy Crookes has ever experienced. Falling in love whilst also falling into an anxious spiral that threatened to ruin all she’d worked for, it is a record with identity embedded into its fabric and explored with Joy’s now trademark delicate yet hard-hitting style.

Sonically and vocally, you’d never know that Joy was going through one of the most unsteady times of her life. Her forthright delivery on delectably domineering ‘Pass the Salt (ft. Vince Staples)’ represents a woman reborn and ready, underlined by unbelievably catchy soulful pop tune ‘Perfect Crime’ and the rich, deep palette of jazz-slash-RnB anthem ‘Mathematics (ft. Kano)’ which allows Joy’s vocal to soar. Meanwhile, explosive brass sections on ‘I Know You’d Kill’ and the hazy, syncopated rhythm of ‘Paris’ transport you to a sleek, smoke-filled jazz club where Joy holds all the cards and owns every inch of the room.

Elsewhere, her softer, more vulnerable side shines through. Whether it’s in the pleading frustration of Western beauty double standards in ‘Carmen’, or in the swirling, off-kilter album opener ‘Brave’, Joy reinforces her ability to show the nuanced and often unsettling nature of simply being human. Equally, ‘First Last Dance’ sees her eyes full of stars as love fills her heart, while ‘Mother’ powerfully paints a picture of someone determined to rise above generational trauma. She’s never been afraid of feeling, no matter how scary it might seem, and she’s commanding that steely, resolute conviction with untold ease.

Joy’s debut album, ‘Skin’, was so good that it won her a Mercury Prize nomination. Somehow, though, ‘Juniper’ might be an even better record, cementing Joy Crookes as one of the world’s most prodigious talents”.

Another album that you may think would be shortlisted but I don’t think will be is Arlo Parks’s Ambiguous Desire. She won the Mercury Prize for her debut, Collapsed in Sunbeams, and she won the Mercury in 2021. However, this album I feel is going to be in the mix. JADE’s THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY was released on 12th September and was met with critical and commercial success. It is a truly exceptional album, and I hope that JADE is recognised for her incredible debut. This is what DIY wrote in their five-star review:

“Lyrically, too, she always seemed one step ahead: between the sex-positive, feel-good bangers were vulnerable admissions of insecurity amidst the fickle fame machine and eviscerating asides about exploitative industry types (well, one high-trousered, Dayglo-toothed exec in particular). Hers was a run of singles of such consistent quality that you couldn’t help but think - has JADE already played all the best cards in her hand?

In a word: no. The latter half of ‘THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!’ is a dizzying journey through genre, era, and Jekyll and Hyde dynamic shifts that more than lives up to the vitality of its previews. ‘Headache’, for example, has all the attitude of a heat-warped Pharrell 7”; ‘Natural At Disaster’, meanwhile, offsets earnest crooning with choral BVs and glitchy, video game-like effects, a Frankensteined collage of the shredded pop ballad blueprint. The album’s only slight stalls come with ‘Self Saboteur’ and ‘Lip Service’ - a pair of shimmering synth-led cuts which, while not bad by any stretch (both recall Caroline Polachek at best, The 1975 at worst) feel frustratingly safe next to the balls-to-the-wall experimentation of the rest of the record. Because, clearly, JADE thrives most when she’s throwing curveballs: namely, the gloriously ‘80s guitar pop of ‘Unconditional’ - which could sit shoulder to shoulder with Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode - and The Supremes-sampling ‘Before You Break My Heart’: an impossibly catchy instant-classic that casts her as the natural successor to Diana Ross’ girl-group-to-solo-superstar trajectory. After a career’s worth of constricting, prescriptive pop formula, she’s now finally concocted a recipe for success on her own terms - and it’s anything but vanilla”.

I am writing this before Jessie Ware’s Superbloom is released (17th April), so this might be one album that makes it into a revised feature. For the time being, I will leave the album out. My New Band Believe by My New Band Believe is an album that I do think warrants a Mercury Prize salute. Another incredible debut, it was released on 10th April. It was formed by Cameron Picton, formerly of black midi. NME declared My New Band Believe a masterpiece. Even though the band’s name – and debut album’s title – is pretty dumb and annoying, you cannot deny their album is flawless:

“It’s the kind of ambition that could result in a mess. Thankfully, by imposing the limitation that almost everything on the record should be acoustic, with the smallest possible amount of reverb, Picton ensures that the maximalism is tightly controlled. The way it constantly tries to press against those self-inflicted cast-iron boundaries – like the orchestra in that room – is one of the reasons it’s so thrilling.

Then, there is Picton himself, a dazzling instrumentalist. On ‘Heart Of Darkness’ alone, he flits between serpentine finger-picked guitar and blissed-out soul, envisaging a transatlantic communion between English folk great John Renbourn and American soul legend Otis Redding. To longstanding Black Midi fans such chops will come as no surprise. What’s intriguing, though, is how much he shines as sole frontman.

Lyrically, too, there’s brilliance at work, Picton skipping between the perspectives of different characters, drawing out the intense moments of desire, lust, anger, bliss and despair that exist in intimate spaces. Sometimes these emotions dovetail with the music – the gentle domestic portrait on ‘Love Story’ set to strings that border on saccharine; the skittering rhythms that heighten the paranoid self-consciousness on ‘In The Blink of an Eye’ – and sometimes they’re set in uneasy juxtaposition. There is a simmering violence under the quirky surface of ‘Target Practice’, for instance, a meditation on the ethics of assassination.

Like its name that emerged within that 2023 fever dream, My New Band Believe’s debut is an open-ended record, as ambitious as it is ambiguous. In less skilled hands it could easily fall apart under its own weight. In Picton’s, however, it’s a masterpiece”.

Three more albums to include. Elmiene is an artist who is rightly being talked about as a future legend. A rare talent that comes along every so often. He is a British-Sudanese musician from Oxford. He placed fifth in the BBC Sound Of 2024 poll. His sounds for someone is an immense debut. It was released on 27th March. This is what Shatter the Standards wrote in their review:

“Almost every song on sounds for someone asks for something. “Honour,” with Baby Rose’s voice winding around his in the low end, requests the simplest thing imaginable—believe in me. “I’ve always been the one to doubt myself/Convinced I don’t deserve a ‘someone else,’” he admits, and then spends the rest of the song trying to earn what he’s afraid to expect. “Don’t Say Maybe,” the album’s most rhythmically insistent cut (Ghost-Note and No I.D. supplying a snapping, uptempo groove that breaks from the album’s prevailing warmth), takes the same impulse and strips the patience out of it. “I always hated when you treated me like a child,” he opens, and the chorus is blunt. Just say yes, just say no, don’t say maybe. That directness sounds different for Elmiene. The songs addressed to his father plead and circle. This one draws a line.

Not everything on the album bleeds. “Reclusive” is probably the most fun anyone’s ever had admitting they don’t want to leave the house. Elmiene has credited Biz Markie’s ability to make the mundane memorable, and you can hear that in the way the song zooms into the tiniest details of inertia: wake up, play video games, think you need a change, don’t change. “I ain’t even gonna lie/Not a social butterfly” is as self-aware as this album gets, and the Gitelman production (piano and drums that gradually widen into a busier arrangement) treats his reclusiveness as a fact of life, not a problem to solve. The romantic songs carry more weight than they might on a less emotionally loaded album. “Lie With Me” makes a painful request. Fake it, lie, make me believe what you don’t, just until I can move on. He knows it’s over. He’s asking for one more night of pretending. “Light by the Window” puts Elmiene in a locked room with an empty glass and a double bed, hiding for days by the window, wondering if leaving would make any difference. Saadiq’s presence brings a weight to the arrangement that Elmiene meets without strain, and this section (“Detrimental to my vision/Without my glasses you’re far away with no precision”) is the kind of odd, specific image that separates a good lyricist from someone filling bars.

Ghost-Note and OzMoses Arketex handle the majority of the album’s back half, and their production keeps to a steady, mid-tempo pulse that gives Elmiene room to phrase long. The consistency pays off when the songwriting justifies it (”Lonely People,” a mutual codependence anthem where two people agree to stay small together, gains from the controlled simmer) and drags mildly when it doesn’t (”Special,” a sweet ordinary-day love song, sits comfortably in the same tempo and register as three or four songs around it). But Elmiene’s tenor is a remarkable instrument for this kind of sustained quiet. He dips into falsetto when the lyric needs air and drops to a low murmur when it doesn’t, and neither gear sounds forced. Raised in Oxford by his Sudanese mother, the son of a poet grandmother and a musician grandfather, he sings like someone who grew up in a house where expression wasn’t optional but volume was negotiable. On “Told You I’ll Make It,” he reaches his father’s house, puts the key in the lock, and it won’t turn. “How much have I changed?/Do you hate me now?” He promised he’d be there, and he’s making good. The door is still closed”.

The penultimate album I am including is from Dry Cleaning. Secret Love. The London band released their third album on 9th January. Produced by Cate Le Bon, Secret Love could see them nominated for a Mercury Prize. God Is in the TV awarded it eight-out-of-ten and made some insightful observations:

“Can you, should you judge an album by its artwork? Their previous album, Stumpwork, had a front cover that featured a photograph of a bar of soap decorated with pubic hair spelling out the album title. This time round, the album’s cover artwork features a painting by the Scotland-based Canadian artist Erica Eyres, which shows the band’s frontwoman Florence Shaw having her eye washed by someone largely out of frame, holding Shaw’s eyelid open. Of course, if you only tend to stream or download, this may be a mute point, but is it her eyes that are being opened, or ours?

Quite possibly both, and that should be ears too;  artwork showing ears being syringed would have been way too obvious, and the reality is that Dry Cleaning are not an obvious band. Having made two successful albums, they’ve taken their time with this one, and it’s paid off in spades.

That should have been obvious from the release of the opening track last year ‘Hit My Head All Day.’ For those who have yet to hear it, this six minute track served as a call to arms: we’re back, we’ve developed and we’ve moved up a gear or two. Its baseline is as funky as anything (think prime LCD Soundsystem or Tina Weymouth on either Talking Heads or Tom Tom Club records), and the lyrics that take in the mundane but also reach the surreal on a par with The Sugarcubes’ Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week.

There are some things that haven’t changed. Sure, there are still tracks you might not want to play in front of your more prudish relatives. Also (while it would be weird to simply love a group because of what they don’t sound like), it’s impressive that whilst they’ve made their most accessible and best album so far, in this case it is most definitely not a way of saying that they’ve shed their edges that made them so interesting and have become bland enough for mainstream acceptance. Both the band and Shaw have started singing (occasionally), but these are not songs to soundtrack your local beige indie disco. Frankly, it’s all the better for that.

It’s pointless to simply describe this as the first great album of 2026 when we’re not even two weeks in. It is, however, a record that will reward repeated playing, and one that will certainly win them new fans, and rewarding those long-term fans with how much they’ve developed. How long it will be to the next record is anyone’s guess, but we’ve got this and it’s brilliant. For best results, listen to with your eyes closed and just focus on one aspect at a time…”.

People might have their own thoughts about which albums released so far – or between last autumn and now – will be in contention for the Mercury Prize. I am not sure who is hosting this year’s ceremony, though it is likely to be Lauren Laverne. She hosted last year, so I am pretty sure she will host this year’s. The final album I am suggesting is possibly going to be shortlisted is Knucks for A Fine African Man. Released on 31st October, Knucks is a London-born rapper. A hugely acclaimed talent. A  fine place to end. I feel this album is a hot favourite to be among the golden twelve that will be in contention on 22nd October at Newcastle’s Utilita Arena. We have a way to go, though the eligibility window closes near the end of August. I will publish another feature nearer the time. Who else can be in contention when we look at the albums already confirmed? Kneecap for FENIAN, Maisie Peters for Florescence and Paul McCartney for The Boys of Dungeon Lane. It would be amazing if Paul McCartney was shortlisted! Also, Ringo Starr releases Long Long Road on 24th April. Two Beatles shortlisted! Neither needs the award, though it would be possibly the last time this is possible. Let’s get back to Knucks, and NME’s review for A Fine African Man:

“Throughout ‘A Fine African Man’, Knucks’ verses move with the rhythm of spoken poetry – like diary entries, all lived-in and unfiltered. But the album’s most tender moment comes on ‘Yam Porridge’, where he recalls his younger self, alone at a Nigerian boarding school, finding home in the solace of a dinner lady who made the best bowl around. Tiwa Savage’s voice drifts in sweetly (“Anything you want, I’m here / Full confidence, no fear”), providing the blissful warmth of motherly comfort. ‘Yam Porridge’ is the clearest evidence that Knucks is one of this generation’s sharpest storytellers – real rap doesn’t need to be lyrically complex or super conceptual: sometimes, simple words work too.

Although this album is a new sonic exploration for Knucks, you can still catch glimpses of the foundation he made for himself. Since his 2014 debut mixtape ‘Killmatic’, Knucks has always favoured groove and rhythm, perfecting the balance between mood and meaning – making the ordinary feel cinematic. On ‘A Fine African Man’, that instinct has matured beautifully. ‘Are You Okay?’ is full of neo-Afrofusion sultriness, all bass warmth and glossy keys, but with depth beneath its glow. ‘Pure Water’ calls back to the sombre drill production that first built his legend, embodying the relentless grind that defines Knucks: always moving with purpose, chasing something real.

All this is done with great Nigerian pride, manifested through bravado. ‘No Shaking’ sees Knucks link up with Phyno, trading bars in their mother tongue over a warping grimetrap-like beat that fuses London grit with Lagos swagger. Then there’s ‘Nkita’ with UK trap disruptor Fimiguerrerro – an aggressive, braggadocious track about being top dog that adds some bite to the mostly mellow record. By the time we get to songs like the chirpy amapiano-style ‘Container’ and the groovy ‘Palm Wine’, it’s a full-blown celebration stretching into the far-flung corners of the diaspora.

‘A Fine African Man’ shines as a vibrant depiction of Igbo culture through the eyes of someone both belonging and (once) an outsider. Using love, struggle, and growth as his colour palette, Knucks paints from memory and discovery alike. If ‘Alpha Place’ reflected London, here, Knucks turns his mirror toward Nigeria, watering his roots through sounds and customs from his motherland. No longer the boy from Kilburn, Knucks stands tall as a fine African man whose talent will never be forgotten”.

Rather than include the entire album for each of my selections, I am instead popping in a song from the album. I would encourage people to check out the albums, but I didn’t think people who read this would listen wholly to every single album, so I thought it was better putting a song in instead. Such a varied collection of artists, my current top-five of sure-fire Mercury nominees would be Dove Ellis, Dave, Olivia Dean, JADE, RAYE and Holly Humberstone. I do think a female artist will win, and the Mercury is not guaranteed to go back to London. In 2024, a female-fronted band English Teacher, won for This Could Be Texas, but Little Simz won in 2022 for Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. English Teacher and Sam Fender from northern England, so two years running it has been awarded to artists outside of London. I think, so far, I would put Holly Humberstone against Olivia Dean as thew favourite, though every album I have included is deserving. The Mercury Prize always throws up surprises and you can never predict. We will see who is nominated in September. In terms of albums that could be in the running, there is…

MUCH more to come.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential May Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Tori Amos (In Times of Dragons is released on 1st May)

Essential May Releases

__________

MAY is what I would say…

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney (his album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, will be released on 29th May)

is the start of the busiest and most exciting time for new releases. I think artists tend to wait until May through to August or September to release albums. In terms of lining up with festivals and maybe it is a better time to put them out. Although there have been some year-best contenders already out, next months sees a few albums that could challenge that. I am recommending the albums from May you will want to pre-order. You can see a fuller list here. There are eight albums alone due on 1st May that you should have on your radar. Let’s start out with Ana Roxanne and Poem 1. This is an artist I am aware of but have recently got more into her. You can pre-order it here:

"I wanted to travel / Home into somewhere,"Ana Roxanne breathes across an eerie suspended drone on "The Age of Innocence". "I wanted to try / And go very far." These are the first words we hear on Poem 1 and reintroduce an artist who's in a conspicuously different phase of her life than she was when her debut album, Because of a Flower, sprouted nearly six years ago.

Heartbroken and reflective, Roxanne surveys the transformations that followed and displays a new-found boldness. Her voice is naked, vulnerable and alive, no longer shrouded in tape noise or looped and echoed beyond recognition beneath layered electroacoustic textures.

Throughout the course of Poem 1, Roxanne displays her skill as a singer and songwriter in the classic sense, using the limited instrumentation simply to accent her exposed tones. Muted piano phrases and plucked bass notes languidly trail her anguished siren song on "Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45", making each word count.

On "Keepsake" meanwhile, she sounds as if she's alone in an abandoned bar, stroking the dust off the piano's keys as she inventories her emotional scars. There's a smell of old whisky in the air, but Poem 1 is a remarkably sober album; never wallowing in self pity, Roxanne finds catharsis in the logic of her expressions, twisting out the edges of her memories into surreal, cinematic asides. "Untitled II", the album's pronounced, uninhibited centerpiece, delivers on the Lynchian promise that's been present since her first EP, 2019's ~~~. "

And when she interprets the Robert Schumann's lied "Stille Tränen" on "One Shall Sleep", she turns Justinus Kerner's words into a whispered echo of her own grief, narrating the 19th century poem over syrupy synthesizers and strings. There's a light emerging on the horizon, though; burying her past on the choral standout '"Cover Me", Roxanne shifts the pace and the mood on 'Atonement', lifting her voice into a gentle lilt”.

I am excited to see what the brilliant Jesca Hoop offers up with her new album, Long Wave Home. I really love her music and have seen her perform live. Such a compelling, lovable, talented and fascinating artist. This is an album that you definitely need to pre-order. There is not a tonne of information about the album available, so I will drop in what there is. Artists like Jesca Hoop will never receive the sort of acclaim and focus as bigger Pop artists. I think that her music is more arresting and interesting than most of what it is out there. It does definitely warrant a lot more conversation and exposure. She is a brilliant artist:

“Jesca Hoop releases her new album Long Wave Home. Staying true to her folk roots, though never purely, Hoop delivers strikingly original songwriting showcasing her innovative vocals augmented by imaginative arrangements. Long Wave Home is energized and rings with the promise of a fresh new chapter for the artist”.

An album that is definitely going to get a lot of love and huge reviews is Kacey Musgraves’s Middle of Nowhere. This is an album from one of the true greats of modern music. A superb songwriter, again, there is very little from Rough Trade regarding what we can expect from this album. However, do go and pre-order it, as Musgraves is superb. Middle of Nowhere follows 2024’s Deeper Well. Not as celebrated as albums like 2018 Golden Hour, it was seriously underrated. I think that Musgraves might win back a bit of critical traction with Middle of Nowhere. Its lead single, Dry Spell, is a wonderful taste of what is to come:

“Middle of Nowhere is the sixth studio album from eight-time Grammy Award winner Kacey Musgraves, and is made for two-stepping. The collection draws from a love of Texas dancehall classics, humorous takes on the human condition, and the space where traditional Country borders many sounds including Norteño and even Zydeco. Fresh yet familiar, and classically Kacey: honest, fearless, immersive, and always ready to wink at life’s twists and turns”.

Another terrific and anticipated album from 1st May is Melanie C’s Sweat. There has been a lot of promotion and talk around this. Some of the very best work from Melanie C, this album is going to get some massive reviews I think. It is phenomenal and one you need to pre-order. Its cover alone marks it out as a great album. You are captured by that image. The music released from the album is wonderful, so I feel this is an album that you cannot afford to miss out on. I am going to source from the start of an interview from The Times published back in January. Melanie C (Chisholm) discussing her new work and personal life. A revealing and amazing interview from this incredible artist:

“Melanie Chisholm has never looked hotter than she does in the video for her comeback single, Sweat, an ultra-camp tribute to Jane Fonda workouts and Eric Prydz’s Call on Me. Chisholm — 52 years old and ripped to the heavens: abs, quads, biceps, glutes, all of it, honed beyond belief — frolics and cavorts on an exercise bike and bench presses barbells surrounded by admiring trainer dudes clad in Union Jack budgie-smugglers. She donkey kicks in ankles weights, spike-heeled booties and outrageously saucy unitard. The song, a dance track that could be about training, but — guess what? — could also be about sex (“I’ll make you, I’ll make you sweat” etc), is fun and silly and compulsive, and while Chisholm definitely does not take herself too seriously, the whole effect is, nonetheless, outrageously sexy. Sporty Spice — but absolutely not as you know her.

“I think this is the most courageous I’ve ever been in a video,” she tells me. What made her so courageous, I ask. “I think it’s because I’m 50. I look like this — and it’s powerful”. 

I love Lip Critic, so I am going to listen to Theft World when it comes out on 1st May. This is a fantastic U.S. Electro-Punk group that you really need to connect with. Go and pre-order this album. Hex World is an incredible album, though Lip Critic are not going to repeat themselves for Theft World. It is going to be this tremendous album that will get lots of praise:

“Lip Critic’s 2024 Partisan debut Hex Dealer was one of the most-hyped experimental releases of that year (“Like the B-52s on ketamine” -Paste) and signaled the Brooklyn band’s arrival as a borderline-batshit creative force. Theft World is their next chapter, built again from the chaos of two drummers locked in psychic combat, a sampler that sounds like it was struck by lightning, and frontman Bret Kaser’s paranoid preacher energy. But where Hex Dealer leapt from one absurdist vignette to the next, Theft World plays like a fully locked-in transmission. Themes orbit around the concept of theft, not just as a political force or digital dilemma, but as a surreal, emotional constant. Club rhythms and hardcore breakdowns pull as much from Tyler the Creator’s ‘Igor’ and Korn as they do Skrillex and Soul Coughing, coming together to soundtrack a world that’s constantly being striped apart and resold”.

A few more albums from 1st May to cover off before moving to 8th. I have talked about Maya Hawke and Maitreya Corso in a recent feature. Not only is she this phenomenal actor who is among the best of her generation. Hawke is this singular artist with such an incredible voice. A wonderful songwriter. Her upcoming album is one you should pre-order if you can.  A busy time for Maya Hawke, her fourth studio album will sit alongside this year’s best:

“For the past couple of years, Maya Hawke has been busy in the acting world, wrapping the final season of Stranger Things and taking on a role in The Hunger Games franchise. The American singer is now returning to music, unveiling her upcoming fourth album, ‘Maitreya Corso’, and sharing its lead single, ‘Devil You Know’.

‘Devil You Know’ is a stripped-back and honest track with folk influences. Speaking about the song, she says “‘Devil You Know’ is about trying to keep ambition and greed out of the creative process. This album is about learning to protect the precious from the poisonous. Protect creation from pride. Protect love from control. Protect collaboration from jealousy.”

For her highly anticipated fourth album, set for release on May 1st, charts Hawke’s experiences of a life-changing relationship. For ‘Maitreya Corso’, Hawke has created a persona and fantasy world to allow her to explore complex feelings with more depth. Speaking about the character she has crafted, she describes her as a “magical misfit, whose sheer inability to adapt to the surrounding world allows her to create a world of her own, and to explore the positive and negative power of the ego.”

Hawke enlisted the help of regular collaborators, singer-songwriter (and new husband) Christian Lee Hutson, multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Lazar Davis, and producer Jonathan Low to bring her stories to life on ‘Maitreya Corso’.

The news of the upcoming release was accompanied by the announcement of a slew of live shows, which will be her first US tour in three years”.

The next album I will recommend is The Black Keys’ Peaches! I really like the U.S. duo, and I have been following them for years now. I would say, even if you have not heard of them or are quite new, to invest in Peaches! You can pre-order the album here:

“The Black Keys Peaches! is the Akron duo’s fourteenth studio album (their sixth since 2019), a visceral and raw 10-song collection described by singer Dan Auerbach as the band’s “most natural record” since their 2002 debut, The Big Come Up. In similar DIY spirit, the album was recorded with all musicians playing in the same room with few overdubs, and is the first record mixed entirely by the band themselves since 2006’s Magic Potion. The songs chosen reflect Auerbach and bandmate Patrick Carney’s obsessive record-collecting habit, which in recent years has escalated into an ongoing series of Record Hang DJ-set dance parties where they spin vintage 45s for packed, high-energy dancefloors in the coolest spots across the globe.
The cover art for Peaches! is based around an iconic image from Memphis-born photographer, William Eggleston, and marks the return of Patrick’s brother, Michael Carney, overseeing the art direction”.

One more album from 1st May. Another music legend to highlight. Tori Amos’s In Times of Dragons will be one you’ll have to pre-order, as she is a genius who always releases wonderful music. This is no exception. In a recent interview with The Times, Tori Amos discussed In Times of Dragons:

“As we walk round the site we bump into crew members, some of whom are staying here. Amos describes her team as “a lady pirate ship”, pointing up at a pink Jolly Roger fluttering on a mast. If that sounds eccentric, wait until you hear the new album. In Times of Dragons is a blend of southern gothic drama, pick-and-mix mythology and Game of Thrones-style fantasy that is a critique of “the cabal of puppeteering billionaires”.

Smokily sung by Amos over end-of-the-world piano, it features “angel sharks”, gay witches and an alternate Tori who, instead of marrying Hawley in the Nineties, got hitched to an evil American tycoon who is also a lizard demon. She flees from him and reunites with her daughter — whose part in the album is beautifully sung by Amos’s daughter, Natashya — before growing wings and turning into a dragon queen. Ed Sheeran this ain’t.

It all came to her, Amos says, via a selection of muses including the wizard Merlin, an Egyptian goddess by the name of Setmuk and a Celtic deity called Lugh of the Long Arm, with whom she says she had a love affair. Her husband doesn’t mind, she says. “Lugh is in a different dimension so Mark’s OK with that.”

Not everyone will believe this stuff, I suggest. “I began to learn, particularly in the Nineties, when I wanted to share the magic of music and how it came, that there were some journalists that unfortunately had stepped into cynicism,” Amos says. We have been known to do that. “They circumcised their imagination,” she adds.

Her own gifts, she insists, came through those muses. That is why, she says, “I never had to learn how to play and why I can’t teach.” Away from music, she says, “I can’t do a whole lot. I’m virtually unemployable. Some of the builders that have been building the rehearsal shed, they can do all kinds of things.” And her husband is practical. “Very practical.” All of which is just as well because “the lady pirate ship is rolling” and it needs a big and dedicated crew. “The muses barely wait for me. If I don’t show up, they’re going to go find Björk”.

I want to move to a few albums from 8th May that should be on your radar. The first you need to check out is Aldous Harding’s Train on the Island. Harding is a terrific artist that I really love. I would urge people to pre-order Train on the Island. You can have a dig for recent interviews where Aldous Harding talks about the album, but here is a little bit of information about it:

“Aldous Harding releases her fifth studio album, Train On The Island. The 10-track Train On The Island was co-produced by long-time collaborator John Parish (PJ Harvey, Dry Cleaning) at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, where the pair recorded the New Zealander’s previous bodies of work, Party (2017), Designer (2019) and Warm Chris (2022). Joining Harding and Parish on Train On The Island are pedal steel player Joe Harvey-Whyte, harpist Mali Llywelyn, synth artist Thomas Poli, drummer Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear) and Huw Evans (H. Hawkline) on bass, vocals, acoustic/electric guitar and organ”.

I have been a fan of girli for quite a long time now, so it is always exciting when she releases an album. Everyone needs to keep an eye out for it’s just my opinion. You can pre-order the album here. The moniker of London-based Amelia Toomey, GIRLI is an artist that does not get as much love as deserved. A hugely talented artist that I feel everyone needs to listen to. You will instantly get hooked:

“With her third record, girli steps fully into her most honest era yet.


The album is sharp, cohesive, and rooted in who she's always been. Growing up in North London, she absorbed the chaos and hooks of the indie sleaze scene, and now she channels that restless energy into songs that feel alive, pulsing like a sweaty gig in Camden or Shoreditch. It's classic girli alt-pop - nostalgic, chaotic, and fearless, but sharpened with a bold new edge.

girli has been teasing the new era since the end of 2025, sharing 'Better Undressed' and the powerful recent single 'Slap on the Wrist'.

Known for her shimmering, high-concept production and fearless commentary, girli now pivots toward a more grounded, girl-next-door energy, trading gloss for grit, and polish for raw, intimate expression.

Since emerging with her breakthrough sophomore album, Matriarchy, girli has carved a space in the alternative scene for bold, boundary-pushing storytelling. Her ability to merge pop essence with underground energy has earned her a tight-knit and dedicated fanbase.



As an openly LGBTQ+ artist and advocate for social change, girli continues to intertwine her personal journey with broader cultural conversations. Her past work has touched on themes of identity, politics, mental health, and more - and this new chapter builds on that same spirit of activism, but through a softer, more human lens”.

Actually, two more 8th May albums that I need to cover off. Lykke Li’s The Afterparty is the first of them. Again, I have been listening to Li for a long time and always love what she puts into the world. You can pre-order The Afterparty here. Another case of there being scant information about the album, I am including what there is to know:

“Lykke Li’s The Afterparty is a journey through the night, turning the collective feeling of hopelessness into a celebratory revenge. With hooky choruses, maximalist arrangements and “apocalyptic bongos,” The Afterparty asks the eternal question. It’s 4am: can we have one last euphoric dance before the hangover crushes us? Featuring a limited vinyl with a transparent printed outer sleeve and exclusive stunning 20-page insert, it’s as much a visual artifact as it is a sonic one”.

Quite a few more albums to cover off. However prior to getting to those out on 15th May, one more from 8th. MUNA’s Dancing on The Wall is worthy of recommendation. Such a brilliant group, they are comprised of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson, they are signed to the Saddest Factory label. Founded by Phoebe Bridgers, this is a label housing artists that you need to know. You can pre-order Dancing on the Wall here:

“Muna’s journey has always been about holding space for the complex, messy, ecstatic realities of life, and with their fourth album, Dancing On The Wall, they’ve never been sharper, darker, or more exhilarating. Emerging from the sparkly, confetti-strewn heights of their 2022 self-titled record, Muna now channel the anxious, uncertain energy of living in a Los Angeles defined by political tension, environmental decay, and the quiet pressures of millennial precarity.

The result is a record that feels both intimate and spectacular, a pop world built with teeth, wit, and emotional resonance, a soundtrack for hearts simultaneously on fire and observing the chaos around them. Across the record, Muna explores desire, intimacy, and connection against a backdrop of a world in flux. There’s a quiet reckoning throughout the album with how to keep living, loving, and reaching for one another while bearing witness to political brutality and systemic violence and how joy survives without denial.

The record is produced by Naomi McPherson, with their trademark attention to detail blending effortlessly with bandmate Josette Maskin’s  well-honed behind-the-scenes pop technique to create living, breathing worlds for lead singer Katie Gavin’s incisive lyricism and signature voice. Dancing On The Wall blends euphoric sonic landscapes with sharp, human storytelling. The album reflects a fiercely self-directed creative process, one shaped by instinct, trust, and total artistic control. It feels lived-in, urgent, and cinematic, a reflection of a generation navigating uncertainty while refusing to let go of joy.

With this album, Muna proves once again that pop can be daring, intimate, and socially conscious all at once: a record that doesn’t just capture the moment, but distills it into a world you want to inhabit”.

Two albums from 15th May I want to bring to your attention. The first is Dua Saleh’s Of Earth & Wires. You might not know about her work, though she is such a special artist that you need to listen to. You can pre-order here album here:

“Sudanese-American artist Dua Saleh continues their boundless ascent with Of Earth and Wires, a resolutely warm, spiritual, and frenetic album exploring notions of home, humanity, and renewal.

Featuring contributions from Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), aja monet, Gaidaa, and more, Saleh threads and deconstructs indie, R&B, and electronic pop with flashes of Sudanese folk, UK dance, and reggaeton, sounds intrinsic to their story, all held together by ambitious, future-facing production and clear-eyed lyricism.

Saleh’s soulful, gritty, shape-shifting style has found fans from The New York Times to NME, alongside their breakout role in the Netflix series Sex Education, making 2024's Ghostly International debut, I Should Call Them, a proper arrival. The highly anticipated Of Earth and Wires responds to the moment as both a watershed in their career and an urgent dialogue with struggles faced on a universal level.

In addition to their musical endeavors, Dua is a rising actor with a breakout role in the well-loved Netflix series Sex Education, where they starred as Cal Bowman for three seasons”.

An album that I can see being in line for awards and sitting with the best of 2026 is Maisie Peters’s Florescence. I am writing a feature about albums that might get shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. This one is coming a bit late for me to include in that, though I will revisit the feature, as I think Fluorescence could be a contender. Here is where you can order your copy:

“Chart topping British singer-songwriter Maisie Peters returns with much anticipated third studio album Florescence, co-produced with 2x Grammy Winner Ian Fitchuck with collaborators including Marcus Mumford and Julia Michaels. Florescence reflects on how the right love can help heal the wrong ones. It’s an album about perspective, self-realisation, healing, and ultimately, learning how to flourish. This lands as Maisie’s first new LP since she became the youngest solo British female artist in almost a decade to land a UK No.1 album with The Good Witch back in 2023. Since then, she’s had the A-list co-signs via Phoebe Bridgers, Sam Smith and Olivia Rodrigo. She’s had a fiercely devoted fandom flock to headline tours around the world. And she’s played shows from Wembley Arena, to Glastonbury, to stadium slots with Taylor Swift and Coldplay.

“Florescence means ‘the process of flowering, of developing richly and fully’ and to me, this album describes exactly that. These 15 tracks depict a blossoming of myself from ages 23 to 25 and a blossoming of a true real love that anchors both me and this record. It tells the story of the last few long winters, with all of their villains and thorns, heartbreaks and rains, and it leads you, by the end, into a perfect English spring, into the hope and catharsis that comes when the first wildflower blooms. It’s a true representation of healing, of finding hope and peace and strength not just in somebody else, but in yourself. It is clear skies, cherry pits on the grass, windows flung open - it is Sussex country roads and London corner shop wine that leaves a stain when you kiss. It is the feeling of flying, then falling, then flying again. It is knowing that there was a point to all the sadness of before, and the point is the woman you see in this mirror now, and the person you see by her side. Love is weaved into every strand of every song on this album and for good reason - love is timeless, love is pure, love is organic and simple and effortless and real. I hope you find this album to be that as well”.

There are three albums from 22nd May that are well worth pre-ordering. I know that people cannot get all of the albums I recommend, so this is more of a suggestion. Though May features so many great albums. Alela Diane’s Who's Keeping Time? is one you will want to pre-order:

“In circles and ever changing, Who’s Keeping Time? is a musing on life’s seasons—fleeting truths of beauty and chaos.  For 10 days in August of 2025, we made this record in the attic of my 1892 Victorian home in Portland, Oregon, where all the songs were written.  The scene felt kindred to a mouse house: a cozy world built of antique quilts,  musical instruments, sound baffles, relics, marigolds, great-grandma’s dolls, old photographs, paintings and brightly colored rugs.  Sunshine poured through the skylights as Maggie the cat slept atop the pre-amps and inside guitar cases. We played these songs together in one room: no click tracks, no tricks, and no fuss. This is music from the hearts and breathing bodies of human beings, imperfect as we may be.

I hope we can all take pause, and remember what is real — thanks for listening”.

Let’s move to Bleachers’ everyone for ten minutes. You might not know this band or have heard one or two of their songs. However, they are brilliant and they are worthy of fonder investigation. You can pre-order their forthcoming album here:

“Bleachers return with their latest album everyone for ten minutes, continuing the project’s evolution under the direction of acclaimed singer, songwriter, musician, and producer Jack Antonoff, an eleven-time Grammy Award winner. Over the past decade, Bleachers have cultivated a passionate global fanbase, celebrated for high-energy live performances and a strong sense of connection with their audience. Their previous self-titled fourth studio album marked a major milestone for the band, highlighted by a sold-out Madison Square Garden performance and widespread critical recognition, further solidifying their place in modern pop rock”.

One more album from 22nd May that I want to highlight. It is Ed O'Brien’s Blue Morpho. Guitarist in Radiohead, his solo work is fabulous. You should pre-order Blue Morpho. I am looking forward to it. People always expecting band members to repeat what they do in their solo work, though Ed O’Brien’s solo work is detached and distinct from Radiohead:

“Ed O'Brien, the acclaimed guitarist and singer-songwriter known for his role in Radiohead, announces Blue Morpho, his absorbing, second solo album and first under his own name.

Named for the iridescent butterfly, Blue Morpho was written during lockdown and recorded at The Church Studio, London and Seven Sound in Wales. The tranquil Welsh countryside proved inspirational, capturing a sense of reflection, healing, and acceptance. Musically the album blends a collage of hypnotic psych-folk, jazz, trip- hop, radiant guitars and rhythm sections. Blue Morpho marks a fresh and deeply personal chapter in O'Brien's musical journey.

Produced by Paul Epworth (Adele, Coldplay), with additional production from Riley MacIntyre (Ezra Collective), and mixed by Ben Baptie (Sault, Little Simz). The album features an array of musicians, such as Shabaka Hutchings (flute), Dave Okumu (guitars, bass), Philip Selway (drums), and The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra”.

The first of three albums from 29th May that you should get is Iceage’s For Love of Grace & the Hereafter. You can pre-order the album here. Not a lot out there about the album. However, this is an incredible band that people need show support for. Here is what is out there for the incredible Love of Grace & the Hereafter:

“For Love of Grace and the Hereafter is the sixth studio album from beloved Danish quintet Iceage. Across the sprawling, twelve song arc of the album, a universe of love variously expands and contracts in an eternal tango, Elias Rønnenfelt’s lyrics burn with apocalyptic intimacy while the band masterfully maneuvers within their shape-shifting scenery of feral post-punk”.

It is going to be hard to top Paul McCartney’s The Boys of Dungeon Lane when it comes to the biggest albums of the year. Still such a genius, the first single from the album, Days We Left Behind, is emotional and classic Macca. His modern albums are really great, though some were not sold on McCartney III from 2020. I do feel like The Boys of Dungeon Lane will get better reviews. It seems like it going to be one of his most personal albums. You can pre-order the album here:

“The Boys of Dungeon Lane is a collection of rare and revealing glimpses into memories never-before shared, along with some newly inspired love songs, from one of the most culturally significant figures of our time. These extraordinary new songs find Paul writing with rare openness about his childhood in post-war Liverpool, the resilience of his parents, and early adventures shared with George Harrison and John Lennon long before the world had ever heard of Beatlemania”.

The final album from May that I want to recommend is from Violet Grohl. Be Sweet to Me is her debut. You can pre-order it here. This is going to be one of the best albums of 2026. I say that about quite a few, though this might top the list:

“Be Sweet To Me is the debut album by Violet Grohl. Featuring 11 tracks, including the single, “THUM.”

The first years spent entering adulthood come with a lot of big life decisions, and for Violet Grohl, that Be Sweet To Me.was seeking producers and collaborators for her debut album,

“Going into the studio and recording felt like the path that I was supposed to be on,” the 19-year-old says. Grohl immediately clicked with producer Justin Raisen (Kim Gordon, Yves Tumor,Angel Olsen). “My first impression was that she’s beyond her years. She has a golden voice, and she’s unapologetically herself,” says Raisen.

Be Sweet To Me was recorded from late 2024 into early 2025 at Raisen’s Los Angeles home studio alongside musicians assembled in the spirit of the Wrecking Crew session players in the ’60s and ’70s. The first song Violet wrote with her collaborators, a fuzzy ripper called “Thum,” was influenced by the old-school packaging of anti-nail-biting polish that Grohl brought into the studio. “Self help me/Self help myself/Chew my bitter fingers,” she snarls in a honeyed voice over ecstatic squall.

Like “Thum,” the songs on Be Sweet To Me were conjured from the immediate present and tend to be impressionistic, colored by Grohl’s love of film, particularly the work of David Lynch. Inspired by a vintage t-shirt advertising a phone sex line, “595” is a sly and sexy slasher filled with jolts of noise and a killer chorus: “I'll be your 1-900 G spot, baby/595 I'm on the line/You won't last.” The slippery and melodic “Bug In A Cake” recalls the paranormal activities surrounding Grohl’s recent move into the home of her late paternal grandma, a beloved “guiding force” in her life. “Turn the TV off so it turns back on/Come on, grandma, play me your favorite song,” Grohl roars.

“Everything was written in the studio,” Grohl says. “I would come in with an inspiration playlist, we would hang and listen for a little while, and then start writing.” “Violet is so well-versed in all styles of music; every playlist was different,” says Raisen, describing trip hop, new wave, Scandinavian black metal, ’70s acoustic folk, and vocal jazz. “She showed me a number of things that I wasn't familiar with; her encyclopedic knowledge of music is crazy,” he continues.

Alternative music from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s is a perpetual influence. “There’s something so powerful about that period of music, from the messaging to the visuals, it’s authentic and raw.” Pixies, Soundgarden, Cocteau Twins, The Breeders, PJ Harvey, The Muffs, Björk, Alice in Chains, L7, Juliana Hatfield: “I've listened to that stuff since I was a kid,” Grohl says. “That's what my dad was playing in the car on the way to school.”

“Music, whether it’s making it or just loving it, is a key thing that connects my family,” Grohl says, noting her father, Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, and her paternal grandparents, who played flute and sang in local groups. Grohl has been singing and playing music as long as she can remember, teaching herself how to play ukulele, and later guitar, hauling the instruments around on both school and tour bus. “Around the time I was 12, it clicked for me that I love watching other people make music, and maybe I could too,” she says. "I had been writing poetry as well, and it kick-started the drive to want to turn painful experiences into art.”

Previously, Grohl’s songwriting practice had been shy and solitary, often taking place in the privacy of her bedroom. “Working in a collaborative space helped me open up to sharing stuff lyrically,” she says. “But it also opened up the possibility to experiment with different genres and instrumentations that maybe I wouldn't typically choose.”

Mid-way through recording the energy of the Be Sweet To Me sessions shifted. “The vibe I had originally intended no longer felt authentic to how I was feeling,” she says. “I needed sludge, droning guitars, and crazy reverb. It felt really good to be able to transmute whatever pain and sadness I was feeling into something tangible.” “Applefish” is a grungy slowcore ballad that slips beneath the surface, weighed down by the heaviness of mortality, while the swirling shoegazer “Last Day I Loved You” describes “losing touch with my sense of self,” per Grohl. Meanwhile, “Cool Buzz” is about “poking fun at moral inconsistencies in punk guys who preach progressive politics, but then in their own musical spaces won't let women have a chance,” says Grohl. “Shoot my favorite arrow/Through the mind that's narrow,” she coolly taunts over music worthy of windmill kicks and circle pits.

The phrase Be Sweet To Me is an inside joke amongst Grohl and her friends, a white flag of surrender when teasing becomes too much. It’s a fitting title for a record and artist unafraid to face life’s more raw moments while still embracing tenderness with elegance and grace”.

Plenty to choose from when it comes to albums out next month that you’ll want to own. Big artists like Melanie C and Paul McCartney alongside Iceage and GIRLI. A great selection and variety that should suit all tastes. The start of a really productive time of the year when so many huge albums will drop, I think things will get even better as we move int June and July. In terms of albums, it is going to be…

A hot summer.

FEATURE: We Think You Are Really Cool…? Does Kate Bush Have the Necessary Pull to Appeal to Young Music Fans?

FEATURE:

 

 

We Think You Are Really Cool…?

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot at Worx Studios, London for the stunning ‘Birdfish’ photo in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

Does Kate Bush Have the Necessary Pull to Appeal to Young Music Fans?

__________

IN this Kate Bush feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performs Suspended in Gaffa on the French T.V. show, Champs Elysees, in October 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Araldo Di Crollalanza/Rex Features

there are a few things that I want to cover off and explore. The first thing to look at is this recent tweet from Kaleidoscope Eyed Girl: “kate bush doesn't have the ‘cool factor’ that björk, david bowie, madonna, fiona apple, and pj harvey have with young music nerds and musictwt in particular. she's too outdated for many of them”. This did cause some reaction and interesting discussion. I recently published a feature, discussing Kate Bush as this fashion icon. Maybe more under the radar or less extravagant than a Bowie or Björk, I argue that she is more versatile and inventive than most artists who have lived. From comfy and high street looks through to sexy, stylish and unusual, her repertoire, wardrobe and portfolio is as colorful, inventive, influential and standout than any. I do wonder about that cool factor. Today, I feel a lot of the major Pop artists, consciously or not, are cool. That sense that they break through and connect with young listeners if they have a certain element to them. Whether that is their clothing or how they present themselves on social media, there is still an emphasis on style and looks. The industry also still a bit exploitative when it comes to women and sex appeal. Marketing female artists in a different way to men. Though many women are reclaiming their autonomy and are body-positive in their approach. I was talking with someone recently about Kate Bush, who said that she become cool again when Stranger Things launched Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) back into the consciousness. A 1985 song that had new lease in the 2020s, there was this insinuation that Kate Bush was not cool before.

Arguably, like some of her peers, Bush had her decade. A time when she was cool. You could say that was the 1980s. In the 1990s, like Bowie in fact, she was not talked about or seen as relevant or at her best. However, like all the best artists, she regained footing and relevance. That tweet struck me. Artists like Fiona Apple, Madonna and Björk are cool with young music listeners in part because of how they dress and that they are visible. Fiona Apple less so, arguably, but still undeniably cool in terms of attitude and how her music has translated and resonated with a new generation. Can we say that Bush, through lack of prolific output and public visibility, is seen in a particular way? Hounds of Love is a cool album, though do we narrowly define her and is there this feeling that she was relevant in the 1980s and outdated now? Listen to 2005’s Aerial and 2011’s 50 Words for Snow and they may be considered more middle-aged, for a BBC Radio 2 audience or lacking edge or modern significance. The former album was released in 2005; the latter in 2011. You can say that Madonna is on trend and very much innovating. Bowie produced one of his best alums, Blackstar, before his death in 2016. Fiona Apple released Fetch the Bolt Cutters in 2020. A masterpiece. Björk has new material coming out and is still a fashion icon. A style of her own. Regardless of age, these artists are fresh and still relevant. It would be worrying to think that Kate Bush is dustier and less important. However, you can appreciate why some younger listeners might not instantly attach themselves to her work. I feel that young listeners are discovering Kate Bush and loving her because of her originality and legacy. The fact that everything is in the music. I know she might not have that visual aesthetic and resonance that some icons do, though that is purely aesthetic and fashion. In an Instagram age, can music alone connect? What I mean is that artists like Madonna are on platforms and they have this updated, visual engagement. They can be considered more fashionable and cooler. Kate Bush does not seemingly have that advantage.

IN THIS PHOTO: PinkPantheress/PHOTO CREDIT: Simon Albert Khan for Interview Magazine

I would say that she is definitely hugely relevant and influential. That may not be equivalent to cool and an ingredient that cuts through to young audiences, though think about artists today who are inspired by her. Major Pop artists such as Charli xcx and Chappell Roan are fans. Young listeners learn about Kate Bush because artists are talking about her, and you can detect Bush’s influence in their work. It is curious whether an artist has a cool aspect and that special something is what is needed to truly captivate the young. Kate Bush has not released an album since 2011, and she has not been photographed in public for over a decade. Her music is played on radio, but there is a narrow selection of songs. That tweet that I started out with seems to associate the outward and visible with an artist’s endurance and cool. It might suggest a shallowness in terms of young listeners and what appeals to them. Or that we live in an age where photos, the visual and cool are currencies stronger than anything else. However, one cannot deny Kate Bush is cool through her association with modern artists shouting her out. In an interview with fellow artist Clairo, artist and producer PinkPantheress talked about Kate Bush. Maybe this contradicts my point somewhat, but this is what PinkPantheress said: “I value mystery above all else. It's really beautiful to be someone who hides away and then emerges when a musical moment arises. Like Kate Bush. She's also one of my inspirations”. You can see the interview here. Maybe you would not think so, though I would say that Bush remaining popular and relevant without being out in public and showing her face is incredibly cool. The brilliance of her music and her sheer genius does not require her to dress a certain way or be a fashion icon – even though she is. Bush can go away and then release an album after many years and then explodes. Today, artists have to grind, constantly promote and post photos of themselves. That is what is required. The suggestion too that this is cool. Lots of photos get lots of likes. Less to do with the music and more to do with what the artist looks like. Bush is from a different time and is more traditional. I can appreciated how Madonna might speak to young listeners because she is out there releasing music seen as more accessible and nearer the mainstream – or what is popular and common. Kate Bush more niche or outside of that.

Do young generations require certain things from legacy artists for them to be picked up and appreciated en masse? Perhaps there is an argument in that. I don’t think it is a fault of Kate Bush. She is not going to change herself and kowtow to modern demands and be all on Instagram and change her music direction. I think that the issue lies with what people value in an artist and how there is this dependence on visuals and the aesthetic of an artist. Unless you are cool and all over social media then you are not worth that much. Kate Bush might not seem the coolest out there, but the more you delve and read about her, you realise that is not the case. The weird and wonderful details. Look at her photoshoots and some things she has done through the years. Shot with a fake/toy crocodile (maybe an alligator, I am not sure) in the 1970s when in Amsterdam. Smoking weed and getting a slight telling off from Donald Sutherland when he filmed with her. How she released these videos that were so unusual and ahead of their time. Not allowed to play In the Warm Room on Ask Aspel in 1978, as it was deemed too sexual and inappropriate for a young audience. She instead performed Kashka from Baghdad – a song about two gay men! Also, how she was often bold and risqué. Her music brought in styles and sounds from around the world. She was confident and forceful when needed. Dealing with constant sexism and misogyny with professionalism. How incredibly kooky and wonderful odd she was at times. She was doing this long before many artists who followed who are seen as cooler or more popular with young audiences. I have been talking about how Bush’s music videos need to be upgraded to HD and that visual side needs to be clearer and shared again. I think this would help. It can be hard to keep a momentum or simply start a new trend and appeal to young listeners if there is not something visual out there. Or a gravitational pull. People not necessarily playing her videos. I wrote how The Beach Boys and The Beatles had special videos. New ones for older songs. The Beach Boys’ ones are especially great. Other artists have this too. I would love to see some of Kate Bush’s singles or album tracks given a brilliant new video. I previously wrote how Mrs. Bartolozzi from Aerial should have a video for it. She might not be a Kate Bush fan, but I am a fan of Carla Woodcock.

She is a tremendous actor and one of Britain’s greatest talents. I listen to Houdini – my favourite Kate Bush song, it is the final track from 1982’s The Dreaming – and how she would be perfect in that video. Playing Harry Houdini's wife, Bess. You can read more about the track here. Although I think dark-haired, I feel that Carla Woodcock would make a great fit. I am spit-balling, but bringing in modern and brilliant actors to appear in Kate Bush videos would help a connection. Make her seem ‘cooler’. This is a topic I might not be doing full justice to. That feeling that Kate Bush might be outdated. When she does release a new album, it will be similar to her more recent work and there will be no T.V. appearances, live work or much in the way of visuals. Think about how David Bowie has exhibitions, reissued material and documentaries. Madonna very much still going strong. Fiona Apple one of the coolest artists around, still breaking ground decades after she started making music. For Kate Bush, and taking Stranger Things out of the equation, what is going to be the thing that keeps her firm in the conversation and ensures she is relevant to modern listeners? It is not incumbent on her to do that. We need to talk about her more and stop defining her by one song or image. She is one of the most innovative and brilliant artists ever. A genius producer. The sheer number of modern queens she has influenced. Dig deeper and you not only realise Kate Bush is one of the coolest artists ever. She has set records, broken ground and paved the way for so many others. Fans and newcomers alike need to do more. Perhaps be less fashion/image-focused and listen to the full spectrum of her music. Then, I do feel that Kate Bush will not seem outdated or someone only cool or worthy in the 1980s. This is the very least that is owed to…

THIS music queen.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Hannah Peel

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel McCarthy

Hannah Peel

__________

THIS is one artist/composer…

that I would love to see live as I can imagine her shows are truly spectacular. Hannah Peel plays London’s Barbican in October, so I may have to go along to that show. It seems weird putting her in my Spotlight feature, as she is an established artist. However, it offers me a chance to shine a light on her new work. Peel is one of the world’s greatest composers. In terms of what she has created. In terms of the soundtracks she has created, including Bring Them Down, Insomnia, Silent Roar and Bring Them Down. Midwinter Break is her latest soundtrack. She has also released studio albums such as 2021’s Fir Wave. I wonder if there will be another studio album from Peel. I am going to pop in a playlist of her best work to date. There are a couple of interviews that I want to come to. Here is a little bit of background to the amazing Hannah Peel: “Mercury Prize, Ivor Novello and Emmy-nominated, RTS and Music Producers Guild winning composer, with a flow of solo albums and collaborative releases, Hannah joins the dots between science, nature and the creative arts, through her explorative approach to electronic, classical and traditional music From her own solo albums to composing soundtracks like Game of Thrones: The last Watch, or to orchestrating and conducting for artists like Paul Weller, her work is ambitious, forward-looking, always adapting and re-inventing new genres and hybrid musical forms Hannah is a regular weekly broadcaster for BBC Radio 3’s Night Tracks”. Born in Northern Ireland but now based in northern England, this Ivor Novello award-winning composer, producer and broadcaster is incredibly talented. I would advise everyone to listen to Night Tracks, as it is this gorgeous, calming and incredible blends of music. It is “An adventurous, immersive soundtrack for late-night listening, from classical to contemporary and everything in between”. Hosted alongside Sara Mohr-Pietsch, I do really love this series.

I think what is so amazing is how adaptable and versatile Hannah Peel is as a composer. Artists do shift between albums, though many of them do not evolve so greatly between albums. Composers like Hannah Peel do not get the attention they deserve. The majesty and consistent brilliance of her work. Peel is one of the truly great composers. Classical music is an area where men still dominate. There is sexism and sexual abuse that is not discussed enough. Gender inequality remains significant, with men dominating, holding over 90% of orchestral performance slots as of 2024. Despite some  progress, women composers receive minimal representation, often less than 10% of programming, while female musicians face structural barriers, including gendered pay gaps and a sharp decline in visibility. These are shocking statistics. Last summer, this article shows that there has been no real improvement. No huge efforts by the music industry to overturn sexism and inequality. I want to come to a couple of recent interviews. It seems like a new album is coming. It is amazing how prolific Hannah Peel is. 15 Questions spoke with Peel recently. Peel said how “I prefer scores that don’t tell us how to feel, that support the narrative and characters and allows us viewers to escape without thinking about it”:

“Hannah Peel's new album The Endless Dance, a collaboration with Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang, is out May 22nd 2026 via Real World.

Current event: Hannah Peel appears at the Film Composers Panel with the Alliance for Women Film Composers (12 April, 11am at Royal College of Music, London) as part of the 2026 edition of the London Soundtrack Festival – London’s first-ever festival dedicated to celebrating the music of film, TV and games. You can check out the full line-up at https://londonsoundtrack.com/whats-on/.

Recommendations for Bangor, Northern Ireland: My favourite place to eat and take time out, is a café restaurant on the coast called ‘The Starfish’. It overlooks the sea and the house the café is in, is like a Victorian traveller’s treasure trove. The food is the best around too. On a warm day, you can drink your coffee in the garden whilst dreaming of where the sea might carry you.

Shoutouts: Follow positivenewsuk on insta for nice world things … and for an alt news outlet I’m loving The Nerve (fearless independent journalism) and those that are leading it. Good on them, we need it.

Which composers, or soundtracks captured your imagination in the beginning? What scenes or movies drew you in through their use of music?

In the very beginning …The score to Michael Nyman's The Piano. Wow that got played everywhere, everyone I knew had bought, borrowed or stole the book. If you had a piano you played it. Pretty addictive as a youngster to play music that was in an actual film!

But when I heard the score to Hable Con Ella by Alberto Iglesias, it was the first to actually tune my ears into something different. Sombre and obsessively romantic.

How would you rate the importance of soundtracks and film music for the movie as a whole? How do you see the relationship between image and sound in a movie?

That’s such a fascinating question.

You know films like The Taste Of Things (2023), the choice to not have music is such an integral part of the film. It’s just not needed at all. The sounds evoke the smells and a score might have taken away from the deep realistic connection of the chef and her food.

And yet, some need music so much they would be lost without it. I can’t imagine Star Wars with no music! It paints the whole world instantly and is completely integral.

I’m not sure that answers your questions directly, but I do know I prefer scores that don’t tell us how to feel, that support the narrative and characters and allows us viewers to escape without thinking about it. The composer is there and magically they are not, without anyone noticing!

Can you take me through your process of composing a soundtrack on the basis of a movie that's particularly dear to you, please?

Always, it’s so different but as the documentary film Underland has just been released after 5 years of making the score (a few years longer for the filmmakers).

It’s one of my favourites because I had read the book, way before I’d known about the film and just somehow fell into the job after contacting the author, Robert MacFarlane.

The project can change so much over that length of time, and to be honest, my scoring abilities had definitely improved by the time we recorded it all! There was a lot of music by the end …

Read the script (or in this case the book)

A list of instruments that could suit that sound world

Exploring that palate with no footage to begin with

Building up enough demos that feel comfortable with the films narrative and fit with the director’s conversations with you

Start to play with the ideas with early footage.

Record some instruments to help the process. In this case it was an explorative session with ancient horn player John Kenny. The sounds he created suited us needing this ‘voice’ of the underworld
More footage, more music and edits.

Many thoughts of “whose music stem is this? Okay, it’s mine, I don’t remember writing this.”

Once the final film edit is coming together; like a giant puzzle, start piecing all the stems together and pieces over 5 years

Picture lock arrives – work alongside the sound designer, start finalising the music and get cues signed off!

Orchestrate – choir, string ensemble, percussion.

Prep for mixing and then send all to be mixed.

Visit the dub and make some notes

Music edit a little more, suggest any extra ideas whilst in the room with everyone
Celebrate with a drink in the present moment, before running for a train or starting on the next score.

Different composers could potentially approach the same scene with strikingly different music. Would you say there can be 'wrong' and 'right' musical decisions for some scenes? In which way can some film music be considered 'definitive'?

The music can change everything! So yes on that basis there can definitely be choices to what is best suited.

For example, in Debrah’s childhood scene in ‘Once Upon A Time In America’ … I just can’t imagine anything other than the utterly perfect Morricone orchestral music as she dances”.

I am going to end with Focus Features and their interview around the soundtrack for Midwinter Break. Hannah Peel discussing her composing this incredible, powerful and hugely impressive score. Truly, Hannah Peel is one of the world’s great music talents. She has so much passion and commitment for everything that she does:

“In Polly Findlay’s Midwinter Break, when Stella and Gerry (Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds), a long-married couple living in Glasgow, take an impromptu getaway to Amsterdam, the postcard scenery and time away invite both to reflect on their life together and the mysterious tragedy that forced them to leave Belfast years before. Adapted from Bernard MacLaverty’s acclaimed novel by the author and screenwriter Nick Payne, the film creates an almost musical arrangement of internal meditation, comfortable chatter, shared moments, and ineffable loneliness. The Associated Press wrote, “This is a relationship that’s all about the small moments and what’s left unsaid.”

To score the film, Findlay turned to the innovative composer Hannah Peel, having heard her innovative score for a theater piece. The award-winning Northern Irish composer has worked in TV, film, and theater creating scores noted for the way they cross boundaries between electronic, live instrumentation, and sound design. Her thoughtful approach in Midwinter Break created an intimate conversation with Findlay’s cinematic style. “Findlay keeps things as elegant as possible in the director’s chair, going in for close-ups wherever she can to let the actors’ faces tell the story and sparingly utilizing the potent emotionality of Hannah Peel’s score,” write Next Best Picture.

How did you get involved in scoring Midwinter Break?

I was the composer on a National Theatre staging of Brian Friel’s Dancing At Lughnasa in London and Polly had heard the music. She and the team then asked if I was interested in being part of the film. I hadn’t read the script or seen a cut at this point, but after the first few minutes of our meeting, I knew I wanted to be involved.

What did you see as your biggest creative challenge in scoring the film?

It wasn’t necessarily a challenge, but being from Northern Ireland and having to leave when young after witnessing bombs, I could personally understand some of the underlying trauma of the main characters. So, my instinct was mostly about honing in on that—figuring out how and what that would sound like; asking questions like what role does tradition play and how that is affected or changed when you leave your home.

What sort of instrumentation did you use for the score?

Aside from myself on piano and Alice on cello, I recorded a string quintet, harp, clarinet, and soprano voice. We wanted an intimate quartet sound but the quintet was essential for the rich addition of a double bass. The playing style was also important, having a breathiness to bow styles meant that the strings could sit within intimate moments of the movie. The harpist, Esther Swift, is a wonderful folk singer and classical harpist so she instantly understood how I was approaching the parts.

What do you hope people take away from Midwinter Break?

Polly’s work is focused on detail and finding space between the noise. I hope people will see and enjoy the beauty in this and recognize how compassion and love for each other can continuously grow, no matter what age”.

I have loved Hannah Peel’s work for years now. I wanted to spotlight her again because she has new work out and live dates. I will try and see her at the Barbican later this year. I would love to interview her one day. She is a staggering talent. Go and follow Hannah Peel. A wonderful broadcaster, composer, producer and artist, Peel will continue to produce the most spellbinding and original work for…

MANY years to come.

__________

Follow Hannah Peel

Official:

https://www.hannahpeel.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hannahpeelmusic/

Twitter:

https://x.com/Hanpeel

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/HannahPeelMusic

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/hannahpeelmusic/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3LRldYGJpCAQT5cZKQyi7o?si=xq_UhkMsRSuOUitrXiNx4Q

FEATURE: I Begin to Wonder: Will There Be New Music from the Amazing Dannii Minogue?

FEATURE:

 

 

I Begin to Wonder

IN THIS PHOTO: Dannii Minogue shot for Attitude in 2025/PHOTO CREDIT: Mark Cant

Will There Be New Music from the Amazing Dannii Minogue?

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THIS year is quite…

PHOTO CREDIT: Pedro Alvarez/The Guardian

a significant one for Dannii Minogue. One half of possibly the most famous musical sibling pairings ever, she turns fifty-five in October. Whilst Kylie Minogue continues to put out incredible albums and go on these acclaimed tours, there has not been as much music from Dannii Minogue. I am a big fan of Kylie Minogue and have been since a child, and I also listened to Dannii Minogue’s music growing up. That brings me to her first international album, Love and Kisses. This was released on 3rd June, 1991. It has its thirty-fifth anniversary, so I wonder whether Dannii Minogue will celebrate it. Love and Kisses went to number eight in the U.K. and did receive some positive reviews. On 30th July, 2025, production for Australian/U.K. co-commissioned series, Imposter, announced that Minogue had been cast to the series, in her first major television role since Home and Away. Minogue is busy with television work at the moment, though I wonder whether she will bring out new music. I would love to see the Minogue sisters take to the stage together or even combine on record. The two albums she has released this century have been terrific. That makes the albums sound ancient, but they were both released in the first decade of this century. Neon Nights came out in 2003 and won Dannii Minogue some of the best reviews of her career. Seen as a cult classic and lauded because of its seamless blend of genres and styles, Dannii Minogue then followed that with 2007’s Club Disco. Arguably her best album, it was this great duo of albums. Not to compare Dannii Minogue to her sister, but Kylie released Light Years in 2000 and Fever in 2001. A remarkable couple of albums seen as a reinvention, there was this comparison when Dannii Minogue released these two magnificent albums, Neon Nights and Club Disco. Although those albums did not get the true credit they deserve.

I do feel like that was the start of a new chapter for Dannii Minogue. Love and Kisses has that big anniversary coming later in the year. I wonder whether it will spark something in Minogue and she is thinking of another album. There would definitely be call for it. I want to bring a couple of fairly recent interviews in with Dannii Minogue. A hugely important artist who I feel has material up her sleeve. I do want to come to a 2023 interview with The Guardian. Dannii Minogue was being interviewed about the new show, I Kissed a Boy. Minogue is this L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ champion, and she won huge praise for her presenting on this show. She did mention how she has been asked about music:

“Minogue’s coronation almost certainly took place some time between the early 90s, when she was one of the first bona fide pop stars to play G-A-Y nightclub in London, and this February, when she delighted crowds at Sydney WorldPride with her surprise duet with her sister, Kylie. Maybe it was when she sang at Pride in London in 1997, or when she posed naked except for a red ribbon on World Aids Day in 2004.

“This has been a part of my life since I started working, since I was a child,” she says. Now 51, Minogue began her career on Young Talent Time, a popular Australian variety show. “I knew there were people that I worked with who were gay, and I just thought that was completely normal.”

In the 90s, the media were not so progressive. “Artists were terrified,” she says. “Outing people was a thing.” For many, performing at gay bars wasn’t an option: gay artists didn’t want to be outed and straight artists were worried they would be deemed gay by association. “I’ve heard so many stories of people who were told: ‘No, you can’t be visible … that is gonna kill your career.’ I just thought: ‘Stuff it – say what you want about me, because you do anyway!’”

This is how a glammed-up Minogue finds herself in a photography studio to promote BBC Three’s new gay dating show, I Kissed a Boy. “I can’t believe we’re in 2023 saying it’s Britain’s first gay dating show ever. When those words spill out of my mouth, I’m in shock,” says Minogue. She loves being back in the UK, but is struggling with the separation from her 12-year-old son, Ethan. Still, she says: “It’s great for his growth … And mine!” I am about a foot taller than the 5ft 2in (1.57m) Minogue, and a lot less striking (she is wearing a black, off-the-shoulder evening gown), so it’s hard not to feel like Shrek next to her on the sofa.

Her recording career bounced back, with a trio of albums showcasing a more mature, electro-dance-pop sound. But after the release of Club Disco (2007), Minogue was ready to step back. That decision was confirmed in 2010 when she had her son with her then-partner, the former rugby player Kris Smith. “It takes a toll on your body, touring. Now, I get asked a lot about music and I’m like: it’s incredibly hard for me to do that the way I want to do it and be a mum the way I want to be.” It is impossible, she says, not to think about bath time and bedtime on stage. “It’s really oil and water.”

Still, she did manage nine Top 10 UK singles. Does she feel her music career is underrated? “It’s always been and always will be compared with Kylie’s success,” she says. “But all I can do is be happy with what I’ve done. If I look at that on its own: amazing. But I also don’t compare myself with Beyoncé or Mariah Carey”.

Maybe Dannii Minogue sees music as something in the past. The legacy she has left. What is notable is how what an impression her music has made. I will end with Classic Pop and their 2025 interview. Speaking with Dannii Minogue fifteen years after Neon Nights was released – an album compared to Kylie Minogue’s Fever and Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor -, Minogue reflects on a career turning point:

“Neon Nights was, in a sense, validation for Minogue, who, in contrast to her older sibling, Kylie, has had a bit of a raw deal from the media over the years. Her close friend, author Kathy Lette, has referred to the perception that Dannii was: “The B-side to Kylie’s A.” Not only is this an unfair perception, it’s also inaccurate. Dannii, after all, made it big before Kylie, rising to prominence in the early 80s in the Australian television talent show Young Talent Time.

“I was the one who invited Kylie on the show to come and sing with me. I was proud of my sister and we did a duet of Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves. I wanted to show everyone, this is my sister and she sings, too. Then she came on tour with us and I was just so happy to be up there with her. Years later, she invited me to do a duet of Kids with her in concert. Then we did the 100 Degrees Christmas song. When we bring each other into our world, it is like: ‘This is my sister and I’m proud.’ We had fun doing stuff together. Don’t forget, we were dancing around and annoying our family for many years before we were allowed to do it on stage. I think our parents were relieved that they didn’t have to sit through it anymore!”

She insists Lette’s description didn’t bother her. “I think what was harder was people saying: ‘Oh, you decided to go into singing because your sister does’. But I had sung for years and years, and there’s so much out in the public domain, that it was just unbelievable to me that people would say that. I’ve done it my whole life, and invited my sister to come and do it with me. But I’m just continuing to do what I do, to the best of my ability. I do stuff that I enjoy and I don’t want anyone to try to take that away from me.”

The tabloid press, of course, delights in creating division, and so it was with the Minogue sisters. Over the years, Dannii has found it alternately amusing and annoying, but mostly difficult.

“Exhausting is probably the best word because it went on for so long, no matter what either of us said or did, or who we were or what happened. I couldn’t face being asked about it anymore. Answering the same thing when nobody hears the answers – so, stop asking me the questions! But I guess social media changed everything, when artists could be in control of their story and translating that through to, not just their fans and friends, but to everyone. Communicating who they are and what they’re doing without things being twisted. When that happened, it got rid of that so quickly, and it never came back. Then it was like: ‘Okay, I literally exhausted myself answering that question so many times… and for what?’”

It’s clear the two enjoy a close relationship and that Dannii is full of admiration for Kylie.

“As she’s grown, I’ve seen an inner strength that I never knew… She’s always been a fighter and really fiery, working hard to get what she wants, but she does everything with a lot of kindness. Her whole thing is to make people happy. That’s all she wants to do. I’ve had some incredible moments, as her sister, to see how she is with people. I think her fans know that and can share that together. I’ll go and see her in concert and I can stand by the side of the stage and look down on the audience and see everyone’s faces – she’s doing exactly what she went on stage to do. Everyone has smiles on their faces and the love is reciprocal. She’s managed to sustain that for a long, long, long time, regardless of the challenges that she’s had to go through.”

What’s perhaps surprising is that the pair haven’t collaborated as much as either they – or we – would like them to have done. There was a live duet of Kids during Kylie’s 2006 Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour in Melbourne, and 100 Degrees on 2015’s Kylie Christmas. Surely, there are more expansive plans to work together? Well… disappointingly not.

“There’s nothing in the pipeline at the moment, but there will always be stuff. We’re just connected and we love getting together and sharing ideas, thinking about what we can do. And there’s a lot of stuff that makes us giggle, that we talk about doing but we know we’ll never do! It’s good to just explore it in our minds. It’s there and it will definitely keep popping up.”

Meanwhile, Dannii – who became a mum to Ethan in 2010 – is involved as executive producer and host on a new Australian TV reality show, Dance Boss, and suggests she may return to the studio at some stage.

“I’ve got a couple of tracks that I’ve worked on. I’ve got plans for them and if it happens, it happens. If there’s no stress involved, then I’m all for it. But I guess my life has taken a shift in balance, being a mum. It was a mch easier project to be obsessed about for much longer when I wasn’t a mum. But since it’s so much easier now to release music, why not?”

For now, she can’t wait for her own copy of the Neon Nights vinyl. “We’ve worked really hard on putting everything together, going through all the photos again. I listened to every song over and over and over and over. I’ve checked every lyric and corrected stuff that wasn’t right! I wanted this to be something I am so proud of, and I’ve got the time. I didn’t get that finicky about that sort of stuff back when I was releasing it the first time. I was on the road, doing shows and promoting. Yeah, I’m really excited about the vinyl. I’m going to frame it!”

I am going to wrap up. I do love Dannii Minogue’s music, so I’d like to think that there is more music coming from this legend. I would also urge people to look at this interview with Attitude last year. Danii Minogue was “reflecting on the empathy that has shaped her connection with the LGBTQ+ community as she's honoured with the Ally Award at the 2025 Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, powered by Jaguar”. Even though she has T.V. work and is a mum, many of her fans would love to see another album. Love and Kisses turns thirty-five on 3rd June. Minogue did suggest ion that interview that she has a few tracks done/written. Hope that we could get another album from this incredible artist. That really would be…

AN incredible gift.

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Olivia Rodrigo – SOUR

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

Olivia Rodrigo – SOUR

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BEFORE I look at…

PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Jane Coulson for British Vogue

the incredible debut album of Olivia Rodrigo, there is a third album coming soon When speaking with British Vogue recently, Rodrigo did give some details about her much-anticipated new album. It did not have a title then, though we know it arrives on 12th June. It will be called you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love:

“Fans have been decoding clues about “OR3” in her every move. Teasers are on the way, but for now they’re sure it’ll be love songs and have a new colour theme (a shift from the purple that has been her signature) and another four-letter title (bets are on Luck). As she enters this new fashion era, Rodrigo reveals “my Pinterest is all babydoll dresses and ’70s necklines. I want it all to feel fun and laid-back.” As a magpie for unique vintage pieces, her stylists, LA-based sisters Chloe and Chenelle Delgadillo, write to tell me that they are “always on the hunt for special finds [for Olivia]. When we travel, we make a point to visit local vintage dealers.” Rodrigo is a personal fan of Lovers Lane and Vault Vintage when in Notting Hill, and Chloe and Chenelle add that, “Lately, we’ve been drawn to archive Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs.” They look to modernise the vintage references and create a style that is “effortless, feminine, with a slightly undone feel”.

There are still two or three songs to write. “It was a creative challenge to write from a joyful place,” she says. “When you’re experiencing that you’re connected to someone, or feeling really good, you’re not in your head thinking about bittersweet poems!”

We stop to sit on a bench. It’s time to hear for myself. “Gosh, I’m scared. I’m scared to play [it for] you,” she mutters, fiddling with her phone. This is the first reaction from outside her tightest circle. Her best friend, Madison Hu, heard most of OR3 in an In-N-Out parking lot. (Rodrigo “believes the sound system is the best in [her car]”.) Hu’s excited by its freshness, “And how honest she is!” she tells me over Zoom. “I’ve always been very in awe of how willing to spill to the world she is with her music.” To her ear, it’s about how “love is complicated. I think that’s what she learnt this year.”

Rodrigo hands over wireless headphones. “I’ll play three.” The winter sun shines bright and, from this vantage point, it feels like the city is at your feet. She presses play. The songs are instantly transporting, cinematic and so intimate that I can’t bring myself to look at her while I listen. She puts her hands in her pockets as I focus on the view and scrawl notes in my tiny Moleskine”.

I want to spend some time with this album. Released on 21st May, 2021, SOUR turns five soon. I will end with some reviews of one of the most exceptional debut albums of recent years. Speaking with Vogue in 2021, Olivia Rodrigo discussed her breakout album and brand-new album. It was a hectic time for an artist coming out with a debut album. What made it more difficult was being quarantined because of COVID-19. A  tough time to get music out there:

“It’s been pretty non-stop,” says Rodrigo. When we speak, she’s quarantining in the British countryside—“somewhere near Oxford”—ahead of her performance at the Brit Awards in early May. “It’s actually my first performance ever, so it’s crazy that it’s at the Brits,” says Rodrigo. “I’m just so excited to see people in real life, you know? All of the success of ‘drivers license’ happened in a bubble. I was able to see the numbers on my phone, all the people who were streaming it and all that, but I never actually got to meet anyone who was actually affected by the song. So it’s gonna be so cool to see people singing along to it. I’m really stoked for that.” (Despite these nerves, Rodrigo’s powerful rendition of “drivers license”—performed in a red Valentino batwing gown and choppy middle parting that gently recalled Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” video—brought the house down.)

Rodrigo’s natural ear for the epic balladry that characterized “drivers license” might be in full force across the record, but it’s the edgier moments that leave the strongest impression. The album’s opener, “brutal,” erupts into a thunderous guitar riff that sits somewhere between Elastica’s “Connection” and a song you might expect from a Warped Tour headliner circa the year 2000. “I’m so sick of seventeen / Where’s my fucking teenage dream?” Rodrigo wails. “If someone tells me one more time / ‘Enjoy your youth,’ I’m gonna cry.”

Not all the songs are about heartbreak: the album’s closer, “hope ur ok,” pays tribute to lost connections with old friends—a boy with an abusive father, and a gay friend with homophobic parents—whose triumph in the face of adversity continues to inspire Rodrigo. Still, the terrain of romantic torment feels most natural, recalling some of the greatest alt-rock records of the ’90s, from Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill to PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me to Fiona Apple’s Tidal. “I wish I could be a teenager in the ’90s, because that’s my favorite music ever,” says Rodrigo, namechecking both Apple and Morrissette as influences for Sour. “I just feel like it’s so raw. I remember the first time I heard Jagged Little Pill and I turned to my mom and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, wow, she really just said that.’ It’s so brutally honest to the point it’s almost shocking—they were things that I’d genuinely never heard before in a song. And that was super inspiring to me. That’s what really got me going and what made me excited to write my own story.”

For all its angst-riddled teenage catastrophism, though, the positive response to the album has been very much universal, with many noting its uncanny ability to transport you right back to the thick of the emotional turbulence of that life stage. “I work really hard to be specific in my songwriting, as I feel like specific songs are the most meaningful,” Rodrigo says. “I'm just so obsessed with really story-driven songs. I grew up listening to a lot of country music, and country music is really specific and vivid, and I think I always was attracted to that as a young girl, which translated over into my songwriting.” It’s a formula that clearly works, and has had its own, reciprocal benefits for Rodrigo too. “I always say you put out songs in hopes of making people feel more understood, but it also works in the reverse,” she continues. “All these people have said to me, I feel the exact same way, or this thing happened to me too. It makes me feel a lot less alone.”

On the subject of the relentless promotional cycle accompanying the album, Rodrigo is endearingly enthusiastic. “It’s been very go, go go, but in the best way possible,” says Rodrigo. “I literally feel like I’m living my dream every day. I feel so grateful.” Still, I hope she will be able to find some time to put her feet up soon? “I think after the album comes out, I’m going to take a vacation somewhere on the beach with a lot of sun. I think that’s super important, too. I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were like, 50% of our jobs is writing songs and the other 50% is living a life to write songs about, you know what I mean? You can’t just spend all of your time in the studio or on tour, because what are you going to write your songs about? You sort of become out of touch with reality. So I’m definitely trying to keep that in mind as I’m going into my second album”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Heather Hazzan for Variety

The last interview I am including is from Variety. From her Disney days to her debut single, drivers licence, Olivia Rodrigo was on course for becoming the voice of her generation. It was incredible seeing how SOUR blew up and the reaction it got:

“Rodrigo grew enamored with songwriting through country music, and it quickly became a much-needed emotional outlet. She proudly calls herself a “fangirl for life” and has cited Taylor Swift as a songwriting idol — nods to Swift’s lyrical style and knack for big bridges can be heard all over “Sour.” The artist also was one of Rodrigo’s early champions on social media.

“It’s so nice to be welcomed into the music industry and so great to be supportive of other women,” Rodrigo says. “She wrote me a letter a while ago, and she wrote something about how you make your own luck in the world, and how you treat other people always comes back to you.”

Most of the tracks on “Sour” came from Rodrigo’s deep arsenal of songs, many of which were written during the COVID-19 quarantine that began in March 2020. During that period, Rodrigo says she wrote a song every day for four months, ultimately sharing writing credits on all but three of the album’s tracks with her key collaborator, songwriter-producer Dan Nigro.

“She’s so effortless when it comes to lyric writing it’s pretty incredible to witness,” says Nigro. “Sometimes she’ll run a line by me, and I’ll help her tweak it to make it stronger. But most of the time she’s just running with it.”

Released on April 1, “Deja Vu” added more of an alt-rock sensibility to Rodrigo’s lyric-driven songwriting with fuzzy guitars and saturated drums, courtesy of Nigro. Recounting the sneaking suspicion that an ex is now repeating history with someone else, “Deja Vu” references Billy Joel, “Glee” and strawberry ice cream.

PHOTO CREDIT: Heather Hazzan for Variety

“I think specificity is one of the most important things you can do as a songwriter,” Rodrigo says. “I love songs where you can listen to them and sort of feel like you’re in another world… and the way you do that is through imagery and details.” 

Indeed, though the sonic diversity of “Sour” is impressive, what really stands out is Rodrigo’s brutally honest lyrics, especially when recounting the all-too-familiar pain of a relationship gone wrong. Even on upbeat cuts like “Good 4 U,” the words cut like a knife: “Maybe I’m too emotional / But your apathy’s like a wound in salt,” she snarls in the song’s bridge.

“I definitely talked about my deepest, darkest secrets and insecurities on ‘Sour’ — which is sort of strange to be like, ‘Here, you guys can have this. Anyone who wants to listen to it can listen to it,’” Rodrigo says. “But it’s really empowering when it comes out, and it’s been really awesome for me to see people resonate with that vulnerability and relate to it.”

Rodrigo credits Nigro’s background as the former lead singer and guitarist of indie rock band As Tall as Lions with helping her find the pop-punk sound for “Good 4 U.” She says she came up with the track’s hook — “Good for you / You look happy and healthy / Not me / If you ever cared to ask” — in the shower. “I didn’t want the entire record to be sad piano songs,” Rodrigo says. “But then again, I didn’t want to write a poppy, happy, ‘I’m in love’ song, because that was so far from how I was truly feeling at the time. So writing ‘Good 4 U’ was really satisfying because the song is upbeat and high energy and people can dance to it, but I didn’t have to sacrifice being honest and authentic in order to write it.”

Though “Sour” is heavy with heartbreak ballads, its edgier tracks bolster Rodrigo’s genre-shifting abilities – most of all, opener “Brutal,” which smacks you in the face with angst and ferocity. Other album highlights include “Traitor,” Rodrigo’s belted manifesto on how emotional affairs can hurt just as much as physical ones, which she initially wrote off as not being relatable enough. Little did she know, the result would be the opposite.

“I wrote it on my bed while I was crying,” Rodrigo says. “I never really thought that it was going to be a song that resonated with so many people. I thought that it was a very specific situation that I was going through, and it’s so funny that that’s the non-single song that’s the most successful. So many people have been like, ‘How did you know? This is exactly what happened to me!’.

GUTS, Olivia Rodrigo’s second album, was released in 2023. It also was a massive success and received incredibly positive reviews. There are a couple of reviews to include before wrapping up. Pitchfork and said how SOUR was a “nimble and lightly chaotic collection of breakup tunes filled with melancholy and mischief”:

“The matter of failed romance is central to Sour, a nimble and lightly chaotic grab bag of breakup tunes, filled with both melancholy and mischief. Rodrigo’s first trick: Seconds into the lugubrious strings that open the record, she and her producer, Dan Nigro, abruptly switch to grunge guitar and distortion. Abandoning both the gossamer falsetto and the emotive belt that power “drivers license,” Rodrigo adopts a wry sprechstimme on “brutal” to rattle off her grievances: self-doubt, impossible expectations, her inability to parallel park. “Where’s my fucking teenage dream?” she snarls, wisecracking about the way pop culture romanticizes youth. It’s not particularly elegant—it’s not meant to be. Bucking expectations about the kind of sounds she might gravitate toward? That’s just part of the fun.

When she was little, Rodrigo and her mother made a habit of grabbing records indiscriminately from the thrift store, exposing her to the mistiness of Carole King and the muscle of Pat Benatar. Born two years post-Napster, two years pre-YouTube, Rodrigo grew up with music of all varieties at her fingertips. The range of her taste, and her disinterest in choosing a lane, animate Sour; queue up a track at random, and you might hear pop-punk fireworks à la Paramore (“good 4 u”), dewy-eyed soft balladry à la Ingrid Michaelson (“1 step forward, 3 steps back”), or alt-rock squall à la the Kills (“jealousy, jealousy”). Like any teenager, Rodrigo is trying on identities. The fluidity of her approach creates a sense of play that balances out the record’s more sullen moments—the self-righteous sprawl of “traitor,” for example, or the sinister extended metaphor of “favorite crime.”

Of Rodrigo’s many influences, she’s most obviously styled herself after Taylor Swift, whose work she praises often and emphatically. Like her idol, Rodrigo treats emotional turmoil like jet fuel, and laces her lyrics with specifics—a Billy Joel song she and her ex listened to together, the self-help books she read to impress him. She’s said that the shouty bridge in Swift’s “Cruel Summer” directly inspired her own in “deja vu”; “1 step forward, 3 steps back” interpolates the reputation song “New Year's Day.” And publicly inveighing against a heartbreaker, then sauntering off with the last word? How very Swiftian.

But there’s more to Rodrigo’s writing than revenge; Sour gives her occasion to examine her own insecurities. “I wore makeup when we dated ’cause I thought you’d like me more,” she sings over fingerpicked guitar on the tearful “enough for you.” It’s a shot at her ex for underappreciating her, but also a hard lesson about not making concessions. On “happier,” a sweet-and-sour ballad that appeared in demo form on Rodrigo’s Instagram in early 2020, she grapples with the faulty narrative of female rivalry: “And now I’m picking her apart/Like cutting her down will make you miss my wretched heart.” It was this song that captured the attention of Nigro, a former emo band frontman who’s written with Carly Rae Jepsen and Conan Gray. It’s easy to hear what he heard in the homemade snippet: a gently tumbling melody, Rodrigo’s flute-like lilt, a winning balance of pettiness and wisdom.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo is still very much a part of the Disney ecosystem, reprising her role in the second season of HSM:TM:TS, which debuted just last week. To anyone familiar with the history of Disney darlings and the morality clauses that typically bind them, the profanity that peppers Sour will stand out as a break from type. This minor subversion of expectations has given Rodrigo a low-key rebel status. Like her seeming newness, her earnestness, the heartbreak baked into her ascent, it’s one of the qualities that make her easy to root for. In a way, the flattening effect of the internet has worked in her favor, allowing her—someone who has been on TV for roughly a third of her life and is signed with the biggest record company in the world—to slip into the role of the underdog.

Rodrigo avoided the major-label treatment when Universal left her and Nigro largely to their own devices to make Sour. But the effort to preserve the authenticity of Rodrigo’s voice also leaves her shortcomings more exposed. The flatness of the melody on “traitor” is especially noticeable alongside the movement of “drivers license”; “enough for you” is oversung. On a record largely centered around a single story, Rodrigo can fixate on select plot points (like the amount of time it took her ex to move on), rather than seeking out new angles. She sometimes settles for simple rhymes and self-evident phrasings: “You betrayed me/And I know that you’ll never feel sorry.” In moments like these, she seems more invested in content than in craft.

Of all the songs on Sour, “hope ur ok” feels most connected to her Disney lineage. Over a twinkly instrumental, Rodrigo sings directly to a victim of child abuse, a queer girl rejected by her family, and to outcasts more broadly. In its message of love and acceptance, the song calls to mind the empowerment anthems churned out by a previous generation of Disney stars. But as Sour’s closer, “hope ur ok” is limp. An outward-looking loosie tacked on to 10 songs about the world inside Rodrigo’s head and heart, it reads as a last-minute effort to demonstrate perspective and maturity. Someone out there might feel genuinely comforted by Rodrigo’s words, and that matters. But, as the success of “drivers license” shows, there’s a certain magic to be found in embracing your own mess”.

I am going to finish with this review from The Guardian. Cathartic rage set against teenage heartbreak, as it is said. A hugely important moment for a teenage artist “that metabolises anger, jealousy and bewilderment into pop euphoria”. For anyone who has not heard Olivia Rodrigo’s debut, it is a perfect time to get into SOUR:

“Even in a world where streaming’s rise means chart records are broken all the time, the debut single by Disney star Olivia Rodrigo is an anomaly. Upon the release of Drivers License in January, it had the biggest first week for any song ever on Spotify – then hit the 100m streams mark faster than any other track on the platform had before. It debuted at No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for eight weeks – only the seventh song ever to do so. In the UK, it topped the charts for nine weeks and broke the record for the highest single-day streams ever for a non-Christmas song.

And yet, both the song and the album it is taken from are propelled by an energy that’s about as far from cold, number-crunching rationality as it is possible to get. Drivers License – a portentous power ballad backed by plummeting drones and minimalist percussion – was written among the ruins of first love. At 18, Rodrigo, sentimental, furious, mired in self-pity, is staggered at the way her ex-boyfriend has moved on (“I just can’t imagine how you could be so OK now that I’m gone,” begins the chorus crescendo). This isn’t just about romantic rejection: for Rodrigo, reality has been irrevocably ruptured, and she is deeply disturbed. No wonder. The realisation that somebody you once knew and loved can unilaterally revert back to being a complete stranger – and by doing so seemingly erase all the time you spent together – is among the biggest and most unpleasant shocks of adulthood.

In a satisfying mirroring of form and content, almost every single song on Sour –written entirely by Rodrigo and producer Daniel Nigro – deals with the enormity of this development baldly, bluntly, and with none of the meaningless word salad that popstars often hide behind. Rodrigo imagines her ex recycling dates with his new squeeze over the Taylor Swiftian pop of Deja Vu (“Don’t act like we didn’t do that shit too”). The seething pop-punk of Good 4 U has her incredulous at the irony of everything: “I guess that therapist I found for you, she really helped.” She uncovers yet more hypocrisy on the sad and stately Traitor - “Remember I brought her up and you told me I was paranoid?” - and is fundamentally bruised on Enough for You: “I don’t want your sympathy, I just want myself back.” Rodrigo uses the album as a way to do that, by setting down the terms of her own reality, over and over again.

And if she sounds like a broken record, that’s the point: what makes Sour such a great album is that its maker is unafraid to make a nuisance of herself. In an interview with the Guardian earlier this month, Rodrigo said she was proud the record revolved around emotions that “aren’t really socially acceptable especially for girls: anger, jealousy, spite, sadness”. Even the title is a reclamation of the word “sour”, with its connotations of bitter, undesirable women. Considering that women are told to feign disinterest in men lest they scare them off, writing a whole album about how furious and devastated you are that your ex has forgotten you seems like the sort of thing any good friend would strongly advise against. But the shades of cringeworthiness that run through the whole enterprise is the reason why it is so cathartic, and so charming.

Of course, the emotions Rodrigo mines are not exclusive to adolescence, but Sour is still a gloriously teenage album. Vulnerability has recently become a watchword for a generation of young (and youth-oriented) musicians who are keen to open up about tumultuous inner lives that revolve around anxiety, low self-esteem and romantic rejection. Rodrigo’s emotional palate is not restricted to that: there is much rage here and the generic grammar to match. The brilliant opener Brutal starts with elegiac strings before Rodrigo insists things get “like, messy” and the song swiftly morphs into anthemic 90s alt-rock with pregnant pauses suggestive of a droll eye-roll, in the vein of the Breeders’ Cannonball. Good 4 U, meanwhile, channels a more recent strain of rock: a slice of electro-tinged pop-punk, it shares perhaps slightly too much DNA with Paramore’s Misery Business – but it’s hard to care when it metabolises spitting fury into infectious euphoria so expertly.

A couple of songs have Rodrigo singing over fingerpicked guitar figures in sweetly folky style (Enough for You, Favorite Crime), while Deja Vu plays with fuzzy, crashing percussion and a mosquito synth-line. The majority of Sour, however, is rooted in the style of its breakout hit: Adele meets Taylor, lovely and unadventurous, thoughtful but hardly breaking new ground. Which isn’t quite the same as calling it basic or staid. From the way the seatbelt alarm sound births the opening piano line to the gut-wrenching drones of doom that sporadically appear low in the mix, the other heritage fuelling Drivers License is the precise, sparsely furnished production pioneered by the xx that now forms the basis for a huge amount of modern pop. Rodrigo carries the baton with class and mass appeal, even if things do get a bit samey after a while.

Miraculously, the subject matter never seems over repetitive, but Rodrigo loses her nerve right at the end. On closing number Hope Ur Ok, she turns her gaze outwards to sing about people she once knew who have experienced hardship in their lives. It’s as close to a palate cleanser as a song with such a cloying sentiment can get, but thankfully doesn’t overshadow the glorious myopia of Sour: a collection of polished, precociously accomplished pop that doubles as one of the most gratifyingly undignified breakup albums ever made”.

Whilst it has been almost five years since SOUR was released, Olivia Rodrigo has done so much in that time. Huge tours, a celebrated second album, and a third that is coming in June, she is one of the leasing voices of her generation. A five-star Glastonbury headline slot last year, I do feel that Rodrigo will releasee so many albums and continue to be talked about as one of the greatest Pop artists we have ever seen. A lot of exocomet around you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. It is going to be the biggest album of this year. On 21st May, we will mark five years of SOUR. I think that it is one of the best debut albums that…

WE have ever seen.

FEATURE: Trouble Man: The Trouble Club in 2026, and Being a Better, Vocal Feminist

FEATURE:

 

 

Trouble Man

IN THIS PHOTO: Caitlin Moran

The Trouble Club in 2026, and Being a Better, Vocal Feminist

__________

I am not going to look back…

IN THIS PHOTO: Emma-Louise Boynton

at all the events I have attended this year with The Trouble Club. You can follow them on Instagram. They are wonderfully led by its CEO and owner: supreme queen Ellie Newton. An amazing team around her too (including Zea and Jen). I was really affected by the most recent event I attended. I want to look ahead to a few, including one where I have a double booking dilemma! This year has been a terrific year for The Trouble Club. In terms of new faces, I attend a lot of new talks/events and I see a lot of fascinated Trouble members who are here for the first time. Thee have been some incredible highlights from this year. Kate Ade and Lyse Doucet were terrific. Maybe Kate Adie was the best guest I have ever seen speak for The Trouble Club. In terms of her honest and the things she has seen. Reporting from hostile and violent territories, she is amazingly brave and inspiring. To be honest, there has been a rich variety of guests. I am going to look ahead to some events upcoming that I am excited to attend. However, the one I am referring to happened yesterday (9th April). Journalist, broadcaster and royal commentator Afua Hagan and multi-award-winning barrister Dr. Charlotte Proudman were in conversation with Ellie Newton. Going into the evening, I knew about the work of Hagan and Proudman. I had actually seen the later speak for Trouble last year. However, I was probably not prepared for what was to come! I have been following the Epstein Files and the news around it. The development. How it has been buried, and the conflict in Iraq has taken over. Almost like a man mentioned in the Epstein Files thousands of times started it to divert attention away from it! It was such a fascinating evening at the Century Cub. What was said again and again is, despite the fact there are millions of pages and so many names (redacted), no arrests have been made. The only person in prison – who is deservedly in there – is a woman: Ghislaine Maxwell. A system set up to serve me is protecting men. Also, in terms of what we know, the truth is so much worse! Dr. Proudman and Afua Hagan made that very clear. In their capacities and roles, they shared so many fascinating insights and facts. To be honest, I was in a bit of a daze leaving the event, as it was so disturbing and dark at times.

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What was clearest from all of this is how little consideration had been given to the victims. The brave and amazing women who have had to endure years (and sometimes decades) of not getting justice, it is unimaginable what they are going through! There was a Q&A at the end of the event. There were some great questions asked and a couple of tense moments. It was charged but respectful. There was one question asked with a bit of a caveat (if that is the right word?!) before. I think one woman who asked a question gave the impression that women were on their own when it came to this. How it was women fighting for the truth and, when it comes to cases of sexual assault and abuse, it is women on their own. It was pointed out that many men – including those at the Trouble event – were shocked and appalled by the Epstein Files and how there have been no arrests and so many horrible men are living free. It got me thinking about this dilemma. It certainly seems on paper that women are completely alone and have to fight without support. Though it is not the case that no men are invested, whether identifying as feminists or simply showing care, there is relatively little vocalisation. I would consider myself an ally, and yet I am not as proactive and vocal as I could be. The recent Trouble Club event lit something in me. The severity of the Epstein Files and what I, and so many other men, can do. It does seem completely helpless at the moment. A woman at the event asked what can be done. When it seems to horrendous. Whilst there is no easy fix and we might never have the Epstein Files unredacted and bring men to justice, there are small steps and continued efforts that can be taken. I do wonder about what I can do. I write a lot and raise issues and highlight problems. Yet, what do I do beyond that? I think one of my main ambitions and goals this year is to be much more proactive and involved. I keep thinking back to what was revealed about the Epstein Files. Women, the victims, are almost seen as anonymous and sub-human. They have not had justice served. It is being buried under war and horrifying events from around the world. Donald Trump, one of the key names in the Epstein Files, creating war to take the heat off of something that should be at the front and centre of the news!

Looking ahead, there are some incredible events that I am looking forward to. Including one where I am double booked and in a bit of a dilemma. The Culture Roundup with Lara Olszowska, on Tuesday (14th April), will be amazing. Olszowska has hosted for The Trouble Club a number of times and her Cultural Roundup will be a must-see/hear. Dame Harriet Walter: When She Speaks, The World Listens! takes place at Ladbroke Hall on 22nd April:” Name a great Shakespearean woman (Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Portia), Dame Harriet has worn the frock and got the T-shirt. She’s also strapped on a metaphorical codpiece and taken on some of the greatest male roles too, including Brutus and Henry IV. Dame Harriet knows Shakespeare so well that she decided to write some new dialogue for his best female characters. In She Speaks!, she creates thirty new parts for Shakespeare’s women, revealing what they might really have been thinking. "I worship Shakespeare. His psychological insight is second to none, but the mirror that he held up to nature reflected a predominantly male image of the world. I pondered the long shadow of his genius and tried to think of ways to let a little sunlight in on some of his women’s stories. I like to think he wouldn’t mind." Join us as Dame Harriet describes what it’s like to live inside the skin of so many extraordinary characters and to embody them so fully that you can almost peer into their minds. For one night only, Dame Harriet Walter will speak, and we will all be listening”. On 12th May – a few days after my birthday! -, Sophia Smith Galer: How to Kill A Language will be held at The Conduit in Covent Garden: “As Sophia Smith Galer’s Nonna lay dying, she realised it wasn’t just a beloved grandmother she was losing, it was the language she spoke, too. From Northern Italy, she spoke a dialët that Sophia, like so many children and grandchildren of migrants, can understand but can’t speak. With the death of the language, Sophia would lose a culture, a history, an inheritance, a whole world. This tragedy reaches far beyond her family. Globally we are witnessing an unprecedented mass extinction event. By the end of this century half of the world’s 7000 languages will be gone, killed by war, climate breakdown, migration, nationalism or neglect, along with the vital knowledge that they have sustained for centuries. Award-winning journalist Sophia Smith Galer has journeyed across continents and generations to report from this disappearing world and she'll join us to share the scale of the tragedy and the beauty of languages that may soon disappear forever”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Sophia Smith Galer

On 20th May, Caitlin Moran and Bryony Gordon are in conversation. This is the event of this year that I am most looking forward to! I am a huge fan of both, though I have wanted to see Caitlin Moran speak for years! She is someone I admire hugely. Unfortunately, on the same evening, a gig that was rearranged from last year (Iraina Mancini not aware of my conundrum and Caitlin Moran fandom!). An artist I am a big fan of, there is a bit of a dilemma, so I am not sure what the outcome will be yet. However, it is going to be one of the all-time best Trouble events: “Join us as we sit down with bestselling authors and professional over-sharers Caitlin Moran and Bryony Gordon for a fabulous evening of confession and collective catharsis. Caitlin and Bryony aren’t therapists, accountants, or relationship experts. What they do excel at is highlighting the embarrassing and the very very messy, and talking about it openly so we can all feel a little more okay about being imperfect. Throughout the evening we will journey through Caitlin and Bryony's life via the best and most dangerous advice they've ever received. Friendship, failure, politeness, people-pleasing, sex, sacrifice, it's all on the table along with many existential wobbles. Caitlin Moran is one of Britain's most influential columnists and a bestselling author of many books.  She writes regularly on everything from culture to sex and marriage, motherhood and body image to social media, highlighting the existential joys and angst of modern womanhood. Bryony Gordon is an award-winning journalist, author and mental health campaigner. As well as writing a column for The Daily Mail, she is the writer of six Sunday Times Bestselling books, including "Mad Girl" and "You Got This", which both went to number one”. An event I will definitely be at (unless there is another gig rejig!) is on 28th May at The Ministry. Let’s Talk About Pleasure with Emma-Louise Boynton. I have seen Boynton speak for The Trouble Club before, and she is a podcaster and author that I admire hugely. Such a passionate, intelligent and beautiful speaker: “Like every Good Girl or Woman, I had perfected the performance of pleasure with aplomb. I knew how to writhe and moan and move my body to a sexual rhythm; I’d just lost, or perhaps never truly discovered, the ability to enjoy it. And so while my body performed pleasure, my mind wandered off...” Emma-Louise Boynton, author of Pleasure, thinks and talks about sex every day. The founder of Sex Talks will join us at The Trouble Club to discuss her journey from being unable to orgasm and battling a years-long eating disorder, to rebuilding her relationship with sex, desire and intimacy. The story begins in the sex therapy room, where Emma first discovered that her struggle with bulimia was deeply entangled with her experience of sexual numbness. From there, she'll expand outward - drawing on expert interviews, cultural analysis and immersive research (including four days on a porn set) - to reveal that this rupture between women and their bodies is not a personal failure, but a systemic one. From narrow ideals around desirability and sexist narratives about aging, to the policing of women's pleasure, and the emotional alienation of app-based intimacy, Emma will interrogate the forces that teach women to mistrust their bodies and perform rather than feel their pleasure”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Zadie Smith

There are two events in June. Both happening at St Marylebone Church. Zadie Smith: Dead & Alive is going to be a hugely popular event. It takes place on 2nd June. Zadie Smith is one of our most celebrated authors. If you have not booked a ticket yet, then you are going to want to book your place. I am definitely excited to be there:  

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”

“You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair.”

Zadie Smith is one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary writers, penning era-defining titles like White Teeth and On Beauty that have delighted and intrigued readers for decades. Zadie will join us to discuss not only her most renowned, bestselling novels but also her latest book of essays, Dead and Alive.

This evening will be an opportunity to hear Zadie reflect on her greatest works and share what she really thinks about big and small topics such as:

• Glastonbury and the ascendance of Stormzy

• Films like Tár and artists like Toyin Ojih Odutola and Kara Walker

• Changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic

• The death of writers like Joan Didion, Hilary Mantel and Toni Morrison

• Cultural appropriation, gender and so much more...

Join us as Zadie demonstrates her unrivalled ability to think critically and humanely through some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times”.

Having seen her speak before for The Trouble Club, I am very much looking ahead to Lucy Worsley’s All-Time Favourite Women on 19th June. This is going to be another wonderful event. If you are not a Trouble member, then I would thoroughly recommend it. I have just highlighted some upcoming events. There are book club events and member breakfasts. It is a chance for members to socialise and connect in a different way. The events held bring together incredible women across multiple fields. Every one memorable in their own way:

“Five women. Centuries of history. One briliant historian.

Lucy Worsley has read the letters, walked the rooms, worn the clothes and pieced together the lives. Now she's joining us at Trouble to share the five historical women she can't stop thinking about, and why they deserve your attention.

The brilliant, the bold and of course - the troublemakers. Women who changed the course of events, women who survived against the odds and women whose stories are so extraordinary you'll wonder why nobody told you sooner.

Lucy will share the stories, the details, and the facts that make each one unforgettable. Come with your questions, your own nominations, and maybe a few opinions of your own. Fair warning! You'll be down a Wikipedia rabbit hole by midnight.

Lucy Worsley is one of television's best-known historians. Over 15 years of landmark BBC documentaries from Six Wives with Lucy Worsley to Lucy Worsley Investigates, she has brought some of history's most dramatic chapters vividly to life, earning a BAFTA in 2019 for her film on the Suffragettes. A bestselling author of numerous non-fiction and children's books, her most recent publication is a biography of Agatha Christie. She is also the host of Lady Killers, one of the BBC's most downloaded podcasts, and she was appointed an OBE in 2018 for services to history and heritage”.

I am going to leave it there. I wanted to split this into two parts. Finishing off with upcoming events at The Trouble Club. Though I am thinking about the discussion between Charlotte Proudman and Afua Hagan (and Ellie Newton). It was not only one of the most powerful and best. It has also affected me in a way to make change and be better. Maybe not even as a feminist. As a human being. Hearing about the horror of the Epstein Files and the women who have not found justice and the men who are walking free, it shows that justice is set up by men to serve men. That is something that needs to change in the world. Victims need to be heard, honoured and supported. The bravery they display is simply astonishing! Things will not change quickly or easily, yet there will be better days and improvement. Collective action and concerted effort (from everyone). A better and more just future is…

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WONDERFUL to imagine.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Zara Larsson

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

Zara Larsson

__________

I did actually write about…

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rutherford

the superb Zara Larsson recently, in the context of Chappell Roan. Roan was criticised for seemingly having a bodyguard tell a young fan to stop bothering her or keep away. It turns out Roan knew nothing of this and the bodyguard had nothing to do with her. Regardless, people piled onto her and there was this backlash. Zara Larsson spoke in an interview about how it seems these people (mainly the media) just really hate women. This continuing trend of women in music being criticised more heavily then men and there being this ingrained misogyny that is not shifting. I am not going to go back over that. Instead, I want to shine a light on Larsson. One of the biggest Pop artists in the world, she is not talked about as highly as others. I think she is one of the most consistently interesting and brilliant artists. A strong role model and someone who is strong and independent. Her brilliant latest album, Midnight Sun, was released last year. I will get to some interviews around that and also bring in a more recent interview. I’ll also include a review for the tremendous Midnight Sun. One of the standout Pop albums of last year. For anyone who does not know about the Swedish-born artist, she released her debut album, 1, in 2014. I think there was a lot more talk around her music when her third album, 2021’s Poster Girl, was released. She is this consistently artist who followed that with the phenomenal Venus in 2024. However, I feel Midnight Sun is her finest album to date and this is someone who continues to grow stronger with each album. She is inspiring so many of her fans and other artists. This incredible voice in music that I feel we need to talk about more. Zara Larsson is someone who sees herself as an activist. She is a huge fan of Beyoncé. Modelling herself after her in a sense, Larsson is an incredible feminist and this amazing figure that speaks up against evils and oppression. Criticism the Israeli genocide in Palestine and tackling ICE and their regime in the U.S., this is someone who does get involved politically. Someone who stands with trans people and the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ and is pro-choice. Against the lack of abortion rights and the criminalisation of abortion in the U.S.

There are a few 2025 interviews to get before a review of Midnight Sun, prior to wrapping up with an interview from this year. I’ll start out with Vogue and their interview with Zara Larsson from last summer. She talked about her confident and vulnerable new album. It was interesting when she was asked about Swedish Pop legacy and how she feels about that:

“You then progress into these really candid tracks, “The Ambition” and “Saturn’s Return,” which navigate the competitiveness of the pop world and giving up control. Can you talk about how you make such vulnerabilities feel pop?

I wanted to show the journey I’ve been on to understand that I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m not sure what I want in my life, and that’s okay. I’m not as successful as I want to be, but I’m growing. As a young woman in the pop industry—and I started very young—dreaming big is everything. So is competition. You’re encouraged to be competitive and I wanted to actually confront that. I’ve deleted some social media—Twitter—from my phone because that validation is like a drug to me. Comparing myself to other people was too. As pop girls, we love the craft, we’re passionate about the music, but real talk: you’re also wanting to be a star that’s playing the big stages and on the radio. That’s getting awards. I don’t think ego is good or bad, it’s just reality. I’m very competitive, and it’s hard being in an industry where your work is subjective and things can flip so quickly. I can be that girl and then…flopiana.

How has that evolved with age? Is pop always engineered that way?

I experienced huge success at the very beginning of my career, but I didn’t take it in or stop to feel happy. I wanted hit after hit. Like, okay, I just did this stage, but next time, I want 40,000. I want 50. That girl over there’s doing 50! I’d leave the stage and think I never gave enough. It took the fun out of it. I feel I’ve landed somewhere different. I have my drive and ambition, but I’m also happy with the rhythm of life. I look around and let myself be inspired by others—to develop as an artist, rather than comparing myself. And maybe, sometimes, I wish I romanticized moving out to the countryside and having lots of babies…but I know I’d still have that itch.

How has working with friends and peers changed things?

Well, that’s never really happened before. I’ve always been the youngest in the room, and because of that I never truly felt that connection I needed when writing songs with people in the early days, even if everyone was amazingly talented. Like, yeah, Rick Nowels is amazing…but he’s also 64, know what I mean? I’m working with women and friends who know my references, and we can have honest conversations that make beautiful music. That’s how these songs started and how we wrote three songs a day. I’ve never felt as involved in my own music.

How in tune with the Swedish pop legacy do you feel?

I’m turning 28 soon, so I’m allowed to be nostalgic here! Stockholm will always be home, and I’ve come to appreciate those summers that shaped me. The long winters of darkness and melancholy make you appreciate summers like nowhere else. And that’s a metaphor for life that I’ve trained myself on: Be present for the good things, make your own vibe. I was really inspired by Swedish folklore when I started writing this album—images of nymphs with long blonde hair staring into blue lakes. Then I added aesthetics of my own: glittery, colorful, fashion vibes. I’m always inspired by Swedish pop—it sounds polished and fun, but we’re also crying on the dance floors.

My digital footprint was defined by the “Symphony” meme of the dolphins. I thought, damn, I love it. How can I incorporate it into my world? It actually really inspired the album moodboard—animated animals, rainbows. Nature but silly”.

Arguably, Midnight Sun was the standout song of summer 2025. I would definitely put it in the top three. Heralding the creative dawn of Zara Larsson, The Line of Best Fit had a long and compelling talk with her. There was a lot of justified excitement around Midnight Sun. It is an album that “mixes the serious with the silly – and it's easiest and truest music she’s ever made”. You wonder just how far this modern Pop great can go. Like I said, she is an artist that is not talked about as much as she should:

“The world came serendipitously, in the form of a meme. Last year, TikTok users were pulling “Symphony”, her song with Clean Bandit, out of the pop graveyard and into a technicolor world of smiling dolphins and rainbows. She put the dolphins in her shows at the time, but when it became big, “I didn’t know how to capitalise off of something like that. I spent so much time online, of course I was aware of what was happening. That’s so fun, to be inspired by something that happens [online]. And people might associate that with me now.” She decided to cement her brand in a way she had never done before. The video for “Midnight Sun” is basically a continuation of that Barbie summer energy, brought to real life: Larsson in a boardwalk-ready top dancing in cerulean water below a vibrant sunset or in a lush forest, stickers, dolphins, and butterflies eclipsing the camera. “I’m a little nymph who found her way into the city, but still going down to take a swim on lunch break,” Larsson says about the vision.

“When you look at the numbers, and you compare them to previous single releases, it’s kind of flopping,” Larsson says. “But I feel like culturally, people are really connecting with it.” Call it an underdog story, call it hard work paying off, but people are finally discovering her back catalog and realizing that a plethora of incredible pop awaits. Better yet, her upcoming album is filled with summery, electro-pop hits that feel true to her; this is the first time she co-wrote every song on an album. This is what matters, Larsson says, and growing up has shifted her perspective. “I want real people to care about the things I’m doing and feel they can relate to that or feel inspired in some way. Who cares about a Spotify playlist? I feel a different energy, and it’s so rewarding, because this album feels so me.” During studio sessions, she declined when people pulled up the Hot 100 to see what was trending: “Let’s lock in!”

The record — Larsson’s best by far — is a soundtrack to a Swedish summer night whose passing is ameliorated by the fact that another one is on the horizon. It’s a party album that doesn’t try to imitate its predecessors, but injects seriously fun songs with intimate, conversational lyricism. Mid-album showstopper “Saturn’s Return” is a cavernous, spacious ode to the mystifying ways of life, grounded by volcanic thuds and Larsson’s sweeping belt; right next to it is “Euro Summer”, a Balkan-pop anthem whose religion is skinny cigarettes and church is the beach. These songs coexisting isn’t a result of a fractured view, but a multifaceted personality worked into song.

PHOTO CREDIT: Shervin Lainez

That’s why the hype around the music is so personal — the record feels like a piece of her. With previous albums, she either didn’t write her own material or felt sidelined by the presence of industry veterans. “I was always the youngest person in the room,” she says after being signed at 14, and felt massive pressure after So Good’s singles blew up. “It’s very hard when you start out and you get huge amounts of success very early without cementing who you are artistically,” she says. “I just wanted to hold onto my success. I didn’t have a team that I worked with creatively. I didn’t write everything back then. I was looking outside of myself so much: ‘‘Who am I?’ What will they think?’ I think I’ve always had a vision, or a taste level. I just wasn’t confident enough in myself to trust it.”

But Midnight Sun is built from the ground up, constructed from a vision of a Scandinavian summer like no other — friends, family, fun, sex and cigs. “The more I travel, the older I get, there’s something that makes me really grateful for the way I grew up and where I’m from,” she says. She’s lived in the same house all her life, still keeps in touch with older friends. The magic of the midnight sun, the dreamy, cosmic phenomenon she captured in a live performance, was normal to her as a child, but after traveling the world, she understands how special it is. “A lot of people don’t know it’s a real thing,” she says. “They just think it’s a beautiful, symbolic thing I made up. But that’s my life, every summer was like that.”

The album is “spiritual,” she says. “It’s a love letter to life. The best thing that I know is to go out to my country house, an hour outside of Stockholm, and just be in nature. There’s so many beautiful things about growing up there. I just wanted to capture the essence of that more. I travel so much, just like, take me to a tree. Let me touch grass! There’s something so grounding to that. I get so emotional when I see a beautiful sunset. A beautiful cloud. It’s so beautiful and I’m so thankful to be alive, to be doing what I do.”

But prioritising fun doesn’t mean Larsson stays away from serious subjects; she’ll use a song as a Trojan horse for a deeper, more meaningful conversation. She’s been teasing “Hot & Sexy” on tour, a three-in-one Frankenstein song that combines bubblegum bass, Brazilian funk, and techno, narrated by Tiffany “New York” Pollard’s iconic Big Brother quote. It’s fun, it’s bouncy (“K-Pop down!”), filled with it-girl quips (“Get in the car, girl, we gon’ be late / Puss puss 97 on the number plate”), but after its dance break, something like anger starts to calcify. Part of the song was taken from a demo called “Let a Girl Live”, meaning being able to have drinks with your girls without some rude guy bothering you, but unfortunately, its meaning can be literal. “Tale as old as time, crime on womankind” she sings with her voice warped, “I’m done feeling like I’m prey / Watching my back everyday.” It gets real quickly, a reminder that outside the bright strobes of the club, a dark night awaits outside.

That song ends with the plea to “let a girl be hot and sexy,” which has a political element to it, too. No matter which way a woman dresses, conservative commentators on the internet will find a way to slot it into their binary view: a tradwife or a slut. “Me dressing up in this tiny dress and these uncomfortable heels, maybe I am conforming to the patriarchy,” Larsson admits. “Maybe I am just a girl who lives in a world where I’m trying to survive and have a good time and be cute because that’s what’s expected of me, but even if I do, just let me be!”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rutherford

Prior to getting to a glowing review of Midnight Sun, there is one more 2025 interview to include. Zara Larsson spoke with FADER about Midnight Sun and wanting a taste of being number one. Whilst you can’t hold and sustain that forever, she did yearn for that glimmer of gold. Midnight Sun was a chart success and debuted at number one in Larsson’s native Sweden. She is someone who is going to have a load of number one albums and continue to inspire and give strength to people around the world:

“The FADER: I have so many questions about the new era and the aesthetic. But first, “Midnight Sun.” How do you hold the note for so long? Is there a special technique?

Zara Larsson: [Laughs.] I always worry a little bit when I'm writing the songs because [I think], how am I gonna do this live? In the studio you can cheat and cut, but I was thinking I really want to do this live. We did it in the studio where you could just redo it a million times and I was kind of struggling in the studio, but when I go on stage and I hold the microphone and it's live, it's like something clicks in me. I just do things on stage that I never am able to do in the studio, like hold different notes or take a higher note than the one that I did in the booth. I don't know if it's the adrenaline, I don't know if it's the energy, I don't know if it's my listening, but something happens in me when I go on stage. You just hold a note.

I want to talk about the other side of this record, which is fun, but also gets very vulnerable. On “The Ambition,” you get very honest about how you feel about your career and your experience in the industry. There's this line where you say, “Everything is competition.” Do you feel like pop music specifically is inherently more competitive than other genres?

I don't really know what it's like for people outside of [pop music], but I would say from what I've seen, and how I feel, it gets really competitive, especially in pop, and especially with women. It's not even really the artists themselves always, it's like so many things around it as well. It's being compared by numbers and fans and awards and streams and tickets, it's just so many things to measure, but it's also weird because music is so subjective. What's better and what's worse, you can't really say because it's just a matter of style and taste.

I feel like I am a completely different person today than I was even three years ago. I'm at a place now where I don't feel like I have to compare myself to others because I'm so confident in what I have made and what I'm doing. But I also have deleted Twitter or X because I was just like, I can't be on here for my ego.

People love you on Twitter.

I will be up all night just scrolling and be like, oh fuck yeah. It's like a drug and it's like, the validation of it is like a drug, but I know one day, if it's not today, it will flip. I will do something that somebody doesn’t like, or they compare me to something, and then it will be like, “fuck this girl.” I just know that doesn't do me any well.

I am already competing with myself because I have done [music] for such a long time, so I'm also comparing the success that I had so early on with what I did after that. I had success and then flop, and then success and then flopiana, and now I'm like, I feel the success again. But I know it goes up and down.

I am keen to get to a recent interview with Zara Larsson. It is worth noting she is on tour at the moment, and actually comes to the U.K. next month. That is in Sunderland. She is then back in the U.K. in June. I am going to come to a review from CLASH. They said this about Zara Larsson’s incredible Midnight Sun:

“It’s difficult not to interpret Zara Larsson’s fifth album as a course correction.

Arriving only a year after ‘Venus’,a record that saw the Swedish star caught between delivering a visionary pop opus and preserving commercial vitality, ‘Midnight Sun’ feels like a return to form. Where its predecessor strained under that balancing act, this album offers no overarching concept or grand conceit, just wall-to-wall bursts of irresistible scandipop.

At just under 32 minutes, it’s Larsson’s shortest outing to date, and you immediately sense an artist trusting her instincts, fully uninhibited. Lead single ‘Pretty Ugly’ is the prime example: its feisty gang-vocal hook is destined to spend its time lodged in listeners’ heads for much of 2025.The track brims with an air of unfettered abandon, a feverish rush of house piano stabs and maximalist production. ‘Midnight Sun’ is better still, where glittering hooks and club beats converge during its chorus to serve up something relentlessly euphoric and hypnotic.

Reuniting with longtime collaborator MNEK – the British singer has production credits on each of the ten tracks here – has clearly reinvigorated Larsson, and her confidenceis palpable throughout. ‘Crush’ and ‘Eurosummer’ brilliantly fuse modern pop aesthetics and mass appeal with lean, astute writing, meanwhile reverberating walls of synthesizers bathe ‘Saturn’s Return’ in an opulent, hallucinogenic hue.

Ultimately, ‘Midnight Sun’ is Zara Larsson honing in on what she does best with laser focus: starry-eyed, joyous Scandi-pop built to ignite dancefloors as easily as festival sing-alongs.

8/10”.

I will finish off with a  part of The Guardian’s recent interview with Zara Larsson. She has been what we might consider an underground talent for a decade or so. Now, with Midnight Sun, she is being proclaimed one of the biggest Pop artists. It is an important step forward. She has managed to do this without sacrificing her morals or sound:

“On a warm spring day, Brooklyn’s century-old Paramount theatre has been transformed into a base camp for all things Zara Larsson. Stage techs scurry past entourage members, managers furiously tap smartphones and various figures patiently await their moment with the Swedish superstar.

Down a plushly carpeted flight of stairs, Zara Larsson is on all fours, saying “puss puss” (Swedish for “kiss kiss”) into a camera. Despite all the craziness around her, she is locked in, wearing electric-blue stockings, tangerine booty shorts and a tiny blazer that makes her look like Malibu Barbie at graduation. A man powers up a leaf-blower, sending Larsson’s blond hair flying. After hitting a few poses, she tippy-taps over in maribou-trimmed stilettos and offers me a can of water. “Cheers!” she says as we clink.

Larsson’s career is moving at lightning speed and there’s not a moment to waste, or to indulge in much celebration beyond designer mineral water. In the week we meet, her irresistible spot on PinkPantheress’s Stateside has risen to No 1 on Billboard’s global charts after Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu’s viral routine to the track added fuel to what was already a white-hot six months for the Swedish star. At time of writing, Larsson has three songs in the US Hot 100 and is the fourth biggest female artist on global Spotify, behind only Taylor Swift, Olivia Dean and Raye.

Although she debuted aged 16 with the lovestruck ballad Uncover, everything changed for Larsson, now 28, with the release of September’s zeitgeist-hijacking album Midnight Sun. A flagrantly fun collision of brash electro-pop and drum’n’bass, the project reinvented her as a rave nymph: all dolphins and rainbows, rhinestones and lipgloss, tropical flowers and bare feet on fresh grass. Pop can seem like hard work in the age of chart gamification, “stan wars” and paparazzi-hounding, but Larsson makes it shimmer: a pop star who acts as if her duty is to provide joyful escape.

“I’m having the time of my life,” she beams as she kicks off her heels. She’s nearing the end of a six-week US theatre tour that goes viral nearly every night, thanks to her habit of inviting a fan on stage to dance to her 2015 single Lush Life (the song subsequently shot back up the charts). “The energy is amazing in these shows. But hopefully this is the last time I’ll do venues this size,” she says, arenas in her sights.

Part of what has made Midnight Sun so irresistible to fans – who call themselves Larssonists – is its genuine youthfulness: it is ultra-fun, uber-femme and whip-smart, evoking tan lines on chests, handprints on butts and skinny-dipping in the dark, all delivered in Larsson’s bright, startlingly powerful three-octave singing voice. “The change on Midnight Sun was my attitude,” she says. “I really evolved into a writer. People think personal songwriting is sad, on a guitar,” she says, making a “bleurgh” face. “But that’s not me.”

Midnight Sun embraces eurodance-pop, frenetic breakbeat and Baltimore club, as well as some fabulously cheesy accordion; the title track was nominated for best dance pop recording at this year’s Grammys. Larsson’s best lyrics have the immediacy of a voice note sent to a crush: “Look FaceTime / ’Cause my outfit so nice / And you say you love it ’cause it’s all see-through / Ooh!” At other moments, she is startlingly frank about her insecurities. Over stardust synths on Saturn’s Return, she reckons with her early ambitions hitting the skids. “Said by 20, I’d be filling up stadiums,” she sings. “Didn’t happen, so I changed the deadline / Might take another 20 years, and that’s fine.”

In the mid-2010s, Zara Larsson was a dependable B-list pop fixture, with a clutch of mega-streaming dance-pop collaborations with Clean Bandit, David Guetta and MNEK. These were stonking chunes that you could count on to get you through spin class, but which told you little about their big-voiced singer. Even recent albums – 2021’s Poster Girl and 2024’s Venus – did little to change that, feeling like overly focus-grouped grab-bags of trending sounds. In a scene in the recent documentary Zara Larsson: Up Close, the singer reflected on why her music was missing the mark. “A lot of people know the songs,” she said. “They don’t know I sing them. What the fuck is up with that? I’ve got the hits, but I’ve got no cultural relevance.”

“I think maybe I wasn’t an artist,” she tells me today. “I didn’t allow myself to do what I wanted to do in my soul. I don’t think I was allowing myself to even discover what that was, because I was so worried about whether radio would play it.”

She has since reconsidered her attitude, recognising that radio’s hit-making ability pales in comparison to the power of fans in the streaming era. “Who gives a fuck about radio?” she says. “I think radio at this time is just supporting what already exists.” It’s far more meaningful for Larsson as an artist – and as a brand – to see fans at her show wearing DIY spray-painted T-shirts and hibiscus flowers in tribute to her Midnight Sun look. That maximalism also finds Larsson barrelling closer towards the unapologetic camp of peers such as Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, with an accessible twist: you can find most of your Larsson cosplay essentials at Claire’s.

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rutherford

Larsson has always been vocal about sex positivity – in 2015, she busted the myth that some men claim to be “too big” for condoms by getting her entire leg inside one – as well as women’s rights and her support of Palestine. She says that the latter has got her dropped from brand deals and awards shows. In 2024, she declined to perform at Eurovision’s halftime show in protest at Israel’s inclusion. “The older I get, the less I care,” she says of the lost opportunities. After buying back her master recordings in 2022 for what she calls a “sickeningly good deal”, Larsson is financially stable. She’ll still take sponsorship – she just did an ad for soy milk purveyors Alpro – but she says she’s not greedy. “I have a really amazing home in Stockholm. I have a beautiful summer house. I travel and I can eat at whatever restaurant I want.” She looks at me as if to say: what else would a 28-year-old need?

“Maybe pop stars aren’t thought of as people taking a stand,” she continues. “But if you constantly go against your inner compass and morals, you lose yourself as well.” In January, she inflamed Maga with a post that read: “I love immigrants … I love socialism, I fucking hate ICE.” A few days later the White House posted a pathetic riposte on TikTok set to Larsson’s hit Lush Life: “We love America First, we love deportations … we love ICE and our law enforcement!” She says she missed out on another deal last month after joking about abortion with a fan on social media.. “I lost $3m, which is the biggest brand deal I’d been offered in my life,” she tells me without a lick of remorse. “I was genuinely like: OK, losers!”

Larsson says that Midnight Sun’s cultural moment is a happy accident. It was a fan who paired her and Clean Bandit’s 2017 hit Symphony with kaleidoscopic dolphin art for a viral TikTok in 2024; Larsson just leaned into her marketing savvy to bring Y2K mermaid-core style to Midnight Sun. After fans started creating DIY versions of her airbrushed baby tees, she introduced a moment in her show where she spray-paints one for a lucky fan. Has she learned that her instincts are better than a record label’s? “Yes,” she replies instantly. “I get this weekly data update of my chart positions and monthly listeners from my label. And it’s not interesting to me to look at because that’s last week’s data. It’s already old. I want to ask, ‘What are we creating, what are we doing now?’”

She is putting the finishing touches to a Midnight Sun deluxe edition with all-women guest stars. Her label, Epic, “want me to release a new song before it drops to tease it”, she says. “And I’m like: it ruins the project and the specific rollout that I have planned.” It’s all a play for stats, which she finds depressing: “Playing the chart game is so dead to me. No one’s looking at the charts but industry people and maybe Taylor Swift fans.”

Sometimes fame can feel like a Faustian bargain, with scrutiny, sexism and presidential subtweets coming as part of the package. As her star has kept rising, Larsson has been wondering if there are limits to how much fame she can take. Could she handle it if she was as famous as, say, Chappell Roan, now in regular standoffs with the paparazzi? “The more people hate her, the more I love her,” says Larsson. “I don’t like how she’s being treated at all. When a woman has boundaries, I think people freak out. Men can do violent criminal things and people applaud them, but when a woman says, ‘Stop following me,’ it’s controversial? It’s like: you guys just hate women, actually”.

I shall wrap up there. Undoubtably one of the most incredible human beings in music today, Zara Larsson deserves all the success in the world. Midnight Sun was one of last year’s most memorable albums. A Deluxe edition will bring together some music queens. I am looking forward to hearing what comes from that. The more albums and songs she releases, the further and higher she goes. I feel Zara Larsson will one day be seen as one of the most influential and greatest artists…

IN Pop history.

___________

Follow Zara Larsson

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rutherford

Official:

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FEATURE: Sign in Stranger: Steely Dan's The Royal Scam at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

Sign in Stranger

Steely Dan's The Royal Scam at Fifty

__________

WHEN we rank…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Steely Dan (Walter Becker and Donald Fagen) in London in May 1976/PHOTO CREDIT: Alan Messer

the albums of Steely Dan, where does The Royal Scam come? Many would probably have it in their top five, though I don’t think it gets as much love and attention as Aja (1977) or Pretzel Logic (1974). This was the album released a year before their masterpiece, Aja. Katy Lied of 1975 was a great album, though there are some sound issues stemming from a faulty DBX noise reduction system used during mixing. That had been rectified for The Royal Scam. Perhaps the best-known song from The Royal Scam is its opening track, Kid Charlemagne. Released on 31st May, 1976, I want to mark fifty years of this classic. There is not a tonne written about it, though it is still worth exploring and spotlighting. I do want to get to some revies of The Royal Scam. However, I will start with this interview that was published in Melody Maker in June 1976. Steely Dan were in London at the time. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker discuss their careers in general, but also asked specifically about the newly-released The Royal Scam:

“Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are living proof that intelligence is still regarded with suspicion in rock and roll. I confess it annoys me that they are more persistently categorized as “oddballs” and “smart asses” rather than considerable songwriters, which is what they are, because rock music and literary qualities are still held to be incompatible even by those who write about rock. Or so it seems.

Yet I suppose that, ultimately, Fagen and Becker, progenitors of Steely Dan, have only themselves to blame for insisting upon erudition and references drawn from jazz, Latin and classical music, as well as pop, whilst concealing it all beneath shiny music that can demand very little beyond an acquiescent toe unless one wishes it; for the supreme irony of Steely Dan, with whom irony as a device is second-nature, is the apparent equanimity with which they go about being most things to all men and everything to a few.

Probably, as they are children of the Sixties (Fagen is 28, Becker 26), it was inevitable that they chose rock as their creative field, but just as predictable, given their tastes and ambitions, that they would thereby appear conspicuous to those who did want more than to tap a toe. As Becker says himself, “if we were novelists dealing with the subject matters of our songs… our thematic concerns would not stick out as much.”

Those concerns are the most wide-ranging within rock writing, and have become the subjects for more interpretations than songs by any other artist since the Dylan of the period leading up to John Wesley Harding. Not usually very specific — the most recent album, The Royal Scam, is the least difficult of the five — they range from the typically black little tale of a compulsive loser (“Do It Again,” the hit single from the first album, Can’t Buy A Thrill) to the grandly worked title track of Royal Scam, which in three verses encapsulates an epic story of Puerto Rican settlement in New York.

The extent of their ambitions for these songs is illustrated by Becker’s statement that on “The Royal Scam” they were trying to catch the inflection of the King James Bible (in fact, there’s perhaps an echo of the 107th Psalm, “they wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way,” in the song’s chorus line “And they wandered in from the city”).

Nothing if not carefully constructed, their writing does not flow along with Dylan’s stream-of-images; it relies upon nuance, upon literary style and the suggestion of atmosphere in a novelistic manner far removed from the traditional workings of the pop song.

In lyric terms, very few writers in rock — perhaps Randy Newman, Robbie Robertson, Joni Mitchell — are working as consciously towards the aesthetic experience; for a start, there is nothing in the whole of Becker-Fagen’s output that is overtly autobiographical, which, because there’s nothing except for the songs themselves to which the audience can relate, helps explain why Steely Dan seems so faceless.

During the following interview with them in London recently, where they were on a working holiday looking at studios, Fagen suddenly broke off at one point to make the observation that reggae music, he had just realised, was very much like German band music.

This precipitated a rapid exchange of views between himself and Becker, who then went on to develop a theory of his own that the sound quality of English rock music was dictated by the humidity.

The last two albums have taken two years to appear, partly because of specific technical problems that tax the perfectionists in them, and there has been no touring in that period.

Nor will there be — in Britain, at least — until next year, since there are contractual problems with ABC that necessitate the delivery of two albums by January 1977.

“Caesar wants a record every three months, it turns out, so we have to render unto him before we can render unto the concertgoer,” describes Becker.

However, they have never been very happy performing, anyway.

They claim that in the early days of Steely Dan they were “coerced” into extensive performances with ill-prepared bands, although they were satisfied with the line-up that played here in 1974.

Even that trip, though, was marred by Fagen’s problem with his throat, for which he says he was wrongly treated by a Harley Street doctor and had to seek medical help in California.

Fagen still lives in California — precisely, in Malibu, and within hailing distance of Becker; but it does look as if the next album will be cut somewhere in Europe.

This interview was recorded one recent afternoon in London at the Montcalm Hotel, where both they and the Rolling Stones were staying.

I was amused that they had conveyed the message, through ABC, that the conversation had to be conducted “on a certain intellectual level,” for Fagen was once to exclaim, “this is really serious! Jesus! It’s only rock and roll.” Perhaps the Stones next door were at the back of his mind.

Gary Katz, a drawn, bony man, sat mostly in silence throughout, while Fagen slumped down in an armchair behind his shades and delivered his replies unsmilingly in an adenoidal New Jersey accent.

Becker perched himself on the edge of his chair, from which he could better twinkle in his inimitably sardonic fashion.

I had been informed by the press office that they had been woken up one morning at 4 a.m. by Keith Richard playing Katy Lied.

“Apocryphal,” Fagen replied shortly. Their answers generally, I found, were just as succinct and scholastically phrased…

Do you see a specific mood for each album?

Fagen: You know, I don’t listen to them after we’ve made them. In a restaurant the other night some guys from the record company played it while we were eating, some old record of ours, and it sounds like some other group to me, really, in a lotta ways.

Becker: We do try to put together a programme of songs that somehow hangs together.

Fagen: But mostly that’s things like tempo.

Becker: Yeah, not in terms of themes, really.

Fagen: In other words, we don’t wanna have too many songs with a very moderate tempo on one album; we like to break up the musical flow. But lyrically we feel we write the songs and the album will take care of itself.

We sequence for sound rather than for narrative potential; we sequence for how it affects the ear, rather than cerebrally.

Katz (entering the conversation): There’s no concept. Never.

Fagen: Chance is very important to an artist, you know. Dostoievski wrote in installments for magazines, and I’m sure he wasn’t aware of the entire flow until it was all together.

You know, if there is a lyrical unity to each album it’s simply because most of the songs on each album are written in a certain time period, and naturally a certain phase of our personalities would be prominent while the songs were written, and that would give it a lyrical unity, certainly.

There’s not usually more than two or three songs that were written long before we start recording them.

 

Let me ask you about individual songs, beginning with those on The Royal Scam.

Fagen: We don’t have to answer anything, but take a stab at it.

‘Kid Charlemagne,’ for instance — could that be about a Leary or a Manson? Am I in the right direction?

Fagen: You’re on the right track. I think it would probably be about a person who’s less of a celebrity than those people.

Did you have a definite person in mind?

Becker: Well, there is a particular individual, whom we naturally can’t name…

Fagen (straight-faced): For legal purposes.

Becker: …who hovered over the creation of the song like a sword of Damocles, like Hamlet’s father. Basically, it’s a chef.

A chef?

Becker: Cooks.

Katz: Master cooks.

Becker: Chemists.

‘Sign In Stranger’ — that’s almost like a school for gangsters?

Fagen: That’s true. Of course, it does take place on another planet. We sort of borrowed the Sin City/Pleasure Planet idea that’s in a lotta science fiction novels, and made a song out of it. But, indeed, you’re right.

Turning to the last album, Katy Lied — is that a praying mantis on the cover?

Becker: It’s a katydid. They may not have them here, or they may not call them that, but it’s a little bug that looks like a grasshopper, except that it has larger translucent wings. It makes a sound that is onomatopaeically rendered as “katydid.”

How about the phrase “Lady Bayside”?

Becker: Aah! In Queens, New York, there is a community called Bayside, where I culled numerous members for my first rock and roll band, and Bayside had a particular character to the community, which ranged from politically, rabidly conservative to absolute congenital mind-damage among its younger citizens. So the young women growing up in this community had a particular kind of character.

Fagen: It would be kind of like saying Lady Knightsbridge.

Becker: It may not mean anything to anyone but me, but lit sounded good.

Is ‘The Royal Scam‘ about Puerto Ricans trying to settle in New York?

Fagan: Because the interpretation is so accurate I wouldn’t even want to comment any further.

Becker: In other words, you already know more than is good for you.

Fagen: To tell you the truth, we tend to refrain from discussing specifics as far as lyrics go, because it is a matter of subjective interpretation, and there are some things that are better that man does not know. You are on the right track, and whatever you make of it will suffice. Really.

Why do you find you need so many guitarists. There are five on Royal Scam.

Becker: Just to keep it interesting. We’re constantly trying to expand the number of musicians that we think will fit into what we’re doing. It’s more fun for us to have different musicians.

How does Denny Dias like that?

Fagen: Denny is an extremely tractable human being.

I presume Jeff Baxter was not.

Becker: He was less tractable by a good margin, although he was an exceptionally good sport about what we were doing, always, and extremely co-operative with us.

I also presume his problem was you weren’t touring.

Becker: That was one problem. Another problem had to do with money, in that being a member of Steely Dan was tantamount to a kind of enforced poverty at that time. And there were musical things.

Fagen: It was always a compromise.

Do you tend to be martinets, then?

Becker: I wouldn’t put it that way. Good grief! Perhaps you would care to re-phrase the question. I know you can do better.

Katz: It’s their show.

Becker: What we try to do is nudge very, very competent musicians into doing something extraordinary, even for them.

Fagen: A musician will come in and see some of the changes we got, and he’ll go, “Mmm. This is some sort of music here!”

Are you thinking of recording here?

Fagen: We’re looking at some recording studios here. We may.

Is it just because you want a change of scenery?

Fagen: That’s just about it, yeah, really.

Becker: Well, actually, our main motivation in coming was that we might pick up some inspiration, or stimulate some provocative vision or experiences or feelings”.

Let’s get to a couple of critical reviews for The Royal Scam prior to rounding up. I am going to lead with Sputnikmusic and their 2021 review of the incredible The Royal Scam. I had never really thought of this album as an especially ‘fun’ one, but it is an interesting point to make. It has a different energy to Aja that is for sure:

“The Royal Scam is affectionately referred to by fans as the duo’s “guitar album”, and for damn good reason. As with previous Steely Dan releases, this one shows yet another facet of their core jazz-rock sound: guitar-driven funk. Prior records had their funky moments as well, but they were never featured quite as prominently as they were here. More importantly, as is the case with funk rock in general, the chemistry between the guitar and the rhythm section is crucial to the quality of these songs. Luckily, the lineup of guitarists featured on The Royal Scam is absolutely fantastic. There’s Larry Carlton as I previously stated, but there’s also the return of legendary Steely Dan alumni Denny Dias, Elliott Randall (remember that amazing guitar work on “Reelin’ in the Years”?), and Dean Parks. Add Walter Becker himself to the mix and you’ve got an amazing all-star cast.

But of course, they’re all used in the service of these amazing tunes. “Kid Charlemagne” might be an incredible opener, but what it really does is give us a taste of just how eclectic and crazy this record really is. Despite being more funky in nature, this might also be one of the most diverse tracklists the group ever put out; jazz, pop, funk, hard rock, progressive rock, and a hint of blues can all be found on the album. In fact, just after the opener, we get a complete change of pace with the horn-driven number “The Caves of Altamira”; the song marries a story about the genesis of creativity and expression with an arrangement that only gets more complex as it goes on. Lots of jazz, of course, but also a hint of R&B in the verses and some prog in each post-chorus. Meanwhile, “Don’t Take Me Alive” might just be one of the most hard-rockin’ Steely Dan numbers; Larry Carlton’s lead guitar work absolutely tears it up on this fast-paced number, perfectly complimenting the dark lyrics about a criminal who’s killed his own father and wants the cops to shoot him. How pleasant!

And the stylistic contrasts continue. But it’s not like any of this detracts from the cohesion and focus of the record. If anything, each song is like its own unique extension of the Steely Dan style while still very much being in the Steely Dan style. This is perhaps best represented in some of the album’s deeper cuts, most notably “Haitian Divorce” and “The Fez”. The former is a song that I never would have expected to enjoy; I’m not much of a reggae fan as it is, so I wasn’t really excited about the prospect of a Steely Dan song using rhythms and guitar leads reminiscent of the genre. And yet, it somehow works! I think the band’s infusion of jazz into the mix, as well as the haunting and melancholic chorus, are really what pull it through in the end. Those backing vocals in the chorus are just lovely, and they only make the song even darker and more atmospheric than it already was. “The Fez”, however, is an interesting experiment for the duo as well. The music covers pretty familiar funk rock rock territory, but the lyrics are quite minimalistic. “No I'm never gonna do it without the fez on; oh no!” is repeated as if it were a mantra, while the strings in the background make you feel as though you’re in a 70s cop show. Honestly, it’s fun as hell. And it culminates in the beautiful jazzy harmonies that make up the chorus.

If I had to give a label to The Royal Scam, I'd say it’s probably Steely Dan’s most “fun” album. The energetic funk-inspired sound is just a blast, and the incredible roster of amazing guitarists just makes it even more exciting. Additionally, with the lens of hindsight, you can definitely tell that it was the immediate precursor to Aja. While it’s a lot funkier and more fast-paced than its successor, The Royal Scam was even more drenched in jazz influence than its predecessors and paved the way for songs like “Black Cow” and “I Got the News”. Simply put, this album absolutely rocks and I can’t give it a higher recommendation. But if you put it on, just make sure to turn down The Eagles; the neighbors are listening”.

Let’s round off with Pitchfork and their 2019 review. It has been great learning more about The Royal Scam. A Steely Dan album I have not investigated as much and deep as many of their others, I am now compelled to right that. As it turns fifty on 31st May, it is a good time to reacquaint myself with The Royal Scam:

“Although Scam was Steely Dan’s slickest album to date, it was also, in some ways, their ugliest. Its arrangements are a jungle of Rhodes stabs and the most aggressive—and finest—guitar work on a Steely Dan album since 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy. On “Don’t Take Me Alive,” Larry Carlton seems to take up most of the space, snarling, feeding back, advancing the simmering tension at the song’s stakeout (in a 1979 radio interview, Gary Katz said they’d directed the guitarist to play as “nasty and loud as possible.”) In “Sign in Stranger,” Elliott Randall’s erratic guitar breaks jostle for space with Paul Griffin’s bluesy piano—hard-bop comping in double-time. Together, they seem to mimic the crooked vendors vying for customers in the song’s marketplace, which Fagen claimed to have modeled on the “Sin City/Pleasure Planet” trope from some of his favorite sci-fi stories.

Techniques like these illustrate how Fagen and Becker pushed the music on Scam to feel as grotesque as their words—to be vignettes musically as well as lyrically. This tendency toward the theatrical is most apparent in the album’s queasy emulations of reggae and Carribean music. “I think Duke Ellington’s whole exotic jungle trip contributed a lot to our tropicality numbers,” Fagen told Melody Maker in 1976. “It’s an idealized, exotic atmosphere...Showtime, Ricky Riccardo stuff. More I Love Lucy than Bob Marley.” There is the rock-steady backbeat of “Sign in Stranger,” with a closing horn line that sounds like Cuban jazz pouring in from somewhere outside of the song.

On the more extreme side is the white elephant in the room: “Haitian Divorce,” complete with an intermittent Jamaican accent and a talkbox-treated guitar that sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher. Allegedly inspired by tracking engineer Elliot Scheiner’s attempt to finalize a divorce in a matter of a couple of months through a Central American loophole, it was a cinematic bit of storytelling, and Fagen and Becker framed it explicitly as such: “Now we dolly back/Now we fade to black.” It would be easy to write off as a misguided aberration if it didn’t rank among the record’s musically inspired moments: The song’s central modulation when the backing vocalists enter makes for one of the most satisfying chorus drops they ever recorded. It was also the band’s highest-charting single in the UK to date.

The song is a microcosm of what makes The Royal Scam both singular and frustrating: a combination of sharp songwriting, a resourceful approach to narrative, piss-take musical references, and willfully poor taste. More than on any album they ever released, Fagen and Becker foregrounded their jarring stylistic pivots, tying them directly to their lyrical scenarios; Aja and Gaucho, on the other hand, would create a sleek musical surface that functioned just as well apart from the sordid narratives. The Royal Scam is the Dan album where the music doesn’t allow the listener to escape the mindset of its characters and their stories’ grim implications: real progress is rarely possible, and we are doomed to repeat our worst behaviors over and over again.

Nowhere on The Royal Scam does this feel more apparent than on the title track and closer, a plodding epic about Puerto Rican immigrants in New York City. With little in the way of vocal melody, verbose phrasing inspired by the King James Bible, and a beat that never really seems to kick in, it sounds like a smooth-rock version of what it might have felt like to row a Viking warship. It is based around harsh melodic cells traded back and forth between Fagen’s Rhodes and Carlton’s guitar, with a few solo horn interjections. The motifs feel oddly mechanistic—a process that never gets anywhere. The corruption and abuse that crop up throughout the rest of the album descend on the undeserving populace. “The Caves of Altamira” may be about a loss of idealism, but we never see the fallout; here, Fagen and Becker shove our faces in the characters’ dashed dreams. In the album’s final moment, they perpetuate the scam they fell victim to like a game of telephone, crafting fabricated success stories for their relatives at home: “The old man back home/He reads the letter/How they are paid in gold/Just to babble in the back room/All night and waste their time.” By all indications, the cycle of hope, subjugation, and destruction will begin again”.

A typically distinct Steely Dan masterpiece, go and listen to The Royal Scam. Although the cover is awful – they had a habit of putting our particularly dreadful covers! -, don’t let that put you off! The music contained within is up there with the best released in the 1970s. The Royal Scam continues to reveal treasures…

AFTER fifty years.

FEATURE: And Here I Am Again, My Girl: Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes at Forty-Eight

FEATURE:

 

 

And Here I Am Again, My Girl

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Aris

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

__________

THERE is still…

uncertainty around when exactly Kate Bush wrote The Man with the Child in His Eyes. She says when she was sixteen, though most people say it was when she was thirteen. Either way, it does not take away from the extraordinary beauty and maturity of the song. The second U.K. single released from The Kick Inside, following Wuthering Heights, I wanted to revisit this track. Ut turns forty-eight on 26th May. This is a song that Bush performed live quite a bit, including during her only appearance on the U.S. show, Saturday Night Live. That was introduced by Eric Idle. I have written about The Man with the Child in His Eyes, though I will need to repat myself a little when it comes to the inspiration and backstory. Reaching number six in the U.K., it did remain on the charts for eleven weeks. This is one of the songs that was recorded in June 1975 at AIR Studios with David Gilmour as Executive Producer. The other album track, The Saxophone Song, was recorded during that session. Bush recalled how nervous she was recording alongside an orchestra. More used to piano, drums, bass and guitar prior to that, this was a moment when she got to record with a larger ensemble. However, listen to the version we hear on The Kick Inside – which was unchanged from its 1975 recording – and it sound faultless. No nerves from Kate Bush at all! There is a difference between the single mix and the album version. The single mix has Bush repeating “He’s here!”. A little giggle too. I am not sure why that was not part of the album version. I suppose it was an inclusion thought of post-1975. Many people prefer the single mix and that addition. This extraordinary song received Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding British Lyric in 1979.

It is fascinating what influenced the song. Many people misinterpreted the title and what that meant. Also, who inspired the song. Thinking it was a specific person. However, Kate Bush explained how The Man with the Child in His Eyes was about men in general. The Kate Bush Encyclopedia provide some interview archive:

“The inspiration for ‘The Man With the Child in His Eyes’ was really just a particular thing that happened when I went to the piano. The piano just started speaking to me. 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. I, myself, am attracted to older men, I guess, but I think that’s the same with every female. I think it’s a very natural, basic instinct that you look continually for your father for the rest of your life, as do men continually look for their mother in the women that they meet. I don’t think we’re all aware of it, but I think it is basically true. You look for that security that the opposite sex in your parenthood gave you as a child.

Self Portrait, 1978”.

I have said before how it is a shame that the handwritten lyrics for the song, which Bush wrote in hot pink felt-tip pen, were sold an an auction. Steve Blacknell – perhaps her first serious boyfriend who many (including him) felt the song was written about – gave it away. This is the item of Bush memorabilia that I would want to posses more than any. Just holding that paper Kate Bush was writing on perhaps as early as 1971. That would be truly something to behold!

Also, The Man with the Child in His Eyes was performed by Kate Bush. Steve Harley and Peter Gabriel at Bill Duffield’s memorial concert on 12th May, 1979. It was renamed The Woman with the Child in Her Eyes. Duffield was part of Kate Bush’s crew for The Tour of Life who tragically died following an accident after the warm-up gig in Poole. Forty-eight years after its release and I still think that it is one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded. I am surprised it was not a biggest chart success. When we discuss The Man with the Child in His Eyes, we mention how young Kate Bush was when she wrote it. However, that sort of takes away from the fact that she wrote it. Artists that young recorded hits but very few wrote them at that age. Think about the history of music and the age at which major artists wrote their earliest hits. I guess The Beatles might be an exception with Love Me Do. John Lennon and Paul McCartney only seventeen when they wrote that. Other Beatles songs written when they were even younger. I feel McCartney was fourteen when he wrote When I’m Sixty-Four. That song was not really a hit. In general, artists did not write songs that young. Dreams of Orgonon highlighted how spectacular it is that Kate Bush had this song in her mind when she was a teenager:

“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. It’s rare for artists to pull this off successfully so early on, which may account for the limited amount of in-depth analysis on “Child”—Ron Moy finds little to say on the song in his book Kate Bush and Hounds of Love, and Deborah M. Withers’ classic Bushology text Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory skips the song altogether (frankly the best reading of the song hails from this Tumblr post). The most useful critical take comes from Graeme Thomson’s seminal biography Under the Ivy:

“[Kate] is surely unique among female songwriters in that her canon contains not a single song that puts down, castigates, or generally gives men the brush off. She has never been feminist in the bluntest sense — she wants to preserve and embrace the differences between the sexes and understand the male of the species. Many songs display a desire to experience fully what it is to be a man; she invests them with power,  beauty, and a kind of mystical attraction which is incredibly generous”.

It is interesting too how Bush portrayed men. Many teenage artists would be quite naïve or immature. There would be recrimination and some anger. It happens today. Young artists talking about men and relationships with some anger and regret. Not to say Bush was heartbreak-free even aged thirteen. Through her career, she maintained this positive attitude towards men. The positive role that they played in her life. The Man with the Child in His Eyes is so moving and unique because it is written by a teen prodigy. Instead of it being a simple love song or regretful break-up, there is this sense of wonder. Teenage artists of the 1970s were not writing songs that had this sort of approach to men. Commending the child-like quality they retain.

I will move on in a minute, though I want to stay with this Dreams of Orgonon article, as there are some really insightful observations made. The Man with thew Child in His Eyes has not been dissected and discussed enough through the year:

“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. But she walks a strange line—she mediates a discussion between poptimism and rockism. Kate Bush is that relatively unusual thing in 1970s popular music—a creator of bestselling singles who immediately moves into the role of albums artist.

Musically, MWCIHE is Kate’s most significant accomplishment to date. It’s easy to see why Dave Gilmour wanted it released. It’s the first Kate song to really work melodically—it’s cleanly structured, gorgeous, organic, and uncanny. She manages to balance ethereality and hummable melodies while keeping her more experimental drive. She finally develops a memorable hook, an arpeggiated E minor chord (B-G-E-E). The song continues by displaying Kate’s propensity for unorthodox key changes. The first part of the verse (“I hear him before I go to sleep” through “when I turn the light off and turn over”) in E minor with a progression of i-III-VI-III-iv (E minor-G-C-A minor). The second half of the verse moves to E minor’s dominant key, B minor, before shifting to Bb major, doing some things in G, and shifting to a chorus in C. The song is not static—it’s organic, it breathes like a person”.

What is interesting is how The Man with the Child in His Eyes has this simplicity. In terms of the arrangement and the music video. I think that is one of its greatest strengths. It is a song that could only have been sung by a very young woman. Older artists like Hue and Cry and Dusty Springfield covered the song, and it is not one Bush could have performed later in her life and made work. It is the purity of her voice and the fact that she was this teenager writing and recording this song which made it so powerful. Even though the song weas recorded almost three years before it was released as a single, I did want to mark forty-eight years of this outstanding and beguiling track. In 2022, when highlighting ten Kate Bush tracks to delight new listeners, Alexis Petridis for The Guardian rightly observed this: “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”. It is clear that Bush felt strongly about The Man with the Child in His Eyes and wanted it to succeed. She was determined for this to be the single. EMI wanted to go with another choice. Mirroring that battle she had to get Wuthering Heights released as her debut single when EMI wanted the more commercial James and the Cold Gun. I think Them Heavy People was suggested as the next U.K. single – though it was released in Japan under the title of Rolling the Ball. When speaking with Melody Maker in 1978, Kate Bush did say how much she wanted this new single to succeed:

“Dave Gilmour, of Pink Floyd, was impressed enough by her potential to put up the money for proper demos, and Andrew Powell, usually noted for his orchestral arrangements, stepped in to produce her album. With all the business taken care of, Kate was able to "educate" herself.

"Train myself for the ...ah...Coming, I guess. I really felt that I wanted to get some sort of bodily expression together to go with the music. Music is a very emotional thing, and there's always a message, and your purpose as a performer is to get it across to the people in as many ways as you can."

The "Coming" came and Kate Bush took everybody by surprise, including herself and EMI, by breaking through immediately. She had insisted that "Wuthering Heights" be the first single, as much for business reasons as artistic ones.

"I felt that to actually get your name anywhere, you've got to do something that is unusual, because there's so much good music around and it's all in a similar vein. It was, musically, for me, one of my strongest songs. It had the high pitch and it also had a very English story-line which everyone would know because it was a classic book."

EMI had wanted to go with another track, "James and the Cold Gun," a more traditional rock'n'roll song. But Kate was reluctant, just as they were with the new single, "The Man With the Child In His Eyes," which, musically, is a complete contrast to her first hit. The record company would have opted for a more obvious follow-up in "Them Heavy People."

"I so want "The Man With the Child In His Eyes" to do well. I'd like people to listen to it as a songwriting song, as opposed to something weird, which was the reaction to 'Wuthering Heights.' That's why it's important. If the next song had been similar, straight away I would have been labeled, and that's something I really don't want. As soon as you've got a label, you can't do anything. I prefer to take a risk”.

I am going to wrap up. On 26th May, it will be forty-eight years since The Man with the Child in His Eyes was released as a single. Wuthering Heights reached number one, but it also labelled Kate Bush as a weird or eccentric artist. She did not want to be defined by that song and its sound. The fact is that her second U.K. single was very different and did establish her as a serious and genuine songwriter who was not a one-hit wonder or this stereotype that was perpetuated by many in the media. It remains this tender, dreamy, sophisticated and hugely accomplished song. We do not discuss it enough. Articles are not written about it. Like so many Kate Bush songs. That needs to change. One of the most beautiful songs ever recorded, forty-eight years after it was released as a single, and The Man with the Child in His Eyes…

STILL captivates.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Violet Grohl

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Milly Cope for The Forty-Five

Violet Grohl

__________

YOU will definitely connect…

PHOTO CREDIT: We Are Moving the Needle

the surname to a pretty well-known Grohl but, rather than this being the daughter of Dave Grohl following in her father’s footsteps or getting a leg-up by association – as many will call it nepotism -, this is a teen artist who has her own career on her own terms. Indeed, she does have creative parents and a father who has been a stalwart of the music scene for decades now. However, this is a singular and already-distinct and talented artist that is making her own way and will release her debut album, Be Sweet to Me, on 29th May. Violet Grohl is incredible, so I wanted to spotlight her. She also turns twenty on 15th April, so that is going to be another reason to celebrate her here! There are some features and interviews I want to get to. You can pre-order Be Sweet to Me. Grohl plays Reading & Leeds in August, though I hope there are more intimate gigs in the U.K., as she is developing a strong fanbase here. I am going to end with a new interview from The Forty-Five. They spent time with a compelling and passionate artist whose debut album is primed to be among the best and most notable of 2026. Let’s start with her interview with Far Out Magazine, where Violet Grohl discussed her five major influences:

“It is no surprise that Violet Grohl’s first teaser tracks from her upcoming debut album are so good. When you’ve grown up with a rock star dad and a director mum, surrounded by the greatest talents in the musical world thanks to their social circle, you’re bound to get some great inspiration passed down.

In debates about nepotism, that nuance is often overlooked. Yes, Grohl has connections most people could only dream of. But when it comes to her artistry, what she really inherited was an extraordinary education. Her father is a genuine music obsessive who has witnessed many of the greatest moments in modern music firsthand. Growing up with him meant being surrounded by incredible music, hearing endless stories and recommendations, and having someone able to guide her toward the very best of it all.

In Far Out’s conversation with Grohl, that point comes up quickly as she reflects on the huge influence of simply driving around with her father. From the passenger seat throughout her childhood, she discovered many of her favourite albums and films. It became the ultimate starting point for her own musical journey, and she ran with it.

But now, age 19 and prepping to release her own debut album, Grohl is out there on her own, merging those life-long influences with new ones she’s gathered along the way as she forged her own passion and built her own artistic world”

The Breeders – ‘Last Splash’

Grohl makes no secret of the immense influence the 1990s have had on her. Obviously, she wasn’t there as she was born in 2006, but naturally, the soundtrack of her childhood came from the records her mum and dad loved from their own youth, forever enamoured with the sound of the ‘90s grunge wave that they were both invested in, either as a musician in Dave Grohl’s case, or a fan in the crowd for her mum, Jordyn Blum.

One of the key acts on repeat was always The Breeders, but it wasn’t until she got a bit older that this second record from the group really hit her. “That album totally opened up a world for me sonically when I listened to it for the first time,” Grohl said, adding, “The way that Kim Deal writes music is so spectacular and just so enjoyable to listen to. It’s so frenetic and high energy and also really beautiful at the same time.”

‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ (David Lynch, 1993)

“When you come, I’ll be waitin’,” Grohl repeats on her single ‘595’ like the voice of Laura Palmer, haunted by the spectre of BOB in her final days.

Since her teenage years, when she first saw Blue Velvet, the world of David Lynch has always been important to her. But for this record especially, it was the dark, devastating and eerie world of the Twin Peaks prequel movie that kept coming back to her.

“There were lots of moments when we were recording where scenes in that movie would just pop up in my head and or there would be a line from the movie that was just so spot on to what I was trying to say that we would throw it in there just as kind of a little nod to him,” she said, treating her music as a kind of sonic tribute to Lynch, adding, “There’s something so beautiful and dark and emotional about his work that I just I relate to very deeply.”

The state of Virginia

While Grohl was born and raised in Los Angeles, her ancestral home of Virginia always had a draw to her. While Dave Grohl is mostly associated with Washington, the majority of his young life was lived in Virginia, and for all of Violet’s youth, trips to her grandparents’ house always felt like a hyper-inspirational step back in time.

“I love Virginia, and I feel so connected to it,” she said, adding, “My dad grew up there, and I used to go to his childhood home all the time and spend time with my grandma there, and her house is, it’s basically left exactly as it was when my dad was like, growing up there.”

As a young girl, only really coming to realise that perhaps her dad was a person of note, looking at the bits and bobs at her grandparents’ place felt like a gateway to something, as she said, “There’s just so many little bits and pieces of memorabilia and of moments in time that are so special and beautiful”.

Her grandma

In a similar vein, it wasn’t just the house that felt inspiring, but the woman who kept it, too.

“I think both of my grandmas, my dad’s mom and my mom’s mom have both been just like massive inspirations for me my whole life,” she said, honouring her family. “As a person, in art, in school, in whatever field it was that I needed support in. They were always there to support me. Always are there to support me,” she added, highlighting that the influence of her family goes way beyond her dad.

“They’re so wise and beautifully articulate, and that’s just like everything that I could ever aspire to be, and having them raise me was really, really, really special,” she gushed as a beautiful tribute”.

PJ Harvey at Glastonbury

When you’re a kid at arguably the world’s greatest festival, the experience is bound to be formative. When you’re 16 and performing at that festival as part of your dad’s secret set, that’s also bound to be a highlight. But for Grohl and her many experiences of attending Glastonbury, nothing was quite as impactful as in 2024 when she was in the crowd watching PJ Harvey’s set on the Pyramid Stage.

“Marina Abramovic came out and did a silent meditation piece at the beginning, I think it was ten minutes, but it was just the most, like, beautiful emotional roller coaster,” she said as the set started powerful and stayed that way. “There were moments where my sister and I would look at each other and we’d have tears in her eyes, and then the next song would play, and it would be like a fucking amazing rock song, and we’d be jamming out,” she said of the experience.

To Grohl, it was everything she could’ve wanted: “It was just like she had perfectly encapsulated her essence into that live show, and it was so spectacular”.

It is worth moving along to Kerrang!. Great to see her getting some love and attention in the U.K. press. Here, Violet Grohl talks about “finding the confidence to go it alone, how her late grandmother Virginia is still a “massive presence” in her life, and if there’ll be UK shows”. I cannot wait for the release of Be Sweet to Me. Although I love all the details about recording the album and working with producer Justin Raisen, it is her connection with her grandmother that stands out . This interview was published in March, and Violet Grohl was asked at the end whether there will be U.K. shows, to which she answered, “You might hear something soon…”. So we may get some confirmed venue dates for fans who want to see her here:

“Your initial songwriting efforts were solitary but became more collaborative in the studio. Was that something you pushed for, to take you out of your comfort zone?

“Yeah, that was something I wanted. After a while of writing on my own, I started to get emotionally drained, as I was pulling from some very memorable places. That put me into a zone it wasn’t really easy to get out of, so it was fun to be in a spontaneous environment and really beautiful. A lot of stuff happens in those moments that you don’t really expect. Sometimes it might go wrong, but other times something even better comes out of trying. THUM was written and recorded the first day we were in the studio – I thought, ‘I didn’t even know I could do that.’ I had a lot of unfinished demos, so I hadn’t finished my own song before. It all fell together and lit a fire under my ass.”

You have your grandmother’s portrait tattooed on your arm. You’ve also written a song, Bug In A Cake, about living in her house now, and her continued presence there…

“She was such a massive presence, and when she passed it was really devastating. But her presence on earth was so strong and so vibrant that it feels like she’s still here and I feel very close to her all the time. Moving into her house was all I wanted to do. The thought of it being torn down and turned into some developmental property broke my fucking heart, so I couldn’t let that happen. Last year, I officially moved in. My grandmother had kept the most amazing family heirlooms, like my great grandpa’s World War II dogtags, and all the letters he wrote to my great grandma when he was serving in the navy. The song Bug In A Cake is about how the house is haunted, because my grandmother is still very much there. There’s a lyric, ‘Turn the TV off so it turns back on,’ about when I came home and despite switching everything off, the TV was on in the bedroom, with MSNBC on, which was my grandmother’s favourite channel.”

What qualities did Justin bring as a producer? Given your relative inexperience, what were you looking for from him?

“We both had the same feel for what we wanted to do. He’s pretty hands-on – he’d hop on the bass when he needed to – and wrote the bassline for THUM. He’s not overbearing – he has so much going on in his brain constantly and is like a mad scientist. It was very collaborative, and everyone was willing to listen.”

Let’s talk about a few of the artists on those playlists and what qualities you were trying to emulate from them – starting with Soundgarden…

“Their guitar sound is so sludgy and so powerful. I love it because it can be angry one moment and very emotionally heavy the next. And I just love the melodic structures of Soundgarden songs. Plus, there is no man who can sing like Chris Cornell. I’ve never heard a guy do a good cover of a Soundgarden song – only women.”

What about the Pixies? You seem to share a predilection for surreal lyrics with Frank Black…

“Absolutely! I love how abstract his lyrics can be, but somehow beautiful and depressing. It feels like unfiltered expression of exactly what he wants to say, which is so fucking badass. Plus, their guitar sound and backwards drumming are so iconic and inventive.”

And what about PJ Harvey?

“PJ Harvey is just something else… the way that she’s able to translate her emotions in extraordinary ways, and her sonic choices are so tasteful and spectacular, and never obvious. I think I was 12 or 13 when I got my first PJ Harvey record, [1993’s] Rid Of Me, and it blew my fucking mind!”.

I want to end with this new interview from The Forty-Five (this video is also pretty cool), as the photoshoot (photos are by the brilliant Milly Cope) is incredible, and we get this fascinating portrait of a young artist about to release her debut album. Such an exciting time for Violet Grohl, she has this affinity for London. That bodes well for potential shows here. The Forty-Five sat down with Grohl to discuss a debut album that could (and most probably will) rival some of the greats from the '90s. I don’t want to include the entire interview, though there are selections that I was eager to highlight:

“In person, Violet is sweet and polite, gushing about how much she loves London (“the architecture! The big grassy fields!”). She has her mother, actor and director Jordyn Blum’s piercing blue eyes that well up as she talks about her love of music.

But the rest is all Grohl. And not just her dad – familial influence dating back to her paternal grandparents, who set in motion a love of music that would shape the generations that followed. There’s not a hint of precociousness to her, nor is she a wallflower. She chats away freely and enthusiastically about the process of making her debut record. Not shying away from her lineage, Grohl’s debut is steeped in 90s influences. Be it the dream-pop of Cocteau Twins on ‘Pool Of My Dreams’ or the DC hardcore-indebted ‘Cool Buzz’, it’s a record that says: I know who I am and I’m proud of it.

Enrolled in the school of rock from birth, morning trips to school in the San Fernando Valley were soundtracked by the 90s alt-rock canon of PJ Harvey, The Muffs and Juliana Hatfield and the experimental sounds of Bjork. Picking up a ukulele and, latterly, guitar, Violet taught herself to play music and write poetry. Aided by a voice that can belt out a gravelly rock song with the same conviction as a jazz standard, and perhaps, a debut album was always an inevitability.

By thirteen, around the time when most of us were discovering Nirvana, Violet was playing with them. At a one-off LA reunion show (only the fourth time the band had publicly linked up since Kurt Cobain’s passing) she joined Krist Novoselic, Pat Smear and Dave Grohl on stage. And despite the familiarity, the weight of the occasion wasn’t lost on her.

Though many of her early musical experiences were utterly atypical, Violet was still a teenage girl, growing up in an age where another teenage girl was making serious waves.

PHOTO CREDIT: Milly Cope

“I’ve been following Billie Eilish since the beginning – like, since her SoundCloud days,” Violet admits. “I love her. She’s a lovely person. Watching her open up this path for female musicians in this alternative pop space that’s still beautiful, it was just so incredible to me. I watched her play live a handful of times in 2018 and it was just insane.” She recalls a moment side of stage at Camp Flog Gnaw, when Eilish’s dad handed her his ear set so she could listen to Billie’s isolated vocals. “I was crying so hard the whole time, because it was so raw and so beautiful. And I was just like, this is all I want to do. It totally lit a fire under my ass.”

Turning painful experiences into art was something Violet discovered at a young age. “When I’m in an emotionally vulnerable place, or I’m very sensitive, I’m more open.’ she explains. “There’s something about it that puts me in this perfect temperature where it’s the sweet spot to finding stuff that resonates very deeply with me, I guess. “Making this album, I was definitely unpacking a lot of past pain and stuff that was going on in my life. But it just came out the way it came out. I wasn’t looking for feel, particularly.”

That seismic emotional shift is felt most prominently moving from track six, ‘Mobile Star’; an Eilish-indebted shoegaze track inspired by Ian Curtis’ death and “the pressure to be a certain way” into ‘Often Others’ – the record’s heaviest song: a sludge anthem with doom-laden, droning guitars. “There’s so much emotion behind a sludgy guitar,” she shares of the artistic choice. “It feels like a gut punch.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Milly Cope

On ‘Cool Buzz’, Grohl prods at the hypocrisy of men in the hardcore scene, who pretend to be progressive but still don’t welcome women into their spaces.

“It still feels like an exclusive scene,” laments Grohl. “Especially when you wanna listen to really hardcore shit and run around and mosh, there’s a lot of ‘Oh, you’re too delicate, you’re too feminine, this isn’t your place,’ she sighs. “ But I do wanna be in that space and I know there are a lot of other girls who want to be there too. So I think more girls should make punk music, if these spaces aren’t gonna allow it.”

At nineteen, Violet seems to have a lot worked out already And most importantly, she’s made a record that should go a long way to silence those claiming she’s only here because of her last name. “I’m beyond grateful and for the life that I was born into,” she says, fully tapped into the discourse. “It’s such a privilege to be able to be around musicians and in a space that nurtures my interest and allows me to grow and to make a record.

“Obviously, doors are open for me because of my last name,” she eye-rolls. “It’s not something I’m ever going to hide behind or say, ‘No, I worked so hard for this! You guys shouldn’t say that! That hurts my feelings.’ I don’t care – I really don’t. I’ve heard that since I was 13 years old. So call me a Nepo Baby all you want. It’s whatever to me. I just hope that eventually people will give me a shot.”

This summer, Grohl will play Reading and Leeds festival for the first time, just like Nirvana did thirty-five years ago. A smattering of UK shows is also on the cards. As her team prepares to whisk her off to Paris for a run of European press, she ends our conversation with a request –  or perhaps a challenge – for the naysayers.

“Come see me live,” she urges. “Come listen to my music and then you can decide for yourself if I’m worthy of this career or not.”

She pauses, those big blue eyes glistening a little. “This is my passion, this is my thing – and it’s all I want to do”.

Violet Grohl celebrates her twentieth birthday on 15th April. On 29th May, her debut album, Be Sweet to Me, arrives. She has some huge festival dates in the U.K. later in the summer, but it seems like we may get some news before then of extra dates. From there, it really will be full steam ahead! An artist who will be hugely in-demand and will scoop a load of ecstatic reviews for her debut album, make sure you connect with Violet Grohl. This is a brilliant and instantly engaging and lovable artist and person who…

YOU truly need in your life.

___________

Follow Violet Grohl

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/viioletgrohl/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3PbVZAe3y6cQKBDdG2YASB?si=MgcBLuCHQnKtB89aWtYGYg

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@Violet-Grohl

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/p/Violet-Grohl-61582003366088/

FEATURE: Dua Lipa Curating the London Literature Festival: A Hugely Positive and Influential Way to Get More People Reading

FEATURE:

 

 

Dua Lipa Curating the London Literature Festival

A Hugely Positive and Influential Way to Get More People Reading

__________

THIS news story…

PHOTO CREDIT: Dua Lipa

went out a while ago, though the festival itself is not until October. The incredible Dua Lipa has a busy year ahead of her. She will appear on A24’s new comedy film Peaked, as Deadline reveal. It sounds like an incredible project. Lipa has appeared in films but, like her Pop peer, Charli xcx, she has not quite been given the right project and vehicle. This new film sounds like one that will put Dua Lipa more in the spotlight and give her an opportunity to flex her acting muscles. What I mean is that, so far, she has not been given too many challenging or vastly interesting roles. I feel she is a wonderful natural actor, so I hope that Peaked is the start of a run of films that gets people discussing her as an accomplished and varied actor. You can see her tackling really gritty roles and also charming romantic-comedies and biopics. At the moment, she has a lot of other things on her plate. Her latest album, Radical Optimism, was released in 2024. She will be thinking about her next album. If some saw Radical Optimism as a less spectacular follow-up to 2020’s Future Nostalgia, I felt that it was equal to that 2020 album. I feel Dua Lipa will do something very different for her fourth studio album. I believe she is also engaged to be married, so that is going to be a big focus for her this year. We will see Dua Lipa grace the big screen and perhaps the small screen if the right scripts come her way. At the moment, I think her Radical Optimism Tour has wound down. It seems like a new chapter and time for her to launch new music. It is not unusual for artists to have offshoots and other things they do.

Usually, that means products and brand advertising. Nothing like a whole new discipline or something beyond that. Apart from acting, most artists are busy with music but do not get involved too much in other areas of the arts. Sure, Dua Lipa has been involved with advertising and she has been in some popcorn flicks or films that are a bit empty. That will change when she is seen more as a genuinely great and eclectic actor. One of her most fulfilling ventures is the Service95 Book Club. Service95 is a global style, arts and society venture – the ultimate cultural concierge – at the service of the reader. What is fantastic about Service95 is how engaging it is. Dua Lipa recommends a monthly read. There are articles and interviews. The Reading List is probably my favourite part. I am trying to think of other high-profile artists that are avid readers and extraordinary interviewers too. Dua Lipa is as good as any interviewer. I feel there should be a YouTube series where artists interview one another. A format where they talk about their career and select tracks and there are these different segments, I would love to see Lipa talk with another big artist. Service95 is something Dua Lipa is passionate about. She also is urges so many people to pick up books. Her young fans, who might be distracted by the shallowness of social media, are encouraged to pick up books and engage more with literature. It seemed like a natural step that she was asked to curate this year’s London literature Festival. Art Plugged provide details of a festival that is going to be fascinating:

“The Southbank Centre has named Dua Lipa as curator of its 2026 London Literature Festival, placing one of pop’s most visible literary advocates at the helm of the capital’s longest-running festival of literature and spoken word. The Grammy and Brit Award-winning artist, who founded the Service95 Book Club, will shape a series of events for the opening weekend on Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October, alongside programming across the wider festival in collaboration with Service95 Book Club.

Running from Wednesday 21 October to Sunday 1 November, the 2026 edition arrives as part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary year and during the National Year of Reading. Now in its nineteenth year, the London Literature Festival has established itself as a fixture of the city’s cultural calendar, bringing major authors, public thinkers and new voices into conversation on one of London’s most prominent arts sites.

Dua’s curatorship reflects a reading life she has made increasingly public. In 2023, she launched the Service95 Book Club as part of Service95, her global culture platform. Each month, she selects a title and speaks with its author for the club’s podcast, building an audience around reading that extends well beyond traditional literary spaces. She has also used that platform to advocate for readers who face barriers to access, including those affected by book bans and incarceration

Commenting on her curatorship, Dua Lipa said: “Reading has anchored me through every chapter of my life – from being the new kid at school in a new country to finding quiet refuge on tour. Curating the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival is a dream come true. I’m thrilled to indulge one of my greatest obsessions: books and the brilliant minds behind them. I can’t wait to dive into the imaginations of some of my favourite authors in one of London’s most iconic cultural spaces.”

For the Southbank Centre, the appointment places literature within a broader anniversary programme that looks to the institution’s postwar origins while inviting contemporary artists to recast its public role. It also signals an effort to connect literary culture with audiences who may first know Dua through music, fashion or digital media, but who have followed her growing commitment to books, authors and reading communities.

Mark Ball, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre, said: “The Southbank Centre was borne out of the 1951 Festival of Britain – a moment that galvanised the nation using art, music, science and design to imagine a brighter future. 75 years later our anniversary programme is capturing that optimistic spirit of ‘51 by inviting global creative talent to help us celebrate the unifying power of arts and culture and to conjure up visions of the future.

“Dua Lipa is a global cultural force with millions of fans around the world, and her passion for the written and spoken word has inspired a new generation of readers. We’re absolutely thrilled that Dua will take the reins of our flagship London Literature Festival, applying her incredible creative talent, her advocacy and her reach to connect audiences to our finest writers.

The drop was especially pronounced among primary-aged children, with reading continuing to attract lower engagement among boys than girls. In that context, the London Literature Festival will include events designed to engage young people with books and storytelling, with creative collaborations from the world of gaming, special workshops and a programme of free events. This strand is supported by Bukhman Philanthropies”.

PHOTO CREDIT: YSL Beauty

I am going off on a slight tangent. Dua Lipa is also someone who I would genuinely call a businesswoman. An innovator and someone who I feel might become more involved in politics years from now. Last month, for ELLE Singapore chatted with Dua Lipa. She has been the face of YSL Beauty’s Libre since 2019. Lipa talked about the scent and her association with it and affinity for her. Talking about her scent and perfume regime, we see another side to her:

“Every girl wants to be Dua Lipa. Since signing her record deal with Warner Records Inc. in 2014 and releasing her debut track "New Love", the 30-year-old British singer has evolved into one of music’s bona fide stars. In true popstar fashion, she's scored a slew of UK top ten hits—including three off her third studio album Radical Optimism—and has won countless awards, including Best Pop Vocal Album at the Grammys for Future Nostalgia and seven Brit Awards throughout her career. She has also gone on to headline Glastonbury Festival in 2024, star in movies Barbie (for which she sang the hit "Dance The Night Away") and Argylle, complete three successful tours, and perform her greatest hits with the Heritage Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall for the television special, An Evening with Dua Lipa, all within the last decade.

Combined with her free-spirited nature, vivacious sensuality, and zest for life, the British songstress is every bit of an it girl; well-read, well-loved, and well-traveled as displayed through her acclaimed weekly lifestyle newsletter Service95 alongside its accompanying podcast Dua Lipa: At Your Service and sun-soaked snapshots with her equally stunning entourage and fiancé, actor Callum Turner, around the world on Instagram. It’s this exact effervescence that makes her the perfect choice as the face of YSL Beauty’s Libre since 2019. This oriental scent—along with its sister iterations—is inspired by the independent Libre girl embracing life fearlessly on her own terms. In short: it’s sexy, sophisticated, and unapologetically bold, much like Dua herself”.

That was a slightly distraction. However, it does show how Dua Lipa gets to balance brand association, film, music and her Service95 book club. Her helming the curation of this year’s London Literature Festival is going to be a major priority. I wonder how she will incorporate Service95 and whether there will be a tie-in. Already, she has so much influence on many young fans. Those who may not have picked up a book or been too interested in literature. Dua Lipa, as this engaging and very intelligent and skilled interview also has this great connection with authors and people she interviews. This month’s recommend read is quite momentous for Service95 Book Club:

“April 2026 marks a milestone for Lipa’s Service95 book club: its first play. In her intro, Lipa notes that she first read “Jerusalem” when she was 15 and the play’s main character “has stayed with [her] ever since.”

“From the very first page, Rooster is mixing himself a hangover smoothie of sour milk, eggs, vodka and… speed,” Lipa explains. “He’s a former daredevil now living in a caravan in the English countryside, spending his days dispensing booze, drugs and tall stories to local teenagers. He’s also been served an eviction notice for unauthorised encampment. It’s not his first warning, but it feels like it might be his last.”

She continues: “What I love most about “Jerusalem,” and why I’ve chosen it as our first play, is how alive it is on the page as well as the stage. One moment you’re deep in English folklore: giants, fairies, ancient drums. The next, someone is arguing about Girls Aloud (if you don’t know, get to know!). It is funny, it is tragic and it is the best possible reminder that reading plays is not only for school”.

The Service95 Book Club is this phenomenal thing that is definitely something Dua Lipa believes in and wants to see grow for years to come! Rather than it being a celebrity gimmick or something that an artist is doing to make themselves seem deeper, Lipa has always been a committed reader and she believes in the power of the written word. Alongside Service95, her curating of the London Literature Festival will get more people reading. Though, how do you keep traction and interesting going so that people keep picking up books, rather than just the one book. Ikon London Magazine asked if Dua Lipa taking control of a huge literary festival will inspire more reading among her fans and far wider beyond:

“The festival, which runs from October 21 to November 1, lands in the middle of the UK’s National Year of Reading and marks the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary. Dua will shape the programme across the first weekend, from October 24–25, and contribute events throughout via her Service95 Book Club.

There is a clear reason organisers are trying something different. Reading, particularly among younger audiences, is slipping. Research by the National Literacy Trust found that just one in three children aged eight to 18 read for pleasure in 2025, the lowest level on record, with the steepest decline among primary school pupils and boys.

That context makes celebrity involvement look less like a gimmick and more like a calculated shift. If people are already following public figures into fitness regimes, skincare routines and viral challenges, it is not unreasonable to think they might follow them into reading. The difference is that books ask for something rarer: time and attention.

Dua Lipa has been building towards this for a while. She launched the Service95 Book Club in 2023 as part of her wider cultural platform, pairing monthly book picks with long-form interviews and recommendations shared to a global audience. On Instagram, those choices travel far beyond traditional literary circles, landing in the same space as tour footage and fashion campaigns.

“Reading has anchored me through every chapter of my life,” she said. “From being the new kid at school in a new country to finding quiet refuge on tour.”

There is precedent. Oprah Winfrey turned her book club into a publishing force, while Reese Witherspoon has built a media brand around monthly selections that regularly push titles onto bestseller lists. Emma Watson has also used reading initiatives to build engaged communities around books.

The Southbank Centre is now applying that logic at scale. This is not a one-off appearance but a curatorial role. Dua will shape conversations, invite writers and set the tone for a weekend likely to blur the line between a literary event and a broader cultural moment. Expect a mix of established names and emerging voices, alongside free events aimed at audiences who might not usually book a ticket for a traditional author talk.

Mark Ball, the centre’s artistic director, put it plainly:
“Dua Lipa is a global cultural force… her passion for the written and spoken word has inspired a new generation of readers.”

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A post shared by SERVICE95 (@service95)

The festival itself is hardly niche. Now in its nineteenth year, it remains London’s longest-running literature and spoken word festival, with past headliners ranging from Ai Weiwei to Malala Yousafzai and Margaret Atwood. It spreads across the Southbank Centre’s full site, from the Royal Festival Hall to smaller performance spaces, mixing headline talks with workshops, spoken word and experimental formats.

Literary festivals themselves have been shifting in response to changing audiences. Star-led programming is becoming more common, often used to widen audiences rather than redefine the format entirely. In the UK, literary events have increasingly mixed writing with wider cultural personalities to broaden their appeal. Long‑established festivals such as the Cheltenham Literature Festival programme conversations that bring together novelists, actors, broadcasters and public figures, recognising that cultural conversation doesn’t stop at the boundaries of genre. The Hay Festival’s 2026 line‑up itself includes artists and thinkers known outside strictly literary circles, signalling a shift toward programmes that feel less like academic showcases and more like shared cultural moments.

What changes here is the framing. Books are being positioned less as a specialist interest and more as part of a broader cultural circuit, sitting alongside music, performance and digital storytelling. There are plans for collaborations that stretch beyond traditional readings, including projects that tap into gaming and other narrative forms.

Ted Hodgkinson, who leads literature and spoken word at the venue, describes reading as “a creative and collaborative act”, pointing to Dua’s interviews and selections as a way of opening that up to a wider audience.

The timing is deliberate. The literature festival sits within a wider anniversary programme that includes projects from figures like Danny Boyle and a major exhibition by Anish Kapoor. In that context, handing part of the programme to a pop star feels less like a novelty and more like a recalibration.

Whether it works is another question. Celebrity book clubs can drive attention, but attention does not always translate into habit. It is one thing to double-tap a recommendation. It is another to read the book”.

I do think that Dua Lipa will help make a push towards more of us reading and becoming more engaged with literature. Perhaps more aimed at a younger demographic that might not have otherwise stepped into that world. Whilst not influential or powerful enough to completely change habits or get millions reading, I do think that someone with her reputation will truly make a big difference. I feel other artists need to follow her lead. Go and follow Service95 Book Club on Instagram. It is so fulfilling, fascinating and revealing following. In terms of the authors featured and what is discussed and recommended. I wonder if Dua Lipa has a literary adaptation she would love to feature in or whether she herself would ever write a novel. This multi-talented artist, actor, businesswoman and modern icon will most assuredly get many more people reading and discussing literature and engaging with one another as we go through this year. And beyond. For that, she deserves…

A huge amount of respect!